https://robertscribbler.com/2017/06/30/ ... l-warming/Scorching 129 Degree (F) Temps Hit Iran; Severe June European Heatwave Attributed to Climate Change; Satellite Data Confirms Rapid Global Warming
In a slew of climate change related news this week, Iran’s city of Ahvaz saw temperatures hit near the highest readings ever recorded on Earth, a new scientific model study has found that climate change made the recent heatwave that hit Europe this June two to ten times more likely, and climate change deniers lost a major cherry-picked talking point as the most recent satellite data now confirms the rapid global temperature rise that ground stations have been reporting all along.
129 F in Iran — Near Record for Globe, But Not a 35 C Wet Bulb Reading
On Thursday, in Ahvaz, Iran, temperatures hit a blazing 53.7 degrees Celsius or 128.66 degrees Fahrenheit. These temperatures were just shy of the 54 C (129.2 F) global records in Mitribah, Kuwait on July 21, 2016 and in California’s Death Valley on July 30, 2013 identified by Chris C Burt of Weather Underground. The reading was also the hottest temperature ever recorded in Asia.
This very severe high temperature came just one day after the thermometer struck 52.9 C (127.2 F) on Wednesday and is the strongest temperature spike of a broader Middle Eastern heatwave that has been baking the near-Persian-Gulf-region for many days. Such severe heat did not, however, tip wet bulb readings above the 35 C human self-cooling threshold despite an extremely hazardous heat index near 142 F. A combined dew point of 72 F, a 129 F temperature, and 995 hPa pressure resulted in wet bulb readings of around 30.2 C for the city — quite dangerous, but not beyond the human limit for temperature self-regulation.
June European Heatwave Attributed to Climate Change
As the Middle East was testing new all-time high temperature records for planet Earth, Europe was also sweltering under combined severe heat and drought. Throughout June, dry weather and high temperatures have plagued Europe. Extreme record heat sweltered the UK, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium — setting off heat emergencies and forcing some regions to ration water. Belgium as a country saw its highest night-time temperature readings on record. England endured its hottest day since 1976. Meanwhile, the heat and extreme dryness set off wildfires that resulted in the tragic loss of 64 lives in Portugal while 1,500 were forced to evacuate from similar extreme blazes in Spain.
(June heat set off a rash of extreme conditions across Europe. World Weather Attribution has linked this extreme event to climate change. Image source: Climate Central.)
This kind of heat is becoming more typical around the world as global temperatures have increased, on average by around 1.2 C since the 1880s. And a recent climate change model attribution study has confirmed that this particular heat wave was a lot worse than it otherwise would have been without the added kick provided by human-forced warming. For a study by World Weather Attribution found “clear and strong links between June’s record warmth and human-caused climate change.”
According to the new study:
“These high temperatures are no longer rare in the current climate, occurring roughly every 10 to 30 years depending on the country. The team found that climate change made the intensity and frequency of such extreme heat at least twice as likely in Belgium, at least four times as likely in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and central England and at least 10 times as likely in Portugal and Spain.”
Satellite Data Confirms Rapid Global Warming
In another climate science related development, remote sensing researchers at the University of California have significantly revised their lower troposphere temperature record. The revision corrected for orbital decay in satellites that caused the world to appear to warm more slowly than actual trends. As a result of these revisions, a significant subset of the satellite data now largely confirms the more accurate land based temperature record showing significant global warming over the past few decades.
(Satellite data revised to correct for orbital decay now basically confirms land-based observations of global temperature increase. Image source: Carbon Brief. Data Scource: RSS and NASA.)
Dr Carl Mears, a co-author of the new findings, in a statement to Carbon Brief noted:
By correctly accounting for the changes in satellite measurement times, the new satellite data are in better agreement with the surface data.
Carbon Brief goes on to add that:
Unlike the satellite temperature record, where only a few satellites are measuring temperatures at any given point of time, there is a large amount of redundancy in surface temperature observations, with multiple independent sets of data producing consistent results. Therefore, it is not too surprising that corrections to problems with satellite data would move them closer to surface records.
Climate change deniers (self-labeled skeptics), have long pointed to satellite data showing the Earth warming at a slower rate than land-based measures. These ‘skeptics’ have then gone on to falsely claim that such data throws the whole issue of human-caused climate change into doubt. But this same group has failed to acknowledge the fact that orbital decay, as pointed out by the very researchers that run the satellite sensors, tends to result in artificially cool readings.
