Francis's News Feeds

Skeptical Science: Using Skeptical Science to improve climate literacy

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 05:52:30 +0000

Guest post by Lee Tryhorn

The average person who wants to be informed about climate change can find themselves bombarded by contradictory information from sources that appear to be equally valid. This is as true for someone working in a government organization as it is for a member of the general public. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has recognized this issue, and consequently has been working hard to improve the climate literacy of its representatives.

The latest effort has involved a series of workshops designed to increase the capacity of NOAA representatives to communicate current climate change science. I was fortunate enough to participate as a speaker at two of the workshops. The most recent workshop, Climate Literacy for Extension Educators, was held August 3-4 in Ithaca, NY. The participants in this workshop were predominately from Cornell Cooperative extension, NOAA Sea Grant, and the National Weather Service. For those that are unfamiliar with these groups, Cooperative Extension is an educational program implemented in the United States designed to help develop practical applications of research knowledge. The service is provided by designated universities in each state and tends to focus on agriculture, natural resources, community economic development, and youth programs. Similarly, Sea Grant is a nationwide network (administered through NOAA) of university-based programs that work with coastal communities. These people are often the point of contact for the general public and the media for many scientific issues.

Major themes of the workshop were communication of climate change, the current state of climate science, and use of climate change information in extension outreach programs. Many previous climate change communication efforts have focused on increasing the understanding of climate science and the scientific facts are assumed to speak for themselves. Of course, it has been shown many times over that presenting an audience with a graph of increasing global temperatures is not overly successful in motivating action on climate change. With this in mind, rather than asking the participants to learn every single aspect of how a climate model works, a large theme of the workshop was focused on techniques for finding reliable information, and reframing and communicating that information, including techniques for dealing with the media and climate skeptics. We devoted a session to the top 10 skeptics arguments and what the science says using material from this site.

Climate change discussions have become so polarized that many of the extension educators reported finding conversations with the public stifled. I know exactly what they mean, as when I say I’m a climate scientist, I sometimes have people assume that I will look down on them for using a dryer or others will ask me what I think about the Gulf oil spill. Like other controversial issues, climate change has been divided into two distinctive camps. These two camps continue to dominate the media and are in some ways intractable. At the workshop we discussed the need to restart the conversation in a more meaningful way. We really need to move beyond the crippling polarization and promote discussions of alternatives and solutions. In order to achieve this we need to start talking about climate change in ways that resonate more with what the general public already values or understands. For example, we can talk about climate change in terms of economic development, morality and ethics (a responsibility to take care of the Earth), and public health. The US military for one, is talking about climate change as a national security issue.

Of course, a series of workshops are not going to change the world, but we’re hoping that this is at least a better approach for equipping those on the ground with the communication tools they need.

Skeptical Science: The Little Ice Age: Skeptics skating on thin ice

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 05:52:30 +0000

Climate change skeptics suggest that because the climate has changed dramatically in the past – and without man’s intervention – it is possible that current changes to the Earth’s climate are also a natural event. You may be familiar with paintings depicting Londoners skating on the frozen River Thames, when winters, at least in the northern hemisphere, were more severe. The beginning and end of this period are subject to various interpretations, but the period is referred to as the Little Ice Age (LIA) and occurred between the 16th to 19th centuries.

Limited History

If we are to understand the LIA, we need to figure out what caused it. Scientists have examined several important strands of evidence about the LIA, including the activity of the sun, of volcanoes, and ocean heat circulation, principle drivers of natural climate change.

The activity of the sun can be assessed by looking at proxies – processes we know are affected by the sun’s activity. One of these is the formation of the radioactive isotope Carbon-14 in the atmosphere, which plants then absorb. By measuring carbon-14 in tree rings and other materials we know are from a certain period, we can estimate how active the sun was at the time. This graph shows the sun’s activity over the last millennium:

The carbon-14 data used in this graph go up to 1950. The graph below gives a fuller picture, showing that in the last three decades, the sun's normal cycle of activity has remained steady, while temperatures have shot up:

Yet while the dips in solar activity correlate well with the LIA, there are other factors that, in combination, may have contributed to the climate change:

Volcanic activity was high during this period of history, and we know from modern studies of volcanism that eruptions can have strong cooling effects on the climate for several years after an eruption.
The ‘ocean conveyor belt’ – thermohaline circulation – might have been slowed down by the introduction of large amounts of fresh water e.g. from the Greenland ice cap, the melting by the previous warm period (the Medieval Warm Period).
Sudden population decreased caused by the Black Death may have resulted in a decrease of agriculture and reforestation of agricultural land.

Can We Draw a Conclusion?

In truth, not really. The Little Ice Age remains for the present the subject of speculation. The most likely influence during this period is variable output from the sun combined with pronounced volcanic activity. We know that from the end of the LIA to the 1950s the sun’s output increased. But since WW2 the sun has slowly grown quieter, yet the temperature on Earth has gone up.

The skeptical argument that current warming is a continuation of the same warming that ended the LIA is unlikely. There is a lack of evidence for a suitable forcing (e.g. the sun) and numerous correlations with known natural forcings that can account for the LIA itself, and the subsequent climate recovery. Taken in isolation, the LIA might cast doubt on the theory of climate change. Considered alongside the empirical evidence, model predictions and a century of scientific research into the climate, recovery from the LIA is not a plausible theory to explain the observed evidence and rate of global climate change.

This post is the Basic version (written by Graham Wayne) of the skeptic argument "We're coming out of an ice age".

Daily interesting photos - Flickr: Interesting photos - 8 Sep 2010 - Flickr

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 05:49:39 +0000

Cosmic Variance: Zozobra

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 05:43:35 +0000

Imagine, if you will, 40,000 people whipped into a mad frenzy. The chants of “burn him” are deafening. They surround a 50 foot high marionette (the world’s largest), which is moaning and struggling and crying. The giant puppet, named “Old Man Gloom”, represents all of the troubles of the past year. Through fire the gathered masses seek deliverance. There are dancers with torches. The old man screams out in despair. Suddenly he is aflame, his eyes glowing from within. Soon there is a five story pillar of fire; the heat washes over the thousands of people gathered around. And then, in a blizzard of fireworks, the marionette vaporizes to nothing but a pile of embers. This is Zozobra. He burned two hours ago. A Santa Fe tradition for the past 85 years, the event marks the beginning of Fiestas de Santa Fe, which has run continuously since 1712.

There is something communal and primal about Zozobra. It feels purifying and freeing; the sorrows of the city have been dispelled. And I can bike to it from my house, which is a lot more convenient than Black Rock City. It is uniquely Santa Fe.

John Redwood MP: Evidence to the Vickers Review – 1 Systemic risk

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 05:29:53 +0000

Sir John Vickers is a an accomplished senior academic, with Bank of England and Competition authority experience. He comes to the task of reporting on how the banks should be structured and regulated from a perfect background. I know he will approach it seriously with useful knowledge but no opening prejudices.

One of the first questions he needs to ask is Why did we have banking failures and problems in 2008-9? Some will be urging him to the veiw that it was the combination of “casino banking ” with clearing banking which caused the problems.

The evidence does not bear this out. The worst of the crisis was the collapse of Lehmans, a pure investment bank. In the UK the most distressed banks were three relatively small specialist mortgage banks, without Investment banking arms. Forcing Barclays and HSBC in London to divest their investment banking operations would not prevent a future Lehmans or Northern Rock.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion when looking at Lehmans, Northern Rock, RBS, the Irish banks or the Icelandic banks that it was misjudgement by the banks of how much cash and cpaital they should keep to cover their risks, and bad judgement by Regulators who did not require them to be more cautious. Bankers and Regulators together presided over a massive expansion of leverage throughout the system. Both shared the view that the advent of new financial isntruments and larger banks alllowed more risk to be run . They threw out of the window the old ideas about prudent levels of capital and cash. The Central banks then withdrew liquidity from markets too rapdily and helped bring about the crisis.

My first conclusion is that splitting Investment and clearing banks is not the answer. Banks of all types and sizes got into difficulties, including small and specialist institutions. It is increasingly difficult to seperate investment bank activities from clearing bank activities. A business customer may need foreign exchange futures and commodity derivatives as well as a bank loan and current account. A retail customer may want investmnt management as well as a means of payment. Seeking to stop banks undertaking certain types fo financial business might just drive them offshore.

Copenhagen Cycle Chic: Copenhagen Cargo Bike Moments

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Autumn rain. Playground arrival. Birthday party in the park.The Original Cycle Chic -...

For the full photographic glory and the rest of the text, you know where to go. The Original Cycle Chic awaits.

xkcd: Leaving

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Global Voices (Cambodia): Asia: Videos on Drug Abuse and Detention Centers

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 01:55:25 +0000

By Juliana Rincón Parra

image from HCLU video

Drug abuse detention centers in Asia are in the spotlight. Although some Asian drug addicts go in voluntarily to kick their habit, in some places, this has led to routine human rights abuses where people off the street are locked up with no choice, tortured, raped, forced to work for free and denied basic comforts.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union has released Abuse in the Name of Treatment, a new video showing the situation of people sent into some compulsory drug detention centers in Asia. Some are sent there by family or walk themselves in to kick their drug habit, but in some other places, military police routinely round up anyone they consider “deviant”. So street children, sex workers and drug users are sent to these camps with no right to appeal. Adding insult to injury, some of these camps were built with money sent by Western governments, so the HCLU is calling viewers to action:

One of the centers – Koh Kor – was closed thanks to human rights advocacy but there are still too many in operation. HCLU, along with international organizations such as UNAIDS or UNODC, is calling for the closure of these camps. We hope after watching our new movie more people will join us and put pressure on these governments to stop the abuse in the name of drug treatment.

Current TV's Vanguard released web episodes discussing the subject of drug addictions, Meth production and consumption in Cambodia and visited Korsang, a harm reduction center created as an alternative to the abuses happening in government run drug detainment centers.

Also in Cambodia, students at the University of Puthisastra made a two part video for the UPSTV showing their perspective on why youth get involved with drugs in the first place:

At the end of the Second part, Kosal returns from his 5 year prison sentences a changed man, willing to right his wrongs and have a fresh start. Their perspective of how a drug addict is sent to a place where he or she can genuinely get better should become a reality, because it shouldn't take a miracle.

To read more about the human rights abuses happening in detention centers in Asia, you can read the Human Rights Watch reports on drug rehab centers on Where Darkness Knows no Limits and An Unbreakable Cycle in China and on Skin on the Wire in Cambodia .

Futurismic: Atheism, proselytism and other isms

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:34:06 +0000

There’s an interesting article by Alom Shaha over on the Guardian’s blog, on why he’s no longer an “angry atheist”. The gist of it is basically that the “preaching” atheists (those who claim loudly that to believe in God is the act of morons) can be as annoying as religious fanatics.
It’s an interesting comparison, and one which reminds me of a conversation I had a while ago over on Gareth’s blog with Cecile Cristofari. Cecile pointed out an article by Tatiana Chernyshova, which explained that

Only a fraction [of people], however, is actually able to explain what e=mc² stand for; and even fewer can understand the theory and explain precisely why it makes sense. The rest of us simply accept scientific facts in the same way as uneducated people in the 19th century accepted the idea that God existed: because competent authorities have said so, but this knowledge still relies on faith, not proof, in spite of the fact that science is supposed to be about proof, not faith.

To me, there’s a fair amount of similarities between atheism, science and religion: they’re all beliefs. Religious faith is the most obvious one; but faith in science (the idea that science can explain and/or control everything) is also one. So is atheism. Some of those beliefs seem more substantiated than others: science seems to work so far at explaining the world around us, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s perfect or even that it’s a good explanation. After all, the medieval Christian mythos also worked pretty well to explain the world ten centuries ago–until it became clear that particular worldview wasn’t equal to the task. At some point, all of those require a leap of faith: that science is an accurate representation of reality, that there is a God and that he spoke through the mouth of prophets or of the Messiah, that there is not and will never be a God.

But as beliefs? They’re not equal. Being a loud atheist is OK; being a loud religious person is… well, generally an embarrassment in most First World nations. Believing in science is reasonable and sensible (in spite of the fact that most people have no idea at all how most of it works or what assumptions it rests on, as Chernyshova points out); believing in God is much less so. As a scientist and a believer, I find it fascinating how some beliefs can end up more valued and/or socially acceptable than others, sometimes to the point of being accepted as gospel truths.

(also, I’m very much fascinated by the idea that faith in science has replaced faith in God, which is worryingly plausible, and possibly explains why I always end up in such acrimonious arguments about the fallibility of science)

PS: I welcome notes and comments on the subject, but could you please try to keep to basic rules of politeness. I have seen the Guardian’s comment thread, and I’m not over-enthusiastic to replicate it here…

Aliette de Bodard is a Computer Engineer who lives and works in France. When not wrestling with Artificial Intelligence problems (aka teaching computers how to analyse what they see), she writes speculative fiction. She is the author of the Aztec fantasy Servant of the Underworld from Angry Robot, and has had short fiction published in Asimov’s, Interzone and the Year’s Best Science Fiction.

Follow Futurismic on Twitter for more nuggets of near-future fun and weirdness!

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scyfilove.com (Liverpool): Torchwood writer John Fay excited by The New World, plus why killing Ianto was ‘right thing to do’

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:09:29 +0000

An exclusive interview over a pint or two in Liverpool with the scriptwriter and all round top bloke

Torchwood writer John Fay excited by The New World, plus why killing Ianto was ‘right thing to do’ has just flown in from scyfilove.com - click through for the rest of the good stuff

Copenhagen Cycle Chic: Sense of a Cyclist

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 20:22:00 +0000

The Original Cycle Chic - straight from Copenhagen to you. All content is copyright Cycle Chic.

For the full photographic glory and the rest of the text, you know where to go. The Original Cycle Chic awaits.

Global Guerillas (John Robb): JOURNAL: Koran Burning

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 20:20:15 +0000

The "Koran Burning" event is a interesting example of some global guerrilla themes.

An unexpected global event occurs. What caused it? The event was produced by an individual, relatively powerless by traditional standards. However, since this is the 21st Century, this individual is able to use unfettered access to a global super-network to leverage and amplify his actions. The event he creates disrupts established global social networks and puts them into turmoil. That turmoil creates the opportunity and sustenance needed to activate dozens of small subnetworks/groups. As these groups interact, a new dynamic is formed.

Climate Progress: Serreze: Arctic is “continuing down in a death spiral. Every bit of evidence we have says the ice is thinning.”

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 20:00:22 +0000

UPDATE: National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) director Mark Serreze slammed the anti-science disinformers yesterday:

There are claims coming from some communities that the Arctic sea ice is recovering, is getting thicker again. That’s simply not the case. It’s continuing down in a death spiral.

Every bit of evidence we have says the ice is thinning. That means there’s less energy needed to melt it out than there used to be.

Certainly the latest analysis from the Polar Science Center bears that out:

Arctic sea ice volume, extent, and area continue to shrink apace as we approach the dramatic end to this year’s melt season. The NSIDC tells me extent dropped to 4.76 million square kilometers today — which is below the majority of even the most recent expert predictions logged with the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH).

Here’s one of the sea ice graphs on the web I haven’t posted before, from the University of Bremen (click to enlarge), one of the resources that SEARCH recommends:

An unexpected source suggested I ask NSIDC scientist Julienne Stroeve to explain what is going on. I did, and she replied:

We’ve dropped to 4.76 today.

All the old ice that was transported into the Chukchi Sea over the winter is gone and about 50% of the old ice in the Beaufort Sea remains.

Arctic-wide there has been a 60% reduction in ice ages 5+ years from the end of April to the end of August. Atmospheric circulation patterns in summer 2010 were not as favorable to ice loss as in 2007 and 2008, so this suggests that the ice may have been on the thin side.

I haven’t looked into detail on the SSTs, and there is compression towards the pole in the Chukchi that is contributing, but given the continued ice loss this month, which is double that of climatology, and faster than in 2007 and 2009 (but a bit slower than 2008), I’m thinking it’s a combination of warmer SSTs and thin ice that is continuing the current ice loss.

The water is warm — see Captain’s log from the Chukchi Sea: “The water temperature is 7.5 degrees. If we weren’t sailing, it would be a great temperature for a swim!”; “North of Point Hope. Water temperature: 9.0˚C.”

Sometimes it is the wind that helps push the ice together and drive down sea ice extent. This year’s rapid end-of-season extent drop is partly due to some compression, but appears to be driven more by warmer waters and thinner ice, which is not a big surprise — see Study: “It is clear … that the precipitous decline in September sea ice extent in recent years is mainly due to the cumulative loss of multiyear ice.”

Human emissions of greenhouse gases are warming the planet and polar amplification is accelerating that process in the Arctic.

Featured Comment (from Steve Bloom): Joe, I’ll suggest again posting this animation (by Jack Taylor via Neven’s Arctic sea ice blog) of UniBremen ice concentrations from 8/26 through 9/8. It demonstrates perfectly the thin and mobile ice conditions plus the effect of the dipole anomaly.

Where on Earth is it unusually warm? Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, which is full of rotten ice
NSIDC director Serreze says, “I think it’s quite possible” we could “break another record this year.”
Arctic death spiral: Naval Postgrad School’s Maslowski “projects ice-free* fall by 2016 (+/- 3 yrs)”: But in the land of make-believe, Watts and Goddard say: “Arctic ice extent and thickness nearly identical to what it was 10 years ago.”

onlineSpin: Google Instant: Our Long-Awaited, Just-in-Time Serendipity?

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:45:13 +0000

Yesterday, Google announced the formal launch of Google Instant, a new feature in its core search product that automatically provides real-time recommendations as you type the letters and words in your search query. Is this a big deal?

The Sartorialist: On the Street....Ninth Ave., NYC

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:38:00 +0000

So what is more important, fashion or style?

I attended a few fashion shows today and I have seen some very "fashionable" young ladies. But, they always come up short when compared to the young ladies doing their own thing.

I know what this season's trends are suppose to be and this young lady doesn't really fit into any of those forecasts and yet she really stood out from all the other pretty young things.

Official google.org Blog: Official data underestimate global water and sanitation crisis, showing need for improved monitoring

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 19:14:42 +0000

Official data on the number of people still lacking access to adequate water and sanitation services prove that the current situation is simply unacceptable: 884 million people lack adequate access to clean water and 2.6 billion lack access to proper sanitation, according to the WHO and UNICEF’s Joint Water Monitoring Program. Disease spreads rapidly with over one billion people forced to defecate outside due to a lack of sanitation and indoor plumbing; in fact, unsafe water and sanitation is the most important environmental cause off ill-health, with millions dying every year as a result of poor water, sanitation and hygiene conditions. Young children in particular tend to suffer from water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea.

Success in water supply and sanitation interventions is commonly measured in terms of the number of wells dug, public water points connected or public toilets constructed. This is what the official data - available at national scale only - reflect. The assumption is that every water point and every toilet will provide adequate and sustainable services to a fixed number of people. Too often, though, wells run dry, hand pumps break, toilets go “out-of-service,” or the quality of the water provided is not safe.

As a result the official data seriously underestimate the water and sanitation crisis. A realistic assessment requires continuous monitoring at local levels. Modern technology now makes that possible.

The H2.0 group of partners set out to demonstrate that community level monitoring of operational water and sanitation services is feasible at national scales. Google.org is one of the H2.0 partners. We have co-funded the effort and provided technical support. Yesterday the group launched the H2.0 platform at a World Water Week event in Stockholm. Over the past several years, the partners have collected detailed water and sanitation service data and developed a data management and mapping platform. This platform will enable users open access to analyse, visualise and interact with the data. We want to support government and development partners prioritize water investments and help NGOs and service providers assess their performance in a transparent manner.

The data show that the number of people with access to safe and affordable water is significantly lower than official estimates have previously shown:

For Kenya, the initial analysis of data collected by the Water Services Trust Fund shows, according to Han Seur of GTZ, that: “In over a thousand low income urban areas with a total population over 4.5 million less than 25% have access to safe and affordable water.”
For Tanzania WaterAid and partners mapped over 25 thousand rural public water points in 2006. Vincent Casey of WaterAid summarized their report as: “Water point data mapped by WaterAid Tanzania has demonstrated that nearly half (46%) of rural water points are not functional. A quarter of all new water points are no longer working just two years after installation.”
For Zanzibar, according to Graham Alabaster of UN-Habitat: “Counting only those who are paying less 10% of their income for water as having affordable access, the water access rate had to be revised from 90% down to 22%.”

Unfortunately this information implies that the water and sanitation crisis is affecting two to three times more people in the areas surveyed than the official data suggest.

Better data on water services can help consumers hold their water service provider accountable. H2.0 partner ITC developed the Human Sensor Web, a system that allows Zanzibar citizens to report water outages by SMS and receive alert messages on water quality and availability.

To understand the issue and invest in solutions that work, we need to stop measuring success as construction of taps and toilets, and start measuring success by monitoring the number of people with sustainable access to safe and affordable water and sanitation services.

Posted by Frank Rijsberman, Director Program, Google.org and Chair, H2.0 Consortium

Left Foot Forward: Our litmus test of the state of UK politics today

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:51:40 +0000

This is a joint posting by Left Foot Forward, ConservativeHome and Liberal Democrat Voice

The leading blogs of left, right and centre, Left Foot Forward, ConservativeHome and Liberal Democrat Voice have teamed up to publish a special, limited edition newspaper – Litmus – looking at the key issues facing Britain today, which will be distributed at the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat Party conferences.

It may not have been the Internet election that many had predicted but websites and social networks played a greater role than in any previous election. The blogosphere, in particular, grew up. A medium which had sometimes been criticised for its trivialisation of politics became the place for incisive commentary, rapid fact checking, and serious debates on the future direction of Britain.

In Litmus, we look at some of those big issues; the economy, immigration, climate change, social justice, electoral reform and technology:

• With deficit reduction essential but myriad concerns about a ‘double dip’ recession, Labour MP Chuka Umunna, Lib Dem blogger David Boyle, and Policy Exchange’s Chief Economist Andrew Lilico ask what role can the tax system can play in getting us out of this mess;

• Public concern over immigration was a key issue during the election but business concern about shutting the door is currently making the headlines. Immigration Minister Damian Green MP, Lib Dem blogger Dinti Batstone, and ippr’s Senior Research Fellow Sarah Mulley examine whether Britain is full;

• The Copenhagen conference last year ended in failure but 2010 is likely to be the hottest on record. Climate Secretary Chris Huhne, Green party leader Caroline Lucas MP, and Conservative Home editor Tim Montgomerie ask whether Britain should lead the world in tackling climate change;

• With a national debate raging over the fairness of the Coalition’s Budget, Conservative MP Therese Coffey, Equality Minister Lynne Featherstone, and Labour MP Kate Green ask whether the Big Society can defeat poverty;

• A referendum on the Alternative Vote is due in September amid widespread Conservative opposition and concern from Labour over boundary reforms. Lib Dem Voice editor Mark Pack, Left Foot Forward’s Will Straw, and blogging peer Lord Norton examine whether electoral and Lords reform change anything; and finally

• Labour MP and former minister focusing on tech issues Tom Watson, Liberal Democrat peer Richard Allan, and internet entrepreneur Stephan Shakespeare each answer the question: Will technology kill bureaucracy?

We want you to join the debate, here at Left Foot Forward, and on ConservativeHome and Liberal Deomcrat Voice. Please send us your personal views on any of the questions, or post comments below. We’ll include the best in the paper itselg. The deadline for reader comments to be included is close of play tomorrow.

Litmus will be available free to download from next week; more details to come.

Global Voices (India): India: No Safeguard Against Misuse Of Law

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:49:22 +0000

By Rezwan

All laws are misused in India and there are no safeguards against misuse of laws, says Sumanth at Desicritics.

Climate Progress: Science scorned: The journal Nature warns, “The anti-science strain pervading the right wing in the United States is the last thing the country needs in a time of economic challenge.”

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:44:57 +0000

US citizens face economic problems that are all too real, and the country’s future crucially depends on education, science and technology as it faces increasing competition from China and other emerging science powers…. Yet the public often buys into anti-science, anti-regulation agendas that are orchestrated by business interests and their sponsored think tanks and front groups.

That’s from a powerful editorial published today by the journal Nature titled, “Science scorned” (subs. req’d). It is an important message that, apparently, few science journals and leaders in this country have the guts to spell out.

Then again, Nature is not merely one of the top journals in the world, it is one of the rare publications of any kind that understands what we are up against — see Nature: “Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.”

Here are extended excerpts from this must-read piece:

The anti-science strain pervading the right wing in the United States is the last thing the country needs in a time of economic challenge.

