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There are thirteen human beings in space right now, four of whom are women. 

The technological hurdles of launching thirteen humans into the cold and hostility of space notwithstanding, I cannot help but reflect on the enormous social challenges that have been overcome in order for four of them to be women. From Valentina Tereshkova, who 47 years ago became the first woman in space, to Peggy Whitson, current NASA chief astronaut and former commander of the International Space Station, women are participating in space exploration. This serves as a powerful reminder of the progress women have made in the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, and the other nations which have sent women into space as well as the opportunity space presents as a burgeoning frontier. Yes, perhaps this is precisely the sort of “distraction” Jessica Valenti believes is pulling our attention from the ongoing “epidemic of sexism” in the United States. But let’s think about what this might mean to different people. 

Life may move fast, but the wait for the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus on AT&T certainly doesn’t. AT&T feels your pain, so they’ve set up a a promo section for the little webOS devices that could where you can learn about the phone and – most importantly – punch in your email address to get the scoop on when it’ll be available for purchase.

Not listed on the promo pages – the pricing. At announce, the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on AT&T were set at $149.99 and $49.99, respectively. Now that Verizon has undercut those prices by a country mile, we’re wondering if AT&T and Palm will stick to their guns on that pricing.

Thanks to grandebob for the tip!

El anuncio de AOL de que se rinden con Bebo – servicio de redes sociales que compraron hace un par de años por más de 800 millones de dólares – ejemplifica la concentración a la que hemos asistido en redes sociales. Facebook no deja de crecer y de hacer valer su poderosísimo efecto red frente a las alternativas locales (aunque aquí resiste Tuenti), globales (conquistando poco a poco las plazas en las que Orkut sigue como líder) y verticales (redes especializadas o muy ligadas a un tema como MySpace y la música). Esto siempre es una noticia preocupante: un único punto de definición de reglas de privacidad mundiales, de poder en el mercado publicitario y en la identidad online.

Más información en Paid Content.

Filed under: Classics, Etc.

For the past 30 years Motorbooks has been hosting Wheels & Wings, an annual “show-what-ya-brung car/motorcycle/truck/tractor extravaganza.” Sounds like our kind of party, “From AMCs to Zagatos, Ariels to Zundapps, Allis to Zetors (well, maybe not a Zetor) our friends and customers share their rides with our guests.” But what if you and your AMC Matador Brougham can’t make it to Osceola, Wisconsin this September 11? Once you get over the shame, fear not!

Motorbooks is asking for your help in designing a 30th Anniversary Wheels & Wings logo. Should your chicken scratching the fruits of your $160,000 private art school education be selected as the winner, Motorbooks will let you blow $500 on stuff they publish. You might remember that Basem Wasef’s hugely awesome Legendary Race Cars is published by Motorbooks. But did you know that they also sell Cars of the Soviet Union (which gets out highest recommendation)? Want to enter? Just click right here. Don’t want to enter? Check out a couple previous Wheels & Wings logos in the gallery below.

Design a logo, win $500 in Motorbooks originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 07 Apr 2010 10:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ex New York Giants superstar Tiki Barber has dumped his college sweetheart and wife of 11 years Ginny for a former NBC intern, according to sources cited in Wednesday’s edition of The New York Post.

Ginny and Tiki began dating 16 years ago when both were students at the University of Virginia. Ginny, a former fashion publicist, is a full-time mom to the couple’s two sons — A.J., 7, and Chason, 6.

Post sources say The TODAY Show correspondent reportedly took up with Traci Lynn Johnson, a petite and blonde 23-year-old, when the pair met while working at NBC’s NYC headquarters.

“We were shocked to find out that he could walk out on his wife of 11 years while she’s pregnant with twins. He was with this girl in Senegal while Ginny was three months pregnant,” one family friend exclaims of the shamed sportsman.

The grounding of a freight vessel poses yet another challenge to the world’s most diverse marine habitat.

When the Shen Neng 1 ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland, carrying 975 tonnes of fuel oil and 65,000 tonnes of coal, reef conservationists and scientists worldwide gave a collective shudder.

The spot where the ship foundered is a restricted area due to its environmental sensitivity. Though ongoing efforts may prevent a major oil spill, the area of reef that the vessel landed on could take decades to recover.

Growing threats to reefs

The incident has served to highlight the growing threat to reefs worldwide from human activities. The 2,500km Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest reef system, as well as its best-managed. Yet the protections put in place by the Australian government could not prevent Shen Neng 1 from veering off course into restricted waters. With the gross tonnage of international commercial shipping growing by 67% between 1980 and 2003¹, and with most reefs subject to less shipping restrictions than the GBR, such incidents are increasingly likely.

Moreover, commercial shipping is only one of the myriad threats facing the world’s reefs. Others include over-fishing, coastal development, land-based sources such as agricultural runoff, and oil infrastructure. In recent years, the first effects of climate change have also become apparent in the form of bleaching, which can kill coral. Looking ahead, increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is expected to acidify oceans, which will also impact coral health.

Why do reefs matter?

This is not just a problem for the tourism industry and nature lovers. While reefs occupy less than one tenth of one per cent of ocean habitat, they harbor more than a quarter of all marine species². Their presence is vital to local economies, to fisheries, and to global biodiversity. By absorbing wave energy, they also provide storm and erosion protection to coastal communities on several continents and many island nations.

What is the status of the world’s reefs?

This fall WRI will publish Reefs at Risk Revisited a global report on the health of the world’s coral reefs, documenting the growing range and volume of threats to their survival. An update of our influential 1998 analysis, Reefs at Risk: a Map-Based Indicator of Threats to the World’s Coral Reefs, the new report will employ the most recent high-resolution data to provide a detailed examination of human pressures on coral reefs (including from climate change), implications for reef condition, and projections of associated socioeconomic impacts in coastal communities. It will document the growing range and volume of threats to the world’s reefs as typified in dramatic fashion this week off the coast of Queensland.

