PLEASE NOTE:
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CCNet 112/2003 - 26 November 2003
DEEP IMPACT: SMASHING INTO A COMET MAY IMPROVE PLANETARY
PROTECTION
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Could the flying of Deep Impact offer a glimpse into potential
planetary
protection? Given the fear of harmful-to-Earth comets and
asteroids, the
technology mustered by Deep Impact might well find future use in
hammering
out an anti-incoming object strategy. "Yes, it will provide
important
information on the physical properties that will be essential to
planning any
threat diversion," A'Hearn of the University of Maryland
said. "However, it
will be applicable only to the small subset of potential
impactors that are
comets (or extinct comets)."
--Leonard David, Space.com, 25 November
2003
A lunar facility to mitigate the asteroid-comet hazard for the
Earth has
been proposed by Russian scientist, Viacheslav Ivashkin of the
M.V. Keldysh
Institute of Applied Mathematics. The base would be multi-tasked
in its
operation. Solar energy would first be collected at the facility,
then converted
into electricity to power both an astronomical observatory and a
laser station.
--Space.com, 25 November 2003
To dismiss technology as a force multiplier in the war against
terrorism, as
some pundits tend to do, is to throw away America's strongest
available weapon
in favor of methods that will take years to properly develop.
Only by combining
technology, including space technology, with human intelligence
as well as
political warfare, can the war in Iraq be won in a reasonable
time period.
--Taylor Dinerman, The Space
Review, 24 November 2003
It would be a tragic irony if, in the 21st century, this most
technologically
sophisticated of human societies finally succumbs to the
unconscious urgings of
fatally self-interested primitive tribalism.
--William Rees, University of
British Columbia, 24 November 2003
(1) DEEP IMPACT: PROBING A COMET'S INNER SECRETS
Space.com, 25 November 2003
(2) MOON LASER BASE PROPOSAL FOR ASTEROID-COMET HAZARD
Space.com, 25 November 2003
(3) QUEST FOR SPACE IMPACT RICHES
BBC News Online, 25 November 2003
(4) THANKSGIVING FORECAST: POTENTIAL FIREWORKS ON THE SUN
The New York Times, 25 November 2003
(5) SPACE, TECHNOLOGY AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM
The Space Review, 24 November 2003
(6) EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS AND GLOBAL WARMING
CO2 Science Magazine, 26 November 2003
(7) A 2000-YEAR RECORD OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN CHINA
CO2 Science Magazine, 26 November 2003
(8) KYOTO 101: A CRASH COURSE FOR WESTERN EUROPE
National Review Online, 25 November 2003
(9) THE DEATH OF V HYDRAE
Oliver Manuel <oess@umr.edu>
(10) AND FINALLY: 1,000 TIMES TOO MANY HUMANS - OR JUST TOO MANY
MISANTHROPES?
Discovery News, 25 November 2003
=============
(1) DEEP IMPACT: PROBING A COMET'S INNER SECRETS
Space.com, 25 November 2003
http://space.com/businesstechnology/technology/deep_impact_031125.html
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
BOULDER, Colorado -- All spacecraft missions aim to be a smashing
success. But in the case of NASA's Deep Impact, such desire takes
on new meaning in the form of a head-on collision with a comet.
Scientists and engineers are taking a crash course in
understanding what's inside Comet 9P/Tempel 1 -- an effort to
help deduce how the solar system was formed. Comets are time
capsules. They consist of chunks of ice, gas and dust - ancient
scraps from the earliest and coldest period of our solar system
4.5 billion years ago.
At a clean room here at Ball Aerospace & Technologies
Corporation, both the Deep Impact mission's "flyby"
spacecraft and a comet "impactor" are being built,
tested, and readied for launch late next year.
Celestial fireworks
Slated for launch in December 2004, Deep Impact is a two-part
hit-and-run mission.
After a six-month cruise to Tempel 1, the combined spacecraft
approaches the object imaging the icy drifter before the impact.
Twenty-four hours before impact, the flyby spacecraft points
high-precision tracking telescopes at the comet and releases the
impactor into the comet's path.
Now on its own, the impactor -- a specially equipped autonomous
craft -- takes a premeditated plunge into the sunlit side of the
speeding comet.
The resulting crater could range in size from that of a house to
a football stadium. The hole in the comet might be from two to 15
stories deep. In the excavation process, the pristine interior of
a comet is to be studied -- truly, in depth. This all takes place
while the flyby spacecraft has maneuvered itself to a telescopic
front-row seat, but at a safe distance, speeding by the
show-and-tell at closest approach some 300 miles (500 kilometers)
away.
After special shielding guards against high-velocity particles
from the comet's dust tail passing overhead, the flyby spacecraft
turns to look at the comet again. The flyby spacecraft takes
additional data from the other side of the comet's nucleus.
Images from both the flyby spacecraft and the impactor will be
sent back to distant Earth as data in near real-time.
Seemingly in a blend of orbital mechanics, celebratory patriotism
and celestial fireworks, Deep Impact's smack down with Tempel 1
is set for July 4, 2005 -- Independence Day for the United
States.
"Mini-Me" Impactor
"There's a lot of newness in this program," said Monte
Henderson, Deputy Program Manager on the Deep Impact project at
Ball Aerospace. "This is our company's first program that
sends us into deep space," he told SPACE.com .
Garbed in white smocks, technicians are busily checking and
re-checking Deep Impact hardware and software, moving closer to a
series of essential confidence-building tests in the coming
months.
