First Look purchased the url, "The Intercept" in January, 2014. "The Intercept" (aptly named) originally consisted of the posts below with many reposts of articles and blogposts collected to share. They consist of stories that we thought were the most important and verifiable news/opinions at the time.  

There are also a number of original posts covering various topics we happened to be knee-deep in exploring. This collection was a hobby/habit of sharing what I learned and presenting in a news hub style format. Consider this blog like a "Wayback Machine" that preserves the more controversial articles (many long gone from their original sites) and compiles them in a way that serves as a snapshot of what was happening at the time.  Bonus to whomever finds that post that had video of a witness to a false flag shooting that was cancelled by the local sheriff in California.  That has mysteriously disappeared. 

 I learned a lot during this time and I hope there are some useful references for others.

 Apologies in advance for any media that is missing due to its dependence on other sites.  This included many youtubes and blip.tv vids.

Note:  Some have inquired about our site, americanterrorist.com, which explored the hypocrisies of the war on terror.   A lot of the data was lost for that site after it was successfully hacked around the summer of 2016.  We're in the process of redesigning the site and recovering the information.  Just keep an eye on the url.  

New CIA Director John Brennan Cheers Torture

Sandy Hook shooting - MSNBC reports that AR-15 rifle was left in the car

Editor's Note: Straight up reporting before it was necessary to blame the shooting on an AR-15.

PLA officials say troops are to prepare for war amid territorial disputes with Japan

'Hard and rigorous' training planned amid territorial tension with Japan, officials declare, but observers rubbish 'loud propaganda'

South China Morning Post
Choi Chi-yuk

Sino-Russian amphibious tanks and marines storm a
beachhead in a 2005 assault drill.

The PLA aims to beef up its troops' combat readiness and prepare for actual war situations through exercises this year, according to the latest annual training directive, amid escalating tensions between China and Japan over territorial disputes in the East China Sea.

"In 2013, the goal set for the entire army and the People's Armed Police force is to bolster their capabilities to fight and their ability to win a war … to be well-prepared for a war by subjecting the army to hard and rigorous training on an actual combat basis," according to yesterday's People's Liberation Army Daily, which referred to a training blueprint issued by the PLA's Department of the General Staff for the entire force.

The directive came in stark contrast to that of its predecessor. In last year's directive, more emphasis was placed on joint military trainings and co-ordination among different PLA services.

This year's statement stresses the urgency of real combat abilities in all military training by repeating the phrase "fighting wars", or dazhang, as many as 10 times in the article, which was no more than 1,000 words. The phrase did not appear in last year's directive.

The changes could be a result of the rising tensions in waters between China and Japan, while they might also indicate that there is a different focus for the PLA, since the Central Military Commission's chairman Hu Jintao was succeeded by Xi Jinping , the new PLA commander-in-chief since November.

Separately, state broadcast media reported in the past week that the PLA's naval air force kicked off the open-sea training portion of its annual exercise programme. No details were given on the specific dates or duration.

The General Staff department's training directive came a day after Japan's Self-Defence Forces conducted a massive military exercise on training grounds in Narashino, on the outskirts of Tokyo, on Sunday, in which 20 aircraft, 300 personnel and 33 vehicles participated.

Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera issued a statement after the drill insisting that Chinese ships had trespassed in "Japanese waters" near the Senkaku Islands, which are known in China as the Diaoyus, and that the security surrounding Japan was therefore being tightened.

The disputed chain of islands in the East China Sea has been claimed by both China and Japan since the early 1970s.

Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of the Canada-based Kanwa Defence Review, said, "The PLA is making its propaganda voice louder this year, aside from shifting their target to Japan instead of the Philippines last year," adding the statement was more or less the same as last year's.

The Age of the Siege: Nazi Military Tactics Revisited

NATO Strategies, Economic Sanctions and the "Responsibility to Protect"

Global Research
Felicity Arbuthnot

“Disengage, avoid, and withhold support from whatever abuses, degrades and humiliates humanity.” (Alice Walker, b:1944.).

“[former Danish PM and Secretary General of NATO] Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Du har blod på dine hænder” ( “You have blood on your hands”), Danish protester, 2003.

The siege of Leningrad is still considered the most lethal siege in world history, a shocking “racially motivated starvation policy”, described as: “an integral part of Nazi policy in the Soviet Union during World War 11.”

