Tuesday, February 24, 2009

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North Korea Says It Is Preparing Satellite Launch, US Fears Long-Range Missile Top
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Tuesday it is preparing to shoot a satellite into orbit, its clearest reference yet to an impending launch that neighbors and the U.S. suspect will be a provocative test of a long-range missile. The statement from the North's space technology agency comes amid growing international concern that the communist nation is gearing up to fire a version of its most advanced missile _ capable of reaching the U.S. _ in coming days, in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution. North Korea asserted last week it has the right to "space development" _ words the regime has used in the past to disguise a missile test. In 1998, North Korea test-fired a Taepodong-1 ballistic missile over Japan and then claimed to have put a satellite into orbit. "The preparations for launching experimental communications satellite Kwangmyongsong-2 by means of delivery rocket Unha-2 are now making brisk headway" at a launch site in Hwadae in the northeast, the North's space agency said in a statement carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency. The report did not say when the launch would take place. Intelligence officials reported a flurry of personnel and vehicle activity at the Hwadae launch site, the Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday. However, the North has not yet placed a rocket on the launch pad, the report said. After mounting the satellite or missile, it would take five to seven days to fuel the rocket, experts say. Hwadae is also the launch site for North Korea's longest-range missile, the Taepodong-2, with the potential to reach Alaska. Reports suggest the missile being readied for launch could be an advanced version of the Taepodong-2 with even greater range: the U.S. west coast. The country test-launched a Taepodong-2 missile in 2006, but it plunged into the ocean shortly after liftoff. North Korea should present clear evidence that it is planning to launch a satellite, South Korean Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee said Tuesday, according to Yonhap. But either way, he said South Korea would consider any launch a "threat" because the technologies are similar. Baek Seung-joo, a North Korea expert at Seoul's state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, said Pyongyang is only calling it a satellite launch "to minimize friction with the United States and international criticism." North Korea is banned from any ballistic missile activity under a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted after the North's first-ever nuclear test in 2006. Analysts have warned for weeks that the North may fire a missile to send a signal to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who took office a year ago with a hard-line policy on North Korea, and to President Barack Obama. Pyongyang recently has stepped up its hostile rhetoric against South Korea, saying it is "fully ready" for war. The two Koreas technically remain at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. South Korea, Japan and the United States have warned Pyongyang not to fire a missile. Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged the North to stop its "provocative actions," saying a missile test would "be very unhelpful." More on North Korea
 
Michael Likosky: Can Politicians Be Honest? Top
Secretary of State Clinton controversially just called for a redirection of US human rights policy toward China--We are now going to be honest . This caused great outrage and worry. Clinton argued that our human rights goals are actually hindered by our antagonistic stance. In other words, the more we complain, the more they crack down. The more we take on airs, the more we foment nationalistic resentment. We can no longer ignore this reality. Instead, we should kill authoritarianism softly. When someone says that we need to have an honest conversation, it's best to ask how long we've been dishonest with one another. Is Secretary of State Clinton's call for honesty an indictment of Bush II, Clinton I? Regardless, what was this peaceful evolution thing about--the argument that we should commercially engage authoritarian governments because it was an effective means for promoting human rights and democracy? Did those saber-rattling speeches get in the way of our commercial plans and thus our human rights hopes? Should we just have been quieter and let trade to the trick? A reporter once asked Malcolm X about his next tactical move. Malcolm X succinctly said: 'I would not say how we plan. I would not say publicly how I plan to do anything.' Fair enough. In fact, the self-proclaimed realists--those that believe not only in a secret cabal running foreign policy but also that they're a part of it--argue that this is the brilliance of Clinton's remarks. Honesty here is a tactical maneuver used to advance a closely-held plan. In fact, I suspect human rights groups and others that assess honesty by the yardstick of practice--by those who experience human rights in China--are rightly worried because the stakes are so high. This is assuredly something they share with our Secretary of State. More on Bill Clinton
 
Rupert Murdoch Apologizes For Cartoon: "The Buck Stops With Me" Top
Rupert Murdoch released a statement in the pages of the NY Post on Tuesday, saying in part, "I am ultimately responsible." Murdoch was responding to the uproar after last week's controversial stimulus cartoon , for which the paper had already semi-apologized . The statement in full: As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me. Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted. Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you - without a doubt - that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such. We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.
 
