(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

National Poetry Month is officially past, alas. However, every day is good for poetry! If you happened to miss this great segment from The Colbert Report, check it out here at Crooks and Liars, as Sean Penn and Stephen Colbert square off in a “Meta-Free-For-All.”

This also allows me to give a shout-out to the moderator, former National Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. Pinsky is a great speaker and teacher, with a witty, funny touch, and if you have a chance to hear him speak, I’d recommend it. A previous post mentioned the wonderful Favorite Poem Project, which Pinsky runs with Maggie Dietz, and I can’t plug it or them enough.

from The B.B.C.

Iran’s president has come under fire from a conservative newspaper after he publicly kissed the hand of a woman who used to be his school teacher.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative by the standards of Iranian politics, was attacked by the Hezbollah newspaper for acting “contrary to Sharia law”.

It accused him of “indecency and violating religious values”.

The elderly woman at the centre of the controversy was wearing thick gloves, a headscarf, and a long black coat.

Ahmadinejad, better known in the west for his fiery anti-Israel rhetoric and his staunch defense of Iran’s nuclear program, has been criticized in the past by ultra-conservative elements in Iran.

He once suggested that women should be allowed to watch football matches. This proved highly controversial and was turned down.

from The B.B.C.

O.K. Americans! Time to bone up on the environment and the Kyoto Treaty, even though President Bush wouldn’t sign it.

Experts at a major UN climate change conference in Bangkok have reached a deal on the best ways to combat global warming, delegates say.

It follows marathon talks with strong reservations voiced by China.

Areas of dispute included language regarding the Kyoto protocol, the costs of cutting emissions and nuclear power.

The third part of this year’s assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change looks at ways to curb emissions and economic factors.

The report is due to be released in the Thai capital on Friday.

‘Action needed’

“It’s all done,” Peter Lukey, a member of the South African delegation, told the Associated Press news agency.
“Everything we wanted to see was there and more. The message is: We have to do something now.”

China repeatedly tried to tone down some elements of the draft text prepared for the start of the week-long discussions, delegates said.

It has been keen to remove references to scenarios which it fears could affect its short-term economic growth.

“Certainly one direction seems to be that there isn’t the investment going into renewable technologies and energy efficiency that’s sufficient for them to meet the potential they have to tackle this problem,” Catherine Pearce, international climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth UK, who is in Bangkok, told the BBC News website.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has already this year produced the two other elements of this global assessment report - its fourth since 1990 - dealing respectively with the science of climate change and on the potential impacts.

Stable futures

The draft report assesses the likely costs to the global economy of stabilising greenhouse gases at various concentrations in the atmosphere.

Aiming for a total greenhouse gas concentration equivalent to 650 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide would reduce global GDP by about 0.2%, it says, whereas a more ambitious target of 550ppm would cost about 0.6% of global GDP, says the BBC’s environment correspondent Richard Black.

The current atmospheric concentration is about 425ppm, and many climate scientists now argue that only agreeing to keep below about 450ppm can prevent major climatic consequences.

The IPCC draft says keeping concentrations at this level could cost up to 3% of GDP.

“I can tell you that the probability for achieving 450ppm in anything approaching the world as it now is almost impossible,” commented Professor Stephen Schneider from Stanford University in California, who helped draft the IPCC’s first report this year on the science of climate change.

“But a temperature rise over 2-3C leads to potential mass extinctions, serious problems with coasts, mountain glaciers disappearing, melting ice sheets… and one has to talk about stabilization at 450-550ppm range to have a better than 20-30% chance of preventing that.”

The IPCC does not make policy recommendations, but even so China, with some other delegations, has sought to play down references to the lower stabilization levels.