How do we protect them?

WRI’s reef project works with reef scientists and managers of marine protected areas to provide the data and information needed to develop effective management plans and policies for reefs. Our new report will make specific, detailed recommendations to national governments, to local planning authorities and to marine park managers on how to counter threats to, and better manage, coral reefs in order to ensure their future place on Earth.

Simon Keenlyside in the title role of Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet at the Metropolitan Opera House, March 12, 2010 (Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera)

The new production of Ambroise Thomas’s 1868 Hamlet—the first time the Met has staged the work since 1897—brings to New York a revival first performed fourteen years ago in Geneva. It is an opera that has met with a fair amount of derision over the years, chiefly for its laughable original ending in which Hamlet finishes off Claudius and mounts triumphantly to the throne of Denmark. (The Met production substitutes a cobbled-together and not especially satisfying alternative in which, following an unexpected intrusion of the Ghost into the graveyard scene, the prince more appropriately dies. Perhaps, since no one would mistake Thomas’s Hamlet for Shakespeare’s anyway, it would make more sense to restore the original happy ending.)

Overall it is a production of intermittent pleasures, chiefly musical. On opening night a boorish claque resoundingly booed the conducting of Louis Langrée, who to my ears had (despite a few ragged horn passages at the outset) capably and often beautifully sustained the tone of the work, with its firmly anchored balance between resounding choruses, full-bodied and neatly delimited vocal trios, duets, and solos, and the delicate lyrical passages that serve as preludes and entr’actes. The continuity of the whole is finally more important than any particular highlight; Thomas’s music, if rarely inspired, extends with complete control the prescribed variants of a single vein. The only moment when I was genuinely startled was at hearing an unexpected modern sound in the fifth act music of the gravediggers, as if a bar or two of Kurt Weill had leaked into the 1860s.

Any sense of deep dramatic involvement was evoked more by the work of the orchestra and the singers than by the staging of Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser. The production design centered around some large moveable walls that bore a disturbing resemblance to the room partitions frequently deployed at convention hotels, and the use of theatrical space seemed quite limited, very much horizontal and elongated, with only limited employment of depth, the singers often reduced to figures cast against big dark empty backdrops. The more frenzied moments (Hamlet pouring blood-red wine over himself at the end of the play scene, or running madly against a wall) seemed inadequate attempts to wrench the opera into a style at odds with its music.

It is admittedly hard to imagine a body language consonant with the stately four-square architecture of Thomas’s music, a body language that would not seem impossibly stilted and grandiose, but here the direction at times had a desperate quality, as if things needed to be modernized or livened up so as to keep the opera running. In fact it moves along very well on its own sonic gears, even if its pace might strike some contemporary listeners as ponderous or needlessly protracted. I was myself very pleased to be borne along, however unsurprisingly, on its pleasant underpinnings.

Where the directors did bring things to life was in the more intimate confrontations of the piece, notably in the second-act trio of Claudius, Gertrude, and Hamlet. Here was an object lesson in how to transform Shakespearean tragedy into walloping domestic melodrama, with Jennifer Larmore the driving force in her intensified rendering of a fear-wracked Gertrude. In this scene, as again in Gertrude’s third-act duet with Hamlet, the opera is like a chamber play in the French nineteenth-century style; it was not surprising to learn that Alexandre Dumas had a hand in the adaptation on which the librettists based their work. Instead of opening out into immense metaphysical or political perspectives, Thomas’s Hamlet narrows at its best into vigorously sketched emotional face-offs. For a moment you could almost imagine you were watching an opera based on one of Claude Chabrol’s thrillers set among the modern French haute bourgeoisie (while remembering that Chabrol himself indulged in his own Hamlet variation, the long-lost 1962 Ophelia).

The production is very much built around Simon Keenlyside’s quite stirring performance, beautifully sung (his diction was so clear that the lyrics could be understood without difficulty) and acted with an emotional expressiveness that sometimes made the music seem more subtle and ambiguous than it actually is (even when his costumes seemed designed to cast him, a little distractingly, as a trenchcoated Bogart surrogate). Marlis Petersen (replacing, more or less at the last moment, Natalie Dessay, who had sung the role elsewhere with Keenlyside) did full justice to Ophelia, a role requiring a great deal of fine singing but not much dramatic effectiveness.

For me the evening belonged—along with Keenlyside and Petersen and Larmore—above all to the much-maligned Ambroise Thomas. His score, widely characterized as mediocre and overlong, is a piece of machinery, but it’s machinery cast in an idiom whose pleasures are solid and consistently diffused, a matter not of flashes of inspiration but of unwavering attention. It’s an idiom that might be called industrial lyricism, evoking a world of firmly, none too subtly defined intentions and equally firmly defined limits, in which emotions are permitted to pour without restraint through channels carefully and sturdily built for that purpose.

In that light Ophelia’s mad scene can properly be appreciated as the enactment of an operatic convention, an analogue rather than a description of madness, a licensed, carefully circumscribed transgression. Perhaps such a scene can only assume its full meaning when imagined taking place at the Paris Opera in 1868. A work like the Hamlet of Ambroise Thomas cannot really be updated. It speaks with utter confidence the language of its moment. As we listen to it we are inevitably listening backwards.

Geoffrey O’Brien

Simon Keenlyside in the title role of Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet at the Metropolitan Opera House, March 12, 2010 (Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera)

The new production of Ambroise Thomas’s 1868 Hamlet—the first time the Met has staged the work since 1897—brings to New York a revival first performed fourteen years ago in Geneva. It is an opera that has met with a fair amount of derision over the years, chiefly for its laughable original ending in which Hamlet finishes off Claudius and mounts triumphantly to the throne of Denmark. (The Met production substitutes a cobbled-together and not especially satisfying alternative in which, following an unexpected intrusion of the Ghost into the graveyard scene, the prince more appropriately dies. Perhaps, since no one would mistake Thomas’s Hamlet for Shakespeare’s anyway, it would make more sense to restore the original happy ending.)