The recent reworking of satellite data to account for orbital decay along with researchers’ direct acknowledgement of the higher accuracy of land-based data removes the rational scientific basis for this line of ‘climate skeptic’ argumentation and renders past assertions in this vein mostly moot.
Links:
Mercury Tips Record 53.7 C in Iran
World Weather Attribution
Europe’s Extreme June Heat Clearly Linked to Climate Change
Chris C Burt
Major Correction to Satellite Data Shows 140 Percent Faster Warming Since 1998
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GOP operative soliciting Russian hackers was bagman for ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’
Posted on July 2, 2017 by Daniel Hopsicker
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The GOP operative leading a team looking for Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails—the same ones Donald Trump had publicly implored Russia to find—was active as a Republican bagman in what Hillary Clinton famously called the “vast right-wing conspiracy” during the Bill Clinton-era Troopergate sex scandals.
Chicago financier and leading GOP donor Peter W. Smith last year launched a well-funded quest for Clinton’s missing emails, according to a pair of stories by Shane Harris in the Wall Street Journal.
During his hunt for the stolen emails Smith told computer specialists he approached that he was working with Michael Flynn, then a top Trump foreign policy adviser, as well as Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon.
Smith, an old Clinton foe and an enthusiastic backer of Trump, died of undisclosed causes less than two weeks after talking to the Journal.
Corroboration for the story came from a former British government intelligence official who said he was approached last summer by the veteran Republican operative to help verify hacked Hillary Clinton emails from a mysterious and most likely Russian source.
The incident, recounted by Matt Tait, who was a information security specialist for British intelligence (GCHQ) and now runs a private internet security consultancy in the UK, sheds new light on pathways used by the Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election in Donald Trump’s favour.
Tait’s account, published on the Lawfare national security blog, shows Republican operative Peter Smith’s willingness to collude with the Russians, as well as possible collusion by Trump aides.
Troopergate bagman revealed
In his efforts during the campaign last year, Smith reprised a role he first played in 1992 as a Republican bagman, passing out an estimated $ 80,000 cash while trolling for dirt on Bill Clinton.
“Chicagoan was trooper bagman” was the headline of a United Press International report on March 31, 1998.
“A Chicago banker says he played a pivotal role in getting the so-called ”Troopergate” story into print. Investment banker Peter W. Smith says he paid out $80,000 to two Arkansas troopers and their lawyer as part of a plan to bring sexual misconduct allegations against President Clinton into the mainstream press.
“The story led to the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit against Clinton, which led to the special prosecutor’s sex-and-cover-up investigation involving former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and others.”
A revealing April 10, 1995 story in Crain’s Chicago Business headlined “NEWT’S DOLE: HIS ILLINOIS PATRONS” stated:
“When Newt Gingrich talks, a lot of people listen these days. What a lot of people don’t know is that when Peter W. Smith talks, Newt Gingrich listens.
Smith started his own political efforts in 1988, organizing the Republican Candidates for the Future Political Action Committee (PAC). Shortly thereafter he met Newt Gingrich.
“I was introduced to him by some people from Goldman Sachs in New York,” said Smith. ”I became a supporter pretty much on the spot.”
“In addition to his support for GOPAC, Mr. Smith is a major backer of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based conservative think tank, as well as a contributor to various GOP candidates for Congress.
“He also hosts lunches in his Wrigley Building offices every month or so for visiting GOP luminaries, such as Mr. Gingrich, Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, and noted Republican strategist William Kristol.
“In 1992 Smith began an effort to dig up dirt on Clinton to help re-elect George Bush president. Although the White House contended there is an anti-Clinton network, Smith said he worked alone.
Another lone wolf financier?
Yet there is ample evidence this was not the case, and that Smith was assisted by operatives who were also officials in the Republican party.
For example, Richard W. Porter, a law partner in Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s private practice, provided advice and shared information with Smith’s covert investigation of President Clinton’s sex life conducted between 1992 and 1994.
At the time that Porter first began assisting Smith, he had been directing an opposition research effort against Clinton for the Bush reelection campaign,” Salon magazine reported. Billing records showed Porter was paid for “legal strategy” and prepared a memo on “investigative leads” that could embarrass Clinton.