Steve Fleischli: Clean Coal is a Dirty Lie Top
Coal. It's nasty stuff and it's responsible for 80 percent of the total greenhouse gases that come from energy consumption in the U.S. But even if carbon capture and sequestration technology existed to remove these emissions, it still wouldn't make coal clean. From cradle to grave, coal is inherently filthy. That fact should be obvious to everyone. Yet, the coal industry has spent millions trying to convince the public that coal can be clean, that coal is the energy of the future, and that we must rely on coal for the sake of energy independence A new national campaign, www.thedirtylie.com , exposes "clean coal" for what it is: a dirty lie. It shows that the devastating impacts of coal go well beyond coal's impact on our climate. Coal destroys our waterways, our wild places and our communities:  U.S. coal-fired power plants spew 48 tons of mercury into our environment every year and are the largest source of mercury air emissions in the U.S. And recent EPA-sponsored studies have shown that around 70 percent of these mercury emissions end up in waterways within a couple of hundred miles of these plants, leading to mercury hotspots across the country.  All 50 states have issued advisories against eating mercury-contaminated fish, and the EPA reports 1 in 6 babies in the U.S. are born each year with unsafe levels of mercury in their bodies, causing brain damage, low IQ and developmental disorders.  In the past 20 years, mountaintop removal has obliterated an estimated 470 mountains in Appalachia, crushing one million acres of the world's most productive and diverse temperate hardwood forests and smothering 1,200 miles of streams.  As of 2006, only 5 percent of acres destroyed by mountaintop removal were used for economic development, while other mountains were left flattened and barren with only scrub grass and shrubs, even though the law requires that land be restored to conditions equal to or better than those prior to mining. What is even more disturbing is that moving away from our dependence on coal is not an expensive proposition:  The U.S. Department of Energy reports that, on average, state renewable-electricity standards, which require electricity providers to increase the amount of renewable energy, raise consumer bills by just 38 cents a month.  In fact, the DOE compared 28 studies and found that in 20 of the studies, consumer costs rose by less than 1 percent. See what the coal industry doesn't want you to see. Visit www.thedirtylie.com . Take Action. Tell President Obama that his leadership is critical in moving our nation and the world beyond coal. Tell him that we must develop an energy plan that rapidly reduces our dependence on coal as our primary energy source and commits to clean, renewable energies. Help spread the word: Clean Coal is a Dirty Lie. More on Barack Obama
 
