Lack of Global Warming Blamed on Heat Hiding Oceans

Editor's Note:  They ignore the laws of thermodynamics and just assume the heat is stored somewhere.  Heat dissipates. 

"Missing" global heat may hide in deep oceans

 

(Reuters) - The mystery of Earth's missing heat may have been solved: it could lurk deep in oceans, temporarily masking the climate-warming effects of greenhouse gas emissions, researchers reported on Sunday.
 
Climate scientists have long wondered where this so-called missing heat was going, especially over the last decade, when greenhouse emissions kept increasing but world air temperatures did not rise correspondingly.

The build-up of energy and heat in Earth's system is important to track because of its bearing on current weather and future climate.

The temperatures were still high -- the decade between 2000 and 2010 was Earth's warmest in more than a century -- but the single-year mark for warmest global temperature was stuck at 1998, until 2010 matched it.

The world temperature should have risen more than it did, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research reckoned.

They knew greenhouse gas emissions were rising during the decade and satellites showed there was a growing gap between how much sunlight was coming in and how much radiation was going out. Some heat was coming to Earth but not leaving, and yet temperatures were not going up as much as projected.

So where did the missing heat go?

Computer simulations suggest most of it was trapped in layers of oceans deeper than 1,000 feet during periods like the last decade when air temperatures failed to warm as much as they might have.

This could happen for years at a time, and it could happen periodically this century, even as the overall warming trend continues, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.

"This study suggests the missing energy has indeed been buried in the ocean," NCAR's Kevin Trenberth, a co-author of the study, said in a statement. "The heat has not disappeared and so it cannot be ignored. It must have consequences."

Trenberth and the other researchers ran five computer simulations of global temperatures, taking into account the interactions between the atmosphere, land, oceans and sea ice, and basing the simulations on projected human-generated greenhouse gas emissions.

These simulations all indicated global temperature would rise several degrees this century. But all of them also showed periods when temperatures would stabilize before rising. During these periods, the extra heat moved into deep ocean water due to changes in ocean circulation, the scientists said.

(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko in Washington, editing by Chris Wilson)

Reuters Office In Tehran Likely To Be Shut Down For Good

Director General of Foreign Media Office of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Javad Aqajari said the Reuters representative office in Tehran is likely to be shut down for good.

Talking to Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) on Monday, he said the first hearing of Reuters court on allegations of labeling Iranian women athletes as terrorists will be held on Sept 30, 2012.

He noted that the head of the news agency's office in Tehran Parisa Hafezi has already attended court sessions twice.

Iranian female athletes have lodged a complaint against Reuters for a photo-report describing them as terrorists.

Stressing that all media and news organisations are ethically and professionally obliged to carry on their activities impartially and in an unbiased manner, the official said Tehran expects foreign media working inside the country to reflect realities and avoid spreading false and unfounded material.

He said the Reuters officials have already admitted their mistakes in numerous correspondence and phone conversations and are so eager to sit for negotiations that they may visit Iran at the time of holding the court session.

Aqajari said despite the fact that the Reuters has already expressed apology for the report both during phone conversations and correspondence, they need to repeat them in person as well.

Saying that the court might vote for permanent closure of Reuters office in Iran, he said that Iran's basic policy was to give space to foreign correspondents.

According to the official, 120 foreign media and press have offices in Tehran.

The activities of Reuters office in Tehran is currently suspended due to a video-report it carried about Iranian female athletes active in Ninjetsu, labeling them as terrorists.

The report implied that thousands of Iranian women are being trained to commit murders as terrorists while the ladies were just ordinary people like housewives or students who took the exercises for their own excitement.

Journalists revolt against Obama-Romney censorship

Russia Today

Even reporters with the strongest political ties from the most mainstream US publications are so terrified by the draconian rules set up by the Obama and Romney campaigns that they are rethinking their policies on covering the presidential race.

The New York Times and LA Times editors are changing the rules for their journalists on quote approval. This news comes after months of discussions with policymakers and attempts to break the draconian censorship set by the camps of both presidential contenders. On Monday The New York Times finally broke the silence and openly admitted that the Obama campaign grants interviews "under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name."

According to the same article, Romney advisors do practically the same. The Times reveals that the presumptive Republican nominee’s camp requires that "reporters ask them for the green light on anything from a conversation that they would like to include in an article." Journalists who refuse to follow these rules lose their sources.

But this practice of censorship has been so disappointing for the journalists that now they are ready to give-up close ties with policymakers in order to have more freedom to report the facts as they see them. According to the British Guardian, both The New Your Times and LA Times are rethinking their rules on quote approval. Most likely, they will stop checking quotations with the staff of both campaigns and put more trust on their reporters. The reason is obvious.

After reporters reluctantly send in their top quotes from an interview, they are often disappointed by the edited, dull-sounding versions that they soon find in their inboxes.

“The verdict from the campaign – an operation that prides itself on staying consistently on script – is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message,” the Times writes.

Aside from the campaign spokesmen, almost all strategists and aides of the Obama campaign demand quote approval. Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, is known to be “foul-mouthed,” the Times writes, but his curses are erased from quotes, so readers would not know it.

