Agency Calls for Heavy Energy Investment
By JANE WARDELL (AP Business Writer)
From Associated Press
November 07, 2006 4:49 PM EST
LONDON - The International Energy Agency called on governments to curb growth in energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions as it warned Tuesday that the world's energy supply is rapidly running out.
The IEA said that global energy needs will surge by 53 percent over the next quarter century and that crude oil prices could exceed $100 a barrel by 2030 as countries rapidly consume more energy, particularly emerging economies such as India and China.
China is expected to overtake the United States as the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide before 2010, the Paris-based agency added in its 2006 World Energy Outlook.
"On current trends, we are on course for a dirty, expensive and unsustainable energy future," IEA Executive Director Claude Mandil said at the report's launch in London. "In response, urgent government action is required. The key word is urgent."
The report from the IEA - an energy policy adviser for its 26 member countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia and 19 European nations including Germany and Britain - joins a growing consensus of governments, international agencies and politicians pointing to the economic advantages of tackling emissions growth and warning of stark consequences of inaction.
It predicts that world oil demand will reach 116 million barrels per day in 2030, up from 84 million barrels in 2005. Global carbon dioxide emissions are anticipated to reach 40 gigatons in 2030, a 55 percent increase over today's level.
The IEA was asked by the group of eight leading industrialized nations, or G-8, to provide advice on alternative energy scenarios and strategies aimed at a "clean, clever and competitive energy future."
The agency's alternative scenario for energy use provided a less gloomy outlook with more efficient use of energy, a step-up in biofuels production and - eventually - more investment in nuclear and renewable power.
Mandil said governments must promote both energy efficiency and energy investment, with predictions that they will need to spend a combined $20 trillion on power, oil and gas production and related facilities to meet expected demand.
If countries implement the more environment-friendly policies, the IEA predicts that energy demand and carbon-dioxide emissions would be significantly lower, with overall global energy demand expanding 10 percent less than the business-as-usual scenario.
"The additional upfront costs are quickly outweighed by savings in fuel expenditures," Mandil said of the alternative plan.
The IEA, established during the oil crisis of 1973-1974, also made dramatic upward revisions to its oil price forecasts for the next quarter century, raising them by almost half, citing ongoing bottlenecks in refining and supply, and potential volatility stemming from international tension.
By 2030 the IEA's nominal crude import price, which assumes 2.3 percent annual inflation, is expected to be $97.30 a barrel, up half as much on the $65 it predicted a year ago. The agency's import price includes crude grades cheaper than premium-priced Brent and U.S. oil futures and tends to be around $4 to $6 a barrel lower than those prices - implying futures prices by 2030 in excess of $100.
Crude oil is currently trading around $60 a barrel after hitting a summertime high above $78 a barrel.
Mandil also cautioned that governments needed to look beyond the IEA's 2030 forecasts and alternative plan to ensure long-term energy sustainability, and flagged nuclear use as the key next step.
"Globally, we consider nuclear has to be part of the energy mix," he said. "Without nuclear, sustainability in the long term is much more difficult to attain and much more costly."
Mandil said that nuclear policies will only flourish if governments play a stronger role in facilitating private investment. He said the IEA was not advocating government subsidies for nuclear investment, but said they should provide a regulatory framework that is "conducive to investment."
Biofuels, another second-generation measure, could make a significant contribution to meeting future road transport energy needs, helping to promote energy diversity and reduce emissions, he added.
The IEA also said that consumers can conserve energy on a global scale by paying slightly more for more goods, including cars and refrigerators, that are more fuel efficient. It said additional spending of just $1 on more fuel-efficient goods equated to $2.20 saved on the supply side, reducing the need for power plants and networks.
Global Warming Could Devastate Economy
By THOMAS WAGNER (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
October 30, 2006 12:06 PM EST
LONDON - Unchecked global warming will devastate the world economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression, a British government report said Monday, as the country launched a bid to convince doubters that environmentalism and economic growth can coincide.
Britain hired former Vice President Al Gore, who has emerged as a powerful environmental spokesman since his defeat in the 2000 presidential election, to advise the government on climate change - a clear indication of Prime Minister Tony Blair's dissatisfaction with current U.S. policy.
