Tuesday, April 15, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Uncle Sam Taking a Bigger Tax Bite Out of the 1% – NBC
By Robert Frank
First published April 14 2014

For most Americans, the tax increases passed in January 2013 look like ancient history. But for the wealthy, the bill for those changes is now coming due.

The euphemistically named American Taxpayer Relief Act brought the top tax rate to 39.6 percent from 26 percent in 2012. (Whether you call this "reverting" or "raising" depends on your partisan bent). The change also phased out certain personal exemptions and it limited itemized deductions.

Taken all together, the "tax relief" for most Americans will hit the top earners when they pay their tax bills this month.

Pretty sure he'll be paying more. The wealthiest Americans, such as billionaire investor Warren Buffett, will be paying bigger tax bills.

The top 1 percent of earners will pay an average tax bill of $525,231, up more than $36,000 from last year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. It will surge to $670,000 for 2014 taxes.

The top 0.1 percent will see even bigger tax bills. That group will have an average tax burden of $2.6 million for 2013 taxes, up from $2.3 million in 2012.
The incomes of the top 1 percent are also going up, of course. The average income of the top 1 percent is expected to rise from $1.67 million in 2013 to just over $2 million in 2014.

But the average tax rate that top earners actually pay is also going up. The average tax rate for the top 1 percent will go from 27.2 percent for 2012 taxes to 31.4 percent for 2013 taxes, and 33.4 percent for 2014 taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center.

The top 5 percent of taxpayers now paid an estimated 27 percent of federal taxes in 2012 and their share will rise to 29.8 percent next year.



American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (Pub.L. 112–240, H.R. 8, 126 Stat. 2313, enacted January 2, 2013) was passed by the United States Congress on January 1, 2013, and was signed into law by President Barack Obama the next day.
The Act centers on a partial resolution to the United States fiscal cliff by addressing the expiration of certain provisions of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (known together as the "Bush tax cuts"), which had been temporarily extended by the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. The Act also addressed the activation of the budget sequestration provisions of the Budget Control Act of 2011.

A compromise measure, the Act gives permanence to the lower rate of much of the Bush tax cuts, while retaining the higher tax rate at upper income levels that became effective on January 1 as a result of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. The Act also establishes caps on tax deductions and credits for those at upper income levels. It does not tackle federal spending levels to a great extent, rather leaving that for further negotiations and legislation. The American Taxpayer Relief Act passed by a wide majority in the Senate, with both Democrats and Republicans supporting it, while a majority of Republicans in the House opposed it.




The American Taxpayer Relief Act is taking effect. It raises the top tax rate from 26% to 39.6%; it also eliminates “certain” personal exemptions and reduces itemized deductions. A substantially increased number of top earners will come under this law. According to the Tax Policy Center, the top 1% will pay an average of $525,231 for 2013 and $670,000 for 2014. This is an increase of $36,000 from 2012. On the top The top .1% and the top 1% will be at an average $2.6 million and $1.67 million in 2013, respectively. “The average tax rate for the top 1 percent will go from 27.2 percent for 2012 taxes to 31.4 percent for 2013 taxes, and 33.4 percent for 2014 taxes,” with the top 5% of taxpayers going from 27% in 2012 to 29.8% in 2014.

The current income gap between the rich and the poor is summarized below. See website http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/11/nation/la-na-nn-income-inequality-20130910 for the following quotation.

“If you feel you're falling behind in the income race, it's not just your imagination. The wealth gap between the top 1% and the bottom 99% in the U.S. is as wide as it's been in nearly 100 years, a new study finds.

For starters, between 1993 and 2012, the real incomes of the 1% grew 86.1%, while those of the 99% grew 6.6%, according to the study, based on Internal Revenue Service statistics examined by economists at UC Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University.”




200 Girls Abducted From Nigeria School: Reports
-Marian Smith
First published April 15 2014

Gunmen abducted at least 200 girls from their school in northeastern Nigeria late Monday, according to reports.

