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Two earthquakes strike near Iran nuclear plant

Two earthquakes strike near Iran nuclear plant, By Artemis Moshtaghian, CNN, 8 Jan 2020, 

 Two earthquakes struck near a nuclear power plant in southwestern Iran on Wednesday morning, just over a week after another quake hit the region.

The first quake, measuring 4.9 magnitude, struck just before 9.00 a.m. local time in Bushehr province, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Around 30 minutes later a second quake, this time measuring 4.5 magnitude, struck the same province which runs along the Iranian coastline.

The quake epicenters were within 20 kilometers of the city of Borazjan — a short distance from the country’s Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Another earthquake, measuring 5.1 magnitude, struck the same region less than two weeks ago.

In a dramatic day for Iran, the two quakes happened just hours after the country fired a number of missiles at two Iraqi bases housing US troops, in retaliation for the US’ killing of a top Iranian general last week.

In the wake of Qasem Soleimani’s killing last week, Iran said it was ending its commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Opened in August 2010, Bushehr is not only Iran’s first nuclear plant but the first civilian reactor in the Middle East.

Another earthquake, measuring 5.1 magnitude, struck the same region less than two weeks ago.

In a dramatic day for Iran, the two quakes happened just hours after the country fired a number of missiles at two Iraqi bases housing US troops, in retaliation for the US’ killing of a top Iranian general last week.

In the wake of Qasem Soleimani’s killing last week, Iran said it was ending its commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Opened in August 2010, Bushehr is not only Iran’s first nuclear plant but the first civilian reactor in the Middle East.

History of deadly quakes

Iran is no stranger to tectonic activity. The country sits on a major fault line between the Arabian and Eurasian plates, and has experienced many earthquakes in the past……https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/two-earthquakes-strike-near-iran-nuclear-plant/ar-BBYK7JS

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, safety | Leave a comment

Donald Trump plays with possible nuclear crisis in Iran

Trump risks nuclear crisis in Iran, The Hill, BY REBECCA KHEEL – 01/06/20  President Trump is increasingly facing the possibility of a nuclear crisis with Iran, as Tehran takes its biggest step back from the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran’s decision to stop adhering to limits in the Obama-era nuclear agreement comes just days after Trump authorized a drone strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, posing a major test of the Trump administration’s gambit to withdraw from the international accord.

While Iran hasn’t kicked out nuclear inspectors, and has even left open the possibility of coming back into compliance, experts say Sunday’s announcement by Tehran brings the deal closer to collapse than ever before…….

Iran had set an early January deadline for its next step away from the deal, even before last week’s U.S. strike in Baghdad killed Soleimani, the Quds Force leader. But his unexpected death has ratcheted up tensions between the United States and Iran, stoking fears about a military confrontation and making any step away from the nuclear deal now that much more fraught.

“The degree of their abandonment of the JCPOA may have come about as a result” of Soleimani’s death, Takeyh said, using the acronym for the official name of the deal.

On Sunday, Iran announced it would no longer adhere to the deal’s limits on uranium enrichment.

Trump responded to the news Monday by tweeting in all caps that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon!”…..

Despite saying it was no longer bound by the deal’s limits, Iran did not immediately announce actions to increase its uranium enrichment and reiterated its pledge to come back into compliance with the deal if it gets sanctions relief. Iran also maintained that its nuclear program is not a weapons program.

Iran also said it would continue cooperating with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors.

The IAEA said Monday its “inspectors continue to verify and monitor activities in the country.”….https://thehill.com/policy/defense/477047-trump-risks-nuclear-crisis-in-iran

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international, USA | 1 Comment

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors – just a speculative technology, no use against climate change

Environmentalists Say Small Nuclear Reactors Aren’t A Climate Change Solution,  https://huddle.today/environmentalists-say-small-nuclear-reactors-arent-a-climate-change-solution/  – 8 Jan 2020 SAINT JOHN – Environmentalists in Saint John are raising concerns over the province’s investments in small modular reactors.Two companies are hoping to develop the new nuclear fission technology at Point Lepreau.

But David Thompson of Leap4ward says the technology is too new and won’t be implemented soon enough to have an impact on climate change.