Blair, President Bush's top ally in the Iraq war, said unabated climate change would eventually cost the world between 5 percent and 20 percent of global gross domestic product each year. He called for "bold and decisive action" to cut carbon emissions and stem the worst of the temperature rise.
"It is not in doubt that, if the science is right, the consequences for our planet are literally disastrous," he said. "This disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime."
The report emphasized that global warming can only be fought with the cooperation of major countries such as the United States and China, and represents a huge contrast to the Bush administration's wait-and-see global warming policies.
Sir Nicholas Stern, the senior government economist who wrote the report, said that acting now to cut greenhouse gas emissions would cost about 1 percent of global GDP each year. He recommended a "low-carbon global economy" through measures including taxation, regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon trading.
"That is manageable," he said. "We can grow and be green."
Bush kept America - by far the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming - out of the Kyoto international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases, saying the pact would harm the U.S. economy. The international agreement was reached in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 and expires in 2012.
Blair made his displeasure with U.S. environmental policy clear when he signed an agreement this year with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to develop new technologies to combat the problem. The measure imposed the first emissions cap in the United States on utilities, refineries and manufacturing plants in a bid to curb the gases that scientists blame for warming the Earth.
The prime minister and the report also said that no matter what Britain, the United States and Japan do, the battle against global warming cannot succeed without deciding when and how to control the greenhouse gas emissions by such fast-industrializing giants as China and India.
Stern's 700-page report said evidence showed "that ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth."
"Our actions over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century," he said.
The report said at current trends average global temperatures will rise by 3.6 to 5.4 degrees within the next 50 years or so, and the earth will experience several degrees more of warming if emissions continue to grow.
It said such warming could have effects such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels, declining crop yields, drinking water shortages, higher death tolls from malnutrition and heat stress, and widespread outbreaks of malaria and dengue fever. Developing countries often would be the hardest hit.
The report acknowledged that its predictions regarding GDP relied on sparse data about high temperatures and developing countries, and placed monetary values on human health and the environment, "which is conceptually, ethically and empirically very difficult."
Treasury Chief Gordon Brown, who is expected to replace Blair as prime minister next year, said Britain would lead the international effort against climate change, establishing "an economy that is both pro-growth and pro-green." He called for Europe to cut its carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2020 and 60 percent by 2050 - and Blair's government on Monday said it would propose a British law to that effect.
Under the 1997 Kyoto accord, 35 industrialized nations committed to reducing emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
But Britain is one of only a handful of industrialized nations whose greenhouse gas emissions have fallen in the last decade and a half, the United Nations said Monday.
The U.N. said Germany's emissions dropped 17 percent between 1990 and 2004, Britain's by 14 percent and France's by almost 1 percent.
Overall, there was a 2.4 percent rise in emissions by 41 industrialized nations from 2000 to 2004, mostly because former Soviet-bloc countries, whose emissions declined in their economic downturn of the 1990s, increased emissions during the recent four-year period by 4.1 percent.
The British government is considering new "green taxes" on cheap airline flights, fuel and high-emission vehicles.
Posted on Oct 19, 2006
Courtesy the Tillman Family
By Kevin Tillman
Editor's note: In 2002, Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat who left his career in the NFL, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in
2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.
It is Pat's birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after.
It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we
joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the
papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American
leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a
direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave
us without a voice until we get out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice:
Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct
threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored
terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received
weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD,
or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy,
or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can't be
called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it
is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and
humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly
kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not
charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that
overt policy of torture became the fault of a few bad apples in
the military.
Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-
year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it
overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an
extra pad in a helmet. It's interesting that a soldier on his third
or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a
faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad
in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle
50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to
the seat.
Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal
invasion becomes.
Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people
and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the
courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.
Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are
allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.
Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is
tolerated.
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is
tolerated.
Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country
safe.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.
Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it
is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the
world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and
distrusted countries in the world.
Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been
replaced by apathy through active ignorance.
Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous,
malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.
Somehow this is tolerated.
Somehow nobody is accountable for this.
In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the
people. So don't be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this
generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity.