Sitting side-by-side in the clean room is the flyby spacecraft
and the smaller, "Mini-Me" impactor for the Deep Impact
Mission.
"In a sense, this program is building two 100-percent
capable spacecraft. And that has been a big challenge,"
Henderson said. The two craft share a large number of parts, such
as electrical components and control units. The impactor uses
simpler versions of the flyby spacecraft's hardware and software,
but sports fewer backup systems.
Often, the impactor gets treated as the little brother to the
flyby spacecraft...just the rock that's going to go out and smack
into the comet, Henderson stated. "The impactor has become a
very smart, fully-autonomous spacecraft. It's capable of
maneuvering and taking care of its own positioning and targeting
completely independent of what's going on with the flyby
spacecraft," he added.
The impactor totes a "cratering mass" -- 220 pounds
(100 kilograms) of pure copper.
Pushing the envelope
Work on the Deep Impact mission has been underway since November
1999. It is a NASA Discovery-class mission, the eighth in a
series of low-cost, highly focused space science investigations.
Total contract value for Deep Impact is $300 million.
It has been an uphill battle wrestling with several technical and
cost-growth issues. A year ago, those troubles forced a
cancellation review of the project at NASA Headquarters. Issues
were eventually resolved, but led to a change in launch date that
would have been next month. A year slip to a target liftoff of
December 2004 permitted more ground testing of tough-to-master
technologies. But that also meant an infusion of extra money to
keep engineers on tap for rounds of pre-flight work on spacecraft
hardware
Deep Impact has involved numerous cutting-edge technology
developments. "We are pushing the envelope in several areas
on this mission," Henderson noted.
For one, a new space-based processor was necessary to handle high
data rates at comet encounter. On the flyby spacecraft,
lightweight shielding had to be created using layers of aluminum
sheets to thwart particles encountered as the craft zooms through
Comet Temple 1's tail. Also, to hold a pinpoint lock onto the
speeding comet, precision-pointing technology was advanced.
"Although we have been struggling with a variety of problems
on our spacecraft computer in the last few months, it looks to me
as though we have found most of them and are on our way to fixing
them.
Fortunately, we have some schedule margin and are therefore
looking ahead to launch at the very end of 2004," said
Michael A'Hearn, principal investigator for the Deep Impact
Mission in response to a separate email question. He is an
astronomer at the University of Maryland in College Park,
Maryland.
Sweaty palms
While spacecraft hardware was daunting, still an unknown is what
exactly Deep Impact will find at Tempel 1, an object discovered
in 1867. The comet has made many passages through the inner solar
system orbiting the Sun every 5.5 years. This makes Tempel 1 a
good target to study evolutionary change in its mantle, or upper
crust.
In fact, a recent assessment of the comet shows it to be smaller
than the once projected 3 miles (5 kilometers) in diameter.
But will the comet be a solid mass? Perhaps it's a jumble of
debris underneath an ice shell? Could the impactor just shoot
right through the comet? Potato-shaped or dumbbell-shaped?
Drawing closer to the object, Deep Impact onboard telescopes and
sensors can provide a detailed look.
"It's an evolving science of what this comet is...and what
it's made of," Henderson said.
There is a lot of flexibility in the mission over the six months
en route to the target. The flight to the comet is to be run from
an operations center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in
Pasadena, California. They are the world's leading experts in
flying deep space missions and are overall manager of the Deep
Impact mission.
Once the impactor is released from the flyby spacecraft, some
last-minute chance for mission updates and adjustments prior to
comet collision 24-hours later are possible. "But that means
sweaty palms making those decisions," Henderson admitted.
Big unknowns
There is a significant ground-based component to the comet
mission, said Lucy McFadden, a science team member for Deep
Impact. She is a space scientist at the University of Maryland.
The entire Deep Impact team consists of more than 250 scientists,
engineers, managers, and educators.
Telescope observations of the comet are now underway, and others
are being planned, McFadden told SPACE.com in an email response
to questions.
"In a year, we'll have small telescope observers measuring
the comet's magnitude," McFadden said.
"The advantage to small telescope observations is that there
is potential to observe the comet more frequently and get good
temporal coverage of its brightness variation as it comes back
into the inner solar system."
Deep Impact science team members are engaged in research to
better determine exactly what they will encounter at Tempel 1.
"Its rotation rate is know pretty well. It is rotating
slowly, so we won't hit and then lose sight of the crater due to
rotation," McFadden explained.
McFadden pointed out, however, there are big unknowns about
Tempel 1.
Are there significant concavities that will cast shadows that
will limit our opportunities for hitting a sunlit area? If it is
shaped like Comet Borrelly -- NASA's Deep Space 1 spacecraft flew
by this object on September 22, 2001-- chances are good that
there will be plenty of sunlit surface exposed, McFadden
observed. "After that, the biggest uncertainty is in the
nature and structure of the comet itself, and that is why we are
doing the experiment. How big a crater will we excavate and how
deep will the crater be?"
"We need the observational science community to make
complementary observations, both prior to encounter -- to
characterize the comet and enable us to plan the experiment -- as
well as follow the event from Earth," McFadden said.
Planetary defense
Could the flying of Deep Impact offer a glimpse into potential
planetary protection?
Given the fear of harmful-to-Earth comets and asteroids, the
technology mustered by Deep Impact might well find future use in
hammering out an anti-incoming object strategy.