Thompson says the province shouldn’t be investing in “speculative technology” and should instead be focusing renewable energy sources that have been proven to work in New Brunswick, such as wind, solar and hydro.

“The renewable sources of energy that we’ve talked about to the premier, some of them can be put in place and operating in maybe three, three and a half years,” he said.

Thompson says in comparison, SMRs could take 10 years or more to perfect.

“We haven’t got 10 years for something that might work, and another 10 years to build it after it’s proven to work, or even longer than that to put in place enough of it so that it’ll make some kind of difference,” he said.

“At the end of it we still have the problem of nuclear waste and we will have the problem of radiation.”

Interest in SMR and nuclear energy has been growing in recent months as a green energy alternative, but the modular reactor technology is still in the very early stages.

Thompson says climate change is a growing issue and more needs to be done sooner rather than later.

“Climate change can’t wait for something that might work, and what if it doesn’t work? What if it isn’t economically feasible after 10 years?” he said.

He says not only have wind, solar, and hydro been proven to work, but they’re low-cost and easy to implement.

Thompson has sent a letter to Premier Blaine Higgs outlining his concerns and asking him to pull funding from SMRs.

“We applaud him for the decision he made to cut all funding to the speculative Joi [Scientific] hydrogen fuel project, but we’re even more concerned about these companies who are getting government money—and attempting to get more—to build these modular reactors,” he said.

“By not putting renewable energy in place now in New Brunswick, we’re not doing the right thing. We need action on climate change now.”

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Trump urges Britain, Germany, France, Russia and China to dump the Iran nuclear deal

Trump urges dumping of Iran nuclear deal, news.com.au, 9 Jan 2020, 
The decision by the UK and other signatories to try to maintain the Iran nuclear deal has been criticised by US President Trump. 
 US President Donald Trump has called on the world’s major powers to abandon the “defective” Iran nuclear deal.

Trump said the “time has come” for Britain, Germany, France, Russia and China to dump the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Under the deal, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear programme and allow in international inspectors in return for the easing of economic sanctions.

But at a White House press conference on Wednesday, in which he gave his reaction to the overnight Iranian attacks on air bases housing US forces in Iraq, Trump said the “very defective JCPOA expires shortly anyway and gives Iran a clear and quick path to nuclear breakout”.

Trump said the US would immediately impose “additional punishing economic sanctions” on Tehran until Iran changes its behaviour,” citing the nuclear programme.

Since Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018 and started a “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions against Iran, tensions have steadily escalated.

“Iran must abandon its nuclear ambitions and end its support for terrorism. The time has come for the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and China to recognise this reality,” the President added.

“They must now break away from the remnants of the Iran deal – or JCPOA – and we must all work together towards making a deal with Iran that makes the world a safer and more peaceful place.”

However, just hours before Trump’s remarks, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the deal remains the “best way of preventing nuclear proliferation in Iran. https://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/trump-urges-dumping-of-iran-nuclear-deal/news-story/535d6f4704348e8ebac6f0e96f45403c

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Don’t Worry About Iranian Nukes Anytime Soon, Nuclear Experts Say

Don’t Worry About Iranian Nukes Anytime Soon, Nuclear Experts Say“I see no signs of Iran rushing to build a bomb, and doing so would almost certainly not be in their best interest,” said one expert. BuzzFeed News, Dan Vergano, 7  Jan 2020,

Iran’s announcement that it would be abandoning the last remaining restrictions placed on the country under a landmark nuclear arms limitation agreement doesn’t mean it will soon have nukes, arms control experts told BuzzFeed News.

“Is this a sign that Iran is racing toward a bomb? Absolutely not,” nuclear nonproliferation expert Corey Hinderstein of the Nuclear Threat Initiative told BuzzFeed News. “We are not seeing behavior that points in that direction.”