Most likely, they will come to know that somehow this was nurtured by
fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to
unchecked, unchallenged parasites.
Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice.
People still can take action. It can start after Pat's birthday.
Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,
Kevin Tillman
While walking down the street one day a US senator is tragically hit by
a truck and dies.
His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.
"Welcome to heaven," says St. Peter. "Before you settle in, it seems
there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts,
you see, so we're not sure what to do with you."
"No problem, just let me in," says the man.
"Well, I'd like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we'll do is
have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose
where to spend eternity."
"Really, I've made up my mind. I want to be in heaven," says the senator.
"I'm sorry, but we have our rules."
And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down,
down, down to hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a
green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of
it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him.
Everyone is very happy and in evening dress. They run to greet him,
shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while
getting rich at the expense of the people.
They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar and
champagne.
Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a
good time dancing and telling jokes. They are having such a good time that
before he realizes it, it is time to go.
Everyone give s him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises...
The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on heaven where St.
Peter is waiting for him.
"Now it's time to visit heaven."
So, 24 hours pass with the senator joining a group of contented souls
moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a
good time and, before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and
St. Peter returns.
"Well, then, you've spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now
choose your eternity."
The senator reflects for a minute, then he answers:
"Well, I would never have said it before, I mean heaven has been
delightful, but I think I would be better off in hell."
So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to
hell.
Now the doors of the elevator open and he's in the middle of a barren land
covered with waste and garbage.
He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting
it in black bags as more trash falls from above.
The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulder. "I
don't understand," stammers the senator. "Yesterday I was here and there
was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank
champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now there's just a wasteland
full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?"
The devil looks at him, smiles and says, "Yesterday we were
campaigning......
Today you voted ! ! ! ! ! !
Researchers Find Average Minds More Apt To Think Alike Than Great Minds
by Scott Borchert
In stark contrast to countless years of the commonly accepted adage, scientists and research professionals have concluded that great minds are less likely to think alike than are minds of average intellect and ability.
The findings have sent a shock through the mainstream that had been confident, despite their pedantic and unremarkable opinions, appearance and lives, that being likeminded somehow equated to a state of greatness.
"This may come as a surprise to everyone, but it has been empirically proven that great minds are significantly less likely to be thinking the same thoughts as the 90% of the population that are fixated upon the same five or ten TV shows, sports, musicians, celebrity scandals and beer companies," said research expert Carnell Brookston at Indiana University, who agreed with the breakthrough. "Despite decades of misconception, it is now clear that 9 out of 10 common minds are more likely to be simultaneously thinking, 'Mmm, Bud Light' on any given day than any two excellent minds to have concurrently similar ideas."
Believers in the maxim "great minds think alike" expressed disappointment that the banal cliché applies better to banal minds than it does to the "great" ones it claims.
"I don’t believe [the findings], because the first thought that went through my mind when I found out that [best friend] Krissy [Walker] has the exact same pink Coach purse I just bought was, 'God, we must have great minds 'cause we totally think alike!'" said Lincoln Park resident Cassie Vasser. "And what's even more awesome is that we totally bought them to match the shoes we bought last week when we were out shopping together. That's just not something that happens to anyone."
"I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with science on this one," said one Fox News commentator with a frown. "Great minds do think alike, and Pluto is still a planet."
Experts concede that conventional wisdom is a hard nut to crack, and that their discovery is likely to fall on deaf ears and mediocre minds. Reversing years of the accepted axiom will be exceedingly difficult given that the average mind tends to think of itself as "greater" than the common mind.
"How can we expect the public to come to grips with these findings when many Americans still think that there are weapons of mass destructions in Iraq?" asked William Gibson, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago. "As it turns out, conventional wisdom is neither conventional or wisdom."
The findings stand to send shockwaves through the average community, who for years have been associating having similar briefcases, shoes or favorite pro wrestlers with greatness. Conversely, great minds have been mostly unmoved by the news, stating that they've known it to be true for years.
"The proof that our conclusions are correct is that while all ungreat minds were thinking that they were so wonderful merely by thinking in parallel, my great and salient mind discovered the opposite to be true," said director of research doctor Reuben Thomas, who co-authored the dissertation with no one, he pointed out.