"Yes, it will provide important information on the physical
properties that will be essential to planning any threat
diversion," A'Hearn of the University of Maryland said.
"However, it will be applicable only to the small subset of
potential impactors that are comets (or extinct comets)," he
added in response to email queries.
Henderson of Ball Aerospace called Deep Impact a "good
learning experiment" in this regard.
"I personally feel like Deep Impact is a lot more complex.
If we just wanted to blow up a comet, we wouldn't have to deal
with the two spacecraft pointing issues that we've got,"
Henderson advised. "So impacting a spacecraft...is something
we'll be able to bring the intelligence forward," he
concluded.
Meanwhile, Deep Impact is moving into final testing. It will now
be shaked and baked, and undergo acoustic vibration. Its mission
draws closer, with a shipping date to Cape Canaveral, Florida
slated for next October, followed by mating with a Delta 2
booster.
"We're less than a year from ship," Henderson said.
"This is when it gets really exciting. Everybody has been
building individual pieces. Now we put it all together and say:
'Prove that it works.'"
Copyright 2003, Space.com
==========
(2) MOON LASER BASE PROPOSAL FOR ASTEROID-COMET HAZARD
Space.com, 25 November 2003
http://www.space.com/astronotes/astronotes.html
A lunar facility to mitigate the asteroid-comet hazard for the
Earth has been proposed by Russian scientist, Viacheslav Ivashkin
of the M.V. Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics.
The idea was tabled this week at the International Lunar
Exploration Working Group (ILEWG) meeting on the Kohala Coast,
Hawai'i.
The base would be multi-tasked in its operation. Solar energy
would first be collected at the facility, then converted into
electricity to power both an astronomical observatory and a laser
station.
Ivashkin's proposal has the observatory scanning the heavens for
any near-Earth objects (NEOs) -- either comets or asteroids --
that could be on an incoming trajectory harmful to Earth.
"In this case, the laser station is proposed to give a
powerful laser effect on that object to deflect or destroy
it," Ivashkin reports. The Russian scientist has assessed
the amount of solar collecting hardware needed to be planted on
the Moon to thwart hazardous NEOS, as well as laser power levels
required to produce the desired effects of mitigating troublesome
comets or asteroids.
In a paper presented at the ILEWG, Ivashkin concluded that
international cooperation in designing, creating and operating
the energy-astronomical-laser space base on the Moon is
necessary.
Ivashkin's study of the asteroid-comet mitigation concept is
being supported by the Russian Foundation for the Basic Studies
and the Harbin Institute of Technology, China.
Copyright 2003, Space.com
==========
(3) QUEST FOR SPACE IMPACT RICHES
BBC News Online, 25 November 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3281611.stm
Sites where asteroids struck the Earth millions of years ago may
be the key to discoveries of new mineral and metal deposits in
the future.
Some geologists believe that sudden, catastrophic impacts could
have created some of the world's biggest deposits - in an
instant.
Mineral exploitation currently occurring at impact areas includes
the world's most profitable gold mine, in South Africa, and a
massive nickel and platinum deposit in Canada.
"On average I would say that one quarter of the known impact
structures on the Earth have some sort of deposit associated with
them," Canada's Natural Resources Department chief scientist
Richard Grieve told BBC World Service's Science In Action
programme.
"Of that quarter, maybe about half have been actually
exploited, either in the past or currently so."
Increasingly, some geologists are questioning the theory that the
Earth's rock record changes slowly over time.
Many are now looking for evidence of where rocks have been
"shocked" - which would indicate the impact of an
asteroid or comet.
Impact lines
"The pressures required to make the textures that we're
going to look at can only be made by impact of something like a
meteoroid or an asteroid or a comet," said Dr Adrian Jones,
of University College London.
The keys to finding such sites are grains of quartz, which, under
the microscope, have tell-tale parallel lines that reveal if they
were part of an "impact structure", the area where an
extraterrestrial body struck the Earth.
Dr Jones added that one recently discovered major nickel deposit
in Russia - coupled with two other, previous finds - suggested
that some metals might come from the impactors themselves.
"It makes it rather interesting that two or three large
impact structures are now associated with the same association of
nickel-rich metals," he stated.
"The idea from our modelling and our smaller experiments
[is] that the impact crater itself may still retain a mixture of
materials, both from the melted crust and from the residue of the
meteorite impact that has been redistributed around the crater.
"That would contain a lot of nickel-rich metals and
platinum-group elements."
Gas creep
Alternatively, it may be that the impact causes such massive,
immediate change that minerals become present in ways they
otherwise would not have done.
The disruption caused to the Earth's underlying crust can create
the ideal conditions for the deposition of minerals and
hydrocarbons, geochemist Ian MacDonald of Cardiff University told
Science In Action.
"It's the excavation of the crater - the way that the rocks
have been broken up and smashed - that has allowed oil or gas to
creep into that structure and accumulate there, for us to drill
into and then tap off," he said.
"Or it's been the way that the rocks have melted at the
moment of impact that has allowed important metals like nickel or
copper or platinum to concentrate or segregate at the bottom of
the crater."
But the impact theory is not popular theory with everyone.
"Geologists have always viewed the rock record as something
that changes very, very slowly," Dr MacDonald said.
"These catastrophic events, for many of them, were difficult
to accept, because they seem to be so at variance with the slow
change of geological time that generally happens.
"Ninety-nine percent of the time things happen very
slowly."
