Borat's Mountain Home?View of Manshuk Mametova glacier melting down to a lake in northern Tien Shan mountains in Kazakhstan August 24, 2003. Ocean and so-called greenhouse gas levels are rising faster than they have for thousands of years, according to two reports published on Thursday that are likely to fuel debate on global warming. (Alexei Kalmykov/Reuters)Aiyah.
When The Night Calls On Radio...
The seas and Greenhouse gasses are rising faster than any other time in thousands of years.
One study found the Earth's ocean levels have risen twice as fast in the past 150 years, signaling the impact of human activity on temperatures worldwide, researchers said in the journal Science.
Sea levels were rising by about 1 millimeter (0.04 inches) every year about 200 years ago and as far back as 5,000 years, geologists found from deep sediment samples from the New Jersey coastline. Since then, levels have risen by about 2 millimeters (0.08 inches) a year.
While the planet has been in a warmer period, driving cars and other activities that create carbon dioxide are having a clear impact, the Rutgers University-led team said.
"Half of the current rise ... was going on anyway. But that means half of what's going on is not background. It's human induced," said Kenneth Miller, a geology professor at the New Jersey-based school who led the 15-year effort.
Carbon dioxide emissions come mainly from burning coal and other fossil fuels in power plants, factories and automobiles.
Miller and his colleagues analyzed five 500-meter (1,650-foot) deep samples to look for fossils, sediment types and variations in chemical composition, giving them data on the past 100 million years.
They also analyzed data from satellite, shoreline markers and by gauging ocean tides, among other measures.
"It allows us to understand the mechanisms of sea level change before humans intervened," Miller said in an interview.
His team did not determine whether the rate is accelerating.
The research, funded mostly by the National Science Foundation, also found ocean levels were lower during the dinosaur era than previously thought. They were about 100 meters (330 feet) higher than now, not 250 meters (820 feet) as many geologists had thought, Miller said.
That's not good news at all. At least the good news is that oil prices are so high, people are finally balking from buying big 'Suburbans' in the USA, sending General Motors to the mat.
UPDATE:
The NYT had this article about gas levels for the last 650,000 years.
The measured gases were carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Concentrations have risen over the last several centuries at a pace far beyond that seen before humans began intensively clearing forests and burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels.
The sampling and analysis were done by the European Program for Ice Coring in Antarctica, and the results are being published today in the journal Science.
The evidence was found in air bubbles trapped in successively older ice samples extracted from a nearly two-mile-deep hole drilled in a remote spot in East Antarctica called Dome C.
Experts familiar with the findings who were not involved with the research said the samples provided a vital long-term view of variations in the atmosphere and Antarctic climate. They say the data will help test and improve computer models used to forecast how accumulating greenhouse emissions will affect the climate.
Some climate experts not involved in the research said the findings also confirmed that the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emissions was taking the atmosphere into uncharted territory.
The longest previous record of carbon dioxide fluctuations, compiled from ice cores collected at the Russian research station at Vostok, in East Antarctica, goes back slightly more than 400,000 years.
"They've now pushed back two-thirds of a million years and found that nature did not get as far as humans have," said Richard B. Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University who is an expert on ice cores. "We're changing the world really hugely - way past where it's been for a long time."
We shouldn't be comfortable about that at all.
Okay, He's A Crim, But He's Our Crim
This business of deporting permanent residents is a lot worse than we thought.
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has defended her predecessor, Philip Ruddock's decision to cancel Mr Jovicic's permanent visa in October, 2002.So some time ago, he did apply for Australian Citizenship having lived here nearly all his life but got rejected on 'character grounds'. Now they're saying he hasn't applied again, knowing full well that he wouldn't be allowed to get one by their own guidelines. How hypocritical is that? How do these people ssleep at nights?
She says an application by him for citizenship in 1998 was rejected on character grounds.
She said Mr Jovicic had co-operated with his deportation to Serbia.
He was eligible for Serbian citizenship, but had not yet applied for it, she said.
Mr Jovicic appears to be one of 233 permanent residents deported in the past three years on character grounds.
I'm not saying that he's a good man and should be alllowed back in. I'm saying, no matter how bad a man he is, there are bear minimum responsibilites our government should have for such a person. Chances are, he paid taxes here all his working life, right?
The other thing is the number: 233!
Here's another fellow awaitng similar 'statelessness'
The ABC's Lateline has learnt of the case of Fatih Tuncok, who moved from Turkey to Sydney at the age of six.What were they thinkng? Half of Australian residents were born Overseas. Many are still permanent resident status. They pay taxes but don't vote. How in heavens name did they think this kind of thing would not emerge as a problem?