Thomas pointed to the state of American democracy as the greatest evidence that great minds, in fact, do not think alike, and then excused himself from the interview prematurely to go clean his elephant gun.
Supporters of Thomas' findings applaud what they see as a necessary step towards knocking the normal citizen off his or her pedestal and putting them in their rightful place, which was described by Thomas as, "somewhere down there."
Arctic Ice Melting Rapidly, Study Says
By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP Science Writer)
From Associated Press
September 13, 2006 5:07 PM EDT
Arctic sea ice in winter is melting far faster than before, two new NASA studies reported Wednesday, a new and alarming trend that researchers say threatens the ocean's delicate ecosystem.
Scientists point to the sudden and rapid melting as a sure sign of man-made global warming.
"It has never occurred before in the past," said NASA senior research scientist Josefino Comiso in a phone interview. "It is alarming... This winter ice provides the kind of evidence that it is indeed associated with the greenhouse effect."
Scientists have long worried about melting Arcticsea ice in the summer, but they had not seen a big winter drop in sea ice, even though they expected it.
For more than 25 years Arctic sea ice has slowly diminished in winter by about 1.5 percent per decade. But in the past two years the melting has occurred at rates 10 to 15 times faster. From 2004 to 2005, the amount of ice dropped 2.3 percent; and over the past year, it's declined by another 1.9 percent, according to Comiso.
A second NASA study by other researchers found the winter sea ice melt in one region of the eastern Arctic has shrunk about 40 percent in just the past two years. This is partly because of local weather but also partly because of global warming, Comiso said.
The loss of winter ice is bad news for the ocean because this type of ice, when it melts in summer, provides a crucial breeding ground for plankton, Comiso said. Plankton are the bottom rung of the ocean's food chain.
"If the winter ice melt continues, the effect would be very profound especially for marine mammals," Comiso said in a NASA telephone press conference.
The ice is melting even in subfreezing winter temperatures because the water is warmer and summer ice covers less area and is shorter-lived, Comiso said. Thus, the winter ice season shortens every year and warmer water melts at the edges of the winter ice more every year.
Scientists and climate models have long predicted a drop in winter sea ice, but it has been slow to happen. Global warming skeptics have pointed to the lack of ice melt as a flaw in global warming theory.
The latest findings are "coming more in line with what we expected to find," said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "We're starting to see a much more coherent and firm picture occurring."
"I hate to say we told you so, but we told you so," he added.
Serreze said only five years ago he was "a fence-sitter" on the issue of whether man-made global warming was happening and a threat, but he said recent evidence in the Arctic has him convinced.
Summer sea ice also has dramatically melted and shrunk over the years, setting a record low last year. This year's measurements are not as bad, but will be close to the record, Serreze said.
Equally disturbing is a large mass of water - melted sea ice - in the interior of a giant patch of ice north of Alaska, Serreze said. It's called a polynya, and while those show up from time to time, this one is large - about the size of the state of Maryland - and in an unexpected place.
"I for one, after having studied this for 20 years, have never seen anything like this before," Serreze said.
The loss of summer sea ice is pushing polar bears more onto land in northern Canada and Alaska, making it seem like there are more polar bears when there are not, said NASA scientist Claire Parkinson, who studies the bears.
The polar bear population in the Hudson Bay area has dropped from 1,200 in 1989 to 950 in 2004 and the bears that are around are 22 percent smaller than they used to be, she said.
This hole in the ground
Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.
All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul -- two more in the Towers.
And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.
I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.
And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.
However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have predicted this.
Five years later this space is still empty.
Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.
Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.
Five years later this country's wound is still open.
Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.
Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.
It is beyond shameful.
At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.
Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.
Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.
Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.
And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.
And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.
The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.
Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.
Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.
Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.
History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.
Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.
The President -- and those around him -- did that.
They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."
They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.
The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."
The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."
Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.
Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.
Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.
Yet what is happening this very night?
A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.
The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.
How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?
Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.
So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.
This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.
And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."
And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.
"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."
When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:
Who has left this hole in the ground?
We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
You have.
May this country forgive you.