Copyright 2003, BBC
======
(4) THANKSGIVING FORECAST: POTENTIAL FIREWORKS ON THE SUN
The New York Times, 25 November 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/25/science/25SOLA.html?ex=1070341200&en=69e78e5263aacf48&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 22 - Snapping like rubber bands pulled too
tightly, tangled magnetic fields on the surface of the Sun have
been spewing waves of radiation and superheated particles at
Earth.
So far, the damage has been relatively minor in comparison with
significant communications disruptions three years ago. The
culprits this year are three volatile sunspots that began
erupting last month and set off blackouts in Sweden, damaged
satellites and forced some airlines to divert flights from polar
routes to escape extra radiation.
And now, after a three-week lull while the Sun's rotation spun
them out of view, the sunspots are back within striking distance.
The one with the potential to produce the most fireworks, Region
507, is expected to fix its sights squarely on Earth just as
Thanksgiving arrives. While all three have decayed a bit, 507 is
still roughly eight times the size of Earth.
Predicting the level of havoc that can be wrought by 507 or any
other exploding sunspot is a minute-to-minute science. The
erratic nature of exploding sunspots leaves researchers with as
little as 30 minutes to warn of radiation storms or as much as 17
hours to prepare for speeding clouds of plasma.
Nowhere perhaps is the pressure greater to assess the magnitude
of these blasts than within the walls of the Space Environment
Center here, home of what could be called the solar storm
trackers. Vivid, up-to-date images of the Sun captured by
satellites a million miles from Earth constantly blare across an
elevated, oversize television screen demanding the team's
attention.
To the forecasters here, every sunspot has its own personality
and can be dangerously unruly or quickly fizzle into obscurity.
For the last month, the rotating team of several space weather
forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration has focused on nothing else, darting from computer
images of the sun flares to e-mail messages and to telephone
calls in an effort to warn thousands of subscribers, like
utilities, NASA and the airlines, of the newest storm ratings.
They also answer queries from the public that range from the
humorous, like the woman who blamed a speed-trap radar reading of
90 miles an hour on a flare, to the tragic, like those who
believe relatives' pacemakers failed during such events. Or those
who complain the hair on their arms stands on end. Or that their
flaring arthritis is in sync with a solar flare. Or that a homing
pigeon loses its internal compass in a geomagnetic storm.
And lately, with the likelihood of storms resuming, so too has
the number of calls from concerned travelers fearing extra
radiation during their holiday flights.
On Thursday, when the sunspots reappeared with a new round of
storms, the space forecasters fell back into formation. A
locustlike cloud of charged particles shot out of the Sun at more
than two million miles an hour, swarming Earth just after
midnight.
Standing beside a fortress of computers, William Murtagh, a
forecaster, described the storm as relatively slow moving. Still,
he brimmed with the satisfaction of knowing that at least for the
day, he had tried to restrain the Sun's devastating fury.
"This one we predicted would arrive in 50 hours, and it
actually reached us in 46 - so I'd say that's a pretty good
job," Mr. Murtagh said with a smile. "We expected major
to severe geomagnetic storm levels, and that's exactly what we're
getting now - right on target."
Those predictions have far-reaching impact. The agency's
subscribers also include the Coast Guard, most airlines and the
military.
The storm trackers' alerts prompted power companies throughout
North America to switch to "safe mode" to protect grids
from collapse with the heightened solar storm currents. All it
took to plunge six million people in Quebec into darkness during
a storm in March 1989, Mr. Murtagh said, was one transformer that
overheated and shut down.
The frenetic activity in the forecast center on Thursday was only
a glimpse of what could come this week, when Regions 507 and 508
stare at Earth. As 508 was rotating away from Earth on Nov. 4, it
unleashed a flare that some scientists say was the biggest
explosion ever recorded in the solar system.
"It was like being in Miami and seeing a giant hurricane
coming toward you that eventually veers off to sea," said
Dr. Devrie S. Intrilligator, director of the space plasma
laboratory at the Carmel Research Center in Santa Monica, Calif.
"We really lucked out because the full force of it didn't
head toward Earth."
When it was tucked away on the backside of the Sun, 508 ejected
clouds of plasma so enormous that scientists could see them
dwarfing the Sun in size as they roared off into space. Now it is
Region 507 that Mr. Murtagh's team is bracing for. Rivaling
Jupiter in size, it has the potential to bathe Earth with intense
storms that could expose airplane passengers to abnormal amounts
of radiation around Thanksgiving.
The last time that happened, in late October, the Federal
Aviation Authority warned passengers on planes over 25,000 feet
at some latitudes that they would accumulate about two millirems
of radiation per hour, or two days' worth of radiation on the
ground.
What will happen in the next several days is still uncertain.
"A severe one could happen, but I think a moderate one at
most is more likely," Court Williamson, an operations
specialist, told one caller who was concerned about her husband's
flight from San Francisco to London the weekend after
Thanksgiving.
The forecasters can be on 24-hour call at times like these. Mr.
Murtagh recalled talking to an airline from bed at 11 o'clock one
night as the company tried to decide whether to proceed with a
Newark-to-Beijing flight the next day.
Now and then, even the forecasters are dumbfounded by the
connections people draw between the force of the solar storms and
everyday life.
"The deputy," began one woman about her son's speeding
ticket, "at first said he was going 90, then 75 m.p.h. My
son was trying to pull over due to a flat tire, and told the
deputy there is no way he could drive at that speed on a
flat."