Overall it is a production of intermittent pleasures, chiefly musical. On opening night a boorish claque resoundingly booed the conducting of Louis Langrée, who to my ears had (despite a few ragged horn passages at the outset) capably and often beautifully sustained the tone of the work, with its firmly anchored balance between resounding choruses, full-bodied and neatly delimited vocal trios, duets, and solos, and the delicate lyrical passages that serve as preludes and entr’actes. The continuity of the whole is finally more important than any particular highlight; Thomas’s music, if rarely inspired, extends with complete control the prescribed variants of a single vein. The only moment when I was genuinely startled was at hearing an unexpected modern sound in the fifth act music of the gravediggers, as if a bar or two of Kurt Weill had leaked into the 1860s.

Any sense of deep dramatic involvement was evoked more by the work of the orchestra and the singers than by the staging of Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser. The production design centered around some large moveable walls that bore a disturbing resemblance to the room partitions frequently deployed at convention hotels, and the use of theatrical space seemed quite limited, very much horizontal and elongated, with only limited employment of depth, the singers often reduced to figures cast against big dark empty backdrops. The more frenzied moments (Hamlet pouring blood-red wine over himself at the end of the play scene, or running madly against a wall) seemed inadequate attempts to wrench the opera into a style at odds with its music.

It is admittedly hard to imagine a body language consonant with the stately four-square architecture of Thomas’s music, a body language that would not seem impossibly stilted and grandiose, but here the direction at times had a desperate quality, as if things needed to be modernized or livened up so as to keep the opera running. In fact it moves along very well on its own sonic gears, even if its pace might strike some contemporary listeners as ponderous or needlessly protracted. I was myself very pleased to be borne along, however unsurprisingly, on its pleasant underpinnings.

Where the directors did bring things to life was in the more intimate confrontations of the piece, notably in the second-act trio of Claudius, Gertrude, and Hamlet. Here was an object lesson in how to transform Shakespearean tragedy into walloping domestic melodrama, with Jennifer Larmore the driving force in her intensified rendering of a fear-wracked Gertrude. In this scene, as again in Gertrude’s third-act duet with Hamlet, the opera is like a chamber play in the French nineteenth-century style; it was not surprising to learn that Alexandre Dumas had a hand in the adaptation on which the librettists based their work. Instead of opening out into immense metaphysical or political perspectives, Thomas’s Hamlet narrows at its best into vigorously sketched emotional face-offs. For a moment you could almost imagine you were watching an opera based on one of Claude Chabrol’s thrillers set among the modern French haute bourgeoisie (while remembering that Chabrol himself indulged in his own Hamlet variation, the long-lost 1962 Ophelia).

The production is very much built around Simon Keenlyside’s quite stirring performance, beautifully sung (his diction was so clear that the lyrics could be understood without difficulty) and acted with an emotional expressiveness that sometimes made the music seem more subtle and ambiguous than it actually is (even when his costumes seemed designed to cast him, a little distractingly, as a trenchcoated Bogart surrogate). Marlis Petersen (replacing, more or less at the last moment, Natalie Dessay, who had sung the role elsewhere with Keenlyside) did full justice to Ophelia, a role requiring a great deal of fine singing but not much dramatic effectiveness.

For me the evening belonged—along with Keenlyside and Petersen and Larmore—above all to the much-maligned Ambroise Thomas. His score, widely characterized as mediocre and overlong, is a piece of machinery, but it’s machinery cast in an idiom whose pleasures are solid and consistently diffused, a matter not of flashes of inspiration but of unwavering attention. It’s an idiom that might be called industrial lyricism, evoking a world of firmly, none too subtly defined intentions and equally firmly defined limits, in which emotions are permitted to pour without restraint through channels carefully and sturdily built for that purpose.

In that light Ophelia’s mad scene can properly be appreciated as the enactment of an operatic convention, an analogue rather than a description of madness, a licensed, carefully circumscribed transgression. Perhaps such a scene can only assume its full meaning when imagined taking place at the Paris Opera in 1868. A work like the Hamlet of Ambroise Thomas cannot really be updated. It speaks with utter confidence the language of its moment. As we listen to it we are inevitably listening backwards.

Greenwire: Conservationists in Wyoming say they have found a way to lessen the effects of natural gas drilling on sage grouse: reducing tanker truck traffic.

Oil and gas operators are already expanding their network of pipelines in the Pinedale Anticline, and an ongoing study shows that doing so will reduce tanker truck traffic in the area, ultimately protecting more of the birds.

Wyoming Wildlife Consultants released a progress report on a five-year study of sage grouse in the area. It is one of a series of studies commissioned by operators Shell Rocky Mountain Production, Questar Exploration and Production Co. and Ultra Resources to determine the impact of natural gas development on mule deer, antelope, sage grouse and the local ecosystem.

Questar first installed a liquids pipeline network in the field, eliminating 75,000 truck trips between November 2005 and December 2009. Shell and Ultra Resources are adding their own pipelines. Field operators think they can reduce overall traffic by 165,000 trips per year.

