PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 111/2003 - 25 November 2003
1700 JAPAN TSUNAMI LINKED TO MASSIVE NORTH AMERICAN EARTHQUAKE
-------------------------------------------------
Guided by Japanese writings from an era of shoguns, an
international team of
scientists today reported new evidence that an earthquake of
magnitude 9 struck
the northwestern United States and southwestern Canada three
centuries ago.
Their findings are likely to affect the region's precautions
against future
earthquakes and tsunamis.
--Science Daily, 21 November 2003
Remember a few years ago when killer asteroids were all the rage?
News magazine
cover stories went into gruesome detail about the death and
destruction an
asteroid collision with Earth could wreak. Movies and television
delighted in
the special effects of cities being incinerated. Then we found
more pressing
matters to worry about, and asteroids were relegated to the
mental shelf where
such remote but entertaining threats as a second Ice Age, alien
landings and
mutant killer viruses are stored, ready if need be but of no
immediacy.
--Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News
Service, 21 November 2003
(1) 1700 JAPAN TSUNAMI LINKED TO MASSIVE NORTH AMERICAN
EARTHQUAKE
Science Daily, 21 November 2003
(2) 300,000 TONNES OF SPACE GARBAGE ORBITING EARTH
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(3) ASTEROIDS? NO WORRIES
Dale McFeatters
(4) TUNGUSKA GENETIC ANOMALY AND ELECTROPHONIC METEORS
Zurab Silagadze <Z.K.Silagadze@inp.nsk.su>
(5) 400,000 ACRES OF LUNAR REAL ESTATE SOLD TO DATE
Space Daily, 24 November 2003
(6) THE AIR UP THERE - IS IT HOTTER?
Tech Central Station, 21 November 2003
(7) SAME OLD STORY: DOUBTS GROW OVER "HOCKEY-STICK"
PROXY DATA
Tech Central Station, 19 November 2003
(8) SOLAR-POWER SATELLITE SYSTEMS WOULD NOT AFFECT PLANT GROWTH
Space Daily, 24 November 2003
(9) SHOCK, HORROR: ONCE LIFELESS MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL TEEMING
WITH LIFE
BBC News Online, 24 November 2003
(10) CO-OPTING THE FUTURE
PC Magazine, 19 November 2003
(11) ON THE WEB, RESEARCH WORK PROVES EPHEMERAL
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(12) AND FINALLY: BLOWING IN THE WIND
www.john-daly.com,
22 November 2003
=========
(1) 1700 JAPAN TSUNAMI LINKED TO MASSIVE NORTH AMERICAN
EARTHQUAKE
Science Daily, 21 November 2003
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031121071851.htm
WASHINGTON - Guided by Japanese writings from an era of shoguns,
an international team of scientists today reported new evidence
that an earthquake of magnitude 9 struck the northwestern United
States and southwestern Canada three centuries ago. Their
findings are likely to affect the region's precautions against
future earthquakes and tsunamis.
Writing in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth,
published by the American Geophysical Union, scientists from
Japan, Canada and the United States summarize old reports of
flooding and damage by a tsunami in 1700 on the Pacific coast of
Japan. With the aid of computer simulations, they conclude that
this tsunami must have been generated by a North American
earthquake of close to magnitude 9. Such an earthquake would, in
a few minutes, release about as much energy as the United States
now consumes in a month.
The report's authors are Kenji Satake, of the Geological Survey
of Japan; Kelin Wang, of the Geological Survey of Canada; and
Brian Atwater, of the United States Geological Survey, based at
the University of Washington in Seattle.
The earthquake apparently ruptured the full length of an enormous
fault, known as the Cascadia subduction zone, which extends more
than 1,000 kilometers [600 miles] along the Pacific coast from
southern British Columbia to northern California. Until the early
1980s, this fault was thought benign by most scientists, said
Atwater. But then a swift series of discoveries in North America
showed that the fault produces earthquakes of magnitude 8 or
larger at irregular intervals, averaging about 500 years. The
most recent of the earthquakes, dated by radiocarbon methods,
occurred between 1680 and 1720.
These discoveries raised a further question: Can the fault
produce earthquakes of magnitude 9? Such a giant earthquake would
produce low-frequency shaking, lasting minutes, that might now
threaten tall buildings from Vancouver, British Columbia, to
northern California. A giant Cascadia earthquake would also warp
large areas of seafloor, thereby setting off a train of ocean
waves -- a tsunami -- that could prove destructive even on the
far side of the Pacific Ocean.
Such international concerns motivated the research described
today. "At issue for North Americans," said Atwater,
"is how to adjust building codes and tsunami-evacuation
plans to reduce losses of life and property in the event of a
future magnitude 9 earthquake in southern British Columbia,
Washington, Oregon and northern California."
Few scientists took that threat in the Cascadia region seriously
until 1996, when Japanese researchers, in a letter to the journal
Nature, stunned their North American colleagues by linking a
tsunami in Japan to geologic reports of an earthquake and tsunami
at the Cascadia subduction zone.
From the tsunami's arrival time in Japan, the Japanese
researchers assigned the earthquake to the evening of Tuesday,
January 26, 1700. In addition, from preliminary estimates of the
tsunami's height in Japan, they guessed that it was too large to
explain by a Cascadia earthquake of less than magnitude 9.