“The four corners of deceit: government, academia, science and media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit. That’s how they promulgate themselves; it is how they prosper.” It is tempting to laugh off this and other rhetoric broadcast by Rush Limbaugh, a conservative US radio host, but Limbaugh and similar voices are no laughing matter.

There is a growing anti-science streak on the American right that could have tangible societal and political impacts on many fronts — including regulation of environmental and other issues and stem-cell research. Take the surprise ousting last week of Lisa Murkowski, the incumbent Republican senator for Alaska, by political unknown Joe Miller in the Republican primary for the 2 November midterm congressional elections. Miller, who is backed by the conservative ‘Tea Party movement’, called his opponent’s acknowledgement of the reality of global warming “exhibit ‘A’ for why she needs to go”.

The right-wing populism that is flourishing in the current climate of economic insecurity echoes many traditional conservative themes, such as opposition to taxes, regulation and immigration. But the Tea Party and its cheerleaders, who include Limbaugh, Fox News television host Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who famously decried fruitfly research as a waste of public money), are also tapping an age-old US political impulse — a suspicion of elites and expertise.

Denialism over global warming has become a scientific cause célèbre within the movement. Limbaugh, for instance, who has told his listeners that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists”, has called climate-change science “the biggest scam in the history of the world”. The Tea Party’s leanings encompass religious opposition to Darwinian evolution and to stem-cell and embryo research — which Beck has equated with eugenics. The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government….

In the current poisoned political atmosphere, the defenders of science have few easy remedies. Reassuringly, polls continue to show that the overwhelming majority of the US public sees science as a force for good, and the anti-science rumblings may be ephemeral. As educators, scientists should redouble their efforts to promote rationalism, scholarship and critical thought among the young, and engage with both the media and politicians to help illuminate the pressing science-based issues of our time.

Hear! Hear!

Global Voices (India): India: Under-reporting Communal Clashes In Bengal

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:32:55 +0000

By Rezwan

Greatbong at Random Thoughts Of A Demented Mind criticizes the Indian government and the local media for trying to downplay the news of the recent communal clashes in Deganga, West Bengal.

Futurismic: Guilty Pleasures

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:01:30 +0000

Escapism gets a lot of bad press. Some mainstream critics use it as a derogatory term when dismissing genre literature; some serious genre writers go to great lengths to prove that their books are more than “simple” escapism. However, escapism has its place.

Part of the reason we read science fiction is to be transported into new imaginative realms, and this is especially true in cinema. After a hard day of work, what better way to unwind than with an hour and a half of relatively mindless spectacle?

As we’re bombarded with doom-laden news reports and press anxiety over terrorism, global disaster, and societal collapse, films such as Cloverfield, Independence Day, and 28 Days Later provide us with a cathartic release. They enable us to explore our fears in a secure context. While watching the film, we can wonder “what would I do?”, and take reassurance from the fact that the protagonists and their families survive whatever disaster has befallen the world.

And then again, sometimes we just want to see a fleet of spaceships blow the living hell out of famous American landmarks.

In the 1950s, they called these films “B-movies”, and they primarily dealt with society’s fears concerning radiation (The Amazing Colossal Man), nuclear war (The Day The Earth Stood Still) and communism (Invasion of The Body Snatchers). Their modern counterparts, the Hollywood ‘blockbusters’, address our modern concerns in a similar way: with the focus primarily on entertainment.

Yes, they’re sensational and yes they’re frequently implausible; but they have their place. Gritty realism cannot transport us from the day-to-day world. When I’ve been writing all day and I need something to take my mind off the plot for a couple of hours, I don’t want a film I’m going to have to concentrate on, or one that reminds me how grim the real world can be. Instead, I’d rather sit down with a bowl of popcorn to watch Armageddon, Back To The Future, or Aliens.

Do you have films you revisit over and over again? What are your guilty viewing pleasures? Please feel free to share your recommendations in the comments section below.

Gareth L Powell is the author of the novels The Recollection and Silversands, and the short story collection The Last Reef. He is also a regular contributor to Interzone and can be found online at www.garethlpowell.com

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Climate Progress: The coming climate election: Tea party extremists backed by Big Oil and corporate polluters want to stop and then reverse all efforts to advance clean energy or avoid catastrophic global warming

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:42:47 +0000

The chattering class predicts this will be the year of the Tea Party because its members feel more passion about their issues. Despite repeated blows to its moral during the past year, the climate action movement must not lose its passion — or this November’s elections.

Guess blogger Bill Becker is Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project,

On November 2, America’s attention will focus on the mid-term elections for Congress. But those of us who believe government must act against global climate change had better pay attention to another set of races: the election of 37 governors and scores of state legislators.

In the years ahead, the people we elect to our 50 statehouses may be more important than the people we elect to Congress.

Consider the impact on international climate treaty negotiations. At the end of November, negotiators from more than 190 nations will gather for the 16^th Conference of the Parties in Cancun to continue working on a global climate pact.

Few experts expect that a treaty will be signed in Cancun, but there’s hope the meeting will narrow the gaps nations have failed to bridge in the negotiations so far. One positive development would be a concrete, credible, verifiable plan by the United States to cut its greenhouse emissions.

The chief U.S. negotiator, Todd Stern, has just reaffirmed Obama’s goal to cut the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. But with no climate bill from Congress again this year, U.S. negotiators reportedly are pondering how to show the United States will achieve the goal with “other available tools”.

There’s the Clean Air Act, of course, but it’s a path with lots of litigation ahead. Many other tools belong to states and cities and already are in place – for example, utility regulation, energy codes for buildings, public benefit funds, renewable energy and energy efficiency portfolio standards, and zoning that influences how much energy people need for mobility.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) issued a report in July that put a number on what states are doing with their tools. WRI counted the climate actions announced or put into effect so far by 25 states and the federal government. Fully implemented, the combined policies would cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 14 percent by 2020, most of the way to Obama’s goal.

Other policies in the pipeline could result in deeper reductions. For example, WRI’s calculations did not include:

Federal policies to reduce vehicle miles traveled;
Measures to decrease net emissions by increasing carbon sequestration in forests and farmlands;
Actions cities are taking beyond the requirements of state or federal law. Of special interest are the more than 1,000 U.S. cities that have signed the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement.

Armed with WRI’s documentation, U.S. negotiators can go to Cancun with more than aspirations. They won’t have one big national climate bill, but they will have an inventory of national and sub-national commitments that show the United States is moving in the right direction.

WRI’s calculations must be considered qualified evidence of progress, however, because the states’ contribution to emission reductions depends on whether they fully implement the policies they’ve announced.

That’s where the November 2 election comes in. The danger is that voters will elect governors, legislators, mayors and city council members who are opposed to, agnostic about, or frightened to implement the climate and energy policies their predecessors embraced.

Although global climate change is not an inherently partisan topic – some Republican governors have been vocal supporters of climate action, while some coal-state Democrats have been opposed — conservative Republicans are trying hard to make it a wedge issue. Politico reports that Republican candidates for Congress and governorships are becoming more vocal in denying climate science and opposing climate action.

Opinion polls show that while a national climate bill has bipartisan support among likely voters, considerably more Democrats than Republicans favor action. So, however imperfect, domination by one political party or the other has become an indicator of whether a state will move boldly to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

The governorships up for reelection this year are evenly split between Democrats (19) and Republicans (18). Democrats control both houses in 27 legislatures, while Republicans control both houses in 14. Control of eight legislatures is split between the parties.

The Washington Post reports that at the national level, the Republican and Democrat organizations are focusing on about 100 competitive legislative races.

The national parties are said to be approaching statehouse elections with the intensity usually given presidential elections. The reason: The outcome will determine the composition of Congress for years to come.

Every 10 years the Census results in reapportionment of House seats among the states based on their newly counted populations. States that gain or lose seats redraw the boundaries of their congressional districts. The process invites gerrymandering – the manipulation of district boundaries to favor one political party over the others. As a result, the party that controls the state capitol usually controls redistricting. As the Washington Post explains:

Redistricting plays a central political role very 10 years, but the stakes seem particularly high this cycle…Republicans see an opportunity to improve their prospects for winning back Congress and controlling it for years to come by shaking loose the Democrats’ grip on state governments.

The Post quotes Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, that legislative races in 16 states could control the remapping of districts for nearly 200 congressional seats.

Current polls notwithstanding, the biggest issue on November’s ballots is not illegal immigration, health care, the federal deficit, greed on Wall Street, creeping socialism, Glenn Beck’s megalomaniacal ownership of godliness and patriotism, same-sex marriages or even jobs. The most enduring, destructive and irreversible damage to God’s creation and our way of life will be global climate change, and it already has begun.

For that reason, November 2 is more than a mid-term election; it’s a climate election. It will influence public policy at all levels of government in the United States during a decade that leading scientists tell us is crucial if we are to avoid the worst consequences of an unstable climate.

– Bill Becker is Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, an initiative to help the next President of the United States take decisive action on global warming and energy security in his or her first 100 days in office.

Dark Mountain Project: Deep Waters | ‘Melancholia’ by Dan Grace

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:34:46 +0000

On Tuesday, Benjamin Morris opened our Deep Waters project with The Thin Brown Line, his account of a visit to Barataria Bay. We continue this series, which features work written in response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, with a new poem from the English poet Dan Grace.

Melancholia

The skin of my mood
is easily pierced.
A dead bee splayed
on a laminate floor,

as ungainly in death as in life.
Carried out into the light,
on the step,
its curled abdomen

cradled in paper, a full stop,
to punctuate the break
between the animate
and the not.

And a bramble cut
stretched across my knuckle
splits wide open
as I watch

a young sparrow at the feeder
eyed by the crow,
the poppies blood red petals
spilled by the wind

and beneath it all an excess
of bile, black bile, rising
somewhere
out in deep water.

Biographical note:
Born in Leytonstone, east London, Dan Grace has been migrating northwards ever since. He is currently settled in Sheffield and, when not writing, he works in his local library. His first published poem appeared in Dark Mountain: Issue 1.

Left Foot Forward: Irresponsible media have turned Qur’an burning into an issue

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:09:44 +0000

What is the similarity between building a place of worship and burning religious scripture? Well, according to Sarah Palin, both are an “unnecessary provocation”.

Her comparison is obviously ridiculous. Not least because a clumsily articulated plan to build a Muslim community centre near to Ground Zero cannot be compared to a calculated and provocative media stunt designed to cause offence to Muslims by burning the Qur’an.

However, there are a couple of undeniable similarlities between these two cases.

Firstly, whatever one’s views on the ethical rights or wrongs of those specific people choosing to build ‘Cordoba House’/'Park 51′ in that specific location, they have a legal right to do so. Similarly, Terry Jones has a legal right to burn the Qur’an if that’s what he really wants to do.

The only other similarity between the plans is that there has been a massively and violently disproportionate response to both.

With ‘Park 51′/’Cordoba House’, the plans remained uncontroversial until Glenn Beck of Fox News decided to stir things up, creating the frenzy we see today where a crowd turns on a passerby simply on the suspicion that he might be Muslim. In the case of the Qur’an burning, the plans were announced online. This sparked outraged reactions on Facebook which swiftly spiralled into a full-blown media maelstrom. Now, the angry reactions and heightened emotions around the world have the potential to do untold damage.

Without the present media kerfuffle, this plan by a small man at a small Church in a small town would not have had the impact it has. Rather than sparking anger around the world, the event would have passed relatively without notice. Instead, it may well turn into a rehash of the Danish cartoons fiasco which saw embassies being burned in Damascus and fatal protests in Afghanistan.

However, it is not just the journalists who are responsible for how things have developed. Well meaning politicians have fanned the fire of this controversy, ensuring that it will keep burning and able to cause more division and damage. Condemnations for the plans to burn the Qur’an have now come from Downing Street to Washington, both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama have asked the Church not to go ahead. Even Angela Merkel and Tony Blair have now weighed in, with Tony releasing a statement that “Rather than burn the Koran, I would encourage people to read it.”

Well intentioned as these statements are, it would have been more useful for these figures to say “offensive as it is to burn the Qur’an, this is one man’s plan in another country – this is not a story”. With non-Muslim world leaders expressing their outrage, this feeds into a narrative that Muslims around the world should be outraged by the threatened actions of a small group of people in Florida and should react in some way.

Inevitably, Islamist rentagob Anjem Choudary has now announced an international ‘burn the American flag’ day on September 11th – the same day as Terry Jones’s ‘International burn a Qur’an day’. Choudary also claims that he and his followers will be burning the American flag outside the American embassy in London on that day. His symbiotic relationship with the American right was recently highlighted by Fox’s Glenn Beck’s usage of a Choudary interview to support his attack on the ‘Park 51′/’Cordoba House’ plans. Either way, he is now planning one provocative stunt to respond to another provocative stunt.

As discussed before on Left Foot Forward, the result is a feedback loop where the extremes on both sides shout louder and louder whilst the moderate mainstream are deafened from both sides.

In that sense, President Obama is right. The Qur’an burning will be a “recruitment bonanza for al-Qaeda”, just as General David Petraeus has warned that it will endanger American lives in Afghanistan. However, the danger comes less from the actions of one small church in Florida than from the media frenzy which global leaders have conspired in creating.

Responsible journalists and politicians would, rather than emphasising their massive outrage and disgust at the actions of a small group of extremists, cut these individuals and groups down to size. Rather than turning them into threatening bogey monsters whose roar can shake the world, politicians and journalists should be dismissing them as offensive irrelevancies.

Climate Progress: The WashPost gets it wrong again: The replacement of old technologies by new ones drives growth

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:05:55 +0000

Guest blogger Kate Gordon is CAP’s VP for Energy and Climate Policy.

In yesterday’s Washington Post, Peter Whoriskey argues – predictably for the Post these days – that making lightbulbs more efficient puts Americans out of work. The last US-based GE factory to make old-school incandescent lightbulbs is going out of business, and here is Whoriskey’s explanation:

During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology, might stem the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas.

But the real story is, as usual, more complicated. First of all, the U.S. is not the only country to move beyond wasteful incandescent lightbulbs, which burn out ten times faster than fluorescent bulbs. The European Union, Australia, Canada, Russia, Brazil, and Argentina are among the other countries that have passed regulations to phase out these old-school bulbs. So it isn’t a question of the U.S. driving these manufacturers overseas; instead, we are talking about a global shift to newer, more efficient technology.

Second, the phase-out of incandescent bulbs may be bad for this one factory, but it is not a job killer. In fact, U.S. regulations on energy efficient lightbulbs have created jobs across the lighting industry, in research, development, manufacture, and sales of compact fluorescent and LED bulbs. The company Cree, for example, employs over 1400 workers in its factory in Durham, North Carolina, where it manufactures LED bulbs for a variety of uses. Not only are these American jobs, these are American exports: Cree famously provided the LED bulbs that powered the video boards and the Water Cube at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Just as the move away from snail mail and toward the internet cost some postal service jobs but created thousands of high-tech careers, so does the move away from yesterday’s energy technologies toward a new energy future hurt some industries while creating new jobs in others. The key is for the old industries to adapt and innovate, by leveraging existing assets – like skilled workers and manufacturing facilities – to use in new technology development. When the automobile replaced the horse-drawn carriage, some blacksmiths lost their jobs. But others leveraged their metalworking skills to become the first auto mechanics of the 20^th century. Programs like the advanced energy manufacturing tax credit, otherwise known as the “48C program” after its section in the tax code, can help American companies innovate. But even this program, which was part of the Recovery Act and has bipartisan support, has not been renewed by Congress.

This leads to the final point: in order to innovate and compete in the industries of the new global energy economy, companies need the certainty that the U.S. is actually going to be a player in that economy. Right now, they do not have that certainty. The Congress has failed to pass a comprehensive climate and energy strategy that works to create markets, facilitate financing, and provide the infrastructure for clean and efficient energy technologies. Those countries that have these policies – countries like China and the European Union nations – have surged ahead in clean energy patents and renewable energy installations, while decreasing their energy demand and carbon emissions. China, while the world’s largest polluter, is now also the world’s largest investor in clean energy technology. In contrast, as venture capitalist John Doerr pointed out at this week’s National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, of the top 10 companies in three areas — solar, wind, and batteries globally — the U.S. has only 4 companies of the 30. Imagine, he said, if that were true of the Internet, telecom, and information technology.

Unless the U.S. moves forward with a clean energy plan – including critical support for manufacturers to retool their facilities and become part of a new global energy marketplace – we will continue to fall behind, and factories like the GE lightbulb plant will continue to close their doors. It’s not about government action killing jobs; it’s about government inaction killing any hope for sustainable economic growth.

– Guest blogger Kate Gordon is the VP for Energy and Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Left Foot Forward: Sun’s false claim Ed M’s in the pocket of the unions

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:50:42 +0000

Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign may not have the money that his older brother David’s does, but he is sure that the support of 4,500 volunteers has made up for it. Figures released by the Electoral Commission today show that Ed’s fundraising last month overtook David’s by nearly £21,500.

Today’s ‘slur’ in the Sun, which describes various unions of trying to “buy” Miliband junior suggests that they are trying to pay for influence.

“Unite spent £200,000 on pro-Ed letters to 1.1million members. It also spent £20,000 on texts. Ed’s campaign got £28,000 from the GMB in July, and a £105,000 donation from Unite will be confirmed today.

“In return, they want Ed to boost their power if he ever gets to No10.”

In an email sent to members last night, Ed said:

“We still need your help in these final days if we are to make our strong campaign count, win this election and show that we can turn those values into action for the people we serve.”

So far, the campaign has raised a total of £328,000 with £133,000 donated by trade unions and £95,000 coming from small donations.

Other payments disclosed to the Electoral Commission show that David’s campaign, which is said to have raised over £450,000 since May, has taken a variety of donations, including from unions. Ed Balls has had £100,000 donated to him by author, Ken Follett, and an additional £23,000 from donors such as the Communication Workers Union. Andy Burnham has taken £37,4000 from businesses and individuals, including footballer Jamie Carragher.

Diane Abbott is yet to disclose any donations.

All information regarding disclosed donations to all five candidates is available from the Electoral Commission.

Climate Progress: Energy and Global Warming News for September 9th: China Skirts trade rules on clean energy; California close to approving 4,300 MW solar by year’s end

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:44:38 +0000

… much of China’s clean energy success lies in aggressive government policies that help this crucial export industry in ways most other governments do not. These measures risk breaking international rules to which China and almost all other nations subscribe, according to some trade experts interviewed by The New York Times.

On Clean Energy, China Skirts Rules

Changsha and two adjacent cities are emerging as a center of clean energy manufacturing. They are churning out solar panels for the American and European markets, developing new equipment to manufacture the panels and branching into turbines that generate electricity from wind. By contrast, clean energy companies in the United States and Europe are struggling. Some have started cutting jobs and moving operations to China in ventures with local partners.

The booming Chinese clean energy sector, now more than a million jobs strong, is quickly coming to dominate the production of technologies essential to slowing global warming and other forms of air pollution. Such technologies are needed to assure adequate energy as the world’s population grows by nearly a third, to nine billion people by the middle of the century, while oil and coal reserves dwindle.

But much of China’s clean energy success lies in aggressive government policies that help this crucial export industry in ways most other governments do not. These measures risk breaking international rules to which China and almost all other nations subscribe, according to some trade experts interviewed by The New York Times.

A visit to one of Changsha’s newest success stories offers an example of the government’s methods. Hunan Sunzone Optoelectronics, a two-year-old company, makes solar panels and ships close to 95 percent of them to Europe. Now it is opening sales offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles in preparation for a push into the American market next February.

To help Sunzone, the municipal government transferred to the company 22 acres of valuable urban land close to downtown at a bargain-basement price. That reduced the company’s costs and greatly increased its worth and attractiveness to investors.

Meanwhile, a state bank is preparing to lend to the company at a low interest rate, and the provincial government is sweetening the deal by reimbursing the company for most of the interest payments, to help Sunzone double its production capacity.

Heavily subsidized land and loans for an exporter like Sunzone are the rule, not the exception, for clean energy businesses in Changsha and across China, Chinese executives said in interviews over the last three months.

But this kind of help violates World Trade Organization rules banning virtually all subsidies to exporters, and could be successfully challenged at the agency’s tribunals in Geneva, said Charlene Barshefsky, who was the United States trade representative during the second Clinton administration and negotiated the terms of China’s entry to the organization in 2001.

If the country with the subsidies fails to remove them, other countries can retaliate by imposing steep tariffs on imports from that country.

China Clean-Energy Aid to Draw U.S. Trade Complaint

The United Steelworkers union said it will file a trade complaint with the U.S. government against renewable-energy products from China, urging investigation of subsidies and preferences given by that nation.

The case “reveals five major areas of protectionist and predatory practices utilized by the Chinese to develop their green sector at the expense of production and job creation here in the U.S.,” the American union said in a statement, indicating specifics will be provided later today.

The complaint that China is doing too much to help its companies expand their clean-energy sales contrasts with international efforts to encourage renewable energy and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in order to curb global warming. Nations including the U.S. and China plan to meet in Cancun. Mexico at the end of November to renew climate-change talks. Legislation to limit carbon emissions and set requirements for the use of renewable energy have stalled in the U.S. Senate.

The union’s filing will be made to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. The Obama administration will have 45 days to decide if it will investigate the petition under U.S. law.

…

Asia makes more than half the world’s wind and solar energy equipment and is widening its lead. China invested $34.5 billion in low-carbon energy technologies last year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The U.S. spent $18.6 billion.

China may spend about 5 trillion yuan ($738 billion) in the next decade developing cleaner sources of energy to reduce emissions from burning oil and coal, Jiang Bing, head of the National Energy Administration’s planning and development department, said in July.

Attractive Markets

Ernst & Young said this week that China overtook the U.S. for the first time to lead a quarterly index compiled by the accounting firm of the most attractive countries for renewable energy projects.

A U.S. Energy Department report released Aug. 4 found that a growing share of wind-turbine equipment is being supplied domestically, as companies from the U.S. and abroad seek to minimize transportation costs and currency risks. U.S. content increased to about 60 percent in 2009 from about 50 percent the previous year, the department found.

A wind turbine contains about 8,000 parts, and many of those may not be made in the U.S.

China-US collaboration on clean energy research

Chinese and US scientists will be collaborating on research into clean energy with millions of dollars in backing by the two nations, according to a US national laboratory.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California said Wednesday it was part of a US team that will receive 25 million dollars during the next five years from a joint US-China Clean Energy Research Center.

The team, led by West Virginia University, will develop and test new technology for capturing and storing carbon gas considered a main culprit in climate change.

“We believe strongly that cooperation between the United States and China on clean coal and carbon capture and sequestration is critical to national security and global energy and environmental interests,” said Julio Friedmann, director of the carbon management program at the lab.

A second US team, headed by the University of Michigan, will get 25 million dollars in funding to improve technology for clean vehicles, according to the lab. Chinese research partners were to be announced in coming months.

California Energy Commission approves Abengoa Mojave Solar Project

State regulators on Wednesday unanimously cleared the Abengoa Mojave Solar Project for construction, pushing California closer to approving 4,300 megawatts of solar power by the end of the year.

The 250-megawatt Abengoa project is one of nine solar proposals angling for the go-ahead from the California Energy Commission by the end of 2010, when federal stimulus funds expire.

The commission unanimously approved the 250-megawatt Beacon Solar Energy Project at the end of August and is likely to consider the 1,000-megawatt Blythe Solar Power Project next week.

The Abengoa project will be set up in San Bernardino County, on more than 1,700 acres of private land about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Construction, set to start in the fourth quarter of 2010, will be managed by a subsidiary of Abengoa Solar Inc., itself a subsidiary of Spanish giant Abengoa. In early July, President Obama announced a $1.45-billion federal loan guarantee for Abengoa to construct its 250-megawatt Solana project southwest of Phoenix.

Clean Energy Entrepreneurs Face More Obstacles in U.S.

With erect posture and clear gray eyes, Chuck Provini still looks like the Marine who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1969 and was repeatedly decorated for bravery in Vietnam.

He fumes at strangers who call him a traitor for agreeing to manufacture in Zhuzhou, China, a new solar panel production device that his company developed in the United States.

“I love my country,” said Mr. Provini, chief executive of 10-employee Natcore Technology in Red Bank, N.J. “It makes me crazy that I’ve got countries that want to do things with us, but not here.”

Mr. Provini acknowledges that further refinements are needed to the technology, which involves replacing a costly furnace in the manufacture of solar panels with a room-temperature process. But his experience in trying to commercialize it highlights the challenges that clean energy entrepreneurs face in the United States — and the opportunities that await in China.

American venture capitalists are the main source of money for many clean energy start-ups because most commercial banks are leery of lending to businesses with no proven revenue. But venture capitalists are reluctant to make long-term financial commitments, Mr. Provini said, and want clear timetables for when they can get their money back with a profit.