The Iranian government on Sunday announced it was walking away from limits on centrifuges — high-speed spinning machines that separate out weapons-quality uranium — agreed to in 2015 and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council. The move came after the US killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani on Friday, in an airstrike at Baghdad’s airport. On Tuesday, Iranian state television said Tehran had launched “tens” of missiles at Iraq’s Al Asad air base, which houses US troops, in retaliation.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program no longer faces any operational restrictions,” Sunday’s statement from Iran’s official news service said. “From here on, Iran’s nuclear program will be developed solely based on its technical needs.”

Along with an outburst of World War III memes, the announcement triggered an all-caps response from President Donald Trump, stating that Iran would never have nuclear weapons……. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/iran-nuclear-bomb-uranium-soleimani

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Australian government plans to transport nuclear wastes 1000s of kilometres, a dangerous plan in view of bushfires

Transporting nuclear wastes across Australia in the age of bushfires, Independent Australia, By Noel Wauchope | 8 January 2020, IN 2020, the final decision on a site for Australia’s interim National Radioactive Waste Facility will be announced, said Resources Minister Matt Canavan on 13 December.

He added:  I will make a formal announcement early next year on the site-selection process.”

With bushfires raging, it might seem insensitive and non-topical to be worrying now about this coming announcement on a temporary nuclear waste site and the transport of nuclear wastes to it. But this is relevant and all too serious in the light of Australia’s climate crisis.

The U.S. National Academies Press compiled a lengthy and comprehensive report on risks of transporting nuclear wastes — they concluded that among various risks, the most serious and significant is fire:…..

Current bushfire danger areas include much of New South Wales, including the Lucas Heights area, North and coastal East Victoria and in South Australia the lower Eyre and Yorke Peninsulas. If nuclear wastes were to be transported across the continent, whether by land or by sea, from the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney to Kimba in South Australia, they’d be travelling through much of these areas. Today, they’d be confronting very long duration, fully engulfing fires.

Do we know what route the nuclear wastes would be taking to Kimba, which is now presumed to be the Government’s choice for the waste dump? Does the Department of Industry Innovation and Science know? Does the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) know? Well, they might, but they’re not going to tell us.

We can depend on ANSTO’s consistent line on this :

‘In line with standard operational and security requirements, ANSTO will not comment on the port, routes or timing until after the transport is complete.’

That line is understandable of course, due to security considerations, including the danger of terrorism.

Spent nuclear fuel rods have been transported several times, from Lucas Heights to ports – mainly Port Kembla – in great secrecy and security. The reprocessed wastes are later returned from France or the UK with similar caution. Those secret late-night operations are worrying enough, but their risks seem almost insignificant when compared with the marathon journey envisaged in what is increasingly looking like a crackpot ANSTO scheme for the proposed distant Kimba interim nuclear dump. It is accepted that these temporary dumps are best located as near as practical to the point of production, as in the case of USA’s sites.

Australians, beset by the horror of extreme bushfires, can still perhaps count themselves as lucky in that, compared with wildfire regions in some countries, they do not yet have the compounding horror of radioactive contamination spread along with the ashes and smoke.

Fires in Russia have threatened its secret nuclear areas……

Many in America have long been aware of the transport danger:

The state of Nevada released a report in 2003 concluding that a steel-lead-steel cask would have failed after about six hours in the fire and a solid steel cask would have failed after about 11 to 12.5 hours. There would have been contamination over 32 square miles of the city and the contamination would have killed up to 28,000 people over 50 years.

The State of Wyoming is resisting hosting a nuclear waste dump, largely because of transportation risks as well as economic risks. In the UK, Somerset County Council rejects plans for transport of wastes through Somerset.

In the years 2016–2019, proposals for nuclear waste dumping in South Australia have been discussed by government and media as solely a South Australian concern. The present discussion about Kimba is being portrayed as just a Kimba community concern.

Yet, when the same kind of proposal was put forward in previous years, it was recognised as an issue for other states, too.

Most reporting on Australia’s bushfires has been excellent, with the exception of Murdoch media trying to downplay their seriousness. However, there has been no mention of the proximity of bushfires to Lucas Heights. As happened with the fires in 2018, this seems to be a taboo subject in the Australian media.