Senior ecologist Matt Holloran said that while sage grouse are avoiding all aspects of the drilling, there seems to be a link between truck traffic and the areas sage grouse will visit. He cautioned the results are still preliminary and the overall effects will not be known for years (Dustin Bleizeffer, Casper [Wyo.] Star-Tribune, April 6). – JP

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[JURIST] Anti-government protesters in Kyrgyzstan on Wednesday set fire to the prosecutor-general’s office amid violent demonstrations that have led to the death of the interior minister, the arrest of several opposition leaders, and the deaths of dozens of protesters. The protests against President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, which appear prompted in part by a drastic increase in utility costs, began late Tuesday night in the city Talas then spread throughout the country Wednesday. Interior Minister Moldomus Kongantiyev was killed during an attack by protesters in Talas. Former prime minister and presidential candidate Almazbek Atambayev and former parliament speaker Omurbek Tekebayev were among the many opposition leaders arrested as a result of the protests. Bakiyev has declared a state of emergency throughout the country, urging citizens to remain indoors. The protesters have also taken control of the country’s television station, and approximately a thousand people surrounded the prosecutor-general’s office, reportedly setting it on fire. Reports vary as to the number of citizens that have been killed during the protests, with news organizations reporting as many as 50. Kyrgyz police used bullets and tear gas to protect the presidential office in Bishkek.
The protests come a week after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Kyrgyzstan to protect all forms of human rights, including “free speech and freedom of the media.” The statements follow recent events in the country that include the shutdown of an opposition newspaper, a police raid on a local television station that resulted in the station being taken off the air, and the confiscation of computers from a video web portal based on allegations of pirated software use. Opposition members gathered in support of Ban’s comments. Kyrgyzstan was once hailed as a model for democracy in the Central Asian countries that made up the former Soviet Union. It is believed that much of the media pressure is the result of the election of Bakiyev following the Tulip revolution that removed Askar Akayev from power in 2005. Last year, the US State Department (DOS) criticized Kyrgyzstan over its treatment of journalists in its 2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.3:00 PM ET – Kyrgyz opposition leaders claim to have taken power, having forced the government to resign.

Geohot has released a video demo of his PS3 “custom firmware” (quotation marks are his). The video shows the Other OS feature running on a PS3 with OFW 3.21. If you’ll remember, 3.21 removed the feature from

It’s not uncommon for motorists who use Orange County’s toll lanes without a Fastrak transponder to get a bill in the mail from the toll road agency.

But $26,000?

According to the agency, a top official for the Newport Beach Fire Department, Paul Matheis, racked up more than $26,000 in
fines and penalties over a two-year period by using toll roads.

The agency sent a
letter to Matheis and the city  notifying them about the fines, said the toll road agency’s spokeswoman, Lisa Telles.

Toll road violators are identified by cameras that take a
picture of the vehicle’s license plates, she said.





Matheis paid
the fines personally and the issue is resolved from the agency’s side,
said Newport Beach city spokeswoman Tara Finnigan. 

However, the city is now
investigating whether Matheis was using the Chevy Tahoe in compliance
with city policy, Finnigan told the Daily Pilot.

Matheis, the Fire
Department’s Training Division chief, had been using the toll roads to
commute in his city-issued vehicle, said Telles.

Read the full story here.

— Joseph Serna

Photo: Orange County toll road. L.A. Times file

Welcome, ununseptium. With 117 protons, it is the latest super-heavy element, a discovery that fills a gap in the current periodic table of elements, and bolsters the idea that we may yet find an “island of stability” among heavyweight atoms More »

Greenwire: A warmer climate and planting on previously logged pieces of land could be causing more Douglas fir trees in Oregon and Washington to fall victim to a fungal disease, according to a new study by Oregon State University researchers.

The disease, Swiss needle cast, which originated in Europe and has spread throughout the Pacific Northwest since 1996, typically stunts the trees’ growth, causing them to become discolored and lose their needles. Now affecting more than 300,000 acres in the region, Swiss needle cast could eventually become prevalent in up to 2 million acres of forests along the Oregon coast, researchers said, costing the timber industry tens of millions of dollars per year.

The study, published in Forest Ecology and Management, suggests commercial forestry practices may be contributing to the spread of the disease. While coastal forests historically included trees of various ages and species, Douglas fir forests are often planted simultaneously, allowing buildup of the fungus among similarly aged groups of trees, researchers say.

Fungicides have been impractical because of cost and environmental concerns. A better solution, researchers say, would be to plant fewer Douglas firs, instead mixing in trees such as the western hemlock and red alder (Scott Learn, Portland Oregonian, April 5). – GN

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Hewlett-Packard wants you to know that the iPad isn’t the only tablet device out there. Concurrent with Apple’s release, HP has rolled out this 30-second demo showing all the cool stuff it’s Slate gizmo does. As the Silicon Alley Insider notes, this HP blog post doesn’t directly mention Apple but implicitly criticizes the iPad by highlighting Slate features that the iPad lacks, like Adobe Flash and Air support and an implanted camera. The Slate is likely to be priced at $549, more expensive than the cheapest iPad (which is $499). HP, which once licensed Apple’s iPod, clearly has its work cut out for it, but it’s clear that the industry is no longer flat-footed when confronted by Apple’s new high-profile releases.

—Posted by Todd Wasserman

RECENT American economic news has been pretty good. Employment grew in March, activity in manufacturing and services is expanding, equity markets are rising—things seem to be trending in the right direction. Except in housing. Sales, starts, prices, and builder confidence have all weakened in early 2010, which is particularly worrisome given the end, in March, of Fed support for interest rates and the end, this month, of the government’s home-buyer tax credit.