That guess was on target, according to today's report in the
Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth. The researchers
begin by showing that the 1700 tsunami crested as much as five
meters [15 feet high] in Japan. They then use recent findings
about the Cascadia subduction zone to relate earthquake size to
plausible areas of fault rupture and seafloor displacement.
Finally, they employ computer simulations of trans-Pacific
tsunamis to tune the estimates of earthquake size at Cascadia to
the estimated tsunami heights in Japan.
The findings, said Atwater, justify precautions taken recently by
engineers and emergency personnel. Under construction standards
adopted since 1996, engineers have sought to design buildings to
withstand giant earthquakes in the northwestern United States. At
the same time, state and local officials have devised evacuation
routes from areas believed subject to a tsunami from a Cascadia
earthquake of magnitude 9. In Canada, buildings constructed in
Vancouver and Victoria since 1985 are designed to resist stronger
shaking from local earthquakes than is expected from the next
Cascadia earthquake. Canada's 2005 building code will explicitly
include the hazard from the subduction zone, said Wang.
Wang also noted that the giant fault responsible for this
earthquake is currently "locked," accumulating energy
for a future destructive event. "Scientists in the United
States, Canada, and Japan are carefully monitoring the fault's
activities using seismological and geodetic methods and making
comparisons with a similar fault in southwestern Japan,"
said Wang. "With a combination of a better understanding of
the previous earthquake and modern observations, we hope to
better define the potential rupture area of the future
event."
Lead author Satake noted that since their first report in 1996
about the possible relationship between the Japanese documents
and the American earthquake, the Geological Surveys of the three
countries have conducted a joint project on the Cascadia
earthquake. "As a result of this international
collaboration," he said, "we have collected more
evidence, made rigorous interpretation of it, and have modeled
the earthquake source and tsunami propagation by using the latest
techniques. Consequently, we have confirmed that the 1700
earthquake was magnitude 9."
An animation, prepared by Kenji Satake, which shows hourly
snapshots of the simulated tsunami moving across the Pacific
Ocean for a full day, may be viewed at ftp://www.agu.org/apend/jb/2003JB002521/2003JB002521-animation.gif
This story has been adapted from a news release issued by
American Geophysical Union.
Copyright © 1995-2003 ScienceDaily Magazine
=============
(2) 300,000 TONNES OF SPACE GARBAGE ORBITING EARTH
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
[http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/0/0.html?id_issue=5657608]
Tuesday, September 9, 2003
About 300,000 tonnes of space garbage orbiting Earth
NALCHIK (Interfax-South) -- About 300,000 tonnes of space
garbage, including
boosters, carrier rockets and satellites whose service life has
expired, are
orbiting the Earth, Lyudmila Rykhlova, a researcher at the
Russian Academy of
Sciences' Institute of Astronomy has stated.
Since the start of the space era, over 4,000 space launches have
been made. Only
5% of the almost 1,000 artificial space objects orbiting the
Earth are in
operation, Rykhlova told an international conference on
near-earth astronomy in
the mountain village of Terskol in Russia's internal republic of
Kabardino-Balkaria.
This factor must be taken into account when new launches are
planned. Russian
researchers have drawn up charts of objects observed from Earth,
including about
10,000 "satellites" with a diameter of over one meter,
she said.
The conference brought together more than 100 researchers from
Russia, Ukraine,
Poland and Bulgaria, who will discuss the origin and migration of
small bodies
in the solar system, the influence of the interplanetary medium
on space and
Earth objects, the problem of celestial bodies' collisions with
the Earth and
the pollution of the atmosphere.
© 2003 Interfax. All rights reserved.
*****
[http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/0/0.html?id_issue=5653993]
Sunday, August 17, 2003
Russian, European experts to monitor space garbage jointly
MOSCOW (Interfax) -- Russian researchers have proposed
establishing a
Trans-European monitoring system to prevent satellite collisions
with asteroids
and space garbage.
"Over 200,000 objects in space that could be described as
space garbage are in
near Earth orbits. Asteroids are also dangerous. A network of
telescopes and
radars needs to be created to monitor and tackle these
problems," Igor Molotov,
an expert form the Russian Academy of Sciences' Pulkovo
Observatory, has told
Interfax.
"The equipment available in Europe is not sufficient.
Therefore a new project
involving Europe's means of surveillance and the optical
facilities and radars
of former Soviet republics has been launched," he said.
"The new system will be able to warn of small pieces of
space garbage and
monitor them round-the-clock in any weather. There are telescopes
and radars
located from Spain to the Far East, covering several time
zones," Molotov said.
"The system will be capable of finding new asteroids and
measuring their orbits
and determining their physical properties, which will help make
long-term
forecasts on dangerous space collisions and evaluate the
consequences of
possible impacts," he said.
© 2003 Interfax. All rights reserved.
=======
(3) ASTEROIDS? NO WORRIES
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE, 21 November 2003
http://newsobserver.com/24hour/opinions/story/1060799p-7447237c.html
By Dale McFeatters
(SH) - Remember a few years ago when killer asteroids were all
the rage?
