Francis's News Feeds

Skeptical Science: 10 key climate indicators all point to the same finding: global warming is unmistakable

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:55:16 +0000

A common theme expressed at Skeptical Science is that to understand climate, you need to look at the full body of evidence. To help people assess the evidence, NOAA have just published State of the Climate 2009. The report defines 10 measurable planet-wide features used to gauge global temperature changes. All of these indicators are moving in the direction of a warming planet.

Seven indicators are rising: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface. Three indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere. Jane Lubchenco sums it up well:

"For the first time, and in a single compelling comparison, the analysis brings together multiple observational records from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean. The records come from many institutions worldwide. They use data collected from diverse sources, including satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ships, buoys and field surveys. These independently produced lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion: our planet is warming."

I suggest checking out the site as it has some great resources. There's a short video introducing the report. My favourite line from this is Deke Arndt's line, "Climate trains the boxer but weather throws the punches". If you want a quick summary, jump to the press release. There's DIY Climate Indicators with interactive displays and access to data set. And of course there's the full report (6.6Mb PDF).

Daily interesting photos - Flickr: Interesting photos - 27 Jul 2010 - Flickr

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:50:30 +0000

John Redwood MP: Total place – trick or treat?

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:15:30 +0000

In the dying days of the last government there was a flickering of interest in the public sector delivering more for less. Ministers started asking to know how much public money in total was spent in each place. They discovered it was often more than they realised, with great overlap between the spending of different Agencies, departments and Councils.

Some Ministers just wanted the higher figures to be able to make claims over how much they were offering. Others saw that there was scope to cut out the overlap and deliver more for less.

I have just received a glossy brochure from the Local Government Group celebrating “Total Place”. Within its 36 sheets it includes the following statement from the “Chair of the Total Place High level Officials group”:

“The time has come to dramatically reduce the number of …targets, indicators,inspection arrangements and ring fenced budgets….
We have too many vulnerable people, households and communities receiving services from countless agencies which fail to meet their needs at great cost to the public purse….
We spend £220billion on purchasing goods and materials across the public sector but we sitll have no convincing purchasing strategy for common goods….”

This commonsense approach is not reflected throughout the brochure. In a Section entitled “regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnerhsips” we are told:

“In local government, we have been familiar for some time with the need to develop a holistic, customer focussed services (sic) through partnership. In some ways Total Place is not new, but the renewed momentum behind the breadth of our focus on transforming services for residents and codesigning with Whitehall certainly gives me cause for optimism”.

The brochure ends with a Next Step that sounds very different from the tone of the “Chair’s” opening statement:

” We propose a new improvement framework with streamlined departmental and inspection stuctures alongside stringent local self-regulation. This would include peer reviews at least every three years”

So is Total Place trick or treat? Would it cut costs and concentrate the money on the people and problems that matter, or will it spawn its own all new language and bureaucracy?

Only In It For The Gold: Misleading Headline Again

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:46:00 +0000

I think nobody has ever been fired for a bad headline. The story is important and informative for the informed, though possibly a bit misleading for the uninformed. So it's also bad journalism for America, but not as bad as the headline. It's originally Agence France-Press I think, though the headline was clearly written by somebody who only read the first sentence. So maybe it wasn't bad journalism in the original. I don't doubt the French public could do a better job understanding this:

"Our findings will increase our knowledge on the climate system and increase our ability to predict the speed and final height of sea level rise," said Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, an ice expert at the University of Copenhagen and head of the project.

"If the Eemian was unstable, then the models of future change due to increased greenhouse effect are wrong as they cannot handle sudden changes," she told AFP by email from the site.

But many Americans are far more dauntless and brave than Frenchmen, and so are able to go from "models are wrong" to "therefore the sensitivity is zero" so quickly and with so much zeal and so little thought that it causes spinal injury. Certainly the rest of the context is likely reduced to invisibility.

Anyway, it's a good story. And it's the truth, what Dr. Dahl-Jensen says about the models: if they aren't accurate, then things are more likely to turn out much worse than the models say than to turn better than they say.

But these days, in the English-speaking world at least, you really have to spell something like that out. You have to say "worse than the models predict", which I suppose puts you in the terrain of advocate and not scientist! If you just say "models are wrong" you're pretty much guaranteed to be read as saying "no worries"!

Wooster Collective: "Move It On Over" - Fresh Stuff From Elbow-Toe

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 03:23:32 +0000

More here.

Wooster Collective: Barry McGee - An Introduction

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 03:13:18 +0000

Wooster Collective: All You Need Is Love from zed1

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 03:07:15 +0000

Wooster Collective: Requiem for a Thought - A New Collaboration Piece from TXTual Healing

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:55:10 +0000

Requiem for a Thought from paul notzold on Vimeo.

Text message in the thoughts of the strange character lurking along the wall. The interactive bubble reveals the characters inner thoughts, as it tracks the characters movements. A collaboration piece between Paul Notzold's TXTual Healing and Jared Gradinger with Pictoplasma. This piece was made during Les Grandes Traversees festival in Bordeaux France in July of 2010.

Wooster Collective: Fresh Stuff From C215 in London

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:50:27 +0000

One of our favorite C215 pieces to date.

Wooster Collective: Blu's Soldier Puppets in Warsaw

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:36:40 +0000

(Thanks, Miesto)

Wooster Collective: Easy Prey - Fresh Stuff From zed1 in Certaldo (FI) Italy

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:32:06 +0000

Wooster Collective: Fresh Stuff From Dimitris Taxis in Athens

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:26:51 +0000

(click to enlarge)

Wooster Collective: Wing Migration

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:21:47 +0000

"Migration is a celebration of my Chinese and Aboriginal heritage. Both my Chinese and Aboriginal grandparents could not celebrate their cultures for fear of persecution. I feel a great responsibility to celebrate my cultures for my ancestors that lived before me. The figures are based on myself and the birds are magpies. Magpies are important symbols, for both cultures. In Aboriginal culture a magpie is a term used for a person who is a half cast (black and white parents). The magpie is a Chinese symbol of marriage and prosperity. I am blessed to be alive in this day and age where cultural diversity can be celebrated in Australia, so I created an artwork to express these feelings"... Wing

Climate Progress: After the hottest decade on record, it’s the hottest year on record, hottest week of all time in satellite record, and we may be at record low Arctic sea ice volume - But how about the world's heaviest hailstone?

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:19:54 +0000

FoxNews had me on twice for the big snowstorms (during the hottest winter on record), but no invitations during the record-smashing heat waves hitting the nation and world. Go figure!

This is Roy Spencer’s much rejiggered UAH satellite data comparing 2010 lower trososphere temperatures (green) with average temps (blue) and record highs since 1979 (purple):

It would appear we’ve set the all-time record high absolute temperature in the satellite dataset for the last week or two.

NOAA’s annual State of the Climate Report for 2009 (video here) reports that “Past Decade Warmest on Record According to Scientists in 48 Countries“:

Each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the decade before. At the time, the 1980s was the hottest decade on record. In the 1990s, every year was warmer than the average of the previous decade. The 2000s were warmer still.“The temperature increase of one degree Fahrenheit over the past 50 years may seem small, but it has already altered our planet,” said Deke Arndt, co-editor of the report and chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. “Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying and heat waves are more common. And, as the new report tells us, there is now evidence that over 90 percent of warming over the past 50 years has gone into our ocean.”

And the 2010s will be the hottest decade on record and then the 2020s will be the hottest decade on record. The only question is whether humanity is going to continue to staying on this self-destructive emissions path so that every decade this century will be the hottest on record, with an ultimate temperature increase by 2100 of perhaps 9°F or more:

McClatchy reports something that CP readers have known for a while:

Global warming: NASA says it’s the hottest year on record

Scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies reported recently that the average global temperature was higher over the past 12 months than during any other 12-month period in history. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released corroborating data, adding that the past four months, including June, have each individually been the hottest on record as well….

The average global temperature, computed over a 12-month period, reached a new record in May and held steady for the month of June, he said. This was despite the recent minimum in solar activity, which should have had a cooling effect on Earth.Apparently, Ruedy said, the solar cycle “has much less impact than the warming trend.”

A La Niña seems all but certain as central tropical Pacific ocean temperatures have been dropping steadily, which is perhaps what makes the satellite data at top so surprising, since it tends to be the most sensitive to the El Niño Southern oscillation.

You can do your own graphing of the UAH data (click here). The BlackBoard reports that Roy Spencer says:

The record highs and lows are based upon the entire MSU MT record back to 1979. To do this, we intercompared our official UAH TMT product, including the average annual cycle added to the anomalies, with just the Aqua averages over the Aqua period of record since mid-2002. This provided an intercalibration between Aqua-only and UAH official. This then allowed us to go back through and use all of the UAH TMT data to find record highs and lows back through 1979.

This is something I and others have requested for a while, so I take it that the plot at the top does in fact show the lower troposphere experienced the hottest week in the satellite record — though there are presumably recalibrations before the final reporting, since, for instance, March 2010 was easily the hottest March in the satellite record (UAH and RSS), but the top plot doesn’t indicate that.

And while everyone’s eyes are on the Arctic sea ice extent data, which right now appears not to be matching 2007’s record-setting pace, the Polar Science Center’s PIOMAS model puts the far more important metric of Arctic ice volume at a record-smashing low:

Daily Sea Ice volume anomalies for each day are computed relative to the 1979 to 2009 average for that day. The trend for the 1979- present period is shown in blue. Shaded areas show one and two standard deviations from the trend.

Note that PSC says, “September Ice Volume was lowest in 2009 at 5,800 km^3 or 67% below its 1979 maximum.” If I’m reading the two graphs right, then we are pretty close to the all-time volume record right now.

If you want to know why PIOMAS is a credible model , you can read the post by the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s Walt Meier on this at WattsUpWithCrap — yes, he really posted there:

PIOMAS has been specifically validated for ice thickness using submarine and satellite data (http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/IDAO/retro.html). Of course, the PIOMAS model estimates are not perfect, but they appear to capture the main features of the ice cover in response to forcings over seasonal and interannual scales….

PIOMAS includes much more up-to-date model components (developed during the late 1990s early 2000s) with significant improvements in how well the model is able to simulate the growth, melt, and motion of the ice cover. In particular, the model do a much better job at realistically moving the ice around the basin and redistributing the thickness (i.e., rafting, ridging) in response to wind forcing. Thus, the thickness fields are likely to be more realistic than PIPS. The primary references for PIOMAS are: Zhang and Rothrock (2003), Zhang and Rothrock (2001), Winton (2000), Zhang and Hibler (1997), Dukowicz and Smith (1994).

… for the reasons stated above, I would trust the PIOMAS model results more for seasonal and interannual changes in the ice cover. I very much doubt that anyone familiar with the model details would unequivocally trust PIPS over PIOMAS.

But what about the PIOMAS volume anomaly estimates? How can they be showing a record low volume anomaly when there is less of the thinner first-year ice than in previous years as seen in ice age data? Doesn’t this mean that PIOMAS results are way off? Well, first, it is quite possible that the model may currently be underestimating ice thickness. No model is perfect. However, there is a possible explanation for the low volume and the PIOMAS model may largely be correct.

The areas that in recent years have been first-year ice that are now covered by 2^nd and 3^rd year ice will increase the volume – in those regions. However, compared to the last two years, there is even less of the oldest ice (see images below – I also included 1985 as an example of 1980s ice conditions for comparison). The loss of the oldest, thickest ice may more than offset the gain in volume from the 2^nd and 3^rd year ice. Also, it’s been a relatively warm winter in the Arctic, so first-year ice is likely a bit thinner than in recent years. Finally, the extent has been less than the last two years for the past couple of months. So the PIOMAS estimate that we are at record low volume anomaly is not implausible.

Early May ice age for: 1985 (top-left), 2008 (top-right), 2009 (bottom-left), and 2010 (bottom-right). OW = open water (no ice); 1 = ice that is 0-1 year old (first-year ice), 2 = ice that is 1-2 years old (2^nd year ice), etc. Images courtesy of C. Fowler and J. Maslanik, University of Colorado, Boulder. Updated from Maslanik et al., 2007.

Regardless of what happens this summer though, the most important fact is that, despite some areas of the Arctic being a bit thicker this year, the long-term thinning and declining summer ice extent trend continues.

In his subsequent post, Dr. Meier debunks more of their nonsense and concludes:

There is little doubt in the sea ice community that during summer the Arctic can become ice-free and will become ice-free as temperatures continue to rise.

Duh. I suppose that will only come as a shock to Watts, Goddard, and their fellow Kool-Aid drinkers.

Finally, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing on this in the scientific literature — and I have great confidence that the disinformers will assert it must be evidence against the theory of human-caused global warming — but Accuweather reports:

A 1.9-pound hailstone plummeted to the ground as high winds and ample rain continued to fall last Friday afternoon. The massive hailstone is likely on its way to setting a new U.S. national record.

Discovered by ranch hand Les Scott, the hailstone measured 8 inches in diameter with an 18.5-inch circumference, and many believe the current national record hasn’t a chance.

“Officially, where records have been kept, this will be the U.S. record and world record for weight. So very impressive,” said Mike Fowle of the National Weather Service in a Keloland Television article.

Sources from the National Climatic Data Center say that the National Climate Extremes Committee will issue a statement this week stating that indeed a new national record has been set for the largest hailstone in both weight and diameter for the U.S. The previous record was held by a hailstone that fell seven years ago, in Aurora, Neb.

Hail and High Water? Sorry, couldn’t resist!

feeling listless: aren't we all

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:21:00 +0000

Blog! One time Heardsaid contributor (aren't we all) and friend of the blog Tom Reynolds has quit his job as an ambulance man and will now be blogging under his real name Brian Kellett:

"As for this blog... well... I'm unsure of what form it's going to take in the future. WIll I be still writing about ambulance stuff? Will I be documenting my journey into urgent care? Will I just natter about whatever interests me at that moment in time? I'm not quite sure. Certainly I'm not going to stop writing and in fact, later today, I'm heading into town to have drinks and a chat with a friend about something we are planning together.

So I'll keep blogging, but I'll no longer be the 'ambulance blogger', I'll be 'that annoyingly nerdy blogger', which I think puts me in good company."

Good luck, Brian.

feeling listless: Doctor Who Complete Series 5 Blu-ray: £63.99 at play.com (£4.92 an episode) (rrp £79.99 or £6.15) http://bit.ly/buU3BN [del.icio.us]

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:51:13 +0000

Doctor Who Complete Series 5 Blu-ray: £63.99 at play.com (£4.92 an episode) (rrp £79.99 or £6.15) http://bit.ly/buU3BN

feeling listless: Feeling Listless: aren't there a lot of men? [del.icio.us]

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:45:31 +0000

My Avengers blog post has been updated: http://bit.ly/9tVMb5

feeling listless: aren't there a lot of men?

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:44:32 +0000

Film You've probably seen this already, but just in case ...

To endorse the crowd, "woop" and "yeah"!

Except, my first reaction was: aren't there a lot of men?

Traditionally, The Avengers has been a predominantly male superhero team but even in the comics, The Wasp was a founding member. As you'd expect, the wikipedia has a list of members and I think I can see what the problem is. Here's a complete list of female teamsters from across the years from the various flavours of The Avengers:

The Wasp
Scarlet Witch
Mantis
Ms. Marvel
Tigra
Mantis
She-Hulk
Captain Marvel
Mockingbird
Firebird
Spider-Woman
Invisible Woman
Crystal
Firestar
Hellcat
Jocasta
Stature
Valkyrie
Sharon Carter
Marrina
Magdalene
Moira Brandon
Masque

Some of those will be tied up in the Fox X-Men license which I think includes any of the mutants in the Marvelverse (that's Scarlet Witch done for) and similar movie deals (Spiderwoman?). Others because they're part of a property that could be sold on-mass like The Inhumans. But mostly it's because outside of comics circles they're so horrendously obscure.

The only names that really have a cache are Firestar because of the Saturday morning cartoon and She-Hulk and it's unlikely that she'd be included in a film with her more famous cousin without the huge mass of baggage. Oh and Invisible Woman but that would be too weird.

It's a few years since I was really absorbed in Marvel Comics, but I can't think of another proper a-list female Marvel Comics character who isn't a derivation of an existing male character or depends on a super hero team for her existence. I even asked twitter and nothing quite fitted the bill.

Black Widow seems to be in this because Marvel consciously "introduced" her in Iron Man 2 and that might have worked for others from that list, The Wasp for example. But perhaps her non-appearance is because of the potential Ant-Man film, what with their continuity being linked together.

In other words the reason The Avengers is a men's room is not necessarily the film maker's fault. There just aren't enough female a-listers to go around. Which is a pity because Dichen Lachman would make an excellent Mantis. Or Emily Brunt as Hellcat. Or Ali Larter as Ms. Marvel. I'll stop.

Updated later in the day: Or not. A trailer has been released for a new cartoon series, which features the movie line-up plus Ant Man and The Wasp.

Ron Livingston and Michelle Monaghan had best keep their diaries clear.

feeling listless: Topless Robot - Debbie Gibson Vs. Tiffany -- Round 1 -- FIGHT [del.icio.us]

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:37:03 +0000

(oh my) Debbie Gibson Vs. Tiffany -- Round 1 -- FIGHT http://bit.ly/a0DyAH

PW Style: Etsy-delphian of the Day: Heidi Roland

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:49:10 +0000

Ever since I saw the animated feature in the theater, way back in 1995, I’ve considered Pocahontas (or the Disneyfied version of her, anyway) to be one of my fashion muses. Girl looks fly in her one-shoulder fringe dress, waist belt, and turquoise necklace.

Heidi Roland’s Native American-themed line, which incorporates vibrant feathers and swatches of suede into gorgeous necklaces and earrings, perfectly channels the earthy elegance of my favorite princess. Roland does an innovative take on the now-ubiquitous feather motif, dangling them from long leather strips and large silver hoops, or on showcasing them upon a backdrop of chocolate leather tassels.

Not only does Roland go above and beyond the typical peacock statement-piece, she keeps the price tag more reasonable that the boutiques do. Even featherless, her dangling chains are eye-catching. The collection also includes photograph earrings, which can be customized with an image of your choice.

Share this post:

The Sartorialist: On the Street....Greene St., New York City

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:41:00 +0000

Cambodia Calling: Chinese philanthropist gives away his wealth

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:14:00 +0000

Photo: Yang Junopo for The Globe and Mail. Story from theglobeandmail.com:

"With that endowment, Mr. Yu became the first Chinese national to give more than $1-billion to charity, now having contributed almost $1.3-billion in cash and real estate to the Yu Pengnian Foundation...

“If my children are competent, they don’t need my money,” Mr. Yu explained. “If they’re not, leaving them a lot of money is only doing them harm.”

In a society where capitalism is just 30 years old, and charitable giving an even younger concept, Mr. Yu says one of his primary goals in making a show out of giving his money away was to set an example to other rich Chinese. “Everybody has a different view of money. Some do good things with it, some rich people do nothing with it. …My goal is to be a leader, a pioneer who encourages rich people, inside and outside of China, to do something charitable.”

I hope wealthy Cambodians are listening - especially to the part about giving your children lots of money.

Left Foot Forward: Who will win Labour’s 2nd preferences?