Since moving from Turkey, Mr Tuncok - now 39 - racked up a significant criminal record, including a conviction for armed robbery.
He is now in Villawood Detention Centre, pending his deportation back to Turkey.
Psychologist Paula Farrugia counsels Mr Tuncok; she says he will not cope if he is deported.
"He has no formal qualifications to speak of," she said.
Like Mr Jovicic, Mr Tuncok has had his permanent residency cancelled under section 501 of the Migration Act.
Under those provisions the Immigration Minister can deport permanent residents who have been sentenced to significant jail terms.
The Greens say it has affected hundreds of people, many whom know no country other than Australia.
In official documentation, the former immigration minister Phillip Ruddock spelt out clear reasons why Mr Tuncok should be deported, including his record for robbery and home invasion.
But it seems the publicity about Mr Jovicic is having an impact.
Senator Vanstone today called for a detailed report on his case.
A few weeks ago, I bagged out Kim Beazley for his stupid stance on the Anti-Terror laws, but at least he had the decency to say this:
"You take responsibility of your own mess," Mr Beazley told Southern Cross broadcasting today.Damn straight.
"It does no good around the globe to hand your responsibility to somebody else. He is our responsibility. He has been in this country since the age of two for God's sake."
Mr Jovicic may not be an Australian citizen but he deserved to be treated with respect, Mr Beazley said.
"All his criminal activity and everything else have been things that are the product of our system and his decisions within it," he said.
"You don't just go and dump him on the Serbs."
Asked if Mr Jovicic should be allowed back in the country, Mr Beazley said "yes".
The Other Dumb Crim
Van Nguyen has one week to live. Australia is still rallying to try to save his life.
He was arrested at Changi airport in Singapore in December 2002, carrying 396g of pure heroin. His full and immediate confession has never been disputed by the defence, and the poignant details of his wellintentioned stupidity are the source of much of the sympathy for him in Australia.
He was born in a Thai refugee camp to a Vietnamese boat refugee, who raised him and his twin brother, Khoa, alone. He grew up in Melbourne, joined the Scouts, worked part-time at McDonald’s and is described by those who know him as a decent, cheerful and dutiful young man. He was working as a computer salesman when his twin began to get into trouble.
Khoa started taking drugs and ended up with two convictions and legal fees amounting to A$30,000 (£13,000). It was to pay off his brother’s debts, Van Tuong Nguyen has always maintained, that he agreed to act as a “mule” for a group of drug dealers based in Sydney.
Soon after he flew to Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, things began to go wrong. Mr Nguyen was instructed to reduce the heroin to a fine powder in a coffee grinder and strap it to his body in two slim packages.
“I didn’t really know how to go about doing that,” he told the Singaporean police. “So I just did what I thought would work.”
On the plane one of the packages became so uncomfortable that he pulled it off his abdomen and slipped it into his backpack. Changing planes in Singapore, he passed through a metal detector, which was set off by his metal-rimmed sunglasses. The guard who frisked him felt the second packet strapped to his back.
“He asked me what that was and I replied, ‘It’s heroin, sir’,” Mr Nguyen said. “He asked me if I was sure. I told him, ‘Of course’.”
After his arrest he showed consistent remorse and co-operated fully with the authorities. Information that he provided to the Australian police led to the arrest of a drug dealer in Sydney. But Singaporean law is clear and unbending: for quantities of more than 15g of heroin, death by hanging is not the maximum penalty, but the mandatory one.
So the government is presumably expending a lot of capital trying to save this person while turfing out 233 on to other nations as "their problem now". Who voted these people in again? Oh yes, Australians. I should've known.
UPDATE:
I've had a quick e-mail exchange with Walkoff-HBP who confirms one of his wife's friends who happened to have German Citizenship was hit with this horrible process and now is forced to reside in Germany.
Yes exactly the same! The German man that 'L' knew was sent to Germany, a country he has never lived in and the German authorities didn't want him either. If it wasn't for some friends of L's in Germany he would have had no place to go. Its such a smug way of dealing with Australia's problems. Its all about "sending a message" to undesirables and to the great unwashed electorate that loves racism tarted up as tough policy. Its dumb policy. Its hiding your head in the sand stuff. You know that it must mean votes, otherwise they would do something else. I sincerely hope that fear will recede and tolerance will replace it in the future, but not anytime soon I'm afraid.Bloody hell. How do these people in government sleep at nights?
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