The 872 day siege began on 8th September 1941 and was finally broken on 27th January 1944. It is described  as: “one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history and overwhelmingly the most costly in casualties.” Some historians cite it as a genocide. Due to record keeping complexities the exact number of deaths resultant from the blockade’s deprivations are uncertain, figures range from 632,000 to 1.5 million.

Sieges now extend to entire countries, they have become the torture before the destruction. And they are not counted in long days, but in long years. Iran thirty three years, Iraq thirteen-plus years. Ironically the disparity in the deaths in Iraq resultant from that siege, mirror near exactly what was considered a “genocide” in Leningrad.

Syria has been subject to EU “restrictions” since 2011, ever more strangulating, with near every kind of financial transaction made impossible by May 2011- when “restrictions” were also placed on President Assad himself, all senior government officials, senior security and armed forces Heads. The list of that denied is dizzying (i.) By February 2012, assets of individuals were frozen, as those of the Central Bank of Syria.

Cargo flights by Syrian carriers to the EU were also barred, as was trade in gold, precious metals and diamonds – anything which might translate in to hard cash, without which neither individuals or countries can purchase the most basic essentials.
By July 2012 Syrian Arab Airlines and even Syria’s Cotton Marketing Organisation had joined the EU’s victims.

America of course, had been way ahead of the game, with the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act (ii) signed in to law on 12th December 2003, the year of Iraq’s comprehensive US-led destruction. Thus the mighty USA’s personal siege on under twenty one million people, is now entering its tenth year.

By last August, as with Iraq before it, the inability to trade meant that, as ever, the now Nobel Peace Prize winning EU and the policies of the Nobel Peace Prize winning US President, were targeting Syria’s most vulnerable.

Professor James F. Tracy on KPFA

KPFA

"Sandy Hook: Unanswered Questions" with Professor James F. Tracy. Discrepancies in media coverage; coroner's press conference; political fallout.

Guns and Butter - January 9, 2013 at 1:00pm

Click to listen (or download)

Professor's Questions About Sandy Hook Shooting Recall Columbine Massacre

Editor's Note:

“While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place—at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described.”
Anderson Cooper jumps on this portion of the sentence:

“While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place—"
 
 before the following qualifying prep:

"at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described.”

This is intended to milk a reaction of outrage from his audience. 

Mr. Cooper doesn't quite know who he's messing with.  Personally, I would not want to go toe-to-toe with Professor James Tracy.  I've read his past work and he is one of the sharper knives in the drawer.  Anderson had to use a deceptive excerpt out of context in order for people to buy his fake righteous indignation.


The Daily Bell

Believe it or not, there are actually people out there who are convinced that last month's horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut was staged. Anderson Cooper opened his show tonight taking on these conspiracy theorists. He said that ordinarily, he wouldn't give much thought to insane conspiracies, but one of the people pushing them is a Florida professor who raises doubts as to whether the shooting "ever took place" in the way that the media described, and the whole thing was just a huge conspiracy to get the country behind gun control. And as if that wasn't unbelievable enough, he also suspects that some of the parents of the children were really actors. – Mediaite.com

Dominant Social Theme: Sandy Hook conspiracy theories are appalling and outrageous.

Free-Market Analysis: A recent CNN/Anderson Cooper "Keeping Them Honest" segment focused on a media professor, James Tracy, who has publicly claimed that the Sandy Hook shootings "may not have happened at all, at least ... the way they have been described."
An article by the Sun Sentinel describes the Tracy controversy as follows:

FAU prof stirs controversy by disputing Newtown massacre ... A communication professor known for conspiracy theories has stirred controversy at Florida Atlantic University with claims that last month's Newtown, Conn., school shootings did not happen as reported — or may not have happened at all.

Moreover, James Tracy asserts in radio interviews and on his memoryholeblog.com, that trained "crisis actors" may have been employed by the Obama administration in an effort to shape public opinion in favor of the event's true purpose: gun control.

... In one of his blog posts, "The Sandy Hook School Massacre: Unanswered Questions and Missing Information," Tracy cites several sources for his skepticism, including lack of surveillance video or still images from the scene, the halting performance of the medical examiner at a news conference, timeline confusion, and how the accused shooter was able to fire so many shots in just minutes ...