News magazine cover stories went into gruesome detail about the
death and destruction an asteroid collision with Earth could
wreak. Movies and television delighted in the special effects of
cities being incinerated.
Then we found more pressing matters to worry about, and asteroids
were relegated to the mental shelf where such remote but
entertaining threats as a second Ice Age, alien landings and
mutant killer viruses are stored, ready if need be but of no
immediacy.
It is considered a reasonable scientific certainty that 65
million years ago the impact of a six-mile wide meteor killed off
the dinosaurs and might have killed us off, too, had we been
around.
Now scientists say that there is evidence of an earlier mass
extinction due to a meteor.
Fragments found in Antarctica suggest that a mountain-sized
meteor hit the Earth 251 million years ago, killing off 90
percent of all life. "There were no large animals then, but
there were lots of species living on the land and in the seas,
and there were plants," said University of Rochester
professor Asish Basu, a co-author of the meteor study.
It shows something about the resilience and determination of our
ancestral single cells that life on Earth survived two
meteor-caused mass extinctions.
There are two ways to look at this death-from-outer-space.
Either the meteors encountered the Earth at random, in which case
there's no point in worrying.
Or they strike at specific intervals, meaning the next one isn't
due for another 186 million years, in which case there's no
reason to worry.
But it never hurts to look up once in awhile.
Copyright 2003, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
=============
(4) TUNGUSKA GENETIC ANOMALY AND ELECTROPHONIC METEORS
Zurab Silagadze <Z.K.Silagadze@inp.nsk.su>
Dear Dr. Peiser,
maybe the following article will be interesting for CCNet
audiance:
http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0311337
(Tunguska genetic anomaly and electrophonic meteors)
I wanted to submit it to Astronomy & Astrophysics but the
editor answered
that "the manuscript cannot be considered for publication in
Astronomy and
Astrophysics, as the journal is dedicated to publishing results
of
astrophysical research. While quite fascinating, your article is
based
mainly on biological evidence. We therefore suggest that you
submit it to
a journal in that discipline."
I'll appreciate if you could advise what journal I should submit
to.
With best regards, Zurab Silagadze.
-----------
Tunguska genetic anomaly and electrophonic meteors
Authors: Z.K. Silagadze
Comments: 15 pages, LaTeX, A&A style
One of great mysteries of the Tunguska event is its genetic
impact. Some genetic anomalies
were reported in the plants, insects and people of the Tunguska
region. Remarkably, the
increased rate of biological mutations was found not only within
the epicenter area, but also
along the trajectory of the Tunguska Space Body (TSB). At that no
traces of radioactivity were
found, which could be reliably associated with the Tunguska
event. The main hypotheses about
the nature of the TSB, a stony asteroid, a comet nucleus or a
carbonaceous chondrite, readily
explain the absence of radioactivity but give no clues how to
deal with the genetic anomaly.
A choice between these hypotheses, as far as the genetic anomaly
is concerned, is like to
the choice between ``blue devil, green devil and speckled
devil'', to quote late Academician
N.V. Vasilyev. However, if another mysterious phenomenon,
electrophonic meteors, is evoked,
the origin of the Tunguska genetic anomaly becomes less obscure.
============
(5) 400,000 ACRES OF LUNAR REAL ESTATE SOLD TO DATE
Space Daily, 24 November 2003
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/lunar-03u.html
New York - Nov 24, 2003
Buyers looking for that perfect piece of real estate for their
retirement sanctuary or vacation getaway have grown accustomed to
rising property prices. But one company claims to have discovered
a place where bargains still exist. There's just one catch: the
property is not on Earth.
For a modest price (about $30 an acre), the Lunar Registry offers
lunar land claims for sale over the Internet. The organization,
which also advocates lunar exploration and settlement, donates 95
percent of each sale to the Kennedy II Lunar Exploration Project,
a partnership between investors and aerospace contractors that
hopes to develop permanent communities on the moon by 2015.
"Space law experts agree that actual occupation of the moon
is the only legal method for ownership of lunar property,"
said David Ferrell Jackson, managing director of the Lunar
Registry. "Through our partnership with the Kennedy Project,
we plan to make lunar settlement a reality."
Property demand has driven prices upward at such an alarming rate
that many investors are expanding their horizons to include the
moon, which represents one of the last remaining outposts of
peace and quiet for those looking to get away from it all, says
Jackson.
Peace and quiet may be an understatement, as no human has stepped
foot on the moon since Apollo 17 landed there in 1972. But
numerous international organizations seek to return people to the
moon over the next two decades, making settlement a distinct
possibility.
Those who purchase land claims through the Lunar Registry would
enjoy full rights to their property should the Kennedy II Lunar
Exploration Project prove successful, says Jackson.
Buyers may select property from a list of specific lunar regions,
such as the Sea of Tranquility, the Bay of Rainbows and the Sea
of Dreams. Ownership packages include a personalized deed and a
satellite photograph of the property.
According to Jackson, the Lunar Registry has already sold more
than 400,000 acres of lunar property. The organization will only
make two percent of the moon's nine billion acres available for
land claims, meaning plenty of space is still available for that
perfect vacation home.
============
(6) THE AIR UP THERE - IS IT HOTTER?