Romney’s campaign requires that all advisors, and even the candidate’s sons, are not quoted unless the staff gives approval.

This practice leaves little room for anything aside from positive statements regarding the candidates and their policies, making it an ideal campaign strategy for the presidential contenders – but a frustrating situation for reporters with a record full of unusable juicy quotes.

“It is a double-edged sword for journalists, who are getting the on-the-record quotes they have long asked for, but losing much of the spontaneity and authenticity in their interviews,” the Times writes.

Reuters and the Associated Press were opposed to the practice of quote approval from the very beginning, and others are questioning it.

New York University Journalism professor Jay Rosen thinks the only way to change the practice of quote approval is to report accurate stories without the help of quotes.

The solution, he told The Guardian, is“A press willing to say: Fine: we’ll report the story around you. We will build it from the outside in.”

The news comes at a time when Americans are increasingly more skeptical of newspapers. A recent Gallup poll shows that only 25 percent of respondents express confidence in newspapers. While journalists prefer to publish the sometimes-dirty truth, quote approval may force their writing to be nothing more than involuntary campaigning for their interviewees.

Officials: Afghanistan Facing Insolvency Within A Month

Internet Free Press

The Afghan government will struggle to pay its bills "within a month" after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) rejected proposals for resolving the Kabul Bank scandal, western officials have warned.

Although the war-torn country's biggest bank nearly collapsed last September, the government of Hamid Karzai and the international community are still at loggerheads over plans to fund an $820 million (£507 million) bailout as well as how the disgraced former managers and shareholders who helped themselves to hundreds of millions of dollars should be prosecuted.

As long as the IMF declares the plans to be inadequate, many countries, including Britain, are legally barred from pumping money into a government that is almost completely reliant on foreign cash to pay civil servants' salaries.

It was reported by Reuters that the IMF has now formally rejected the Afghan government's proposals, meaning aid disbursements will remain on hold. The failure to reach a deal by a deadline of last Saturday also meant a $70 million payment from the World Bank's Afghan reconstruction trust fund was automatically withheld.

Two senior western officials said the government will face a cash crisis in the coming weeks and could struggle to pay staff bills, although one predicted this would be avoided by cutting other spending priorities.

Last month, Omar Zakhilwal, the country's finance minister, told the Guardian that suspension of aid payments "has already had an effect on us, no doubt about it". He insisted that the Afghan government had done "95% of what was asked of us" by the IMF, including effectively nationalizing Kabul Bank, stripping the shareholders of their rights and putting all unrecovered loans into receivership.

But although he claimed the remaining issues "were inconsequential to Kabul Bank" the IMF sees two aspects as vitally important. Firstly, an agreement that Afghan taxes, not foreign aid, will repay the $820 million taken out of central bank reserves last year to prop up the bank. Second, they want serious criminal investigations against managers and shareholders, many of whom enjoy high level political support, who illegally borrowed huge sums of interest-free cash from the bank.

Although the finance ministry has drawn up plans to increase its tax-raising efforts in order to pay off the bailout in annual installments, horrified Parliament members have already rejected one budget request for $73m and is also likely to reject a supplemental budget due to be presented by Zakhilwal soon.

"The IMF tells me, this is our demand, give me condition by this date the parliament must approve this line in the budget," explained Zakhilwal. "I am a minister, can I chose the parliament time-line? On these issues the international community totally disregards the legal processes of Afghanistan."

Many Parliament members argue that the money should be found by simply selling off the assets illegally bought by shareholders and managers, including a gas distribution company, an airline and luxury villas in Dubai.

Although a $10 million forensic audit by Kroll may help identify many deliberately hidden assets, most western experts doubt more than half of the outstanding $910 million will be recovered. So far just $61 million has been retrieved.

Zakhilwal also argued that prosecutions could only be handled by the attorney general and warned that the complicated inquiry cannot be rushed.

"The attorney general can arrest people, but after 15 days with not case they have to be acquitted – that would be even more embarrassing for us," said Zakhilwal.

Although the finance minister insisted the attorney general was "absolutely committed" to a thorough investigation, the international community is skeptical, not least after Afghanistan's top law officer threw out a case last year against one of Karzai's key aides who had been wire-tapped soliciting a bribe.

One alternative plan is for a special court of handpicked judges deemed to be reasonably honest and well-versed in finance to hear the case.

Credible prosecutions are vital, not just to appease public anger, but also because many of Kabul Bank's assets are in Dubai. Under United Arab Emirates law it is impossible to seize properties until criminal investigations have begun.

Not only does Afghanistan face a cash crunch, the showdown with the IMF also threatens to derail plans, pushed hard by Hamid Karzai, for a far greater proportion of international aid to be spent through official channels, rather than on projects outside the control of the government.


A key element of the "transition" strategy by which the foreign intervention in Afghanistan will be greatly reduced by the end of 2014, the international community last year agreed that 50% of spending will go through the government by 2012.

But it is now feared that if the Afghan government continues to be considered unworthy of international investment by the IMF the country will have to return to patchwork of bilateral funding agreements.

Intellpuke: You can read this article by Guardian correspondent Jon Boone, reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, in context here: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/17/afghanistan-insolvency-within-month