That Richard W. Porter, a key player in Smith’s efforts, was also Kenneth Starr’s law partner was never admitted in Starr’s statements to the attorney general’s office, which supported Clinton’s assertions that a perjury trap had been set for him.
During the 1992 presidential race, then-President George Bush suggested that Clinton might have done something unpatriotic, saying that Clinton should disclose to voters “how many demonstrations he led against his own country from a foreign soil.”
Salon magazine reported that Smith discussed underwriting an investigative effort to obtain information about a college trip that President Clinton made to the Soviet Union in 1969.
Sources said Smith discussed probing Clinton’s Soviet trip in a meeting with other conservative activists. The sources, two of whom participated in the discussions, said that Clinton’s trip was only one of a number of issues that Smith thought worthy of investigation.
“Condolences on your recent death”
Anyone who suspects that the Trump campaign’s defense will be to paint Peter Smith as a “lone wolf financier” may find it profitable to check out the encomiums to Smith that have been left on a ‘Life Tributes’ page at Reuland & Turnbough Funeral Directors in Smith’s hometown of Lake Forest, Illinois.
The first to leave a message of condolence was conservative columnist Charles K. Ortel, who wrote “Peter was a great American patriot who helped me enormously in an ongoing investigation of the Clinton family charity frauds.”
Ortel, who a financial writer calls “A Harvard MBA Guy out to Bring Down the Clintons,” has often been featured on Breitbart. A story headlined “Al-Jazeera, Global Jihad, and the Suicide of the West” noted “Cliff Kincaid is holding another one of his amazing press conferences at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.”
“One speaker, Jerry Kenney, an independent television producer, has uncovered evidence of public television stations illegally turning over their airwaves to foreign propaganda channels, including Al-Jazeera and Russia Today (RT) television. He has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over this illegal activity and will tell us all about it.”
Another one of the featured participants was Charles Ortel, “who’s been warning that many initiatives launched by the Obama Administration constitute a “War on Capitalism.”
The War on Capitalism aside, Ortel was obviously out of sympathy with expressions about “public television stations illegally turning over their airwaves to foreign propaganda channels, including Al-Jazeera and Russia Today (RT) television.”
“Vault 7: Plan 9 from outer space for nerds
Because when Russia’s Sputnik News wanted to stir up comment about whether the release of WikiLeaks’ “Vault 7” would contain anything comparable to the Iraq War Logs or the Podesta emails, Ortel was only too happy to share his views “on the mysterious “Vault 7″ and secret materials which may find their way out in the near future.”
Ortel responded to Sputnik with what some might say sounds like a winking aside.
“I am happy to try answering your questions with the caveat applying to each of my answers that I am joining you in making educated guesses — I have no connection, direct or indirect, with WikiLeaks or with anyone connected to WikiLeaks.”
“I suspect that the next set of WikiLeaks papers may drop earlier than this coming April — if they are extensive, they may need many days to disseminate this information to the general public,” Ortel said.
Then he serves the main course, noting:
“If Vault 7 is a reference to the 7th Floor at the US State Department (which it may or may not be), then it is possible that the forthcoming release will document more intervention in foreign elections and referenda and show previously unseen communications and deliberations involving US government personnel, possibly including Hillary Clinton, her aides, and other members of the Obama Administration.”
Bagman with a mean streak
Republican moneyman Smith was spreading cash around in Arkansas in 1992 in hopes of securing some devastating sex stories. Yet when Hillary Clinton responded to the Monica Lewinsky meltdown by positing a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” she was widely mocked as an X-files-type fantasist.
Journalists also sniffed at disclosures by Salon magazine and elsewhere tracing hundreds of thousands of dollars in conservative money into the pockets of anti-Clinton investigators and operatives like Peter W. Smith.
An In These Times story headlined “Was Hillary Correct? Right-Wing Conspiracies & Hardball Politics” by reporter Robert Perry reviewed reports of Smith’s efforts to catch Bill Clinton with his pants down, then offered an unexpectedly poignant passage:
“At the time Hillary Clinton told confidants she did not believe any of the troopers’ allegations.
“The troopers’ stories were circulated after one of the troopers was caught by his wife with the telephone number of a woman in his pocket while doing her husband’s laundry, the first lady told friends.
“When the trooper’s wife demanded an explanation, according to the first lady’s version of the story, he falsely said that he had obtained the phone number for the governor. After the incident, Hillary Clinton told her friend stories began to circulate about the troopers assisting Clinton in meeting women.