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:48:50 +0000

Activist sentiment in Constituency Labour Party nominations suggests that David Miliband has a slender lead over Ed Miliband in the membership section of Labour’s electoral college. But evidence from those constituencies where there was a run-off between the two Milibands suggests that the younger brother may have a lead in second preferences.

Our appeal on twitter and by email to all CLP secretaries has delivered the full nomination results of 64 local parties where nominations took place and the votes of 1,610 Labour members. In votes cast from our sample of local Labour meetings, David Miliband has 35.3% of the vote followed by Ed Miliband (31.4%), Diane Abbott (14.4%), Ed Balls (10.1%), and Andy Burnham (8.9%). The results for the front runners are surprisingly similar to Labour List’s self-selective poll of Labour members which was used in Left Foot Forward’s model.

It is harder to make any inferences about second preferences since in the majority of cases the CLP either erroneously used first-past-the-post or there was a decisive winner in the first ballot. But in the 12 races for which we have information about a run-off between the two Milibands, Ed gained most second preferences in nine races, David in two, and they were tied in one. In these races, Ed picked up 54 votes while David gained 34.

Left Foot Forward has also spoken this week with a small group of Labour MPs who had nominated either Diane Abbott, Andy Burnham or Ed Balls. Again it is hard to make generalisations from such a small sample but the findings again reiterate how close the race has become. Of the nine willing to divulge a preference between the two Miliband brothers, five are for David and four for Ed. David’s second preferences came primarily from Andy Burnham backers while Ed’s came primarily from Diane Abbott’s.

If you have more information about your CLPs’ race, please send it editor@leftfootforward.org.

feeling listless: Crack!

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:16:12 +0000

TV Remember this?

To: Licensing and Creative, Pyramid International (official licensees for Doctor Who posters)

Hello,

While your Doctor Who character posters are very exciting, some of us fans and kids and fans who are kids and fans who have kids always love something interactive. It's why we purchase the Sonic Screwdrivers and standees in our droves.

Why not produce a poster of the crack in Amy Pond's wall when she was seven years old?

Well, ha!

At: Forbidden Planet.

Doctor Who
Poster: Crack In Time

"Oh dear - have you got a scary crack on your bedroom wall? Who knows what that could lead to?

Straight from the new series of Doctor Who a crack in the fabric of the universe all ready to hang about your home!

Poster measures 11.75" x 36"."

A couple of problems. The logo works against authenticity and it's the open shiny shiny crack from (I think) the Byzantium rather than something which will blend in.

But still look!

Crack!

Climate Progress: Billionaire polluter David Koch: Global warming is good for you - But why does NY Magazine reprint his disinformation without question?

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:09:03 +0000

Global warming could be good for the planet, Koch says. “A far greater land area will be available to produce food.”

This is the big pull-out quote from a profile in New York Magazine of the billionaire polluter behind the Tea Parties, whose family outspends Exxon Mobil on climate and clean energy disinformation.

NY Mag gives Koch free rein to spread that disinformation, with not a single quote by any scientist disputing it. Of course, if conservatives continue to listen to Koch and the groups funded by him, like the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation — and block all efforts to get off our current emissions path — then we are headed towards very high concentrations of carbon dioxide, which will dramatically reduce the land available to produce food, even as we add another 3 billion mouths to feed (see “Intro to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water“).

Rising sea levels will wipe out some of the world’s richest agricultural land, which is near the coast and deltas, while forcing more than 100 million people inland. At the same time, the inland glaciers will shrink sharply, reducing the flow of rivers to tens of millions of people in Asia. And then we have projections of moderate drought over half the planet (at 850 ppm). A NOAA-led study similary found permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe on our current emissions trajectory (and irreversibly so for 1000 years). Future droughts will be fundamentally different from all previous droughts that humanity has experienced because they will be very hot weather droughts (see Must-have PPT: The “global-change-type drought” and the future of extreme weather).

That’s why Scientific American asks “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?” But NY Mag doesn’t ask any such questions. It just reprints his nonsense without question. Brad Johnson of Wonk Room has more:

In a recently published New York Magazine profile, pollution billionaire David Koch lies about his support for tea-party radicalism, cracks racist jokes, and denies the threat of global warming. One of the wealthiest men in the world, Koch has used his billions for decades to promote the extremist, anti-regulatory, right-wing political groups like Americans for Prosperity that now organize under the Tea Party banner. “I’ve never been to a tea-party event,” Koch told reporter Andrew Goldman, even though he hosted AFP’s “Defending the American Dream” tea-party hoopla in Washington, DC, last year.Fueled by his fear that the greenhouse gas pollution generated by Koch Industries might be limited by government regulation, Koch promotes a fantasy about benefits of a changing climate:

Koch says he’s not sure if global warming is caused by human activities, and at any rate, he sees the heating up of the planet as good news. Lengthened growing seasons in the northern hemisphere, he says, will make up for any trauma caused by the slow migration of people away from disappearing coastlines. “The Earth will be able to support enormously more people because a far greater land area will be available to produce food,” he says.

Unfortunately, Koch’s pollution really is heating the planet, and the consequences are grave. With less than one degree C of average warming, heat waves, extreme storms, droughts, sea levels, ocean acidity, wildfires, and flooding are already on the rise. In the unregulated world of global warming pollution envisioned by Koch, the planet’s average temperature will increase five to ten times more than existing warming, with a significant chance of a runaway greenhouse effect. As warming passes 7 degrees C, possible within this century, half the world’s inhabited area will become uninhabitable, literally too hot for the human body to survive. The world’s coral reefs will go extinct, as will about fifty percent of the species on the planet.

The IPCC analysis of global warming’s impact on agriculture found that even if destructive changes in extreme events or the spread of pests and diseases are ignored, agricultural yields will decline in the poorer regions of the world under relatively minor warming. Events like the record Russian heat wave that has destroyed 32 percent of its wheat crop and sent global prices skyrocketing will become commonplace. As temperatures increase more than 3 C, global productivity will decline, the American heartland turned to a permanent Dust Bowl, coastal areas consumed by rising seas, the world’s glaciers melting into memory. As the David Koch-funded Smithsonian Human Origins Initiative warns, global warming is an “experiment” that is “likely to create entirely new survival challenges” for the entire human race. Quite simply, Koch’s happy scenario of a greenhouse planet comfortably sustaining human civilization is not based in fact.

Koch’s sense of humor is as regressive as his politics. “I played basketball when you could be white and be good,” Koch joked about his college days, though he made sure to tell the reporter, “I’m not a racist. I’m very broad-minded.”

Remember that Koch funds the Smithsonian exhibit that whitewashes danger of human-caused climate change. But as the NY Mag profile makes clear, such greenwashing was desperately needed by poor victimized David Koch:

Earlier this year, he found himself attacked for being the financial engine of the largely white, largely male, very angry crowds that were gathering in towns across the country—a few waving overtly racist or menacing anti-Obama signs—to protest the president’s proposed health-care bill and other issues. Koch denies being directly involved with the tea party—“I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me”—but he and his brother Charles were being accused of supporting the group through an affiliated conservative organization. Rachel Maddow had effectively called Koch the tea party’s puppet master. “The radical press is coming after me and Charles,” he said. “They’re using us as whipping boys.” Burnishing his reputation was no longer his concern; now, it seemed, he needed to save it.

Shame on the Smithsonian for taking his dirty money — and especially for such a dreadful exhibit.

BBC College of Journalism: The New York Times as video

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:06:18 +0000

Last spring, when the New York Times launched its daily news video show, TimesCast, one of the bold ideas was to turn the cameras on itself. The Page One Meeting - or editors' morning conference, as most British papers would call it - is right at the heart of the decision-making process.

Within just two days, Executive Editor Bill Keller got into hot water by making a few loose and unproven remarks on camera about a story involving Israel: you never get away with that in the US media. Any editor could have made the same mistake but, when you're broadcasting on your own website, suddenly you have to watch what you say, and how you look.

When I went to see the Head of Video and Television Partnerships at the NYT, Ann Derry (above), who's responsible for TimesCast, admitted they had dropped the sneak-peak inside the meeting. It's nothing to do with the risks of getting things wrong, she says, just not as interesting as a focused interview with a reporter. Today the emphasis is on interviews with journalists who are in the middle of reporting a story; getting their take on the subject they're covering.

But here's an edition of TimesCast from back in March when it still included the morning meeting:

Ann founded the paper's video department in 2005 and she hails from the world of documentary television. The production values are pretty high for TimesCast, with a blend of agency pictures and bespoke high-definition footage shot by Times staffers.

Below is the edition of TimesCast that Ann and I were talking about (and, at bottom, how it is displayed on the Times' website):

TimesCast doesn't provide anything that's really new to the broadcast news toolbox, but it does fit in with the character and style of the paper - gives editorial staff small moments of broadcasting glory.

Furthermore, unlike many areas of the industry, TimesCast is currently recruiting two new members of staff. Needless to say, they have had hundreds of applicants.

Climate Progress: Energy and Global Warming News for July 28: Wind drives growing battery use; Chevy Volt vs. Nissan Leaf

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:04:59 +0000

Wind Drives Growing Use of Batteries

The rapid growth of wind farms, whose output is hard to schedule reliably or even predict, has the nation’s electricity providers scrambling to develop energy storage to ensure stability and improve profits.

As the wind installations multiply, companies have found themselves dumping energy late at night, adjusting the blades so they do not catch the wind, because there is no demand for the power. And grid operators, accustomed to meeting demand by adjusting supplies, are now struggling to maintain stability as supplies fluctuate.

On the cutting edge of a potential solution is Hawaii, where state officials want 70 percent of energy needs to be met by renewable sources like the wind, sun or biomass by 2030. A major problem is that it is impossible for generators on the islands to export surpluses to neighboring companies or to import power when the wind towers are becalmed.

X Prize to offer millions for Gulf oil cleanup solution

The X Prize Foundation launches a competition this week promising millions of dollars for winning ways to clean up crude oil from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The nonprofit group will hold a press conference in Washington on Thursday to reveal details of an Oil Cleanup X Challenge inspired by the disaster.

It added that the competition is “designed to inspire entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists worldwide to develop innovative, rapidly deployable, and highly efficient methods of capturing crude oil from the ocean surface.”

X Prize categories include mapping genomes, making an incredibly fuel efficient car, and exploring the moon’s surface with a robotic vehicle.

For three months, a massive slick threatened the shorelines of Louisiana and other southern US Gulf Coast states as BP tried everything from top hats to junk shots and giant domes to stanch the toxic sludge.

A cap stopped the flow on July 15 after between 2.8 and 4.5 million barrels (117.6 million and 189 million gallons) had gushed out. Only one quarter of that was collected by BP’s various collection and containment systems.

Chevy Volt vs. Nissan Leaf: the electric car price war

After more than three years of buzz and critics’ skepticism, General Motors on Tuesday finally put on sale the Chevrolet Volt – the company’s first plug-in hybrid electric car that many say represents GM’s future. The sticker price: $41,000.

That cost is higher than some had expected for a vehicle that can go 40 miles on all-electric battery power before an onboard gasoline engine kicks in as a “range extender” for 300 more miles.

Will consumers bite at a car that costs that much? Some assuredly will – at least initially: GM has legions of wannabe Chevy Volt owners in online and dealer waiting lists at almost any price. But what about a year or two from now, when competitors have electric cars on the road, too?

Ground broken for wind energy project in Mojave

Renewable energy developers broke ground Tuesday for a major expansion of wind-power generation in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles.

The Alta Wind Energy Center is planned as the world’s largest wind project, with nearly 600 turbines capable of producing 1,550 megawatts of electricity when completed, with the potential to be doubled, according to developer Terra-Gen Power LLC of New York City.

The currently funded first five phases will produce 720 megawatts, according to a company statement.

Financing for the initial phases totaled $1.6 billion, the company said.

The project is being developed in a region already studded with turbines that use the energy of winds sweeping across the Tehachapi Mountains to produce electricity.

Michigan: 800,000 Gallons of Oil Spill After Pipe Breaks

Crews were working Tuesday to contain and clean up more than 800,000 gallons of oil that poured into a creek and flowed into the Kalamazoo River in southern Michigan, coating wildlife. Battle Creek and Emmett Township authorities warned residents about the strong odor from the oil, which leaked Monday from a pipeline that carries about eight million gallons of oil a day from Griffith, Ind., to Sarnia, Ontario. The pipeline company, Enbridge Energy Partners, said the oil spilled into Talmadge Creek. As of Tuesday afternoon, oil was reported in about 16 miles of the Kalamazoo River downstream of the spill. Representative Mark Schauer, Democrat of Michigan, called the spill a “public health crisis,” and said he planned to hold hearings to examine the response. The spill’s cause is under investigation.

Former Green Jobs Czar Identifies With Shirley Sherrod

Van Jones, the former White House adviser for green jobs, says he can personally relate to Shirley Sherrod, the former USDA official who was forced to resign last week after her comments about overcoming racial prejudice were taken out of context. Both individuals resigned from the Obama administration amid strong political pressures. Host Michel Martin talks to Jones about the parallels he sees between his highly publicized resignation in 2009 and Sherrod’s, and what he’s learned since leaving the White House.

The resignation of the Obama administration’s “green jobs” czar, Van Jones, has caused an uproar within progressive circles.

Jones recently came under scrutiny after it was revealed that he signed a 2004 petition questioning whether the U.S. government allowed the Sept. 11 attacks to occur, and after remarks in which he used a derogatory word to describe Republicans.

Spain sees temperatures rising 3 to 6 degrees by 2100

Spanish daytime temperatures will rise by an average of between 3 and 6 degrees Celsius by 2100, and rainfall will tumble to 15-30 percent of recent levels, according to forecasts on Tuesday by the Met Office.

The Met Office said it produced the forecasts in order to plan for the impact of climate change.

“Madrid will be like (southern city) Seville, and Seville like Tucson. This is a report for action,” Met Office President Ricardo Garcia told journalists.

Climate Change Secretary Teresa Ribera added at a news conference that Spain, which already suffers from water shortages and is building desalination plants, was particularly vulnerable to climate change.

“To the extent that temperatures change, animals and other living things will have to grow in different places to today, and that will also lead to significant changes in economic activities,” she said.

In order to combat climate change and reduce its extensive dependence on imported fossil fuels, Spain has invested heavily in subsidizing renewable energy sources in recent years.

U.K. Carbon Calculator Shows 80% Emissions Reduction Is Achievable By 2050

The U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change announced a “carbon calculator” that shows the country’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent in the six decades through 2050 is achievable.

The calculator is an online tool that allows power consumers to gauge how to achieve the necessary cuts by adjusting 34 measures of energy demand and supply, ranging from the temperature of people’s homes to nuclear power generation.

Each of the categories, 17 for demand and 17 for supply, has four scenarios. They range from one, where no attempt is made to fight climate change, to four, which the department describes as a “extreme upper effort.” The calculator shows that an 80 percent cut could be achieved by a mixture of twos (effort viewed as achievable) and threes (unlikely to happen without significant changes.)

France to Seek Bids for Offshore Wind Power Farms

France will seek bids for offshore wind farms by the end of the year to raise renewable energy production and catch up with its neighbors in building sea-based turbines, a government official said.

France will designate 5 to 10 offshore areas that have been evaluated for their “environmental compatibility,” Pierre- Franck Chevet, an official at the Environment and Energy Ministry, said in Paris yesterday.

The country, which doesn’t have any offshore wind parks, is seeking to emulate neighbors such as the U.K. in sea-based wind energy, considered more reliable and less intrusive on local communities than onshore turbines. GDF Suez SA, owner of the French natural-gas network, is planning a 1.8 billion-euro ($2.3 billion) windpark offshore northern France, which is being publically assessed for its environmental impact.

China’s Environment Accidents Double as Growth Takes Toll

China, the world’s largest polluter, said the number of environmental accidents rose 98 percent in the first six months of the year, as demand for energy and minerals lead to poisoned rivers and oil spills.

“Fast economic development is leading to increasing conflicts with the capacity of the environment to absorb” demands, the environmental protection ministry said in a faxed statement in response to Bloomberg questions.

An acid leak at Zijin Mining Group Co.’s copper and gold mine this month poisoned enough fish in the Ting River to feed 72,000 for a year, and Dalian’s beaches and port were closed by an oil spill at the nation’s largest crude terminal. The accidents underscore the toll from two decades of growth averaging 10.1 percent that made China the third-largest economy.

California’s clean energy future threatened by federal delays, state officials say

Plans for a massive expansion of clean energy in California are being jeopardized by federal foot-dragging, according to state officials who say that more than 20 nearly shovel-ready solar and wind projects are being held up by the U.S. Department of Energy. Seven major solar-mirror projects — enough to provide power to 3 million Southern California homes — along with plans for at least a dozen wind-turbine and solar-panel complexes have been cleared or almost cleared by state authorities and the U.S. Department of Interior. The projects are valued at as much as $30 billion, according to estimates by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office. But the Department of Energy’s laborious procedures to guarantee loans threaten to stymie construction financing for many of the projects, and builders could lose out on more than $10 billion in federal stimulus funding if they can’t start digging by the end of the year.

Western Climate Initiative offers cap-and-trade

A coalition of seven western states and three Canadian provinces on Tuesday offered its most detailed strategy yet for controlling greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change, saying they hope it will stand as a model for national systems in the United States and Canada. At the core of the Western Climate Initiative is a cap-and-trade system that would go into effect in January 2012, gradually ramping down emissions levels. The system, which gives financial incentives to reduce carbon emissions, would start with power plants, then extend to large industrial producers and transportation.

Cities Seek Clout for ‘Green’ Taxi Rules

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and five other big city mayors are asking Congress to give them a lift in a long-running fight over turning traditional yellow-cab taxis into green, fuel-efficient vehicles.

Mr. Bloomberg and the mayors of Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington are trying to add a so-called “green taxi” law to Senate legislation aimed at cleaning up the BP oil spill.

Cut the budget, save the environment

Cutting the federal budget by axing environmentally harmful subsidies and taxpayer-funded programs sounds great, right? The Green Scissors 2010 report has identified more than $200 billion in government subsidy programs that are wasteful from a financial and an environmental perspective. The Green Scissors Campaign, which is led by several organizations including Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, is focused on generating bipartisan support for cutting federally funded programs that are harmful to the environment.

This year’s report focuses on programs in four key areas: energy, agriculture and biofuels, infrastructure, and public lands. Energy, especially clean energy, is getting attention from the president as the Obama administration is helping push our country towards a green economy. The energy section of the Green Scissors 2010 report targets three main energy industries: oil and gas, coal, and nuclear.

Senate energy plan bolsters electric cars

The Senate energy bill unveiled Tuesday contains several provisions to bolster the fledgling market for electric cars that Nissan Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and several other companies are developing.

The electric car plan is based on bipartisan legislation sponsored by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). The broader bill — which also contains oil-spill response measures — is slated for debate on the Senate floor ahead of the August recess.

Inclusion of the vehicle provisions follows a campaign by electric car advocates, who call the technology a promising way to curb oil imports by allowing drivers to charge up rather than fill up at the gas station.

California’s climate change law backer donates $5 million to fight Prop 23

Thomas Steyer, a San Francisco hedge fund manager and a big backer of Democratic candidates, will donate $5 million to a group opposing the ballot measure to roll back California’s landmark climate change law.

Steyer, founder of Farallon Capital Management LLC, has joined George Shultz, former U.S. secretary of the state, as co-chairman of the No on 23 committee, giving the group’s leadership a bipartisan mix.