Tracy said also has doubts about the official version of the Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, the 9-11 terror attacks and the Aurora, Colo., theater murders.
"I describe myself as a scholar and public intellectual," he said, "interested in going more deeply into controversial public events. Although some may see [my theories] as beyond the pale, I am doing what we should be doing as academics."

Cooper is at his silky best in this segment, blasting away at the professor's theories and even implying that he ought to be fired for voicing such an opinion.

4 Years Ago Could You've Imagined We'd Let Banks Off Laundering Money For Terrorists & Drug Cartels?

From Kindergarten to University: Homeland Security Culture in America

Global Research
Sancho Jones

In early March of 2009, The Department of Homeland Security, held it’s annual National Fusion Center Conference [1]. The conference highlighted the necessity for Fusion Centers to achieve Baseline Capabilities in the sharing of information and intelligence with the federal government and each other.

At the end of the same month the DHS gave a press release [2] to announce their selection of Purdue, and Rutgers Universities to co-lead the newest Center of Excellence (COE).

Centers of Excellence were created through the Homeland Security Act of 2002; the first centers began operation in 2004. With the addition of the newest one above, there are a total of 12 Centers across the country. The total number of these centers is skewed; as each center is in collaboration with multiple universities; as well as being partners with local, state, federal, and international entities. These COE’s also work with national laboratories, and corporate partners such as the RAND corporation to offer viable real world applications. In the end, there aren’t 12 centers, but a web of several hundred, and possibly thousands of centers.

The official list[3] of 12 centers are overseen by the Orwellian “Office of University Programs” [4]. The “Strategic Objectives” of this office are quoted as follows:

•  Foster a homeland security culture within the academic community through research and educational programs.
•  Strengthen U.S. scientific leadership in homeland security research.
•  Generate and disseminate knowledge and technical advances to advance the homeland security mission.
•  Integrate homeland security activities across agencies engaged in relevant academic research.
•  Create and leverage intellectual capital and nurture a homeland security science and engineering workforce.

Notice, their admitted overall goal is not only to ‘disseminate knowledge’ and technical advances for the homeland security ‘mission’, but also to create a Homeland Security Culture within the educational system; [5], 6].

Each COE website[3] has an education link; not all sites have their educational portion up for viewing. The ones who do have the educational curricula visible, show programs offered for K-12 and college curricula, into graduate school education. From Purdue University’s COE website [7],

“This program is designed to support undergraduate and graduate students in developing the skills to become preeminent scientists in the homeland security specific and technical community.”

The Orwellian Office of University Programs, is not only creating “Obama’s Youth”, but also creating  “scientists” who are studied in Department of Homeland Security disciplines!

Two Centers of Excellence stood out from the rest. The first, is Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism [8], or START which is based at the University of Maryland.

Amongst other activities, they do as the name suggests; they create studies. Hidden amongst the Islamic Jihad studies[9] were the reports of the real terrorists; you, and I!

Two reports stuck out more than the rest. The first was a study conducted from 2007 to 2008, and finished with the creation of the U.S. Extremist Criminal Terror database[10]. The study, and now database focus on far-right extremists; the data base of U.S. Extremist Crime, comprises 1990 to 2005.

The other study of interest was,“Homegrown Radicalization and the Role of Social Networks and Social Inclusiveness in the United States”[11]. There is no finished report of this study. The last update was, July 31, 2008. It seems this study is the one requested through The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (H.R. 1955/S. 1959)[12] “The act would establish a national commission and a university-based “Center for Excellence” to study and propose legislation to prevent the threat of “radicalization” of Americans.” Interestingly enough, just a few months after the final START study update on July 31, 2008, the DHS released, The “Domestic Extremism Lexicon”[13]. This Lexicon was a “newly unclassified Department of Homeland Security report warns against the possibility of violence by unnamed “right-wing extremists” concerned about illegal immigration, increasing federal power, restrictions on firearms, abortion and the loss of U.S. sovereignty and singles out returning war veterans as particular threats.”[14] All this came from the START Center of Excellence!

U.S. Lags Peers in Life Expectancy

Wall Street Journal
Louise Radnofsky

Americans die younger and have more illnesses and accidents on average than people in other high-income countries—even wealthier, insured, college-educated Americans, a report said Wednesday.

The study by the federally sponsored National Research Council and Institute of Medicine found the U.S. near the bottom of 17 affluent countries for life expectancy, with high rates of obesity and diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung disease and arthritis, as well as infant mortality, injuries, homicides, teen pregnancy, drug deaths and sexually transmitted diseases.