Parents of girls at the Government Girls’ Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, reportedly said the attackers ordered the teens onto four trucks, the BBC’s Hausa service said.

Hundreds of residents fled after the attackers set fire to nearby houses and a local government building, Nigeria’s Daily Post newspaper reported. A police officer and a soldier were killed in the melee, the Post said.

Police confirmed the attack on the school building but could not confirm the abductions, according to the BBC.

NBC News could not immediately verify the reports.
The attackers were believed to be members of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which was blamed for a bus station bombing that killed 71 people on Monday in Nigeria's capital Abuja.

The Islamist group has recently focused its aggression on the northeastern part of the country, with no attacks in the centrally located capital for two years until Monday's deadly blast.

Boko Haram means "Western education is sinful" in the Hausa language of northern Nigeria. The group is loosely modeled after the Taliban and has connections with al-Qaeda-linked militants in North Africa.




Boko Haram means "Western education is sinful" and is linked to al-Qaeda militants in North Africa. Hopefully this story will be followed up with more information about what has happened to the girls. Surely even an al-Qaeda linked group won't kill or rape them. They may not find it as easy to handle 200 teen aged girls as they thought. How will they house and feed them?

The following article on Boko Haram shows that they very well may kill the 200 girls if they follow in their past patterns. It also mentions some shockingly ignorant views stemming from their brand of Islamic thinking. They, like extremely conservative Christian groups, disavow modern science.

As a result of that as well as the religious indoctrination, I would never send a child of mine to a religious school. These Islamists, like Evangelical Christians, believe that their source book – the Koran or the Bible – is the completely correct and inspired word of God, and therefore if it differs from the science taught in modern schools, that science will be discarded. I have heard that education in some Islamic schools consists of memorizing large portions of the Koran.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4232/boko-haram-nigeria
by Femi Owolade
March 27, 2014

The Western influence of British colonialists caused a division among the people of Northern Nigeria, who were once united by Islam. This division saw, on one side, the so-called "civilized" -- by Western standards -- elite who were used by the British as agents of colonization; and on the other side, the commoners, who vehemently resisted Western influence in the region.

Dissatisfaction with Western influence also led to an emergence of Islamist fundamentalists among people of the Northeastern region of Nigeria.

The reason Mohammed Yusuf founded Boko Haram appears to be that he saw an opportunity to exploit public outrage at government corruption by linking it to Western influence in governance.

What developments might have triggered the emergence of violent Islamist group Boko Haram during the last decade in Nigeria? According to Umar Mamodu[1] -- a scholar and key Boko Haram historian -- its inception in 2002 resulted from a clash between the moderate Islamic teachings of the prominent Sheikh Jafaar Adam at the Mahammadu Ndimi Mosque in Maiduguri-Borno State in the Northeastern part of Nigeria, and the more militant interpretation of the Qur'an by his disciple, Mohammed Yusuf.[2]

According to Mamodu[3], Yusuf believed in the creation of a new order in which the wretched should inherit the earth, and for his extremist views, was expelled in 2002 from the Ndimi Mosque Committee.[4] Later that year Yusuf built a mosque in the northeast Nigeria to serve as a magnet for primary and secondary school pupils who, in response to his teachings, would abandon Westernized schools in the belief that Western education [Boko] is a sin [Haram]; hence the name Boko Haram.[5]

Ideologically, Boko Haram opposes not only Western education but also Western culture and science -- a position Mohammed Yusuf revealed in an interview conducted by the BBC, when he stated that the belief that the earth is spherical in shape is a sharp contradiction to Islamic thought and therefore should be rejected along with Darwinism and the theory that rain comes from water evaporated by the sun.[9] Ironically, Nigerian academic Hussain Zakaria told BBC News that Yusuf "is graduate educated and very proficient in English".[10]

Violence linked to Boko Haram's activities is reported to have resulted in an estimated 10,000 deaths between 2001 and 2013.[11] Since 2012 alone, according to an Amnesty International report that details Boko Haram's activities in Nigeria, "at least 70 teachers and over 100 schoolchildren and students have been killed or wounded. At least 50 schools have either been burned or seriously damaged and more than 60 others have been forced to close. Thousands of children have been forced out of schools across communities in Yobe, Kaduna, Adamawa and Borno states."[12]




Russia's Lavrov Welcomes 'Step in the Right Direction' by Kiev – NBC
First published April 15 2014
Reuters

MOSCOW - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he welcomed signs that Ukraine's government in Kiev was ready for dialogue with separatists on Tuesday, calling it "a step in the right direction," the Interfax news agency reported.

