hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 352

Scientists beg for climate action

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science WriterWed Dec 5, 6:47 PM ET

For the first time, more than 200 of the world's leading climate scientists, losing their patience, urged government leaders to take radical action to slow global warming because "there is no time to lose."

A petition from at least 215 climate scientists calls for the world to cut in half greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It is directed at a conference of diplomats meeting in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate the next global warming treaty. The petition, obtained by The Associated Press, is to be announced at a press conference there Wednesday night.

The appeal from scientists follows a petition last week from more than 150 global business leaders also demanding the 50 percent cut in greenhouse gases. That is the estimate that scientists calculate would hold future global warming to a little more than a 3-degree Fahrenheit increase and is in line with what the European Union has adopted.

In the past, many of these scientists have avoided calls for action, leaving that to environmental advocacy groups. That dispassionate stance was taken during the release this year of four separate reports by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But no more.

"It's a grave crisis, and we need to do something real fast," said petition signer Jeff Severinghaus, a geosciences professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. "I think the stakes are way way too high to be playing around."

The unprecedented petition includes scientists from more than 25 countries and shows that "the climate science community is essentially fed up," said signer Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in Canada. It includes many co-authors of the intergovernmental climate change panel reports, directors of major American and European climate science research institutions, a Nobel winner for atmospheric chemistry and a winner of a MacArthur "genius" award.

"A lot of us scientists think the problem needs a lot more serious attention than it's getting and the remedies have to be a lot more radical," said Richard Seager, a scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The organizers of the petition — two Australians, two Germans and an American — would not comment about their efforts before their 11 p.m. EST press conference. But several scientists who signed on talked of losing patience.

"Action needs to be taken and needs to be taken now," said Marika Holland, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who signed on. "The longer we wait, the worse it's going to become."

Negotiators in Bali are working on the initial groundwork for a treaty that would take effect after 2012, the expiration date of the Kyoto Protocol, a climate treat the United States didn't sign. However, no on expects concrete results at the closed-door sessions.

NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, who signed the petition, said "the time for half-measures and the time for voluntary agreements and the time for arguing about 1 percent here and 1 percent there — those things are no longer relevant."

Schmidt noted while scientists have been dismissed by some as unrealistic, the call for a 50 percent emissions cut by business leaders "helps give credence to the idea that it's achievable."

Policy analysts, who weren't part of either petition, split on how meaningful the two petitions are.

What's happening is people are agreeing "that the cost of inaction is on the high side and the cost of action is affordable," said Joseph Romm, a policy analyst at the liberal think-tank Center for American Progress, energy business consultant and trained physicist.

But Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute said "scientists are in no position to intelligently guide public policy on climate change." Scientists can lay out scenarios, but it is up to economists to weigh the costs and benefits and many of them say the costs of cutting emissions are higher than the benefits, he said.

Granger Morgan, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, said he sees "a growing realization among a wide variety of players that we've got to stop talking about this and start some action." But, he added, "I'm not going to hold my breath that we're going to get anything."

Cholera crisis hits Baghdad

Iraqi capital fears an epidemic if stricken sewerage system collapses as the rainy season arrives

David Smith
Sunday December 2, 2007

Baghdad is facing a 'catastrophe' with cases of cholera rising sharply in the past three weeks to more than 100, strengthening fears that poor sanitation and the imminent rainy season could create an epidemic.

The disease - spread by bacteria in contaminated water, which can result in rapid dehydration and death - threatens to blunt growing optimism in the Iraqi capital after a recent downturn in violence. Two boys in an orphanage have died and six other children were diagnosed with the disease, according to the Iraqi government. 'We have a catastrophe in Baghdad,' an official said.

The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) said 101 cases had been recorded in the city, making up 79 per cent of all new cases in Iraq. It added that no single source for the upsurge had been identified, but the main Shia enclave of Sadr City was among the areas hardest hit.

As Iraq's rainy season nears, its ageing water pipes and sewerage systems, many damaged or destroyed by more than four years of war, pose a new threat to a population weary of crisis. Claire Hajaj, a spokeswoman for Unicef, said: 'Iraq's water and sanitation networks are in a critical condition. Pollution of waterways by raw sewage is perhaps the greatest environmental and public health hazard facing Iraqis - particularly children. Waterborne diarrhoea diseases kill and sicken more Iraqi children than anything except pneumonia. We estimate that only one in three Iraqi children can rely on a safe water source - with Baghdad and southern cities most affected.'

Although US forces in Baghdad have found that security is improving, on daily patrols they face complaints from residents about streets plagued by piles of household waste and fetid cesspools, often near schools and where children are playing. Captain Richard Dos Santos, attached to the 3rd squadron of the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, said that in the al-Hadar area of south Baghdad sewage pumps were only 30 to 40 per cent operational. 'There is sewage near schools and there is an increased threat of cholera and flu in winter when resistance is low,' he said.

The UN has reported 22 deaths from cholera this year, and 4,569 laboratory-confirmed cases, almost exclusively in northern Iraq where it was first detected in Kirkuk in August. It has now spread to half of the country's 18 provinces, but anxiety is focused on Baghdad.

Unicef said it was providing oral rehydration salts and water purification tablets for families - it distributed three million to the worst hit areas two weeks ago - as well as jerrycans at water distribution points. It is transporting 180,000 litres (47,552 gallons) of safe water per day to Baghdad's worst hit districts.

Unicef issued an urgent appeal to the Iraqi government to clean water storage tanks in all institutions as one preventive measure. Hajaj said: 'Only 20 per cent of families outside Baghdad have access to sewage services, and Iraq's sewage treatment plants operate at just 17 per cent of capacity.'

Cholera is preventable by treating drinking water with chlorine and improving hygiene, but it is estimated that around 70 per cent of Iraqis do not have access to clean water. Many have been too poor or too afraid to go out to buy bottled water, relying instead on tap water, often from polluted sources. Companies responsible for collecting waste and sewage have been reluctant to enter Baghdad's most violent areas.

The government has been trying to educate Iraqis through advertisements on TV and in newspapers and with leaflets handed out at checkpoints. But it admits that six hospitals have unsafe water supplies.


BLOODREDWATER USA
Even as she accepted the resignation of State's security chief Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice quietly promoted two senior staffers who directly oversaw controversial Blackwater security operations, sources tell ABC News.

Justine Sincavage has been serving as director of the Overseas Protection Operation (OPO), which has direct responsibility for all State Department security contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan. That includes overseeing Blackwater, which has won more than $1 billion in security work from the State Department.

According to internal State Department documents, Sincavage was promoted Tuesday. Sincavage's predecessor as OPO director, Kevin Barry, was also promoted, the documents show.