Month: August 2017
Reminder: Exxon, #Carbonbubble, at Center of #Russiagate
Neither President Donald Trump nor Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are fans of the new congressional sanctions on Russia, particularly because they may hinder attempts at restoring the relationship between the two countries, the top U.S. diplomat admitted Tuesday.
“The action by the Congress to put these sanctions in place and the way they did, neither the President nor I were very happy about that,” Tillerson told reporters in the State Department briefing room. “We were clear that we didn’t think it was going to be helpful to our efforts, but that’s the decision they made, they made it in a very overwhelming way. I think the president accepts that.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is resisting the pleas of State Department officials to spend nearly $80 million allocated by Congress for fighting terrorist propaganda and Russian disinformation.
It is highly unusual for a Cabinet secretary to turn down money for his department. But more than five months into his tenure, Tillerson has not issued a simple request for the money earmarked for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, $60 million of which is now parked at the Pentagon. Another$19.8 million sits untouched at the State Department as Tillerson’s aides reject calls from career diplomats and members of Congress to put the money to work against America’s adversaries.
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The struggle over the money is a case study in Tillerson’s approach to managing the State Department and the frustration it is engendering among American diplomats. Current and former U.S. officials call it the latest example of a severe slowdown in department decision-making; of Tillerson’s reliance on a coterie of political aides who distrust State’s career staffers; and a casualty of President Donald Trump’s intention to slash State’s budget, which has Tillerson looking for ways to reshape the department and spend less money, not more.
Sources cited another sensitive factor at play: Russia. One Tillerson aide, R.C. Hammond, suggested the money is unwelcome because any extra funding for programs to counter Russian media influence would anger Moscow, according to a former senior State Department official.
Antarctic Berg gets News, but Look to Greenland for Real Iceberg Impacts
The world saw headlines about one of the largest icebergs ever calved a few weeks ago. But a smaller one on the other end of the globe might have bigger consequences.
The chunk of ice, which broke free in the Arctic last week, is more worrisome to climate scientists who are watching one of Earth’s largest glaciers shed pieces in a way that stands to raise sea levels.
Compared with the Delaware-sized iceberg that split off of West Antarctica earlier this month, this one is almost paltry — the size of three Manhattans or so. It came off the ice shelf that buttresses the Petermann Glacier at the height of seasonal warming in the Arctic region.
By contrast, the recent Antarctic iceberg, while massive, did not have a clear connection to climate. Even if it foreshadows the split-up of the ice sheet to which it was attached, it would not raise sea levels noticeably. The Arctic calving has a much clearer link to climate change.
Movement of the Petermann Glacier has sped up in recent years, dumping land-based ice into the ocean at a faster rate and drawing more ice down from the center of Greenland, said Laurence Dyke, a researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. Meanwhile, the ice shelf that braces it and slows the rate of flow is disintegrating as climate change transforms the region.
“You could call it the canary in the coal mine. If that big glacier there is changing quickly, and it is, it’s a worrying sign for what’s happening in the rest of Greenland,” he said.
The iceberg itself is not particularly notable, according to Dyke. But it could lead to an expansion of major cracks upstream in the ice shelf, causing it to break up more quickly. Most troubling to researchers is a crack at the center of the shelf. It’s an unusual place for cracks to form, and it could connect to separate cracks forming at the sides. Continue reading “Antarctic Berg gets News, but Look to Greenland for Real Iceberg Impacts”
Another Brilliant, Viral Climate Animation
Above the Law? Exxon, under Tillerson, Cited for Russian Contracts
When the history is written, and I still remain confident it will be written by independent, free historians – the direct line between fossil fuel greed, the Carbon Bubble, and the ongoing attempted Russian coup of the US government will be clear.
The Treasury Department has fined the oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil $2 million for violating US sanctions on Russia — and the violations occurred while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was CEO of the company.
The Treasury said that Exxon violated the sanctions between May 14 and May 23, 2014 “by signing eight legal documents related to oil and gas projects in Russia with Igor Sechin, the President of Rosneft OAO, and an individual identified on OFAC’s [Office of Foreign Asset Control] List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons.”
The Obama administration previously issued an executive order that imposed sanctions on Russia in response to the country’s invasion of eastern Ukraine and seizure of the Crimean peninsula. Some of the sanctions leveled on Russia include the prohibition of technology transfers in Russian energy projects in the Arctic, Siberia, and the Black Sea. Sanctions also prohibit dealings with Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin.
“OFAC determined that ExxonMobil did not voluntarily self-disclose the violations,” the Treasury said, ” and that the violations constitute an egregious case.”
Exxon apparently justified the breach by claiming it wasn’t business, just a friendly, informal, unofficial signing of documents with a Russian Oil Oligarch. You know, watch the game, have a beer, sign some oil and gas documents.
Just like you might do on any weekend, right?
According to the Treasury, Exxon’s defense was that the company believed the sanctions established a “distinction between Sechin’s ‘professional’ and ‘personal’ capacity,” but the department insists that “no materials issued by the White House or the Department of the Treasury asserted an exception or carve-out for the professional conduct of designated or blocked persons.”
Continue reading “Above the Law? Exxon, under Tillerson, Cited for Russian Contracts”