Jack Myers: TED Offers Timeless Hope for the Future Top
With the brutal realities of the news day in and day out, there is hope for our world, our civilization, for humanity itself. That's the fundamental premise of the TED Conference. In Daphne Zuniga's excellent documentary film, The Future We Will Create: Inside the World of TED ( http://www.netflix.com/Movie/The_Future_We_Will_Create_Inside_the_World_of_TED/70067274 ) , I comment that the impact of the annual conference cannot be assessed until days -- even weeks -- following the event. As TED has evolved under the curatorial vision of Chris Anderson, the impact and contribution of TED has begun to transcend days, weeks and years and is becoming timeless. Many of the presentations from this year's conference, which ended on February 7, are already available at no charge at Ted Talks ( http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks ). TED encourages us all to ask, in the words of Bennington College president Liz Coleman , "what kind of world are we making, should we be making and can we be making?" The Art of Possibility co-author Rosamund Zander points out "we need to undo the habits we have learned as children and rebuild ourselves as adults. We need to un-program ourselves from our habits of the past in order to respond with a clear unencumbered vision of the world in front of us, and drop old habits that helped us survive but no longer fit the world we are walking into." Companies that are struggling to refocus their priorities for the future and to define new, more productive and rewarding business models, should study not only content from TED, but the TED model itself. Although it is primarily a cause-related enterprise, TED has developed a brand that marketers can associate with and gain significant value through that association. By operating under the mantra of "Ideas That Matter" and delivering on that promise in every aspect of its communications and service, TED has created an opportunity for every marketer that shares the platform of 'important and meaningful ideas'. TED personifies the media company of the future. Its brand extends to multiple media forms, from online and mobile to multiple global events and video. When marketers associate with the TED brand, they are receiving not only the connection to TED Conference attendees but the good will of TEDizens around the globe who appreciate the relationship. For a sense of the TED experience, view one or all of the following presentations, which are just a few of the hundreds of short video presentations available at the site. Barry Schwartz: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html Jose Antonio Abreu: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jose_abreu_on_kids_transformed_by_music.html Bill Gates http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html To communicate with or to be contacted by the executives and/or companies mentioned in this column, link to the JackMyers Connection Hotline . This post originally appeared at JackMyers.com.
 
James Boyce: Let's Stop Enabling The Bubbleholics. Top
The greatest asset bubble in world history was created through a combination of greed, cheap credit, ignorance and incompetence. As it was housing-based, it impacted every sector of our econonmy, from Wall Street to Main Street. Whereas middle class families used to share a car, cheap credit put three cars in the driveway, plus a Jet Ski and maybe a new pool in the backyard just for fun. The companies that benefited most from the cheap credit and ignorance of Alan "The markets will police themselves" Greenspan are now the companies that are in the worst shape, floundering under the weight of debt, poor business practices and incompetence. Major banks had their famed 'models' which were only based on housing prices going up. Major newspapers piled on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and obviously weren't spending a penny on it on smart economic writers to explain that their business model needed to radically shift. Today, like yesterday and the day before that, the business news is bad, worse, awful. AIG, the multi-national insurer bailed out twice last year, is on the verge of reporting a $60 billion quarterly loss, the largest in US history. General Motors and Ford need billions more, and the banks, well, they will be put in temporary receivership. I find it ironic that we recently celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, because while basic economics has failed to persuade those in Washington, i.e. don't spend $25 billion rescuing a company that's only worth $5 billion, perhaps a touch of science will do the trick. These companies are failing and deserve to fail not because of the economic problem our country faces but because of their own incompetence. Americans will still need and use banks, we just won't use the banks that have failed. New banks will emerge to take their place. Americans will still need and want to read the news, we just won't get it from newspapers who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to poor journalists. Americans will still, I promise, drive and buy new cars. We will just buy better, well-made cars regardless of who makes them. Will there be short term pain? Absolutely. But the short term pain will lead to long term growth. As anyone who has every raised a child, or dealt with someone with a dependency issue, you can help, you can advise but for them to grow, you need to be strong. George Soros sees no bottom yet to the current financial crisis, I agree. But the bottom will happen when we discard the corpses of the American businesses who failed themselves, their shareholders and their consumers. The faster we do this, the faster we let the weak ones close shop and die, the faster the strong new businesses will rise from the ashes. And that's exactly what we need from Washington. Hope for the future, delivered with a dose of reality and determination about the present. Hat tip to Charles Darwin.
 