California’s greenhouse gas reduction law, or AB 32, aims to cut emissions to 1990 levels statewide by 2020.

Backed by Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp. of Texas, Proposition 23 seeks to suspend AB 32 until the statewide unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters.

With Steyer’s donation, the No on 23 committee has raised more than $7 million. Proponents of a rollback collected more than $3 million.

“Proposition 23 really boils down to one thing,” Steyer said in a news release. “Do we want California to continue moving forward as a leader in a clean energy economy, including continuing to create new jobs, new economic development and new investment, or do we want to allow two Texas-based oil companies … to take our state backward and see the clean energy jobs, business and investment in our state go offshore to (a) place like China?”

Report: U.S. energy policy a “serious threat” to economic, national security

The country’s energy policy – particularly on climate change – poses a “serious threat” to economic and national security, a new report finds, but one group says that threat can be turned into an opportunity.

The report, released Tuesday by the nonprofit research firm CNA, says the predicted effects of climate change “have the potential to disrupt our way of life” and “create sustained natural and humanitarian disasters on a scale far beyond those we see today.” That, in turn, will likely foster political instability both at home and abroad.

The result, the report argues: The country cannot afford business as usual when it comes to energy.

“The United States government should take bold and aggressive action to support clean energy technology innovation and significantly decrease the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels,” it says.

Climate Progress: Curry Favor

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:02:26 +0000

Anyone interested in the much-replicated/exonerated Hockey Stick and the phony challenges to it by the anti-science blogosphere should read “Hockey Stick fight at the RC Corral.”

Judith Curry has made an amazing series of comments, even after writing, “OK, I officially give up over here” (at #152).

Many of us have asked a favor of her — please define your terms, please respond to the detailed debunking of the Montford critiques you have repeated, and please defend the sweeping but unsubstantiated attacks on the judgment and integrity of unnamed scientists. But she has ignored those requests, continued with her unsubstantiated and primarily personal attacks on scientists and the scientific community, and continued to curry favor with the disinformers, citing Steven Chu, Peter Gleick, and even Feynman, in her defense, using quotes that ironically apply more to what she is doing, and not her critics.

It is a meltdown of historic proportions. For continuity’s sake, please respond in that post.

Left Foot Forward: More confusion over when Clegg flip-flopped over the deficit

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:02:07 +0000

The question of when exactly the Liberal Democrats u-turned over the speed of tackling the deficit reared its head again today when Bank of England Governor Mervyn King appeared before the Treasury Select Committee in Parliament – in particular Nick Clegg’s claim that he had changed his mind after a personal warning from the Governor.

As Paul Waugh reports, King was unhappy Clegg had used his conversation with him as an excuse. Responding to questioning from Labour MP Chukka Umunna, he said:

“I don’t think central bankers ever feel comfortable when they are drawn into comments by politicians.”

Adding:

“I said nothing that wasn’t already in the public domain. My position hadn’t changed.”

Watch the exchange:

During the election campaign, the Institute for Fiscal Studies examined whether the Liberal Democrats were “planning to be more ambitious than Labour in reducing the deficit”, concluding:

“If anything the manifesto implies the opposite: it says that a Liberal Democrat government would carry out a Spending Review over the summer and autumn ‘with the objective of identifying the remaining [our italics] cuts needed to, at a minimum, halve the deficit by 2013-14′.

“At face value this might suggest a less ambitious plan to reduce the deficit overall than that implied by the forecasts in the Budget. The Budget predicted that the deficit (total government borrowing) would be down to 5.2% of national income in 2013-14, whereas halving it means that it need not be reduced below 5.9% of national income (half the 11.8% forecast for 2009-10).

“But the Liberal Democrats tell us that this promise to “at a minimum, halve the deficit” should be taken as shorthand for matching the deficit reduction path set out in the Budget. So, overall, they are no more or less ambitious than the Government.“

Indeed, in January Vince Cable had said:

“My party takes the view that the government’s eight-year plan, with a four-year halving of the deficit, is a reasonable starting point…

“The time to start cutting the budget deficit and its speed must be decided by a series of objective tests which include the rate of recovery, the level of unemployment, the availability of credit to businesses and the government’s ability to borrow in international markets on good terms.”

Of course the Lib Dems now support an additional £32 billion of spending cuts above and beyond Labour’s plans in this parliament; as Waugh points out, Clegg initially put this down to a the result of a private conversation with the Governor, telling The Observer:

“He [King] couldn’t have been more emphatic. He said: ‘If you don’t do this, then because of the deterioration of market conditions it will be even more painful to do it later.’”

After the Forgemasters debacle, we know all he likes to change his mind, but what excuse will he use this time to justify his decision?

Futurismic: Riding the Wire: Space Elevators

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:00:19 +0000

The 2010 space elevator conference is coming soon to Microsoft. It turns out there is also a space elevator event coming to The Seattle Library (on getting a space elevator to the moon). Coincidence? Probably not. But it got me researching, and thinking I might just see a wire to orbit in my lifetime. (more…)

Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00

Riding the Wire: Space Elevators

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Robert Peston (BBC business editor): Dare we wait for bank reforms?

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:51:46 +0000

Earlier this week, the so-called Basel Committee on Banking Supervision - the supreme decision making body for global banking regulation - decided to delay till 2018 the implementation of new rules that would strengthen banks.

Which is so far off that some would query whether those rules will ever really be implemented.

But Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, told MPs today that more rapid implementation would have risked snuffing out our fragile economic recovery, because the effect of the new rules would have been to deter banks from lending.

As for investors, they love the delay: shares in banks have surged relative to other shares in the past few days.

Why is that? Well the new rules would force some banks to raise billions of pounds in new capital as a buffer against potential future losses. And whenever banks issue shares to raise capital, that reduces the value of existing shares.

Here's the paradox: investors positive reaction and the rise in banks' share prices will tend to reinforce economic growth and should thus strengthen banks; but if there turns out to be another banking crisis before 2018, banks may not be in optimal shape to cope with it.

PS I intend to write a longer analysis of Monday's revisions to the proposed Basel lll rules on banks' capital adequacy. There are reasons to be concerned about the foundations and philosophy of this attempt to learn the lessons of 2008's banking meltdown.

Climate Progress: Stavins and Schmalensee: “Demonizing cap-and-trade in the short term will turn out to be a mistake with serious long-term consequences for the economy, for business, and for consumers.”

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:29:09 +0000

Harvard economist Robert Stavins has a good piece, “Beware of Scorched-Earth Strategies in Climate Debates.” In it, he reposts an op-ed co-authored with Dick Schmalensee, who served on President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, on the self-destructive nature of conservative demagogueing against the very market-based solutions conservatives developed years ago when they actually cared about clean air and clean water and the health and well-being of our children.

Robert Stavins is Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

With the apparent collapse last week of U.S. Senate consideration of a meaningful climate policy, it is important to reflect on what could be a very serious long-term casualty of these acrimonious climate policy debates, namely the demonizing of cap-and-trade and the related tarnishing of market-based approaches to environmental protection.

In an op-ed which appeared on July 27^th in The Boston Globe (click here for link to the original op-ed), Richard Schmalensee and I commented on this unfortunate outcome of U.S. political debates and described the irony that the attack on cap-and-trade – and carbon-pricing, more broadly – has been led by conservatives, who should take pride as the creators of these cost-effective policy innovations in three Republican administrations.

Rather than summarize (or expand on) our op-ed, I simply re-produce it below as it was published by The Boston Globe, with some hyperlinks added for interested readers.

By the way, for anyone who is not familiar with Dick Schmalensee, let me note that he is the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Economics and Management at MIT, where he served as the Dean of the Sloan School of Management from 1998 to 2007. Also, he served as a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers in the George H. W. Bush administration from 1989 to 1991.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————-

The Power of Cap-and-Trade

by Richard Schmalensee and Robert Stavins

The Boston Globe, July 27, 2010

LAST WEEK, the Senate abandoned its latest attempt to pass climate legislation that would limit carbon dioxide emissions, putting off any action until the fall at the soonest. In the process, conservative Republicans dubbed the cap-and-trade system “cap-and-tax.’’ Regardless of what they think about climate change, however, they should resist demonizing market-based approaches to environmental protection and reverting to pre-1980s thinking that saddled business and consumers with needless costs.

In fact, market-based policies should be embraced, not condemned by Republicans (as well as Democrats). After all, these policies were innovations developed by conservatives in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations (and once strongly condemned by liberals).

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency successfully put in place a cap-and-trade system to phase out leaded gasoline. The result was a more rapid elimination of leaded gasoline from the marketplace than anyone had anticipated, and at a savings of some $250 million per year, compared with a conventional no-trade, command-and-control approach.

In June 1989, President George H. W. Bush proposed the use of a cap-and-trade system to cut by half sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and consequent acid rain. An initially resistant Democratic Congress overwhelmingly endorsed the proposal. The landmark Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 passed the Senate 89 to 10 and the House 401 to 25. That cap-and-trade system has cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 50 percent, and has saved electricity companies — and hence shareholders and ratepayers — some $1 billion per year compared with a conventional, non-market approach.

In 2005, George W. Bush’s EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule, aimed at achieving the largest reduction in air pollution in more than a decade, including reducing sulfur dioxide emissions by a further 70 percent from their 2003 levels. Cap-and-trade was again the policy instrument of choice in order to keep costs down and achieve the rapid reductions at minimum economic pain. (The rule was later invalidated by the courts, and is now being reformulated.)

To reject this legacy and embrace the failed 1970s policies of one-size-fits-all regulatory mandates would signify unilateral surrender of principled support for markets. If some conservatives oppose energy or climate policies because of disagreement about the threat of climate change or the costs of those policies, so be it. But in the process of debating risks and costs, there should be no tarnishing of market-based policy instruments. Such a scorched-earth approach will come back to haunt when future environmental policies will not be able to use the power of the marketplace to reduce business costs.

Virtually all economists agree on a market-based approach to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Some favor carbon taxes combined with revenue-neutral cuts in distortionary taxes, whereas others support cap-and-trade mechanisms — or “cap-and-dividend,’’ with revenues from auctioned allowances refunded directly to citizens.

Conventional approaches advanced as “painless alternatives’’ — a plethora of standards, special-interest technology subsidies, and tax breaks — won’t do the job, and will be unnecessarily expensive. While we are struggling to revitalize the economy, we simply cannot afford to turn our backs on markets and impose unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers.

A price on carbon is the least costly way to provide meaningful incentives for technology innovation and diffusion, reduce emissions from fossil fuels, and drive energy efficiency. In the long run, it can reduce our use of oil and drive our transportation system toward alternative energy sources.

Market-based approaches to environmental protection – including cap-and-trade – should be lauded, not condemned, by political leaders, no matter what their party affiliation. Demonizing cap-and-trade in the short term will turn out to be a mistake with serious long-term consequences for the economy, for business, and for consumers.

– Schmalensee and Stavins

Green Futures: Are vertical farms the future of urban food?

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:05:10 +0000

With more mouths to feed and increasing demands on land, will high rise city blocks be the source of tomorrow's supper? Duncan Graham-Rowe scans the skies.

The vaults rose up as high as the city walls, bearing reeds richly bedded in bitumen and gypsum. The layered galleries peered each beyond its neighbour to reach the sunlight, and water drawn from the river was pumped through conduits up to the highest level. The topsoil was thick enough to root even the largest trees...

These were the renowned Hanging Gardens of Babylon, as described by the Greek historians Diodorus and Callisthenes, and the earliest example of vertical farming – at least according to Dan Caiger-Smith. His company, Valcent, is taking the concept into the 21st century, recently launching the first farm of its kind at Paignton Zoo in Devon.

It’s a beguilingly simple idea: make maximum use of a small amount of space by filling glass houses with plant beds stacked high one above the other.

Financial and environmental pressures on modern agriculture have sparked new interest in vertical farming. With global population expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050, competition for land to grow both food and energy crops will become increasingly fierce. Four-fifths of us will live in dense urban areas, and increasing awareness of the carbon and water footprints of well-travelled food will have pushed locally grown produce even further up the list of desirables.

So it’s easy to see the appeal of a system which, its proponents insist, can surpass the productivity of existing agricultural spaces by up to 20 times, while using less water, cutting mileage and energy costs, and delivering food security.

“It answers so many of the big questions of the future”, says Caiger-Smith.

Valcent’s system requires about the same amount of energy as having a home computer on for ten hours a day. That’s enough to produce half a million lettuces a year – and, the company claims, seven times less than is required to grow the same crop on a traditional farm.

The 100 square metre farm at Paignton Zoo grows leaf vegetables for animal feed. It applies a technique called hydroponics, where plants are grown in nutrient rich solutions instead of soil. Stacked in trays eight layers high, the crops are continually rotated to ensure that all have adequate access to air and sunlight. The system also allows nutrients that have not been directly taken up by the plants to be collected and recirculated, along with the water, reducing usage and minimising waste.

This is just the beginning, says Caiger-Smith. His company now has more than 150 clients around the world queuing up to see how hydroponics could meet the needs of human food production, too.

How indeed. Inspiring concepts and artists’ impressions abound, but with none actually up and running yet, how can vertical farms meet the impressive efficiency and production claims being made for them?

By cutting lots of corners. For a start, they remove the need for tractors and other fuel-dependent equipment. Distances to ship the produce from grower to retailer to consumer are also slashed. As Jeanette Longfield, Co-ordinator of the food and farming non-profit group, Sustain, puts it: “Intensive agriculture is currently entirely dependent on fossil fuels, from its use of nitrogen-based fertilisers to mechanical equipment, transport and refrigeration – and so urban agriculture really makes a lot of sense”. In particular, Longfield sees “great potential for perishables that don’t travel well”.

Moreover, the traditional dependence of yield on the weather is taken out of the equation, offering greater security to the full supply chain.

Proven business models are still a way off. “It takes a stock market to build a high-rise,” says Natalie Jeremijenko, an aerospace engineer and environmental health professor at New York University. She doubts that the income from vertically farmed crops would be sufficient to recoup the rent. But this hasn’t stemmed her interest. Instead, she’s come up with two designs to sidestep the problem: one is a small hydroponic rooftop pod with a curved shape to maximise exposure to the sunlight. The other is a vertical farm designed around a fire escape on an occupied high rise.

Sustain has also set out to demonstrate that urban land doesn’t always come at a premium. The organisation has launched the programme Capital Growth, which aims to create 2,012 new food growing spaces in London before the city hosts the Olympics that year. The search encompasses “all kinds of nooks and crannies” – from school grounds and the banks of canals to roof terraces.

The other option is to simply do things on an industrial scale. Dickson Despommier at Columbia University, author of The Vertical Farm: The World Grows Up, believes there is scope to take vertical farming to an entirely new level, quite literally. He wants to create a new type of skyscraper to pierce the Big Apple’s skyline – vast multi-storey buildings dedicated to vertical farming. According to Despommier, a single 30-storey building could provide enough food for 10,000 people.

And he’s not alone in thinking big. Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut has drawn up plans for a huge tower, also in New York, on the city’s Roosevelt Island (see 'Weak signals: how to track a changing horzion'). Callebaut’s vision, dubbed the Dragonfly, is to create buildings with lush, fertile interiors that function as self-contained, sustainable eco-systems, producing food for their residents.

It’s not just a flight of fancy. Will Allen in Milwaukee has already demonstrated the concept with a community food aquaculture system he calls Growing Power. This symbiotic cultivation system relies on aquatic life, such as tilapia fish and yellow perch, to redistribute nutrients. Waste products from the fish fertilise plants, while vegetable waste and worms from the gardens feed the fish. Both the vegetables and the fish are sold to local businesses at a marked up price, so that local residents can buy the produce directly from the farm at a subsidised price.

If vertical food does prove cheaper to produce and consume, then it’s unlikely to face much opposition. In years to come, “locally grown” may mean just a few blocks from home.

Duncan Graham-Rowe is a former staff writer for the New Scientist and a regular contributor to The Economist and The Guardian.

Additional material by Anna Simpson, Deputy Editor, Green Futures.

Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog: Belarusian translation of the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD)

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:01:23 +0000

We’ve just added a Belarusian translation of the Open Knowledge Definition thanks to Patricia Clausnitzer!

http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/bielaruskaja/

If you’d like to translate the Definition into another language, or if you’ve already done so, please get in touch on our discuss list, or on info at the OKF’s domain name (okfn dot org).

Babalisme: Back from Blogging Slumber

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:56:00 +0000

Hi all. I hope you are wondering about my sudden hiatus and I shamefully admit that I hope you miss me. Seriously. OK, don't take that seriously, I was joking. So, where were I? (though you might be possibly asking : where are our printables?) I'll give you a hint.

It's a sidewalk picture. Yes. Look closely. Well sit back, not that close, you'll ruin your make up and your monitor.

Need another hint? Happiest place on earth.

Still not getting it? Probably 0.099% of you are.

Give up?

Well, I went to Disneyland, dearies! Baby G's poppa suddenly had this urge to go to Hong Kong Disneyland and he booked the tickets quite suddenly too. Oh, how I used to love his spontaneity on our first dates. With a baby along, not so much. So, up we go on the airplane and leaving my blog behind. I'm sorry for not taking more pictures of our adventures there, I had a tantrum throwing baby on hand and my husband, well, not a camera person. Here's a decent one I can think of...

She didn't seem very pleased riding the Cinderella's Carousel. This photo was taken a bit after the gate was open and 15 minutes waiting in line crying and complaining under the hot sun. My advice to other parents, take toddlers to Disneyland on spring or autumn or winter weather, hot temperature tends to break them on tantrums in line. Or avoid waiting in lines altogether by visiting on weekdays and non public holidays.

There goes my hiatus excuse post. And I want to tell you that I miss you guys, a lot. Seriously.

Climate Progress: Hayward remains proud but deluded: “I think BP’s response to this tragedy has been a model of good social corporate responsibility” - And still a victim: I "was demonised and vilified.... life isn't fair ... sometimes you step off the pavement and get hit by a bus"!

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:50:52 +0000

Yes, yachting multimillionaire and golden parachuting Tony Hayward, life really sucks for you. Sometimes you get hit by a bus — or at least get a $17 million pension and another high-priced job after the worst CEO performance imaginable — and sometimes your recklessness, arrogance, and hubris causes the death of 11 people, devastates a major ecosystem, and ruins the livelihoods of thousands of people.

Hayward leaves his job as he started it — as perhaps the most self-centered, tone deaf, and incompetent CEO in recent memory (see Hayward says to fellow executives: “What the hell did we do to deserve this?”)

You can read a bunch of Hayward’s inane farewell “woe is me, I did a great job but I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time” quotes in the UK’s Guardian’s piece, “Tony Hayward’s parting shot: ‘I’m too busy to attend Senate hearing’: Oil company risks further damage to US relations with snub to committee and claim it is model of social responsibilty.”

But Hayward isn’t the only deluded person running BP. What follows is a Think Progress repost, “BP chairman: Tony Hayward did a ‘great job,’ ouster was simply to help ‘rebuild’ the BP ‘brand’ “:

Over the weekend, news broke that three months after his oil company’s rig set off the largest oil spill in American history, BP CEO Tony Hayward would be stepping down. In his resignation statement, Hayward stressed that, “BP will be a changed company as a result of” its oil spill in the Gulf.