The Federal Reserve is paying attention. This is from the newly released minutes of the March Federal Open Market Committee meeting (H/T Calculated Risk):

Participants were also concerned that activity in the housing sector appeared to be leveling off in most regions despite various forms of government support, and they noted that commercial and industrial real estate markets continued to weaken. Indeed, housing sales and starts had flattened out at depressed levels, suggesting that previous improvements in those indicators may have largely reflected transitory effects from the first-time homebuyer tax credit rather than a fundamental strengthening of housing activity. Participants indicated that the pace of foreclosures was likely to remain quite high; indeed, recent data on the incidence of seriously delinquent mortgages pointed to the possibility that the foreclosure rate could move higher over coming quarters. Moreover, the prospect of further additions to the already very large inventory of vacant homes posed downside risks to home prices…

The staff did make modest downward adjustments to its projections for real GDP growth in response to unfavorable news on housing activity, unexpectedly weak spending by state and local governments, and a substantial reduction in the estimated level of household income in the second half of 2009. The staff’s forecast for the unemployment rate at the end of 2011 was about the same as in its previous projection.

How serious this is isn’t easy to say. A return to sustained declines in home prices would be very bad news but also seems relatively unlikely. Continued stagnation is more probable. High levels of excess inventory and lacklustre sales will mean that construction won’t add very much to output or employment growth for some time. Meanwhile, a lack of price growth will mean that the slog out of negative equity is a long and hard one, and in the meantime reduced labour mobility will slow labour market adjustment. In other words, a weak housing sector will be a drag on employment, and so long as employment growth lags, recovery is in doubt.

by Dan Lashof

Larry Summers,
the Director of the National Economic Council, used his luncheon speech at
today’s Energy Information Administration Annual Energy Outlook Conference to lay out a compelling case for comprehensive energy and climate legislation.
The text of his remarks should be posted on the conference website soon and
will be worth a read as he positioned his points about energy and climate in
the context of an expansive overview of the economic crisis and the Obama
administration’s strategy to get the U.S. economy back on track.

In the meantime, here is an outline of the five key points
he made about the economic importance of enacting comprehensive climate and
energy legislation:

Enacting legislation will create demand and jobs
in the short term, when the economy has idle labor and other economic resources
that can be put to work building the foundation of a clean energy economy.

Enacting legislation will reduce uncertainty and
increase confidence, spurring greater private sector investment.

Enacting legislation will result in a more
efficient policy framework by cutting subsidies for dirty fossil fuels and
increasing reliance on a market-based system to reduce emissions.

Enacting legislation will spur innovation, which
is the key to our long-term prosperity.

Enacting legislation will strengthen America’s
international competitive position by reducing our dependence on oil from
unstable parts of the world and making the United States a leader in the
technologies that will drive growth in the 21st Century.

Press
coverage that I have seen predictably focuses on Summers’ response to a
question about the political priority President Obama places on passing energy
and climate legislation this year. His response, “Going forward for the rest of
this year a bipartisan energy solution is an absolutely crucial priority for
the president,” was certainly a tasty dessert, but the highly substantive
main course should not be neglected.

Related Links:

Coalition of 22 Democratic senators urges floor vote on climate bill this year

The inevitable ‘What Does Health Care Reform Mean for Climate Legislation’ post

Is it a problem that more industry groups are meeting with key regulatory officials than enviros?

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said (.pdf) today that the creation of subprime mortgages didn’t cause the financial crisis — the secondary market demand for these subprime mortgages drove the bubble that was to blame. He made these comments during a Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) hearing. Some blame Greenspan’s easy monetary policy for beginning to inflate the housing bubble. His testimony makes clear that he sees the cause elsewhere.

There’s a strong argument that the mere creation of subprime mortgage couldn’t have inflated a housing bubble: such loan products had been around for many years. Why hadn’t their origination been as great in the past as it was over the last decade? There was a demand shift. Secondary market purchases of subprime mortgages, including bonds resulting from securitization, became much more popular over that period. With ample funding for these risky mortgages, more were created and the subprime mortgage bubble began growing.

Greenspan sees Fannie and Freddie as a driving force. He says:

The firms purchased an estimated 40% of all private-label subprime mortgage securities (almost all adjustable rate), newly purchased, and retained on investors’ balance sheets during 2003 and 2004. That was an estimated five times their share of newly purchased and retained in 2002, implying that a significant proportion of the increased demand for subprime mortgage backed securities during the years 2003-2004 was effectively politically mandated, and hence driven by highly inelastic demand.

Those are pretty compelling facts. The GSEs comfort with those loans likely also drove investors to purchase more of these securitized subprime mortgages on their own as well. Of course, rating agencies made matters worse by slapping AAA-ratings on many of the resulting bonds. Everyone began believing the same fallacy that home prices couldn’t decline, so investor due diligence was inadequate to properly identify the risk inherent in these loans.

Phil Angelides, the FCIC Chairman, however, wasn’t buying Greenspan’s argument. He demanded to know why the Federal Reserve didn’t act to create rules prohibiting abusive subprime mortgage products. Greenspan responded with an explanation that the Fed began worrying about subprime mortgages as early as 1998, and began providing guidance shortly thereafter (documented in the appendix of his prepared testimony – .pdf). But Angelides didn’t think guidance was enough, and pressed that the Fed should have created stricter rules to prevent some of the practices that resulted.

Why didn’t Greenspan engage in stronger regulation? Subprime mortgage products had been around for decades on a small scale and never posed a problem. They only became dangerous when underwriting standards declined and funding for them became too cheap, driven by the demand for their purchase by the GSEs and investors. Greenspan says that the Fed was not aware of the extent of the GSEs subprime mortgage exposure until September 2009 — far too late.

In the retrospect, it’s easy to say that the Fed should have acted to limit the growth of subprime mortgages. At the time, however, no one realized the massive problem they would eventually pose, particularly since they never had been much of an issue before. And even if these mortgages did go bad, the Fed believed any resulting losses would just fall on banks and mortgage companies, with little impact on the broader economy. That shows the more important lack in foresight on the part of the Fed: its failure to see how interconnected all facets of finance had become.

Poll shows vets back energy bill; cite national security

A compelling new poll of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans finds that 73 percent of them support Clean Energy Climate Change legislation in Congress, 79 percent believe ending our dependence on foreign oil is important to national security, and 67 percent support the argument that such legislation will help their own economic prospects.