Tech Central Station, 21 November 2003
http://www.techcentralstation.com/112103D.html
By Sallie Baliunas
If human activities are having a dramatic effect on
globally-averaged temperature, then the temperature in the low
atmosphere would be rising at a rate faster than at the Earth's
surface. A flurry of recent studies continues to round out the
picture and suggests that alarmism about catastrophic
anthropogenic global warming is more hype than scientific fact.
The best analysis of air temperature over the last 25 years is
based on measurements made from satellites and checked with
information from weather balloons. That work, conducted by J.
Christy and R. Spencer at the University of Alabama at Huntsville
(UAH), shows a small global warming trend. Even if the small
trend were entirely human-caused -- an unlikely possibility
because temperature exhibits many naturally-caused changes -- it
contradicts the forecasts of extreme, human-made global warming.
It's not surprising, then, that the satellite measurements are
intensely studied and debated.
Let's start with some background. There is concern that the air's
increasing content of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases,
mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, may cause substantial
global warming. Because naturally-caused temperature changes have
always occurred and will continue to occur, the human effect must
be searched for against that varying temperature backdrop,
preferably in areas of the climate system especially sensitive to
human-caused warming.
Nearly all computer simulations of climate say that the air layer
at a height from just above the surface to about five miles --
called the troposphere -- is very sensitive to human-made global
warming. Thus, one important test of the human effect -- a
stronger warmer trend, especially in the low troposphere compared
to the surface -- should be obvious in reliable balloon and
satellite observations that have been made from 1978.
Specifically, near the surface, the globally-averaged temperature
constructed from thermometer readings scattered across the globe
rose about 0.4 C during the last 25 years. That is the period in
which the air's concentration of human-produced greenhouse gases
has been rapidly increasing. The low troposphere should show a
greater warming trend -- about 0.5 C over the last 25 years -- if
the human-made global warming effect is pronounced.
Three new analyses of troposphere temperatures have appeared in
the publications Science and Journal of Oceanic and Atmospheric
Technology. They all start with the same set of measurements made
from satellites, but find different results. Because not one but
a series of satellites has collected the data, corrections need
to be made to the measurements from each instrument to produce a
precise record of temperature going back over two decades. How to
find the best result?
The first of the three recent analyses of the satellite
measurements appeared in Journal of Oceanic and Atmospheric
Technology. It continues the UAH work by Christy and Spencer. It
is solidly-based because its results were checked by careful
comparison to good measurements from the weather balloons. The
UAH team finds a small warming trend of approximately 0.07 C per
decade in the low troposphere, with a few hundredths degree C
uncertainty in the last 25 years. In an independent study by NOAA
researchers published earlier this year in Journal of Climate,
good weather balloon information agrees with the UAH satellite
analysis.
That observed trend is much cooler than estimates of the
human-made trend, according to the computer simulations.
The remaining two studies consider the same satellite
measurements and find results consistent with computer-based
forecasts of globally-averaged human warming. But those two
studies also produce contradictory results, indicating the small
temperature trend from UAH is the most reliable.
The second of the three analyses of satellite data, developed by
a team led from Lawrence Livermore Labs and appearing in Science,
claims to find a substantial rise in the height of the top of the
troposphere, called the tropopause. The increase in height of the
tropopause nearly matches that predicted by computer simulations
for human-made global warming resulting from a significant
warming in the troposphere below.
But that second analysis contains within itself its own
counterargument, which wasn't mentioned in the study. The
temperature of the troposphere -- presumed to be the cause of the
observed tropopause rise -- is an easier and more direct
measurement to make than the difficult-to-measure (and, for the
computer simulations, to estimate) changing height of the
tropopause. The temperature trend derived from the second
analysis of the satellite data shows a small warming trend in
tropospheric temperature, which agrees with UAH's trend within
the uncertainties. The conclusion is that the measurement and
modeling of changes in the tropopause height may be too uncertain
to use in the question of evaluating the size of the human-made
warming trend.
The third analysis of the satellite data, made by a team led from
the University of Maryland and also published in Science, claims
to see a significant warming trend in the troposphere, consistent
with forecasts of a human-made enhanced greenhouse effect. But
it, too, seems uncertain, as evidenced by the following.
The satellite instruments sample the air temperature often enough
to see afternoon, sun-heated warmth and evening, sun-absent
cooling. This third analysis incorrectly shows cool temperatures
in the early to mid-afternoon and warm temperatures after sunset.
That odd result seems to arise from the omission of an important
temperature correction owing to calibration errors among
satellite instruments, noted five years ago by the UAH team, and
independently verified by Remote Sensing Systems in California,
whose work is just appearing in Journal of Climate. Also, no
independent balloon comparisons for cross-checking results were
provided to readers in that second Science paper.
Thus, the UAH analysis, which has been thoroughly scrutinized by
many independent researchers and measurements, shows a small
temperature trend in the low troposphere. It has been checked by
good weather balloon measurements, and may be the most reliable
indicator of the temperature of the low troposphere of the last
25 years.
The small troposphere temperature trend indicates that the
human-made part of the warming trend at the surface has been
exaggerated by at least a factor of two to three. Adjusting
forecasts downward by the same amount suggests a human-made
global warming trend of less than 1 degree C over the next 100
years, an amount that would be lost in the background of natural
change, thereby answering panic with scientific facts.
