Tag: science

Time to show fingerprints on Syria issues
December 7, 2012 0

Time to show fingerprints on Syria issues

By News Desk

From NYTimes : The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats….  The experience in Libya has taken on new urgency as the administration considers whether to play a direct role in arming rebels in Syria, where weapons are flowing in from Qatar and other countries.The Obama administration did not initially raise objections when Qatar began shipping arms to opposition groups in Syria, even if it did not offer encouragement, according to current and former administration officials. But they said the United States has growing concerns that, just as in Libya, the Qataris are equipping some of the wrong militants….   Relying on surrogates allows the United States to keep its fingerprints off operations, but also means they may play out in ways that conflict with American interests ….“….When you have an intermediary, you are going to lose control.†The obvious reaction is either stop getting involved or stop worrying about showing your fingerprints

In Memoriam (1920-2012)
December 5, 2012 0

In Memoriam (1920-2012)

By News Desk

Eli Rabett Eli Rabett Eli Rabett is a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny, a chair election from retirement, at a wanna be research university that has a lot to be proud of but has swallowed the Kool-Aid. The students are naive but great and the administrators vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional. His colleagues are smart, but they have a curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves

A modest carbon tax has modest carbon reduction results
December 4, 2012 0

A modest carbon tax has modest carbon reduction results

By News Desk

A modest carbon tax has modest carbon reduction results Been meaning to highlight Brad Plumer’s post on a paper about the effect of a carbon tax on emissions (full paper here ).  A tax of $20/ton, with an inflation-adjusted 4% annual increase, knocks emissions down 14% by 2020, and a larger number in 2050 if you believe economic projections that far in the future

Back to the Future Once More
November 24, 2012 0

Back to the Future Once More

By News Desk

November 23rd, 2012 at 7:16 pm Steve Fitzpatrick, I don’t believe science claims to have a good grip on all of the factors you describe. More pertinent to the discussion, back in the late 80s and 90s nobody was talking about those factors when temperatures were rising swiftly, alongside emissions. In fact they said that the response was both quick and expected–even expectable

Solution is Sometimes the Solution to Pollution
November 20, 2012 0

Solution is Sometimes the Solution to Pollution

By News Desk

Solution is Sometimes the Solution to Pollution There has been quite a bit of worry about what happens when the methane hydrates on the Arctic shelf go blooie, but a factor not thought of by many is that since these hydrates are underwater, a fair amount of the methane will never reach the surface, but will first go into solution in the sea water, and later be oxidized to CO 2 , hydrogen carbonate and carbonate ions.  The same issue confronts anyone (Ian, Ian Plimer, are you out there), who rants about all of the carbon dioxide coming from underwater volcanoes.  In point of fact, you read it here on Rabett Run, that if such volcanoes really were the source of so much CO2, the easy mark would be to go look for acidic plumes in the ocean.  Plimer’s hound of the Baskervilles as it were, because they are not found.  Biastoch, et al (eleven of them, including Latif, and Wallman at  the University of Kiel, have thought about the fate of the methane hydrates, and in an article entitled "Rising Arctic Ocean temperatures cause gas hydrate destabilization and ocean acidification" conclude that the major effect will be a decrease of pH, near the Arctic Ocean coasts. Since the Arctic has and will be warmed considerably, Arctic bottom water temperatures and their future evolution projected by a climate model were analyzed.

Hot Time, Summer in the City
November 20, 2012 0

Hot Time, Summer in the City

By News Desk

From our German friend, Jörg Zimmermann a reminder that good planning requires good scientists and good politicians:    Global warming is harder and harder to deny.  Plots of global temperature are clearly moving upward.  The Arctic sea ice melt reached a new record low this year, which definitively confirmed what we suspected in 2007, that the Arctic has entered a new climatic regime. Thus, we are now more and more concerned about the impact that global warming will have. One of the most discussed topics this year in Germany was how city dwellers will deal with increasingly common heat waves.  But first I want to tell you a story of a professor, who pasted grains of sand on paper …