A Regenerative Feat for Solar Cells

Leaves aren’t nearly as efficient as photovoltaic panels in harnessing the power of the sun. The typical plant captures just 3 to 6 percent of the sunlight available to it, compared with about 15 percent for the average solar panel. But when it comes to cost-efficiency, Mother Nature has mankind beat by a mile.

Patrick Gillooly/M.I.T.A solution with nanomaterials generated solar power while imitating the self-repairing qualities of plant cells.

Unlike silicon wafers, leaves require no manufacturing, just water, air, sunlight and a few common minerals to grow. And chloroplasts, the tiny engines within plant cells that drive the photosynthetic process, need no maintenance: in full sunlight, they break down and reassemble the proteins they use to convert carbon dioxide into sugar every 45 minutes or so.

This week, in one of several recent breakthroughs merging natural processes and solar technology, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology described the creation of solar cells just a few billionths of a meter wide that mimic this ability of plants’ chemical engines to self-repair and regenerate.

“We’re basically imitating tricks that nature has discovered over millions of years,” Michael Strano, a professor of chemical engineering who led the team behind the discovery, said in an M.I.T. news release.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben’s quest to bring solar panel to White House

Esteemed environmentalist launches PR stunt to get President Obama’s attention? Yep, we’re officially back from summer break. Goodbye flip-flops, hello political theater.

Bill McKibben, author of best-selling “The End of Nature” and an expert on global warming, is heading to Washington with one of the solar panels originally installed at the White House in 1979. His goal: to present it to Obama on Friday and urge him to reinstall it on the roof, therefore inspiring millions of like-minded citizens to go greener.

“When Michelle Obama put the garden in the White House, it was one of the things that caused seed sales to jump 30 percent,” McKibben told us. “We’d rather have a climate bill than solar panels on the roof, but we’re not going to get it this year. This is a way to help build visibility for the steps we need to take. In a way, it’s a reboot of 1979.”

To tout clean energy bona fides, President Jimmy Carter had 32 panels installed — which the Reagan administration took down and stowed away in a government warehouse. A professor at Maine’s Unity College later sought out the panels, which were installed on the school’s cafeteria roof. Now one of the 6-by-3-foot plates (they’re old but still work) is on its way to D.C.

McKibben, who’s organizing a huge environmental rally next month on 10/10/10, left Maine on Tuesday with stops in Boston, New York and Washington. He scored an appearance on David Letterman’s show last week — much wonkier than your typical late-night fare. Now he’s angling for a splashy photo op at the White House, although nothing is set yet. “We keep hearing, ‘We’ll see’ and ‘It’s complicated,’” he said. “Compared with the other things Obama has to do, it seems relatively easy. They can’t filibuster the roof.”

World’s Largest Wave Power Hub Goes Live

Ten miles off the Cornish town of Hayle, 180 feet below the sea, lies a 12 tonne four way plug which cost $64 million to build and install. Called the Wave Hub, it can have four 5MW marine power devices connected to it at any one time and is connected to the main national grid by a 15 mile length of cable.

Now, 5MW is peanuts compared to some of the projections for marine power installations; for example just up the coast it’s been estimated that the world’s largest tidal power generator could generate 187,000 MWh/year.

However permanent installation is not the aim of the Wave Hub. Rather, it’s all about providing a live scenario test bed for marine energy developers to come and test and tweak their inventions. If it just so happens it provides energy for 20,000 homes, then so much the better!

The first testers scheduled at the Wave Hub are New Jersey based Ocean Power Technologies, whose buoy based design is already live off the north coast of Spain. Their stint at the Wave Hub is to test out a new design which would see the buoys’ output increase by over three times.

Philadelphia To Recover Subway Trains’ Brake Forces In Huge Battery For Reuse/Resale

Having a battery could someday be compared to having gold mine. Take Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, for example. They’ going to use a huge battery and charge it from the subway’s braking trains. The energy recovered thus will either be sold back to the grid or reused for acceleration.

Viridity Energy, a smart-grid company, is behind the project, having received $900,000 from the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority for the pilot program costing $1.5 million.

One of the “hottest” lines in Philadelphia, Market-Frankford,will benefit the system, for the moment. 1.5 MW of energy will be recovered in much the same fashion that hybrid/electric cars and locomotives recover their braking force – by reversing the motors to work as generators.

Joseph M. Casey, general manager of the transportation authority, says the system will provide measurable gains in energy efficiency and voltage stability in a critical mass transit corridor. Audrey Zibelman, president and CEO of Viridity Energy, says the goal is to improve the transit agency’s operational efficiency, reduce its carbon output and cut its costs.

A $500,000 saving in energy costs is estimated after the system will go online in the spring of 2011. Plans of further expanding it already exist, but their accomplishment only depends on the results of the pilot project. Anyway, theory says that if the regenerative braking system would be applied at all of the 33 substations, a cut of 40 percent would be possible.

Climate Progress: Koch-funded oil rally calls global warming a “hoax,” dismisses oil spill, and attacks Democrats

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:24:43 +0000

Beginning last week, the oil industry launched a national astroturfing effort called “Rally for Jobs.” The events, which are being held across the nation, are backed by right-wing billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. They launched a nearly identical campaign last summer that was widely mocked for its obvious astroturfing after it was revealed that 15 of the 21 Energy Citizens events were actually planned by oil industry lobbyists.

ThinkProgress attended one of the rallies yesterday in Canton, Ohio and reports on what happened.

What was billed as an organic grassroots jobs rally quickly descended into attacks on three things the Kochs most oppose: global warming science, oil safety regulations, and Democrats. One of the speakers, Sgt. Dennis Bartow, called global warming a “hoax.” He was joined by Karen Wright, CEO of the gas company Ariel Corporation, who ridiculed climate change as “questionable science” and referred to pollutants as “so-called carbon dioxide emissions.” Wright went on to rail against “so-called green jobs” that were “dubious” and “phony.”

Other speakers later dismissed attacks on the oil industry’s safety record, particularly in the wake of the Gulf oil spill. Radio host Matt Patrick called the deepwater drilling moratorium “ridiculous” and compared it to a ban on building houses because one caught on fire. Wright “did a quick Google search” on the oil industry’s safety record and openly wondered why Congress doesn’t ban cars because the number of auto accident deaths far exceeds the number of oil industry deaths. Wright also gleefully proclaimed that the oil spill is “all gone,” a claim that is easily dispelled with a quick Google search.

Many of the speakers also rallied the crowd against Ohio’s Democrats in Congress. For example, after telling audience members that he wasn’t going to call out particular politicians nor indict a single political party, Patrick — literally ten seconds later — called out only Democrats by name:

I’m not going to sit here and tell you it’s all one political party or that it’s this politician or that politician. You’ve got some people right now in the state of Ohio that want nothing more than to tax small businesses right out of business. You know who they are. And John Boccieri and Zack Space and Tim Ryan and Betty Sutton and Charlie Wilson, this message is for you. We’re coming after you. Good luck in November!

Of the approximately 400 who showed up for the rally, “most arrived in four buses” that were paid for and organized by oil and gas companies. ThinkProgress caught up with one of the attendees, who confirmed that Marathon Petroleum arranged a bus to bring over 50 of its employees to the rally.

Watch the highlights here:

This cross-post is by Scott Keyes via Think Progress.

New Yorker exposes Koch brothers along with their greenwashing and whitewashing Smithsonian exhibit

feeling listless: "Einsteinium..."

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:24:12 +0000

Science "I'd like to take you now on wings of song, as it were, to try and help you forget, perhaps, for a while, your drab, wretched lives."

"I hope you've all been taking notes, because there'll be a short quiz next period."

Global Voices (Cuba): Cuba: Change the Model

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:09:28 +0000

By Janine Mendes-Franco

Of Fidel Castro's admission during an interview that the Cuban economic model doesn't work, Along the Malecon says: “Most of 11 million Cubans endure great economic hardship because the Cuban economy does not work. Castro should not only acknowledge that, as he evidently did, he should take bold steps to change it.

BBC College of Journalism: Where is your mobile phone?

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:58:43 +0000

It's almost certain to be within a metre of you right now, and it's more likely than not that you left it on while you slept last night.

Those are just two nuggets of information I've come across while working at the College of Journalism on a project designed to raise journalists' awareness of the ever-growing importance of the mobile.

Clearly, a high-end mobile is a key weapon in the armoury of the modern journalist, as it can act as a camera to capture still or moving images, a digital voice recorder, and a mobile computer for blogging and checking information on websites. Some journalists are even known to use it to call the newsroom to let people know how they're getting on with their report.

But the popularity of the mobile phone worldwide also has profound implications for broadcasters, changing the way the public consume BBC output and interact with media more generally.

To call the mobile phone 'popular' is something of an understatement; 'ubiquitous' would be more accurate:

- The mobile phone is the most widely owned piece of technology on the planet. Ever.

- Although the first commercially available mobile only appeared around 30 years ago, it has sold in greater quantities than anything comparable - more than radios, more than televisions, and many, many more than computers.

- Figures from Wireless Intelligence - a subsidiary of the GSM Association which represents more than 700 mobile phone operators worldwide - showed that there are now 5 billion active mobile phone connections. (The population of the world is about 6.8 billion.)

- In late 2008 there were 'only' 4 billion - which meant that the next 18 months or so saw a growth rate of 33%. With similar growth predicted over the next 18 months, the planet is likely to see 6 billion active connections by early 2012.

This isn't just a 'developed world' phenomenon. But there are impressive stats for countries like the UK too:

- In the UK, the penetration rate is around 130% - the number of active mobile phone numbers exceeds the size of the population.

- Estonia has 188%, the highest penetration rate in Europe; while the United Arab Emirates has the highest worldwide, at 230% (according to the International Telecommunications Union).

In Brazil the figure is 90%, India 60% and China 55%. The overall figure for Africa, the least affluent continent, is still 50%.

Vast swathes of the planet which largely missed out on both landline phones and home computers have gone straight to the object that can do both: the mobile phone. Some countries are seeing innovations which have yet to take off in many developed countries. For example, in Kenya, where 80% of people don't have a traditional bank account, 10 million transfer money by mobile phone.

And the rapid growth in mobile phones is resulting in a fundamental shift in the way information is accessed via the internet. It has been predicted that, within three or four years, more people worldwide will go to the internet via a mobile browser on their phone than through their desktop computer (Source: Morgan Stanley).

The majority of the population will be able to find out what they need to know, wherever and whenever they need to - not just when they are behind a desk, at home or through their TV or radio. The increasing sophistication of mobiles also means that when they get that information they will be able to share it with friends and colleagues far more easily.

All of this has distinct and important consequences for journalism, which I will cover in a subsequent blog post.

BBC College of Journalism: Media law lite

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:56:05 +0000

Once upon a time there was McNae's Essential Law for Journalists, designed to be the standard (and for many years, the only) textbook for aspiring journalists studying for the NCTJ law exam.

More recently, the expansion in the number and variety of journalism courses has prompted a similar growth in the market for media law books.

Most of these have set out to be a thorough treatise on the subject, addressing all the usual areas in some depth. But a new addition to the range has different aspirations.

Newsdesk Law is a slim volume which its creators describe as a no-frills, user-friendly learning aid for journalism students. It aims to complement other media law learning resources, rather than replace them.

Written by Vincent Kelly, a former regional newspaper editor turned university lecturer, the book has enough detail on the key areas of libel and contempt of court to act as a valuable aide memoire. It also includes a very practical guide to how the courts work, with useful (redacted) examples of real-life court lists, and even a custody sheet with a guide to their interpretation.

Kelly is a qualified lawyer and, for me, where this book scores over some others is in its succinct explanation of the developing area of privacy. This is well targeted at journalists, with enough background and examples to put it in context without going too deeply into the legal arguments.

The shifting sands of case law in this area may render it out-of-date before long, but the publisher says there will be an associated website with regular updates - although this is not mentioned in the book.

There is also a good section on the Freedom of Information Act, including a practical guide to making a request and the options open to a journalist if an organisation declines to provide the requested information.

Copyright gets a brief section to itself, with a top-level mention of everything most journalists would need to know in this area.

One surprise is the way the web gets short shrift. Given the number of journalism careers that now begin with, or otherwise involve, the internet, it might be thought there would be some mention of libel and contempt issues in connection with an online presence. However, with the exception of the copyright section, there's little about the impact of the web on the way journalists go about their business.

Overall, this is a useful little book that any journalist could keep close to hand for quick reference. You may still need to refer to a weightier volume if you want the whole story - but that is what was intended.

Newsdesk Law, by Vincent Kelly, is published by Millstream Publications, at £10.

Kevin Steele is the Senior Legal Trainer at the BBC College of Journalism.

Left Foot Forward: Sword of Damocles? Scale of cuts to north is more like Grim Reaper’s scythe

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:53:30 +0000

Further evidence, if any were needed, that the North-South divide is real and threatening to get wider came today with research for BBC Regions showing a map of economic resilience across England, compiled as part of the Corporation’s Spending Review season.

The research, conducted by Experian, charts areas of the country that are best and least able to withstand economic shocks, such as public sector cuts, based on an index of 33 variables under the thematic headings: business, community, people and place.

Of the top fifty areas best able to withstand economic shocks, 44 are in London, the south east, east of England and South west. Just six are in the northern half of the country.

Conversely, of the 50 least resilient areas, just nine are in those same southern regions, (including well-known deprivation hotspots like Newham, Barking and Dagenham). The rest are in the north and midlands, with Middlesbrough, Mansfield and Stoke-on-Trent at the bottom on a list of 324 local authority areas.

This research is yet further evidence that Britain remains a fundamentally divided country with an unbalanced economy favouring the needs of an overcrowded and overheated south-eastern economy at the expense of much of the rest of the country.

The least economically resilient areas of Britain are still grappling with the 1980s legacy of massive deindustrialisation and job shedding – courtesy of Thatcherite economic vandalism - and are unlikely to be able to withstand a similar onslaught.

But that is exactly what is expected in next month’s Comprehensive Spending Review. The question now is whether another bout of ‘faith-based economics’ in the shape of the coalition’s massive public spending cuts will deliver a second crushing blow to the economic prospects of the north of England.

Indeed, it is a moot point whether the regional economies of the North have yet to emerge from recession at all. Different research out today shows the North-South divide even stretches to the high street. Shop vacancy rates in town and city centres rose by one per cent to 13 per cent in the first half of this year. Again, the North and Midlands were trailing the south.

Matthew Hopkinson who compiled the research said:

“While some centres, particularly central London and the South East are showing stabilisation or improvement, others in the provinces are not.”

Seeking to pour oil on troubled waters this morning, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said:

“While I totally understand people’s anxiety, I don’t think we should aggravate that anxiety by pretending there is a sword of Damocles coming down straight away.”

Given the scale of the promised cuts a more accurate analogy would be the Grim Reaper’s scythe. But Clegg, as a Sheffield MP, will be keen to talk down the imminent threat to economic prosperity in the North. He will be increasingly nervous of the political price to be paid for the coalition’s bout of retro-Thatcherism.

Those ex-steelworkers in The Full Monty may have shed their clothes to earn a living in the city he now represents, but it is coalition MPs in marginal seats who risk losing their shirts if they inflict Thatcherism Part II on the North.

BBC College of Journalism: Most annoying cliché in a generation?

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:53:00 +0000

Last night, BBC Radio 4's Six O'Clock News led on Tony Blair's memoirs, which it described as "the most eagerly anticipated political memoirs in a generation".

In a generation? So, since when?

According to 2008 figures from the Office of National Statistics, the average woman giving birth for the first time is 27.5 years old.

On this basis, women having their first child now are those born in 1983 - so "in a generation" would mean "since 1983".

Well, John Major's autobiography was published in 1999. Even Margaret Thatcher: the Downing Street Years was published in 1993 - less than two thirds of a generation ago.

Radio 4 news is not alone in trying to add a sense of significance to ordinary stories with generational claims. I'm sure I've heard this cliché more in the last few weeks than, well, for a generation:

- "Town halls ... are facing the biggest spending squeeze in a generation." Daily Telegraph, 24 August

- The housing market is experiencing "the worst downturn it has suffered in a generation". Independent, 24 August

- "Local authorities are facing the biggest cash squeeze in a generation." Daily Telegraph, 23 August

- "Scottish schools face 'chaos' this week as pupils return amid the biggest overhaul of the education system in a generation." Sunday Express, 15 August

- "The whole nation really believed [the England football team], above any in a generation, was capable of great things." Daily Star, 12 August

And today's generation of clichés is global:

- "For the first time in a generation, the number of women serving in Congress could decline." Chicago Tribune, 29 August

- "Australia was ... rolled for 88 - the national side's lowest Test total in a generation." Herald Sun, Australia, 22 July

- "A new constitution is a once-in-a-generation opportunity." Africa News, 14 August

Call me pedantic, but isn't this kind of hyperbole only justified when backed up with the name and date of the relevant event a (full) generation ago?

BBC College of Journalism: The day after - lessons learned from my crowdmap experience

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:42:28 +0000

Late on Monday night, I wrote a short post on my blog in anticipation of the crowdmap I'd just set up for BBC London which I hoped would provide a useful service the following day during the Tube strike.

It's now Wednesday and I can write, while still feeling slightly shell-shocked from the experience, that, all in all, I'm very pleased with how it went.

I want to use this post to reflect on some of the things that worked, some of the things that didn't work as well, and some things I will do differently if the next scheduled Tube strike goes ahead.

The bottom line was that lots of people saw it: 18,860 unique visitors, and 39,306 page views from 55 countries. Of these, 13,808 were from the UK, 3,863 from the US, and I can't get over the fact that we had two people from Bermuda, one person from Uruguay and nine from Kenya, the home of the Ushahidi platform. The power of social media never ceases to amaze me.

We posted 202 reports yesterday. About 50 were sent directly to the map from the audience, either via the web form or the specific SMS channel we set up. The rest of the reports we took from Twitter - either tweets in the #tubestrike stream or replies to the @BBCTravelalert account.

I can't stress enough that getting the reports up wasn't easy because of the time pressures. Every report, whether it was sent directly or not, had to be physically approved. Nothing went straight up onto the map.

Yesterday, I was ably assisted by Abigail Sawyer who works for the World Service and who wanted to see how the platform worked and how it might work in a global context, and for two hours during the evening rush hour by Emma Jenkinson, a producer from BBC London who was drafted in as emergency help. We also had help from Steve Phillips, the BBC London transport reporter who was Audiobooing, appearing on TV, and updating Twitter like a mad thing.

During the two peak times, we were monitoring the SMS console, three Twitter streams (#tubestrike, "tube AND strike", @BBCTravelalert), Audioboo, emails and the BBC London Facebook page.

For each report we needed to add or check:

1) A clear headline

2) A description - which, if it was from Twitter, we were cutting and pasting

3) The official time stamp (which frustratingly never stayed connected to the actual time, so drop-down menus had to be used each time)

4) The geo-location by putting in the location box and waiting for the map to find it (we soon learned that if you just put in Waterloo it defaulted to Waterloo in Canada, so we had to write Waterloo, UK)

5) The category (Tube, train, bus etc)

6) The verification status (we only ticked the verification box if the report had been supplied by our own reporters. We realised we couldn't even verify information from the Transport for London website as commuters were contacting us and saying the TFL information was not up to date).

Only then could we finally approve it and put it on the map.

Phew. Quite a process.

If you had an event which wasn't so time-sensitive or fast-paced, it wouldn't have been such an issue, but at times we were mopping sweat off our brows, feeling slightly under pressure - especially as we saw so many people tweeting about us from around the world!

That was the process.

In terms of things we learned along the way ...

1) I had originally chosen Google Maps as the default mapping tool, but halfway through the morning rush hour we heard from Harry Wood who encouraged us to use Open Street Map, a free, editable map of the whole world, created by volunteers. It is not-for-profit and apparently started in London. We quickly changed the settings with one click and were immediately amazed at the improved quality of the map. It was much more accurate.

2) Although we needed to use the inbuilt time stamp, we also realised people needed to quickly see on the map itself (rather than having to click through) when information had been sent. So at lunchtime we started each headline with a time stamp that we typed in.

3) At lunchtime, we had collected 90 reports, but realised they were quickly going out of date. We therefore deleted all of the earlier reports and started afresh, although we did manually input all station closures, which we realised was the key bit of information people were looking for. One major problem, however, was that by early afternoon word had spread and I saw people tweeting 'good idea, shame there isn't more information on the map'. So I was torn between trying to make the map look impressive and it actually being useful!

Things I wish we could have done:

1) Publicised it more beforehand. This was a crowdsourcing initiative but we didn't talk to the crowd early enough to encourage people to take part, and to then show how it might be helpful. For obvious reasons, this was very much an experiment and the BBC was slightly nervous about shouting about something that hadn't been tried and tested. As a result, I only published my short blog post on Monday night and we started tweeting about it on Tuesday morning - that was it. So the fact that we got the results we did is pretty amazing (I'd say, modestly!).

2) I wish we could have had more time to thank people and to let people know we'd used their information on the map. I did it a few times when I got a chance and, unsurprisingly, we saw those people posting more reports.

Things I'd encourage Ushahidi to think about:

It feels churlish to make suggestions to the platform when I think it's amazing and I wouldn't have the skills to make 1/100th of the site, but, as someone who used it under pressure in this situation, here are a couple of suggestions:

1) It would have be useful if there'd been a scrolling news bar at the top so we could have put out topline information which we knew everyone could see by just going to the map. Something like 'the Circle Line is suspended' or 'the roads are really starting to build with traffic' was very hard to map. There's no one spot on the circle line (for those who don't know, it's a Tube line which runs (mostly) in a continuous circle!).

2) It would have been great to have added more information to the first speech bubble which appeared when you clicked on a dot - for example, a photo, an Audioboo, more detail etc. I don't think everyone was always clicking through to the next page.

3) A way to visualise the time stamp more clearly from the map would have been great - for instance, the brighter the colour, the more recent the report. It was a shame to have to delete earlier reports.

4) A way to differentiate between good and bad news. Most of the information we were reporting was negative - Tube line suspended, traffic jams etc. Sometimes, we got tips or advice about how to avoid the problems, and it would have been great if we could have shown those in a different way.

Overall, we created a map that at many points during the day was more accurate than the Transport for London website, and which was a live and updated version of what was happening out on the streets of London. And, most importantly, it was built by the people of London.

If more people had known about it and understood how to upload reports, it would have been even richer and even more useful and accurate.

While I don't wish another strike on anyone, I secretly hope there's another one so we can take crowdmap for another test drive.

BBC College of Journalism: Video: Papal UK Visit - Interview

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:39:57 +0000

Dr Austen Ivereigh, the coordinator/founder of Catholic Voices, journalist and commentator, spoke to the BBC College of Journalism about the importance of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to England and Scotland.

He was a panellist at a lunchtime briefing looking at the papal visit, where he was joined by the BBC's Religious Affairs Correspondent, Robert Pigott.

Watch the full CoJo briefing.

Three Quarks Daily: The Enigma of Capital, and the crises of capitalism

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:32:34 +0000

Andrew Gamble in The Independent:

Andrew Mellon, the US Treasury Secretary during the Great Crash of 1929 and one of America's richest men, observed that in a crisis assets return to their rightful owners. Nothing much has changed. As the present crisis has mutated from a banking crisis to a fiscal crisis and a sovereign debt crisis, bonuses continue to be paid, while the people of Greece and Iceland suffer huge cuts in jobs and services.

As the head of Citibank helpfully pointed out, "Countries cannot disappear. You always know where to find them." Once the bubbles are burst, expectations about asset values are dashed, optimism gives way to despair, and wealth is ruthlessly redistributed. Capitalism survives by purging itself of debt and loading the costs of adjustment on the weak and the poor.

For David Harvey, this is the latest of the great structural crises which have punctuated the development of capitalism and which signify that major limits have been reached to further growth. Crises on this view are inherent in capitalism itself, and the means by which it renews itself. Only a periodic clear-out of debt and unproductive activities creates the basis for a further leap forward.

Harvey is less interested in the detail of how the 2007-8 crisis unfolded than in understanding it as a manifestation of how capitalism works. Over the last two decades, he has become a leading exponent of classical Marxist political economy, his work known for its exceptional clarity and for integrating spatial categories into the theory of capital accumulation.

More here.

PW Style: A year of dresses

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:19:49 +0000

Dresses—oh how I love dresses. In fact, just last night PW Arts and Culture Editor Emily G. and I were waxing poetic about our love for dresses. It was a conversation that I’m sure Philadelphia’s Abigail Lalonde has had many times in her life. On August 29 she completed her goal of wearing a dress every single (even through those crazy-ass snowstorms) day for a year, but it wasn’t until last night that the faithful readers of One Hundred Days of Dresses got Abigail’s final blog post.