The poll was conducted by Lake Research Group for VoteVets.org In February, and is made up of 45 percent self-identified Republicans, 25 percent Independents, and 20 percent Democrats.  The full memo detailing the results is below.

“This poll confirms what we always knew was true – veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan know, first-hand, the destructive effect our dependence on oil has on our national security, and on the battlefield,” said Jon Soltz, Iraq War Veteran and Chairman of VoteVets.org.  “They are well aware of arguments made in favor and against bi-partisan clean energy and climate change legislation, and firmly fall into the group of Americans supportive of passing that comprehensive legislation.  Veterans of the wars we’re fighting want legislation passed now.”

Indeed, an overwhelming majority of veterans said that they supported the view that our national security was adversely affected by our dependence on foreign oil – by a 79-14 percent margin.

Yet, veterans do not believe that the answer is just more drilling.  When asked the question, “Do you favor or oppose a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill that invests in clean, renewable energy sources in America and limits carbon pollution in the atmosphere?” Seventy-three percent of veterans supported the bill, while only 22 percent opposed.

VoteVets.org also announced today that it is running new television and internet ads, nationally, and in Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and North Dakota supporting energy reform policies as a matter of security.  The ads are co-sponsored with Operation Free.

The ad can be viewed here: www.billiondollarsaday.com

The ad features Iraq War and US Army Veteran Christopher Miller, who earned a Purple Heart as the result of an explosion from an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). Miller then highlights the destructive potential of a newer and more powerful explosive device, the Explosively Formed Projectile (EFP), which was brought to Iraq from Iran and then used against our troops.  Photos and news clips show the deadly capability of the weapon.

Miller notes that every time the price of a barrel of oil increases $1, Iran makes another $1.5 billion, enhancing their ability to create weapons to be used against our troops. The world oil market depends greatly upon Iranian supply and the United States, as the top consumer of oil in the world, significantly drives up oil prices.

The ad concludes by telling our leaders, “It’s time stand up for America’s Security.”

VoteVets.org is a pro-military organization of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, dedicated to the destruction of terror networks around the world, with force when necessary.  It primarily focuses on education and advocacy on issues of importance to the troops and veterans, and holding politicians accountable for their actions on these issues.

• Read the poll memo on Climate Change here
• View the poll on Climate Change here

European satellite to watch ice for climate change

Scientists’ hope of pinning down more precisely the effects of global warming on the globe’s ice packs are riding with a satellite that the European Space Agency will launch this week.

The CryoSat 2 mission is to start Thursday. It is designed to pinpoint details of changes in polar ice and help fill in gaps in an alarming picture of retreating ice caps. Though most scientists agree global warming drastically affects the Earth’s ice shields, many also say too little is known with certainty.

CryoSat 2 will use radar technology from 720 kilometers (447 miles) above Earth’s surface to measure the thickness of land and floating ice and pinpoint changes to within 1 centimeter (0.4 inch).

“Adaptation requires a large population. Otherwise they’ll go extinct,” he said.

Nevada tree plantation to help fight deforestation

An international forestry company embarking on a global effort to accumulate carbon credits while slowing deforestation has picked an unlikely site for the first of up to 100,000 acres of tree plantations it intends to grow on U.S. soil in the coming years.

ECO2 Forests Inc. announced plans Tuesday to plant up to 3 million trees over the next seven years at irrigated tree farms in northern Nevada’s high desert covering a total of up to 21 square miles north of Reno, an area about the size of the island of Bermuda.

The Sacramento, Calif.-based company, in conjunction with land owners collectively named Jaksick Entities, has acquired the water rights needed to launch the first of seven, 2,000-acre plantations in May to grow kiri trees.

The kiri (pronounced kih-REE’) is a fast growing, broad-leafed hardwood that is native to China and naturally regenerates from the stump after harvest, EC02 Forests officials said.

It grows up to 20 feet the first year, up to 80 feet tall and 20 inches thick by the end of the seven-year harvesting cycle and captures as much or more carbon than any other tree currently known, said Collie Christensen, ECO2 Forests’ chief executive officer.

He projects annual revenue of $225 million at the Nevada site: $12 million in carbon credit sales and $213 million in sales of sustainable lumber.

“By growing our sustainable forests we can help stop the logging of forests that have existed for hundreds of years and enjoyed by thousands of families every year,” Christensen said.

“Due to the specific regenerative nature of the kiri tree being planted and its ability to regrow from the stump after each harvest, the project should endure for approximately 50 years and then can be extended again by replanting,” he said.

What Is Geoengineering and Why Is It Considered a Climate Change Solution?

When a report on climate change hit the U.S. president’s desk, the suggestion was not to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, scientific advisors counseled intervention via technology in the climate system itself—a practice now known as geoengineering. And the president was not Barack Obama, George W. Bush or even Bill Clinton—it was Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

“This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through…a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels,” President Johnson told Congress in February of that year. To address the problem, his science advisors suggested spreading reflective particles over 13 million square kilometers of ocean in order to reflect an extra 1 percent of sunlight away from Earth.

Today, with climate change accelerating and little being done to curb the greenhouse gas emissions, some scientists have resurrected the idea of “deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment,” as the U.K.’s Royal Society puts it. After all, it’s an idea nearly as old as the understanding of the physical principles behind global warming itself. Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius thought that global warming would be a boon to humanity and therefore fossil fuel burning should be encouraged, after calculating by hand the likely temperature impact of continued coal-burning and rising carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the late 19th century—roughly matching the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and their computer models more than a century later.

