Hubble telescope will get upgrade

November 5th, 2006

– I’m so glad this is happening.   It would have been a huge shame to have let Hubble fall silent and blind before its replacement is in place.  We are at such an incredible place of discovery in human history and Hubble’s work is right on the edge of the excitement.  Maybe you have to have a bit of the scientist in your blood to feel it, but one of the real joys I get out of life is following along, vicariously, as science reveals the inner workings of this beautiful creation we live in.

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US space agency (Nasa) chief Mike Griffin says shuttle astronauts will be sent to service the Hubble telescope.

The orbiting observatory has astounded astronomers and the public alike with its amazing pictures of the cosmos, but its systems are beginning to fail.

Dr Griffin told Nasa employees that recent modifications to the shuttle launch system meant it was now safe to send a crew to work on Hubble.

The mission, which will use the shuttle Discovery, should launch in 2008.

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India Joins Anti-Kyoto Asia Pacific Partnership

November 5th, 2006

On a day when British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett was urging India to join the fight against climate change, the country announced that it is throwing its lot in with the industry-oriented Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP).

The anti-Kyoto APP is an international body including Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and the U.S. It has been presented as an alternative to the United Nations-sponsored Framework Convention on Climate Change, albeit one that rejects the notion of enforceable climate change measures such as those negotiated in the Kyoto Accord. Instead, the APP is dedicated to increasing GHG-causing industrial and energy development, promising only to improve the relative environmental cleanliness of those developments

The APP’s apparent devotion to clean development is welcome. There will be a huge amount of energy- and industry-related development, especially in India and China, in the coming decades and it is critical that these be as clean as possible. But it’s still a concern that the APP is being used as an international alternative to the hard choices and enforceable treaties that are necessary – the tiniest first steps of which are evident in Kyoto.

We can only hope that Canada, at least, will stand up and dismiss the APP for what it is, an international PR exercise, intended to make these countries look like they are acting responsibly when, in fact, they are just trying to dodge a difficult issue.

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State Dept. petitioned to issue missing and overdue Climate Action Report required by climate treaty

November 5th, 2006

U.S. in Violation of International Climate Change Treaty on Eve of Critical Meeting in Kenya

WASHINGTON, D.C. The Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace today petitioned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to produce the overdue U.S. Climate Action Report as required by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The deadline for the fourth U.S. Climate Action Report passed on January 1, 2006—more than 11 months ago. Now the 12th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC will take place in Nairobi, Kenya from November 6-17 without required information from the U.S.

“As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and a non-party to the Kyoto Protocol, you would think that the U.S. could at least meet its modest commitment to issue a timely Climate Action Report,” stated Julie Teel, a staff attorney in the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate, Air and Energy Program. “With the daily influx of new scientific and economic data highlighting the urgency of immediate action to address climate change, the Bush administration’s failure to take even this meager step in the right direction is an indicator of just how far out of step it is with the desire of the majority of Americans to do something about global warming.”

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Diebold demands that HBO cancel documentary on voting machines

November 5th, 2006

– this is a subject I’ve watched closely. I’m convinced that it is one of the bigger under-reported stories around.

-It is so obviously in the best interests of our democracy that we have completely open and transparent processes for everything to do with electronic voting machines. The Australians have done it well and there’s no plausible reason why we here in the U.S. cannot do the same. So, if it isn’t happening here, then it must be to someone’s strong advantage that it doesn’t. Think about that. There’s definitely something stinky surrounding this entire issue here in the U.S.

– Try searching this site for the word, ‘Diebold’. You will find a number of articles questioning the veracity of electronic voting in this country and Diebold is near the epicenter of most of them.

– See BlackBoxVoting.org

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Film saying they can be manipulated ‘inaccurate’

Diebold Inc. insisted that cable network HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair.

The program, “Hacking Democracy,” is scheduled to debut Thursday (November 2nd), five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims that Diebold voting machines aren’t tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results.

“Hacking Democracy” is “replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting,” Diebold Election System President David Byrd said in a letter to HBO President and Chief Executive Chris Albrecht posted on Diebold’s Web site. Short of pulling the film, Monday’s letter asks for disclaimers to be aired and for HBO to post Diebold’s response on its Web site.

According to Byrd’s letter, inaccuracies in the film include the assertion that Diebold, whose election systems unit is based in Allen, Texas, tabulated more than 40 percent of the votes cast in the 2000 presidential election.

The letter says Diebold wasn’t in the electronic voting business in 2000, when disputes over ballots in Florida delayed President Bush’s victory for more than a month and raised questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines.

“We stand by the film,” said Jeff Cusson, a spokesman for HBO, which is a unit of Time Warner Inc.

“We have no intention of withdrawing it from our schedule. It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing.”

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Salt-Water Fish Extinction Seen By 2048

November 5th, 2006

Study By Ecologists, Economists Predicts Collapse of World Ocean Ecology

The apocalypse has a new date: 2048.

That’s when the world’s oceans will be empty of fish, predicts an international team of ecologists and economists. The cause: the disappearance of species due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change.