As the Progress Report today details, “Hayward’s departure will mark the end of a disastrous legacy that was spent botching the company’s response to its oil spill in the Gulf.” Almost a month after the gusher released 32 million gallons of toxic oil into the surrounding ocean as well as an unprecedented amount of chemical dispersants, Hayward told Sky News that “the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest.” In May, Hayward told a reporter who asked him about the victims of his company’s oil spill, “We’re sorry for the massive disruption it’s caused their lives. There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back.”

However, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, who has previously told the American public that he cares about the “little people,” appeared on CNBC this morning to celebrate Hayward’s record at BP. “Tony Hayward has done a great job for the company,” Svanberg said proudly. He then admitted to CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo that the change in leadership at BP is simply cosmetic. Hayward’s presence at the company, Svanberg explained, hurt its image, so replacing Hayward was based simply on “rebuild[ing]” the BP “brand and reputation”:

SVANBERG: Tony Hayward has done a great job for the company through his almost thirty years and he has done it very well, greatly as a CEO. He has driven the company’s performance and developed the company in many, many ways. He has also led an unprecedented response in the Gulf of Mexico. But it became obvious to him and to us that in order to rebuild our position, in order to rebuilt our brand and reputation, we needed fresh leadership and that is why we are doing the change.

BARTIROMO: Of course on Hayward’s watch, the company suffered and the country in America suffered the worst environmental disaster ever.

Watch it:

Given the golden parachute pension Hayward received — “an immediate £600,000-a-year ($930,000) pension when he leaves the firm in October” — it’s no wonder his fellow executives at BP think highly of his tenure at the oil conglomerate.

Global Voices (Cuba): Caribbean: New Memoirs

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:35:28 +0000

By Janine Mendes-Franco

Repeating Islands blogs about the release of two memoirs: by editor Diana Athill, who worked with V.S. Naipaul and Jean Rhys, and by Fidel Castro.

PW Style: Philadelphia hat designer honored by Smithsonian

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:31:42 +0000

Mae Reeves

Last night the 60-year millinery career of Philadelphia’s Mae Reeves was put on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The event honored Reeves’ accomplishments as a hat designer/millinery shop owner and the recent announcement that 30 of her hats will be included in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian. In addition to being presented with a ceremonial Liberty Bell, local television personalities modeled Reeves designs. PW’s multimedia intern Matt Petrillo was there to capture this moment in hat history. Check out his snaps of Reeves’ elegant and eclectic hats after the jump.

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Left Foot Forward: Celtic warnings over AV poll date

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:26:44 +0000

With controversy about the Government’s Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill rumbling on, voices from the devolved administrations have expressed their concern with the planned timing of the vote.

Wales’ Chief Electoral Officer has declared it “vital” that the Welsh public have full confidence in the electoral system, ahead of next year’s elections.

The comments, by Ian Kelsall will once again raise concerns about the problems that could be caused by holding on the same day votes for the devolved institutions and local councils, a referendum on the Alternative Vote, and a Wales-only ballot on further powers for Cardiff Bay.

In 2007, the Scottish Parliamentary Elections were marked by scenes of chaos as voters were faced with multiple ballot papers, each under a different system.

In the latest warning, Kelsall concludes:

“Next year voters in Wales will have several opportunities to have their say at the ballot box.

“It’s vital that they have confidence in the electoral process and the UK Government addresses some of the areas where change is needed.”

His remarks come as over 40 Conservative MPs signed a parliamentary Early Day Motion (EDM 613) expressing their concern that the proposed date of the AV referendum would clash with the elections to the devolved bodies. In doing so, the motion cited Electoral Commission advice in 2002, which made clear its unease at holding referendums on major policy issues on the same day as other polls. Among the concerns it raised was a warning that:

“There is a risk that the dominance of the referendum issue would influence other polls to an extent that may compromise the electorate’s will in those other polls.”

Meanwhile, the Interim Electoral Management Board for Scotland has written to both Nick Clegg and Scottish Secretary, Danny Alexander to express its concerns at holding a poll on AV at the same time as elections to Holyrood. In particular, the board warned:

• Holding a referendum on AV would need to be administered based on Westminster constituencies, while polling for Holyrood elections is administered based on different boundaries. This could mean some people having to cast their votes at two separate polling stations.

• Under current law, the elections would also have to be treated as two separate polls, requiring two voting cards and two lists of eligible voters.

What is more, following the chaotic scenes that followed the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary Elections, the report into the fiasco, drafted by Ron Gould cautioned against combining more than one poll in two days (p. 114 – 115).

Responding to the latest developments, Shadow Scotland Office Minister, Ann McKechin said of the ConDem coalition:

“It is an act of disrespect not to have even thought about the consequences for Scotland.”

Speaking in the House of Commons however, Nick Clegg said that it was “disrespectful” to suggest that voters “could not make two different decisions at the same time.”

feeling listless: still life with artist’s date « [del.icio.us]

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:18:45 +0000

still life with artist’s date http://ff.im/-oq9J5

Only In It For The Gold: Russian Heat Wave and Peat Fires

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:03:00 +0000

It's surprisingly hard to find good photos of the smog/heat emergency in Moscow. The best I have found is this set from the Chinese news service xinhuanet.com .

Joe Romm points out that this heat anomaly is part of a global pattern this summer:

Globally nine countries have smashed all-time temperature records, “making 2010 the year with the most national extreme heat records,” as meteorologist Jeff Masters has reported.

“This is a serious abnormality. The Russian weather service has never measured such temperatures in Moscow in July,” said Dmitry Kiktyov, Deputy Director of the Hydrometeorological Center of Russia.

Futurismic: Blueprint for a Dying Earth: what would happen if the world stopped spinning?

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:00:49 +0000

I’m not sure whether I’m a sucker for outlandish “what if?” speculation because I’ve always read science fiction, or whether I read sf because I have some innate speculative itch that I need to scratch. Whichever it may be, this is the sort of thing that pushes a whole lot of my buttons: using modelling software to determine what Planet Earth would look like were it to – for some reason – stop spinning [via BoingBoing].

The lack of the centrifugal effect would result in the gravity of the earth being the only significant force controlling the extent of the oceans. Prominent celestial bodies such as the moon and sun would also play a role, but because of their distance from the earth, their impact on the extent of global oceans would be negligible.

If the earth’s gravity alone was responsible for creating a new geography, the huge bulge of oceanic water—which is now about 8 km high at the equator—would migrate to where a stationary earth’s gravity would be the strongest. This bulge is attributed to the centrifugal effect of earth’s spinning with a linear speed of 1,667 km/hour at the equator. The existing equatorial water bulge also inflates the ellipsoidal shape of the globe itself.

[...]

Today, all three world oceans are connected. This creates a global ocean with basically one sea level. As a consequence of rotational slowdown, the outline of the global ocean would continuously undergo dramatic changes. Equatorial waters would move toward polar areas, initially causing a significant reduction in depth while filling the polar basins that have much less capacity. As regions at high latitude in the northern hemisphere become submerged, the areal extent of the northern circumpolar ocean would rapidly expand, covering the vast lowlands of Siberia and northern portions of North America. The global ocean would remain one unit until the rotation of the earth decreased to the speed at which ocean separation would occur. The interaction between the inertia of huge water bodies and decreasing centrifugal force would be very complicated. As the consequence of steady slowdown of earth’s rotation, the global ocean would be gradually separated into two oceans…

Sure, so it’s pretty unlikely to ever happen… and if it did, speculating about topography would be the last of our concerns, I imagine.

But what if…?

[ As a side note, that's a great way to virally advertise a piece of software that would otherwise only be of interest to 0.001% of the world's population. Kudos! ]

Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00

Blueprint for a Dying Earth: what would happen if the world stopped spinning?

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onlineSpin: What Does It Mean To Be A True 'Partner'?

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:00:38 +0000

The antithesis of a partner is a vendor, and there is a simple point of differentiation. A partner is a valued relationship. A vendor is an order-taker. A partner is someone who adds value beyond the exact words of a contract, where a vendor does exactly what they're told and nothing more. Many people ask me what's wrong with the marketing services business. My two cents: too many companies and too many people are vendors; not enough are true partners.

FOI News: Waste? Yes. Waist? No.

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:51:50 +0000

Thanks to the Daily Mirror for this.

When our new Justice Secretary Ken Clarke was interviewed on the television about his appointment in the cabinet he made a joke about how he looked in silk stockings.

Hopefully as somebody who rarely misses a trick I thought I’d wait to see what his inauguration outfit looked like before firing in a question to the Ministry of Justice.

When the answer came back that the clothes he wore for the ceremony cost around £20,000 it was clearly going to be a story – although from my point of view it was a shame that the vast bulk of the cost was incurred by Jack “The Veto” Straw who felt it necessary to spend £18,000 on the gown. Who says politicians can be out of touch?

Anyhow the reason for bringing this story to your attention is that when I sent in my question to the MoJ I couldn’t help myself and thought if I’m paying for Ken Clarke’s breeches then I wonder what size they are.

But the MoJ didn’t fall for that. Although they gave me the cost of his costume the details of his girth will remain subject to a S.40 exemption. [MoJ response]

The MoJ said: “Section 40(2) provides that personal data about third parties is exempt information if one of the conditions set out in section 40(3) is satisfied. Under Section 40(2) together with section 40 (3) (a) (i) of the FOIA disclosure of this information relating to third party would breach the fair processing principle, as there was a legitimate expectation by a third party, that this information would remain confidential.”

And we must remember that disclosure of his breeches would be a breach of the Data Protection Act.

Climate Progress: Blankenship’s dirty coal money pollutes West Virginia congressional races

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:00:13 +0000

Don Blankenship is notorious in West Virginia, and he’s gained increased recognition nationally following the deadly explosion at his company’s Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, WV, the worst U.S. coal disaster in 40 years. As the chairman and CEO of Massey Energy, Blankenship is an anti-regulatory, science-denying, unrepentant right-wing capitalist coal baron. Just as significantly, he wields tremendous political power in West Virginia and even bought a state Supreme Court seat in 2004. TP has the story of how the dirty Don wields his power.

As Ian Millhiser explained last year:

When West Virginia coal overlord Don Blankenship’s company lost a $50 million verdict to one of its competitors, Blankenship set out to buy a judge. Rather than appeal his case to a fair tribunal, Blankenship spent $3 million to elect a friendly lawyer to the West Virginia Supreme Court, even running ads accusing the lawyer’s opponent of voting to free an incarcerated child rapist, and of allowing that rapist to work in a public school. Once elected by a Blankenship-funded campaign, the newly-minted justice cast the deciding vote overturning the verdict against Blankenship’s company.

In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that justice is not for sale, ruling that Blankenship’s judge, Brent Benjamin, should have recused himself because the conflict of interest was so “extreme.” (Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas dissented.)

Blankenship is now trying to extend his control of the federal government by getting involved in West Virginia’s congressional elections, via Republican candidates Spike Maynard and David McKinley. As the AP reported on Sunday:

Blankenship contributed $4,800 to Elliott “Spike” Maynard, the Democrat-turned-Republican running in the 3rd U.S. House District, during the three-month reporting period that ended June 30. David McKinley, the GOP’s 1st District nominee, received $2,400 from Blankenship. [...]

Upper Big Branch, located in the 3rd District, is likely to play a role in the Rahall-Maynard contest. Around $21,000 of Maynard’s money during the quarter came from Massey employees, Blankenship’s family and former political operatives including [Greg] Thomas. All told, around one-third of Maynard’s individual contributions came from the energy sector. That amount includes $15,200 from 19 executives or employees of International Coal Group.

Maynard’s relationship with Blankenship is especially tight. In 2006, when Maynard was chief justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and Massey Energy had millions of dollars of cases pending before the court, Maynard and Blankenship went on an expensive vacation in the French Riviera together. A fellow justice said he was “outraged” by Maynard’s impropriety. Later that year, Maynard voted with the majority in favor of Massey. Watch an ABC News report on their relationship here. (When ABC tried to talk to Blankenship for the story, he said, “If you’re going to start taking pictures of me, you’re liable to get shot,” and tried to tear off the camera’s viewfinder.)

McKinley has hired Greg Thomas to assist his campaign. Previously, Thomas “helped oversee that 2004 spending and other Blankenship-funded political campaigns” and has been described as the former “chief political consultant” for Blankenship. In the past, Thomas aided Maynard’s Supreme Court re-election bid.

This Think Progress cross-post is by Amanda Turkel.

Official Google Blog: Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers unite at the Google Geo Teachers Institute

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:45:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog)

What do Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers have in common? Last week, these individuals and groups all came together at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA to celebrate exploration and learning.

Google hosted its first Geo Teachers Institute, an intensive two-day workshop in which 150 educators received hands-on training and experience with Google Maps, Google SketchUp and Google Earth, including features like Mars, Moon and SkyMaps. Attendees from around the globe not only learned how these products work, but also discovered tips and resources for introducing these tools to students and using them to conceptualize, visualize, share and communicate about the world around them. Through this event, teachers were hopefully inspired to bring the world's geographic information to students in compelling, fresh and fun ways.

John Hanke, VP of Product Management, addressing the audience of educators

As part of our continued effort to collaborate with teachers and help students get a better sense of places across the globe, we also announced that Google Earth Pro is now available to educators for free through the Google Earth for Educators site. Educators from higher educational and academic institutions who demonstrate a need for the Pro features in their classrooms can now apply for single licenses for themselves or site licenses for their computer labs. A similar program exists for SketchUp Pro through the Google SketchUp Pro Statewide License Grant, which is currently being provided via grants to 11 states, and available to all others at the K-12 level at no cost.

In conjunction with these exciting Geo-related events and announcements, the Geo Education team also thought it’d be timely and fun to test Googlers’ geographic knowledge by hosting the company’s first ever Google Geo Bee. With help from National Geographic, 68 teams relived their school years and took a written geography exam, competing for a spot on stage with Alex Trebek, who hosted the main event. The competition was based on the group version of the National Geographic Bee for students, which Google has sponsored for the past two years. Questions included those like “Which country contains most of the Balkan Mountains, which mark the boundary between the historical regions of Thrace and Moesia?” and “Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the United Kingdom, is located in which mountain chain?”

The winners of our Google Geo Bee: Ian Sharp, Marcus Thorpe and Rob Harford

The final three Google teams (the Tea-Drinking Imperialists, the Geoids and the Titans) all showed off their geographic literacy and answered a plethora of diverse and complex questions. In the end, it was the Tea-Drinkers who emerged the winners when they figured out that Mecca was the answer to the clue, “Due to this city’s location on a desert trading route, many residents were merchants, the most famous of whom was born around A.D. 570.” And they didn’t just walk away with bragging rights; thanks to Sven Linblad from Linblad Expeditions, they also won an amazing adventure trip to either the Arctic, the Galapagos or Antarctica.

Through all of these education efforts — for teachers, students and grown-up Googlers alike — we hope people of all ages never stop exploring.

Posted by Tina Ornduff, Geo Education Team

Left Foot Forward: Cameron is showing refreshing pragmatism on Turkey and Europe

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:37:55 +0000

David Cameron’s stance on Europe and the European Union seems to have turned on its head in recent weeks. In his leadership bid he secured the support of many of his party’s ultra-eurosceptics by promising to remove the Tory MEPs from the EPP on the grounds that the centre-right EPP was ‘too federalist’. Then he appeared to delay on that promise once elected, only establishing the weak ECR group following the 2009 European elections.

Meanwhile, he offered strident opposition to the Lisbon Treaty – he and William Hague seemed set to hold a post-ratification referendum until November 2009; then, when Lisbon was ratified, he pledged to claim back the UK opt-out on EU social policy legislation, and a referendum on all future treaties.

In government he seems to have changed, in part because of the Coalition agreement which reversed Tory policy on EU social policy legislation, and is showing pragmatism and, dare I say it, conviction.

Following the sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone which revealed gaping flaws in Europe’s economic governance, Cameron has not attacked the euro (unlike his eurosceptics and much of the right-wing press) and seems open to the prospect of new EU supervision and surveillance of its Member States’ public finances.

In a clever piece of diplomacy, his first state visit was to meet with France’s Nikolas Sarkozy, and following his first meeting last week with President Obama, he visited India with a view to creating a ‘special relationship’ between Britain and India. This makes political sense – Britain has long ignored the importance of its relationships with countries other than the US – and economic sense, since the US is not going be taking British exports any time soon.

And earlier this week, he used his meeting with the Turkish prime minister to state Turkey’s case for EU membership – a crucially important issue for both Turkey and the future of the EU.

Admittedly, Cameron may be indulging in a spot of political ‘kite flying’, since EU membership talks have stalled over the situation in divided Cyprus. As Sarkozy is opposed to Turkish membership, and factions of Angela Merkel’s CDU are opposed to Turkish membership on the spurious grounds that the EU is a ‘Christian’ club – conveniently ignoring the millions of European Muslims and the long history of European Islam – Turkey is unlikely to be joining the EU soon.

Nonetheless, Cameron has made a strong case for Turkey and, bravely in my view, stated that the EU is a ‘secular organisation’. This will put him at odds with many Christian Democrats in Europe, and with many in his own party, who are split on enlargement in general and Turkey in particular. Many Tory MEPs oppose Turkish EU membership, while this survey of their MEP candidates reveals a party divided on the issue.

It’s still early days, but Cameron may have been an ultra-sceptic in opposition, so much so that Merkel and Sarkozy were worried at the prospect of his election, but in government he is proving much more of a McMillan or Heath than a Thatcher.

The question is: how he will square that with a Tory party that is more eurosceptic than ever before?

Climate Progress: Big oil apologist, former dirty-energy lobbyist Barbour raises over $2 million in oil money for GOP governors

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:29:43 +0000

Thanks to Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s (R) prodigious fundraising, which continued apace even the very same day the oil slick reached Mississippi, the Republican Governors Association was able to raise an astonishing $19 million last quarter.

CAP’s Josh Dorner has a ThinkProgress review of RGA documents recently filed with the Internal Revenue Service, which reveal a significant portion of last quarter’s haul—more than $2,000,000—came from oil and gas industry interests, including:

$1,000,000 from infamous right-wing oil billionaire and tea party-funder David Koch.

$250,000 from Devon Energy

$150,000 from Chevron

$100,000 from ExxonMobil

$100,000 from Hunt Oil

$25,000 from Marathon Oil

$25,000 each from Bollinger Shipyards and the president of Gilbert Cheramie Boat, both of which provide support services to the offshore oil drilling industry.

Barbour is no stranger to raking in huge sums of money from Big Oil and other polluters. He raised some $1.8 million in campaign cash from the oil and gas industries during his 2003 and 2007 gubernatorial campaigns. During his two cycles as chairman of the Republican National Committee in the 90s, the oil and gas industry contributed $30 million to the RNC — nearly three times as much as it gave to Democrats during the same period. He also maintained extremely close ties to dirty energy interests when he was one of Washington D.C.’s most prominent corporate lobbyists, representing some of the nation’s largest polluters. As Mississippi governor, he has remained an outspoken opponent of clean energy policies.

As BP’s oil rolled onto the beaches of the Gulf Coast and the cash rolled into the RGA, Barbour consistently and conspicuously downplayed the significance of the BP disaster. After skipping two meetings with President Obama, he went on to argue that the Obama administration’s common-sense moratorium on deepwater drilling was worse than the spill itself. And before eventually backtracking, Barbour complained that the $20 billion escrow fund BP agreed to setup “bother[ed]” him because it might cut into BP’s profits.