"The [U.S.] health disadvantage is pervasive—it affects all age groups up to age 75 and is observed for multiple diseases, biological and behavioral risk factors, and injuries," said the report's authors, who are public-health and medicine academics recruited by the government panels.

The shorter life expectancy for Americans largely was attributed to high mortality for men under age 50, from car crashes, accidents and violence. But the report also said U.S. women's gains in life expectancy had been lagging behind other well-off countries.

The authors offered a range of possible explanations for Americans' worse health and mortality, including social inequality. They also described criticisms including limited availability of contraception for teenagers, community designs that discourage physical activity such as walking, air pollution and access to firearms, as well as individual behaviors such as high calorie consumption.
The U.S. health-care system wasn't spared criticism, with authors describing it as fragmented, lacking sufficient primary-care physicians and posing financial barriers to millions of Americans who lack insurance or are unable to afford out-of-pocket medical costs.

But the chairman of the panel of authors, Steven Woolf, a professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the report showed that health outcomes were determined "by much more than health care."

"Our health as Americans is only partly aided by having a very good health-care system," he said. "Much of our health disadvantage comes from factors outside of the clinical system and outside of what doctors and hospitals can do."

The Obama administration has aimed to improve Americans' health by expanding insurance coverage through the 2010 Affordable Care Act, while Republicans have pushed for giving the private sector a greater role in managing health care through changes to such programs as Medicare.

Public health has received relatively little attention from lawmakers, despite campaigns by high-profile figures such as first lady Michelle Obama on childhood obesity and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on smoking, gun control and the sale of high-calorie beverages.

"The political environment on health is so wrapped up right now around implementation of health reform that we need to have the space to have this larger conversation and for people to understand that having health insurance is necessary but not sufficient to close this gap," said Jeff Levi, head of the Trust for America's Health, a public health advocacy group. He wasn't involved in the study.

The new report noted that average life expectancy for American men, at 75.6 years, was the lowest among the 17 countries and almost four years shorter than for Switzerland, the best-performing nation.

American women's average life expectancy, 80.8 years, was second-lowest among the countries and five years shorter than Japan's, which had the highest expectancy.
The report's authors were particularly critical of the availability of guns, writing: "One behavior that probably explains the excess lethality of violence and unintentional injuries in the United States is the widespread possession of firearms and the common practice of storing them [often unlocked] at home."

The authors noted that Americans who lived past age 75 had higher survival rates compared with similar countries, and Americans overall had better rates of surviving cancer and strokes. They also said the U.S. better controls high blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking rates and use of alcohol than many other nations.

The report didn't directly consider U.S. health in the context of spending on care, but noted that America's low outcomes were striking given that U.S. per capita health spending exceeds that of other countries.

Full Disclosure: CO, WI, CT shootings.. Are These The Work of "Lone Wolf" Gunmen

Editor's Note: Here's a good rule of thumb. If the official story contradicts existing evidence and there is no transparency while independent inquiry is discouraged by the authorities, it is reasonable to acknowledge that the event was facilitated by the authorities.

Judge Rejects Obama Administration Ploy To Dismiss 'No-Fly' Suit With Secret Evidence

Business Insider
Michael Kelley

A federal judge has rejected an attempt by the Obama administration to use secret evidence to derail a former Stanford student's attempt to challenge her inclusion on the government's no-fly list, Bob Egelko of The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

In 2005 officials detained Rahinah Ibrahim when she attempted to fly from San Francisco International Airport to her native Malaysia. The then-Standford doctoral student and her 14-year-old daughter were allowed to take a flight the next day but were not allowed to return to the U.S. two months later.

The U.S. Consulate later informed her that her student visa had been revoked under a terrorism law, according to Egelko.

In 2009 Ibrahim settled claims against police and others involved in her arrest for $225,000, but brought a new suit because her inclusion on the no-fly list has barred her and her daughter from returning to the U.S. for nearly eight years. (Ibrahim has four children.)

The government argues that it cannot discuss its no-fly list because it would "reveal or tend to reveal information that is classified."

Consequently the Justice Department called District Judge William Alsup and said an agent would bring him evidence for dismissal of the suit but would take it back because Ibrahim's counsel couldn't be "trusted to handle sensitive information."

