Hagel: ‘I Think It’s Always Wise To Try To Talk To People Before You Go To War’

By Ben Armbruster on Jan 31, 2013 at 7:30 pm

One of the main themes senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee committed themselves to today during Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing to be the next Secretary of Defense was — not wondering whether Hagel fully supports a diplomatic approach to Iran’s nuclear program, as most Americans do — but rather, whether the former Republican senator is willing to take this nation into another war in the Middle East if necessary.

Senator after senator, both Republican and Democrat, repeatedly sought Hagel’s reassurance that he is committed to starting a war with Iran — as if the last 10 years of a disastrous war in Iraq had never happened.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) was one of those senators. During one series of questions in which Ayotte wondered if Iran was “responsible” enough to deal with, Hagel explained that his priority is diplomacy. “I think it’s always wise to try to talk to people before you get into war,” he said:

AYOTTE: Because here we have a regime that doesn’t respond to in a responsible or sane behavior as a state-sponsor of terrorism and why that would be an appropriate manner for us to address them?

HAGEL: Well first I said engagement and I think we should talk, we actually are indirectly in the P5 plus one, we have been. I think that’s responsible. I think it’s always responsible to try to talk first. North Korea. I don’t consider North Korea a responsible, sane administration but we’re talking to North Korea. We’ve been talking bilaterally to North Korea. We are talking with the party of six to North Korea. I think that’s wise. I think it’s always wise to try to talk to people before you get into war.

Ayotte continued to badger Hagel about his past support for talks with Iran. “I’ve always thought that that’s smarter and wiser” to push countries into international organizations, Hagel said, adding:

HAGEL: Because when they go in to world bodies they have to comply with some semblance of international behavior it doesn’t mean they always will, they won’t, they cheat. But I think we’re smarter to do that. I’ve never thought engagement is weakness. I’ve never thought it was surrender. I never thought it was appeasement. I think it’s clearly in our interests. If that doesn’t work then I think the President’s position and his strategy has been exactly right. Get the United Nations behind you. Get the international sanctions behind you. Keep military options on the table. If the military option is the only option, it’s the only option.

Watch the clip:

“At Hagel hearing,” the Washington Post’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran observed on Twitter, “136 mentions of Israel and 135 of Iran. Only 27 refs to Afghanistan. 2 for Al Qaida. 1 for Mali.” Indeed, the neocons aren’t dead, yet — at least not in the Senate.

(Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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Climate Progress

Why Climate Scientists Have Consistently UNDERestimated Key Global Warming Impacts

By Joe Romm on Jan 31, 2013 at 6:12 pm

Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama

by Dana Nuccitelli, via Skeptical Science

A paper recently published in Global Environmental Change by Brysse et al. (2012) examined a number of past predictions made by climate scientists, and found that that they have tended to be too conservative in their projections of the impacts of climate change. The authors thus suggest that climate scientists are biased toward overly cautious estimates, erring on the side of less rather than more alarming predictions, which they call “erring on the side of least drama” (ESLD).

In this paper, Brysse et al. examined research evaluating past climate projections, and considered the pressures which might cause climate scientists to ESLD.

Conservative Climate Projections

While we have recently shown that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) temperature projections have been exceptionally accurate, several other projections in the IPCC reports have been far too conservative.

Sea Level Rise

For example, Rahmstorf (2007) and more recently Rahmstorf et al. (2012) showed that sea level is rising at a rate inconsistent with all but the highest IPCC scenarios (Figure 1). Rahmstorf et al. (2012) concluded,

“The satellite-based linear trend 1993–2011 is 3.2 ± 0.5 mm yr^-1, which is 60% faster than the best IPCC estimate of 2.0 mm yr^-1 for the same interval.”

Figure 1: Sea level measured by satellite altimeter (red with linear trend line; AVISO datafrom (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) and reconstructed from tide gauges (orange, monthly data from Church and White (2011)). Tide gauge data were aligned to give the same mean during 1993–2010 as the altimeter data. The scenarios of the IPCC are again shown in blue (third assessment) and green (fourth assessment); the former have been published starting in the year 1990 and the latter from 2000.

