WASHINGTON — The White House convened a two-day conference of the world’s major greenhouse-gas-emitting nations here on Thursday that served to highlight how isolated the Bush administration is on the issue of global warming. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that climate change was a real global problem, and that the United States was a major contributor. She said the United States was willing to lead the international effort to reduce emissions of gases that had led to the warming of the planet, with the attendant ill effects. But she repeated President Bush’s insistence that the solution could not starve emerging economies of fuel or slow the growth of the advanced nations. ‘Every country will make its own decisions,’ she said, ‘reflecting its own needs and interests.’ Mr. Bush is scheduled to address the meeting on Friday. Many delegates from the 16 nations at the conference expressed skepticism about the administration’s motives, fearing that Mr. Bush was trying to derail a global emissions-reduction program managed by the United Nations. European delegates, in particular, rejected the administration’s insistence that any plan to reduce emissions be voluntary and devised by individual nations rather than as a part […]
Birds can travel the world without any of the gizmos that humans depend on, and a new study suggests how: Our feathered friends might ‘see’ Earth’s magnetic field. While other mechanisms are thought to help birds navigate, including magnetically sensitive cells within their beaks, their brain regions responsible for vision are in full gear during magnetic navigation, researchers said. ‘If you look into the brain of a bird during magnetic compass orientation, only the visual system is highly active,’ said study co-author Henrik Mouritsen, a biologist at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, noting that most migratory birds do so at night. ‘Other regions of the brain are not, so birds could use vision to ‘see’ Earth’s magnetism and orient themselves.’ Mouritsen and his colleagues’ findings are detailed online in a recent issue of the journal PLoS ONE. Magnetic chemistry The researchers previously discovered molecules called cryptochromes, which change their chemistry in the presence of a magnetic field, in the retinas of migratory birds’ eyes. ‘When light hits these molecules, their chemistry changes and magnetism can influence them,’ Mouritsen said. The molecules might then affect light-sensing cells in the retina to create images, which […]
WASHINGTON — President Bush and Congress are headed toward another showdown on war spending, this time sparring over nearly $190 billion the Pentagon says is needed to keep combat in Iraq afloat for another year. Sen. Robert Byrd, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, vowed Wednesday not to ‘rubber stamp” the request and said it was time to put Bush’s policies in check. ‘We cannot create a democracy at the point of a gun,” said Byrd, D-W.Va., whose speech during a Senate hearing on the spending request was interrupted several times by cheers of anti-war protesters. ‘Sending more guns does not change that reality,” Byrd said. The tough rhetoric was reminiscent of last spring, when Congress passed and Bush vetoed a bill funding the war through September but ordering troop withdrawals to begin by Oct. 1. Democrats still lack the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto. If approved, Congress would have appropriated more than $760 billion for the two wars, having already approved of $450 billion for Iraq and $127 billion for Afghanistan. Testifying before Byrd’s panel, Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged that America’s “difficult choices” on the war “will continue to be […]
NEW YORK — Al Gore, the former US vice-president, on Wednesday called for a ‘Marshall plan’ to make job creation and measures to address climate change compatible and urged President George W. Bush to commit to mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. ‘This is an emergency,’ Mr Gore told the opening session of the Clinton Global Initiative. ‘I think that the key to fighting global poverty is to have the wealthy nations and the developing nations join together to reduce global warming ¦ I think what we need is a global Marshall plan to make the creation of jobs around the reduction of carbon the central principle for how we develop this.’ Mr Gore said Mr Bush should follow the example of former US president Ronald Reagan, who after an initial delay responded to the 1985 discovery of a hole in the ozone layer by supporting a marked reduction in chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. ‘We have to have a binding reduction on carbon,” he said. Robert Zoellick, the head of the World Bank, sounded a sceptical note on the developing world’s ability and desire to reduce carbon emissions, however. Poorer countries are worried aid is going to […]
New Tesla Motors CEO Michael Marks sent out a letter to all their customers yesterday confirming both some good and bad news about this electric car. The good news is that the efforts of Tesla’s engineers over the last several months have resulted in the recovery of most of the range that had been lost to weight increases and other engineering changes. The Roadster has now been validated on the EPA combined cycle with a range of 245 miles (252 city and 236 highway). Your mileage will of course vary. They have also made structural improvements and one of the validation prototypes has now passed the side impact test that caused problems for an earlier version. On the downside, prospective buyers will have to wait longer for their cars. Tesla’s revised production schedule now has them only building a small number of production cars by the end of this year with the first fifty being delivered in the first quarter of 2008. Once production ramps up a bit they plan to turn out another 600 cars by the end of the 2008 model year.
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