One wonders whether it’s a coincidence that all of the large donations listed above came in after Barbour began downplaying the significance of the disaster. The Biloxi Sun-Herald, which twice endorsed Barbour for governor, wrote that Barbour’s “underestimation” of the oil disaster left had left Mississippi’s Gulf Coast “more vulnerable” than that of neighboring states. The paper also called his decision to continue fundraising during “these days of crisis” “questionable, even troubling.”

Joshua Dorner is Communications Director for Progressive Media. This is a TP cross-post.

Dirty energy lobbyist-turned-Governor Haley Barbour to champion ‘Do Nothing’ stance in big Senate climate hearing Tuesday

Miss Smidge: I know you’ve come a long way baby. I’m not the girl you used to know

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:21:34 +0000

I’ve another confession to make, Monday’s fraking hell my life is shite post was a bit of a fraud. Yes, all those things are happening to me, yes they are all pretty scary, but do you know what?

I’m coping.

I’ve been reading back over the archives of this blog. Two years I was getting dumped by friends and boyfriends left right and centre. I was lonely and alone. I was unhappy with my life, but didn’t know how to change it. I often wrote like my life was ending, that the men in white coats were ready to carry me off. Looking back it’s obvious as I was a highly strung, pissed off with life, hot mess.

December 2008 saw me at my lowest ever, the Boy had finished with me, I was still hanging on to the coat tails of my ex best friends (who had wiped me off the planet). The end almost came after I had crawled home from a night out in the poring rain, blubbing my little heart out, just trying to get home to investigate the content of the bathroom cabinet. I was lucky, there was nothing there of use.

After a trip home to mum, for the first 6 months of last year I reconsidered my life.

In January 2009 I wrote that “I have to relearn that I’m a good person; that I’m deserving of friends”. In February I got rid of the sprit sucking spectre that had been darkening my home for the last 18 months and I started the battle against my worsening health, a battle I am winning today. In March I wrote a letter to everyone who had hurt me, taunted me, and broken me. In May I cleared the ghosts of my wedding, the pain it brought me was flushed away leaving me strong enough a year later to get divorced.

It was the cathartic move I needed.

But then in June it all came crashing down around my ears again, all the painstaking work to rebuild myself, gone in an instant when the Boy left me again and in July, I fell out with one of my best friends, an argument so dramatic we didn’t speak for nearly a year. I was relapsing, quickly. The turning point finally came when just before leaving the home the LTE and I had bought together I broke a mirror. I decided that

“I really don’t need 7 years bad luck; i’ve just been through what has felt like 7 years of bad luck, especially on the relationship front – Two houses, one ex husband, and one ex long term boyfriend, plus lots of ex-friends; I think that’s enough bad luck for a long time, don’t you?”

…and that

“From now on there is no such thing as bad luck. No thing that can’t be turned around eventually. No thing that means i wont eventually end up on the right path. There is only good luck…”

So, what’s the point of this post? Well, its now a year later and I believe in the power of good luck. Things have moved on so far from July 2009, I don’t know myself anymore. I’m not sure when the change happened, when I suddenly got happy.

But I know now the change is finally permanent, I know that when the boxes start falling I can push them back into their precarious piles. I know I have people to rely on, friends I can call, a boyfriend who loves me.

I’ve come a long way (baby) and I want to take this opportunity to thank you all (yes you reading this) helping, reading and listening to me along the way. Here’s to many more years of good luck, remind me to break another mirror when the time comes!

Ayesha's photos: IMG_3670

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:19:40 +0000

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BBC College of Journalism: The mystery man file: a collective investigation

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:05:22 +0000

The Daily Telegraph yesterday identified a man who has been spotted regularly behind television reporters on location - and even in the crowd at the Antiques Roadshow. The Telegraph cites blog reports that he's a London community worker called Paul Yarrow.

The mystery man had already featured in the BBC's Russell Howard's Good News - uploaded by someone to YouTube here.

The story has been picked up by mainstream media, but much of the work of collecting Yarrow's appearances was done by a small website, Fidgetwith.com, started by someone called Steve, who reveals just this about himself and his venture:

Steve has hit the big time with his Yarrow story: as he says in a blog post called Fame at Last:

"It's been just under four months since I started this blog - with quirky news, funny pictures and videos, whinges and other random thoughts.

In that time, I've seen visitor numbers growing from ten or 20 a day in the first couple of weeks, to thousands of visitors a day - that is beyond my wildest expectations for my little corner of the web."

Steve's file on Yarrow has been growing almost daily, as his readers send in their TV sightings.

It's the kind of job no news organisation could afford to pay for. The result is a nice story based on 18 separate sightings in different programmes.

Fidgetwith also used its readers to pursue the identification of the man. On 16 July, a comment was left by Darren:

"His name is Paul Yallow (sic). I met him today at the democracy village. He says he does it to protest against the media, how they predigest (sic) against older people and overweight people, plus he wants to be famous."

Steve responded:

"Is this legitimate? Sorry to doubt you, but do you have any proof I can use for the page?"

No further word from Darren, but five days later another comment was left with a link to Paul Yarrow's Facebook page, headed with a picture looking like the man on television.

So far, Yarrow himself has yet to speak, so the identification could be wrong. And Steve still wants more on the story. He ends his latest update:

"Do you know Paul Yarrow? Are YOU Paul Yarrow? Let us know!"

Give these two a big round of applause: Steve for building a site that produces results; and Paul Yarrow, because it's great to see there are still people who think appearing on TV is a big deal.

Official Google Blog: What to search when you’re expecting

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:54:32 +0000

This is part of our summer series of new Search Stories. Look for the label Search Stories and subscribe to the series. -Ed.

Having been a new dad for six months now, I’ve quickly come to learn two valuable parenting lessons. First, being a father is truly a full-time job—and second, sleep is completely overrated. Whether buying the latest bottles, binkies, blankets and bibs, or just blogging about the whole magical journey, becoming a father has been the most invigorating and moving experience of my lifetime.

This week, I’m excited to help introduce our latest search story, New Baby. The video really captures the joys (and costs!) of becoming a new parent. I’d like to share my heart-felt compassion with new dads everywhere (and of course, my wife and the other mothers out there who are the true heroes.) We will all rest when they head off to college—in the meantime, enjoy!

Posted by Murali Viswanathan, Product Manager

PW Style: Interview With Former PW Designer and Adorable Dog Owner Tim Gough

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:53:37 +0000

The best part about being a blogger? Getting to shout out your pals when they do cool stuff.

Peep former Philadelphia Weekly art director Tim Gough’s interview with Print Liberation’s Katie Miller, where he gives us the visually stimulating scoop on his recent freelance work, what inspires him, his favorite things and poop on sidewalks.

Additionally, swing over to Tim’s personal site where you can purchase his latest prints — on paper and on T-shirts. We strongly encourage this. Freelancin’ ain’t easy and Tim — whose work has appeared everywhere from Business Week to the Village Voice — is a shining example of how a little hustle and a lot of talent can pay off creatively.

Also, on a completely gratuitous note, Tim’s the proud papa of the adorable-beyond-belief pup Porkchop who frequented the PW offices more often than some staffers during Tim’s tenure.

Porkchop!

Don’t you want him to have a new chew toy or a ball to play with? Buy a T-shirt, support a puppy (and local art!).

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The Sartorialist: On the Street....Thea, New York

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:43:00 +0000

Isn't it so refreshing to see a sixteen year-old dressed like this?

I didn't immediately know if I wanted to take this shot. While I was deciding I thought about my own daughters and realized it would be nice for them to see a young lady ,that is obviously very cool, dressed like this instead of the constant media parade of Britneys and Lindsays. This is the anti-"Jersey Shore" (I mean the show not the actual place)

Open Mind (Tamino): sx-sa

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:23:11 +0000

The sea ice data available from NSIDC includes estimates of both sea ice extent and sea ice area. Extent is the area over which sea ice concentration is at least 15%, while area is … well, the area covered by ice. Necessarily, sea ice extent will be greater than sea ice area. It’s mentioned in [...]

BBC College of Journalism: CoJo Summer Tips #2

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:17:10 +0000

Read your work out loud:

OK, so maybe not if yours is a 5,000-word investigation into insider trading ... though even then it's no bad idea to read aloud to yourself the key passages that your audience needs to understand if they're going to follow the whole story.

Certainly, if your copy is intended to be read on air or online, reading your script out loud is a must. Don't be embarrassed - it's your colleagues who aren't reading their copy out loud that are getting it wrong.

There are apocryphal tales of accidental poetry being thrust into the hands of newsreaders at the last minute which would never have got on air if the writer had followed this tip. My favourite is:

"There were cheers of delight in Port Talbot tonight as news of the settlement spread."

OK ... maybe it never happened (or maybe it did), but it illustrates one danger pretty well.

For clarity's and accuracy's sake, you really should read headlines and straplines several times out loud. Do those few words actually mean what you intend? Reading them out loud can shake out ambiguities or assumptions the facts don't support.

Inadvertent tongue twisters don't always leap off the page - but you'll spot them if you read out loud.

And remember, even if you're writing for the web, reading your opening pars out loud is a good test of whether you've made your story as clear, simple and engaging as possible.

BLDGBLOD: Quick Links 14

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:10:00 +0000

[Image: A film still from Wolfen].

1> Reduced to Rubble | Cartographies of the Absolute:

Bonfire of the Vanities

Fort Apache, The Bronx

80 Blocks from Tiffany’s

Death Wish

C.H.U.D.

The Warriors

Escape from New York

Driller Killer

Wolfen

Woodstock

2> Open Carry | L.A. Times:

[Image: A 20,000 square-foot underground shelter by Vivos; courtesy of Vivos].

3> An Investment in Life | USA Today:

Vivos

[Image: Photo by Spencer Weiner for the Los Angeles Times].

4> The Mogi Doughnut | L.A. Times:

Seismologists call the possible pattern a Mogi doughnut. It's the outgrowth of a concept, developed in Japan, which holds that earthquakes sometimes occur in a circular pattern over decades—building up to one very large quake in the doughnut hole.[Images: Emergent North by Lateral Office (Mason White/Lola Sheppard)].

5> Emergent North | Bustler:

Emergent North

[Images: Photos by Linda Pollak, courtesy of Urban Omnibus].

6> City of Alternate Signs | Urban Omnibus:

[Linda Pollak's] investigations into mysterious carvings in the granite sidewalks of Lower Manhattan have much to teach us about the ways natural forces determine urban form. They also have yielded photographic imagery that is visually arresting on its own. I happened to glance at one of these images in Linda’s office last winter, and immediately afterward I started seeing the “cuts and patches” they depict everywhere I went. Turns out many of them are coal chute covers, relics of a different era of energy infrastructure in formerly industrial neighborhoods like SoHo or TriBeCa.7> City of Acoustic Side-Effects | Local Ecologist:

If you stand at the edge of the inner most ledge of the spiral and utter "Ah" you are supposed to hear "Ah" as if you spoke it into an echoing microphone.[Image: Institute of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg/Giraudon/Art Resource, via Saudi Aramco World].

8> Great Tent Cities in Muslim Lands | Saudi Aramco World:

9> The Man Who Moves Buildings | Guardian:

Jeremy Patterson moves large structures from place to place... Patterson's latest monster move involved a 19th-century brick mansion on a hill, which the owners wanted transported five miles south to their winery... Patterson and his crew dug out the foundations and cut holes in them at intervals, into which they slotted a lattice of 110-foot steel beams. Then they pumped the beams up on jacks, demolished the foundations, slid some wheels underneath and drove the whole thing away... He can't stop talking about what an insane idea moving a building is. He kept mentioning the threat of the house collapsing and killing everyone. A few minutes later he collapsed himself, of a suspected heart attack.[Images: The SNOLAB neutrino detector and mine in Ontario, Canada].

10> The Light Below | BBC:

Scientists are looking to relocate an underground experiment searching for dark matter to an even deeper site. Cosmic rays striking the Earth could completely mask the rare dark matter events sought by the experiment. Team members want to cut out as much of this cosmic ray interference as possible, even if it means moving the experiment 2km below ground. This could help them positively identify the particles thought to make up dark matter. Dr. Marek Kos, who is a team member on the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search II (CDMSII) project, outlined details at the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) in Paris. He said the experiment could be relocated from a mine in Minnesota to a deeper facility in Ontario, Canada.(Some links via Steve Silberman, Jim Rossignol, Nicola Twilley, and possibly others I've forgotten; don't miss Quick Links 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13).

Left Foot Forward: Immigration cap differences of Cameron and Cable laid bare on trip to India

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:52:39 +0000

The internal contradictions of the Government’s immigration policy have been laid bare during the prime minister’s trip to India.

Yesterday’s comments from Vince Cable that he wanted the UK to have “as liberal an immigration policy as it is possible to have” sit in stark contrast to David Cameron’s insistence today that the government remains committed to reduce net immigration to the UK to ‘tens of thousands’.

This isn’t simply a case of political differences within the Coalition – the Government is facing two real policy tensions on immigration. The first is between the Government’s desire to support a private sector-led recovery and its intention to reduce net immigration by capping the number of highly-skilled migrants who can come to the UK to work.

The Government is consulting (including, apparently, with the Indian government) on how the immigration cap will work, and various options seem to be on the table to ‘soften’ the policy and reduce the impact on business; but it is hard to see how any cap that will satisfy those who want to see drastic limits on migration to the UK can also meet the needs of the economy.

The second policy tension is that the cap looks likely to fail on its own terms – it will not significantly reduce net immigration. Net immigration to the UK is falling fast already in response to changing economic conditions, and the cap applies only to a small part of immigration flows to the UK (ironically, to the most beneficial and least controversial parts of those flows).

Perhaps more significant than these policy tensions is a political dilemma, highlighted by Vince Cable yesterday when he said:

“We’re trying to reconcile two different objectives, one of which is to reassure the British public that immigration is under control, and the other is to have an open economy where we can bring in talents from around the world…

“We are arguing, within government, about how we create the most flexible regime we can possibly have, but in a way that reassures the British public.”

But the coalition may be about to learn a lesson that Labour ministers learned in recent years – that immigration policy changes don’t assuage people’s political concerns about immigration. The two objectives highlighted by Cable are not incompatible, but they are separate problems. The public (rightly) want the government to be in control of immigration, but a cap is the wrong approach.

The way to deal with public concerns about migration is to change the political narrative and tackle a wider set of issues including the labour market, housing, and changing communities – the immigration cap does neither.

Futurismic: Booker Prize longlist snubs genre fiction (again); should we give a damn?

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:47:46 +0000

It’s that time of year once again where Britain’s booklovers (and others around the world) get to see and discuss the longlist of nominations for the prestigious Booker Prize. And, as is traditional, there’s a complete lack of genre fiction on it; cue much kvetching from the genre fiction scene. (Like we need an excuse, right?)

At the risk of sounding contrarian, I really don’t think it matters. Sure, there’s the argument that genre titles and authors would benefit from the prestige and exposure, but in response I’d say you can’t miss what you’ve never had, and Dan Brown’s certainly not suffering from lack of acclaim by juried prizes (more’s the pity).

What we love to read just isn’t widely appreciated; perhaps it could be (if we assume that the sort of person who consciously chooses “literary” fiction over any other sort is no more picky or prejudiced than someone who consciously expresses a preference for “genre” fiction, and that they would be influenced toward something they previously turned their noses up at because of an award nomination, which are pretty big assumptions, not to mention ones that probably wouldn’t wash if you reversed the polarity of the preferences in question), but it’s not. And while I’d love for the authors I most enjoy to be rich, successful and still cranking out great books, I really struggle to care that they’re not on that list.

As a cautionary parable, I’d point out that this reminds me of the way I and my fellow thrash metal fans at college used to bemoan the lack of mainstream exposure and appreciation for our chosen genres. If only people had the opportunity and encouragement give this stuff a chance, they’d be able to appreciate the musicianship, give the imagery and symbolism a chance to sink in properly, understand that there’s more to it than studs, leather and album covers with demons on them. Wind forward a decade an a half, and we got our wish: MTV and daytime radio is full of watered-down imitations and knock-offs of authentic and innovative rock and metal music, enthusiastically and uncritically consumed by people to whom it’s nothing more than three minute chunks of momentary audio diversion. And so the subgenres move on and progress, continuing to develop new ideas (or new takes on old ideas, perhaps), pushing at the boundaries of expectation and possibility, and selling their work to a handful of thousand people worldwide; meanwhile, mass-market cookie-cutter product makes millions for middlemen and elevates talentless hacks to superstar status, simultaneously providing a whole new bunch of tired cliches for everyone outside your fandom to assume must apply to everything within it.

Be careful what you wish for, in other words; an explosion of public recognition for the obscure cultural product you love rarely works out the way you want it to. And every time we moan that prizes like the Booker don’t recognise the genius that resides within our ghetto, we confirm the opinion we assume that they hold of us: provincial geeks with marginal interests and a persecution complex. We wear the bruised vanity of the snubbed underdog like sackcloth and ashes, and it does us a disservice far greater than being passed over by a prize that – by its own implications and history, if not outright admission – is just as focussed on a small (if ill-defined) set of aesthetic criteria as our own in-ghetto awards.

Let it go, people. Let it go.

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Booker Prize longlist snubs genre fiction (again); should we give a damn?

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Heather Brooke: A few words on the Times paywall

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:06:24 +0000

Inevitably since I’ve written for the Times a few readers have questioned why, as the paper’s online content is no longer free. Andrew Denny, for example, wrote: ‘Is there not an irony in the fact that your Times articles are now online behind a paywall and not openly accessible?’

It’s a point I’d like to address.

Firstly this comment is to miss the clear difference between a public body and private industry. The courts are paid for by the public. We have no choice but to pay our taxes – under threat of jail – to support this service which exists for the benefit of the public as a whole. Whether we like what we get is immaterial to the taxes we must pay. Transparency is one of the only ways to ensure this public body is working efficiently for the benefit of all, not just the elite.

The Times is a private company. Its survival depends entirely on whether people feel they get something of value for the money they pay. Newspapers are not free and they never have been. They can appear to be so but someone, somewhere is covering the costs whether that is through advertising, a patron’s largesse or a license fee. Advertising is no longer subsidising the industry and so the cost must fall somewhere – why not on the people who use it?

I actually believe journalism must improve if the Times is asking people to pay for it, as readers are not going to pay for inaccurate rumour or propaganda. They can get that anywhere – for free. What quality journalism can offer is synthesis of a great amount of material which is then verified and put into language everyone can understand.

I believe the experience and skills I’ve gained over 22 years as a journalist and writer have value which is why I don’t give away my work for free. I’ve written for the Times because they have valued what I do enough to pay me. The New Statesman magazine also asked me to write an article but they didn’t want to pay me anything. To me, that shows how much they value quality journalism.

If you don’t think there is any value in the work I, or any other serious journalists do, then don’t spend your money on it. At least you have the choice. You’ll still have to pay your taxes, though.

Copenhagen Cycle Chic: Gentlemen Cargo Bike Cyclists

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:27:00 +0000

Looking dapper is not a prerequisite for riding a cargo bike. But we don't complain if you...

