Tag Archives: ice

Arctic sea ice melting faster than expected —WMO

A major source of the water for the

sea level rise already affecting Savannah and Jacksonville
is melting Arctic Ocean sea ice.

WMO Press Release No. 966:
2012: Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Multiple Extremes and High Temperatures,

“Naturally occurring climate variability due to phenomena such
as El Niño and La Niña impact on temperatures and precipitation on
a seasonal to annual scale. But they do not alter the underlying
long-term trend of rising temperatures due to climate change as a
result of human activities,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel
Jarraud.

“The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a new record low. The
alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far-reaching
changes taking place on Earth’s oceans and biosphere. Climate change
is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a
result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,
which have risen constantly and again reached new records,”
added Mr Jarraud.


30 years of Arctic sea ice

15 September 1982 vs 16 September 2012

The Arctic reached its lowest annual sea ice extent since the start
of satellite records on 16 September at 3.41 million square
kilometers. This was 18% less than the previous record low of 18
September, 2007. The 2012 minimum extent was 49 percent or nearly
3.3 million square kilometers (nearly the size of India) below the
1979—2000 average minimum. Some 11.83 million square
kilometers of Arctic ice melted between March and September 2012.

WMO noted other effects of climate change outside the arctic, including:

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Medical issues at McRae warrant closing CCA private prison —ACLU

Azadeh Shahshahani wrote for Huffpost 18 August 2011,

License to Abuse? Time for Bureau of Prisons to Sever Ties With CCA

Last week, the ACLU of Georgia submitted

comments
to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to ask that the agency not renew its
contract with Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) for operation of
the McRae Correctional Facility.



McRae is located in Telfair County, Georgia. The prison is owned by CCA,
which purchased it in 2000. McRae currently houses a population of low
security, adult male, primarily non-citizen prisoners. The contract
between CCA and the BOP is set to expire in November 2012.

Why? Lack of medical treatment for prisoners, among other reasons.
For example:

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Private prisons unaccountable —ACLU

Found on the
ACLU blog of rights.


Azadeh Shahshahani wrote for the AJC 11 June 2009,

Private prisons for immigrants lack accountability, oversight



On March 11, a 39-year-old man held in detention at the Stewart Detention
Center, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in
southwest Georgia, died at a hospital in Columbus.

That’s in Lumpkin, west of Americus, south of Columbus.

To this day, the immediate cause of Roberto Martinez Medina’s death
remains unclear (a press release pronounced the cause of death as
“apparent natural causes”).



Last month, Leonard Odom, 37, died at the Wheeler County Correctional
Facility in south-central Georgia.

That’s in Alamo, GA, between Macon, Tifton, and Savannah.

Both facilities are operated by Corrections Corp. of America, which
has a contract with the Department of Homeland Security to operate the
Stewart center and one with the Georgia Department of Corrections to
operate the one in Wheeler County.

So, what happened?

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an End to ICE/Local Police Collaboration

Another Sunday, more church people against private prisons.

A year ago, on 29 July 2010,

Letter to Secretary Napolitano
Calling for an End to ICE/Local Police Collaboration
and a Halt to Expansion of Immigration Detention System:



On the occasion of the scheduled implementation of Arizona’s racial
profiling law, SB 1070, veterans of the civil rights movement and
representatives of social justice and faith-based community organizations
in Georgia today issued a letter to the Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Napolitano, calling on her to put an end to 287(g) and
other ICE-local police collaborations which lead to racial profiling
and separation of families, and halt the expansion of the inhumane,
profit-driven immigration detention system.

“As veterans of the civil rights movement and representatives of
social-justice and faith-based organizations in Georgia, we urge
you to take the bold steps necessary to end this unjust system that
creates divided families and improbable prisoners,” says the letter.
Signatories of the letter include: Constance Curry, a veteran of the
civil rights movement and Atlanta-based writer and activist; Edward
Dubose, President of the Georgia State Conference NAACP; Ajamu Baraka,
Executive Director of the U.S. Human Rights Network; Jerome Scott, Founder
and Board Chair of Project South; Reverend Gregory Williams, President
of Atlantans Building Leadership for Empowerment (ABLE); and many others.

Only seven months later Rev. Gregory Williams and others got to
speak against the all-too-similar Georgia law, HB 87.
Jeremy Redmon wrote for the AJC 3 March 2011,

House passes Arizona-style bill aimed at illegal immigration:

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Who wants to live in a prison colony?



Judy Green, a prison policy analyst says:

“The very first
contract
for the first private prison in America
went to CCA, from INS.”

Hear her in this video

Private Prisons-Commerce in Souls by Grassroots Leadership
that explains the private prison trade of public safety for private profit:

A local leader once called private prisons “good clean industry”.
Does locking up people for private profit sound like “good clean industry” to you?
Remember, not only is the U.S. the worst in the world for locking people up
(more prisoners per capita and total than any other country in the world),
but Georgia is the worst in the country, with

1 in 13 adults in the prison system.
And private prisons

don’t save money and
they

don’t improve local employment.
As someone says in the video, who wants to live in a prison colony?

We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.
Spend that tax money on rehabilitation and education.

-jsq

PS: Owed to Jeana Brown.

Many rural farmers are taking notice of HB 87 —Patrick Davis

Patrick Davis points out from Macon that HB 87 is producing
Lowndes County farm employment problems, and maybe local farmers
should take that into account when they vote.

Patrick Davis wrote,

Rural Republicans in Georgia can’t have it both ways on immigration reform



With the law passed and ready for implementation, many rural
farmers—especially in Central and South Georgia—are taking notice to
the exodus of migrant workers and immigrants which has left some farmers
without workers to pick crops.

Many of these same farmers that are hurting economically and losing
crops in these rural counties had voted Republican for years.



Valdosta’s Ellis Black who represents parts of Lowndes County as a
state representative helped to pass Gov. Nathan Deal’s conservative
and punitive agenda and consequently it has contributed to drive an
increasing number of migrant workers out of the Peach State.


Black has continued to justify his HB-87 vote and attempt to support
Gov. Deal’s ridiculous assertion in regard to the use of probationers
as a solution.

That last link is to

Parolees to replace migrants?
Gov. Deal says put probationers in fields
by David Rodock in the VDT 15 June 2011, which included:

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