Speaking during a visit to Beijing, Lavrov said Kiev's apparent willingness to "resolve through negotiations all the problems relating to the legal demands of the inhabitants of the southeast regions of Ukraine, is certainly a step in the right direction, albeit very belated."

Lavrov's statement followed Monday's telephone conversation between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which Obama criticized Russia and said Moscow's actions in Ukraine were not conducive to a diplomatic solution.

The Kremlin said it had requested the call. The White House said the call was frank and direct.

"President Putin called on Barack Obama to do his utmost to use the opportunities that the United States has to prevent the use of force, and bloodshed," the Kremlin said in a statement. The White House said Obama urged Russia to use its influence to get separatists in the country to stand down.




Both sides are maintaining that the other side is wrong. Russia congratulates Kiev on becoming willing to negotiate with the pro-Russian dissidents. Obama “urged Russia to use its influence to get separatists in the country to stand down.” It's more of the same, to me. I will wait for more news from the Ukrainians. The following information is from the UK on website http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10767005/Ukraine-launches-anti-terrorist-operation-in-the-east.html.

Ukraine launches 'anti-terrorist operation' in the east
Ukrainian forces set up checkpoints as acting president announces operation to root out 'separatists' in pro-Russian east
By Roland Oliphant, Izyum, Ukraine
11:51AM BST 15 Apr 2014

Ukraine has begun what it calls an "anti-terrorist operation" to root out pro-Russian "separatists" in the east of the country, The Telegraph can confirm.
Up to 12 armoured personnel carriers flying Ukrainian flags were guarding the road at a check point around a mile south of the city of Izyum.

It is thought to be the first evidence of a Ukrainian military operation to re-assert authority in the east of the country.

Locals told The Telegraph that the troops had arrived at around midnight on Monday. The operation included members of the Ukrainian army, police and the interior ministry.

There were no signs there had been any fighting. The troops were checking all vehicles travelling south.

Earlier on Tuesday, Ukraine's acting president, Oleksandr Turchnyov, accused Moscow of having "brutal plans" that extended far beyond Donetsk, where militants have proclaimed a breakaway republic and seized government buildings.

"They want to set fire not only to the Donetsk region but to the entire south and east - from Kharkiv to the Odessa region," he told parliament.

But he sounded a note of caution as he announced the launch of a "full-scale" military operation against the separatists, insisting it must proceed "gradually, responsibly and in a measured way".

Mr Turchnyov insisted that that Donbass - the informal name of the Donetsk region - had a vast majority that was happy to be rid of the old leaders and become part of a broader Europe.

"The Donbass is in colossal danger," he said.
"Besides the Russian special special forces, besides terrorists, Donbass also has hundreds of people who have been deceived by Russian propaganda," he argued.
"And besides them are hundreds of thousands of completely innocent Ukrainians. That is why an anti-terrorist operation must be carried out responsibly."

Mr Turchynov's impassioned charges against Ukraine's historic master came only hours after a "frank and direct" exchange on the crisis between US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.




“12 armoured personnel carriers flying Ukrainian flags” have been seen outside the city of Izyum accompanied by members of the Army, the police and the Interior Ministry checking all southbound traffic.

Meanwhile Turchnyov announced today that his military operations against the separatists must be carried out "gradually, responsibly and in a measured way," insisting that Donetsk had “a vast majority that was happy to be rid of the old leaders and become part of a broader Europe.” He blames Russian special forces and terrorists for the uprising, plus “hundreds of people who have been deceived by Russian propaganda,” and hundreds of thousands of “innocent Ukrainians.” So the fact that there is little visual evidence of his military activities doesn't mean that Turchnyov is doing nothing or backing down from his pledge.




