Global Hoax

By Natalia Antelava
BBC News, Astana

Kazakhstan has unveiled a new architectural project for its capital Astana - a giant transparent tent that will contain an indoor city.

The 150m-high (500ft) dome, designed by UK architect Norman Foster, will be built in just over a year.

The tent is being made from special material that absorbs sunlight to create the effect of summer inside.

Astana lies in the very heart of the Central Asian steppe. Temperatures there often drop to -30C in the winter.

'Difficult project'

The final shape of the world's biggest tent was revealed in a 3D model by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Underneath, in an area larger than 10 football stadiums, will be a city with squares and cobbled streets, canals, shopping centres and golf courses.

The idea is to recreate summer, so that when the outside temperature is -30C, the residents of the Kazakh capital can play outdoor tennis, take boat rides or sip coffee on the pavement cafes.

Called Khan Shatyry, the project is designed by Lord Foster, who has recently built a giant glass pyramid in Astana.

"Nothing of the sort has been done before, and from the engineering point of view it's an extremely difficult project," says Fettah Tamince, the head of Turkey's development company Sembol that is building the tent.

Mr Tamince is nevertheless confident the company can complete the construction in just 12 months.

'Huge risk'

It is a hugely ambitious undertaking, but so is Astana itself.

It was just over 10 years ago that President Nazarbayev decided to move the capital from Almaty to the very heart of Kazakhstan.

Since then the government says it has spent $15bn (£7.7bn) on construction, although some believe the figure is actually much higher.

For this oil rich state, which is an increasingly important global energy player, cash is not a problem.

Still, Mr Nazarbayev recently told the BBC that moving the capital was the riskiest step he had ever taken, and that Astana was one of his biggest achievements.

"It was a huge risk, and I took it intuitively," Mr Nazarbayev said.

"I put everything at stake, including my career and my name. I knew if I had failed it would be a fatal failure, but the success would also be the real success."

At the time, the president added, no-one seemed to believe that he would be able to create a real city in the steppe.

But the Astana skyline still looks more surreal than real - with its marble palaces, shining skyscrapers, metal structures and abstract statues, all surrounded by vast, snow covered emptiness.

Soon, rising above it all, will be the illuminated glass dome of the Khan Shatyry - an appropriate addition, it seems, to Astana's oil-money fuelled architectural extravaganza.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6165267.stm

"The Public Has Been Vastly Misinformed," NCPA's Deming Tells Senate Committee

12/6/2006 5:57:00 PM

To: National Desk

Contact: Sean Tuffnell of the National Center for Policy Analysis, 972-308-6481 or sean.tuffnell@ncpa.org

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 /U.S. Newswire/ -- David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), testified this morning at a special hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The hearing examined climate change and the media. Bellow are excerpts from his prepared remarks.

"In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.

"I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." "The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. ... The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."

"In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became known as the "hockey stick," because of the shape of the temperature graph. "Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent.

"There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed."

---

The NCPA is an internationally known nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute with offices in Dallas and Washington, D. C. that advocates private solutions to public policy problems. NCPA depends on the contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations that share our mission. The NCPA accepts no government grants.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

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/© 2006 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770

Anger at UN chief's Iraq comments
Kofi Annan is leaving office with major crises unresolved
Kofi Annan interview
Iraq's national security adviser says he is shocked by UN head Kofi Annan's suggestion that the average Iraqi is worse off than under Saddam Hussein.

Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie also accused the UN of shying away from its responsibility towards the Iraqi people.

The UN secretary general, who leaves office after 10 years on 31 December, told the BBC that the situation in Iraq was now "much worse" than a civil war.

He also expressed his sadness at being unable to prevent the invasion in 2003.

Mr Annan told the BBC's Lyse Doucet that the current situation in Iraq was "extremely dangerous", and that he sympathised with the plight of ordinary Iraqis.

"If I were an average Iraqi, obviously I would make the same comparison, that they had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets, they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying: 'Am I going to see my child again?'

A few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war - this is much worse
Kofi Annan
UN Secretary General

"The society needs security and a secure environment for it to get on. Without security, not much can be done - not recovery or reconstruction."

Mr Rubaie rejected Mr Annan's comments, asking: "Doesn't Kofi Annan differentiate between the mass killing of Iraqis by the security and intelligence apparatus of Saddam Hussein and the present indiscriminate killings of civilians, Iraqi civilians, by the al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq?"

He added: "I'm shocked and stunned by what Kofi Annan alluded to, that the condition was better under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein."

Asked whether the situation in Iraq could now be classified as a civil war, Mr Annan pointed to the level of "killing and bitterness", and the way forces in Iraq were now ranged against each other.

"A few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war. This is much worse.

"We have a very worrisome situation in the broader Middle East," Mr Annan said, linking the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and tensions over Iran.

He admitted that the failure to prevent the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a major blow to the UN, one from which the organisation was only beginning to recover.

"It's healing but we are not there yet, it hasn't healed yet, and we feel the tension still in this organisation as a result of that."

Referring to the invasion, Mr Rubaie said: "The UN, I believe, shied away from the responsibilities towards the Iraqi people in 2003."

Darfur 'tragedy'

Mr Annan, a Ghanaian who joined the UN in 1962, became the first secretary-general from sub-Saharan Africa at the start of 1997.

The years before his appointment were marred by the genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

Although the UN vowed "never again" in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide and killings at Srebrenica, the organisation has been unable to end a three-year crisis in Sudan's Darfur region, where more than 200,000 people are thought to have died.

"It is deeply, deeply disappointing and it's tragic," said Mr Annan. "But we do not have the resources or the will to confront the situation."

He pledged to work towards a solution in Darfur, which Sudan's government has refused to allow UN peacekeepers to enter, until his very last moment in office.

Mr Annan also urged his successor, Ban Ki-moon, to follow his own path.

Mr Ban, a South Korean diplomat, will pick up the reins at the UN's New York headquarters on 1 January.

"He should do it his way. I did it my way, my predecessors did it their way and he should do it his way," Mr Annan said.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6206480.stm