Hop over to her blog and read about the surprise party her husband threw for her at the 700 Club to celebrate the successful completion of her project or just to browse all the dresses—yes, all 365 of them.

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Global Voices (Cuba): Cuba: Our Lady's Birthday

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:13:50 +0000

By Janine Mendes-Franco

“Yesterday, many Guantanamo residents and Cubans in general celebrated the nativity of Our Lady of Charity (Caridad del Cobre), the mother and patron saint of Cuba since 1916″: Havana Times reports.

Left Foot Forward: Livingstone tackles “proliferation” of betting shops

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:38:39 +0000

Ken Livingstone today announced his intention to reduce the “huge” spread of betting shops across London’s high streets, as part of his campaign to become Labour’s mayoral candidate. He is backed by Tottenham MP and shadow higher education minister David Lammy, who has been vocal about the issue for some time, and is Mr Livingstone’s campaign chairman.

The two intend to lobby Eric Pickles, communities and local government secretary, to amend the Decentralisation and Localism Bill so that it increases residents’ power over planning permission, and places gambling shops in a different category from other financial institutions such as banks and building societies.

According to Livingstone and Lammy, betting shops are increasingly attracted to less affluent areas; in fact they “target” them. Whilst insisting that he is not on a “moralistic crusade” against gambling in general, Lammy has accused William Hill of “profiting from the desperation of the poorest in society”, pointing out that whilst Newham has over 90 betting shops, prosperous Richmond has just 29.

They argue that betting shops are taking the places of essential local amenities and shops. In Seven Sisters, Paddy Power are attempting to replace Every Bodies Music, a famous local music shop that has existed for over 40 years; Lammy observes that there are 39 betting shops in his Tottenham constitueny, but no bookshops.

Livingstone, meanwhile, draws attention to the fact that there were 2,100 gambling licenses in operation in London in 2009, up from 1,700 in 2003 – an increase of 400 or of almost 25 per cent over 6 years.

He said:

“… since legislation governing the criteria to obtain a gambling license was relaxed by the 2005 Gambling Act, many parts of London have seen an explosion in the number of betting shops.”

His figures, however, are slightly misleading. Tom Kenny of the Association of British Bookmakers told Left Foot Forward that since the 2005 Gambling Act came into force in September 2007, there has been “no net increase in London betting shops, but actually a slight decline”. Livingstone’s 25 per cent increase statistic does not therefore appear to have any relation to the Gambling Act, he said, and should be viewed as mere rhetoric.

However, Mr Kenny conceded that since the Gambling Act, there has been more freedom for betting shops to locate. And this is essentially what Livingstone wants to change, by increasing the powers of local authorities to refuse planning permission to gambling shops in areas already saturated by them.

Earlier this year, the London Assembly lamented the loss of small indendent shops in the city. The Livingstone-Lammy campaign ties into this, and Ken has taken the fight to Boris Johnson, arguing that he has

“… neither the energy nor interest to get involved in an issue that is so important for the day to day quality of life for millions of Londoners.”

The Mayor has yet to respond.

A spokesman for William Hill told Left Foot Forward he was opposed to Livingstone’s plans. He said he was “unaware of any betting company which doesn’t open where there isn’t demand”, and pointed out that for the computer illiterate, the social environment of the betting shop was important.

But Livingstone insists:

“This is not an attack on gambling. We want a decent balance of shops on our high streets and there is a place for betting shops in our communities.”

And David Lammy adds:

“Councils can already decide that there are too many bars and pubs in a particular area: why shouldn’t the same be true of betting shops?”

William Hill odds on the next London Mayor:

Boris Johnson: odds on; Ken Livingstone 6/4; Oona King 8/1

BBC College of Journalism: Event: US Politics, Journalism and the Mid-Terms

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:14:29 +0000

Tuesday 21 September, the Think Tank, BBC Media Centre, London.

Len Downie, the former editor of the Washington Post, is to hold a special Journalism Programme lunchtime seminar looking at US politics, the mid-term elections and the future of journalism in the United States.

He'll be discussing his views on the changing face of US journalism, Barack Obama and what impact the mid-terms could have on the face of US politics.

When: 1.30pm - 2.30pm, Tuesday 21 September 2010

Where: The Think Tank, Ground Floor, BBC Media Centre, London

The event is open to all BBC staff. If you'd like to attend, please email cojoevents@bbc.co.uk

Official Google Blog: Google Instant, behind the scenes

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:06:31 +0000

Yesterday we introduced Google Instant, a change to make search fast and interactive by showing you results instantly as you type. With Instant we’ve turned search from a static HTML page into an AJAX application, just as we did with Google Maps and Gmail. You can learn more about Google Instant in yesterday’s blog post, but we also wanted to share a peek behind the scenes into some of the engineering challenges we faced in design and infrastructure.

The design challenge: relevant, not distracting
Our key design challenge was to make sure people would notice relevant results without being distracted. We knew it would take extensive testing to find the right design, so we ran through a sequence of prototypes, usability studies (testing with people from the community), dogfooding (testing with Google employees) and search experiments (testing with a small percentage of Google users). Some of our early prototypes weren’t perfect. For example, we tried a prototype where we waited for someone to stop typing before showing results, which did not work. We realized the experience needed to be fast to work well. We also considered other interfaces which essentially clustered results for a variety of queries based on probability. Here are a couple examples:

Grouped results prototype

Blended results prototype

In the end, our grouped and blended interfaces seemed too difficult to scan while typing, so we pursued a model based on a single search. We hit upon two features that worked well together: first, a query prediction in the search box in gray text and second, results for the top prediction that update continuously while the user types. In user studies, people quickly found a new way to interact with Google: type until the gray text matches your intention and then move your eyes to the results. We were actually surprised at how well this worked—most people in our studies didn’t even notice that anything had changed. Google was just faster.

The infrastructure challenge: 5-7X more results pages for typical searches
We’ve been optimizing performance and speed for more than 10 years, and we’ve found that every second counts. When we came to the infrastructure team and said, “we’re going to be serving five to seven times as many results pages for each query performed in Google Instant,” first they threw a fit, then they figured out how to get us there! Even before Instant, Google was serving more than a billion searches per day, and our systems were optimized to ensure those searches happen as quickly as possible (usually less than a quarter second). How could we serve so many more searches without breaking or slowing down our systems?

One solution would have been to simply invest in a tremendous increase in server capacity, but we wanted to find smarter ways to solve the problem. We did increase our back-end capacity, but we also pursued a variety of strategies to efficiently address the incredible demand from Google Instant. Some of these are quite technical, but here are some examples:

We deployed new caches that can handle high request rates while keeping results fresh as we continuously crawl and re-index the web.
We introduced user-state data into our back-ends to keep track of the results pages already shown to a given user—this way we don’t re-fetch the same results repeatedly.
We optimized page-rendering JavaScript code to help ensure web browsers could keep up with the rest of the system.

In total, these efforts enabled us to release Google Instant while maintaining the speed people have come to expect from Google.

The engineering team at work
As Google Instant neared completion, we packed the core teams into two large rooms on our main campus. We began having daily stand stand-up meetings (more than 50 people). With all that hard work behind us, we’re thrilled to see Google Instant out in the wild! But, in some ways, this is just the beginning of a new kind of “conversational” search interaction. We will continue to experiment, as we always have—and with the help of your feedback, we hope to make Instant even better over time! While it’s a big change, I personally believe that we’ll look back and wonder how search was ever any other way.

Members of the Google Instant team watching the launch announcement

Posted by Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer

Tim Davies: Resources for exploring social media participation

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:53:20 +0000

[Summary: a quick linking list of social media & youth engagement resources, cross-posted from Youth Work Online]

I’ve just been running a short session at a meeting of the South East Participation Project around how different social media and social network sites can be used in youth participation. The session gave me an opportunity to put together some new slides and a list of resources capturing learning from recent projects about the need to look at more than just Social Network Sites – but to think about how a wide repertoire of tools and online facilitation approaches are brought together to support engagement and inclusion. You can view the slides below (may not make massive sense without the speaking with them – but hopefully give some insights) or scroll on for a list of links and resources.

Youth participation and Social Media – South East Participation Group

We discussed a wide range of resources in the session, some of which I’ve tried to capture links to below.

Online tools

Video-making tools: powerful for ‘context-setting’ (explaining a participation opportunity); promoting projects; and as a way of capturing young people’s views and getting voices heard.

Useful links: Shared Practice Through Video guide; Example of video to promote projects; Discussion on using video; Suggested kit-list with cameras;

Survey tools: you can link people to online surveys – or some surveys can be embedded within Facebook and blogs to get structured input from young people. Think carefully about the design of online surveys.

Useful links: SurveyMonkey for online polls; Look for Poll and Voting applications to add to a Facebook page; SMSPoll for text-message surveys; Practical Participation can offer support designing and hosting online surveys; Google Forms also offers a free and effective way to create quick survey forms.

Online mapping tools: to communicate information, or for campaigning.

Useful links: the MyMaps feature on Google Maps (see the one page guide here) can be used for collaborative map making; Google Sketch Up can be used to make 3D models for Google earth; OpenStreetMap can generate free maps of your area for printing & working with; TacticalTech on Maptivism

Collaboration tools: for group work across distance.

Useful links: iEtherPad offers a quick-to-set-up places to collaborative write a document in real-time. Google Documents allows a group to all share and collaborate on spreadsheet(e.g. Budgets) or other documents. Zoho collaborative docs and Huddle collaboration space both have Facebook applications that let you create a ‘virtual office’ within Facebook for a project.

Social Network Sites can be the hub for many engagement projects. They provide a space to connect with young people; to share media from other tools; to promote opportunities to engage; to campaign for change and more.

Some local areas will have private ‘social networking spaces’ within the local authority or schools – such as SuperClubsPlus or RadioWaves which practitioners may wish to explore as environments to work with. If exploring engagement in the wider environment of existing social network sites then more links are below.

Working with social network sites:
There are many resources to help practitioners explore the use of social network sites such as Facebook. The following were mentioned in the workshop:

Social Media, Youth Participation and Local Democracy – including sections on overcoming barriers to using social networks; case studies of practice; guidance on using listening and engagement tools; and section on using social media with children and young people in care.
Online Youth Outreach from Katie Bacon includes a wealth of shared resources, policies, guides and tools.
Check the pictures section of Youth Work Online for some flow-charts on responding to common challenges in social network practice
Youth Engagement and Social Networking Guide – a draft and developing guide with Toolkit section on many different social media tools – including details on different ways of using social network sites. Also support on making the case for online engagement – and getting web blocks removed.

Safe and Effective Engagement with Social Network Sites for Youth Practitioners
Youth Work and Social Networking Report – sets out a theoretical and practice case for engaging with social networks.

On e-safety issues take a look at The Byron Review for the wider context, and resources from ChildNet such as Digizen.
For those exploring the development of applications Safe and Effective Social Network Site Applications might also be of interest.
If you have young people interested in Internet governance issues – check out the HuWY project.

Taking it further

The Youth Work Online network and the Network Participation networks are places to explore these issues more.

Open Mind (Tamino): tamino

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:49:44 +0000

I’ve just returned from a conference in California … so I should be able better to keep up with moderation. Meanwhile, here’s another open thread.

Three Quarks Daily: A TRIBUTE TO MICHAEL JACKSON BY BAPPI LAHIRI

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:29:17 +0000

[Thanks to Amitava Kumar.]

Three Quarks Daily: Human Chain by Seamus Heaney

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:24:36 +0000

From The Telegraph:

Human Chain is stranger – and much greater – than a cursory glance would suggest. Though here, as expected, are exquisitely turned poems about rural events and childhood incidents, the collection also revisits (and sometimes redirects) earlier work, and there is a chilly, other-worldly aura hanging over the whole enterprise. “Chanson d’Aventure” describes the mild stroke Heaney suffered in 2006, and how he and his wife were “careered at speed” in an ambulance through “Dungloe, / Glendoan, our gaze ecstatic and bisected / By a hooked-up drip-feed to the cannula.” The book, as Eliot said of Webster, is much possessed by death.

The opening poem, “Had I not been awake”, replays the stroke in allegory, setting a new unfamiliar tenor of uncertainty and precariousness. A sudden wind whips sycamore leaves up onto the roof in a moment that “came and went so unexpectedly / And almost it seemed dangerously, / Returning like an animal to the house” resulting in “the whole of me a-patter”. Dominant motifs of Heaney’s work such as balance, steadiness and endurance are infused with a new awareness of instability, even in retrospect. And there is gratitude for this newly earned knowledge. In “A Herbal”, after Guillevic, about the plants that thrive in graveyards, Heaney writes: “The wind // Has me well rehearsed / In the ways of the world. // Unstable is good.” A new lexicon of tremor has entered the poems; as a boy he is “a-fluster” when an eel takes his fishing bait; his grandfather’s voice is “a-waver”; when the funeral bell tolls, the grass is “all a-tremble”; a riverbank field is “twilit and a-hover / With midge-drifts”; the words “giddiness”, “giddy” and “lightheadedness” occur and sometimes reoccur.

The poems are preoccupied with connection and separation.

Morehere.

Three Quarks Daily: Thursday Poem

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:12:05 +0000

One Season

That was the summer my best friend
called me a faggot on the telephone,
hung up, and vanished from the earth,

a normal occurance in this country
where we change our lives
with the swiftness of hysterical finality

of dividing cells. That month
the rain refused to fall,
and fire engines streaked back and forth crosstown

towards smoke-filled residential zones
where people stood around outside, drank beer
and watched their neighbors houses burn.

It was a bad time to be affected
by nearly anything,
especially anything as dangerous

as loving a man, if you happened to be
a man yourself, ashamed and unable to explain
how your feelings could be torn apart

by something ritual and understated
as friendship between males.
Probably I talked too loud that year

and thought an extra minute
before I crossed my legs; probably
I chose a girl I didn't care about

and took her everywhere,
knowing I would dump her in the fall
as part of evening the score,

part of practicing the scorn
it was clear I was going to need
to get across this planet

of violent emotional addition
and subtraction. Looking back, I can see
that I came through

in the spastic, furtive, half-alive manner
of accident survivors. Fuck anyone
who says I could have done it

differently. Though now I find myself
returning to the scene
as if the pain I fled

were the only place that I had left to go;
as if my love, whatever kind it was, or is,
were still trapped beneath the wreckage

of that year,
and I was one of those angry firemen
having to go back into the burning house;
climbing a ladder

through the heavy smoke and acrid smell
of my own feelings,
as if they were the only
goddamn thing worth living for.

by Tony Hoagland
from New American Poets of the '90s
David Godine publisher, 1991

Climate Progress: California public schools invited BP to help develop environmental curriculum

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:07:34 +0000

BP is an extreme greenwasher (see “Should you believe anything BP says?”). Its lies to the public, government, and itself have had catastrophic consequences (see The three causes of BP’s Titanic oil disaster: Recklessness, Arrogance, and Hubris).

So naturally, when students in California return to school this fall, they will have a brand new environmental curriculum developed, in part, by BP. Think Progress has the amazing story:

The Sacramento Bee reported today that BP helped California’s public schools form an environmental curriculum to be used by over 6 million public school students (kindergarten through 12th grade) in 1,000 districts. The Bee reports that state officials included BP on a technical team that “was responsible for developing the program’s guiding principles.”

Even before the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, which BP officials admit was the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, the company had a terrible environmental record: over the past five years, BP paid $373 million in fines to avoid prosecution after admitting to breaking U.S. environmental and safety laws.

The same company involved in forming California’s environmental curriculum also has a long record of dishonest greenwashing. As Lisa Graves, executive director for the Center for Media and Democracy, which monitors “greenwashing” techniques, told the Bee: “I’d hate to see how a section in future textbooks mentioning the BP oil spill will look. … I think it’s very worrisome because their fundamental goal is to profit from energy and not to teach children.”

BP’s dishonesty was on full display during the Gulf disaster, as the company tried to spin the environmental catastrophe that unleashed 206 million gallons of oil into the ocean. Just today, BP released a report deflecting blame for the oil spill onto various other companies. The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has been tracking some of BP’s most egregious statements:

– Five months and one day before its Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, BP’s top Gulf of Mexico official testified its practices were “both safe and protective of the environment.”

– In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, BP officials called the disaster “inconceivable,” “unprecedented,” and completely unforeseeable: “I don’t think anybody foresaw the circumstance that we’re faced with now,” said one spokesman. This was despite the fact that blowouts are unfortunately common in offshore oil drilling.

– Then-CEO Tony Hayward said on May 19 that “the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest.”

– On June 9, Hayward said that a new fund the company set up “will have a significant positive impact on the environment in this region.”

– BP’s new CEO, Robert Dudley, has repeatedly said dispersants the company used in the Gulf were “like dish soap.” The dispersant used, Corexit, is a combination of petroleum distillates, propylene glycol, and dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate which is banned in the United Kingdom.

Nevertheless, California officials defended BP’s involvement in interviews with the Bee, saying that the company’s involvement was “minor” and that it was “important to get all sides of the environmental debate involved in developing the classroom materials.” The problem is that the side BP generally represents is not based in fact.

– This is a TP cross-post.

Left Foot Forward: Who are the most influential left wingers? Vote now!

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:00:31 +0000

Earlier in the summer, Left Foot Forward asked readers to tell us the names of people they considered to be influential in the politics of the left. From politicians and think tankers, to journalists and other public figures, we have rattled it down to your top 50.

We are delighted to announce that the poll to find Left Foot Forward readers’ number one influential left winger has opened today. To vote for your top five, simply follow the link.

The vote will close on the 22nd September.

Thank you for your participation and we look forward to announcing the winner during the Labour Party Conference.

BBC College of Journalism: Video: Papal Visit Briefing

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:23:33 +0000

This is the full recording of the College of Journalism briefing on the 2010 UK Papal Visit, with Robert Pigott, the BBC's Religious Affairs Correspondent, Morwen Williams, the Deputy UK News Editor, and Austen Ivereigh of Catholic Voice.

Three Quarks Daily: Modernity’s Uninvited Guest: Civilization makes progress, but evil persists

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:11:01 +0000

Theodore Dalrymple in The City Journal:

It is an unenviable fate for an author to be remembered, if at all, for a devastating review of his principal work by a much greater writer; but such was the fate that befell Soame Jenyns at the pen of Doctor Johnson. The book that occasioned Johnson’s scorn was A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, which Jenyns first published anonymously in 1756. Johnson’s review brings to mind Truman Capote’s famous remark about Jack Kerouac’s autobiographical novel, On the Road: that it was not writing, it was typing. For Johnson said of Jenyns: “When this [author] finds himself prompted to another performance, let him consider, whether he is about to disburden his mind, or employ his fingers; and, if I might venture to offer him a subject, I should wish, that he would solve this question: Why he, that has nothing to write, should desire to be a writer?”

In this case, however, the criticism was rather unfair; and Jenyns, by all accounts an amiable man, was mortified and harbored a deep but concealed resentment against Johnson for the rest of his life. After Johnson died, Jenyns published some vengefully scurrilous verses about the great man:

Here lies poor Johnson. Reader, have a care,
Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear;
Religious, moral, generous, and humane
He was—but self-sufficient, rude, and vain;
Ill-bred and over-bearing in dispute,
A scholar and a Christian—yet a brute.

Morehere.

The Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog: Stately Dutch MILF Magnet

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:06:50 +0000

I feel so BikeSnobby (not a bad feeling, just odd...) blogging a Craig's List ad. But I couldn't resist the humour in this one.

Date: 2010-03-01, 11:20PM

This is a Batavus "PERSONAL" delivery bike. It's black, has one speed, a coaster brake, a kick stand, chain case, racks, and a dynamo lighting system. I discovered it in the basement of the Smith and Butler boutique in Carrol Gardens last October.
I am selling this bicycle because my therapist suggested I need to come to terms with my attraction to african-american women. No sister is going to date a 34 year old systems administrator riding a european grocery bike. However, when I would cruise slowly down Park Slope's fifth avenue, panties would literally fly off of every white or asian woman with a stroller and a master's degree.

I live in Williamsburg now and the bike confuses most of the women here. If I grow my moustache out a little and explain it only has one speed "like a fixie" I can sometimes get to second base. But for the most part I might as well have a soul patch and collect classic cameras. If you want to get some action I'd only take this baby out south of Atlantic Avenue.

Spring is coming and if you like flat-assed waspy moms who went to Vassar, this is the ride you need.
$300 O.B.O.

* Location: Williamsburg
* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Original URL: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/nyc/1624333458.html

Thanks to the ever-vigilant Jeff for the link.

(Come to think of it, BikeSnob probably wrote this shit... )

BBC College of Journalism: Event: Society and Entertainment TV

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:05:21 +0000

Thursday 28 October 2010, BBC Broadcasting House, London.

Beyond News: How TV Covers Social Issues.

The BBC College of Journalism is hosting an evening event to launch new research funded by the Economics and Social Research Council to look at the way social issues are portrayed in entertainment TV.

We hope you can join us for a presentation and panel discussion addressing key themes of the research.

Can entertainment TV be seen to complement current affairs? Do producers seek to educate as well as entertain? And what does the audience think?

Research presentation by Dr Bethany Klein - University of Leeds

Discussion panel chaired by Dr Claire Wardle - BBC College of Journalism

With:

Simon Ashdown - Lead writer and series consultant on EastEnders

Professor Stephen Coleman - University of Leeds; author of The Media and the Public: Them and Us in Media Discourse and numerous articles on the relationship between popular culture and politics

Peter Kosminsky - Writer and director of award-winning television dramas including Britz and The Government Inspector

Richard McKerrow - Creative director at factual entertainment specialist Love Productions.

When: Thursday 28 October 2010, 6.30pm - 8.30pm (drinks reception to follow)

Where: The Council Chamber, BBC Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London W1

If you'd like to attend, please email cojoevents@bbc.co.uk

Left Foot Forward: Leadership candidates in final plea for female vote

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 10:49:15 +0000

In a room packed with women, four men and one woman set out their pitches for being the Labour Party’s champion for women. After an exhausting number of hustings already, last night found the wannabe leaders quizzed exclusively on issues that affect women. The event, which was organised by the Fabian Women’s Network, covered a wide range of questions – from the internal issues within party politics to international women’s rights.

Hours before, Labour MPs voted on the percentage quota of women that should be in the shadow cabinet. The proportion favoured was 31 per cent - meaning that at least eight members of the team will be women. Although it remains under-representative of women, it is a lot more equal than the coalition cabinet – of which only 14% of positions are held by women, as Left Foot Forward reported in May.

The leadership hopefuls disclosed how they had voted:

• David Miliband, 30% to 50% in 2012;

• Andy Burnham, 31% now, in line with PLP proportions;

• Ed Miliband, 30% to 50% in 2012;

• Diane Abbott, 30% to 50% in 2012;

• Ed Balls, 40% now

Before the hustings began, David Miliband released his ‘five point plan for gender equality’. One of his most significant and radical ideas throughout this campaign is to consider job sharing for shadow ministerial positions. The Daily Mail consequently reported that Ed Balls and his wife, Yvette Cooper, would be considered to job share the role of shadow chancellor. Mr Balls denied the rumours.

Earlier in the campaign, he announced his campaign to restore Domestic Violence Protection Orders – an idea of the last government that the home secretary Theresa May has scrapped.

Mr Burnham’s idea of remote voting – so that MPs in constituencies out of London or those with other commitments could vote from home – seemed to be a popular idea. He also told the Women’s Network before his appearence:

“We need to support women who are or would like to be office-holders within the Party, through training, through mentoring and by abandoning forever the ‘sink or swim’ ethos.”

On the ‘macho culture’ that the Labour Party and parliament continue to suffer from, Ed Miliband said that he would like to see politics more of a nine-to-five job – ensuring that women wouldn’t have to choose between family duties and a career in politics.

Diane Abbott said that she had an advantage as she was the only of the five who had the experience of balancing being a single parent and a politician. She also pointed out how useful the annual women’s conference was for policy making and networking, and that she would bring it back to life if elected.

The blunder of the evening came from Andy Burnham, who admitted he was not familiar with the case of Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani – who was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. His admission did not go down well among members of the audience.

To see more on what each of the contenders has to say on women in the Party, read Lead4Women’s Q&A here.