Mr. Murtagh said he was reluctant to rule anything out. "If
someone did a study showing geomagnetic storms affect radar guns,
you can be sure the legal system would be flooded with millions
of people fighting traffic tickets."
The space environment center is fighting a battle of its own in
Washington. Instead of the $8.3 million that the agency requested
for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, the House allocated
$5.3 million and the Senate budgeted no money at all.
"If a major storm hits and we don't exist, the airlines will
have no reason not to divert planes away from polar routes or the
higher latitudes," said Dr. Ernest Hildner, the center's
director. "How much is it worth to expose all those people
to all that radiation and increased cancer risk?"
As 507 glares into view, the storm trackers already have warned
power companies, satellite operators and holiday travelers.
Those who would have the most reason to be concerned if a major
storm did hit, Mr. Murtagh says, would be passengers or crew
members on flights that cross over the North Pole, like New York
to some parts of Asia. Because of the shape and location of
Earth's magnetic field, radiation from violent solar events tends
to flow toward the poles and regions at higher latitudes.
"It's costly for airlines to send their planes on the longer
route or make them drop from say 38,000 feet to 28,000 to avoid
radiation," he said. "But generally they would if we
give them the data that shows a strong radiation storm is on the
way."
Some European countries have adopted legislation mandating
studies into how much radiation passengers are exposed to during
solar flares and others have regulations to protect flight crews.
One popular analogy that quantifies radiation exposure while
flying in numbers of chest X-rays, said Joe Kunches, chief of the
space weather operations division, is often imprecise.
"Are we talking about chest X-rays today or many years
ago?" Mr. Kunches said. "What side of the plane are you
on? How high is it flying? There are just too many variables
involved."
Copyright 2003, The New York Times
==========
(5) SPACE, TECHNOLOGY AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM
The Space Review, 24 November 2003
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/62/1
Space assets proved essential in the invasion of Iraq; can space
technology play a
greater role there now?
by Taylor Dinerman
Monday, November 24, 2003
Since President Bush declared major combat operations over on May
1, 2003, the new war in Iraq has developed into a
counter-insurgency/counter-terrorist type of low-intensity
conflict that the US military has traditionally tried to avoid.
It is a highly political war that requires political
sensitivities that Americans, let alone American soldiers, have
never really had. So they are doing what Americans do best-they
are improvising, they are adapting, and they are learning.
Unfortunately, the enemy is doing the same thing. It is beginning
to look as if they are, as they saying goes, getting inside our
decision action loop. This is better known as the OODA (Observe,
Orient, Decide, Act) loop. On the battlefield, the US military
has few problems getting inside the enemy's cycle but, in this
kind of a war, the enemy can make its plans and preparations
hidden from US and allied intelligence until the time comes to
strike. There is no way that a UAV or an electronic listening
system can effectively get inside the heads of the members of a
terrorist cell that is deciding where and when to plant a
roadside bomb or to fire a rocket or mortar.
Normally, human intelligence is the solution to this. However,
police and counter-terrorist forces have been trying to crack the
cell structure that terrorist organizations have used for more
than a hundred years, since it was invented by anti-Czarist
Russians. For the most part they have failed, and when limited
success has been achieved, the methods are so repugnant to
Western sensibilities that a positive tactical outcome results in
a strategic victory for the terrorists.
In the Nineties, the Algerian and Egyptian governments were able
to more or less eradicate their homegrown Islamic terrorists. The
methods they used cannot be replicated by the US nor its allies
if we wish to reach the most important strategic goal, which is
to install a democracy in Iraq. The slow and methodical process
of building up a reasonably honest, competent, and humane Iraqi
police force is going to take a long time. In the long term, such
a police force will be able to eradicate the terrorist better
than any US military force ever will but, in the short term, the
US and its allies have got to find ways to bring these enemies
under control.
To dismiss technology as a force multiplier in the war against
terrorism, as some pundits tend to do, is to throw away America's
strongest available weapon in favor of methods that will take
years to properly develop. Only by combining technology,
including space technology, with human intelligence as well as
political warfare, can the war in Iraq be won in a reasonable
time period. Already, the DoD is putting a big effort into
adapting its existing systems to the needs of the guys on the
ground in Iraq. Creativity, rather than big budgets, is what is
now needed.
For example, archeologists have developed methods using satellite
remote sensing data to find ancient trade routes that once
crisscrossed the desert. There is no reason that the DoD cannot
use these same methods to detect smuggling routes used by
terrorists to infiltrate Iraq.
The GPS and weather satellites need not only to be kept at peak
operating effectiveness, but their operators need to be
constantly thinking of innovative ways to use them to support
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Weather forecasters should
concentrate on determining what weather condition degrade the
heat seeking systems on the SA-7 and the other shoulder fired
missiles used against our aircraft. The GPS units inside Air
Force Space Command should be thinking about how to improve the
speed with which target coordinates are transmitted from a mortar
detecting radar to an Apache helicopter or other
"shooter."
Other new ideas include finding ways to use high-powered
microwaves to disable the detonators on roadside bombs, or new
sensors that can detect explosives. There is a lot of interesting
technology, both inside the Pentagon and in the civilian
marketplace. Finding ways to get it into the hands of the troops
on the ground as soon as possible is the biggest challenge.
Procurement regulations are designed to insure that no one ever
cheats the government. These regulations now insure that no
soldier will ever get what he or she needs until long after they
are dead, wounded or discharged.