Keith Olbermann
Sept. 11, 2006 | 3:19 p.m. ET
A special comment on 9/11
An open letter to the red states...
Dear Red States...
>
>We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and
>we're taking the other Blue States with us.
>
>In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon,Washington,
>Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We
>believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially
>to the people of the new country of New California.
>
>To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.
>We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot
>Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.
>
>We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.
>We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
>We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.
>We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You
>get Alabama.
>We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states
>pay their fair share.
>
>Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the
>Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a
>bunch of single moms.
>
>Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and
>anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at
>once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have
>kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no
>purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their
>children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and
>hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our
>resources in Bush's Quagmire.
>
>With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent
>of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple
>and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of
>America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners)
>90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most
>of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and
>condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale,
>Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.
>
>With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88
>percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care
>costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the
>tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern
>Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh,
>Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.
>
>We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.
>
>Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was
>actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred
>unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say
>that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved
>in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy b*****ds believe you are people
>with higher morals then we lefties.
>
>By the way, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt
>weed they grow in Mexico.
>
>Peace out,
>Blue States
Scientists See New Global Warming Threat
By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP Science Writer)
From Associated Press
September 06, 2006 12:01 PM EDT
WASHINGTON - New research is raising concerns that global warming may be triggering a self-perpetuating climate time bomb trapped in once-frozen permafrost.
As the Earth warms, greenhouse gases once stuck in the long-frozen soil are bubbling into the atmosphere in much larger amounts than previously anticipated, according to a study in Thursday's journal Nature.
Methane trapped in a special type of permafrost is bubbling up at a rate five times faster than originally measured, the journal said.
Scientists are fretting about a global warming vicious cycle that had not been part of their already gloomy climate forecasts: Warming already under way thaws permafrost, soil that had been continuously frozen for thousands of years.
Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost, and so on.
"The higher the temperature gets, the more permafrost we melt, the more tendency it is to become a more vicious cycle," said Chris Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "That's the thing that is scary about this whole thing. There are lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tends to shut it off."
The effect reported in Nature is seen mostly in Siberia, but also elsewhere, in a type of carbon-rich permafrost, flash frozen about 40,000 years ago. A new more accurate measuring technique was used on the bubbling methane, which is 23 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than the more prevalent carbon dioxide.
"The effects can be huge," said lead author Katey Walter of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. "It's coming out a lot and there's a lot more to come out."
Another study earlier this summer in the journal Science found that the amount of carbon trapped in this type of permafrost - called yedoma - is much more prevalent than originally thought and may be 100 times the amount of carbon released into the air each year by the burning of fossil fuels.
It won't all come out at once or even over several decades, but the methane and carbon dioxide will escape the soil if temperatures increase, scientists say.
The issue of methane and carbon dioxide released from permafrost has caused concern this summer among climate scientists and geologists. Specialists in Arctic climate are coming up with research plans to study the effect, which is not well understood or observed, said Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a group of 300 scientists.
"It's kind of like a slow-motion time bomb," said Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at the University of Florida and co-author of the Science study. "There's these big surprises out there that we don't even know about."
Most of this yedoma is in north and eastern Siberia, areas that until recently had not been studied at length by scientists.
What makes this permafrost special is that during a rapid onset ice age, carbon-rich plants were trapped in the permafrost. As the permafrost thaws, the carbon is released as methane if it's underwater in lakes, like much of the parts of Siberia that Walter studied. If it's dry, it's released into the air as carbon dioxide.
Scientists aren't quite sure which is worse. Methane is far more powerful in trapping heat, but only lasts about a decade before it dissipates into carbon dioxide and other chemicals. Carbon dioxide traps heat for about a century.
"The bottom line is it's better if it stays frozen in the ground," Schuur said. "But we're getting to the point where it's going more and more into the atmosphere."
Vladimir Romanovsky, geophysics professor at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, said he thinks the big methane or carbon dioxide release hasn't started yet, but it's coming. It's closer in Alaska and Canada, which only has a few hundred square miles of yedoma, he said.
In Siberia, the many lakes of melted water make matters worse because the water, although cold, helps warm and thaw the permafrost, Walter said.
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