Copyright 2003, Tech Central Station
=============
(7) SAME OLD STORY: DOUBTS GROW OVER "HOCKEY-STICK"
PROXY DATA
Tech Central Station, 19 November 2003
http://www.techcentralstation.com/111903B.html
By David R. Legates
The conventional wisdom has been that temperatures during the
early years of the last millennium (~A.D. 800 to 1300) were
relatively warmer -- in what was known as the Medieval Warm
Period -- while temperatures decreased during the middle years of
the millennium (~A.D. 1400 to 1850) -- during what was known as
the Little Ice Age. During the 1900s, temperatures increased as a
result of a number of factors, including the demise of the Little
Ice Age. Both introductory scientific texts as well as extensive
scientific literature confirm these facts.
But in 1999, Dr. Michael Mann of the University of Virginia and
his colleagues produced what has now become known as the 'hockey
stick' curve -- a representation of the annual temperature for
the Northern Hemisphere over the last millennium. This curve,
compiled by averaging a number of proxy records (secondary or
inferred sources from which assumptions about temperature can be
drawn), shows a very slight cooling trend from A.D. 1000 to 1900
with a dramatic warming during the 1900s. This led Dr. Mann, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the US
National Assessment of Climate Change to assert that the 1990s
were the warmest decade of the last millennium with 1998 being
the warmest year.
But is the "hockey stick" assumption consistent with
the observations? Harvard astrophysicists Dr. Willie Soon and Dr.
Sallie Baliunas and their colleagues contend that it isn't. After
examining more than 240 individual proxy records analyzed by
nearly 1000 researchers, they concluded that taken individually,
proxy records offer strong support for the widespread existence
of both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age and that
they do not support the claim that the climate of the 20th
Century is unusual when compared to the variability over the last
millennium.
So why does Mann's "hockey stick" representation of
average Northern Hemisphere temperature fail to retain the
fidelity of individual proxy records? Many reasons involve
detailed statistical issues, although some are rather obvious and
fundamental. For example, Mann contends that the curve represents
Northern Hemisphere temperature trends. So why is it that four of
the twelve proxy sources used for the pre-A.D. 1400 analysis are
from the Southern Hemisphere? Mann also simply affixed
thermometer-based estimates for the 1900s to the end of his proxy
averages -- a classic apples-versus-oranges comparison -- thereby
producing the characteristic 'hockey stick' shape. But the
thermometer-based record shows more variability than the proxy
records during the 1900s and Mann represents it without the
assignment of uncertainty. If the thermometer-based record was
not included or if a satellite-based temperature record (where
only a small warming trend exists for the late 1900s) were used
instead, the claim that the 1990s were the warmest decade becomes
unfounded. Even if a reasonable estimate of the error in the
thermometer-based record were provided, the claim becomes
questionable. Moreover, the range of uncertainty for the pre-A.D.
1400 analysis depends on a single proxy source for western North
America; and Mann admits that his entire millennial
reconstruction hinges on that single source.
But do proxy records really represent air temperature
fluctuations? Most of the analyses on which the "hockey
stick" relies are taken from tree-ring cores. Trees,
however, respond not only to temperature fluctuations but also to
species competition, fire episodes, pest infestations, and
droughts. For example, if rainfall is limited, as often is the
case in western North America (where the preponderance of data
for Mann's pre-A.D. 1400 analysis is located), tree growth is
severely restricted, regardless of the temperature conditions. It
is impossible under such conditions to discriminate between a
cold period and a dry period -- which is why Soon and Baliunas
correctly characterized their assessments as "climate
anomalies" rather than boldly assert they reflect air
temperature fluctuations, as Mann does. Moreover, Dr. Jan Esper
of the Swiss Federal Research Institute and colleagues
demonstrated that their careful analysis of tree-ring
chronologies yields an annual temperature curve for a large
portion of the Northern Hemisphere that, unlike the "hockey
stick," clearly shows the existence of the Medieval Warm
Period and that temperatures during the early years of the
millennium were commensurate with those of the 1900s.
These and other more complex issues are fundamental reasons the
"hockey stick" is being challenged on scientific
grounds by a number of serious scientists. But the IPCC and the
US National Assessment of Climate Change continue to demand that
policy be based on this flawed and biased research. We must take
a closer look at the "science" behind the IPCC and, in
this case, ask the question, "How much of the warming of the
20th Century was 'man-induced' and how much of it is
'Mann-induced'?"
David R. Legates is Associate Professor and Director of the
Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware and
Research Fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.,
publisher of the new report, New Perspectives in Climate Change:
What the EPA Isn't Telling Us (www.independent.org).
Copyright 2003, Tech Central Station
=========
(8) SOLAR-POWER SATELLITE SYSTEMS WOULD NOT AFFECT PLANT GROWTH
Space Daily, 24 November 2003
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/food-03h.html
Moffett Field - Nov 24, 2003
A NASA scientist has discovered that future solar-power satellite
systems designed to harvest sunlight, convert solar electric
energy into weak microwaves and beam them down to Earth to make
electricity, are not harmful to green plants.