Sucking Carbon From Sky May Be Necessary to Cool Planet, UN Says – NBC
By John Roach
First published April 14 2014

International efforts to combat global warming are so broken that it's come to this: hoovering massive amounts of carbon dioxide out of the sky.

A body of scientists convened under the auspices of the United Nations is giving more weight to the idea that vacuuming vast stores of CO2 from the skies and burying it in the ground may be necessary to limit the temperature rise to the internationally agreed safe level of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels. The plan's not quite like a giant thermostat for the whole globe, but the metaphor's not completely off either.

While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has touched on so-called geoengineering approaches in the past, the increased discussion of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere reflects a sense in academic climate policy circles that "it is more okay" to do so, said David Keith, a climate scientist and expert on geoengineering at Harvard University in Massachusetts.

Keith has participated in previous reports released by the climate science body, but dropped out of the process about a year ago. In a report released Sunday, the group said the world must swiftly enact a suite of economic and behavioral changes that cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 70 percent by the middle of this century and to near zero by its end to avoid a dangerous temperature rise.

"What comes out very clearly in this report is the fact that the high-speed mitigation train would need to leave the station soon and all of global society would have to get on board," Rajenda Pachuari, chairman of the panel, said Sunday during a press briefing when the report was released.

"What comes out very clearly in this report is the fact that the high-speed mitigation train would need to leave the station soon and all of global society would have to get on board."

The report is the last of three from the climate science panel. The first, released in September 2013, found with 95 percent certainty that human activity is the primary driver of global climate change. The second, released in March, noted that climate changes are already reverberating around the world and are likely to accelerate in the decades to come.

The latest report essentially explores scenarios on how to prevent a climate catastrophe, many of which co-chair Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist, noted in the press briefing "strongly depend on the ability to remove large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere."

Shift to carbon sucking technology
The report's discussion of technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere comes as the climate science body's earlier assumptions about how easily the world would gravitate to technologies with lower emissions have been proven wrong, according toSteve Rayner , the co-director of the Oxford Geoengineering Program at the University of Oxford in England.

"They seem to have abandoned such assumptions, only to substitute the assumption that carbon dioxide removal from the ambient air will do much the same job," he told NBC News in an email. "There has been no comprehensive assessment of the feasibility of taking such technologies to scale in terms of costs, skills and materials requirements, or incentives, regulation and financing."

Indeed, the panel noted in its summary that "the availability and scale of these … technologies and methods are uncertain and to varying degrees, associated with challenges and risks."

The term geoengineering encompasses a broad range of technologies that bring about a cooling of the planet. Some focus on blocking sunlight through means such as filling the skies with sulfate particles to mimic the cooling effect of a massive volcanic eruption. Others focus on ways to capture carbon dioxide from power plant smokestacks or the air and store it underground.

The climate change panel has focused its discussion on the carbon capture and storage approach, in particular one associated with burning wood chips or other crops grown for energy. Edenhofer, co-chair of the climate mitigation report, co-authored a May 2013 paper in the journal Climatic Change on the benefits of the technology, known as bioenergy carbon capture and storage.

The approach's promise stems from the use of plants, which absorb carbon via photosynthesis as they grow, as the fuel source for power plants instead of fossil fuels such as coal. When the plants are burned, the carbon emissions are captured and buried underground. The net result is negative emissions, at least on paper.
"There has been no comprehensive assessment of the feasibility of taking such technologies to scale in terms of costs, skills and materials requirements, or incentives, regulation and financing."

The technology is largely untested outside of projects that capture carbon dioxide streams from ethanol refineries. The gas is then pumped into the ground to enhance the recovery of oil, "which means it is being used to access more oil," Rachel Smolker, co-director of BiofuelWatch, an advocacy group that opposes scaling up biofuels, told NBC News in an email. "That is hardly reducing emissions."