“Said the friend who was told the story: “You listen to the story and you know that it’s not plausible. But you don’t have the heart to say anything.”
Then, more than 20 years later, it happened again.
That the same Republican moneyman who helped finance the sex scandals during Bill Clinton’s presidency was leading a search more than 20 years later for Russian hackers who could deliver Hillary Clinton’s missing emails for public consumption is, for Clinton,
By this time next year, CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling will be out of prison. But in the meantime, Jeffrey and his wife Holly continue to endure a very painful ordeal.
For both of them, you’re been a lifeline -- signing petitions in support of Jeffrey, maybe donating to the Sterling Family Fund, maybe writing to Jeffrey. Whatever you’ve done has been vitally important, lifting their spirits.
Now, please read the new message from Holly below.
-- The RootsAction.org Team
_________________________________________
Dear Friends,
The anticipation of the appellate court issuing its decision is over. On June 22, the court upheld the unjust convictions of my beloved husband Jeffrey. An entire judicial system failed him yet again. We are grieving another horrific loss and miscarriage of justice that has been allowed to continue for so many years. We always maintained the hope and belief that the truth would prevail and true justice would be delivered; instead we are devastated and reliving the nightmare of the conviction once again.
The start of this summer also marked completion of the second year of Jeffrey's incarceration. He had this to share reflecting on this tragedy:
"Two years of imprisonment have given me ample time to reflect on the circumstances in which I find myself today. I often retrace my steps, carefully recalling each conversation I had and action I took that landed me in this prison. However, in the two years that I have served, my position has never wavered. I know who I am, and I know what my values are. My name is Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, and I am an innocent man who has been wrongfully convicted of espionage after dedicating my life to serving the U.S. government.
"I was convicted of espionage against the U.S. government for being in communication with a reporter. The CIA accused me of offering New York Times journalist James Risen classified national defense information regarding Operation Merlin, a top-secret operation that targeted Iran’s nuclear program, which Risen later described in his book ‘State of War.’
“Though I have persistently maintained that I never disclosed any classified information to Risen and was only in touch with him regarding my discrimination case against the CIA, I was nonetheless convicted of espionage based solely on metadata from phone calls and emails we had exchanged. Despite the lack of any direct evidence proving I was the source for Risen’s book, I am now entering the third year of my three-and-a-half-year prison sentence.”
Jeffrey and I are beginning to look forward to and preparing for his return home as his official release date is June 14, 2018.
Please continue to support and assist us in those preparations:
** Your help for the Sterling Family Fund would continue to grant me the privilege of visiting Jeffrey in Colorado and provide funds for essential preparations. You can make a donation by clicking here. Contributions of any amount are a real help and gratefully received.
** Please continue to send words of support and encouragement to my beloved husband. Your sentiments will lend much-needed support and strength handling the news of this latest injustice. You may write letters and/or send cards to him at the following address:
JEFFREY STERLING, 38338-044
FCI ENGLEWOOD
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSITUTION
9595 WEST QUINCY AVENUE
LITTLETON, CO 80123
Jeffrey and I continue to find solace in your unwavering support. We remain eternally grateful as you have remained by our side through this seemingly endless nightmare. Thank you to each of you for your warm sentiments and overwhelming generosity. All of you are in our thoughts and we wish you continued health, happiness, and peace.
Your friend,
Holly Sterling
PS from the RootsAction.org Team: We hope that you can write to Jeffrey and/or click here to make a contribution to the Sterling Family Fund. The thoughtful letters and the donations, no matter how short or how small, loom large for providing vital ongoing support to Jeffrey as a CIA whistleblower who is paying a steep personal price for his courage.
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Background:
>> BBC News: "Jeffrey Sterling's Trial by Metadata"
>> John Kiriakou: “CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling Placed in Solitary Confinement”
>> ExposeFacts: Special Coverage of the Jeffrey Sterling Trial
>> Marcy Wheeler, ExposeFacts: "Sterling Verdict Another Measure of Declining Government Credibility on Secrets"
>> Norman Solomon, The Nation: "CIA Officer Jeffrey Sterling Sentenced to Prison: The Latest Blow in the Government's War on Journalism"
>> Reporters Without Borders: "Jeffrey Sterling Latest Victim of the U.S.' War on Whistleblowers"
>> AFP: "Pardon Sought for Ex-CIA Officer in Leak Case"
>> Documentary film: "The Invisible Man: NSA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling"
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http://stevehochstadt.blogspot.com/2017 ... ickly.htmlTuesday, July 4, 2017
Gay Equality is Coming Quickly
Usually public opinion on important and emotional subjects shifts gradually. The realization that discrimination against African Americans and women was wrong came very slowly. For more than a century, Americans spoke out against sexism and racism. In the 19th century, they were considered radicals, advocating unpopular political positions against traditional beliefs in white male superiority. By the 20th century, opinion in America was split and some discriminatory laws were changed, but common practices based in prejudice persisted.