Official Google Blog: Display advertising: “WATCH THIS SPACE”

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:18:11 +0000

Last year, the travel industry—like many others—was having a difficult time. To grow its business, Hawaiian Airlines created and ran an engaging and interactive display ad campaign on the Google Display Network (comprising over a million partner websites, as well as Google sites like YouTube), encouraging people to fly to Hawaii. The campaign worked. Hawaiian Airlines increased online ticket orders and revenues by three percent in a very difficult year, and now spends 15 percent of its advertising budget on the Google Display Network.

We’re now proud to see thousands of great display advertising stories like this every month—from large and small advertisers. If you’ve read this blog or the press over the past few months, you’ll know that display advertising is no longer just the “next big business” for Google—it’s already central to what we and our clients do.

Advertising with Google used to be all about four lines of text, on Google.com and on our partner sites. No longer. Did you know that, outside of ads alongside search results, more than 40 percent of the ads that we show are now non-text ads? And that doesn’t include the 45 billion ads that our DoubleClick advertising products serve every day across the web.

We get excited by display advertising for a number of reasons. First, we now know that we can use all the technology and expertise that we’ve developed in search and search advertising to improve display advertising for users, advertisers and publishers, right across the web. Second, helping advertisers and publishers to easily deliver the most engaging, relevant, creative and valuable ad contains the sort of huge technical challenge that we love. And third, great display advertising helps to fund great content on the web.

Display advertising has come a long way from the ugly banner ads and pop-ups of the mid 1990s, but there’s still huge improvements to come. As we’ve indicated in previous posts, our efforts are focused on three core areas.

Simplifying display advertising

Many advertisers still don’t bother with display advertising because buying ads across millions of sites in various formats causes too many headaches. We’ve been working to simplify the process for advertisers and agencies so they can buy with ease. For example, our DoubleClick platform manages the complexity of planning, scheduling, measuring and optimizing ad campaigns across the web. And Teracent’s technology can automatically tailor and select the creative elements in an ad, and adjust them based on location, language, weather and even the past performance of ads, to show the optimal ad.

Delivering better performance

We’re focused on helping advertisers get the best results from their campaigns—by enabling creative branding campaigns, precise targeting, wide reach and effective measurement. Over recent years, we’ve added a ton of new features to YouTube and the Google Display Network, to help advertisers get—and measure—the results they’re after. From remarketing to Campaign Insights to video targeting on YouTube, we’re building tools that are helping advertisers get great results and enabling them to run some of the most amazing ad campaigns the world has ever seen.

Opening the display ecosystem

Like search advertising, display advertising should be accessible and effective for every advertiser and publisher, from the smallest corner store to the biggest global brand. Display advertising will grow if it is more open and inclusive. Products like the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which enable publishers and agencies to buy and sell ad space in an open, competitive, real-time environment, are making it happen. Every day, there are more ad calls on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange than there are trades on all the world’s stock exchanges combined.

WATCH THIS SPACE

Our single message about display advertising can be summed up in three words: “WATCH THIS SPACE.”

Starting today, we’re going to be talking about our vision for display advertising with a campaign called “WATCH THIS SPACE.” As part of this, you might see ads across the web, in print and maybe even elsewhere. Drop on by the site, read about what’s happening today in display advertising at Google and—even more importantly—what’s yet to come!

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management

Official Google Blog: Fly to...a whole new website for Google Earth

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:09:22 +0000

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog)

When you think of Google Earth, you might think about flying to the top of Mt. Everest, surveying the ancient Acropolis, or simply finding the house where you grew up. For the past five years, people all over the world have been discovering new places to explore through our community, blogs, news articles and Gallery. Now you can go to one place—our brand new Google Earth website—to find everything you’re looking for.

The new site is loaded with lots of great content including images, videos, tours, maps and tutorials on how to get started with Google Earth. We invite you to explore the new site, starting with these five areas:

Showcase: Browse our collection of featured content about the Ocean, Moon, 3D buildings and more to see all the ways you can explore the world around you.
Video tutorials: Whether you’re new to Google Earth or an expert user, watch our new video tutorials to learn how to create placemarks, record a tour, add a 3D building, import GPS data and more.
More products: See all the different ways ways you can experience Google Earth. Did you know you can access the 3D globe from your phone or on Google Maps?
Community: Get connected with other Google Earth fans in our forums and stay up-to-date through our newsletter, blog and Twitter feeds.
Industries: Everyone uses Google Earth for a different reason, so we created unique pages for educators, media, developers, businesses, non-profits and data providers.

Now it’s your turn to explore the website on your own. Right now, it’s only available in English but don’t worry, we’ll be adding more languages soon. Check out what’s new with Google Earth at earth.google.com.

Posted by Tasha Danko, Product Marketing Manager

The Baseline Scenario: simonhrjohnson

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 10:07:52 +0000

By Simon Johnson

President Obama is finally attempting to cut through some of the disinformation and confusion that surrounds US fiscal policy in general and taxes in particular. His suggestion this week is: let’s (effectively) raise taxes on relatively high income people – by letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those people – while introducing temporary tax breaks that will more directly stimulate business investment and presumably hiring.

Any way you cut it, the numbers involved are not big enough to impact unemployment significantly by November, but these ideas – and the Republican rival suggestions currently on the table – are more about symbols, messages, and midterm votes than about accelerating the economic recovery. Seen in those terms, the president is still missing a key argument in both economic and political terms.

The president’s point is simple. If you are arguing to keep the Bush tax breaks for upper income groups in order to support the economy, his proposal represents a direct and reasonable challenge – there are better ways to “use” (i.e., for the government to forgo) tax revenue to help reduce unemployment.

The bigger issue, of course, is the budget deficit and the president feels the need to tread gingerly because the 2010 deficit will come in around $1.3 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, i.e., almost 10 percent of our gross domestic product and over the last two years we have run the highest deficits since World War II.

Everyone agrees that we need to worry about this deficit. The US Treasury can borrow at record low interest rates, but we should not presume this will be the case for the indefinite future. In particular, irrespective of what happens in the United States, our interest rates are determined in part by what developments in the rest of the world – if some subset of Europe, for example, becomes more creditworthy over the next 12-24 months, this will tend to reduce the relative appeal of US government debt to investors (both US and non-US) and likely push up our long-term interest rates – deterring private sector investment and making it more expensive to finance the budget deficit.

Cutting our budget deficit in the short-term would tend to slow the economy and both sides of the aisle are currently treading carefully in this regard. But agreeing to cut the deficit in the future would be helpful and should stimulate the economy – because it would lower long-term interest rates by reducing uncertainty about the trajectory of fiscal policy. This dimension is completely missing from our current political dynamic and from the sensible debate.

The president should be pushing harder for agreement on medium-term deficit reduction, including by putting forward ideas for comprehensive tax reform. The US system has become complex and quite opaque – people have a hard time figuring out what taxes they are pay and what they get in return. Tax systems elsewhere in the industrialized world are just as (or more) progressive while also being more efficient, i.e., cause less distortion in terms of reducing the incentive to work and to invest per dollar of revenue collected.

In the context of redesigning the tax system to promote employment and responsible savings, it is entirely appropriate to look for ways to shift the burden of taxation back to relatively high income individuals. This group has had a great run over the past 30 years – while the consequences for most Americans, as seen for example in real median wages (flat), the stability of employment (look around you), or the vulnerability to financial crisis (2008-09 was a wake-up call), have been much less favorable.

The president’s latest proposals are tinkering at the margins and will likely only have a limited impact. But if the president moves the broader debate towards considering fair, reasonable, and efficient ways to tax higher income individuals, this is a step in the right direction.

As prepared for submission to the NYT.com’s Economix and used here with permission. If you would like to reproduce the entire post, please contact the New York Times.

Left Foot Forward: Scots Labour leader: Alex Salmond “in office but not in power”

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:37:01 +0000

Alex Salmond has pledged to put his Government’s budget at the heart of the SNP’s programme leading up to next May’s elections to the Scottish Parliament. In warning MSPs that the financial outlook facing Scotland was the worst since the second world war, he said:

“Everything we do in this session of Parliament and every legislative programme for many years to come will be set against that context.”

The first minister was presenting his final programme for government of the current Parliamentary session, a programme that includes 10 bills, including:

• The Forced Marriage etc. (Protection and Jurisdiction) Bill to “protect people from being forced to enter into marriage without their free and full consent and protect those who have been forced to enter into marriage without such consent”.

• A Double Jeopardy Bill, providing that in certain circumstances, for the first time, those convicted of serious offences and released could face trial for the same offence should new evidence be found.

• The Private Rented Housing Bill “to strengthen the regulation of the private rented sector and give local authorities more powers to tackle rogue landlords”.

• Legislation bringing changes to Scottish Water. Last month, Ministers were forced to deny rumours that they were about to privatise the body.

• The most anticipated measure however will be the Government’s Budget Bill, with all eyes looking to the Government over how it will address what finance secretary John Swinney has warned will be £3.7 billion of cuts over the next four years.

In alluding to his decision to abandon plans to legislate for a referendum on independence in the current Parliament, Salmond continued:

“And we will take our case for greater powers to the people. Now that we face an economic hurricane, never was the case for independence and financial responsibility more obvious and true.

“What Scotland truly needs is not a funding formula whether Barnett or Calman. Scotland needs control of its own resources and the ability to grow revenue rather than just expenditure. We need control over both sides of the Scottish balance sheet.”

Responding, Labour’s leader, Iain Gray, who on Tuesday told Newsnight Scotland why he was ready to be first minister, dubbed the programme a “failure”, adding:

“Right enough – an Executive does things. This government undoes things. It undid the capital programme of schools and hospitals and transport projects. It is undoing ten years of economic progress. And it has undone every single promise it ever made.

“Increasingly, the First Minister gives the impression of being in office but not in power. As Scotland faces perhaps its most difficult years in a generation, this is neither a programme nor a government worthy of the name.”

Annabel Goldie, the Conservative leader with questions over her own future, said of the programme:

“It reeks of inertia, exhaustion, escapism and atrophy. To cover his failures, this is a First Minister who will spend the next nine months whining about the powers he doesn’t have, rather than using the ones he does.”

Meanwhile, in picking up on Alex Salmond’s suggestion that only independence could protect the Scottish economy, Scottish Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott declared:

“To say that Scotland would be in the land of milk and honey if only we were independent is typically bombastic in a way that only Mr Salmond can be.”

Whatever the substance of the legislative programme might be, the reality is clear – Scotland now faces an 8 month election campaign.

Official Google Blog: Announcing our new Family Safety Center

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 10:21:35 +0000

(Cross-posted to the Google Public Policy Blog)

Helping your children use the Internet safely is similar to teaching them to navigate the offline world. There are parts of the real world that you wouldn’t let your children explore unsupervised—and that goes for the online world as well. But while most of us remember being taught to cross the road and not talk to strangers, we probably weren’t taught how much personal information we should share online or how to handle cyberbullies.

Therefore, it’s no surprise when parents and teachers tell us they want to learn more about how to help their kids use the Internet safely and responsibly.

Today, we’re launching our new Family Safety Center; a one-stop shop about staying safe online. We’ve included advice from leading child safety organizations around the world, tips and ideas from parents here at Google, as well as information on how to use the safety tools and controls built into Google products.

For day-to-day practical tips we asked some of our parents at Google to share their own ideas. Tactics they use range from limiting screen time and preventing computers in kids’ bedrooms to ad hoc checks on their browser history and social networking profiles. Everyone has different ideas and there’s no right or wrong answer, but hopefully some of these will resonate and inspire you. See more videos and let us know your own thoughts on our YouTube channel.

To answer some of the toughest questions most important to parents, such as accessing inappropriate content and meeting strangers online, we went straight to the people that know best; the organizations that advocate and promote child safety and digital literacy. Organizations that we’ve partnered with around the world include the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s OnGuard Online initiative, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, U.K.’s ChildNet, and New Zealand’s NetSafe.

The new Safety Center also provides information on the safety tools built into Google products. SafeSearch and YouTube Safety Mode can help you control what content your children stumble across. Sharing controls in YouTube, Picasa, Blogger and others ensure your videos, photos and blogs are shared only with the right people. And in response to popular requests, we’ve added a section on managing geolocation features on mobiles.

With kids growing up in an age where digital know-how is essential, it’s increasingly important to ensure that they’re developing healthy, safe and responsible online habits. And we’re thinking every day about how we can help parents and teachers to do just that.

Posted by Kate Hammond, Marketing Manager

Robert Peston (BBC business editor): Regulators agree 7% capital ratio for banks

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:02:59 +0000

Central bank governors and senior regulators are set to ordain that banks must have a minimum core tier one capital ratio, including a new so-called "buffer" to protect against extreme economic conditions, of 7%, I can reveal.

This is considerably lower than was wanted by the "hawks", the US, UK and Switzerland. They wanted a core tier one capital ratio of 8 to 9% including buffer, which is what British banks currently have to maintain. In fact most British banks currently have a core tier one ratio of around 10%.

But the new 7% minimum has been agreed in the face of stiff resistance from a number of countries, led by Germany, many of whose banks typically have much lower stocks of core capital in the form of equity and retained earnings - and will have great difficulty meeting the new standard.

This new international minimum was negotiated by regulatory and central banking officials in a meeting of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision earlier this week. It is expected to be approved by the governors and senior regulators when they meet in Basle on Sunday.

It will then be ratified in a final, supposedly irrevocable way by the heads of the G20 governments, at their summit in November.

The 7% minimum represents a dramatic increase on the current minimum of 2%. That 2% minimum is widely seen as far too low: banks' low levels of capital relative to their assets was a major contributor to the severity of the 2008 banking crisis, as investors lost confidence in their ability to survive losses.

As they approached collapse, the capital ratios of Northern Rock and Royal Bank of Scotland fell to dangerously low levels - which is why Northern Rock was nationalised and RBS was semi-nationalised.

The point of capital is to absorb losses when loans and investments turn bad.

Although this new 7% minimum ratio of core capital (in the form of equity and retained earnings) to assets (loans and investments) as measured on a risk-weighted basis represents a significant increase, some will argue that the ratio is still too low.

One reason for this is that the absolute minimum capital ratio, without buffer, will be around 4%, or double the previous minimum.

Under the new system, if a bank's capital ratio falls below 7% or would fall below 7% when the bank is tested for financial stresses, the bank will be forced by regulators to raise new capital. And if the ratio falls below 4%, the bank will be put into "resolution" - which means that it will be taken over by regulators and wound up.

It means that banks' core capital ratios must always be above 7% in normal economic and financial conditions. But regulators would tolerate those ratios falling below 7% for short periods during economic downturns.

A senior regulator has told me that many of the biggest banks - those "too-big-to-fail" banks whose collapse would cause ruptures to the financial system - will in practice be forced to hold more than the 7% minimum.

"There will be some kind of add-on for systemically important banks," he said. So the likes of Barclays, JP Morgan, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and so on will in practice have to maintain core capital ratios greater than 7%.

The major concern of banks about the imposition of the higher capital ratios is that it will constrain their ability to lend in the transition period, as they build up stocks of capital - and that could undermine the global economic recovery.

The point is that there are two ways for banks to raise capital ratios: they can persuade investors to buy new shares; or they can shrink their balance sheets relative to their existing stock of capital by lending and investing less.

Because of the threat to economic growth of rapid implementation of the new capital ratios, the regulators and central bank governors are expected to give banks several years to meet the new standards.

Three Quarks Daily: 3QD Philosophy Prize 2010 Semifinalists

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:42:00 +0000

Hello,

The voting round of our philosophy prize (details here) is over. A total of 497 votes were cast for the 36 nominees (click here for full list of nominees). Thanks to the nominators and the voters for participating.

Carla Goller has designed a "trophy" logo that our top twenty vote-getters may choose to display on their own sites. So here they are, in descending order from the most voted-for:

Playtonic Dialogues: Musicians Debate Methods Of Political Dissent
Guardian Science Blog: Is quantum mechanics messing with your memory?
Experimental Philosophy: Further Experimental Work on the Bank Cases
P.A.P.-Blog: Why and How Do We Separate State and Church? And What Are the Consequences for Religious Liberty?
Minds and Brains: The Myth of Sensory Immediacy – Why Berkeley Was Wrong
Philotropes: Do folks think that consciousness matters for moral responsibility?
Underverse: We Just Live In It
Experimental Philosophy: Is the Armchair Sexist?
Brian Leiter's Nietzsche Blog: Katsafanas on "Nietzsche's Philosophical Psychology"
PEA Soup: Am I a Consequentialist?
Specter of Reason: Ryle On Rules And Creativity
Justin Eric Halldor Smith: More on Non-Western Philosophy (the Very Idea)
The View from Hell: The Patriarchy, the Gynocracy, and Other Comforting Myths of Struggle
3 Quarks Daily: Raising Neanderthals: Metaphysics at the Limits of Science
TTahko: Counterfactuals and Modal Epistemology
Vis Viva: On Handwaving
Flickers of Freedom: Can There be Partial (as opposed to impartial) Desert?
Tomkow: The Retributive Theory of Property
Flickers of Freedom: Does Consciousness Matter?
The Philosophy of Poetry: The Leap

The editors of 3 Quarks Daily will now pick the top six entries from these, and after possibly adding up to three "wildcard" entries, will send that list of finalists to Akeel Bilgrami on September 11. We will also post the list of finalists here on that date.

Good luck!

Abbas

Liverpool Daily Post - Dale Street Blues: Caption competition: Steve Rotheram and Stephen Twigg at city spa

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:37:42 +0000

Walton MP Steve Rotheram and West Derby MP Stephen Twigg feature in the social diary page of today's Daily Post. Westminster can be a stressful place to work, so it's nice to see the pair taking time out for...

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Three Quarks Daily: Why literary critics still count

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 07:08:31 +0000

The past decade has been a vivid tutorial in the truth of Marshall McLuhan's phrase, "the medium is the message". The rise of 24/7 TV and the concomitant decline of traditional network news has fragmented the old collective audience. Today disparate groups receive the same facts, filtered through a different angle of the political prism. Web commentary has split these primary colours into a thousand graded hues. The residual virtue of mainstream critics is that they still discriminate on behalf of whole communities; they bind readers together, not slice them into ever smaller coteries. Also, in a world characterised by a hyper-abundance of media, where bandwidths are filled with a ceaseless flow of chatter and governments drown real information in large-scale data dumps, it is the sceptical, nimble-minded, old-fashioned literary critic, trained to thresh narrative grain from word chaff, who is best situated to gather something like truth from the digital realm.

more from Georgie Williamson at the ALR here.

Three Quarks Daily: what's the secret?

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 06:59:55 +0000

There is nothing odd about Byrne’s growing inclination toward Christian mysticism. What is odd is that the doctrine she propounds has no room for it, just as “The Secret” had no room for the story of Hicks-as-Abraham. Byrne must be one of the most influential religious writers in the world, and yet she seems to consider her own evolving religious beliefs to be unmentionable. The creed promulgated by “The Secret” and “The Power” is finally noteworthy not for its audacity—many religions promise more—but for its modesty, its thinness. In distilling a spiritual message that claims to be compatible with all religious traditions, Byrne has had to bracket all possible points of disagreement, discarding anything that might seem, as Winfrey put it, “weird.” The result is a pair of religious books curiously devoid of ancient lore and esoteric beliefs, history and holiness—curiously devoid of religion itself. Byrne’s hope is that this minimalist creed will be enough for her readers. But surely some of them will notice that it doesn’t seem to be enough for her.

more from Kelefa Sanneh at The New Yorker here.

Three Quarks Daily: Graham and all the Greenes

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 06:51:56 +0000

Once upon a time there were two brothers who, at the turn of the twentieth century, settled in the small town of Berkhamsted, at the end of the commuter line in Hertfordshire. They each had six children and it is because of one of these children that the above sentence must immediately evoke in most readers over a certain age a sense of ungraspable melancholy, of secret childhood pleasures on a common, of bored and blighted lives redeemed or partially redeemed by a secret adherence to an ideology, Catholic or Communist. Few writers have made more and better art out of their guilt and childhood unhappiness than Graham Greene, or conveyed more powerfully, in stories, novels and memoirs, the feel of the place where he grew up. Graham’s father was a conventional public-school headmaster, his younger brother a coffee merchant newly returned from Brazil with his German wife and large brood.

more from Gabriel Josipovici at the TLS here.

John Redwood MP: Public spending

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 06:26:11 +0000

Yesterday I asked Mr Clegg to confirm that current public spending will rise 15% in cash terms this Parliament according to government budget plans. I asked him to confirm that this being so the puloic sector need not cut any important public service. It would be incompetence or perversity if it did make cuts in important public services, given the cash increase in spending.

Mr Clegg did not disagree with this view. The view, of course, was not picked up by the BBC. Clearly the increase in cash current spending by governemnt is an inconvenient truth amidst their narrative of deep and damaging cuts. Their journalists should weave this inconvenient truth into their analysis. I expect government Ministers to start explaining what they are doing on public spending a little more accurately, as the government itself has allowed the myth to grow that there will be deep and immediate cuts in current spending which are just not reflected in the budget figures.

The government challenge to those many well paid public sector managers should be a simple one. We can manage modest increases in cash spending – less growth than you are used to. Can you manage things so we do not need cuts in anything that matters? Private sector companies would avoid service cuts if they were sure of 15% more revenue over the next five years, with cash increases each year.

Successful - PledgeBank: 为身患双重癌症的蒋静老师募捐医疗费

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 06:01:11 +0000

'我将为身患双重癌症的蒋静老师募捐医疗费，只要10个当地的其他人将做同样的事情。' -- lms0023

Successful - PledgeBank: give £20 to Norwich Green Party

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 06:01:11 +0000

'I will give £20 to Norwich Green Party but only if 20 other people will do the same.' -- Rupert Read, Norwich Green Party Fundraiser.

Skeptical Science: How we know the sun isn't causing global warming

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:56:35 +0000

The Sun's largest influence on the Earth's surface temperature is through incoming solar radiation, also known as total solar irradiance (TSI). Changes in TSI can be converted into a radiative forcing, which tells us the energy imbalance it causes on Earth. This energy imbalance is what causes a global temperature change.

The solar radiative forcing is TSI in Watts per square meter (W-m^-2) divided by 4 to account for spherical geometry, and multiplied by 0.7 to account for planetary albedo (Meehl 2002). The albedo factor is due to the fact that the planet reflects approximately 30% of the incoming solar radiation.

dF = 0.7 * d(TSI)/4

This is a very straightforward and easy to understand formula - the larger the change in solar irradiance, the larger the energy imbalance it causes, and thus the larger the radiative forcing. Studies have reconstructed TSI over the past 300 years. Wang, Lean, and Sheeley (2005) compared a flux transport model with geomagnetic activity and cosmogenic isotope records and to derive a reconstruction of TSI since 1713.

Figure 1: Total Solar Irradiance from 1713 to 1996 (Wang 2005)

Satellites have directly measured TSI since 1978.

Figure 2: Total Solar Irradiance as measured by satellite from 1978 to 2010

As you can see, over the past 32 years, TSI has remained unchanged on average. In the early 20th century, from about 1900 to 1950 there was an increase in TSI from about 1365.5 to 1366 W-m^-2. The change in global temperature in response to a radiative forcing is:

dT = λ*dF

Where 'dT' is the change in the Earth's average surface temperature, 'λ' is the climate sensitivity, usually with units in Kelvin or degrees Celsius per Watts per square meter (°C/[W-m^-2]), and 'dF' is the radiative forcing.

So now to calculate the change in temperature, we just need to know the climate sensitivity. Studies have given a possible range of values of 2 to 4.5°C warming for a doubling of CO₂ (IPCC 2007), which corresponds to a range of 0.54 to 1.2°C/(W-m^-2) for λ. We can then calculate the change in global temperature caused by the increase in TSI since 1900 using the formulas above. Although Wang, Lean, and Sheeley's reconstruction puts the change in TSI since 1900 at about 0.5 W-m^-2, previous studies have shown a larger change, so we'll estimate the change in TSI at 0.5 to 2 W-m^-2.

dF = 0.7 * d(TSI)/4 = 0.7*([0.5 to 2 W-m^-2]/4) = 0.1 to 0.35 W-m^-2

This matches up well with the IPCC solar forcing range of 0.06 to 0.30 W-m^-2, with a most likely value of 0.12 W-m^-2. We can then calculate the associated surface temperature change:

dT = λ*dF = (0.1 to 0.35 W-m^-2)*(0.54 to 1.2°C/[W-m^-2]) = 0.05 to 0.4°C, with a most likely value of 0.15°C.

We can confirm this by comparing the calculation to empirical observations. From 1900 to 1950 the Earth's surface temperature warmed by approximately 0.4°C. Over that period, humans increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by about 15 parts per million by volume (ppmv), from approximately 295 to 310 ppmv. This corresponds to an anthropogenic warming of:

dT = λ*dF = 5.35*(0.54 to 1.2°C/[W-m^-2]*ln(310/295) = 0.14 to 0.32°C with a most likely value of 0.22°C.