University Putra Malaysia

Alsup — who had actually dismissed Ibrahim's case twice before but was overruled on appeals — refused to see the secret evidence and scheduled the trial for December.

The judge added that the government must stop "persistent and stubborn refusal" to follow the legal precedents for sharing evidence.

New World Next Week with James Evan Pilato - Interview 575

Corbett Report

The crazy climate change obsession that's made the Met Office a menace

• The £200 million-a-year official weather forecaster often gets it wrong
• This week it has admitted there is no evidence that ‘global warming’ is happening
• The Met Office quietly readjusted its temperature projections on its website on Christmas Eve

Daily Mail
James Delingpole
 
Was there ever a government quango quite so useless as the Met Office? 

From its infamous ‘barbecue summer’ washout of 2009 to the snowbound winter it failed to predict in 2010 and the recent forecast-defying floods, our £200 million-a-year official weather forecaster has become a national joke.

But of all its recent embarrassments, none come close to matching the Met Office’s latest one. 

Without fanfare — apparently in the desperate hope no one would notice — it has finally conceded what other scientists have known for ages: there is no evidence that ‘global warming’ is happening.

A chunk of ice is shown drifting after it separated from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf
off the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada. The Met Office has conceded
there is no evidence that 'global warming' is happening

The Met Office quietly readjusted its temperature projections on its website on Christmas Eve. 

Until then, it had been confidently predicting temperature rises of at least 0.2 degrees per decade, with a succession of years exceeding even the record-breaking high of 1998.

Its latest chart, however, confirmed in a press release earlier this week, tells a very different story: no more global warming is expected till at least 2017. 

According to Dr David Whitehouse of the independent think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the climbdown couldn’t be more dramatic or more devastating for the Met Office’s credibility. 

‘They’re panicking. All the predictions they’ve been making about man-made global warming these past 20 years have started to come crashing about their ears.’

For two decades the Met Office has acted as Britain’s foremost cheerleader for climate change alarmism. In 2007, its Hadley Centre for climate change research produced a briefing document for the Government claiming its state-of-the-art computer models left no doubt: man-made global warming was a very real threat which needed to be addressed urgently by policy-makers.

‘The Met Office Hadley Centre has the highest concentration of outstanding people who do outstanding work, spanning the breadth of modelling, attribution, and date analysis, of anywhere in the world,’ claimed an expert from the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) in the document.

Many in the Government were impressed for, a year later, the 2008 Climate Change Act was passed by an overwhelming majority. 

The act has been described by veteran journalist Christopher Booker as the most expensive legislation in history, committing the government to as much as £734 billion (£18.3 billion a year for the next 40 years) in extra spending to ‘decarbonise’ the economy. 

It is also one of the reasons why our countryside is being ruined by ugly, noisy wind turbines.

But what if carbon dioxide isn’t the culprit for global temperature changes? 

What if all the expensive, economy-ravaging, job-killing, environmentally destructive measures we’ve taken have been a spectacular waste of money?

If so, the Met Office will be attacked for being not just risibly incompetent — but an active menace both to the integrity of science and to the nation’s wellbeing.
Hence its defiant attempts to argue that nothing has changed and it’s business as usual. 

Nicolas Sarkozy ordered the assassination of Hugo Chavez

Voltaire

The Venezuelan Minister of Correctional Services, Iris Varela, has announced on her Twitter account the expulsion of a French citizen known as Frédéric Laurent Bouquet, December 29, 2012

Mr. Bouquet (photo) had been arrested in Caracas on June 18, 2009, with three Dominican nationals in possession of an arsenal. In the apartment he had acquired, forensic police seized 500 grams of C4 explosives, 14 assault rifles including 5 with telescopic lenses, 5 with laser sighting and one with a silencer, special cables, 11 electronic detonators, 19,721 cartridges of different calibers, 3 machine guns, 4 hand guns of different calibers, 11 radios, 3 walkie talkies and a radio base, five 12-gauge shotguns, 2 bulletproof vests, 7 military uniforms, 8 grenades, one gas mask, one combat knife and 9 bottles of gunpowder.

During his trial, Mr. Bouquet admitted he had been trained in Israel and was an agent of French military intelligence service (DGSE). He admitted planning an attack to assassinate Constitutional President Hugo Chavez.