During the simple experiment, the scientist bathed a tray of
alfalfa plants with weak, 2.45 Ghz microwaves for seven weeks
with no ill effects. The microwaves were about 1 million times
weaker than those an average kitchen microwave oven makes.
The test took place in a laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center
in California's Silicon Valley, and is the first of many
experiments scientists plan to conduct to see if an array of
solar-power satellites designed to send microwave power to Earth
could affect plant life.
"A tray of growing plants was illuminated with microwaves
while control plants were grown behind a microwave-opaque shield.
Test plants and the control plants were subjected to the same
environment otherwise," said NASA Ames scientist Jay Skiles,
who designed the experiment and recently presented its results at
the 54th International Astronautical Congress in Bremen, Germany.
"In all measured variables, there was no difference between
the control and the microwave treatment plants," Skiles
added. A 'control' is a parallel experiment in which the factor
being tested in the main experiment is left out in order to
provide a way for scientists to judge that factor.
In 1968, scientists proposed putting solar-power satellites into
orbit about 22,000 miles above the ground, where these spacecraft
could harvest sunlight for its energy. While the satellites would
collect sunshine to make direct current (DC), they also would be
converting the DC to some form of radiation, most likely
microwaves. The satellites then would broadcast the microwave
energy to the Earth's surface, where power plants would reconvert
it into electricity for distribution.
"Over the ensuing decades, the space-power satellite concept
has been studied from the view of engineering feasibility and
cost per kilowatt, with only little attention paid to the
biological consequences to organisms exposed to continuous
microwave radiation," Skiles said. "The hypothesis of
my experiment was that plants exposed to microwaves would be no
different from those plants not exposed to microwaves," he
said.
Skiles used off-the-shelf equipment to conduct the experiment. He
used the same nutrients and watering techniques on two sets of
plants, only one of which was exposed to microwaves.
A microwave generator with an antenna and a parabolic reflector
beamed microwaves onto the test plants from the side so as not to
block lights placed above the plants. A sheet metal microwave
shield protected the 'control' plants from the microwaves so
Skiles could compare the non-microwaved plants with the
microwaved plants.
Skiles measured the chlorophyll concentration of the alfalfa
leaves in the microwaved and non-microwaved plants. He measured
the plants' stem lengths, and also harvested, dried and weighed
the plants. He found there were no significant differences in the
microwave-treated plants and the untreated control plants. Skiles
chose to test alfalfa because it is an important crop that
animals and people eat. Alfalfa also represents a broad class of
economically important plants, he added.
Unlike radioactive materials, microwaves cannot burn living
things, but microwaves do generate heat. However, Skiles
reported, "Even though I tested microwaves on alfalfa, I
didn't see any increase in plant or soil temperatures."
Skiles plans to conduct additional experiments to test plants
outdoors, as well as under other conditions. "I want to test
plants growing in a glasshouse to determine the effects of
microwaves on the plants during daily changes of light and
temperature," he said.
"Another experiment will be to grow cereal plants, including
wheat and oats, to determine the effect of microwaves on the
kinds of plants that humankind depend on for food," Skiles
continued.
He also plans to test whether or not microwaves provide a
competitive advantage for some kinds of plants when several
different species are growing in the same area. In another
experiment, he is planning to examine the genes of one plant
species to learn the effects of weak microwaves on that plant.
Additional experiments to test effects of climate change,
watering and other conditions also may be conducted, according to
Skiles.
=======
(9) SHOCK, HORROR: ONCE LIFELESS MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL TEEMING
WITH LIFE
BBC News Online, 24 November 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/3230940.stm
A famously polluted canal is now supporting one of the fastest
growing fish populations in the UK, experts say.
The water quality is so good in the Manchester Ship Canal after a
three-year clean-up initiative that it has gone from supporting
five species of marine life to more than 30.
Before the operation began the canal was so polluted it was
reportedly in danger of catching fire and was "virtually
lifeless and hazardous to human life", researchers said.
However, after 15 tonnes of liquid oxygen was pumped into the
canal every day since 2000, its "biodiversity is
booming", the Mersey Basin Campaign (MBC) revealed on
Monday....
===========
(10) CO-OPTING THE FUTURE
PC Magazine, 19 November 2003
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1382914,00.asp
By John C. Dvorak
Blogs, or Web logs, are all the rage in some quarters. We're told
that blogs will evolve into a unique source of information and
are sure to become the future of journalism. Well, hardly. Two
things are happening to prevent such a future: The first is
wholesale abandonment of blog sites, and the second is the casual
co-opting of the blog universe by Big Media.
Let's start with abandoned blogs. In a white paper released by
Perseus Development Corp., the company reveals details of the
blogging phenomenon that indicate its foothold in popular culture
may already be slipping (www.perseus.com/blogsurvey).
According to the survey of bloggers, over half of them are not
updating any more. And more than 25 percent of all new blogs are
what the researchers call "one-day wonders." Meanwhile,
the abandonment rate appears to be eating into well-established
blogs: Over 132,000 blogs are abandoned after a year of constant
updating.
Perseus thinks it had a statistical handle on over 4 million
blogs, in a universe of perhaps 5 million. Luckily for the
blogging community, there is still evidence that the growth rate
is faster than the abandonment rate. But growth eventually stops.