The main reason these sea level rise projections have been too low and that the IPCC almost certainly underestimates future sea level rise is that their models do not include the effects of dynamic ice processes from chunks of ice breaking off into the ocean (“calving”), then melting. The IPCC approach in attempting to account for these processes considers recent contributions to sea level rise from ice sheet melt, then “assume that this contribution will persist unchanged.” This is certainly a conservative approach, and the primary reason their sea level projections have been low.

Arctic Sea Ice Decline

Three years after the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was drafted, the 2009 Copenhagen Diagnosis examined the latest climate research to effectively update the IPCC report. In addition to confirming the Rahmstorf finding that the IPCC has underestimated sea level rise, the Copenhagen Diagnosis also found that the IPCC has dramatically understimated the decline in Arctic sea ice extent (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Observed vs. IPCC modeled annual minimum Arctic sea ice extent

In 2012, Arctic sea ice melt shattered the previous record low, to levels unseen in millennia, increasing the margin by which IPCC projections have been too conservative.

CO2 Emissions

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Security

Virginia Lawmakers Approve Bill Forcing Universities To Fund Student Groups That Discriminate

By Zack Ford on Jan 31, 2013 at 5:55 pm

(Credit: Ellen Kaufman/seniorphoto.tumblr.com)

The Virginia House of Delegates voted 80-19 today to approve HB1617, a bill that would invite any religious or political university student group to discriminate as they please and still require the campus to providing them funding and access to campus facilities. This would make LGBT students particularly vulnerable to discrimination because universities’ protections for sexual orientation are not enforceable under Virginia law. Under this bill, though, even a KKK chapter could hypothetically form, use campus resources, and openly discriminate against non-white and non-Christian students on campus.

Here’s the text of the bill:

To the extent allowed by state and federal law:

1. A religious or political student organization may determine that ordering the organization’s internal affairs, selecting the organization’s leaders and members, defining the organization’s doctrines, and resolving the organization’s disputes are in furtherance of the organization’s religious or political mission and that only persons committed to that mission should conduct such activities; and

2. No public institution of higher education that has granted recognition of and access to any student organization or group shall discriminate against any such student organization or group that exercises its rights pursuant to subdivision 1.

On most college campuses, student organizations must maintain a constitution that conforms to the university’s procedures, including its nondiscrimination policies. For example, James Madison University requires that all organizations obey the “policies, rules, regulations, and standards of the university,” such as its nondiscrimination policy, which includes sexual orientation. The College of William & Mary offers similar protections and requires student groups be open to all students.

Such policies are key because student organizations receive funding and use campus resources (like meeting spaces) that are funded by fees that all students pay; thus, all students deserve equal access to those campus clubs. Nondiscrimination policies have become a source of contention for conservative Christian student groups, like at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University and New York’s University of Buffalo, who wish to exclude gay students from membership. In the 2010 case Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly answered this question in favor of nondiscrimination policies, ruling that “all-comers” policies are viewpoint neutral, and thus are no more unfair to Christian groups than any other student groups.

Conservatives have argued, however that nondiscrimination policies allow for “hostile takeovers“ — in which students with opposing views infiltrate and assume power in the organization — but there’s no evidence to suggest that this is plausible, let alone that it ever happened. Members of an organization are still allowed to vote for their group’s leaders, even with discriminatory intent, if all students remain eligible. Any student group that can’t persist on its own merits probably doesn’t warrant use of student fees in the first place.

All 19 votes against the bill were cast by Democrats. It now advances to the Senate for committee consideration.

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Health

Vermont Legislature Debates Controversial ‘Right To Die’ Bill

By Sy Mukherjee on Jan 31, 2013 at 5:30 pm

The Vermont Senate’s Health and Welfare Committee has taken up a controversial measure that would “allow physicians to prescribe lethal doses [of medication] to those with less than six months to live who request the option.” If the bill were to pass, it would make Vermont only the third state after Oregon and Washington to legalize a so-called “right to die” measure.