Mr. Bouquet had been sentenced to four years in prison for "illegal possession of weapons." He served his sentence. He was taken from his cell by Ordinance No. 096-12 of trial judge Yulismar Jaime, then was expelled for "undermining national security" under Article 39 paragraph 4 of the Migration and Foreigners Act.

Venezuelan authorities had so far refrained from communicating on this subject. The facts were confirmed by the spokesman of the Quai d’Orsay, Philippe Lalliot. The French Embassy in Caracas declined to comment.

From our investigation we can conclude that:

 (1) President Nicolas Sarkozy had ordered the assassination of his counterpart Hugo Chavez;

 (2) the operation was a fiasco;

 (3) France granted substantial compensation to stifle this matter during Mr Sarkozy’s term in office.

Inside Story Americas - Which stories did the media ignore this year?

Does Truth Have A Future In America?

Global Research
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

As a writer I have found that one problem in communicating with readers is that many have political, social, economic, or ideological agendas. 

They read in order to confirm their beliefs and agendas. Neither the right-wing nor the left-wing can escape their ideological boxes and are creatures of their biases. They want their prejudices vindicated and their beliefs supported.

A writer who tells them something that they do not want to hear receives abuse.

These readers cannot benefit from facts and new information and change their minds. Truth is what validates their prejudices, biases, or their programing. Objective truth is not the matrix in which they live.

If a writer makes a case so clear that readers simply cannot avoid it, the reader will intentionally misread the article or book and attack the writer for saying everything that he does not say. The chorus will join in the effort to shut down the unwelcome information before it reaches others.

The Israel Lobby uses the technique of branding everyone who criticizes, no matter how constructively and moderately, any Israeli government policy, no matter how egregious, an anti-semite. The Israeli government applies this tactic to its own Israeli political opposition and to Jews themselves who are branded “self-hating Jews” if they criticize government policy toward the Palestinians. The effect is to deprive the Israeli government of constructive criticism. Only the Israel Lobby could call former President Jimmy Carter an anti-semite. Anyone who is not totally enthusiastic about Israel’s theft of Palestinian lives and properties is an enemy of Israel. These wild accusations from the Israel Lobby deprive anti-semite of any meaning. Essentially, every moral person has become an anti-semite. The Israeli government has simply cut itself off from truth.

The identical hardline substitution of self-interest for factual reality characterizes the American right and left. The right-wing insists that America is going broke because of welfare spending. The left-wing persists in its belief that government is capable of great good if only the right people are in power and that social institutions, such as religion, and inanimate objects, such as guns, are responsible for human evil.

If a majority of Americans sought objective truth instead of confirmation of their beliefs, truth could prevail over special interests. Reality would inform social, political, and economic life, and American prospects would be good. But when a majority are hostile to facts and truths that do not support their biases and serve their interests, there is a disconnect from reality, which is the situation in America today.

It is ironic that the left-wing, which has a large repertoire of tales of societies in the clutches of shamans, witch doctors and priests, imposes its own artificial or make-believe realities on social, political, and economic explanations. Leftists who appear to be oblivious to the militarized murderous police state erected by Bush and Obama still go out of their way to tell me how evil Ronald Reagan was and that I must also be evil because I served in the Reagan administration.

Alex Jones Gives Piers Morgan the Respect He Deserves

Part I

Part II

Antarctic Sea Ice Sets Another Record

Forbes

James Taylor

Editor’s note:  An update from the author has been added to this article on September 20, 2012.

Antarctic sea ice set another record this past week, with the most amount of ice ever recorded on day 256 of the calendar year (September 12 of this leap year). Please, nobody tell the mainstream media or they might have to retract some stories and admit they are misrepresenting scientific data.

National Public Radio (NPR) published an article on its website last month claiming, “Ten years ago, a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island disintegrated and melted in the waters off Antarctica. Two other massive ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula had suffered similar fates a few years before. The events became poster children for the effects of global warming. … There’s no question that unusually warm air triggered the final demise of these huge chunks of ice.”

NPR failed to mention anywhere in its article that Antarctic sea ice has been growing since satellites first began measuring the ice 33 years ago and the sea ice has been above the 33-year average throughout 2012.

Indeed, none of the mainstream media are covering this important story. A Google News search of the terms Antarctic, sea ice and record turns up not a single article on the Antarctic sea ice record. Amusingly, page after page of Google News results for Antarctic sea ice record show links to news articles breathlessly spreading fear and warning of calamity because Arctic sea ice recently set a 33-year low.

