WASHINGTON — Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world’s only hope is drastic action. James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the ‘dangerous level’ for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth’s atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises. ‘We’re toast if we don’t get on a very different path,’ Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. ‘This is the last chance.’ Hansen brought global warming home to the public in June 1988 during a Washington heat wave, telling a Senate hearing that global warming was already here. To mark the anniversary, he testified before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming where he was called a prophet, and addressed a luncheon at the National Press Club where he was called a hero by former Sen. Tim […]
WASHINGTON — White House hopeful Barack Obama attacked energy speculators Sunday, outlining new regulatory proposals that his campaign said would slash record-high oil prices and help hard-pressed consumers. The Democrat attacked the so-called Enron loophole, a 2000 deregulation of oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that critics say opened the way to a speculative free-for-all in the oil markets. ‘For the past years, our energy policy in this country has been simply to let the special interests have their way — opening up loopholes for the oil companies and speculators so that they could reap record profits while the rest of us pay four dollars a gallon,’ Obama said in a statement. ‘My plan fully closes the Enron loophole and restores common-sense regulation as part of my broader plan to ease the burden for struggling families today while investing in a better future,’ the Illinois senator said. After a week of furious controversy over Republican John McCain’s call for the lifting of a federal ban on offshore oil drilling, Democrats said they would introduce new anti-speculation bills in Congress this week. But McCain’s campaign said the Republican had already backed legislative action against speculative […]
Wikipedia and other online research sources were yesterday blamed for Scotland’s falling exam pass rates. The Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC) said pupils are turning to websites and internet resources that contain inaccurate or deliberately misleading information before passing it off as their own work. The group singled out online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows entries to be logged or updated by anyone and is not verified by researchers, as the main source of information. Standard Grade pass rates were down for the first time in four years last year and the SPTC is now calling for pupils to be given lessons on using the internet appropriately for additional research purposes ‘before the problem gets out of hand’. Eleanor Coner, the SPTC’s information officer, said: ‘Children are very IT-savvy, but they are rubbish at researching. The sad fact is most children these days use libraries for computers, not the books. We accept that as a sign of the times, but schools must teach pupils not to believe everything they read. ‘It’s dangerous when the internet is littered with opinion and inaccurate information which could be taken as fact. ‘Internet plagiarism is a problem. Pupils think ‘I’ll […]
Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism. Horatio Alger, twist in your grave. The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country’s sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance. The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year’s presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order - and hope. Republican John McCain promises an experienced hand in a frightening time. Democrat Barack Obama promises bright and shiny change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, ‘Yes, we can.’ Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2003. An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent, tying the […]
American-dug coal could be altered to produce clean-burning fuels for our vehicles. Here’s how we could do it, and what might stop it from happening. In 1943, when Germany had virtually no sources of petroleum to fuel its Luftwaffe, U-boats, and Tiger tanks, its scientists (arguably among the best in the world at that time) didn’t turn to solar and wind power. Evil does not equate to naivete. Hitler’s technical advisers turned to another energy source to keep their Wehrmacht running steadily for several years without petroleum. They used the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert coal into diesel fuel and employed the Bergius hydrogenation (or liquefaction) process to convert coal into aviation gasoline and high-quality truck and automobile gasoline. Coal-to-liquid Technologies Gasoline and diesel fuel are hydrocarbons. The name gives us a clue as to how to convert coal to liquid fuel: combine hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbon fuels are designated by the number of carbon atoms in their molecules. For example, methane, the main constituent in natural gas, has one carbon and four hydrogen atoms. Ethane, butane, and propane are gaseous at room temperature and have two, three, and four carbon atoms respectively. There are many hydrocarbons, and […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