The bill has aroused significant passions in both supporters and detractors, with each side claiming that their views represent a more humanitarian approach to public health issues for the terminally ill:

Earlier Tuesday, [the committee] heard from former Gov. Madeleine Kunin, who described watching her brother, former state Sen. Edgar May, die last month.

“He told me, ‘I want to die.’ We were all shocked,” Kunin said, as she addressed committee. “He didn’t want to live an incapacitated life.” [...]

Kunin said her brother didn’t need a lethal dose of medication, as the bill allows. Instead, having suffered from a series of strokes, he voluntarily withdrew his medications and had his feeding tube removed. His doctors and family went along with his wishes, she said. [...]

Edward Mahoney, president of the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Health Care, was in the audience listening as Kunin testified. An opponent of the bill who is also scheduled to address the committee this week, Mahoney said her story was compelling but also shows why such a law is not needed. Her brother’s doctors followed his wishes and made him comfortable, Mahoney said.

Kunin disagreed. “I wouldn’t say we don’t need the law. This was a unique situation,” she said, whereas someone else might be in more pain. “We have to respect the wishes of the dying person.”

The bill is expected to receive a full vote in the Vermont state Senate, and the outcome is likely to be close and unpredictable, as the issue has cut across party lines and regular partisan polarization.

Oregon and Washington’s physician-assisted suicide laws have shown that a very low percentage of the terminally ill actually request or utilize them. That lends some credence to the argument that only Americans in dire need of such procedures would pursue them, and that a lack of access to these provisions encourages self-inflected harm and suicide, which might increase the suffering of the terminally ill.

Still, others argue that “right to die” legislation embodies a race to the bottom. Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly voted down a similar law in the most recent election cycle.

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Justice

As Part Of Lockdown Drill, School Fires Off Blanks In The Halls

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Jan 31, 2013 at 5:30 pm

Students at a high school in Illinois experienced a uniquely terrifying school shooting drill on Wednesday. Instead of conducting a regular school lockdown, Cary-Grove High School administrators simulated gunfire by shooting off blanks in the hallways while students locked their classroom doors, pulled the curtains, and hid.

The drill, understandably, upset some parents in the area, who received a letter ahead of time telling them what their children would be experiencing:

The simulation will take approximately 15-20 minutes, during which time teachers will secure their rooms, draw curtains, and keep their students from traveling throughout the building. Please note that we will be firing blanks in the hallway in an effort to provide our teachers and students some familiarity with the sound of gunfire. Our school resource officer and other members of the Cary Police Department will assist us in sweeping the building to ensure that all students are in a secure location during the drill. At the conclusion of the drill, we will take some time to process what occurred and then we will return to our normal classroom routine.

I encourage you to discuss the drill with your student both before it happens and after. These drills help our students and staff to be prepared should a crisis occur, but it may cause some students to have an emotional reaction.

Schools and parents have gone to exceedingly extreme lengths, in the wake of the horrific killing of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, to come up with ways to prepare for school gun violence. A school district in Texas is considering allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons; parents have been purchasing bulletproof backpacks for their kids to take to school; the South Carolina legislature is even considering making a gun training class for high schoolers; and some parents even packed a gun for their sixth-grader to bring to class.

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Economy

Chris Christie Vetoes Help For Homeowners In State Plagued By Foreclosures

By Guest Blogger on Jan 31, 2013 at 5:20 pm

Our guest blogger is David Sanchez, a Special Assistant with the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Economic and Housing Policy Teams.

New Jersey is facing a twin crisis of foreclosures and lack of affordable housing, but Gov. Chris Christie (R) recently vetoed two bills that would have brightened the outlook for New Jersey residents struggling to afford homes.