Eric Boehlert: Unhinged in 30 Days: The Right-Wing Media's Obama Era Implosion Top
The Republican Noise Machine doesn't need the customary 100 days to size up the new president. Right-wing commentators barely needed 30 days to come to their conclusion that they hate everything Barack Obama stands for. In terms of speed and efficiency, the right-wing collection of bloggers, AM talkers, pundits, and yes, newspaper cartoonists, may have set a new land speed record for becoming collectively unhinged, as they wail and moan about how the new Democratic president's turning America into a fascist state, or communist, or socialist, or whatever other bugaboo claim Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham are tossing out to viewers and listeners on a daily basis. Barack Obama is "arrogant," "dishonest," and "radical," Fox News' Sean Hannity announced during a single 10-second chunk of prime-time TV last week -- a casually hateful appraisal that didn't even raise eyebrows, simply because that kind of blanketed disdain for the new president has already become so commonplace. If we just pause and take one or two steps back from the daily/hourly barrage of hate, it's obvious that faced with the new Obama presidency, the Republican Noise Machine has already lost all perspective -- has gone totally loco -- and it's only February , a mere month into Obama's first four years in office. Who dares to even imagine where the right-wing "conversation" goes from here? Read the entire Media Matters column here . More on Bill O'Reilly
 
A. Siegel: MIT doubles warming warning: Or, Why George Will should read WashPost.COM Top
There is plenty of reason to be frustrated with the Washington Post when it comes to its striving for "fair and balanced" when it comes to global warming, producing science-based editorials calling for action and having articles that discuss climate change in serious ways. Balancing this, to be fair to anti-science syndrome (ASS) sufferrers, is quoting global warming deniers amid the articles and turning oped space over to serial deceivers like Charles Krauthammer , Robert Samuelson , and George Will . Sadly, to top this off, the Washington Post is ready to defend untruthful work by the likes of Will . Not all The Washington Post merits criticism in this regard and better work merits highlighting. Just yesterday, the top-notch Capital Weather Gang published a story meriting attention (and concern): MIT Group Increases Global Warming Projections . The MIT study concludes that, without significant ("stringent") reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, we might see far more significant climate change in the 21st century than previous assessments have suggested. From Probabilistic Forecast for 21st Century Climate Based on Uncertainties in Emissions (without Policy) and Climate Parameters ," The MIT Integrated Global System Model is used to make probabilistic projections of climate change from 1861 to 2100. Since the model's first projections were published in 2003 substantial improvements have been made to the model and improved estimates of the probability distributions of uncertain input parameters have become available. The new projections are considerably warmer than the 2003 projections, e.g., the median surface warming in 2091 to 2100 is 5.1°C compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study. Six years later and their "BAU" (business as usual) scenarios is more than doubling the warming by the end of the century: some 9+ degress fahrenheit of warming. By the way, yet again more data is proving that the models were wrong ... in understating the implications of climate change and the risks we face us. As Joe Romm puts it , The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change has joined the climate realists. The realists are the growing group of scientists who understand that the business as usual emissions path leads to unmitigated catastrophe To place into context, the recommendation is to keep warming below 2 C (or 3.6 degrees F) to avoid catastrophic climate change. MIT is saying that that is impossible with just some change, we need a massive shift in course. Sadly, being a realist means that we should be increasingly concerned about (terrified at) the world that we are creating for ourselves and our descendents ... unless we undertake some significant change in our path forward. Back to the Capital Weather Gang The new findings, released this month by MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, showed significantly increased odds that by the end of the century warming would be on the high end of the scale for a so-called "no policy scenario" as compared with similar studies completed just six years ago. The main culprits: the cycling of heat and carbon dioxide in the climate system are now better understood and projections of future greenhouse gas emissions have increased. As we learn more, the scenarios are getting worse ... not better. The results also showed that even if nations were to act quickly to reduce emissions, it is more likely that warming would be greater than previous studies had shown. However, the increase in projected temperatures under the "policy scenario" was not as large as for the no policy scenario. In other words, ACT! Even if there will be problems if we act, those problems will not be as bad as might otherwise occur. The modeling experiments are not meant to provide precise forecasts of future temperature changes, but rather to serve as what one related MIT study calls "thought experiments" to help policymakers and the