It took more than 10 years to move the Bradley Fighting Vehicle
from the concept stage to units in the field. Other systems have
taken even longer. Rumsfeld has been trying to change the way the
Department does business. Some concepts, such as the Advanced
Technology Concept Demonstration projects, are changing the way
things happen, but now speed is by far the most important thing.
Some new technology is flowing into Iraq. A flood of new
technology could overwhelm the enemy. They may be able to adapt
to one or two new systems every month-there is no way they could
confront one or two dozen new weapons and sensors. Some of the
new systems will probably not work as planned. This should be
expected and should not discourage the military from continuously
trying new things.
The goal should be to create more new problems for them every
day, than they create for us. Whether we do it with technology or
tactics may not matter. The aim should be to eradicate their
ability to use the OODA cycle. We must constantly be thinking
about how can we change the situation faster than they can adapt.
Taylor Dinerman is editor and publisher of SpaceEquity.com.
=============
(6) EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS AND GLOBAL WARMING
CO2 Science Magazine, 26 November 2003
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n48c1.htm
Reference
Khandekar, L. 2003. Comment on WMO statement on extreme weather
events. EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 84:
428.
What was done
The author briefly reviews what he learned about extreme weather
events in Canada in the course of conducting a study of the
subject for the government of Alberta; and he mentions the
findings of several other recent studies of the subject.
What was learned
Khandekar says his research led him to conclude that
"extreme weather events such as heat waves, rain storms,
tornadoes, winter blizzards, etc., are not increasing anywhere in
Canada at this time." He additionally notes that a
recent special issue of Natural Hazards (Vol. 29, No. 2, June
2003) concludes much the same thing about other parts of the
world. In this context, he cites a recent survey article by
Robert Balling that concludes "there is no significant
increase in overall severe storm activity (hurricanes,
thunderstorms/tornadoes, winter blizzards) across the
conterminous United States," as well as an article by
Stanley Changnon, which concludes that "increasing economic
loss due to weather extremes in the conterminous United States is
a result of societal change and not global warming."
What it means
Contrary to the recent statement of the World Meteorological
Organization on extreme weather events, which that organization
suggests are increasing in association with global warming (and
for which Khandekar chastises them for not knowing better), there
are no significant increasing trends in these phenomena, as may
readily be verified by perusing the Journal Reviews we have
archived in our Subject Index under the many sub-sections of the
general heading Weather Extremes.
Copyright © 2003. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
============
(7) A 2000-YEAR RECORD OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN CHINA
CO2 Science Magazine, 26 November 2003
http://www.co2science.org/edit/v6_edit/v6n48edit.htm
In our Editorial of 19 Nov 2003, we describe the work of Ge et
al. (2003), who utilized 200 different sets of phenological and
meteorological records to produce a 2000-year history of winter
half-year temperature for the region of China bounded by
latitudes 27 and 40°N and longitudes 107 and 120°E. This
study provided evidence for the existence of what in other parts
of the world have come to be called the Roman Warm Period, the
Dark Ages Cold Period, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice
Age, and the Modern Warm Period. In addition, it indicated
that although the temperature of the region rose rapidly during
the twentieth century, especially over the period 1981-1999,
temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period rose higher still,
and remained higher for several 10- and 30-year time periods.
In this Editorial, we describe the somewhat similar work of Bao
et al. (2003), who utilized proxy climate records (ice-core
ð18O, peat-cellulose ð18O, tree-ring widths, tree-ring stable
carbon isotopes, total organic carbon, lake water temperatures,
glacier fluctuations, ice-core CH4, magnetic parameters, pollen
assemblages and sedimentary pigments) obtained from twenty
previously-published studies to derive a 2000-year temperature
history of the Tibetan Plateau, after first developing similar
temperature histories for its northeastern, southern and western
sections. So what did they find?
The temperature histories of the three parts of the Tibetan
Plateau were all significantly different from each other. In each
case, however, they had one important similarity: there was more
than one prior 50-year period of time when the mean temperature
of each of them was warmer than it was over the most recent
50-year period. In the case of the northeastern sector of the
Tibetan Plateau, these maximum-warmth intervals occurred during
the Medieval Warm Period; while in the case of the western
sector, they occurred near the end of the Roman Warm
Period. In the case of the southern sector, however, they
occurred during both warm periods, as well as during the Dark
Ages Cold Period! Hence, for all three portions of the Tibetan
Plateau, there has been nothing unusual or unnatural about their
most recent warm temperatures.
With respect to the entire Tibetan Plateau, the story is pretty
much the same: there has been nothing extraordinary about the
recent past. For the whole region, however, there was only one
prior 50-year period when temperatures were warmer than they were
over the most recent 50-year period; and that interval occurred
near the end of the Roman Warm Period, some 1850 years ago.
After presenting their findings for the Tibetan Plateau, Bao et
al. compare them with those of Wang and Gong (2000) for central
east China, which are significantly different. In the latter
history, for example, the most recent temperatures are the
warmest of the record; but the central east China record of Wang
and Gong only goes back about 1200 years and thus does not
include the period of most extraordinary warmth found in the
record of Boa et al. Hence, the data of Wang and Gong cannot
provide a definitive answer to the question of whether the warmth
they document in the latter part of the central east China record
is unprecedented over the past two millennia.
Nevertheless, it is possible to make this determination with the
much longer central east China record of Ge et al. (2003), which
is also more up-to-date and more comprehensive in terms of the
number of data sets upon which it is based and is thus likely to
be more accurate over the entire 2000-year period of concern.