The study by Boris Worm, PhD, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, — with colleagues in the U.K., U.S., Sweden, and Panama — was an effort to understand what this loss of ocean species might mean to the world.

The researchers analyzed several different kinds of data. Even to these ecology-minded scientists, the results were an unpleasant surprise.

“I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are — beyond anything we suspected,” Worm says in a news release.

“This isn’t predicted to happen. This is happening now,” study researcher Nicola Beaumont, PhD, of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, U.K., says in a news release.

“If biodiversity continues to decline, the marine environment will not be able to sustain our way of life. Indeed, it may not be able to sustain our lives at all,” Beaumont adds.

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Lloyd’s Releases Second ‘360 Report’ on Climate Change

November 3rd, 2006

– Well, people can argue back and forth and believe that each other’s opinions are just politically or ideologically motivated but when people like Lloyds of London, the world famous insurance folks, weigh in on the questions, it is worth sitting up and taking notice.

– These folks make their living by predicting the future and you can be sure that the last thing they want to do is to have the accuracy of their predictions (and thus the profitability of their predictions) marred by ideological biases of any kind. So, when they say there’s a coming problem with the climate, you can be pretty sure you are getting the ‘straight stuff’.

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Lloyd’s has released the second installment of its “360 Climate Change” series, entitled “What next for climate change?” Last June it published the first installment, entitled “Climate Change, Adapt or Bust,” which warned insurers to face up to the growing threats involved or risk being “swept away.”

Lloyd’s is providing both technical knowledge and insights to help understand and contain the effects of global warming. In this installment its market experts “highlight the key projects insured in the market that will contribute towards a sustainable future, said the announcement. “This includes ‘waste to energy’ plants, which burn household and industrial waste to give off gas and generate electricity, and wind farms, which are proving a major source of renewable energy.”

The report notes that the Lloyd’s market provides about a third of the insurance for waste to energy plants, and covers about a quarter of the world’s wind farms. Lloyd’s is also setting up a new team of experts to help its insurers prepare for and manage the growing risk of climate change.

Trevor Maynard, Lloyd’s manager of emerging risks who will lead that team, commented: “Climate change is a very real threat. It would be unthinkable for us to ignore one of the biggest dangers we face in the coming decades. Among other things, this market recognizes the importance of developing new technology to create renewable energy.”

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Lloyd’s full ‘360 Climate Change’ report is here.

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Australia defends climate stance

October 31st, 2006

Australian Treasurer Peter Costello has said there is “no point” in Australia signing the Kyoto Protocol on climate change unless China and India do too.

Australia, like the US, has refused to ratify the Kyoto agreement, but is set to face increasing pressure to do so in the light of a new hard-hitting study.

A report by former World Bank economist Nicholas Stern warned of severe problems if global warming was ignored.

If there was no action now, he said, the world would face a huge depression.

The UN has also just released new data showing that rich countries have made little overall progress in reducing the production of gases blamed for global warming.

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Kyoto Failing to Cool the Planet

October 31st, 2006

The industrialized world’s emissions of greenhouse gases are growing again, despite efforts under the Kyoto Protocol to cap them and stave off global warming, the United Nations reported Monday.

Emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases declined in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the shutdown of polluting factories and power plants in eastern Europe. But now those economies are rebounding, contributing to a 2.4 percent rise in emissions by 41 industrialized nations between 2000 and 2004.

“This means that industrialized countries will need to intensify their efforts to implement strong policies which reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. climate treaty secretariat, referring to taxes on carbon-based fuels, energy-efficiency regulations and other steps.

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Stern Review on the economics of climate change

October 31st, 2006

– this is a major report on the economics of climate change by the British Government.

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Stern Review final report

The pre-publication edition of the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change is available to be downloaded below either on a chapter-by-chapter basis or in parts covering broader themes. The report is available in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer you can download the software free of charge from the Adobe website. For alternative ways to read PDF documents and further information on website accessibility visit the HM Treasury accessibility page.

Hardcopies will be available from January at a charge of c. £29.99 + £3.50 postage and packing (quoting ISBN number: 0-521-70080-9). Copies can be ordered from Cambridge University Press via the website http://www.cambridge.org/9780521700801, by fax on +44 (0)1223 315052 or post from the following address: Science Marketing, Freepost, Cambridge University Press, The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2.

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GLOBAL WARMING REPORT: Right-Wing Fiction vs. Economic Reality

October 31st, 2006

As the scientific consensus on the reality of global warming’s effects have strengthened, global warming deniers have resorted to arguing that, even if it is real, it’s too expensive to mitigate. Some examples:

National Review’s Jason Steorts: “Even if warming is predominately the result of human activity, and even if its harms will outweigh its benefits, the question is whether it will be bad enough to justify the economic castration that significant greenhouse-gas reductions would require.”

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK): “The Kyoto Protocol is a lot of economic pain for no climate gain.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Would you get off the global warming stuff, some people are saying. No, I’m not going to get off of it because what’s at stake is the US economy, folks, what’s at stake is our lifestyle. The people that are trying to force this on everybody and take the natural fluctuations of our climate.”

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