That’s why 175 scientists and other interested folks (including companies looking to profit from geoengineering) gathered in the Asilomar conference center near the end of March to try to repeat the success of molecular biologists who gathered there in 1975 to reassure a skeptical public about genetic engineering. Ultimately, the gathered would-be geoengineersreleased a statement calling for, among other things, “further research in all relevant disciplines to better understand and communicate whether additional strategies to moderate future climate change are, or are not, viable, appropriate and ethical.”

The list of unintended consequences of human manipulation of natural systems is long: concrete jungles creating urban heat islands, vast oceanic dead zones resulting from fertilizer use on inland agricultural fields, and intentionally introduced species, such as the cane toad in Australia, that then wreak havoc on ecosystems, among others. Whether the idea is to mimic a volcano’s cooling impact on climate by continuously pumping sulfates into the stratosphere or to brighten clouds via crewless ships spewing water vapor, possible problems range from shutting down rainfall in certain regions to unilateral declarations of war.

As the Royal Society noted in its 2009 report on geoengineering: “The safest and most predictable method of moderating climate change is to take early and effective action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. No geoengineering method can provide an easy or readily acceptable alternative solution to the problem of climate change.”

Study Says U.S. Waterways Are Warming

Many streams and rivers in the United States are getting warmer, with the greatest increases in urbanized areas, according to research to be publishedin an upcoming edition of the journal Frontiers of the Ecology and the Environment.

Twenty major streams and rivers, including the Colorado, Potomac, Delaware and Hudson Rivers, are warming at statistically significant rates, the study found.

Increases in water temperature were often directly correlated to increases in air temperature and high levels of urbanization, said Sujay Kaushal, the paper’s lead author and a professor at University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science.

“We found the most rapid rates of increase in urban areas — this may be related to ‘urban heat island effects,’ from buildings, parking lots and pavements,” he said.

The researchers compiled all the historical data they could find, which in some cases included 50 to 90 years of water measurements. The vast majority of data was from the last 10 years. They found that the annual mean water temperature increase is between 0.02 to 0.14 degrees per year.

Midsize Energy Companies Focus on North Sea

Midsize independent energy companies are looking to boost their investments in the North Sea by taking advantage of areas put up for sale by international oil companies, even as overall oil and gas output in the region is expected to keep falling.

Production from U.K. waters fell 5.1% to just over 1.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2009, including a 14.3% fall in natural gas production to its lowest level since 1993, according to the U.K.’s Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Rahall to probe ‘inadequacies’ in law and enforcement after mining tragedy

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) on Tuesday pledged to “look for inadequacies in the law and enforcement practices” following the West Virginia mining accident that killed 25 workers.

Massey Energy Co.’s Upper Big Branch Mine, site of the explosion Monday, is in Rahall’s district. Rahall, noting West Virginia is in mourning, vowed to review health and safety violations at the mine to see whether laws were “circumvented.”

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) has dispatched two committee investigators to the scene, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Massey Energy has litany of critics, violations

Massey Energy, owner of the coal mine where at least 25 miners died this week, and its outspoken chief executive, Don Blankenship, have long been lightning rods for critics of the coal industry.

And although the company says that its safety record is better than the industry average, Massey has frequently been cited for safety violations, including about 50 citations at the Upper Big Branch mine in March alone. Many of those 50 citations were for poor ventilation of dust and methane, failure to maintain proper escape ways, and the accumulation of combustible materials.

The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration cited the mine for 1,342 safety violations from 2005 through Monday for a total of $1.89 million in proposed fines, according to federal records. The company has contested 422 of those violations, totaling $742,830 in proposed penalties, according to federal officials.

Blankenship has called congressional Democrats seeking climate change legislation “greeniacs” and “all crazy.” He’s said, “I don’t believe that climate change is real,” and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) “don’t know what they’re talking about.” And in a video promoting a Labor Day music and political event last year, he said, “We’re going to have Hank Williams and a very good time, but we’re also going to learn how environmental extremists and corporate America are both trying to destroy your job.”

He has also thrown his weight around West Virginia, shelling out more than $3 million of his own money for ads to help defeat a West Virginia state Supreme Court justice. Blankenship expected the justice to rule against Massey in an appeal of a $50 million award for a small coal company owner, who convinced a jury that Massey had driven his company into bankruptcy. The new judge cast the deciding vote against the $50 million award. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that the new judge should have recused himself.

EPA rules on smokestack greenhouse gases out soon

The Environmental Protection Agency will soon issue rules that will determine which power plants and factories will face greenhouse gas regulations, an agency official said on Tuesday.

The measure, known as the “tailoring rule,” will set emissions thresholds for the big emitters of gases blamed for warming the planet, such as coal-fired power plants and plants that make cement and glass.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said earlier this year that only plants that emit 75,000 tonnes per year or more of carbon dioxide are likely to be regulated under the rule in the next two years. The EPA wants to limit U.S. Clean Air Act regulations, or “tailor” them, so they apply only to larger polluters to avoid overwhelming federal and state agencies with paperwork.

“We’re expecting that rule to be done very shortly, hopefully by the end of the month,” said Gina McCarthy, an assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, told a conference.

Regulated plants would be required to hold permits demonstrating that they are using the latest technology to pare back emissions. They could also face other future EPA greenhouse gas regulations if Congress fails to pass a climate bill.

The Obama administration has long said it prefers that Congress pass legislation to limit greenhouse gases.

But with climate legislation stalled in Congress, the EPA has begun to issue rules that are expected to help cut emissions — which has angered some U.S. lawmakers and industry.

The 75,000 tonne threshold could lead to a rash of lawsuits against the EPA as it pits big power plants against small ones, said Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners.

Companies such as Calpine Corp, Southern, Dynegy Inc may benefit because they have “peaker” power plants that only run during times of heavy demand. The plants rake in profits during high times of high power demand but they may escape regulations because their annual emissions are small.