The first bill would have empowered New Jersey’s Housing Mortgage and Finance Agency to purchase foreclosed homes and transform them into affordable housing. In doing so, New Jersey would combat the crime and blight brought about by vacant homes, while also increasing housing opportunities for low- and moderate-income families.

The bill had support not only from housing advocates, but from a broad swatch of businesses. What’s more, it would have been implemented without requiring state appropriations.

The second bill would have improved New Jersey’s program to help unemployed or underemployed homeowners make their mortgage payments. This program, funded by a $300 million grant from the federal government’s Hardest Hit Fund program, has badly underperformed for years: according to the most recent statistics, the program has denied assistance to more than double the number of applicants it has helped, and it has spent less than one twentieth of the funds available (although changes have recently been announced that may improve the program). The bill would have mandated that the program respond to applicants and issue aid more quickly.

Christie’s decision to veto these bills is puzzling, to say the least, given the challenges facing New Jersey’s housing market and families. While the housing market is improving in most of the country, it’s getting worse in New Jersey. New Jersey’s percentage of homeowners who are not current on their mortgages increased the most of any state in 2012, and delinquencies remain especially elevated in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy.

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Climate Progress

Study: Energy Industry Water Use Set To Double By 2035

By Jeff Spross on Jan 31, 2013 at 4:30 pm

Evaporation from a nuclear plant's cooling towers.

The International Energy Agency concluded that freshwater use is becoming an increasingly crucial issue for energy production around the world in its 2012 World Energy Outlook.

Between steam systems for coal plants, cooling for nuclear plants, fracking for natural gas wells, irrigation for biofuel crops, and myriad other uses, energy production consumed 66 billion cubic meters (BCM) of the world’s fresh water in 2010. That is water removed from its source and lost to evaporation, consumption, or transported out of the water basin — as opposed to water withdrawn, used, and then returned to its source for further availability, which is a far larger amount.

According to figures it shared with National Geographic, IEA anticipates this water consumption will double from 66 BCM now to 135 BCM by 2035 with most of the growth accounted for by coal and biofuels:

If today’s policies remain in place, the IEA calculates that water consumed for energy production would increase from 66 billion cubic meters (bcm) today to 135 bcm annually by 2035.

That’s an amount equal to the residential water use of every person in the United States over three years, or 90 days’ discharge of the Mississippi River. It would be four times the volume of the largest U.S. reservoir, Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead.

More than half of that drain would be from coal-fired power plants and 30 percent attributable to biofuel production, in IEA’s view. The agency estimates oil and natural gas production together would account for 10 percent of global energy-related water demand in 2035….

The surest way to reduce the water required for electricity generation, IEA’s figures indicate, would be to move to alternative fuels. Renewable energy provides the greatest opportunity: Wind and solar photovoltaic power have such minimal water needs they account for less than one percent of water consumption for energy now and in the future, by IEA’s calculations.

This presents a challenge, since river flows, aquifers, and other sources of fresh water are already being strained by the twin drains of population growth and less reliable rainfall due to climate change. The United Nations is projecting that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in regions with severe water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world’s population could be living under water-stressed conditions. Given water’s importance in different forms of energy production, this presents a double hit: Less available fresh water for human consumption, plus strained and costlier energy supplies.

IEA sees water consumption for coal electricity shooting up 84 percent, from 38 to 70 BCM per year by 2035. So-called “dry cooling” systems could address this, but the plants cost more and generate electricity less efficiently. Nor is carbon capture and sequestration technology likely to help.

While biofuels’ water consumption will be lower than coal’s — 41 BCM in 2035, up from 12 BCM today — its increase of 242 percent will be much larger. Irrigation requires a lot of water, though estimates vary wildly and the industry claims it’s finding ways to cut back. IEA puts it between four and 560 gallons of water needed to produce one gallon of corn ethanol. Other estimates put it as high as 10,000 gallons of water per one gallon of biofuel. And that’s all bound up with the damaging effect biofuel production is having on world food supplies.