The most obvious reason for abandonment is simple boredom.
Writing is tiresome. Why anyone would do it voluntarily on a blog
mystifies a lot of professional writers. This is compounded by a
lack of feedback, positive or otherwise. Perseus thinks that most
blogs have an audience of about 12 readers. Leaflets posted on
the corkboard at Albertsons attract a larger readership than many
blogs. Some people must feel the futility.
The problem is further compounded by professional writers who
promote blogging, with the thought that they are increasing their
own readership. It's no coincidence that the most-read blogs are
created by professional writers. They have essentially suckered
thousands of newbies, mavens, and just plain folk into blogging,
solely to get return links in the form of the blogrolls and
citations. This is, in fact, a remarkably slick grassroots
marketing scheme that is in many ways awesome, albeit insincere.
Unfortunately, at some point, people will realize they've been
used. This will happen sooner rather than later, since many
mainstream publishers now see the opportunity for exploitation.
Thus you find professionally written and edited faux blogs
appearing on MSNBC's site, the Washington Post site, and
elsewhere. This seems to be where blogging is headed-Big Media.
So much for the independent thinking and reporting that are
supposed to earmark blog journalism.
So now we have the emergence of the professional blogger working
for large media conglomerates and spewing the same measured news
and opinions we've always had-except for fake edginess, which
suggests some sort of independent, counterculture, free-thinking
observers. But who signs the checks? The faux blog will replace
the old personality columns that were once the rage in
newspaperdom. Can you spell retro? These are not the hard-hitting
independent voices we were promised. They are just a new breed of
columnist with a gimmick and a stern corporate editor.
This trend is solid. A look at Columbia Journalism Review's
recent listing of traditional-media blogs shows everyone getting
into the act: ABC News, FOX, National Review, The New Republic,
The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street
Journal, and so on. The blogging boosters, meanwhile, are rooting
like high-school cheerleaders over this development. To them,
it's some sort of affirmation. In fact, it's a death sentence.
The onerous Big Media incursion marks the beginning of the end
for blogging. Can you spell co-opted?
I'm reminded of the early days of personal computing, which began
as a mini-revolution with all sorts of idealism. Power to the
people, dude. IBM was epitomized as the antithesis of this
revolution. But when IBM jumped on board in 1981 and co-opted the
entire PC scene, it was cheered. Welcome, brother! Apple even
took out a semiflippant full-page national newspaper ad welcoming
IBM. Actually, the ad reflected Apple's neediness and low
self-esteem. IBM represented affirmation about as much as Big
Media is affirmation for the hopeless bloggers.
Another so-called revolution bites the dust. Big surprise.
Copyright 2003, PC Magazine,
==============
(11) ON THE WEB, RESEARCH WORK PROVES EPHEMERAL
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8730-2003Nov23.html]
Monday, November 24, 2003; Page A08
On the Web, Research Work Proves Ephemeral
Electronic Archivists Are Playing Catch-Up in Trying to Keep
Documents From
Landing in History's Dustbin
By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer
It was in the mundane course of getting a scientific paper
published that
physician Robert Dellavalle came to the unsettling realization
that the world
was dissolving before his eyes.
The world, that is, of footnotes, references and Web pages.
Dellavalle, a dermatologist with the Veterans Affairs Medical
Center in Denver,
had co-written a research report featuring dozens of footnotes --
many of which
referred not to books or journal articles but, as is increasingly
the case these
days, to Web sites that he and his colleagues had used to
substantiate their
findings.
Problem was, it took about two years for the article to wind its
way to
publication. And by that time, many of the sites they had cited
had moved to
other locations on the Internet or disappeared altogether,
rendering useless all
those Web addresses -- also known as uniform resource locators
(URLs) -- they
had provided in their footnotes.
"Every time we checked, some were gone and others had
moved," said Dellavalle,
who is on the faculty at the University of Colorado Health
Sciences Center. "We
thought, 'This is an interesting phenomenon itself. We should
look at this.' "
He and his co-workers have done just that, and what they have
found is not
reassuring to those who value having a permanent record of
scientific progress.
In research described in the journal Science last month, the team
looked at
footnotes from scientific articles in three major journals -- the
New England
Journal of Medicine, Science and Nature -- at three months, 15
months and 27
months after publication. The prevalence of inactive Internet
references grew
during those intervals from 3.8 percent to 10 percent to 13
percent.
"I think of it like the library burning in Alexandria,"
Dellavalle said,
referring to the 48 B.C. sacking of the ancient world's greatest
repository of
knowledge. "We've had all these hundreds of years of stuff
available by
interlibrary loan, but now things just a few years old are
disappearing right
under our noses really quickly."
Dellavalle's concerns reflect those of a growing number of
scientists and
scholars who are nervous about their increasing reliance on a
medium that is
proving far more ephemeral than archival. In one recent study,
one-fifth of the
Internet addresses used in a Web-based high school science
curriculum
disappeared over 12 months.
Another study, published in January, found that 40 percent to 50
percent of the
URLs referenced in articles in two computing journals were
inaccessible within
four years.
"It's a huge problem," said Brewster Kahle, digital
librarian at the Internet
Archive in San Francisco. "The average lifespan of a Web
page today is 100 days.
This is no way to run a culture."