When this is done, as noted in our Editorial of 19 Nov 2003, it
is found that the most recent warmth of central east China, like
that of the Tibetan Plateau, is not unprecedented over the past
two millennia. Hence, over two "big chunks of China,"
we can confidently say that modern temperatures have yet to rise
to levels previously experienced over the past two thousand
years.
In closing, we additionally note that the Mann and Jones (2003)
study of "global surface temperatures over the past two
millennia," which claims uniqueness for the warmth of the
latter part of the 20th century, actually extends back in time to
only AD 200 and, hence, does not include what could well be the
warmest portion of the 2000-year period in question, as
demonstrated by Boa et al.'s study of the Tibetan Plateau. In
fact, even warmer temperatures may have occurred sometime prior
to the BC-to-AD transition, as suggested by the study of
McDermott et al. (2001).
When all is said and done, therefore, the analyses climate
alarmists ask us to accept as definitive with respect to earth's
near-surface air temperature history are by no means sufficient
to prove the point they and the studies' authors are attempting
to make. And, hence, there is no reason to believe that earth's
current temperatures could not have risen to their present level
without the help of the historical rise in the air's CO2 content.
Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
References
Bao, Y., Brauning, A. and Yafeng, S. 2003. Late
Holocene temperature fluctuations on the Tibetan Plateau.
Quaternary Science Reviews 22: 2335-2344.
Ge, Q., Zheng, J., Fang, X., Man, Z., Zhang, X., Zhang, P. and
Wang, W.-C. 2003. Winter half-year temperature
reconstruction for the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow
River and Yangtze River, China, during the past 2000 years.
The Holocene 13: 933-940.
Mann, M.E. and Jones, P.D. 2003. Global surface
temperatures over the past two millennia. Geophysical
Research Letters 30: 10.1029/2003GL017814.
McDermott, F., Mattey, D.P. and Hawkesworth, C. 2001.
Centennial-scale Holocene climate variability revealed by a
high-resolution speleothem ð18O record from SW Ireland.
Science 294: 1328-1331.
Wang, S.W. and Gong, D.Y. 2000. Temperature changes
in China during several special periods of the Holocene.
Progress in Natural Science 10: 325-332.
Copyright © 2003. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
=========
(8) KYOTO 101: A CRASH COURSE FOR WESTERN EUROPE
National Review Online, 25 November 2003
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel-stagnaro200311250916.asp
By Dave Kopel & Carlo Stagnaro
The international global-warming war will heat up next Monday. On
that day, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change will hold its ninth Conference of the Parties in Milan,
Italy. Although Russia has already opted out of the
climate-change controls, western European governments appear
determined to go ahead with strict local controls, regardless of
what other countries do.
The western European public overwhelmingly believes in global
warming, and wants government to do something about it. Asked if
"European governments should take the lead against global
warming by bringing into force the climate treaty, even if the
U.S. doesn't take part at this time," 80 percent of people
in the United Kingdom answered "Yes." So did 82 percent
in Belgium, 89 percent in Italy, and 88 percent in Spain. Even
large majorities in the U.K., Italy, and Spain believed that
government "should do more to reduce the country's own
emissions of global warming pollution."
For Europe's sclerotic economies, the massive increases in energy
prices that would result from strict reductions of
"greenhouse gasses" would be devastating. According to
a 2002 study of the economic effects on the U.K., depression is a
possible outcome of such a move. Between 2008 and 2010, the U.K.
could lose up to one million jobs a year. Moreover, the
productivity of individual jobs would decrease because of the
efficiency reduction (greater cost) of all the other production
factors.
Dr. Margo Thorning performed a study (http://www.accf.org/ACCF_KyotoEconImp.pdf)
about four European countries and estimated that the Kyoto
Protocol would have a strong negative impact on the GNP of
various nations: a decrease of 5.2 percent for Germany, 5 percent
for Spain, 4.5 percent for the U.K., and 3.8 percent for the
Netherlands.
If Europeans knew that the Kyoto Treaty would seriously harm
their economies and significantly reduce their standard of
living, would they still support Kyoto? Would they be willing to
suffer the economic damage if they learned that industrial
activity was not a cause of global warming?
These are precisely the questions that will be posed by an
Italian free-market think tank, the Instituto Bruno Leoni, at a
global-warming conference on Saturday - two days before the U.N.
conference opens in Milan. The IBL is named after the late
Italian political philosopher Bruno Leoni. The conference is
co-sponsored by the Centro Europeo di Studi su Popolazione
(CESPAS) and Sviluppo e Ambiente (an Italian organization that
studies the relationship between humanity and environment), and
has received the patronage of the Italian ministry of the
environment.
The conference will point out that, contrary to the assertions of
much of the European media, orthodox science does not really hold
a single position on whether global warming is taking place or
whether it is anthropogenic. This will be discussed by University
of Virginia professor S. Fred Singer, journalist Dominic
Standish, the High Frontier Foundation's Klaus Heiss, and Italian
Air Force major Fabio Malaspina. A panel on this topic will be
chaired by Prof. Franco Battaglia of the Third University of
Rome.