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

Left Foot Forward: Diane Abbott: “I will give the justice system the change it needs”

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:15:42 +0000

Our guest writer is Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and a candidate for the Labour Party leadership

It was thrilling to see such a large and enthusiastic turnout at the recent criminal justice hustings at Islington Town Hall, hosted by the Howard League for Penal Reform and Tribune magazine. Be in no doubt, this election is about change, and when it comes to criminal justice, we must use this opportunity to signal an end to the days of pandering to Daily Mail editorials instead of standing up for our values.

ID cards, child detention centres and Section 44 are just a few of the ugly blotches on our Party’s record. I certainly welcome the fact the other leadership candidates are distancing themselves from New Labour’s ‘hang-em, flog-em, DayGlo-bib-em’ approach to crime, justice and civil liberties.

Although as I pointed out during the hustings, I can only assume that my fellow contenders were off sick whenever criminal justice came up in Cabinet during Labour’s 13 years in Government.

Jack Straw is right about one important thing: crime did fall by 43 per cent between 1997 and 2010. As an MP, I have been proud to lead successful campaigns for longer sentences for carrying a gun, for a complete ban on imitation weapons, and I was delighted to see that last Thursday, my campaign to make eBay rethink new relaxed restrictions on the type of knives that it sells, made a real difference.

Amidst the chilling prospect a potential 60,000 police officer and civilian posts being axed by 2015, Britain must not lose sight of the magnitude of issues around criminal justice. I have every sympathy with victims of crime because I live in Hackney, which a high crime area – but under my leadership, Labour’s focus on crime will be rooted in our values.

As leader, I will make a start by protecting frontline police from budget cuts; creating a civil rights division to strive for fairness within our justice system; and by launching a complete review of stop-and-search laws.

Whilst we must oppose Lib-Con privatisation of the justice system, we also need big changes. Reform of the system, at this point, is not enough – we need a whole new outlook. The criminal justice system now costs almost £20 billion a year, making it one of the most expensive criminal justice systems in the world. There is a higher percentage of people in prison here than in any other country in western Europe and re-offending rates are also still too high.

Looking back at some missed opportunities, a huge prison-building programme took priority over the Corston Report’s recommendations for different and non-custodial approaches for women, for example. Recent research suggests that over 4,274 women and girls languish in British jails and that more than half have been victims of domestic violence, a third have experienced sexual abuse, and 25 per cent have been in care as children.

The first job I had when I finished university was a graduate traineeship with the Home Office working on prisons policy and so on the campaign trail, I am enjoying listening to Labour members’ ideas on justice and community. Throughout the campaign, many of the people I have spoken to have said that they would, in fact, prefer to see punishment that allows the offender to repair some of the damage done, receive treatment for any addiction and re-learn some responsibility, particularly for non-violent offences.

Under my leadership, there will indeed be an emphasis on early intervention, diversion, preventative support and rehabilitation; reducing the use of short sentences where possible whilst replacing them with community sentencing; and increasing use of restorative justice, forcing criminals to confront their behaviour.

It cannot be right that, at present, just over 2,000 children and young people are in jail in England and Wales, and it is tragic that three out of four young offenders are reconvicted within a year of completing their sentence. I will give the justice system the change it needs, starting by ensuring that all staff working with children and young people in the justice system have received training in children and young people’s development, and by creating a care pathway that includes a full range of mental health services, with transitional arrangements for young people leaving prison.

My constituents in Hackney, like many people across Britain, understand what the right-wing media will never understand: Labour needs a new national approach to crime, which makes the important link to inequality, social care, health, economics, housing and education.

The best solutions to crime are when communities come together to solve it, and I will lead Labour in that new direction by: launching the construction of a new generation of quality council homes; increasing early intervention in schools with classroom-based education programmes; investing in drug rehabilitation programmes in the community; improving access to parenting classes; and also piloting police cadet schemes in local schools.

To Labour members I say this, plainly and simply – this election must be about vision, not division. Hope, not fear. A new direction, not business as usual. And all of this is just a few first steps towards that radical change that we need.

Liverpool Daily Post - Dale Street Blues: Guest blog: Marc Waddington reflects on the life of Rose Bailey

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:11:53 +0000

Rose Bailey and Labour leader Joe Anderson It's almost a cliche to describe a deceased councillor as a "tireless champion for their community". After all, who would say anything else? Funerals are occasions of custom, convention and, often, cliche. But...

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Liverpool Daily Post - Dale Street Blues: Wirral South MP Alison McGovern appointed Gordon Brown's PPS

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:43:24 +0000

New Wirral South MP Alison McGovern today proves herself as a rising star of the Labour party. Gordon Brown has appointed Ms McGovern as his Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) and will effectively be his right-hand woman once parliament returns....

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Mark McNulty Photography: The Wicked Whispers

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:41:20 +0000

Two of The Wicked Whispers were in the brilliant psych, garage, mod band Whiskey Headshot so I’m well looking forward to seeing this band play live and their debut gig will be at the Mathew Street Festival on August 29th. More details here. These were shot a couple of weeks ago in a brief Saturday evening shoot but I’ll be back with the band over the next couple of weeks so expect more soon and maybe even some video!

The Wicked Whispers

Left Foot Forward: Electoral reformers should oppose the coalition’s gerrymandering

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:39:51 +0000

The Alternative Vote is a superior electoral system to first-past-the-post and should be supported if there is a referendum. But the coalition’s Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill also contains clauses that would herald unfair boundary reforms. To accompany Next Left’s examination of the politics behind the move, Left Foot Forward looks at the main arguments against the boundary reform process.

1. The Bill prevents equal representation

While everyone accepts the principled case for equal-sized seats, time must be taken to ensure that the equalisation is of those entitled to vote rather than those already registered to vote.

In 2005 the Electoral Commission estimated that 3.5 million eligible voters were missing from the electoral roll in England and Wales alone. But that was based on five-year-old figures. More recent estimates suggest the figure for the UK today is closer to 6 million. According to an Electoral Commission investigation published in March this year, “under-registration is notably higher than average among 17-24 year olds (56 per cent not registered), private sector tenants (49%) and black and minority ethnic British residents (31%)”, finding that:

“The highest concentrations of under-registration are most likely to be found in metropolitan areas, smaller towns and cities with large student populations, and coastal areas with significant population turnover and high levels of social deprivation.”

As John Costello, writing for this blog, wrote:

“By failing to factor them into his arithmetical review of constituency boundaries, Mr Clegg will be distorting the electoral map of Britain for good, and diluting the representation of people from poorer social groups in the process.”

A proper registration drive must take place before boundaries are redrawn.

2. The Bill gives the Liberal Democrats a partisan advantage

Two parliamentary seats – the Western Isles (SNP) and Orkney and Shetland Islands (Lib Dem) – have been exempted from the need to meet new quotas because of their low population density.

But as John Costello has outlined:

“in practice other seats are spared by special “geographical exemptions” that appear to have been devised with Lib Dem seats in the Scottish Highlands in mind. The Bill states that no seat can be enlarged beyond 13,000 square kilometres. Alongside that, tucked away in Schedule 2, Rule 4(2), is a previously unmentioned exemption that, in addition to the 13,000 sq km limit, constituencies larger than 12,000 sq km are freed from the need to hit the quota of registered electors.”

Seats that will be spared from being broken up include the Liberal Democrat constituencies of Ross, Skye and Lochaber; Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross; and Argyll and Bute.

Completing the boundary changes by 2013 will also lock the public out of deliberations. So much for “[handing] power back to the people” as Nick Clegg claimed in his first speech as Deputy Prime Minister.

3. The Bill does not correct distortions in the electoral system

On the Today programme this morning, Evan Davies asked Jack Straw about the disproportionality in the system which meant the Conservatives needed a large lead in votes in order to form a majority. The 1998 Jenkins ‘Commission on the Voting System’ looked at the issue of ‘bias’ and described it as one of the defects of First-Past-The-Post but described it as “very difficult if not impossible to correct”. Meanwhile, Dr. David Butler, the eminent psephologist, was asked to convene a group of academics – including Vernon Bogdanor, John Curtice, and Patrick Dunleavy – to consider a series of questions including, “Can deviation from proportionality under the current system be corrected to any significant degree by changing the criteria for redrawing constituency boundaries?” They replied:

“The principal sources of disproportionality have nothing to do with boundary-drawing or the detailed statutory rules which the Boundary Commissioners have to apply. Changes in these rules would do very little to make results more proportional…

“In general, no significant reduction in disproportionality can be expected from further action to improve the workings of FPTP.”

More recently, the Independent cited new research at the University of Plymouth which set out why the changes would not correct the problems with the current electoral system:

“The geography of each party’s support base is much more important, so changes in the redistribution procedure are unlikely to have a substantial impact and remove the significant disadvantage currently suffered by the Conservative Party.”

4. A smaller House of Commons will be be less representative

As Sunder Katwala has outlined on Next Left, “a smaller Commons will almost certainly delay and slow down progress towards gender equality in the House of Commons.”

Katwala explains that since 232 new MPs were elected in 2010, the reduction in the size of the House makes it extremely likely that the new intake in 2015 will be “one of the smallest in recent political history”. This will have a knock on effect since, “new cohorts of entries to the House of Commons are very likely to be more equal than the House as a whole in terms of both gender and ethnicity.”

***

The Spectator’s David Blackburn has some advice for David Cameron today suggesting that he should, “Detach the boundaries changes clauses from the AV bill, and then re-introduce them in a separate bill.”

This is a good idea as it would mean that Labour MPs could heartily support the AV bill while continuing a principled opposition to the proposed boundary changes. Reformers should encourage the Coalition to do just that.

UPDATE 10.13

David Cameron this morning accused Labour of “complete and utter opportunism” on the Parliamentary Voting Bill. The wording of Labour’s amendment makes it clear that this is not the case:

“That this House, whilst affirming its belief that there should be a referendum on moving to the Alternative Vote system for elections to the House of Commons, declines to give a Second Reading to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill because it combines that objective with entirely unrelated provisions designed to gerrymander constituencies by imposing a top-down, hasty and undemocratic review of boundaries, the effect of which would be to exclude millions of eligible but unregistered voters from the calculation of the electoral average and to deprive local communities of their long established right to trigger open and transparent public inquiries into the recommendations of a Boundary Commission, thereby destroying a bi-partisan system of drawing boundaries which has been the envy of countries across the world; and is strongly of the opinion that the publication of such a Bill should have been preceded by a full process of pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill.”

Heather Brooke: Article: Court secrecy

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:09:37 +0000

The courts are open but justice is a closed book
The Times, 28 July 2010
By Heather Brooke

We are denied even the barest details of what goes on in supposedly public legal proceedings

Last week I had an encounter with open justice. I was attending the Information Tribunal hearing of a friend who is trying to peel back layers of secrecy surrounding allegations that the Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust had a history of silencing whistleblowing staff by offering them public money to sign confidentiality or ‘gagging’ contracts.

I’ve been to the Tribunal before when I was fighting for the release of MPs’ expenses and that’s when I discovered the only record of proceedings of this so-called “open” people’s court (the Tribunals are meant to be a less formal, more accessible form of justice) were my scribbled notes. When it came time to write a script for a dramatised version of the hearing my notes and those of other reporters were all we had to go on. I’d asked at the time if I could tape record the hearing and was told “no”.

This time I decided to press harder. The rhetoric of the English legal system is that justice must be seen to be done so why are the public forbidden – under threat of jail – from recording a verbatim account of proceedings? Not only that, rules are so opaque and obscure that court reporters struggle to report cases with any degree of accuracy or depth. And that is when there is a reporter in court, which these days is a rarity – there used to be 25 reporters covering national courts for the Press Association; by 2009 there were only four.

We are paying nearly £1.5 billion for the court service plus £2.1billion for legal aid and the salaries of nearly 1000 senior judicial officers. It’s a high price, but to be honest not enough to adequately fund the system. However, if we’re going to invest in the judiciary it’s vital we understand where our money is going and receive some benefit for our considerable contribution. The least we might have is an account of proceedings held in open court.

Anisa Dhanji, the judge, said she was concerned with the hearing being recorded. ‘Usually such requests are made in advance so the tribunal can maintain the necessary degree of control over the transcript.’

“Control” is exactly what a court shouldn’t be exerting. Once it is decided that it is open, there should be no restriction on how that open hearing is processed. She went on to say that she’d allow me to record now but I’d have to wait for a future ruling before I could “use” the recording.

The next day in court the Judge announced she’d made her ruling.
“Please turn your tape recorder off,” she said, looking sternly at me over her glasses. I did so.

‘I have made my ruling. As you will no doubt be aware it is a Contempt of Court under section 9 to make any kind of recording for any purpose including with a view to publication or transcription. It is for the court alone to decide if a recording takes place and the court must have control of the recording. To do otherwise is fraught with difficulty. Firstly there is a risk of manipulation. Secondly it puts at a disadvantage other parties. Any recording you have made thus far must be deleted and cannot be used in any way including transcription.’

At least that’s the gist of what she said because here’s the final irony: When I asked if I could have a copy of her ruling she said there was no written record of it.

To close a court, effectively, from public scrutiny in a ruling of which there is no record strikes me as something straight out of Kafka.

The simple answer is to allow tape recorders for all: no party is disadvantaged and an ‘official’ recording is there for checking. This is how it works in other countries. But this is to ignore the root objection of the courts: that they are losing control of how court proceedings are presented to the public.

The courts’ refusal to allow people to tape-record benefit a few private companies whom the court approves in cosy deals. These people have exclusive right to tape record or listen to official recordings. The cost to the individual of hiring them is about £150– 250 per hour of typing and even before the transcription process begins, you must sign a form stating you will pay whatever amount the company decides. You could be out tens of thousand of pounds and there’s no way to challenge the bill as only the company is allowed access to the raw tapes.

Many trials in the upper courts are now officially recorded (and in the case of the new UK Supreme Court, filmed) yet these records are not accessible to the public. All High Court hearings have been digitally recorded since February 2010 and sit in a basement in the Royal Courts of Justice. When I spoke to the court’s governance officer he told me there were no plans to make these accessible directly to the public. Why not?

I could go on. You might like to know whether the builder you’re going to give your keys to has any convictions for theft or if the company you’re about to do business with has a report for fraud. Tough. This information is not a click of a button away. Instead you’ll have to know the details of the case before you can call up any records – even though it’s the existence of cases that you’re trying to find in the first place. It’s Catch-22. If you do know the details of the case you’re then forced to undergo a tortuous and tedious process which involves battling a raft of petty officials across a number of court offices all for the simple purpose of accessing information that is supposedly public.

There are three main things that would make the courts useful to the
general public: (a) knowing by name who is using them (the court list); (b) why (the particulars of claim);(c) the result (the verdict, sentence or settlement). Yet trying to get any, let alone all, of these is fraught with difficulty.

We have a justice system paid for by the common people but whose proceedings are available only to the rich, powerful, or privileged. Let’s not pretend this is justice for all.

This is a longer version of an article in today’s Times.

Two Talk: Aerial shot from the surroundings of CV Santo after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:49:00 +0000

As it currently stands, the emergency relief effort in Haiti will probably go on for some time. This may be similar to the effort in Kashmir, where even two years after the 2005 earthquake, SOS Children was still actively involved in the emergency relief effort, as highlighted in this article:

feeling listless: how they're photographed

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:41:16 +0000

Music Conclusive proof that Zooey Deschanel only looks like Katy Perry depending on how they're photographed, which is not standing next to one another.

Probably the most sought after pop culture photo since this. Your next mission, paps, is Alex Jones and Christine Bleakley together.

John Redwood MP: Criminal justice and the EU

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:36:27 +0000

Yesterday in the Commons the Home Secretary told us she wished to opt into part of the EU plans for criminal justice, as the Uk is entitled to do under Lisbon. She presented the European Investigatory Orders Directive as a necessary tidying up or simplification of current arrangements to deal with cross border cases with no extra power passing to the EU.

I proposed to her that she should negotiate into the draft Directive a simple clause giving the Uk the right to leave the arrangement again should it not prove to be as good as she plans. The truth is you cease to be sovereign in a particular area if your future actions require the consent of a majority of other member states to make changes. Other Conservative MPs pressed her on what powers the EU and police from other member states would gain over us. She promised to avoid accretions of power in these sensitive areas in the subsequent negotiations. Labour was quick to give her their full backing.

These matters are currently handled through legal agreements which could themselves be simplified and improved without involving more centralised EU powers.

John Redwood MP: The Economic Affairs Committee

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:54:32 +0000

Yesterday Conservative MPs held the first Economic affairs backbench committee meeting which I have been elected to chair. As early twilight descended on a Westminster preoccupied by the start of the summer recess we discussed the future economic agenda. We decided to concentrate immediately on a response to the government’s consultation paper on banks and the financing of recovery. There were also requests subsequently to examine the roles of lower taxes and less but more effective regulation in achieving higher levels of economic growth.

Bloggers may wish from time to time to make suggestions on suitable items for our attention. The Committee’s remit extends beyond Treasury matters to include the work of other economic departments.

It is good news that this Parliament will resume in September as there is plenty to do.

Daily interesting photos - Flickr: Interesting photos - 26 Jul 2010 - Flickr

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:51:16 +0000

xkcd: Frogger

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0000

anecdote - putting stories to work: How to stop executives becoming grammar nazis when defining their purpose

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:29:30 +0000

In our work to help organisations make their strategies stick we often start by helping the executives get clear on their purpose. Why does their enterprise exist? If you have facilitated these types of sessions you probably seen this happen a million times: the group circles in on the essence of what's important and then suddenly they get bogged down nit picking words and trying to incorporate every possibility. In large organisation each executive wants to ensure their part of the business is included in the purpose statement and if you let this happen you end up with mush.

Here's what I do which makes a big difference. Just when they start to get bogged down I call a time out and ask them to watch this video.

From that point on everyone refers back to the Dan's messages and pull each other up when they start acting like a 10th grade school teacher and we move along at pace.

Here is an example of a purpose statement we helped deliver from the Transport Accident Commission: "A future where every journey is a safe one."

It's interesting to note that Dan uses a story to get his message across and clever use of animated graphics.

Art in Liverpool: Artwork of the Week 2010-30

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

'Egg Force 5′ by Allofusarelost at Eggspace

The Sartorialist: On the Street....Mr. Zegna, Milano

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:44:00 +0000

machine-envy (Becky Hogge etc.): Variant Call Format: really?

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:23:10 +0000

1000 genomes are making their genotypes available in variant call format (vcf). Now as others have noticed, vcf isn’t the prettiest format around. There are a few things to dislike:

The data is in ‘wide’ format which means that a file is fifteen screens wide and hides rare variation in a load of noise – it’s also ‘ungreppable’.
The use of tab delimiting with embedded semi-colon delimiting is an old trick, but these days everyone has a json parser handy so you should just use json for an structured field inside a tab delimited file. Since strings, lists and key/value pairs all have simple json representations this will cover all cases.
The fact that the file headers dynamically describe the structure of the fields makes it less a format and more a family of formats. The genotype fields have arbitrary keys.
Despite the flexibility defining genotypes, the locus information is not extensible so you cannot annotate the site with extra information.

feeling listless: How Great Art Thou? | Sevenstreets [del.icio.us]

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:08:21 +0000

How Great Art Thou? http://ff.im/-ont8m

machine-envy (Becky Hogge etc.): Looking into PiCloud’s Sandbox

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:01:02 +0000

EDIT: this was due to python 2.7 incompatibility and incorrect documentation. These examples all work with python 2.6

PiCloud looks very interesting. Execute on demand python could give you a much greater level of control over cloud computing use. Now, of course, sandboxing python is not easy, despite some well known implementations.