Therefore, the solar forcing combined with the anthropogenic CO₂ forcing and other minor forcings (such as decreased volcanic activity) can account for the 0.4°C warming in the early 20th century, with the solar forcing accounting for about 40% of the total warming. Over the past century, this increase in TSI is responsible for about 15-20% of global warming (Meehl 2004). But since TSI hasn't increased in at least the past 32 years (and more like 60 years, based on reconstructions), the Sun is not directly responsible for the warming over that period.

Indirect Solar Effects

Ultraviolet Radiation

It has also been proposed that ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which varies more than other solar irradiance wavelengths, could amplify the solar influence on the global climate through interactions with the stratosphere and atmospheric ozone. Shindell et al. (1999) examined this possibility, but found that while this UV variability has a significant influence over regional temperatures, it has little effect on global surface temperatures.

"Solar cycle variability may therefore play a significant role in regional surface temperatures, even though its influence on the global mean surface temperature is small (0.07 K for December–February)."

Moreover, Shindell et al. found that anthropogenic ozone depletion (via chlorofluorocarbon emissions) may have reduced the impact of UV variability on the climate, and may have even offset it entirely.

"Another consideration is that upper stratospheric ozone has decreased significantly since the 1970s as a result of destruction by halogens released from chlorofluorocarbons. This ozone decrease, which has been much larger than the modeled solar-induced ozone increases, may have limited the ability of solar irradiance changes to affect climate over recent decades, or may have even offset those effects."

Galactic cosmic rays

Henrik Svensmark has proposed that galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) could exert significant influence over global temperatures (Svensmark 1998). The theory goes that the solar magnetic field deflects GCRs, which are capable of seeding cloud formation on Earth. So if solar magnetic field were to increase, fewer GCRs would reach Earth, seeding fewer low-level clouds, which are strongly reflective. So an increased solar magnetic field can indirectly decrease the Earth's albedo (reflectivity), thus causing the planet to warm. Thus in order for this theory to be plausible,

Solar magnetic field must have a long-term positive trend.
Galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth must have a long-term negative trend.
Cosmic rays must successfully seed low-level clouds.
Low-level cloud cover must have a long-term negative trend.

Fortunately we have empirical observations with which to test these requirements.

Solar magnetic field

Solar magnetic field strength correlates strongly with other solar activity, such as TSI and sunspot number. As is the case with these other solar attributes, solar magnetic field has not changed appreciably over the past three decades (Lockwood 2001).

Figure 3: Solar Magnetic Flux from 1850 to 2001

Galactic Cosmic Ray Flux

Cosmic ray flux on Earth has been monitored since the mid-20th century, and has shown no significant trend over that period.

Figure 4: Cosmic Ray Intensity (blue) and Sunspot Number (green) from 1951 to 2006 (University of New Hampshire)

GCR Cloud Seeding

Numerous studies have investigated the effectiveness of GCRs in cloud formation. Kazil et al. (2006) found:

"the variation of ionization by galactic cosmic rays over the decadal solar cycle does not entail a response...that would explain observed variations in global cloud cover"

Sloan and Wolfendale (2008) found:

"we estimate that less than 23%, at the 95% confidence level, of the 11-year cycle changes in the globally averaged cloud cover observed in solar cycle 22 is due to the change in the rate of ionization from the solar modulation of cosmic rays."

Kristjansson et al. (2008) found:

"no statistically significant correlations were found between any of the four cloud parameters and GCR"

Calogovic et al. (2010) found:

"no response of global cloud cover to Forbush decreases at any altitude and latitude."

Kulmala et al. (2010) also found

"galactic cosmic rays appear to play a minor role for atmospheric aerosol formation events, and so for the connected aerosol-climate effects as well."

Low-Level Cloud Cover

Unfortunately observational low-level cloud cover data is somewhat lacking and even yields contradictory results. Norris et al. (2007) found

"Global mean time series of surface- and satellite-observed low-level and total cloud cover exhibit very large discrepancies, however, implying that artifacts exist in one or both data sets....The surface-observed low-level cloud cover time series averaged over the global ocean appears suspicious because it reports a very large 5%-sky-cover increase between 1952 and 1997. Unless low-level cloud albedo substantially decreased during this time period, the reduced solar absorption caused by the reported enhancement of cloud cover would have resulted in cooling of the climate system that is inconsistent with the observed temperature record."

So the jury is still out regarding whether or not there's a long-term trend in low-level cloud cover.

Inability to explain other observations

In addition to these multiple lines of empirical evidence which contradict the GCR warming theory, the galactic cosmic ray theory cannot easily explain the cooling of the upper atmosphere, greater warming at night, or greater warming at higher latitudes. These are fingerprints of the increased greenhouse effect, the major mechanism of anthropogenic global warming.

Dansgaard-Oeschger Events

Some individuals, most notably Fred Singer, have argued that Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events could be causing the current global warming. D-O events are rapid climate fluctuations that occur quasi-periodically with a 1,470-year recurrance time and which, according to Singer, are "likely caused by the sun." However, there is significant debate as to the cause of these D-O events, with changes in solar output being just one possibility (NOAA Paleoclimatology).

Regardless, the most obvious flaw in this argument is that the planet wasn't warming 1,470 years ago. The previous warm event was the Medieval Warm Period approximately 1,000 years ago.

Figure 5: Global temperature reconstructions over the past 2,000 years (Globalwarmingart)

Bond et al. (1999) added further evidence that the timing of D-O events disqualifies them from being responsible for the current warming, by showing that the most recent D-O event may have contributed to the Little Ice Age (LIA):

"evidence from cores near Newfoundland confirms previous suggestions that the Little lce Age was the most recent cold phase of the 1-2kyr cycle"

And a study by Rahmstorf (2003) also concludes that the LIA may be the most recent cold phase of the D-O cycle, and his research suggests that the 1,470-year periodicity is so regular that it's more likely due to an orbital cycle than a solar cycle.

"While the earlier estimate of ±20% [Schulz, 2002] is consistent with a solar cycle (the 11-year sunspot cycle varies in period by ±14%), a much higher precision would point more to an orbital cycle. The closest cycle known so far is a lunar cycle of 1,800 years [De Rop, 1971], which cannot be reconciled with the 1,470-year pacing found in the Greenland data. The origin of this regular pacing thus remains a mystery."

However, according to Braun et al. (2005), D-O events could be caused by a combination of solar cycles and freshwater input into the North Atlantic Ocean. But their study also concludes that D-O events are not expected to occur during the Holocene (the current geologic epoch).

"the 1,470-year climate response in the simulation is restricted to glacial climate and cannot be excited for substantially different (such as Holocene) boundary conditions...Thus, our mechanism for the glacial ,1,470-year climate cycle is also consistent with the lack of a clear and pronounced 1,470-year cycle in Holocene climate archives."

The bottom line is that regardless of whether or not the D-O cycles are triggered by the Sun, the timing is clearly not right for this cycle to be responsible for the current warming. Particularly since solar output has not increased in approximately 60 years, and has only increased a fraction of a percent in the past 300 years, as discussed above.

Ironically, prior to publishing a book in 2007 which blamed the current warming on D-O cycles, Singer argued that the planet wasn't warming as recently as 2003. So the planet isn't warming, but it's warming due to the D-O cycles? It's quite clear that in reality, neither of these contradictory arguments is even remotely correct.

Inability to explain empirical observations

Aside from the fact that solar effects cannot physically explain the recent global warming, as with GCRs, there are several empirical observations which solar warming could not account for. For example, if global warming were due to increased solar output, we would expect to see all layers of the atmosphere warm, and more warming during the day when the surface is bombarded with solar radiation than at night. Instead we observe a cooling of the upper atmosphere and greater warming at night, which are fingerprints of the increased greenhouse effect.

It's not the Sun

As illustrated above, neither direct nor indirect solar influences can explain a significant amount of the global warming over the past century, and certainly not over the past 30 years. As Ray Pierrehumbert said about solar warming,

“That’s a coffin with so many nails in it already that the hard part is finding a place to hammer in a new one.”

This post is the Advanced version (written by dana1981) of the skeptic argument "It's the sun". There is also a basic version.

Daily interesting photos - Flickr: Interesting photos - 7 Sep 2010 - Flickr

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:50:53 +0000

John Redwood MP: The Revenue, computers and the payroll

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:17:32 +0000

As we learn that many tax calculations under the Pay as you earn scheme have been wrong for years, the Treasury is busy consulting on taking over the task of running the payroll for every employer in the country.

I jest not. That is the bottom line of their consultation. Apparently, because so many PAYE accounts have been charged the wrong amounts for years, the answer is for the Revenue to play a much bigger role in sorting out your pay.

The Consultation paper suggest a three stage approach. In the first stage employers will have to supply the Revenue with weekly or monthly details of all pay and tax charged, so the Revenue can see if a new code number or basis for the calculation is needed. Smaller companies that do not have the necessary computer programmes will be able to seek assistance of an unspecified amount to change their systems so they can talk directly to the Revenue to comply.

In the second phase, the Revenue will take on the task of working out the tax for every employee, harnessing the now assured mutual working between the Revenue’s computer and each employer’s computer.

The final denouement comes with the Revenue effectively running the payroll for each firm, charity and state institution.

I am sure the Treasury would like to hear from you if you think this is a good idea, and you might like to tell them if you think it a bad idea. I have already sent in my comments. I am not sure I should reproduce them here.

You might like to ask amongst other things how this would ensure accurate tax, as the employer does not know the details of an individual’s savings or casual income, and how much risk there would be in having such a huge national computer system to handle so much money each week and month.

Myron Ebell Climate: No nuclear power construction deaths ever??

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:25:45 +0000

Blogger Paul Mulshine on NJ.com is the latest on-line correspondent to take comments from "expert" Myron Ebell and post them up without checking if they make any sense. Take a look at this one:

But then there’s the example of that windmill in Oregon that collapsed in 25-mph winds back in 2007 and killed a guy who was working on it. That means wind power has already killed more Americans than have been killed by nuclear power in all our history.

Is Myron Ebell suggesting that there has not been one accidental death during the construction or maintenance of any nuclear power plant in the US ever?

And this guy was dumb enough to print it, as opposed to saying to Ebell:

"Actually that statement about there never being a construction death in the nuclear power industry doesn't sound credible, even if you don't know anything like we do. Can you make up some other false statement instead that sounds a little more plausible? That's what you're paid for, isn't it?"

Generally we know that Myron Ebell is against all new technology, unless it's the kind that enables more fossil fuels to be burned, even though he says it would be less. So Myron's has to scare-monger as much as he can about these turbines and use what little material he has to draw on.

Ebell, who comes from Oregon, told me of what happened when a wind farm was constructed not far from where he grew up. "Within two months, one broke apart in high wind and a blade was found more than a mile away," Ebell said. "Can you imagine sitting on your front porch and seeing one of those coming at you?"

When did this happen? 1973? Could it have physically flown as far as anyone's front porch? Probably not. But, please, just imagine it did, so I can make you scared of these things.

What you are not supposed to be scared of, according to Myron Ebell, is anything to do with lovely clean and tasty fossil fuels.

They don't hurt anyone, do they?

Copenhagen Cycle Chic: Strident

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Sure, people riding bicycles is cool, but the mere art of walking one has certain qualities,...

For the full photographic glory and the rest of the text, you know where to go. The Original Cycle Chic awaits.

Three Quarks Daily: Kazim Ali on "American" Poetry

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:57:00 +0000

From the website of the Poetry Society of America:

I think of something Naomi Shihab Nye wrote, in 1999, in her response to the question "What's American About American Poetry?" Nye said, "When I was working overseas on various occasions, poets in other countries would remark that we American poets have a luxury they do not have: we are free to write about tiny "insignificances" any time we want to…We write about personal lives, minor idiosyncrasies, familial details, tomatoes—not feeling burdened to explore larger collective issues all the time, which is something writers elsewhere often consider part of their endless responsibility."

There is a way in which all American life, American writing and poetry included, participates in the historical (and geographical!) amnesia inherent in the concept of "America." What is the responsibility of the writer? When you look one place, there is another place you are not looking. We will have to think for a long time to figure out where we are and who are and what we are doing in this place, thought to be ours from "sea to shining sea," ours by some form of "manifest destiny," some form of "American exceptionalism."

More here.

Three Quarks Daily: Write for Oprah? Wrong for Me

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:51:00 +0000

Harriet Hall in Science-Based Medicine:

From January through June of 2010 I wrote a column entitled “The Health Inspector” in O, The Oprah Magazine. Now, apparently, I have been fired; although they have not had the common courtesy to tell me so. The whole thing has been a bizarre, frustrating experience.

It started last fall, when I got an e-mail from Tyler Graham. He introduced himself as the new health editor for O, The Oprah Magazine, saying he had only been on the job for 2 weeks. He had read my work in Skeptic magazine and wanted me to write a column for O. I thought long and hard before accepting. I told Mr. Graham my opinion of Oprah and of her chosen medical expert Dr. Oz and why I was hesitant to associate my name with theirs, and he seemed to understand. Oprah has been widely criticized recently, even in the pages of Newsweek, for endorsing pseudoscientific and non-scientific health advice on her TV show. As for Dr. Oz, while he mostly gives good medical advice, he has appalling lapses into non-science-based practices like Reiki, and he has even invited energy healers into his OR to assist in open-heart surgery cases by waving their hands over the patients. I foolishly assumed Mr.Graham was trying to improve Oprah’s image by introducing more science and skepticism to the magazine.

More here.

Only In It For The Gold: Seeking, er, Duly Diligent Consideration Tactics

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:12:00 +0000

I am rerunning Toles' Emergency Procedures cartoon, because Byron Smith has added a ninth step. I'd like to offer a prize to someone who can provide a step 10 strong enough to stand with Byron's step 9, but I can't afford it and I can't afford the lawyers to figure out how to do it if I could.

So I am handing out traditional, old fashioned pulp-publishing no-prizes instead. Only In It for the Gold no-prizes are hereby titled No Gold Medals, and Byron surely gets one for his (slightly edited)

9. Consider that fire may actually reduce the building's heating bill. Commission study by think tank to investigate.

Another No Gold Medal to he-who or she-who comes up with point 10.

feeling listless: No One Likes M. Night Shyamalan [del.icio.us]

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:26:04 +0000

No One Likes M. Night Shyamalan http://ff.im/-qpQPk

Global Voices (Cuba): Getting to Know the Global Voices Latin America Team

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:25:53 +0000

By Eduardo Avila

As outgoing Editor for Latin America, I have seen the Global Voices team from Latin America grow tremendously over the past three years. Each of the volunteer authors has dedicated time and energy to serve the mission of Global Voices, and to share their part of the world with a global audience. At any given time, each of the countries that make up the Latin American region has been represented by a talented blogger tasked with the challenge of presenting a wide range of issues in a balanced and fair manner. Now that I am moving on to take the helm at Rising Voices, I am eager to see how the team will take the coverage of such a diverse region to greater heights under the leadership of the new Latin America Editor, Silvia Viñas. Continuing a recent tradition, let's meet some of these amazing people that have been part of the Latin American team (in alphabetical order by first name).

Members of GV Latin America with friends from GV Portuguese and GV Caribbean. Photo by Suzanne Lehn

Andrea Arzaba [Mexico] - I don't think I've seen a single picture of Andrea in which she was not smiling. Her enthusiasm and friendliness is both sincere and contagious. Recently back in Mexico after spending a semester studying abroad in Spain, Andrea is very active in youth conferences and blogging competitions. She was recently chosen to represent the Think About It organization at the UN Summit to be held in New York City later this month. Read her blog One Lucky Life [es] and follow her on Twitter: @andrea_arzaba.

Belén Bogado [Paraguay] - Belén is quite the multimedia star in her native country of Paraguay. Not only is she an accomplished print journalist, but she has also hosted her own radio show and television program. In addition, she has brought special recognition to Paraguayan bloggers, including an introduction to the first blogger to write in the Guaraní language, who was featured in a GV post and which caught the eye of the local CNN affiliate.

Catalina Restrepo [Colombia] - Many of us have seen how much Catalina has grown over the past three years. She started as one of the participants of the Rising Voices' project HiperBarrio. Since then, she has really come into her own, gaining confidence by the day and asking for more challenges. In addition to being invited to speak at international conferences, she was also recognized at home when she was awarded the Talented Young Woman [es] prize in Medellín. Read her blog: Cosas del Alma [es] and follow her on Twitter: @catirestrepo

Felipe Cordero [Chile] - Felipe joined Global Voices in 2010, and his participation began shortly after the tragic earthquake struck his country of Chile. He was living in Columbia, Missouri at the time when he volunteered to help with the coverage, as way to draw more attention to the tragedy and reconstruction. His posts helped make the Special Coverage Page of the earthquake timely and diverse. Since graduating from college, Felipe has taken part in many interesting training programs and internships, including one at the Chilean Mission at the United Nations. Read his blog: Política Online [es] and follow him on Twitter: @felipe_cordero.

Gabriela García Calderón [Peru] - At the Global Voices Summit in Santiago, Chile, Gabriela received recognition for being the GV member with the most number of translations across all Lingua sites. With more than 2000 translations under her belt, Gabriela wanted to get involved with GV even more. So, she volunteered to become a GV author by focusing on some of the non-political facets of Peruvian society. Read her blog: Seis de Enero [es].

Issa Villarreal [Mexico] - To say that Issa is interested in the urban arts scene in her hometown of Monterrey, Mexico, would be an understatement. In her free time, Issa covers local concerts and music festivals [es] on her blog and other publications. In addition, she is a videographer, and one of her most recent works was filmed a local amusement park. Her three-part series exploring graffiti and urban art across Latin American stands among some of her most classic posts. She also covers other topics, including the #internetnecesario campaign, although I was unable to convince her to write a post on the Mexican delicacy of eyeball taco. Read her blog: Perdida en el Súper [es] and follow her on Twitter: @hiperkarma.

Members of GV Latin America meeting with GV Board Member Rosental Alves at the GV Summit in Santiago. Photo by Juliana Rincón and used under a Attribution 2.0 Generic CC license.

Jenny Cascante [Costa Rica] - Jenny is another of our authors that is active in her country in the arts and cultural scene. She has been a part of the super-stylish arts digital magazine De La Bimba [es]. Read her blog: Nube Número Nueve [es] and follow her on Twitter: @nubecina.

Jorge Gobbi [Argentina] - Buenos Aires is one of my favorite Latin American cities and most times that I've visited, I've managed to stop by to say hello to Jorge. I don't think I realized how well-known he is in the Argentine blogosphere until he was featured in the La Nación newspaper as one of 5 of the most important bloggers [es] in the country. Probably best known for his travel blogging, he won Best Travel Blog in Spanish awarded by Lonely Planet. Jorge is currently pursuing his doctorate degree in Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. Read his blog: Blog de Viajes [es] and follow him on Twitter: @morrissey.

Juan Arellano [Peru] - Ever since Juan has taken on the leadership role for Global Voices in Spanish, the site has thrived. The roster of active translators that he has recruited makes it one of the most diverse and willing teams to bring GV content into the Spanish language. The partnerships and collaborations that he has pursued serves as a model for other Lingua sites. In addition to translating posts, Juan also makes sure that local issues in his native Peru makes it to the pages of Global Voices. Read his blog: Globalizado [es] and follow him on Twitter: @cyberjuan.

Juliana Rincón Parra [Colombia] - While I had less interaction with Juliana than before, it was because she was promoted to Global Voices Video Editor. However, she still managed to provide great coverage of important videos from the region, which was whenever she was not knitting or podcasting. Read her blog: Medea Material [es] and follow her on Twitter: @medeamaterial.

Julián Ortega [Colombia] - Digital media has become an integral part of Colombian politics over the past several years, and Julián has provided a service for helping GV readers wade through the vast amount of tweets, Facebook groups, and blog posts. He is extremely knowledgeable about the subtle nuances and context of Colombian politics. Julián is also very active in the equinoXio [es] digital magazine. In addition, he holds a special place in his heart for his cats, who can be seen on his Flickr account. Follow him on Twitter: @julianortegam.

Laura Vidal [Venezuela] - Laura has been personally responsible for making sure that Venezuela is not portrayed as a country that only revolves around polarizing politics. She has made sure GV readers learn about many of the country's talented musicians, writers, artists, and cultural projects. Currently pursuing her Master's degree in Education Sciences at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense in Paris, Laura has always offered me a place to crash on her floor during my stops in Paris, and also showcased her culinary skills to me when she made delicious arepas. Read her blog Sacando la Lengua [es] and follow her on Twitter @lenguaraz.

Luis Diego Molina and Adriana Vargas [Costa Rica] - I hesitate to not give each of these young authors their own recognition, but they've been working together on the citizen journalism project Habla Costa Rica, where they have reported from the ground during events like the protests at the University of Costa Rica. I've been thoroughly impressed with their willingness to learn and how much dedication they have put into their project. Follow the project on Twitter: @hablacostarica.

Lully Posada [Colombia] - Lully is such a strong supporter of citizen media projects around the world, but there is one that has attracted more attention than others. In fact, she has started volunteering with the HiperBarrio project helping out with workshops, but more importantly, providing encouragement and motivation to the new bloggers. She is also one of the co-founders of the equinoXio digital magazine, and provides interesting interviews. Read her blog: Reflexiones al Desnudo [es] and follow her on Twitter: @lullyp.

Milton Ramírez [Ecuador] - Milton or perhaps I should write Dr. Ramírez, has been one of the most prolific GV authors from the region over the past several years. Milton holds a doctorate in Education and is extremely interested in examining the relationship between education and technology. He is also a champion for local technology projects and events in his native Ecuador, including extensive coverage of BarCamps and other digital campaigns. His love for his home region of Loja has placed the city on my must-visits someday. Read his blog: Education and Tech and follow him on Twitter: @tonnet.

Renata Avila [Guatemala] - As one of the resident Creative Commons experts within the Latin America team, Renata is the lead for the Creative Commons project in her native Guatemala. She is also serving as one of the co-leads in the Technology for Transparency project at Global Voices. Renata also holds a special interest in the plight of the indigenous communities in her country and which has served as a subject for many of her articles on Global Voices. Read her blog: Nothing is Permanent [es] and follow her on Twitter: @avilarenata

Rocío Díaz [Dominican Republic] - Rocío is our first author from the island of the Dominican Republic. She took great care in presenting a wide range of issues from the colorful characters of Carnival to the national sport of baseball, as well as the DR's response to the earthquake in neighboring Haiti. She started blogging as part of a national movement for community action, which helps draw attention to problems, as well as solutions in the island's municipalities. Read her blog: Monaco [es].

Silvia Viñas [Uruguay/Chile] - As the new Regional Editor for Latin America, Silvia has always been willing to fill in whenever needed, whether it be about issues facing Chile or Uruguay. No wonder she is so flexible, since she describes herself as half-Uruguayan and half-Spanish, and has lived in five Latin American countries. This allows her to be a great fit for the role of Latin America Editor, who needs to be well-versed in the affairs of an entire region. When she is not online posting and editing, she is the mother of an adorable two year-old, who just celebrated her birthday. Read her blog: Walking Around [es] and follow her on Twitter: @silviavinas

This is only a partial list, as there are many more authors who have recently joined or who have been recently inactive, but have been an integral part of making the Latin America region as strong as it has become. These authors include: Claudio Ruíz [Chile], Clotilde Castillo [Panama], Nike Jung [Chile], Muna Annahas [Paraguay], Roy Rojas [Costa Rica], Celeste Calvet [Argentina], Aaron Ortiz [Honduras], Leonidas Mejia [Honduras], Mario Durán [Bolivia], Carlos Suasnavas [Ecuador], Mario Blanco [Uruguay], Tim Muth [El Salvador], Rodrigo Peñalba [Nicaragua], Melissa De León[Panama], Luis Carlos Díaz [Venezuela], Rosario Lizana [Chile], Iria Puyosa [Venezuela], Claudia Cadelo [Cuba], Alvaro Berroteran [Nicaragua], HJ Barraza [Mexico].

As you can see, the Latin America team is very diverse, not only in the part of the world that they cover, but in their own personal interests and background. Congratulations to such an amazing team of volunteers for making the Latin America region so well represented at Global Voices.