The International Policy Network (IPN) - a U.K.-based think tank
that promotes pro-freedom approaches to issues relating to
sustainable development, health, technology, and trade - will
also contribute to the conference. IPN's Julian Morris will chair
the second panel at the conference, which will focus on the
economics of global warming. Speakers will include Antonio
Gaspari of CESPAS, Prof. Emilio Gerelli of the University of
Pavia, IPN's Kendra Okonski, and Dr. Margo Thorning of the
International Council for Capital Formation. The speakers will
analyze the costs and benefits of Kyoto-inspired policies. Such
policies impose very high costs in the present, while promising
benefits in the long term that are exceedingly uncertain. The
Kyoto policies are guaranteed to harm people today, and for
generations to come.
A third panel will consider why European politicians are so
willing to harm their own people. Speakers will include three
representatives from Italian political parties: Franco
Debenedetti (Democratic Left), Vittorio Emanuele Falsitta (Forza
Italia party), and Benedetto Della Vedova (Radical party). Fred
Smith of the American Competitive Enterprise Institute will also
take part.
Excessive faith in central planning and excessive pessimism about
the ability of humans to innovate have depressed the European
standard of living for decades. The Kyoto Protocol, as well as
local analogues, represent one of the worst trade-offs between
freedom and security that Europeans have ever faced. The benefits
are based on dubious science and would, even in the most
optimistic scenario, result in barely perceptible reductions in
temperature. The costs are clear and enormous and will make it
nearly impossible for Western Europe to regain the economic
vitality which once made it the center of global civilization.
That international scholars, with the blessing of the Italian
government, are convening to point out that the Kyoto emperor has
no clothes suggests that there is at least some hope for Europe.
- Dave Kopel is research director of the Independence Institute.
Carlo Stagnaro is a fellow of the International Policy Network.
Copyright 2003, National Review
========== LETTERS =========
(9) THE DEATH OF V HYDRAE
Oliver Manuel <oess@umr.edu>
There is a revealing photo from the Hubble telescope of a dying
star at
http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/v_hydra_finale.html
The death of this star called V Hydrae will be reported in the
Nov.
20 issue of Nature by Dr. Raghvendra Sahai of NASA's Jet
Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.
This photo is remarkably like a depiction of the event that made
the
Sun and its heterogeneous planetary system. See Figure 1 in
"The
Sun's Origin, Composition and Source of Energy" 32nd Lunar
&
Planetary Science Conference, Abstract #1041, Houston, TX, March
12-16, 2001.
http://www.umr.edu/~om/lpsc.prn.pdf
http://www.umr.edu/~om/lpsc.ps
With kind regards,
Oliver
om@umr.edu
http://www.umr.edu/~om
http://www.ballofiron.com
http://www.chem.umr.edu:80/facres/manuel.html
============
(10) AND FINALLY: 1,000 TIMES TOO MANY HUMANS - OR JUST TOO MANY
MISANTHROPES?
Discovery News, 25 November 2003
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20031124/humans.html
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Nov. 25, 2003 - A study that compared humans with other species
concluded there are 1,000 times too many humans to be
sustainable.
The study, published in the current Proceedings B (Biological
Sciences) by the Royal Society, used a statistical device known
as "confidence limits" to measure what the sustainable
norm should be for species populations. Other factors, such as
carbon dioxide production, energy use, biomass consumption, and
geographical range were taken into consideration.
"Our study found that when we compare ourselves to otherwise
similar species, usually other mammals of our same body size, for
example, we are abnormal and the situation is
unsustainable," said Charles Fowler, co-author of the paper
and a lead researcher at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory, a
division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Fowler likened the concept of normality to body temperature,
where measurements can fall above or below the accepted average.
A temperature of 105 degrees F, for example, is considered
abnormal and unsustainable. In his paper, Fowler and colleague
Larry Hobbs argue that the human population, now measured at
approximately 6 billion, falls outside the range of
sustainability, which puts us at risk.
"Collectively the risks reflect the complexity of biotic
systems, but specifically (they) include things like the risk of
extinction, starvation, and disease," Fowler told Discovery
News.
Such pathologies can be alleviated, according to the paper, but
changes would have to be profound and widespread.
"It is probably not unrealistic to say that nothing less
than a full paradigm shift is required to get there from
here," Fowler explained. "It requires changes in our
thinking, belief systems and understanding of ourselves."
William Rees, professor of community and regional planning at the
University of British Columbia, disagrees that humans are
abnormal and said, "I would use the term 'unusual'
instead."
Rees explained that humanity has been inordinately successful.
Unlike other species, humans can eat almost anything, adapt to
any environment and develop technologies based on knowledge
shared through written and spoken language.
Rees, however, said that we may be "fatally
successful." He agrees that industrial society as presently
configured is unsustainable.
"In the past 25 years we have adopted a near-universal myth
of 'sustainable development' based on continuous economic growth
through globalization and freer trade," Rees wrote in a
recent Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society paper.
"Because the assumptions hidden in the globalization myth
are incompatible with biophysical reality the myth reinforces
humanity's already dysfunctional ecological behavior."
Rees believes unsustainability is, in part, driven by a natural
predisposition to expand, in the same way that bacteria or any
other species will multiply. He claims that it is an old problem,
reflected in the collapses of numerous civilizations, such as the
early human population at Easter Island.
Rees told Discovery News that there is a way out, but he wonders
if we will take it.
Rees added, "It would be a tragic irony if, in the 21st
century, this most technologically sophisticated of human
societies finally succumbs to the unconscious urgings of fatally
self-interested primitive tribalism."
Copyright © 2003 Discovery Communications Inc.
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