While it has never been a good idea to trek the Lucas Heights nuclear waste for thousands of kilometres across the continent – or halfway around it by sea – Australia’s new climate crisis has made it that much more dangerous. Is the bushfire apocalypse just a one-off? Or, more likely, is this nationwide danger the new normal? https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/transporting-nuclear-wastes-across-australia-in-the-age-of-bushfires,13465

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, climate change, wastes | Leave a comment

Trump’s unpredictability on Iran adds to weapons proliferation dangers

Trump’s unpredictability is making nuclear-nonproliferation advocates nervous as the US takes an aggressive posture against Iran, Business Insider, DAVE MOSHER, JAN 8, 2020, 

  • Tensions between Iran and the US have escalated dramatically in recent weeks, most notably with President Donald Trump ordering the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
  • Trump has vowed potentially disproportionate attacks against Iran if the country retaliates against Americans.
  • Nuclear-weapons experts aren’t immediately concerned about a “tactical” (or limited) nuclear strike against Iranian targets, but they said Trump as president made it a much likelier possibility.
  • If the US or its allies used even one nuclear weapon in combat, it would end a 75-year streak of nonuse, with global and lasting consequences.
  • “It’s possible people around the world will get together to ban these things. But I think the reality is that we’d see nuclear weapons used not on a frequent basis, but on a more regular basis,” one researcher said…… https://www.businessinsider.com.au/trump-iran-attack-tactical-nuclear-weapons-war-consequences-2020-1?r=US&IR=T

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK Leading Labour leadership candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey would use nuclear weapons

Corbyn loyalist Long-Bailey says she would use nuclear weapons as PM, Yahoo News , James Morris, Senior news reporter, Yahoo News UK

8 January 2020 Leading Labour leadership candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey has said she would be prepared to use nuclear weapons as prime minister.It is a marked contrast to the policy of outgoing leader Jeremy Corbyn, a passionate and long-standing advocate of nuclear disarmament.

Ms Long-Bailey, a staunch defender of Mr Corbyn’s failed leadership of the party, has previously been accused of being his “continuity candidate”.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether she would be prepared to launch a nuclear strike, Ms Long-Bailey said: “If you have a deterrent you have to be prepared to use it.”…. https://au.news.yahoo.com/rebecca-long-bailey-labour-leadership-nuclear-weapons-134918253.html

 

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, UK | Leave a comment

The idea of a “Nuclear Second Strike”: NOT morally justifiable , NOT ‘acceptable.’

The Dubious Moral Justification for a Nuclear Second Strike https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/01/08/dubious-moral-justification-nuclear-second-strike

The aim of presenting the case for the continued possession of these terrifying weapons that hold the potential to destroy all life on earth this way seems to be to convince citizens that nuclear weapons are morally justifiable and thus somehow ‘acceptable.’

by  Gerard Boyce   8 Jan 2029

Poised as the nuclear powers appear to be to resume the nuclear arms race, leaders of these countries have been at pains to assure their countrymen and the rest of the world that, though determined to maintain and even expand their nuclear arsenals, they will only use them for the purposes of a second strike i.e. in retaliation to a nuclear first strike by a nuclear-armed belligerent. Their pledges are meant to reassure us that nuclear weapons are for defensive rather than offensive purposes. The aim of presenting the case for the continued possession of these terrifying weapons that hold the potential to destroy all life on earth this way seems to be to convince citizens that nuclear weapons are morally justifiable and thus somehow ‘acceptable’. For a number of reasons, however, a second strike may not be as morally defensible as leaders would have us believe.

Firstly, consider that, given the short reaction time needed to retaliate to a first strike, leaders would have to bypass normal administrative and civic oversight processes, the very mechanisms designed to curb politicians’ excesses and keep their more base instincts in check, to launch a second strike. As such, a second strike can only be launched in anger or, more aptly, rage. Arguably, they would be more volatile in this state than even when contemplating the launch of a nuclear first strike; where some calculus, however sinister, is required on the part of those whose finger is on their country’s nuclear button.