public understand how decisions regarding emissions reductions may affect the magnitude of climate change. They show how human activities are loading the dice in favor of a warming climate, and cast doubt on the feasibility of limiting temperature increases to the lower range of what the influential U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected in its most recent assessment report in 2007. To update their findings that were first unveiled in 2002, the MIT researchers used an in-house computer model known as the MIT Integrated Global System Model that incorporated new insight into how the climate system functions. A main conclusion is that feedbacks within the climate system, which MIT says can be more accurately simulated in the updated version of its model, may act to increase the magnitude of climate change in response to increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. The more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere ... the more significant the feedbacks may be. The IPCC, to date, has excluded feedback cycles which has led many ( including this blogger ) to call them conservative optimists: conservative in terms of how they limited their work and, therefore, optimists in terms of how those constraints limit the severity of their conclusions. For the no policy scenario, the researchers concluded that there is now a nine percent chance (about one in 11 odds) that the global average surface temperature would increase by more than 7°C (12.6°F) by the end of this century, compared with only a less than one percent chance (one in 100 odds) that warming would be limited to below 3°C (5.4°F) . To be clear, climate deniers like George Will are willing to stake America's future, the future of your children, of my children on a spin of the roulette wheel. I wouldn't risk my lunch money on a 1 in 100 bet, let alone my children's lives. The median warming value, with even odds of the temperature increase being above or below that value, was 5.1°C (9.2°F). 9.2 F! For comparison, the same research group's no policy scenario yielded a median value of just 2.4°C (4.3°F) in 2002. Seven years, nearly five degrees. "The take home message from the new greenhouse gamble wheels is that if we do little or nothing about lowering greenhouse gas emissions that the dangers are much greater than we thought three or four years ago," said Ronald G. Prinn, professor of atmospheric chemistry at MIT. "It is making the impetus for serious policy much more urgent than we previously thought." Okay. To be even more concerned. What might the roulette wheel look like six years from now? According to the research group, there was no single factor that caused the new computer modeling to project a greater amount of warming compared with their 2002 simulations. "In our more recent global model simulations, the ocean heat-uptake is slower than previously estimated, the ocean uptake of carbon is weaker, feedbacks from the land system as temperature rises are stronger, cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases over the century are higher, and offsetting cooling from aerosol emissions is lower," the group's web site states. "Rather than interacting additively, these different affects appear to interact multiplicatively, with feedbacks among the contributing factors, leading to the surprisingly large increase in the chance of much higher temperatures." The model becomes more robust. The data better. The science advances. The scenario worsens. Very simply: as we continue to pump GHGs into the atmosphere we create circumstances in which we have less and less control over just how bad the situation will get. Under the policy scenario, in which global carbon dioxide concentrations would reach about 550 parts per million by 2100 (the current level is about 385 ppm), the projected magnitude of climate change is significantly less than under the no policy scenario, but it still would warm more significantly than the 2002 projections. Under the policy scenario, there is a 90 percent chance that climate change could be limited to below 3°C (5.4°F), compared to just a one percent chance of that occurring in the no policy case. Have to say that their "policy scenario" doesn't look like the aggressive "policy" that we should be striving for. We're at 388, a scenario going to 550? That's the good result? "If greenhouse gas emissions are controlled to relatively low levels then the Earth systems feedbacks are much lower and the slight difference in Earth system properties is not as important -- again a result of the way in which these different factors interact multiplicatively," the researchers stated. Again, 550 ppm is "relatively low levels"? As with any computer modeling work, there are uncertainties involved in the projections, and MIT researchers went to great lengths to quantify them in their estimates of temperature increases and future greenhouse gas emissions. Prinn said that rather than obscuring the uncertainties, the roulette wheels "give our best shot of showing what the uncertainties are and at the same time showing the value of a policy." For me, the graphics are for the deniers/skeptics who need picture books. Here MIT is providing an image to show the uncertainty. In conclusion The MIT work should scare us. This is serious confirmation of how bad our situation can get. And, it was well reported by a part of The Washington Post. A part, we can suspect, that George F Will and the opinion page editors don't bother to read. More on Global Warming
 

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