Other concerns include increased competition between crops grown for biofuel and food and the potential for leaks and earthquakes associated with burying carbon dioxide underground. Furthermore, scaling up any approach to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere "would take many decades and vast expenditures to build sufficient capacity to reverse engineer a century and a half of the fossil fuel industry," noted Rayner.

Sunlight blocking a 'political hot potato'
More technically feasible, he added, would be an approach that would block sunlight with a method such as pumping tiny particles that reflect sunlight into the air from ships or planes. That place could also come with large environmental and social costs. For example, several recent modeling studies have suggested that an aggressive campaign to block sunlight could dramatically change precipitation patterns around the world with adverse impacts on agricultural productivity.

"Although it seems technically nearest to being able to be implemented, it would be likely to be very difficult to do so without some kind of international agreement to do so — and we all know how good we are at getting those for climate change," Rayner said. The approach, he added, "is still too much of a political hot potato for the IPCC to be able to address it in any consensual way."

The reluctance of the panel to take up sunlight blocking in a serious manner is a failure for a body that is supposed to help policymakers make decisions, according to Keith. "There are lots of good reasons why we might not want to do it," he said. "But to me it is of first-order importance to how we think about climate policy over the next century."




According to UN scientists the CO2 level must be no higher than “to the internationally agreed safe level of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.” Their scientist David Keith said of geoengineering methods that they are now considered to be “more okay” to do, and the IPCC report stated that “the world must swiftly enact a suite of economic and behavioral changes that cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 70 percent by the middle of this century and to near zero by its end.” The mitigation process should begin “soon” and include all nations. This must include efforts to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

Attempts to block sunlight with reflective particles and methods of capturing CO2 from power plant smokestacks or from the atmosphere are being considered, to be stored underground. One suggestion is to use plant materials for burning rather than coal or natural gas. Objections are that it doesn't really reduce the CO2 releases, and that “increased competition between crops grown for biofuel and food and the potential for leaks and earthquakes associated with burying carbon dioxide underground.” There was a recent news article about the fact that fracking seems to be causing small earthquakes.

Scaling up the effort to remove CO2 “would take many decades and vast expenditures to build sufficient capacity to reverse engineer a century and a half of the fossil fuel industry," noted Rayner. The method of blocking sunlight with reflective particles is “more feasible,” but would possibly have a negative effect on precipitation patterns, and therefore on agriculture, and would require international agreements. Steve Rayner of the Oxford Geoengineering Program voiced doubts that the political climate would allow the use of reflective particles, “but to me it is of first-order importance to how we think about climate policy over the next century." The following article from Wikipedia is an explanation of a number of methods to remove CO2 from the air which now exist.


Carbon dioxide removal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods refers to a number of technologies which reduce the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.[1] Among such technologies are bio-energy with carbon capture and storage, biochar, direct air capture, ocean fertilization and enhanced weathering.[1] CDR is a different approach than removing CO2 from the stack emissions of large fossil fuel point sources, such as power stations. The latter reduces emission to the atmosphere but cannot reduce the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. As CDR removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it creates negative emissions, offsetting emissions from small and dispersed point sources such as domestic heating systems, airplanes and vehicle exhausts.[2][3] It is regarded by some as a form of geoengineering,[1] while other commentators regard it as a form of carbon capture and storage.[4]

The mitigation effectiveness of air capture is limited by societal investment, land use, and availability of geologic reservoirs. These reservoirs are estimated to be sufficient to sequester all anthropogenically generated CO2.[10]

Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS, utilises biomass to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and carbon capture and storage technologies to concentrate and permanently store it in deep geological formations.