So PiCloud don’t write much about the limitations of the sandbox, so I gave it a quick poke to see what happens:


import cloud

def blocker(x=1):
    while True:
        x = x + 1
    return x

jid = cloud.call(blocker)
cloud.join(jid)
print cloud.result(jid)
print cloud.info(jid, ['stde

This produces:

Traceback (most recent call last):
cloud.cloud.CloudException: Job 38: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/root/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/cloudserver/workers/employee/child.py", line 334, in run
  File "tp.py", line 4, in blocker
    while True:
SystemError: unknown opcode

Which is an interesting error!

Trying this:


def blocker(x=1):
    while x  10:
        x = x + 1
    return x

returns

cloud.cloud.CloudException: Job 39: None

So we're not allowed while loops?

feeling listless: Doctor Who Boss Steven Moffat Discusses Sherlock On Newsnight | Kasterborous Doctor Who News [del.icio.us]

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:19:20 +0000

Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes? http://ff.im/-omZiD

CloudMade: We’ve raised $12.3M in Series B funding!

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:03:32 +0000

We’re extremely pleased to announce that we have received $12.3M in a Series B round of funding led by Greylock Partners, which also includes our original investor Sunstone Capital.

This new investment will be used by CloudMade to do two primary things:

Expand our support to developers and businesses in building and monetizing apps, products and services that use maps and location – this will supplement our existing developer products which include: Style Editor, Data Market Place and Navi Studio
Building out and adding to our popular suite of consumer mapping products, Mapzen which severely reduce the complexity of mapping for all

We welcome Arnon Dinur, Partner at Greylock to our Board of Directors and look forward to leveraging his expertise. Commenting on the funding Arnon said:

“CloudMade is leading a dramatic change in the way maps and location data are being created, distributed, used and monetized,” said Greylock Partner Arnon Dinur, who joined CloudMade’s Board of Directors as part of this investment. “We believe that consumers and developers’ needs for daily updated maps with greater detail and relevance, will explode in the coming years. Using CloudMade’s platform enables the best return on investment to meet this growth.”

We look forward to continuing supporting developers and the OpenStreetMap community with new innovative products.

Global Voices (India): India: Shortage Of Nepali Labors In Himachal Pradesh

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:59:02 +0000

By Rezwan

Nityin at Himachal Live blog reports that the farmers in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh are facing problems as there is a shortage of Nepali migrant labors in this year's pick Apple season.

onlineSpin: Defining Social Media Marketing

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:32:12 +0000

What does it mean to do "social media marketing"? In talking with various brands and agencies, there are extremely wide-ranging thoughts on what tactics, goals and, most important, resources should be allocated to social media. Let's settle the debate: All marketing is social media marketing.

Global Voices (India): India: RTI Activist Murdered

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:26:10 +0000

By Aparna Ray

On the 20th of this month, 33 year old Amit Jethwa, a prominent environmentalist and Right to Information (RTI) activist was shot dead by two unidentified gunmen opposite the Gujarat High Court in Ahmedabad. His murder comes just a few days after he had filed a public interest litigation in the Gujarat High Court naming Bharatiya Janata Party member of parliament, Dinu Solanki as one of the parties involved in illegal mining activities in the protected Gir Forest (home to the last of the Asiatic Lions) areas in Junagadh, Gujarat.

In a country where till date there have been eight murders and 20 serious attacks on RTI activists in the last one year, Jethwa's killing once more drove home the dangers of standing up against the powerful corrupt.

Netizens have reacted with shock at this incident. There have been public statements posted condemning the killing in strong terms. Twitter abounded with tweets expressing the sentiments of netizens, some of which have been captured below:

bittusahgal: My friend Amit Jethwa, whose life was dedicated to protecting Gujarat's wildernesses was shot dead 20 minutes ago. The world has gone mad.

ranjona: @bittusahgal it's really shocking. amit was working very hard and refusing to give in.

s_chowdhury: I mourn the death of Amit Jethwa, shot dead in front of the Guj HC. A lone fighter who took on mining mafia n tried to save the Gir lions

drrbalu : Another RTI Activist Amit Jethwa has been killed. Politicians and corrupt leaders have found a way to permanently silence RTI activists

KanishkaNarayan: Shocked and scared by Amit Jethwa's murder for filing PIL against illegal mining

Vinaymenon01: Very sad on the killing of one more rti activist. great gift the pm has given us. To see all the wrong and get killed trying to get it right

protectwildlife: Shocking ; Amit Jethwa fellow conservationist/activist member nathistory India shot dead. He was president Gir Youth Nature club

_bharath_k : Another RTI activist gets killed. The message -”Demanding accountability from bureaucrats and politicians! We know where you live.”

nutanthakurlko: We shall do whatever possible to get justice done in the murder case of Sri Amit Jethwa, the RTI activist and our associate in Gujarat.

TusharG: Satyendra Dube, Manjunath Shanmugham, Yogendra Pande, Satish Shetty, Navleen Kumar, Amit Jethwa……. Martyrs of modern India.

Madhusudan Katti wrote on his Reconciliation Ecology blog:

Bloody sad news from the conservation battle front in Gujarat, India: Amit Jethwa, a young wildlife activist whom I knew only through his occasional postings on Nathistory-India was shot dead right in front of the Gujarat High Court in Ahmedabad! He was there to take on the mining mafia threatening the last natural home of the Asiatic Lion at Gir National Park, which Amit had dedicated his young life to - now literally so! Wildlife conservation remains a dangerous business in India (as indeed elsewhere) - perhaps more so now than ever, and my (academic conservationist's) hats off to people like Amit who take on these real battles in the trenches despite the risks

Citizen Journalist Subhash Chandra, in an article in Merinews, wrote the following:

Immediate concrete steps are needed at the highest level to prevent such happenings and to ensure that law and order authorities protect people like him, who are fighting the rich and the mighty…It is an irony that criminals and corrupt ones enter our political system and get security, while whistle-blowers get threat to life from such notorious politicians or those patronised by such politicians.

As activists join ranks on the ground to push for justice for their slain colleagues, an online petition has been launched, addressed to the Prime Minister and Chief Ministers of all the Indian State, drawing their attention to the dangers of RTI activism in the country. The petition points out:

The state, by passing the RTI Act, is allowing citizens to use information as a weapon. But it is falling short in bringing the real culprits to book or giving protection to the whistleblowers , undermining its own commitment to truth i.e. the government’s commitment on the protection of whistleblowers .

Hope the powers that be are listening and that we the citizens too are ready to give active support to these ‘lone warriors' - for as this tweet rightly points out

TusharG: @SinghGirishR Next time another Amit Jethwa fights our battles stand shoulder 2 shoulder with him only then change will happen.

Image by author

Global Voices (India): India: Why Businesses Must Embrace Social Media

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:48:17 +0000

By Rezwan

Komal-Nishka Manglani at Blog Adda explains why businesses must embrace social media.

Climate Progress: Research says big snow storms not inconsistent with — and may be ampliflied by — a warming planet

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:11:30 +0000

Converging Weather Patterns Caused Last Winter’s Huge Snows

A Warming World Can Still See Severe Storms

That’s the headline on the news release from the Earth Institute at Columbia University for a new GRL study, “Northern Hemisphere winter snow anomalies: ENSO, NAO
and the winter of 2009/10″ (PDF here).

The study itself slams the “deniers” for trying to spin the storms as inconsistent with human-caused global warming:

The wintry winter has encouraged deniers of global warming, and those opposed to restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, to mock climate change science. While these attacks confuse climate and weather and take a very geographically limited view (for example much of the Pacific Northwest had below normal snowfall), it is worth examining the causes for the winter’s snowfall anomalies. Such knowledge can be useful in climate prediction. In addition, explanations for climate and weather events that are in the news can help educate the public and diminish the effectiveness of efforts to exploit events to undermine the credibility of the science of climate change.

The abstract states, “the negative NAO [North Atlantic Oscillation] and El Niño event were responsible for the northern hemisphere snow anomalies of winter 2009/10.”

This might be true — though I think “primarily responsible” would be more defensible. And indeed the conclusion asserts, “We conclude that the anomalously high levels of snow in the mid‐Atlantic states of the U.S. and in northwest Europe this past winter were forced primarily by the negative NAO and to a lesser extent by the El Niño.”

But one study is not dispositive in science and as is annoyingly typical of many of these kind of narrow studies, they simply don’t cite the full scientific literature. The GRL study looked at data from 1950 on.

But there was a detailed study of “the relationships of the storm frequencies to seasonal temperature and precipitation conditions” for the years “1901–2000 using data from 1222 stations across the United States.” The 2006 study, “Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States” (Changnon, Changnon, and Karl [of National Climatic Data Center], 2006) found we are seeing more northern snow storms and that we get more snow storms in warmer years:

The temporal distribution of snowstorms exhibited wide fluctuations during 1901–2000, with downward 100-yr trends in the lower Midwest, South, and West Coast. Upward trends occurred in the upper Midwest, East, and Northeast, and the national trend for 1901–2000 was upward, corresponding to trends in strong cyclonic activity…..

Results for the November–December period showed that most of the United States had experienced 61%– 80% of the storms in warmer-than-normal years. Assessment of the January–February temperature conditions again showed that most of the United States had 71%–80% of their snowstorms in warmer-than-normal years. In the March–April season 61%–80% of all snowstorms in the central and southern United States had occurred in warmer-than-normal years…. Thus, these comparative results reveal that a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more snowstorms than in 1901–2000. Agee (1991) found that long-term warming trends in the United States were associated with increasing cyclonic activity in North America, further indicating that a warmer future climate will generate more winter storms.

Now the authors of the GRL may disagree with this, but to not even cite the paper seems a glaring omission — I guess that’s why it remains a little-known, scientific fact.

The authors also don’t cite the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) U.S. Climate Impacts Report from 2009, which reviewed the literature and concluded:

Cold-season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent.

Large-scale storm systems are the dominant weather phenomenon during the cold season in the United States. Although the analysis of these storms is complicated by a relatively short length of most observational records and by the highly variable nature of strong storms, some clear patterns have emerged.¹¹² [Kunkel et al., 2008]

Storm tracks have shifted northward over the last 50 years as evidenced by a decrease in the frequency of storms in mid-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, while high-latitude activity has increased. There is also evidence of an increase in the intensity of storms in both the mid- and high-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, with greater confidence in the increases occurring in high latitudes.¹¹² [Kunkel et al., 2008] The northward shift is projected to continue, and strong cold season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent, with greater wind speeds and more extreme wave heights.⁶⁸ [Gutowski et al, 2008]

Snowstorms

The northward shift in storm tracks is reflected in regional changes in the frequency of snowstorms. The South and lower Midwest saw reduced snowstorm frequency during the last century. In contrast, the Northeast and upper Midwest saw increases in snowstorms, although considerable decade-to-decade variations were present in all regions, influenced, for example, by the frequency of El Niño events.¹¹² [Kunkel et al., 2008]

There is also evidence of an increase in lake-effect snowfall along and near the southern and eastern shores of the Great Lakes since 1950.⁹⁷ [Cook et al, 2008] Lake-effect snow is produced by the strong flow of cold air across large areas of relatively warmer ice-free water. As the climate has warmed, ice coverage on the Great Lakes has fallen. The maximum seasonal coverage of Great Lakes ice decreased at a rate of 8.4 percent per decade from 1973 through 2008, amounting to a roughly 30 percent decrease in ice coverage (see Midwest region). This has created conditions conducive to greater evaporation of moisture and thus heavier snowstorms. Among recent extreme lake-effect snow events was a February 2007 10-day storm total of over 10 feet of snow in western New York state. Climate models suggest that lake-effect snowfalls are likely to increase over the next few decades.¹³⁰ [Burnett et al., 2003] In the longer term, lake-effect snows are likely to decrease as temperatures continue to rise, with the precipitation then falling as rain.¹²⁹ [Kunkel et al, 2002]

The GRL authors don’t cite a single one of those papers, which again seems somewhat of a glaring omission.

No, all these omissions don’t mean the GRL conclusion is wrong, but since they didn’t cite and challenge the conclusions of these other papers, it can’t be said that the GRL study refutes them or even disputes them.

Then we have this apparently as yet unpublished research presented by Dr James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory at the recent International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference (IPY-OSC) where he was chairing “a session on polar climate feedbacks, amplification and teleconnections, including impacts on mid-latitudes.”

“Cold and snowy winters will be the rule, rather than the exception,” says Dr James Overland….

Continued rapid loss of sea ice will be an important driver of major change in the world’s climate system in the years to come….

“While the emerging impact of greenhouse gases is an important factor in the changing Arctic, what was not fully recognised until now is that a combination of an unusual warm period due to natural variability, loss of sea ice reflectivity, ocean heat storage and changing wind patterns working together has disrupted the memory and stability of the Arctic climate system, resulting in greater ice loss than earlier climate models predicted,” says Dr Overland.

“The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic,” he says.

Now that is an a strong and remarkable claim. If Overland is saying that the sharp drop in summer sea ice in recent years affects the autumn and winter Arctic weather in a unique way, then it may mean that studies that are largely based on data from before, say, 2005 — like the GRL study — are somewhat moot or at least open to reinterpretation.

I have queried Overland about this and will report back if he responds.

This is clearly a complicated, multivariate, and rapidly changing field of study. In response to the absurd claims of the disinformers and the credulous media coverage of those claims that the first Snowpocalypse was evidence against climate change science, I had written “Since one typically can’t make a direct association between any individual weather event and global warming, perhaps the best approach is to borrow and modify a term from the scientific literature and call this a “global-warming-type” deluge — see Must-have PPT: The “global-change-type drought” and the future of extreme weather.”

Even though these storms occurred during warmest winter on record, I think the best way to talk about it until Overland publishes his work is the way NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth did on NPR (audio here):

RENEE MONTAGNE, host: With snow blanketing much of the country, the topic of global warming has become the butt of jokes. Climate skeptics built an igloo in Washington, D.C. during last weeks storm and dedicated it to former Vice President Al Gore, who’s become the public face of climate change. There was also a YouTube video called “12 Inches of Global Warming” that showed snowplows driving through a blizzard.For scientists who study the climate, it’s all a bit much. As NPRs Christopher Joyce reports, they’re trying to dig out.

CHRISTOPHER JOYCE: Snowed-in Washington is where much of the political debate over climate change happens. So it did not go unnoticed when a Washington think-tank that advocates climate action had to postpone a climate meeting last week because of inclement weather.

That kind of irony isnt lost on climate scientists. Most don’t see a contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. Heres Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

Mr. KEVIN TRENBERTH (Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research): The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago, means there’s about, on average, 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was, say, in the 1970s.

JOYCE: Warmer water means more water vapor rises up into the air. And what goes up, must come down.

Mr. TRENBERTH: So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, D.C., for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow, partly as a consequence of global warming.

JOYCE: And Trenberth notes that you don’t need very cold temperatures to get big snow. In fact, when the mercury drops too low, it may be too cold to snow.

There’s something else fiddling with the weather this year: a strong El Nino. That’s the weather pattern that, every few years, raises itself up out of the western Pacific Ocean and blows east to the Americas. It brings heavy rains and storms to California and the South and Southeast. It also pushes high-altitude jet streams farther south, which brings colder air with them.

Trenberth also says El Nino can lock in weather patterns like a meteorological highway, so that storms keep coming down the same track. True, those storms have been big ones – record breakers. But meteorologist Jeff Masters, with the Web site Weather Underground, says it’s average temperatures — not snowfall — that really measure climate change.

There’s more water vapor lurking around the oceans, and whatever the proximate cause of any one snow storm, there is little doubt that global warming means the overwhelming majority of East Coast storms will be sweeping in more moisture and dumping it on the ground.

For more on Trenberth’s analysis, see Exclusive interview: NCAR’s Trenberth on the link between global warming and extreme deluges.

Futurismic: Close conversation really is a meeting of minds

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:00:57 +0000

Behind the inevitable allusions to Star Trek, this is an interesting story: scientific evidence that the brain waves of someone listening closely to another person’s speech can synchronise with them.

The evidence comes from fMRI scans of 11 people’s brains as they listened to a woman recounting a story.

The scans showed that the listeners’ brain patterns tracked those of the storyteller almost exactly, though trailed 1 to 3 seconds behind. But in some listeners, brain patterns even preceded those of the storyteller.

“We found that the participants’ brains became intimately coupled during the course of the ‘conversation’, with the responses in the listener’s brain mirroring those in the speaker’s,” says Uri Hasson of Princeton University.

Hasson’s team monitored the strength of this coupling by measuring the extent of the pattern overlap. Listeners with the best overlap were also judged to be the best at retelling the tale. “The more similar our brain patterns during a conversation, the better we understand each other,” Hasson concludes.

Apparently (and completely unsurprisingly) an unfamiliar language acts as a barrier to this synchronisation – if you can’t understand the person who’s speaking, you can’t “click” with them. This is probably the best argument for a single global language that I can think of… but I wonder if poor comprehension of the same language would produce similar results to a completely foreign language?

Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00

Close conversation really is a meeting of minds

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Climate Progress: Energy and Global Warming News for July 27: New wind mega-project in California; For hybrid cars, a hybrid invention; Pines, beetles and bears

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:58:42 +0000

Wind farm ‘mega-project’ underway in Mojave Desert

The Alta Wind Energy Center — with plans for thousands of acres of turbines to generate electricity for 600,000 Southern California homes — officially breaks ground Tuesday. It’s being called the largest wind power project in the country, with plans for thousands of acres of towering turbines in the Mojave Desert foothills generating electricity for 600,000 homes in Southern California.

And now it’s finally kicking into gear.

The project will probably be a wind power bellwether, affecting the way renewable energy deals are financed, the development of new electricity storage systems and how governments regulate the industry, said Billy Gamboa, a renewable energy analyst with the California Center for Sustainable Energy.

“It’s a super-mega-project — it’ll definitely set a precedent for the rest of the state and have a pretty large impact on the wind industry in general,” he said.

The project’s developer, New York-based Terra-Gen Power, plans to coax three gigawatts of power from the wind farm over the next eight years. It has led some industry experts to predict that California might have a shot at reclaiming the wind energy crown from competitors such as Texas and Iowa.

“Alta’s an absolutely enormous project in probably the most promising wind resource area that remains in the state,” said Ryan Wiser, a renewable energy analyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “It’s the single biggest investment in California wind project assets in decades and is likely the largest the state is ever going to see.”

Southern California Edison agreed in 2006 to buy 1,550 megawatts of electricity from Alta over 25 years, one of the heftiest power purchase agreements ever signed. That would be enough energy to serve 275,000 homes and is twice the capacity of the country’s largest existing wind farm, a 735-megawatt project in Texas.

For Hybrid Cars, a Hybrid Invention

A company with a different approach to the electric car battery problem got a small boost recently when the Patent Office said it would issue a patent on its concept: using a storage device called a capacitor in conjunction with a traditional battery.

The company, AFS Trinity, plans an announcement on Monday.

Capacitors store only small amounts of electricity, but they can accept it or deliver it very quickly without damaging themselves. By contrast, lithium ion batteries, the kind now favored for cars, can store large amounts but have trouble delivering it fast enough to allow good acceleration. What is more, they don’t capture energy very well, a problem in electric cars. Electric cars are designed so that when a driver hits the brake pedal, the electric motors switch functions and become generators, converting momentum back into current. But the current flows very fast.