But any company that owns huge power plants that are on most of the time, including the above ones, could face additional costs that small plants would avoid, Book said.

Nonprofit Group Will Prod Companies to Report Their Water Use

The Carbon Disclosure Project, an investor-backed nonprofit organization that has persuaded some of the world’s largest corporations to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, will announce on Wednesday that it is asking 302 global companies to begin issuing detailed reports on their water use.

The move begins a campaign to put water consumption on par with carbon emissions as a concern of company shareholders. Scientists predict climate change will aggravate worldwide water shortages in the coming decades.

“For investors, it’s a material issue,” Marcus Norton, head of the new project, called C.D.P. Water Disclosure, said in an interview by phone from London. “It matters because long-term investors in particular see that water scarcity is going to impact companies’ operations and supply chains.”

Companies increasingly are running into water-related obstacles. Last week, New York State denied a permit forEntergy’s Indian Point nuclear power plant because of its enormous consumption of cooling water.

A few days earlier, the Environmental Protection Agencyissued new water quality rules that could limit mining company operations. And in California, regulators recently pressured the utility giant FPL Group to use more water-efficient technology in a solar power plant project while denying access to water supplies to other developers.

Norges Bank Investment Management in Oslo has identified 1,100 companies in its portfolio facing water risks, according to Anne Kvam, global head of ownership strategies for the bank, which manages $441 billion.

“As investors, we need to know if companies are in industry sectors or regions where water supplies are scarce and how they are managing those supplies,” Ms. Kvam said. “It’s a challenging thing to get good information about water management.”

The Carbon Disclosure Project has sent an 11-page questionnaire on behalf of 137 international financial institutions to major corporations involved in water-intensive industries, like auto manufacturing, electric utilities, food and beverages, mining, oil and gas production, and pharmaceuticals.

Among other questions, the survey asks companies to identify the percentage of their operations in the world’s water-stressed areas and the portion of their water use that comes from those regions. The project also wants corporations to detail their water use, recycling and discharges into or near wildlife habitats as well as list water-related risks and opportunities and the policies or strategies they have put in place.

“Please describe any detrimental impacts to business related to water your company has faced in the past five years, their financial impacts and whether they have resulted in any changes to company practices,” states one question.

Wind energy needs uniform laws, group says

Congress should make renewable energy standards uniform and give federal regulators the power to oversee the building of a multistate transmission line eastward from Iowa and the Upper Midwest, the head of the nation’s largest wind energy group said Tuesday.

“We can’t have all the state regulators saying grace over what should be a federal policy,” said Denise Bode, executive director of the American Wind Energy Association, at a wind conference Tuesday in Ames sponsored by the Iowa Alliance for Wind Innovation.

She said that traditionally, states have had the right to oversee transmission networks within their borders through their utility regulators.

Electricity transmission grids seldom cross state lines, except in sparsely settled states west of the Rocky Mountains and parts of New England.

“But we need an upgrade of the transmission system along the lines of the interstate highway system,” Bode said. “Our transmission system now in use was built mostly in the 1940s and is just a blackout waiting to happen.”

Iowa, the Dakotas and Minnesota are promoting a transmission line that would carry the surplus of wind-generated electricity from the Great Plains to Chicago and points east.

“We stand ready to be a net exporter of energy,” Gov. Chet Culver told the conference.

Iowa is second nationally in wind electricity generating capacity, with 2,300 megawatts. An additional 1,000 megawatts has been approved by the Iowa Utilities Board.

Culver and other Iowa wind boosters envision Iowa reaping the benefit of sales of surplus electricity in a manner similar to the benefits long enjoyed by oil- and gas-rich states.

But governors and utility executives along the Atlantic seaboard resist being asked to pay for such a line. Officials in many Atlantic states want to tap the potential of offshore wind near the Atlantic coast, rather than buying electricity from the Midwest.

Migratory Birds’ New Climate Change Strategy: Stay Home

Birds may have an unexpected strategy for adapting to climate change. In addition to migrating at different times to newly hospitable locales, they may also shorten their migrations, expending energy on breeding and eating rather than flying.

“There’s lots of data on bird arrival and bird breeding times, and that gives the impression that these are the most important phenomena,” said zoologist Francisco Pulido of the Complutense University of Madrid. The basic impulse to migrate is likely just as important, “but it’s been much more difficult to show, and so it hasn’t been appreciated,” he said.

Pulido and Max Planck Institute ornithologist Peter Berthold describe patterns found in 13 years of data from a southern German population of blackcaps, a common migratory songbird, in a study published April 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As temperatures in central Europe have risen, blackcaps have arrived earlier at summertime breeding areas and departed later for their winter homes. Some researchers have predicted blackcaps would also migrate over ever-shorter distances, and in some cases stop altogether, allowing them to save energy and concentrate on finding food and mates. But this hadn’t been tested.

To gauge the birds’ migratory energies, Pulido and Berthold removed a few hundred blackcaps from the local population each summer. As captive birds are restless during the time they would typically be migrating, the researchers used them to measure the duration of wild migrations. These dropped slowly but steadily between 1988 and 2001, in keeping with predictions.

(Most of the captured birds were released at the end of each season, eventually catching up to their compatriots.)

In a second part of the study, Pulido and Berthold bred the most sedentary blackcaps. They wanted to accelerate the natural trend, seeing in a few years what would normally take decades. From this, they extrapolated that some blackcap populations could stop migrating altogether within 40 to 50 years. Other birds may do the same.

The next step in the research is connecting changes in migratory impulse to other adapations. Pulido speculates that shorter distances facilitate earlier arrivals, which in turn alter patterns of reproductive development.

However, shorter distances may only be an option for some species. Blackcap migration spans a relatively modest 1,000 miles, and sometimes less. For birds that travel thousands of miles, with no hospitable territory between their destinations, there may be no middle ground.