Global Guerillas (John Robb): LINKS: 8 SEPTEMBER 2010

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:20:26 +0000

Some items of interest:

OpenPCR. An open source version of a high cost tool for biohacking, got double the funding it needed on Kickstarter. More on the team behind it.
Inside/outside refrigeration/cooling system. Begs the question: what would be the savings of a refrigerator that leveraged outside air temp intelligently?
Shot spotter. Being installed within lots of American cities. Audio surveillance that can locate a gunshot within 35 ft. See inset.
Gang maps of LA. The alternative political landscape.
Quran burning in Florida. Right Wing Extreme, an armed militia, will protect the "Dove World Outreach Center" during it's first annual 9/11 Quran burning. RWE is currently running a poll on its site: "Do you think it's time for a second American Revolution?" Charles C points out that RWE has withdrawn from the effort (see comments below).
Haystack. A project to foil national firewalls and state monitoring in Iran (China and Egypt next). Newsweek did an article on the leader of the project, Austin Heap and this turned up: When I first met Heap in January, he was regularly shuttling to Washington, D.C., for meetings at State and Treasury and with senior lawmakers.
Global police crack down on the open source insurgency, the Scene. They (the police) just wanted to know who or whom had used two different IPs during a couple of dates in 2009. Since we did not have this information (no logging) there was no information and/or hardware for them to seize. The police did not enter the datacenter, only the office, so no servers or network have been touched by them.

The Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog: Copenhagenize Tests the PUMA/Biomega Mopion Cargo Bike

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:17:09 +0000

Last week, while the Biomega team where living the high life at Eurobike, I wandered into their office and borrowed a copy of their new Mopion cargo bike for PUMA. First impression? "Cool!" Second impression (because I had to carry it down the stairs): "Light!"

When you're used to riding two-wheeled cargo bikes there wasn't any wobbly 50 metres of drama in setting off. I had the afternoon free so I just zipped around the centre of Copenhagen in the sunshine. When you don't really give a shit about specs and tech details, test-riding bikes is a fine, aesthetic experience. You just ride around, speeding up, slowing down, looking at way the sunlight falls on the harbour, following the progress of the swan-like cycling girl crossing the bridge in the other direction, sighing happily, etc. It's the best way to figure out if the new bicycle beneath you is "all that" or that. If the machine distracts - negatively - you from follow the swan-like progress of a cycling girl or the light dancing on the harbour - it ain't "all that".

This bike is, indeed, "all that". And this was just a prototype. There are only three of them in existence which is an instant cool factor. It's an advanced prototype so the bike that will hit the streets next spring is not far off the one under my ass. I headed up over Knippels Bridge and passed some other Copenhageners on bikes. Another cyclist was tailgating me in the passing lane so I sped up to get out of his way. To my surprise I flew up and over the bridge without any effort, leaving the tailgater behind. So. Acceleration? Top points. The handling wasn't something I even thought about until day three of borrowing the bike. It was completely natural and virtually identical to a regular bicycle. So that's nice.

The basket is an interesting angle of the design. Simple lines and elegant slope, I rode around with a football bouncing around in it and never lost the ball. Not a standard test-ride feature, I know, but these daily life details are important, too. My only critique of the design is about this basket. I bought a can of Coke on one of the days and had nowhere to put it. It was too small to sit on the bars of the basket so I had to stick it in my back pocket for the ride home. I thought about other stuff that I may find myself transporting here and there and many small objects wouldn't work. Bags of groceries, a crate of beer, a bag - sure. But I missed - in my personal experience - a bottom to the rack.

The rear end of a kid is, fortunately, wider than a can of soft drink. The all-important Copenhagen test is whether or not you can transport your offspring on a bike and the Mopion - named for a tropical islet in the Caribbean by the way - certainly lived up to my kid cargo needs. Sure, I put a blanket down for Lulu-Sophia and Felix sat on his backpack, but they loved the ride. Even with 25 kg of Felix, the handling wasn't affected in any great way. I had wondered about the higher centre of gravity, compared to other cargo bikes, but there was nothing to write home about. I could still follow swan-like cycling girl progress with a kid on the rack, so to speak.

I've spoken to many people here in Copenhagen about my everyday cargo bike, the Bullitt from Larry vs Harry and it is generally regarded as being incredibly cool, but I often hear people say that they don't have kids or don't have stuff they need to transport, so while they love the bike, they don't always need one.

I can't see the Mopion competing directly with the impressive armada of cargo bikes in use throughout this city. I can't transport two kids and groceries on this puppy. But without actually having any clue what Biomega was thinking when designing this bike, I can see it appealing to a whole new demographics. The young urban professional who wants a cooler than cool ride with a few more practical advantages than a back rack. The cycle tourist pedalling happily about foreign countrysides with all the gear that cycle touring entails. Bike messengers with just a bit more to carry than documents. One-kid families in cities or towns. There is definately a market for this bicycle.

The Mopion is the newest branch on the co-branding deal between PUMA and Biomega. You can see the other bicycles on www.puma-bikes.com but check out designer Jens Martin Skibsted's website for his design super group KiBiSi. Great photos of all the bicycles.

I can't ignore the symbolic and iconic value of the Mopion. Biomega have once again produced an urban icon. If you think about modern bicycle design [re-thinking the bicycle as opposed to just making bicycles lighter and faster] there are two places where exciting things are happening. One is Denmark, with the proud design tradition. The other is America with her army of micro-bikesmiths all sweating away over their welding tools con amore as they try to make the humble bicycle just a little bit nicer and cooler.

When I write about bicycle brands over Cycle Chic I always consider the head-turner factor. Riding a bicycle that turns peoples heads on the street is always just as cool as wearing a jacket or shoes that people notice. Regular people, not your friend at the cycling club who knows all about bicycles. The Mopion has a fantastic head-turning factor. Very similar to when I ride on my Bullitt. The strangest people noticed the bicycle. Elderly ladies, five year olds, young women, old men, you name it. You get noticed on the Mopion. In urban life I'd rather get noticed for riding a wicked cool bicycle than having the latest iPad.

I was waiting for a friend outside of the Central Train Station last Monday when a group of young Japanese walked past. Two of them stopped dead in their tracks upon seeing the Mopion. They politely asked if they could take a photo. They noticed the PUMA logo and I explained that it was Biomega who made it for PUMA. They had already figured it out. The shape of the tubing was 'iconic' said the one so it was instantly recognizable. They took me up on the offer of taking it for a ride with wide grins and they loved it.

How cool is that? Design crossing borders, creating icons but also dialogue.

I've noticed, however, that the greatest accolades are harvested outside Felix's school and at football practice. (He took the above photo, by the way)

The Mopion - like the Bullitt - drew the attention of a very important group. The 5-8 year olds. Seriously. If 5-8 year olds - in Denmark - notice a bicycle for being different it's amazing. When you hear them all say, "THAT is a cool bicycle! See dad/mum!", you know you're on to something good.

Robert Peston (BBC business editor): Goldman fined £20m by FSA

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:19:36 +0000

I can reveal that Goldman Sachs has been fined around £20m by the Financial Services Authority for failing to tell the City regulator that it was being investigated by the SEC - the US regulator - for alleged fraud over the way it sold a subprime mortgage investment.

Goldman also failed to tell the FSA that Fabrice Tourre, the executive who created the relevant mortgage product, was under investigation: this was relevant because Mr Tourre transferred from the US to London, and therefore had to be authorised by the FSA.

The FSA accused Goldman of failing to have the necessary systems for keeping it informed of investigations by other regulators. Goldman has admitted that it made a mistake.

I understand that Goldman would have been fined more, but received a discount for early settlement.

The FSA announced in April it was investigating Goldman, but never disclosed why it was doing so.

The £20m is one of the heaviest fines ever imposed by the FSA.

In July, Goldman settled the fraud charge with the SEC, agreeing to pay $550m.

The mortgage product at the centre of the storm was a collateralised debt obligation called ABACUS 2007-ACI.

Three Quarks Daily: The Genetics of Blueberries

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:32:24 +0000

By Maniza Naqvi

A woman folds her copy of the paper, looks around at all of us and exclaims: “What an evil opportunist! He was virtuous for her when she took the diamonds from him, and now he’s evil because he’s on trial at The Hague?” Then she pauses—“Well, I suppose really---what is good and what is evil are definitions simply determined by survival. It is the story of survival. No?” She shrugs, “The ones who triumph are good, the ones who don’t are evil. Our model picks the Alpha males.”

Several complementary copies of the newspaper lie untouched on the table. The front page carries the story of the war crimes trial in The Hague for Charles Taylor. The accompanying photograph shows—Jemima Goldsmith, Imran Khan, Charles Taylor, Nelson Mandela, Naomi Campbell and Mia Farrow after a dinner party thrown for a charity by Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Everyone smiling congenially posing together, as though boy toys for the actress, the super model and the heiress. The super model and the actress have made appearances at the War Crimes trial in The Hague for Charles Taylor giving the proceedings glamour and an air of scandal that catches our attention more than war and crimes. And scandal sells papers. It is clear that it has been inconvenient for them to be here. They have provided conflicting testimonies about the size of the dirty diamonds and the terms under which they were gifted by Charles Taylor that evening to Naomi Campbell.

“The South Africans cheered the Dutch team didn’t they?” asks the South Asian probably Indian. I am not sure.

We are seated at a round table, a luncheon meeting beginning. There are at last twenty other tables around us doing the same thing. We will report back at the plenary session after lunch. As an icebreaker, we have been asked, by the facilitator at our table, to tell the group a little about ourselves. One by one we introduce ourselves—I say I wanted to be an actor—I take drama classes on the weekends. The South Asian from Pakistan—says he wanted to be a fighter pilot but eyesight got in the way. A young man from Lao begins and tells us that he wanted to be a opera singer but economics came up; another from Tajikistan was going to be a doctor but a war interrupted his education and he found himself earning his living as an interpreter in refugee camps---- A woman from France talks about wanting to own a bed and breakfast place after she retired. Someone from the United States gave up studying the genetics of blueberries to go teach children English in villages in Guatemala-- and someone from Zimbabwe talks about how he wanted to be a fast bowler-but a scholarship to Harvard got in the way.

“It’s interesting—the genetics of blueberries huh? And now Food Aid? What a leap!” I say.

“I am exactly where I wanted to be. I was particularly interested in the ones with 12 chromosomes and the ones with 24 chromosomes. How a species can create a new one—and that new one separates itself out almost as though it….were…..”

“Special?” I ask. “I suppose sooner or later the same old, same old becomes stale no matter how good it is-- nothing grows without change—All good, if left unchanged must go bad.”

“Yeah, I guess. The twenty four chromosome blueberries where created in the areas where there was a density of twelve chromosome blueberries. Then those twenty four chromosome blue berries self selected and migrated to isolated places where only 24 chromosome blueberries exist—no twelve chromosome berries there----further north where it’s cooler.”

“How interesting—I must be one of those! My skin feels happy in this temperature of 25°degree centigrade, perhaps because we are all after all from here," interjects the Facilitator and brings us back to the task at hand, “So as I was saying earlier before about the relationship between food aid and….” She is interrupted by the waiter:

He asks softly “May I offer you this Nederburg Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, Madame? I think you will enjoy it—it is a ruby red color madam—"

“Ah! Lovely the color matches my earrings from Cambodia.” says the woman from France.

“The wine madam—is a delightful commingling of blackberries and currants with dark violets and nuances of oak in the background. A full-bodied wine with ripe fruit and delicate oak spices, firm tannins and a lingering aftertaste. I would suggest madam a goose liver paté and a rare steak and let us start you off with a mature cheese and perhaps some virgin hand pressed olive oil with our own baked bread? While not old madam---it has matured after gentle fermentation in wood for a year.” He pours and leaves.

I raise my glass and laugh, “Aging is not what it used to be.”

“Tell that to Lucy! And didn’t she eat berries? Do we know what kind? No as it turns out her people were predators like the rest of us, big meat eaters.”

The facilitator is satisfied with us—our free association.

Later, after lunch, I go in search of a fax machine from where to send a message in the absence of blackberries and internet connection. Inside the shoebox sized shop for faxes and internet, as I wait for the fax to go through I take in the items for sale crammed on shelves and inside the glass display counter. There are plugs, condoms, paper notebooks, pens, SIM cards, and porno magazines. Tacked on to the cork bulletin board, are the newspaper cut outs of American presidents and a poster of Osama Bin Laden.

The fax will not go through. I make my way back to the conference for I am to speak on a panel on institutional arrangement for Food Aid. The conference center is huge, sprawling, the only game in town it seems—outside of the game reserves—that we have visited.

I have lost my way—taken the elevators in the B section instead of the D section and now though I have arrived on the right floor I am on the wrong side of the building and am in the section leased by a War Crimes Tribunal.

I have found myself in the part leased out to the War Crimes Tribunals, when I am supposed to be at the conference on Food Aid. The photographs on the walls in the corridor tell me so—they are not of happy faces enjoying our largesse. A woman appears and sends me off towards my destination— over there—in that direction. She assures that I will get there from here---and from there—it is a straight forward path back to right here. She assures, me that I cannot lose my way. A sign on the wall says The Geneva of our Continent: We bring the World to our Country.

“Geneva? Would I see a sign in Geneva that compares Geneva to here?” I ask. And as it is the convention here—she smiles tolerantly and helpfully ushers me along to the path I am supposed to take. Three corridors, two elevators and seven flights of stairs later I arrive where I am supposed to be. And added to my anxiety is the fact that I am half hour late for my speech. I apologize to no one in particular, that I had lost my way, the conference complex is too large and too indifferent to my need to be found—different parts of it lead to different purposes you see and it is easy to get lost here—given that all corridors are connected and can lead one easily astray.

I check my blackberry hoping that now perhaps, miraculously, it will work. It is dead. There is no signal to be had. I know this. I have been told this. I wonder why I keep trying.

I sit next to the Uzbek delegate —Two tables away from us a strapping and tall Macedonian, has fainted I am told---succumbed to the altitude and the pills. The Uzbek remarks: “Alexander the Great was defeated by it in Asia.”

“Yes— Taimur---it is the only defense they have against us—really, malaria.” I reply. “But they are looking for a miracle solution, an eradication of it.” The Uzbek looks at me quizzically and I shiver. It is cold here—I say—I wasn’t expecting it to be.

“Yes” agrees Taimur. “It is cooler here than I too was expecting it to be.”

I am delirious and probably drunk. The pills and the altitude will stand in for the two glasses of wine at lunch. Nothing works here I say-the fax, the internet—my blackberry is useless. And the room is filled with delegates. The panelist before me has just ended to a thundering round of applause. I am confused I don’t understand why they are clapping. We are experts in complicating simple things. In building complexities and confusion where there is clarity and understanding.

Unable to enter my blackberry I flip through the photographs on my camera—for yesterday we have gone on a sightseeing trip. Two hundred and twenty nine of us descending on a game park shooting up everything, capturing it with our Canons and Nikons. Capturing and shooting—looking at them through the lenses of our cameras—we will examine them at our leisure later, or perhaps forget to do so, content in the knowledge that we have been here, done that. Seen it, captured it. Done. Check and check.

And tomorrow, I am told we will go on another trip to the “Field”, our cameras in abundance: To see the content of our charity, visits have been arranged for all two hundred and twenty nine of us—together, for there is strength in numbers, we will go to the places which have been recipients of our outreach. On the way to them----Our Projects---there has been scant evidence of structure though large churches are in abundance—ready for business or getting ready for it. It seems that they are everywhere: the prevalence of hope and the exclusivity of promise. We cluck and shake our heads in sorrow and indignation as only missionaries can, at the sight of competition and the errors of their ways: when will they realize that reform, as we demand it is the only way?

Two days of journey for fifteen minutes of speech. Someone is just ending his with the words: “We are religiously addicted to poverty reduction”. It is my turn to speak and yet I have forgotten why I am here. I am nauseated. In kinship, I look at the dizzy Macedonian. It is stuffy here. I look at the Uzbek in confusion. What am I here to say?

Perhaps I am here to speak about the genetics of blueberries.

Climate Progress: Major analysis finds “less ice covers the Arctic today than at any time in recent geologic history.” - Paleoclimate study: "the Arctic temperature change consistently exceeds the Northern Hemisphere average by a factor of 3–4"

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:30:13 +0000

A first-of-its-kind analysis, “History of sea ice in the Arctic” (subs. req’d), by an international team of 18 top scientists led by Leonid Polyak concludes:

[E]pisodes of considerably reduced sea ice or even seasonally ice-free conditions occurred during warmer periods linked to orbital variations. The last low-ice event related to orbital forcing (high insolation) was in the early Holocene, after which the northern high latitudes cooled overall, with some superimposed shorter-term (multidecadal to millennial-scale) and lower-magnitude variability. The current reduction in Arctic ice cover started in the late 19th century, consistent with the rapidly warming climate, and became very pronounced over the last three decades. This ice loss appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years and unexplainable by any of the known natural variabilities.

The key point is that the Arctic loses ice when it is forced to lose ice. In the past that was driven by orbital changes, and now it is being driven by human emissions.

This Quaternary Science Reviews paper is based on a detailed study of “proxy records from the Arctic Ocean floor and from the surrounding coasts.” You can find a brief discussion of those methods in the Ohio State University news release here, which explains this is “the first comprehensive history of Arctic ice.” The analysis “re-examined the data from past and ongoing studies — nearly 300 in all — and combined them to form a big-picture view of the pole’s climate history stretching back millions of years.”

I asked the lead author, Leonid Polyak, of Ohio State’s Byrd Polar Research Center, when was the last time the Arctic was ice free. He replied:

The paleo data we have so far is very scant, so we can’t know for sure when the Arctic was ice free in the summer last time. To be conservative, the closest candidate is the early Holocene (roughly ~10 kyr ago), when the insolation in the Arctic was high due to the beneficial orbital configuration; however, the more data I see, the stronger is my impression that there was not that little ice at that time. The next best (actually, better) candidate is the Last Interglacial, about 125kyr ago, again due to orbitally-driven high insolation: the ice was likely very low, but we can’t say whether it was completely ice free in summer or not. There are also a few other major interglacials, which may have had a similar picture, in particular Marine Isotopic Stage 11, about 450 kyr ago. In any case we are talking about very rare events controlled by a forcing very different from today. If none of those intervals was really ice free, then a million year assessment would be correct.

The Quaternary Science Reviews piece, whose co-authors include Penn State’s Richard Alley and NSIDC’s Mark Serreze, explains why it was warm (and there was reduced ice) in the Arctic 11,000 years ago — and why it’s warm now with rapidly shrinking summer ice:

The present interglacial that has lasted approximately 11.5 kyr is characterized by much more paleoceanographic data than earlier warm periods, because Holocene deposits are ubiquitous and technically accessible on continental shelves and along many coastlines. Multiple proxy records and climate models indicate that early Holocene temperatures were higher than today and that the Arctic contained less ice, consistent with a high intensity of orbitally-controlled spring and summer insolation that peaked about 11 ka and gradually decreased thereafter….

Reviewed geological data indicate that the history of Arctic sea ice is closely linked with climate changes driven primarily by greenhouse and orbital forcings and associated feedbacks. This link is reflected in the persistence of the Arctic amplification, where fast feedbacks are largely controlled by sea-ice conditions.

So external forcings — primarily orbital in the past and primarily greenhouse gases now — start a process that is accelerated by polar amplification.

This was actually a special-themed issue of QSR, “Arctic Palaeoclimate Synthesis.” It has a good piece just on that fast feedback, “Arctic amplification: can the past constrain the future?” (subs. req’d), which concludes:

Arctic amplification, the observation that surface air temperature changes in the Arctic exceed those of the Northern Hemisphere as a whole, is a pervasive feature of climate models, and has recently emerged in observational data relative to the warming trend of the past century…. Here we evaluate the mechanisms responsible for Arctic amplification on Quaternary timescales, and review evidence from four intervals in the past 3 Ma for which sufficient paleoclimate data and model simulations are available to estimate the magnitude of Arctic amplification under climate states both warmer and colder than present. Despite differences in forcings and feedbacks for these reconstructions compared to today, the Arctic temperature change consistently exceeds the Northern Hemisphere average by a factor of 3–4, suggesting that Arctic warming will continue to greatly exceed the global average over the coming century, with concomitant reductions in terrestrial ice masses and, consequently, an increasing rate of sea level rise.

Now that should be alarming to anybody:

the Arctic temperature change consistently exceeds the Northern Hemisphere average by a factor of 3–4

And indeed the best recent models show staggeringly high Arctic warming this century if we stay on our current emissions path (see M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F“).

As RealClimate noted in their useful discussion, “Polar amplification is thought to result primarily from positive feedbacks from the retreat of ice and snow.” Indeed, the popular explanation is that warming melts highly reflective white ice and snow, which is replaced by the dark blue sea or dark land, both of which absorb far more sunlight and hence far more solar energy.

But in fact Arctic warming is amplified for several additional synergistic reasons, which are worth knowing, as I discussed in “What exactly is polar amplification and why does it matter?”

As the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) explains in their 2004 report, Impacts of a Warming Arctic (see figure here):

In the Arctic, compared to lower latitudes, “more of the extra trapped energy goes into warming rather than evaporation.”
In the Arctic, “the atmospheric layer that has to warm in order to warm the surface is shallower.”
So, when the sea ice retreats, the “solar heat absorbed by the oceans in summer is more easily transferred to the atmosphere in winter.”

[And as one climate scientist explained to me, it can get incredibly cold above thick ice, but it can't get much colder than freezing above open water.]

All this leads to more snow and ice melting, further decreasing Earth’s reflectivity (albedo), causing more heating, which the thinner arctic atmosphere spreads more quickly over the entire polar region, and so on and on.

And that in turn threatens a cascade of effects. As the scientists at The International Polar Year explained last year, this could “speed up melting of the Greenland ice sheet, accelerating the rise in sea levels,” and “Permafrost melting could also accelerate during rapid Arctic sea-ice loss due to an amplification of Arctic land warming 3.5 times greater than secular 21st century climate trends” (see “Tundra 4: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss“).

Yet the destruction of a significant fraction of the permafrost must be avoided at all cost, since the tundra feedback, coupled with the climate-carbon-cycle feedbacks that the IPCC models, could easily take us to the unmitigated catastrophe of 1000 ppm (see Tundra, Part 2: The point of no return). See also NSF issues world a wake-up call: “Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the [East Siberian Arctic Shelf] shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.”

One final point from the summary overview of the special issue of QSR:

Taken together, the size and speed of the summer sea ice loss over the last few decades appear anomalous compared to events from previous thousands of years, especially considering that changes in the Earth’s orbit over this time have made sea ice melting less, not more, likely.

Human-caused Arctic warming has overtaken 2,000 years of natural cooling, as a “seminal” 2009 Science study found” [see figure below]:

A Hockey Stick in Melting Ice

In short, “greenhouse gas emissions are overwhelming the system,” as David Schneider, a visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and one of the Science article’s co-authors put it.

So the next time some anti-science disinformer — or more likely, one of the doubters who has been duped by them — says past warmth undermines our understanding of human-caused warming, tell them, quite the reverse is true. The paleoclimate record provides us more cause to be worried, not less. We know natural forcings led to warming in the past, but human emissions of greenhouse gases are overwhelming the climate now, and threatening catastrophic levels of warming if we stay on our current emissions path.

Green Futures: The planet needs family planning, says Sara Parkin

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:14:35 +0000

Why population control is a personal responsibility, as well as a global dilemma

Thwarting death – and particularly child mortality – has been one of the greatest human achievements of the last 200 years. Average life expectancy across the world has risen from 47 to 68 in the last 60 years alone. Growing old remains a privilege, though. Citizens of richer countries still live around ten years longer than those in poorer ones.

Unfortunately, lowering birth rates is not so prestigious and attracts significantly less investment. Although family size has dropped from a global average of over five children in 1950 to just 2.6 today, we are still on course for a world population of 10.5 billion by 2050. According to many ecologists, it would be impossible for the earth to sustain so many. Already, at 6.8 million, we are over-consuming and over-polluting to a dangerous degree.

There are plenty of incentives for politicians to hasten an ‘ecological demographic transition’ – in which birth rates come down to equal death rates, and populations stabilise at a lower level. As solutions to climate change and resource shortages go, this is one of the easiest and cheapest available – and would bring many additional benefits to women, children and economies.

When rich countries discuss population control, a commonly voiced fear is the cost of an ageing population. But, as Adair Turner, former Chair of the UK Pensions Commission, has calculated, raising children represents a far greater cost to families and to the state than caring for the frail and dying.

Globally, up to 40% of pregnancies are unplanned, revealing a huge unmet need for contraception and family planning services. Just by filling this gap, we would have a chance of bringing world population down to the lower UN projection of 8 billion by 2050.