Sea ice around one pole is shrinking while sea ice around another pole is growing. This sure sounds like a global warming crisis to me.

Update:  To provide more perspective on global warming and Antarctica, I would like to update this column with some additional information:

As meteorologist Anthony Watts explains, new data show ice mass is accumulating on the Antarctic continent as well as in the ocean surrounding Antarctica. The new data contradict an assertion by global warming alarmists that the expanding Antarctic sea ice is coming at the expense of a decline in Antarctic continental ice.

The new data also add context to sensationalist media stories about declining ice in small portions of Antarctica, such as portions of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula (see here, for example). The mainstream media frequently publish stories focusing on ice loss in these two areas, yet the media stories rarely if ever mention that ice is accumulating over the larger area of East Antarctica and that the continent as a whole is gaining snow and ice mass.

Interestingly, a new NASA study finds Antarctica once supported vegetation similar to that of present-day Iceland.

“The southward movements of rain bands associated with a warmer climate in the high-latitude southern hemisphere made the margins of Antarctica less like a polar desert, and more like present-day Iceland,” a co-author of the NASA study reports.

"ScienceBlog" Pre-selling Geoengineering (after the fact)

Key points relayed by the ironically named "ScienceBlog" are the legal ramifications of geoengineering and the unavoidable fact that some groups may be adversely affected by the practice.

How to regulate geo-engineering efforts to fight climate change

With policymakers and political leaders increasingly unable to combat global climate change, more scientists are considering the use of manual manipulation of the environment to slow warming’s damage to the planet.

But a University of Iowa law professor believes the legal ramifications of this kind of geo-engineering need to be thought through in advance and a global governance structure put in place soon to oversee these efforts. “Geo-engineering is a global concern that will have climate and weather impacts in all countries, and it is virtually inevitable that some group of people will be harmed in the process,” says Jon Carlson, professor of law at the UI College of Law. “The international community must act now to take charge of this activity to ensure that it is studied and deployed with full attention to the rights and interests of everyone on the planet.”

Carlson is an expert in environmental law and international law who believes geo-engineering is inevitable and will likely happen sooner than later. He considers the issue in a new paper, “Reining in Phaethon’s Chariot: Principles for the Governance of Geoengineering,” published in the current issue of the journal Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems. His co-author, Adam D.K. Abelkop, is a UI law graduate now in the doctoral program at the Indiana University School of Public Health and Environmental Affairs.

Carlson says the concept of geo-engineering goes back to at least the 19th century, when scientists proposed seeding clouds to increase rainfall. Today, scientists have a long list of geo-engineering ideas that could be used to slow the impact of global warming while other methods are developed to actually mitigate the damage. Some ideas are simple and locally focused, such as planting new forests to absorb carbon dioxide, or painting roofs and paved areas white to reduce solar heat absorption.

Others are more complex and controversial—manually cooling oceans so carbon dioxide-laden water sinks to the bottom more quickly; building space-based shields and mirrors to deflect solar heat from the planet; or injecting chemicals like hydrogen sulfide or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, creating an aerosol shield that reduces the amount of solar heat reaching the earth’s surface.

But Carlson says geo-engineering comes with obvious international legal implications because no one country can implement its own geo-engineering plan without causing weather or climate changes in other countries. There’s also the law of unintended consequences, because while many geo-engineering concepts have proved hopeful in the lab, nobody knows what will happen when actually put into practice. For instance, Carlson says that while manually cooling the ocean may be seen as a generally good idea, what impact will that have on farmers in India whose crops depend on rain from heat-induced tropical monsoons?

To address these issues, Carlson urges the creation of an international governing body separate from any existing organization that approves or rejects geo-engineering plans, taking into consideration the best interests of people and countries around the world. He says any legal regimen involving geo-engineering activities should require they be publicly announced in the planning stage, and all countries are notified so they have a voice in deliberations.

As a model for his oversight body, Carlson suggests the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Like the IMF, his proposed organization would give all countries a place during discussions, but decisions would be made by a relatively small group of directors, each of which has a weighted vote that’s based on their country’s greenhouse gas production. That is, countries that produce more greenhouse gases will spend more money to combat global climate change, and so will have more votes.
Carlson’s proposed body would oversee a compensation fund to help people and countries that are harmed by other country’s approved geo-engineering activities, or by unseen effects of those activities.