Secondly, consider the argument that reserving the right to launch a second strike is necessary to maintain the peace as it acts as a deterrent. For the threat of a nuclear second strike to serve as a credible deterrent, it has to be disproportionate. The threatened response will have to be massive to the point of being genocidal whether subject to a barrage of one, two or more missile attacks in an initial strike. By its very nature, this implies that there is limited strategic or tactical value (in military terms) in the use of nuclear weapons during a second strike. Their main (sole?) value lies in the capacity to sow terror in the hearts and minds of the nation’s enemies by invoking the spectre of annihilation. Leaders’ proclamations of their willingness to launch a second strike thus amounts to a taunt; a goading of their adversaries along the lines of, “Go ahead, try me if you dare and see how terrible the consequences will be.”

The message that one’s nation will be satisfied with nothing less than an attack which results in the total destruction of their enemies signals that restoring any semblance of ‘normalcy’ or détente between adversaries will not be possible after a nuclear exchange. In so doing, it forecloses the possibility of reconciliation or the restoration of relations between survivors in warring nations and ensures their eternal enmity. This thought is cause for despair considering that the scattered survivors left in the broken nations that were involved in a nuclear confrontation would have to rely on each other more than ever given the catastrophic global consequences of even a minor nuclear exchange between nuclear powers.

Lastly, lest we forget, for all the efforts which politicians put into drawing a distinction between a nuclear first and second strike, nuclear weapons are still nuclear weapons and retain the characteristics of nuclear weapons whether used in a first or second strike. A crucial characteristic of nuclear weapons is that they are indiscriminate and do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. It follows that the louder one declares one’s willingness to carry out disproportionate and less-targeted strikes that are of limited strategic or tactical military value, the fewer qualms one has about the taking of civilian lives.

Based on the reasons outlined above, a nuclear second strike can only be described as an act of vengeance. Thus, when leaders proudly put forward the position that their nation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons only as a second strike, they effectively proclaim that they represent a vengeful and wrathful people. Is this the societal value that citizens of nuclear-armed countries would like leaders to embrace in their behalf? Is this the sort of sentiment that the rank-and-file citizen in a nuclear-armed country would like to echo across the ages to their grandchildren and grandchildren’s children? If not, and if leaders’ disavowal of launching a nuclear first strike is as sincere as they would have us believe, for what reason should any nation continue to possess nuclear weapons?

If the reason seems unclear, then it may be worthwhile for the average citizen of goodwill in a nuclear-armed country to resolve this new year to urge their leaders to renew their commitments to arms control and ultimately, the elimination of these genocidal weapons. And should the approval of one’s descendants or the appeal to advance our shared universal values not be sufficient to persuade them to resolve to do so, bear in mind that the continued existence of a nation’s nuclear arsenal means that its citizens must continue to entrust their protection and wellbeing to leaders who, as part of their job requirement, must be both quick to anger and harbour homicidal tendencies. One leaves it to the reader to decide if this is the sort of leader the individual citizen or their compatriots deserve at a time when democracy and hard-won freedoms seem to be on the retreat domestically the world over and assassination and targeted killing appear to have become an integral tool of foreign policy.

Gerard Boyce is an Economist and Senior Lecturer in the School of Built Environment and Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Howard College) in Durban, South Africa. He writes in his personal capacity and can be reached at gdboyce@yahoo.com. 

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, Religion and ethics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

New Zealand veterans await nuclear radiation genetic testing study

New Zealand veterans await nuclear radiation genetic testing study, https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/406922/new-zealand-veterans-await-nuclear-radiation-genetic-testing-study 8 Jan 2029Veterans deployed to the Mururoa Atoll will wait another two months to find out whether their children and grandchildren may be genetically impacted by nuclear radiation.

A Mururoa Nuclear Veterans Group teamed up with Otago University last year to produce a study about whether the families of veterans deployed to Mururoa Atoll in 1973, may have been affected by their parents’ exposure to radiation.

University of Otago researcher David McBride is leading the study and said “the public need to know” what veterans had been facing and he hoped this study could help them in their quest for more support for their families.

About 145 people participated in the study which took six weeks. It is now being peer reviewed for the New Zealand Medical Journal.

“When and if our study is peer reviewed favourably then published, I’m hoping that’s not going to take too long,” he said.

He said he suspected the veterans group would have to wait until March or April at the latest.