Of course, even conventional footnotes often lead to dead ends.
Some experts
have estimated that as many as 20 percent to 25 percent of all
published
footnotes have typographical errors, which can lead people to the
wrong volume
or issue of a sought-after reference, said Sheldon Kotzin, chief
of
bibliographic services at the National Library of Medicine in
Bethesda.
But the Web's relentless morphing affects a lot more than
footnotes. People are
increasingly dependent on the Web to get information from
companies,
organizations and governments. Yet, of the 2,483 British
government Web sites,
for example, 25 percent change their URL each year, said David
Worlock of
Electronic Publishing Services Ltd. in London.
That matters in part because some documents exist only as Web
pages -- for
example, the British government's dossier on Iraqi weapons.
"It only appeared on
the Web," Worlock said. "There is no definitive
reference where future
historians might find it."
Web sites become inaccessible for many reasons. In some cases
individuals or
groups that launched them have moved on and have removed the
material from the
global network of computer systems that makes up the Web. In
other cases the
sites' handlers have moved the material to a different virtual
address (the URL
that users type in at the top of the browser page) without
providing a direct
link from the old address to the new one.
When computer users try to access a URL that has died or moved to
a new
location, they typically get what is called a "404 Not
Found" message, which
reads in part: "The page cannot be displayed. The page you
are looking for is
currently unavailable."
So common are such occurrences today, and so iconic has that
message become in
the Internet era, that at least one eclectic band has named
itself "404 Not
Found," and humorists have launched countless knockoffs of
the page -- including
www.mamselle.ca/error.html,
which looks like a standard error page but scolds
people for spending too much time on their computers ("This
page cannot be
displayed because you need some fresh air ...") and
www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk,
which offers political commentary about the U.S.
war in Iraq ("The weapons you are looking for are currently
unavailable.").
Not all apparently inaccessible Web sites are really beyond
reach. Several
organizations, including the popular search engine Google and
Kahle's Internet
Archive (www.archive.org),
are taking snapshots of Web pages and archiving them
as fast as they can so they can be viewed even after they are
pulled down from
their sites. The Internet Archive already contains more than 200
terabytes of
information (a terabyte is a million million bytes) -- equivalent
to about 200
million books. Every month it is adding 20 more terabytes,
equivalent to the
number of words in the entire Library of Congress.
"We're trying to make sure there's a good historical record
of at least some
subsets of the Web, and at least some record of other
parts," Kahle said. "We're
injecting the past into the present."
But with an estimated 7 million new pages added to the Web every
day, archivists
can do little more than play catch-up. So others are creating new
indexing and
retrieval systems that can find Web pages that have wandered to
new addresses.
One such system, known as DOI (for digital object identifier),
assigns a virtual
but permanent bar code of sorts to participating Web pages. Even
if the page
moves to a new URL address, it can always be found via its unique
DOI.
Standard browsers cannot by themselves find documents by their
DOIs. For now, at
least, users must use go-between "registration
agencies" -- such as one called
CrossRef -- and "handle servers," which together work
like digital switchboards
to lead subscribers to the DOI-labeled pages they seek. A
hodgepodge of other
retrieval systems is cropping up, as well -- all part of the
increasingly
desperate effort to keep the ballooning Web's thoughts
accessible.
If it all sounds complicated, it is. But consider the stakes: The
Web contains
unfathomably more information than did the Alexandria library. If
our culture
ends up unable to retrieve and use that information, then all
that knowledge
will, in effect, have gone up in smoke.
[Research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.]
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
==========
(12) AND FINALLY: BLOWING IN THE WIND
www.john-daly.com, 22
November 2003
The senior senator from Massachussetts, Edward Kennedy now finds
himself in something of a political dilemma (http://www.capecodonline.com/special/windfarm/myview8.htm).
At stake is a proposal to build a massive wind turbine farm -
right in the middle of historic Nantucket Sound near Cape Cod,
the so-called 'Cape Wind' project. As usual, such a project will
bring ruination to the landscape and the seascape but this is the
logical outcome arising from the pro-Kyoto policies that Kennedy
himself has promoted. So first, Kennedy the environmentalist
speaks -
"I strongly support renewable energy, including wind energy
as a means of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and
protecting the environment."
All very motherhood. Then a bit of family history and a eulogy
about his responsibilities to the 'treasures' of Cape Cod and
Nantucket Sound -
"My family has a long history on Cape Cod. After growing up
and raising my children here, I understand the enormous national
treasure we have in the Cape. We have an obligation to preserve
it for future generations, which requires us to know the impact
of our decisions on the landscape, seascape, and
environment."
More motherhood. But what if these lofty aims are in conflict? At
that point, Kennedy quickly remembers where his votes come from:
"I'm concerned that we are rushing to implement the Cape
Wind proposal (for Nantucket Sound) - the world's largest
proposed wind farm, 130 turbines, 400 feet tall in the waters
between the Cape and the Islands - with little understanding of
its likely impacts."
It's a bit late for Kennedy to now suddenly find virtue, now that
one of his pet policies is going to be built right in his own
back yard. He is partly to blame for the political climate which
brought the Cape Wind project into existence to begin with,
something which his political rivals may well remind the voters
about.
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