Global Warming Means More Mexican Immigration?

Disputes over illegal Mexican immigrants are already heating up in the United States, thanks in part to a new Arizona immigration law.

But global warming could bring the immigration issue to a boiling point in the coming decades, if a new study holds true.

According a new computer model, a total of nearly seven million additional Mexicans could emigrate to the U.S. by 2080 as a result of reduced crop yields brought about by a hotter, drier climate—assuming other factors influencing immigration remain unchanged.

Bikes and Cars: A Lesson in Los Angeles

Attending the Copenhagen climate conference last December, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles had a revelation: his own city needed to do more to promote bicycling as a clean form of transportation.

“I’ll tell you what I came away with: that in the area of bicycling, I’ve got to do a better job and the city’s got to do a better job,” Mr. Villaraigosa told Southern California Public Radio.

Last weekend, however, the mayor learned a tough lesson about urban cycling firsthand: cars and bikes don’t mix.

On Saturday evening, Mr. Villaraigosa hopped on a bike for a quick ride down to the beach. While he was riding in the bike lane on Venice Boulevard, a taxi abruptly pulled out in front of him. He swerved, fell off the bike and broke his elbow.

Common climate in Canberra and Washington

Turn the clock back four years, and you could not have slipped a cigarette paper between the climate policies of the administrations in Washington DC and Canberra.

With the election of Kevin Rudd in December 2007, paths diverged.

Against the backdrop of opinion polls showing climate change as a major concern for Australians, Mr Rudd’s Labor government ratified the Kyoto Protocol, unveiled new targets for cutting carbon emissions and announced that a new emissions trading scheme (ETS) would be the principal vehicle for reaching those targets.

A year later, Barack Obama entered the Washington White House, talking a positive game on the issue but making clear his desire or even his need for legislation to proceed through both Houses of Congress, and maintaining his opposition to re-entering the Kyoto fold.

Now, there’s a case for arguing that the old days are back, and that Canberra and Washington are once again in step.

Pines, Beetles and Bears

White bark pine forests are in trouble all across Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. Great swaths of trees are dead or dying after being attacked by the mountain pine beetle and a disease called white pine blister rust. The forests used to be protected by harsh winters and cool summers. But warmer winters and summers have allowed the beetle to breed more quickly and to move to the higher elevations favored by white bark pines.

Last summer, pilots working with the United States Forest Service and the Natural Resources Defense Council made low-level flights over 25 million acres of forest, trying to gauge how much damage has been done. The results, released this month, are devastating. Just over half the white bark pine forests are dead; one-fourth have medium to high mortality; few forests have escaped some damage.

The wider ecological effects could be serious. These forests slow the rate of spring snowmelt; without them, the spring runoff will happen faster and streams and rivers will see reduced flow and higher temperatures later in the season. The loss of the pines also threatens the symbiotic relation between the Clark’s nutcracker and the pines, which depend on the bird for reseeding, as well as red squirrels, which gather pine nuts.

Dems press Reid to put renewable power standard in energy bill

Nearly half the Senate’s Democrats are pressuring Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to include a national renewable electricity mandate in the slimmed-down energy bill expected on the floor this week.

But they face an uphill battle — Reid argued over the weekend that a renewables mandate won’t fly in the Senate.

Left Foot Forward: Green Deal without ‘nudges’ will fail

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:00:21 +0000

Last week The Times reported a further development in the coalition Government thinking on the Green Deal – the flagship Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) programme currently under development that will seek to improve the energy efficiency of existing homes. The article propagated follow up coverage on the websites of the Telegraph and the Daily Mail (twice).

The second piece in the Daily Mail is of particular interest. From the quote by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, full of cliché and misrepresentation, it is clearly evident there are no justifications based on fact and evidence supporting the case against nudging home owners to improve their property.

The Government is investigating how they could alter stamp duty to drive home owners to take up energy efficiency measures when they buy a property. The proposal under consideration is to target those properties that are the worst with this measure. Properties such as those that fall into a band F or G on an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) are incredibly inefficient – they are the worst of the worst in terms of energy efficiency and they make up 20 per cent of the British housing stock – just under five-and-a-half million homes.

The suggested reforms to stamp duty are a tax – in part. There is not disagreement that this is a stick. It is also a significant carrot. Refunding of 1 per cent of the stamp duty levy for undertaking some relatively painless improvements to the property so it reaches a band E on an Energy Performance Certificate isn’t a particularly onerous burden on new homes owners who are likely to want to undertake some work on the property before they move in.

The Energy Saving Trust recently released their analysis into F and G rated properties. They have shown that a large majority of these F and G homes will cost under £3,000 to upgrade to a Band E. Under the Green Deal, there would be no upfront cost to the homeowner. They would benefit from the incentives, reduced running costs for their home and will have contributed towards reducing carbon emissions.

It has been obvious for many years that current incentives for improving the energy efficiency of existing homes have been ineffective in delivering especially in the absence of a coherent programme of delivery.

To achieve the legal targets for carbon reduction delivery of a substantial improvement of energy efficiency in the existing housing stock is required (chapter 3 of the committee on climate change 2nd progress report presents a fairly robust indication of the scale required to be achieved in the existing housing stock).

There are three choices ahead for the Government on driving uptake of energy efficiency in existing home to achieve the carbon budgets:

• They can incentivise property owners through a suite of financial measures designed to stimulate the market at various trigger points for retrofit from 2012 onwards;

• They can mandate a minimum standard of energy efficiency for all tenures from 2012 and ban the sale of a property that fails to meet this standard; or

• They can do nothing and see the Green Deal fail in the face of poor take-up.

The success of the DECC flagship programme is dependent on the introduction of incentives such as reforms to stamp duty and rebates on council tax. Climate change and energy secretary Chris Huhne and Gregory Barker, Minister of State at DECC, should be applauded for choosing to incentivise homeowners with a combination of carrots and sticks.

It would be all too easy for the Government to choose to do nothing in the face of a vocal minority; something which will only lead to the Green Deal failing.

Climate Progress: What are the prospects for comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation in the coming years … - ... in the real world, in the world where people believe the BS analysis in the Washington Post, and in an alternative universe where the GOP isn't anti-science and pro-pollution

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:11:36 +0000

The chances for either an economy-wide shrinking cap on greenhouse gas emissions or a major push on clean energy investment over the next several years are not large — on this Earth. The chances would be higher on planet Eaarth, where (in descending order of importance):

Senate Republicans aren’t in the thrall of the anti-science, pro-pollution ideologues and special interests.
The media coverage of climate science, solutions, and economics isn’t so abysmal.
The President gives a full-throated push on such legislation.

On planet Earth, the majorities in both houses that favor any serious action will dwindle in 2011. If 2010 is the third straight wave election and the GOP takes the House, then there is no prospect for any action whatsoever as long as they control the House (that goes double for GOP control of the Senate, which is less likely because of too many Tea-Party-driven GOP candidates).

On Earth, the best one could plausibly hope for in the next Congress, assuming only modest Republican gains, is some sort of weak cap on utility emissions, possibly with some weak oil saving measures, though that would still require Obama to do what he refused to do under more favorable political circumstances — push hard for a bill.

But we also have planet DC, where media outlets like the Washington Post drive a factually dubious but potentially self-fulfilling conventional wisdom, as in their front page story today, “Among House Democrats in Rust Belt, a sense of abandonment over energy bill,” which opens:

When Democratic Rep. John Boccieri went home to Ohio early this year to talk with voters in his Canton-based district, he figured he would have to do battle with at least some constituents over his support for health-care reform. And the economic stimulus. And the auto company bailouts.

But at a meeting with business leaders, he had to come up with fast answers on something completely different: Why, the businessmen wanted to know, had Boccieri voted for a bill last summer to cap carbon emissions, which they feared would drive up their energy bills in the middle of a recession?

So few words, so much BS.

If you think Boccieri wasn’t prepared for questions on his climate vote in a meeting with business leaders — aka a meeting with many Republicans with even more likely planted questions — and hence had to unexpectedly and suddenly “come up with fast answers,” then you just passed the entrance examination for Washington Post political reporters.

You can tell that either the questions were planted or the WP reporters themselves have bought the right-wing talking points (or both), when you realize that the House bill would not have even started to cap emissions until 2012, hardly “the middle of a recession”! And, of course, with a very modest cap in the early years and strong efficiency measures, the bill would have lowered Americans’ electric bills according to EPA, but you can’t expect the Washington Post to explain such complicated matters to their readers, can you?

The story continues:

Boccieri said he was tired of wars based on “petrol dictators and big oil.”

“If I can take a tough vote today, I’m going to take that vote,” said the freshman lawmaker, an Air Force reservist who flew C-130s over Iraq for more than a year.

But 13 months after that tough vote, Boccieri and dozens of other House Democrats along the Rust Belt are not at all happy with the way things have turned out. The White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had assured reluctant members that the Senate would take up the measure. Although Senate passage wasn’t a sure thing, House Democrats hoped to go back home to voters with a great story to tell — about reducing dependence on foreign oil, slowing climate change and creating jobs.

That didn’t happen. Senate leaders, sensing political danger, repeatedly put off energy legislation, and the White House didn’t lean on them very hard to make it a priority. In the aftermath of the gulf oil spill, the Senate is set to take up a stripped-down bill next week, but the controversial carbon-emissions cap is conspicuously missing.

This has left some House Democrats feeling badly served by their leaders. Although lawmakers are reluctant to say so publicly, their aides and campaign advisers privately complain that the speaker and the president left Democrats exposed on an unpopular issue that has little hope of being signed into law.

DC “pack journalism 101″ requires that you never let the facts get in the way of the narrative you want to tell the reader. In fact, the Post’s own June poll found:

Some 71 percent of those surveyed back federal regulation of the release of greenhouse gases from sources like power plants, cars and factories in an effort to reduce global warming. The idea also had strong majority support in polls last year.

CAP’s Dan Weiss wrote a letter the Post published two weeks ago calling the paper out for similar piece of journalistic malpractice, but the Post has never really taken its letters to the editor seriously — they appear to be mainly placebos for readers (see here).

While it is absurd for the Post to keep ignoring its own polling — along with countless other polls (see Yet another major poll finds strong public support for global warming action, “even if it means an increase in the cost of energy” and links below) — the view that this is somehow an unpopular issue has taken hold as some sort of perverse conventional wisdom by otherwise smart people like Rahm and Axelrod.

The Post continues:

Some Democrats liken the situation to that of the 1993 “Btu” tax. The House passed the tax, but the Senate never took it up. Many House Democrats felt hung out on a limb in the 1994 elections, when Republicans reclaimed control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

The implication that the Btu tax was the primary cause of the Republicans reclaiming control of Congress is nonsense. This ignores the House banking scandal, redistricting, trumped up Clinton controversies like Whitewater and the travel office firings, the assault weapons ban that ignited the NRA, and many other issues. But the conventional DC wisdom is that it did matter, even if it probably didn’t matter much. Similarly, if House Democrats who voted for Waxman-Markey lose, that may also become the conventional wisdom, even if the economy, the bailout vote, and the grotesqueness mis-messaging on the healthcare bill and stimulus are the main reasons.

On Earth, the House Democrats have not been hung out on a limb by environmentalists and clean energy advocates, which have kept up their relentless campaign for the bill, which is why the poll numbers for it have actually grown.

But the House Democrats have been hung out on a limb by the White House, which failed to use many persuasion tools at its disposal, only occasionally used the bully pulpit to make a strong case for the necessity of the bill, and never forced the Senate to take a vote on a similar bill. So you can be sure that even if that Democrats retain control of the House next year, they aren’t going to pass a new bill until the Senate passes one of its own, which will probably require nearly 10 Republicans to vote for a bill, an unlikely proposition given that it was fairly clear that not even a single Republican was prepared to vote for a comprehensive bill that had a chance of getting close to 60 votes — and many former Republican supporters of action, like McCain, were actually demagogueing against it. Certainly, it is inconceivable that the next Congress would even contemplate strong climate or clean energy legislation without Obama undergoing a major strategy change and taking a very strong leadership role in crafting the bill and lobbying for the bill and selling it to the public.

So that leaves post-2012, which requires us to move into the realm of even more difficult speculation. To imagine the possibility of comprehensive legislation in 2013, you have to hypothesize a pretty good economic rebound and/or the Republicans nominating a dreadful candidate like Palin, leading to a landslide for Obama (a la 1964 and 1984). Then you have to imagine the long-sought-for strategy change by the White House leading to fairly rapid passage in both houses of … what? Something stronger than a cap on utility emissions? It still requires the Obama reversal, for him to get carbon cojones.

Yes, there is the possibility of near-term climate Pearl Harbors stimulating action but then again there is also the possibility of Iceland’s Katla volcano erupting in the next year, cooling the Earth a tad for a year or so, giving the disinformers another talking point to befuddle the media and public with. And remember, we just had one of the biggest fossil energy Pearl Harbors imaginable in the Gulf of Mexico, but Obama let that opportunity to create a call to action pass. Oh, and yes, there is always the equally slim chance of filibuster reform, ending the extraconstitutional, supermajority requirement.

I will look at the domestic and international implications of this analysis — and alternatives to comprehensive climate or clean energy legislation — in coming posts.

Futurismic: Is manned space flight a waste of money?

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:00:20 +0000

Sending humans into space is an admirable civilisational goal, but is the expense of nation-state funded projects justifiable? Britain’s Astronomer Royal Martin Rees would argue that it’s not:

“The moon landings were an important impetus to technology but you have to ask the question, what is the case for sending people back into space?” said Rees. “I think that the practical case gets weaker and weaker with every advance in robotics and miniaturisation. It’s hard to see any particular reason or purpose in going back to the moon or indeed sending people into space at all.”

[...]

Speaking to Cambridge Ideas, Rees remained enthusiastic about manned space travel, but thought it would be rather different in style from what we have seen before.

“I hope indeed that some people now living will walk on Mars, but I think they will do this with the same motive as those who climb Everest or the pioneer explorers,” he said.

“I think the future for manned space exploration will be a cut-price, high-risk programme – perhaps even partly privately funded – which would be an adventure, more than anything practical,” he said.

Not everyone agrees, of course – including the Obama administration, China, India and the European Space Agency. But I think Rees has a point, in that nation-states aren’t going to provide the main thrust of such projects in the long run, at least not in the West; they’re too risk-averse to pull it off within budget. Commerce will be the driving force, if there is one… as suggested in Jason Stoddard’s Winning Mars, perhaps.

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Is manned space flight a waste of money?

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EastSouthWestNorth: Huge Gas Explosion In Nanjing

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:00:09 +0000

Early on July 28, a chemical gas explosion occurred in Nanjing city causing more than 300 casualties. Photos plus a soon-to-be video are included here.

Left Foot Forward: The best way for Labour to renew is through a frank and open exchange of ideas

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:47:37 +0000

Our guest writer is Alan Lockey, co-editor of Labour’s Future, an ebook produced jointly by Demos’s Open Left project and Soundings magazine

The three mainstream political parties are indisputably broad churches of often differing opinions – witness the weekend papers’ lurid revelations of disaffection on the coalition backbenches. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that we have entered a new, more pluralistic, political epoch. The importance of coalition-building, whether between or within parties, is here to stay.

If historical precedence is an omen of things to come, Labour would appear ill equipped to deal with the challenges this poses. The history of the party is one fraught with long and bitterly destructive periods of introspective internecine warfare. Whether it be Fabian v Hobhouseian Liberal, Militant v Moderniser, Old Labour v New Labour or Blarite v Brownite, the left’s ability to pick a fight with itself has often made it seem like tribalism is its defining characteristic.

Thankfully, this charge cannot be levelled at the 2010 leadership contest. The candidates have been candid about their disagreements, yet the tone has remained impeccably collegial. Perhaps most striking of all though, has been the level of consensus the candidates have espoused policy-wise.

It’s as if, released from the pressure cooker of government, the party has suddenly realised that it actually agrees about quite a lot. The pluralistic exchange is beginning to scope out a common ground from which the party can be relaunched, with a new leader in place.

However, one oft-voiced criticism of the contest does stick: the gruelling schedule of hustings is stifling the candidates’ ability to articulate a deeper analysis of Labour’s future. A new collection of essays produced by the Open Left project at Demos and Soundings magazine aims to plug this gap – at least for the time-being.

It portrays a party fully committed to renewal through a frank and open exchange of ideas. Differences of opinion remain – on the precise role of markets, on welfare reform and (most of all) about how to approach the coalition government’s austerity packages – but it is possible to trace the emerging roots of a shared agenda, one that draws pluralistically from different perspectives within the Labour movement.

In a critique of New Labour’s attitude towards the state Neal Lawson, chair of Compass, writes that even good initiatives such as Sure Start “lost their radical intent of local participation and became tools of a centralised state operating to meet the demands of global competitiveness”.

This link between globalisation and state centralisation is picked up by James Purnell, one of those most associated with New Labour’s public service reforms and defence of globalisation. He argues that “globalisation became the way New Labour told the Labour Party it couldn’t have what it wanted”, though he accepts that “because we were too hands off with the market, we became too hands on with the state”.

The mistake was not to continue the reform of both – some of Labour’s most popular reforms, like the minimum wage, were amongst its most radical reforms of the market. Or as Lawson puts it, Labour must be “opposed to state fundamentalism as well as market fundamentalism”.

Such examples of cross-party consensus abound. Jeremy Gilbert and David Lammy are united in their call for a radically renewed process of democratic engagement. For David Lammy this includes balloting members on policy next time a manifesto is drafted.

Unison’s Heather Wakefield argues that the relationship between Labour and public service workers was severely eroded as “New Labour’s centralised managerialism destroyed any notion of local democratic control of, or engagement with, change”. Her article is framed by the revelation of a statistic that only 29 per cent of local government workers surveyed by Unison in 2008 intended to vote for Labour (in 2010), as opposed to 52 per cent in 2005. Anthony Painter, drawing on a Demos and YouGov poll, reinforces the idea that the electorate is sceptical about Labour’s attitude towards the state.

Policy prescriptions are also offered. Echoing Ed Miliband, Allegra Stratton argues that the part nationalised bank should remain in public hands or be mutualised. A sale of the investment arms of these banks could then be used to create a sovereign wealth fund to finance specific progressive projects like eliminating child poverty.

But perhaps most pervasive of all – and a theme recently discussed by David Miliband – is the repeated call for Labour’s arguments to be grounded in an “ethic of reciprocity”. This ethic of reciprocity can move Labour beyond the ‘rights and responsibilities’ or social contract eras and, in the words of Jonathan Rutherford, establish a deeper ‘covenant’ with people.

So Labour’s public service reform might thus be grounded in the principle of mutualism and increasing the democratic stake of users and workers. Reform of corporate governance could bring firms under greater stakeholder control. And a living wage could be a fair reward for work.

The need to decentralise the party, to redefine the approach to both the state and the market and to develop a new post-crash political economy are emerging as the big tasks Labour must now attend to. But pluralism is non-negotiable; it is the only path to renewal in step with the current political mood. This collection of essays illustrates that Labour is fully equipped with the resources to tackle these challenges head on and in the right manner.

• Download ‘Labour’s Future’: http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/laboursfuture.html