“One of the most out-of-the-ordinary things you can have is exposure to nuclear radiation,” he said.

“It certainly was a traumatising experience and they are right inthe fact that they may have passed defect onto their children and grandchildren.”

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, New Zealand, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Australia Will Lose to Climate Change

Australia Will Lose to Climate Change https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/01/australia-caught-climate-spiral/604423/  Even as the country fights bushfires, it can’t stop dumping planet-warming pollution into the atmosphere.

ROBINSON MEYER, JANUARY 4, 2020  .Australia is caught in a climate spiral. For the past few decades, the arid and affluent country of 25 million has padded out its economy—otherwise dominated by sandy beaches and a bustling service sector—by selling coal to the world. As the East Asian economies have grown, Australia has been all too happy to keep their lights on. Exporting food, fiber, and minerals to Asia has helped Australia achieve three decades of nearly relentless growth: Oz has not had a technical recession, defined as two successive quarters of economic contraction, since July 1991.

But now Australia is buckling under the conditions that its fossil fuels have helped bring about. Perhaps the two biggest kinds of climate calamity happening today have begun to afflict the continent.

The first kind of disaster is, of course, the wildfire crisis. In the past three months, bushfires in Australia’s southeast have burned millions of acres, poisoned the air in Sydney and Melbourne, and forced 4,000 tourists and residents in a small beach town, Mallacoota, to congregate on the beach and get evacuated by the navy. A salvo of fires seems to have caught the world’s attention in recent years. But the current Australian season has outdone them all: Over the past six months, Australian fires have burned more than twice the area than was consumed, combined, by California’s 2018 fires and the Amazon’s 2019 fires.

The second is the irreversible scouring of the Earth’s most distinctive ecosystems. In Australia, this phenomenon has come for the country’s natural wonder, the Great Barrier Reef. From 2016 to 2018, half of all coral in the reef died, killed by oceanic heat waves that bleached and then essentially starved the symbiotic animals. Because tropical coral reefs take about a decade to recover from such a die-off, and because the relentless pace of climate change means that more heat waves are virtually guaranteed in the 2020s, the reef’s only hope of long-term survival is for humans to virtually halt global warming in the next several decades and then begin to reverse it.

Meeting such a goal will require a revolution in the global energy system—and, above all, a rapid abandonment of coal burning. But there’s the rub. Australia is the world’s second-largest exporter of coal power, and it has avoided recession for the past 27 years in part by selling coal.

Though polls report that most Australians are concerned about climate change, the country’s government has so far been unable to pass pretty much any climate policy. In fact, one of its recent political crises—the ousting of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in the summer of 2018—was prompted by Turnbull’s attempt to pass an energy bill that included climate policy. Its current prime minister, Scott Morrison, actually brought a lump of coal to the floor of Parliament several years ago while defending the industry. He won an election last year by depicting climate change as the exclusive concern of educated city-dwellers, and climate policy as a threat to Australians’ cars and trucks. He has so far attempted to portray the wildfires as a crisis, sure, but one in line with previous natural disasters.

In fact, it is unprecedented. This season’s fires have incinerated more than 1,500 homes and have killed at least 23 people, Prime Minister Morrison said on Saturday.* There were at least twice as many fires in New South Wales in 2019 as there were in any other year this century, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Climate change likely intensified the ongoing epidemic: Hotter and drier weather makes wildfires more common, and climate change is increasing the likelihood of both in Australia. Last year was both the hottest and driest year on record in the country.

Perhaps more than any other wealthy nation on Earth, Australia is at risk from the dangers of climate change. It has spent most of the 21st century in a historic drought. Its tropical oceans are more endangered than any other biome by climate change. Its people are clustered along the temperate and tropical coasts, where rising seas threaten major cities. Those same bands of livable land are the places either now burning or at heightened risk of bushfire in the future. Faced with such geographical challenges, Australia’s people might rally to reverse these dangers. Instead, they have elected leaders with other priorities.