BECCS is currently (as of October 2012) the only CDR technology deployed at full industrial scale, with 550 000 tonnes CO2/year in total capacity operating, divided between three different facilities (as of January 2012).[11][12][13][14][15]
The Imperial College London, the UK Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the Walker Institute for Climate System Research, and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change issued a joint report on carbon dioxide removal technologies as part of the AVOID: Avoiding dangerous climate change research program, stating that "Overall, of the technologies studied in this report, BECCS has the greatest maturity and there are no major practical barriers to its introduction into today’s energy system. The presence of a primary product will support early deployment."[16]

According to the OECD, "Achieving lower concentration targets (450 ppm) depends significantly on the use of BECCS".[17]

Enhanced weathering[edit]
Enhanced weathering refers to chemical approach to geoengineering involving land or ocean based techniques. Examples of land based enhanced weathering techniques are in-situ carbonation of silicates. Ultramafic rocks, for example, have the potential to store thousands of years worth of CO2 emissions according to one estimate.[citation needed] Ocean based techniques involve alkalinity enhancement, such as, grinding, dispersing and dissolving olivine, limestone, silicates, or calcium hydroxide to address ocean acidification and CO2 sequestration. Enhanced weathering is considered as one of the least expensive of geoengineering options. One example of a research project on the feasibility of enhanced weathering is the CarbFix project in Iceland.

Artificial trees[edit]
A notable example of an atmospheric scrubbing process are the artificial trees.[18][19] This concept, proposed by climate scientist Wallace S. Broecker and science writer Robert Kunzig,[20] imagines huge numbers of artificial trees around the world to remove ambient CO2. The technology is now being pioneered by Klaus Lackner, a researcher at the Earth Institute, Columbia University,[21] whose artificial tree technology can suck up to 1,000 times more CO2 from the air than real trees can,[citation needed] at a rate of about one ton of carbon per day if the artificial tree is approximately the size of an actual tree.[22][23] The CO2 would be captured in a filter and then removed from the filter and stored.

The chemistry used is a variant of that described [[#Example CO2 scrubbing chemistry|below]], as it is based on sodium hydroxide. However, in a more recent design proposed by Klaus Lackner, the process can be carried out at only 40 °C by using a polymer-based ion exchange resin, which takes advantage of changes in humidity to prompt the release of captured CO2, instead of using a kiln. This reduces the energy required to operate the process.[24]

Scrubbing towers[edit]
In 2008, the Discovery Channel covered[25] the work of David Keith,[26] of University of Calgary, who built a tower, 4 feet wide and 20 feet tall, with a fan at the bottom that sucks air in, which comes out again at the top. In the process, about half the CO2 is removed from the air.

This device uses the chemical process described in detail [[#Example CO2 scrubbing chemistry|below]]. The system demonstrated on the Discovery Channel was a 1/90,000th scale test system of the capture section, the reagents are regenerated in a separate facility. The main costs of a full plant will be the cost to build it, and the energy input to regenerate the chemicals and produce a pure stream of CO2.


To put this into perspective, people in the U.S. emit about 20 tonnes of CO2 per person annually.[citation needed] In other words, each person in the U.S. would require a tower like the one featured by the Discovery Channel to remove this amount of CO2 from the air, requiring an annual 2 Megawatt-hours of electricity to operate it. By comparison, a refrigerator consumes about 1.2 Megawatt-hours annually (2001 figures).[27] But by combining many small systems such as this into one large system the construction costs and energy use can be reduced.

It has been proposed that the Solar updraft tower to generate electricity from thermal air currents also be used at the same time for amine gravity scrubbing of CO2.[28] Some heat would be required to regenerate the amine.

Calcium oxide[edit]
Calcium oxide (quicklime) will absorb CO2 from atmospheric air mixed with steam at 400 °C (forming calcium carbonate) and release it at 1,000 °C. This process, proposed by Steinfeld, can be performed using renewable energy from thermal concentrated solar power.[29]

Sodium hydroxide[edit]
Zeman and Lackner outlined a specific method of air capture using Carbon dioxide scrubber#Sodium hydroxide.[30] Carbon Engineering, a Calgary, Alberta firm founded in 2009 and partially funded by Bill Gates, is developing a process to capture carbon dioxide in a solution of sodium hydroxide with a pilot plant planned for 2014 with hopes to capture CO2 at a cost of $100 a ton.[31]