In the poorest countries, where the average family size is over four children, women need the most help to plan their families and be confident that the children they do have will thrive. Improved access to contraceptives and advice in Iran, Thailand and Rwanda, for example, has been welcomed greatly by women – and has proved very successful at reducing growth rates. For determined governments, distance is no obstacle to making effective interventions. In remote upland regions of Mexico, contraceptives arrive in the villages in panniers carried by donkeys – with medical supplies in the same load.

Yet in the UK, where over a third of pregnancies are unplanned, Primary Care Trusts are failing to provide adequate services.

Currently, rich countries are alone in showing a rise in average family size. With a disproportionate impact on the environment, this puts them on fragile ecological, moral and diplomatic territory. A child born in Europe accounts for 11 times more greenhouse gas emissions than one born in Africa; for North America, the figure is 24 times. (These do not include ‘offshore’ emissions embedded in imports.)

Ultimately, it is clear that, with increasing pressure on key resources, such as land, food and water, everywhere, planning our family is a personal responsibility, as well as a global dilemma.

Sara Parkin is Founder Director of Forum for the Future.

Forum for the Future’s new report, Growing Pains, warns that the UK will struggle to meet the needs of a population officially projected to reach 70 million by 2030, and calls on politicians to start planning now.

Read it online at www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/growing-pains.

Three Quarks Daily: I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:56:41 +0000

George Monbiot in The Guardian:

This will not be an easy column to write. I am about to put down 1,200 words in support of a book that starts by attacking me and often returns to this sport. But it has persuaded me that I was wrong. More to the point, it has opened my eyes to some fascinating complexities in what seemed to be a black and white case.

In the Guardian in 2002 I discussed the sharp rise in the number of the world's livestock, and the connection between their consumption of grain and human malnutrition. After reviewing the figures, I concluded that veganism "is the only ethical response to what is arguably the world's most urgent social justice issue". I still believe that the diversion of ever wider tracts of arable land from feeding people to feeding livestock is iniquitous and grotesque. So does the book I'm about to discuss. I no longer believe that the only ethical response is to stop eating meat.

In Meat: A Benign Extravagance, Simon Fairlie pays handsome tribute to vegans for opening up the debate. He then subjects their case to the first treatment I've read that is both objective and forensic. His book is an abattoir for misleading claims and dodgy figures, on both sides of the argument.

There's no doubt that the livestock system has gone horribly wrong.

More here. [Thanks to Pablo Policzer.]

Tom Watson MP: New You Gov poll: 52% of people think Andy Coulson should resign, 24% think he should remain.

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:43:36 +0000

You Gov say:

The majority of the public thinks that Downing Street’s Director of Communications Andy Coulson should be removed from office (pdf) and that investigations into the News of the World phone tapping affair should be reopened after fresh allegations, our survey reveals.

In 2007, the News of the World’s royal editor, Clive Goodman, and private investigator Glen Mulcaire, were jailed over conspiracy to intercept the voicemail of senior royal aides. The editor at the time, Coulson, denied all knowledge of the operation but accepted ‘ultimate responsibility’ and stepped down. He has since become David Cameron’s Director of Communications, but recent allegations have suggested that phone tapping was widespread at the paper and that Coulson was aware of its use.

Losing his job
Just over half the population (52%) believe the Government’s PR boss should lose his job because of this, compared to 24% who think that Coulson, who has denied the allegations and said he is ‘happy to voluntarily meet’ police to assist further investigation, should keep his position.

Strikingly, just 14% of the population think that the police conducted a full investigation of the phone tapping affair at the time. Although the Metropolitan Police maintain that they gave the Criminal Prosecution Service full access to the clear evidence gathered, almost half of the public (47%) say they do not believe a full investigation was carried out, and a considerable 54% of Brits believe that the police should re-open the investigation, compared to under a quarter (24%) who doesn’t think this necessary.
Editorial ethics
Although this case of illegal story acquisition is limited to News of the World, it appears that the general public do not have much faith in the ethics of other publications either. A staggering 80% of the public believe that other newspapers ‘probably do similar things’, and the News of the World reporter ‘just happened’ to get caught

The Big Picture (Boston Globe): Trapped in a Chilean mine

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:40:35 +0000

Over a month ago, on August 5, 2010, the roof of the San Jose copper and gold mine collapsed, trapping 33 miners inside, 700 meters (2,300 ft) below ground near Copiapo, Chile. The fate of the miners was not immediately known - it took 17 days before a drill reached their refuge, discovering them alive and well. Rescue work began immediately, but even with several concurrent plans underway, the quickest likely rescue will still take two to three months. Until then, the 33 men will have to endure high temperatures and humidity in isolated conditions. A video link has been established, many relatives have set up camp nearby, and food, air, messages and supplies are delivered by several narrow boreholes. Fluorescent lights with timers are to be sent down to attempt to keep the men on a normal schedule by imitating day and night as they care for each other and assist in their own rescue. Once it reaches them, the diameter of the rescue borehole will be very narrow. so each miner will have to ensure they have a waistline of no more than 90 cm (35 in) to escape. (42 photos total)

Relatives wait outside a collapsed mine where about 33 miners are trapped in Copiapo, Chile, Saturday, Aug. 14, 2010. (AP Photo/Luis Hidalgo)

Chile - San Jose California - Gold - Copper - Borehole

Global Guerillas (John Robb): JOURNAL: GG Entrepreneurs Displace Mexico's Control Over PEMEX

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:38:13 +0000

Global guerrilla entrepreneurs, super-empowered by direct connections to the dominant global marketplace (a market that is relatively indifferent to the provenance of the supplies it demands), are taking control of the Burgos basin, home to Mexico's biggest natural gas fields. To accelerate this seizure, these enterprising guerrillas (likely a Zeta offshoot) are kidnapping oil workers working for PEMEX (as Zenpundit kindly notes, this is a playbook we have seen before -- India, Iraq, and Nigeria). Here are some choice GG quotes from the LATimes article about it:

"How is it, that Pemex, supposedly the backbone of the nation, can be made to bow down like this?" -- relative of a kidnapped worker.
"These are territories where the organized crime infrastructure, inside and outside of the police forces, has established power — a parallel power, a parallel government. That territory is in the hands of a parallel power that has penetrated the government at all levels." Alejandro Gertz NOTE: This is a nice description of a hollow state.

NOTE, we'll see variants of this in the US as the global economic depression worsens.

scyfilove.com (Liverpool): Davy Jones interview part two – bringing the Silurians back to life and passing on his skills to the next generation

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:11:59 +0000

Movie and TV make-up maestro Davy Jones on why he has set up a special effects school and when he met new Doctor Who Matt Smith

Davy Jones interview part two – bringing the Silurians back to life and passing on his skills to the next generation has just flown in from scyfilove.com - click through for the rest of the good stuff

Three Quarks Daily: Murray Gell-Mann on beauty and truth in physics

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:10:50 +0000

[Thanks to Farrukh Azfar.]

Three Quarks Daily: What Does It Mean for a Theory to Function as an Accounting Method?

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:07:27 +0000

David Sloan Wilson in Evolution For Everyone:

The evolutionary community is as active as an alarmed beehive over the critique of inclusive fitness theory recently published in the journal Nature by Martin Nowak, Corina E. Tarnita, and E.O. Wilson. I do not agree with them in every respect but I'm glad that they have aroused the evolutionary community from its stupor. The general public and majority of evolutionary biologists have a pre-1975 understanding that hasn't even kept pace with modern inclusive fitness theory, not to speak of the debates that will be taking place among the cognoscenti. This is an opportunity for everyone to take stock of the core issues at stake.

It is important to realize that numerous issues are at stake that must be examined one by one. It doesn't help that Richard Dawkins continues to issue boneheaded statements about group selection, as I recount in my previous post. Inclusive fitness theorists should be joining me in pointing out the errors of these statements, just as I intend to join them in pointing out some errors in the Nowak et al. critique.

In this post I want to focus on a statement that Nowak et al. make in the caption to figure 3 that "inclusive fitness theory...is an alternative accounting method, but one that works only in a very limited domain."

What does it mean for a theory to function as an accounting method?

More here.

good coders code, great coders reuse: Top Ten One-Liners from CommandLineFu Explained

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:03:45 +0000

I love working in the shell. Mastery of shell lets you get things done in seconds, rather than minutes or hours, if you chose to write a program instead.

In this article I'd like to explain the top one-liners from the commandlinefu.com. It's a user-driven website where people get to choose the best and most useful shell one-liners.

But before I do that, I want to take the opportunity and link to a few of my articles that I wrote some time ago on working efficiently in the command line:

Update: Russian translation now available.

And now the explanation of top one-liners from commandlinefu.

#1. Run the last command as root

$ sudo !!

We all know what the sudo command does - it runs the command as another user, in this case, it runs the command as superuser because no other user was specified. But what's really interesting is the bang-bang !! part of the command. It's called the event designator. An event designator references a command in shell's history. In this case the event designator references the previous command. Writing !! is the same as writing !-1. The -1 refers to the last command. You can generalize it, and write !-n to refer to the n-th previous command. To view all your previous commands, type history.

This one-liner is actually really bash-specific, as event designators are a feature of bash.

I wrote about event designators in much more detail in my article "The Definitive Guide to Bash Command Line History." The article also comes with a printable cheat sheet for working with the history.

#2. Serve the current directory at http://localhost:8000/

$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer

This one-liner starts a dedicated server hosting (web server) on port 8000 with the contents of current directory on all the interfaces (address 0.0.0.0), not just localhost. If you have "index.html" or "index.htm" files, it will serve those, otherwise it will list the contents of the currently working directory.

It works because python comes with a standard module called SimpleHTTPServer. The -m argument makes python to search for a module named SimpleHTTPServer.py in all the possible system locations (listed in sys.path and $PYTHONPATH shell variable). Once found, it executes it as a script. If you look at the source code of this module, you'll find that this module tests if it's run as a script if __name__ == '__main__', and if it is, it runs the test() method that makes it run a web server in the current directory.

To use a different port, specify it as the next argument:

$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8080

This command runs a HTTP server on all local interfaces on port 8080.

If you're looking for hosting your website, check out webhosting.

#3. Save a file you edited in vim without the needed permissions

:w !sudo tee %

This happens to me way too often. I open a system config file in vim and edit it just to find out that I don't have permissions to save it. This one-liner saves the day. Instead of writing the while to a temporary file :w /tmp/foobar and then moving the temporary file to the right destination mv /tmp/foobar /etc/service.conf, you now just type the one-liner above in vim and it will save the file.

Here is how it works, if you look at the vim documentation (by typing :he :w in vim), you'll find the reference to the command :w !{cmd} that says that vim runs {cmd} and passes it the contents of the file as standard input. In this one-liner the {cmd} part is the sudo tee % command. It runs tee % as superuser. But wait, what is %? Well, it's a read-only register in vim that contains the filename of the current file! Therefore the command that vim executes becomes tee current_filename, with the current directory being whatever the current_file is in. Now what does tee do? The tee command takes standard input and write it to a file! Rephrasing, it takes the contents of the file edited in vim, and writes it to the file (while being root)! All done!

#4. Change to the previous working directory

$ cd -

Everyone knows this, right? The dash "-" is short for "previous working directory." The previous working directory is defined by $OLDPWD shell variable. After you use the cd command, it sets the $OLDPWD environment variable, and then, if you type the short version cd -, it effectively becomes cd $OLDPWD and changes to the previous directory.

To change to a directory named "-", you have to either cd to the parent directory and then do cd ./- or do cd /full/path/to/-.

#5. Run the previous shell command but replace string "foo" with "bar"

$ ^foo^bar^

This is another event designator. This one is for quick substitution. It replaces foo with bar and repeats the last command. It's actually a shortcut for !!:s/foo/bar/. This one-liner applies the s modifier to the !! event designator. As we learned from one-liner #1, the !! event designator stands for the previous command. Now the s modifier stands for substitute (greetings to sed) and it substitutes the first word with the second word.

Note that this one-liner replaces just the first word in the previous command. To replace all words, add the g modifer (g for global):

$ !!:gs/foo/bar

This one-liner is also bash-specific, as event designators are a feature of bash.

Again, see my article "The Definitive Guide to Bash Command Line History." I explain all this stuff in great detail.

#6. Quickly backup or copy a file

$ cp filename{,.bak}

This one-liner copies the file named filename to a file named filename.bak. Here is how it works. It uses brace expansion to construct a list of arguments for the cp command. Brace expansion is a mechanism by which arbitrary strings may be generated. In this one-liner filename{,.bak} gets brace expanded to filename filename.bak and puts in place of the brace expression. The command becomes cp filename filename.bak and file gets copied.

Talking more about brace expansion, you can do all kinds of combinatorics with it. Here is a fun application:

$ echo {a,b,c}{a,b,c}{a,b,c}

It generates all the possible strings 3-letter from the set {a, b, c}:

aaa aab aac aba abb abc aca acb acc
baa bab bac bba bbb bbc bca bcb bcc
caa cab cac cba cbb cbc cca ccb ccc

And here is how to generate all the possible 2-letter strings from the set of {a, b, c}:

$ echo {a,b,c}{a,b,c}

It produces:

aa ab ac ba bb bc ca cb cc

If you liked this, you may also like my article where I defined a bunch of set operations (such as intersection, union, symmetry, powerset, etc) by using just shell commands. The article is called "Set Operations in the Unix Shell." (And since I have sets in the shell, I will soon write articles on on "Combinatorics in the Shell" and "Algebra in the Shell". Fun topics to explore. Perhaps even "Topology in the Shell" :))

#7. mtr - traceroute and ping combined

$ mtr google.com

MTR, bettern known as "Matt's Traceroute" combines both traceroute and ping command. After each successful hop, it sends a ping request to the found machine, this way it produces output of both traceroute and ping to better understand the quality of link. If it finds out a packet took an alternative route, it displays it, and by default it keeps updating the statistics so you knew what was going on in real time.

#8. Find the last command that begins with "whatever," but avoid running it

$ !whatever:p

Another use of event designators. The !whatever designator searches the shell history for the most recently executed command that starts with whatever. But instead of executing it, it prints it. The :p modifier makes it print instead of executing.

This one-liner is bash-specific, as event designators are a feature of bash.

Once again, see my article "The Definitive Guide to Bash Command Line History." I explain all this stuff in great detail.

#9. Copy your public-key to remote-machine for public-key authentication

$ ssh-copy-id remote-machine

This one-liner copies your public-key, that you generated with ssh-keygen (either SSHv1 file identity.pub or SSHv2 file id_rsa.pub) to the remote-machine and places it in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. This ensures that the next time you try to log into that machine, public-key authentication (commonly referred to as "passwordless authentication.") will be used instead of the regular password authentication.

If you wished to do it yourself, you'd have to take the following steps:

your-machine$ scp ~/.ssh/identity.pub remote-machine:
your-machine$ ssh remote-machine
remote-machine$ cat identity.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

This one-liner saves a great deal of typing. Actually I just found out that there was a shorter way to do it:

your-machine$ ssh remote-machine 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys' < .ssh/identity.pub

#10. Capture video of a linux desktop

$ ffmpeg -f x11grab -s wxga -r 25 -i :0.0 -sameq /tmp/out.mpg

A pure coincidence, I have done so much video processing with ffmpeg that I know what most of this command does without looking much in the manual.

The ffmpeg generally can be descibed as a command that takes a bunch of options and the last option is the output file. In this case the options are -f x11grab -s wxga -r 25 -i :0.0 -sameq and the output file is /tmp/out.mpg.

Here is what the options mean:

-f x11grab makes ffmpeg to set the input video format as x11grab. The X11 framebuffer has a specific format it presents data in and it makes ffmpeg to decode it correctly.
-s wxga makes ffmpeg to set the size of the video to wxga which is shortcut for 1366x768. This is a strange resolution to use, I'd just write -s 800x600.
-r 25 sets the framerate of the video to 25fps.
-i :0.0 sets the video input file to X11 display 0.0 at localhost.
-sameq preserves the quality of input stream. It's best to preserve the quality and post-process it later.

You can also specify ffmpeg to grab display from another x-server by changing the -i :0.0 to -i host:0.0.

If you're interested in ffmpeg, here are my other articles on ffmpeg that I wrote while ago:

PS. This article was so fun to write, that I decided to write several more parts. Tune in the next time for "The Next Top Ten One-Liners from CommandLineFu Explained" :)

Have fun. See ya!

PSS. Follow me on twitter for updates.

This article was sponsored by:

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Futurismic: BOOK REVIEW: JPod by Douglas Coupland

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:00:08 +0000

JPod by Douglas Coupland

Edition reviewed: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2006; ~550pp; £7.99 RRP – ISBN13: 978-0747585879

My initial response on finishing Coupland’s 2006 novel JPod was less than valedictory, but it deserves qualification: I was relieved to have finished it and glad it hadn’t eaten a large amount of my time, but I’d felt no urge to stop reading it. The fairest and truest thing to say would be that it’s not my sort of novel. Whether this is due to a sort of cultural immune-system reaction to the modern “novel of character” by a mind more accustomed to the biome of science fiction (and its defiantly non-literary concern with plot and story) is an open question. (more…)

Follow Futurismic on Twitter for more nuggets of near-future fun and weirdness!

Share and Enjoy:

Three Quarks Daily: Wednesday Poem

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:51:06 +0000

Eighty-Five

As I grow older, I feel younger
more eager, more full of love.
More alive the closer I move to death.
More whole the closer I move into blight.
The sweeter life grows as fervent
clamors of youth pass.
Passions of old age take deeper
flavor, ripened, more nuanced.
More easily words and affections
flow when the self-conscious gaucherie
of youth has passed.

Wholeness suddenly is mine;
ragged edges of fear hemmed.

Mirrors say Look. Do not
be afraid. You are what you are.

by Betty Lockwood
from A Matriach's Song
Peter Randall Publisher, 2001

onlineSpin: Join The Cult Of Looking Up

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:45:20 +0000

The next time you're walking down the street, take a moment to realize how much of your day is spent looking down. I realized this the other day when I was in a cab in San Francisco. It was a beautiful, hot (which is rare) day in SF and I didn't notice it for a few minutes because I was too busy looking down. I was engaged with the screen of my iPhone, checking email, checking Facebook, checking the digital status of my life -- and all the while, I was missing the moment. That's when I realized that the present was passing me by!

BLDGBLOD: Artificial caverns expanding beneath Chicago

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:45:00 +0000

[Image: Tunneling beneath Chicago; view larger!].

Due to Chicago's ongoing TARP project—its Tunnel And Reservoir Plan—there are now "109.4 miles of tunnels bored beneath the Chicagoland area." According to Tunnel Business Magazine, this massive network of new subterranean space includes "deep tunnels, drop shafts, near-surface connection and control structures and dewatering pump stations," all embedded beneath the city. I would love to see Michael Cook sent there as a project photographer.

Until then, the above image shows us TARP's first phase in action, with a tunneling machine breaking through and expanding the artificial caverns that now resonate below the streets of greater Chicago. TARP's second phase—the so-called Chicago Underflow Plan—kicked off back in 2008, its work "consisting of [the] mining and construction of several reservoirs," vast hollows that will occasionally fill with storm runoff and rain, reknitting urban hydrology from below.

(Thanks to Anya Domlesky for the link! Download back issues of Tunnel Business Magazine here).

The Sartorialist: On the Street...Alice, New York

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:44:00 +0000

Left Foot Forward: Tea Party comes to London

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:30:47 +0000

The European Resource Bank - Europe’s largest annual meeting of free-market think tanks - convenes in London tomorrow. It is hosted by the Taxpayers Alliance (TPA), an organisation whose claims to represent ordinary taxpayers are somewhat undermined by the opulent manner in which the meeting will be carried out. Tonight is launch night, marked by

“a champagne reception at a fantastic penthouse apartment overlooking central London.”

This is all possible because the event is funded by wealthy American anti-tax lobbyists, supporters of the ascendent Tea Party movement.

Lobby groups sponsoring the event include the Cato Institute and Americans for Prosperity, both of which are funded by the billionaire Koch brothers. The Heritage Foundation, Ronald Reagan’s favourite think-tank, is also a prominent backer. Unsuprisingly, speakers include the likes of Arthur Laffer, a key economic adviser to Reagan in the 1980s.

The Tea Party is increasingly gaining a reputation as a bigoted organisation. Its Washington rally at the end of last month was headed by controversial Fox News host Glenn Beck, who has previously accused Obama of harbouring “a deep-seated hatred for white people”.

This Newsnight documentary exposed the place of racism in the movement, which is thought to partly explain its growing success in America. Analysis of the Tea Party’s demographic has found the often populist rhetoric of the organisation is not backed up in fact: the typical member tends to be a ‘white, Republican, older male with money.’

These links with the far-right, libertarian, and socially conservative Tea Party movement provide telling clues to the true ideological identity of the Taxpayers Alliance, for those who were still seeking confirmation of it. The organisation is occasionally quoted in the press as if it were a politically neutral organisation, something the BBC has been criticised for.

Most recently, various newspapers have taken up the TPA findings that some union activity is funded by the public purse. The TPA should not be treated as an impartial source of evidence. As the Trade Union Congress’s blog points out, their figures are misleadingly distorted:

“[the TPA] will gladly tell you that the cost of union facility time to Hammersmith and Fulham Council is just short of £200,000 per year – but won’t mention that this represents an incredibly small proportion of that local authority’s total expenditure, which annually is in the region of £180 million.”

The TPA have also been attacked recently for themselves wasting ‘millions‘ of taxpayers’ money, as a result of their numerous ’spurious’ public enquiries.

The event will be seen as an opportunity for a vital boon by the nascent British Tea Party group. Since Daniel Hannan launched the party in February, to mild encouragement from the right, they have held a few events across the country, but have failed to mature as a serious political pressure group. Their most high-profile event so far was the torturously-named Devon Cream TEA Party fringe event at the UKIP conference.

So there’s no need yet for a British version of the Coffee Party – the Facebook-started American progressive group which has sprung up in opposition to their fiscally conservative rivals.

Climate Progress: Climate and clean energy jobs legislation: Carly Fiorina was for it before she was against it

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:48:56 +0000

Last week the Politico reported on the California Senate debate: “Fiorina’s major stumble came on the issue of Proposition 23.” Fiorina had waffled on whether she supported the landmark climate and clean energy legislation that Prop 23 would kill, since, of course, she supported cap-and-trade during the presidential campaign.

Now the GOP Senate candidate she has completed her flip-flop to full support for the dirty energy proposition funded by Big Oil, as the L.A. Times notes in its piece, “Global warming bill a lose-lose issue for GOP candidates.”

Fiorina’s campaign finally released a (somewhat) clear message on where she stands on Prop 23 on Friday, calling the measure “Band-Aid fix and an imperfect solution” to addressing the energy and climate issues, but still supporting it. Here is her full statement on Prop 23:

Proposition 23 is a Band-Aid fix and an imperfect solution to addressing our nation’s climate and energy challenges. The real solution to these challenges lies not with a single state taking action on its own, but rather with global action. That’s why we need a comprehensive, national energy solution that funds energy R&D and takes advantage of every source of domestic energy we have – including nuclear, wind and solar – in an environmentally responsible way. That said, AB 32 is undoubtedly a job killer, and it should be suspended.

It is unclear how a candidate can call for extensive research and legislative action on the climate and energy “challenge” and at the same time support a proposition that would bury the work that California has done on the issue over the last decade. California has set itself up to be the leader in renewable energy through AB 32 and the resulting rules, but Prop 23 would eviscerate all the progress the state has made.

How can she say AB 32 “is undoubtedly a job killer” now when just two years ago she said cap-and-trade “will both create jobs and lower the cost of energy.”

Fiorina seems to be trying to pass the buck to the federal government, in language that is eerily similar to that coming from the climate change deniers at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber, which has endorsed Fiorina, is notorious for questioning the science of global warming. It made headlines when its anti-climate position caused a number of major companies to walk away from the Chamber last year.

Again, as recently as 2008, she advocated for the proposed cap-and-trade system she now opposes. And now she appears to be siding with Texas oil interests over her own state and an approach she embraced just two years ago), as this video makes clear:

What changed? Could it be all the contributions from the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, Sarah Palin, and Tesoro — all part of a PAC contribution list that reads like a Who’s Who of oil profiteers? The same Koch brothers that have sent a reported $50 million to climate change denying groups have already given thousands of dollars to Fiorina, with more likely on the way.

Fiorina’s vacillation and final decision to support Prop 23 leads one to believe that her support is available to the highest bidder or whatever way the political winds blow. Instead of standing with the thousands of jobs in renewable energy, or the millions of Californians that want the state to lead on climate change, she has chased campaign donations. What a shame.

This post is by Araceli Ruano, CAP’s Senior Vice President and the Director for California, and Joseph Romm. Andrew Fitzgerald Adams contributed to this post.