Only after World War II did majority public opinion shift away from entrenched discrimination, but even then progress was halting. The two Supreme Court decisions that declared school segregation (1954) and laws against mixed-race marriages (1967) unconstitutional were 13 years apart, and they were just way stations along a much longer journey toward equality. In both cases, defenders of discrimination used religious arguments to oppose equal treatment for blacks and women, citing Biblical verses written thousands of years ago to claim that God had declared the superiority of white men for all time.
Change comes more quickly in modern society, as we can see in the technological innovations which replace each other with bewildering rapidity. In 1999, Ray Kurzweil proposed the “The Law of Accelerating Returns”; he believed that change in a wide variety of evolutionary systems, including technology, would come with accelerated speed. We might see this “law” operating in the third great shift in public opinion about traditional discriminatory practices, the acceptance of homosexual people as normal and deserving of equal rights.
Data from the Pew Research Center shows a dramatic recent shift in American public opinion on same-sex marriage, which may be taken as an indicator of more general attitudes about homosexuality. After years of relative stability, in the last 8 years the proportion of Americans who oppose gay marriage dropped from 54% to 32%, as the number who favor it rose from 37% to 62%. That same amount of opinion shift on inter-racial marriage took about twice as long.
The popular shift has been rapid, but not smooth. After Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2003, 12 states passed constitutional amendments outlawing it in the next year alone, and eventually 30 states passed such backlash legislation. The Supreme Court decision in 2015 that rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all citizens included the right to get married came four years after support for same-sex marriage reached majority status.
Like many shifts in social attitudes, this was led by young people. The latest Pew survey shows 18- to 29-year-olds against discrimination by 79% to 19%, while Americans over 72 remain opposed to this change by 49% to 41%. But every demographic group, whatever their attitudes were a few years ago, has shifted towards acceptance. Opposition remains concentrated among white evangelical Protestants, conservative Republicans, and the oldest Americans, groups which considerably overlap. Those who demonize their neighbors who have a different sexual orientation continue to use arguments derived from Christian tradition as justification.
What caused this rapid shift in public opinion? When Pew asked why people had changed their minds, the most common answer was that they knew someone who is homosexual. Visibility has been a significant factor in the increasing acceptance of gays in America. While race and gender are usually obvious, homosexuality was not.
I grew up in an America where homosexuality was queer, meaning strange and unnatural. It was dangerous for a gay person to reveal their orientation, which could cost them their jobs. Homosexual relations were criminal across the country, until Illinois was the first state to decriminalize same-sex relations in 1962. So I didn’t know any homosexuals. I, like most Americans, had no evidence from life experience that gay people were not as they were portrayed in medical practice (sick), in official propaganda (dangerous), and in common talk (weird).
Over the course of 30 years, the proportion of Americans who said that someone they knew revealed to them that they were gay rose from 24% in 1985 to 75% in 2013. Since it is unlikely that the incidence of homosexuality has changed significantly, what did change was the realization that there are gay people in everyone’s social circle.
The end of discrimination against homosexuality is determined by changing public opinion and political practice, which differ from country to country. Germany, in many ways more officially opposed to discrimination of all kinds than the US, just legalized gay marriage last week. A recent poll showed that 83% of Germans approved of same-sex marriage, much higher than in the US. But the politics of the conservative party, the Christian Democrats, who have led the government since 2005, prevented any vote on the issue until now.
Bigots will keep using religion as a cover for prejudice, as in the so-called religious freedom laws. But the shift toward acceptance of homosexuality will continue, as older opponents are replaced by younger advocates. Because our gay relatives and friends do not fit the prejudicial stereotypes, discriminatory impulses will lose their persuasive power.
Happy birthday, America.
Steve Hochstadt
Springbrook, WI
Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, July 4, 2017