There are solutions, such as moving to less water-intensive methods like pump irrigation, but the trade-off is far more electricity use from potentially unsustainable sources. Cellulosic ethanol, made from non-food sources, is another possibility, but IEA estimates it won’t be commercially viable until at least 2025.

Also, as National Geographic notes, biofuels’ level of water consumption is grossly out of whack with their contributions to world energy supplies: They provide a mere 3 percent of the energy that drives cars, trucks, ships, and aircraft, and IEA projects they’ll increase to just 5 percent by 2035 under current government policies.

As for fracking, IEA’s estimates covered the entire source-to-carrier production process, and under this framework natural gas’ water consumption reach just 2.85 BCM by 2035, or 2 percent of total consumption. Though the concentration of water use at individual fracking projects can still put a strain on water supplies for local commentaries.

Economy

Senate Successfully Passes Three-Month Debt Ceiling Increase

By Pat Garofalo on Jan 31, 2013 at 4:13 pm

The Senate today — on a vote of 64-34 — successfully passed a bill to raise the nation’s debt ceiling for three months. The bill has already passed the House, so it now goes to President Obama for his signature. Four Republican amendments were rejected prior to final approval.

With the debt ceiling out of the way for the moment, the next big budget task for Congress is funding the federal government beyond March 27th, when the current round of funding expires, and dealing with the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts that will occur in early March due to the so-called “sequester.”

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LGBT

What President Obama Has Done for LGBT Immigrants

By Guest Blogger on Jan 31, 2013 at 4:10 pm

Our guest bloggers are Christopher Frost, intern for LGBT Progress, and Crosby Burns, Research Associate for LGBT Progress.

Earlier this week a bipartisan group of senators announced a sweeping proposal that would overhaul the immigration system and ultimately provide the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country a path to earned citizenship. On the heels of that announcement, President Obama announced a similar plan for immigration reform that would create a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented, establish a nationwide employment verification system, secure our border, and improve visa access for high-skilled workers.

The momentum on immigration reform from both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue is good news for the undocumented, including the hundreds of thousands who identify as LGBT. Allowing LGBT individuals to obtain legal status would offer them and their families the certainty and economic safeguards that citizenship confers. President Obama’s support for these families and for LGBT immigrants more broadly is reflected in many of the policies enacted during his first term. According to a column released today by the Center for American Progress, President Obama has taken the following steps to address the needs and obstacles of LGBT immigrants:

1. Putting an end to separating families headed by same-sex couples. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) incorporated families headed by same-sex couples in its guidance on what it considers to be “low-priority” for investigation and deportation (so long as they are not a threat to public safety or national security).

2. Facilitating humane and safe detention standards for gay and transgender immigrants. DHS released new standards aimed at strengthening the dignified treatment of gay and transgender detainees and decreasing sexual victimization of those detainees.

3. Addressing the needs of gay and transgender refugees. DHS has implemented a training module that requires all asylum officers to be trained on the appropriate terminology they should use and questions they should ask when interviewing gay and transgender refugees.

4. Lifting the HIV travel ban. Finishing a process started by President Bush, President Obama issued rules that overturned the 22-year old ban on travel and immigration of HIV-positive individuals to the United States.

5. Offering undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children a temporary reprieve from deportation. President Obama’s “deferred action” policy has granted greater peace of mind for up to 1.76 million aspiring young Americans who qualify for the program. Many of the youth in this demographic identify as LGBT.

Beyond administrative policies, LGBT immigrants have been part of the recent legislative debate over immigration reform. Included in President Obama’s proposal for reform — but notably absent in the senators’ proposal — is a provision that would allow citizens to sponsor a same-sex partner for residency, a right that different-sex spouses currently enjoy under existing immigration law. Obtaining spousal sponsorship rights for bi-national same-sex couples is important to equitable immigration overhaul that includes all immigrants. LGBT-inclusive language should be a part of any bill going forward.

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Hagel: ‘I Think It’s Always Wise To Try To Talk To People Before You Go To War’