Australia will continue to burn, and its coral will continue to die. Perhaps this episode will prompt the more pro-carbon members of Australia’s Parliament to accede to some climate policy. Or perhaps Prime Minister Morrison will distract from any link between the disaster and climate change, as President Donald Trump did when he inexplicably blamed California’s 2018 blazes on the state’s failure to rake forest floors. Perhaps blazes will push Australia’s politics in an even more besieged and retrograde direction,   empowering politicians like Morrison to fight any change at all. And so maybe Australia will find itself stuck in the climate spiral, clinging ever more tightly to coal as its towns and cities choke on the ash of a burning world.

 

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, climate change | Leave a comment

Fact check: Amy Klobuchar falsely claims Iran is ‘announcing’ it will develop a nuclear weapon   https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/07/politics/fact-check-klobuchar-iran-nuclear-weapon/

By Daniel Dale January 7, 2020 Washington (CNN)  Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar made a significant false claim about Iran in a Monday appearance on “CNN Tonight with Don Lemon.”
While criticizing President Donald Trump’s decision to order the killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, Klobuchar said of Iran: “They are now announcing that they’re going to start developing a nuclear weapon and move toward busting through the cap on uranium enrichment.”
Facts First: Iran continues to say that it has no plans to create a nuclear weapon. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told NPR in an interview published Tuesday: “Iran does not want a nuclear bomb, does not believe that nuclear bombs create security for anybody. And we believe it’s time for everybody to disarm rather than to arm.” Iran has consistently claimed that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
After we notified Klobuchar’s campaign that we planned to call her claim about “a nuclear weapon” false, the campaign implicitly acknowledged that she had been inaccurate.
“She meant that Iran announced that it was going to bust through the uranium enrichment caps, which were in place to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. This is the better way to say it and how she has said it in the past,” said national press secretary Carlie Waibel. Waibel passed along examples of Klobuchar speaking accurately about Iran and enrichment caps without making the inaccurate claim about “a nuclear weapon.”
The second part of Klobuchar’s statement, about Iran announcing that it will breach “the cap on nuclear enrichment,” was indeed correct. The Iranian government said Sunday that it will no longer honor any of the limits on uranium enrichment that were imposed by its 2015 nuclear agreement with the United States and other countries.
(Iran began announcing it would exceed the limits in the agreement after Trump announced in 2018 that he was withdrawing the US from the agreement.)
But Iran announcing it will abandon enrichment caps is far from the same thing as Iran announcing it will pursue a nuclear weapon. Uranium can be enriched for peaceful purposes, like to fuel reactors in power plants. Zarif said this week that Iran will continue its co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which conducts inspections of its nuclear activities.
“Iran has set aside the limitations on its nuclear program, because the US withdrawal has turned the (nuclear agreement) into an empty shell. But it’s not dashing toward a nuclear weapon and its program is still under the most rigorous inspection regime anywhere in the world,” said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental organization that works to prevent conflicts.
Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also said Klobuchar’s claim was incorrect. “Iran announced the resumption of some of its nuclear activities but not the pursuit of a nuclear weapon,” he said.
Before Trump announced the US withdrawal from the agreement, the International Atomic Energy Agency had repeatedly certified that Iran was complying with its obligations. Iran’s latest move, which it described Sunday as its fifth and final step in reducing its commitments to the agreement, was to abandon limits on the “number of centrifuges.”

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | election USA 2020 | Leave a comment

January 8 Energy News — geoharvey

Opinion: ¶ “David Suzuki: A 2020 Vision For Climate Action” • Let’s hope 2020 marks the start of a year and decade when we finally take climate disruption as seriously as the evidence shows we must. We understand the problem and know how to deal with it. Many solutions exist and more are being developed, […]

via January 8 Energy News — geoharvey

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

IPPNW statement on Suleimani killing — IPPNW peace and health blog

The killing of Gen. Suleimani in a drone strike authorized by the US President was not only a violation of international law and of long-standing US policy prohibiting assassinations of foreign officials, it has also further inflamed an already volatile region.

via IPPNW statement on Suleimani killing — IPPNW peace and health blog

January 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

   

1 This Month.

5 January -Webinar-What is Trump’s Golden Dome?

REGISTER AT Massachusetts Peace Action Education

New book – https://www.amazon.com/dp/1923372157?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?

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