Science and Technology

June 18, 2008

McCain ad puts distance with Bush on environment

TITLE: "Global"

LENGTH: 30 seconds

AIRING: National cable and broadcast markets in Colorado, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Iowa.

SCRIPT: Announcer: "John McCain stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming, five years ago. Today, he has a realistic plan that will curb greenhouse gas emissions. A plan that will help grow our economy and protect our environment. Reform. Prosperity. Peace. John McCain." McCain: "I'm John McCain and I approve this message."

KEY IMAGES: Jarring music and a quick black and white succession of video images - heavy traffic, smokestacks belching smoke, glaciers collapsing into the ocean, capped by a color clip of the sun setting. McCain then appears on screen behind a microphone above a superimposed newspaper headline: "McCain climate views clash with GOP." The music softens amid images of windmills, water turbines and solar panels. The ad concludes with McCain outdoors, pines and mountains behind him as a breeze ruffles his untucked shirt.

ANALYSIS: The ad is built on a foundation of five central words: " ... stood up to the president." Democrats have been trying to portray the Republican presidential candidate as an extension of President Bush. McCain and the Bush administration have clashed over how to control greenhouse emissions. And with McCain embracing Bush's current policies on the Iraq war and tax cuts, the issue of climate change gives him a chance to distance himself from the unpopular president. McCain has favored a plan that would see greenhouse gas emissions cut by 60 percent by 2050 and supports more nuclear power.

But the ad aired a day after McCain's announcement Monday that, like Bush, he favors lifting the federal moratorium on offshore drilling. The announcement, a reversal from his position in his first presidential campaign in 2000, when he said he favored the ban, upset environmental groups.

McCain also had indicated he was open to a windfall profits tax on the oil industry, but on Tuesday criticized Democratic rival Barack Obama for demanding the same thing. The Democratic National Committee criticized McCain's environmental record, noting his policy changes and some votes against tax credits for alternate energy sources.

This is the second ad in McCain's expanded general election media campaign. The first described his family's tradition of military service and his more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. If there is a narrative in the ads it is to establish his biography as a war hero and independent politician.

McCain currently has the airwaves to himself. Obama has yet to begin broadcasting his general election themes. McCain is spending at least $2 million a week on the ads, a modest expenditure that focuses on key battleground states.

McCain often has said he aspires to be as great a conservationist as his role model and fellow Republican, Theodore Roosevelt. While the ad sought to assure independent and environmentally conscious voters, global warming also stands as an important issue with the evangelical and Christian conservative voters McCain is trying to court.

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Analysis by Jim Kuhnhenn

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Analysis by Jim Kuhnhenn | Wednesday, June 18, 2008

 

May 13, 2008

Women 'should have abortion on demand'

Women will be able to terminate their pregnancy without having to obtain the signatures of two doctors in an overhaul of abortion laws. Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, told MPs on Monday he would seek to make it easier for women to have an abortion at an early stage, while lowering the time limit for late procedures.

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Rosa Prince - Daily Telegraph | Tuesday, May 13, 2008

 

Wall Street Journal - McCain's Climate 'Market' is Obama-lite

The latest stop on John McCain's policy tour came at an Oregon wind-turbine manufacturer, where the topic was – what else? – the Senator's plan to address climate change. This is one of those issues where Mr. McCain indulges his "maverick" tendencies, which usually means taking the liberal line. That was the case yesterday, no matter how frequently he claimed his approach was "market based."

In fact, if "the market" is your favored mechanism, Mr. McCain's endorsement of a "cap and trade" system is the worst choice for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The Bush Administration has pursued one option, which combines voluntary measures with subsidies for "clean" alternatives. Since 2001 under this approach, U.S. net carbon emissions have fallen by 3% – that is, by more than all but four countries in cap-and-trade-bound Europe.

At the other end of the market spectrum is a straight carbon tax, which would at least distribute costs more efficiently. It would also force politicians to be honest about – and take responsibility for – the true price of their global-warming posturing.

Then there's cap and trade, which Mr. McCain has backed for years and would, as he put it with some understatement, "change the dynamic of our energy economy." He noted that Americans have a genius for problem-solving but continued, "The federal government can't just summon these talents by command – only the free market can draw them out." To translate: His plan is "market based" insofar as it requires an expensive, invasive government bureaucracy to interfere with the market.

Mr. McCain's proposed targets and policy instruments more or less mesh with the global-warming bill sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner that may come up for debate next month. The McCain plan would aim to return emissions to 2005 levels by 2012, and to 1990 levels by 2020. Barack Obama supports similar reductions.

In theory, this would be achieved by imposing emission ceilings on electric power, transportation fuels, commercial business and industries. If a company produced less carbon than it was allowed under the cap, it could sell -- i.e., trade – its extra allowances to other businesses. Under the McCain plan, permits would be given away to industries, at least initially. Mr. Obama prefers to "auction" the permits, meaning businesses would be taxed at the outset. So Mr. McCain's plan would help mitigate the transition costs of putting "the age of fossil fuels behind us."

The problem is that once government creates an artificial scarcity of carbon, how the credits are allocated creates a huge new venue for political rent-seeking and more subsidies for favored industries. Some businesses will benefit more than others, in proportion to their lobbying influence and how well they're able to game the Beltway. Congress itself will probably take the largest revenue grab, offering itself a few more bites out of the economy and soaking politically unpopular businesses.

Then there's the question of whether any of this will even reduce greenhouse gasses. The McCain plan would allow businesses unlimited use of domestic and international offsets to comply with the carbon cap. So a chemical manufacturer, say, would pay an industry not covered by the program – most notably, agriculture – to reduce its emissions. Or it could pay a coal plant in China for plucking low-hanging efficiency fruit, like installing smokestack scrubbers. In other words, U.S. consumers would be paying higher prices for energy in return for making Chinese industries more efficient and competitive. Europe is in the midst of that experience now under the Kyoto Protocol, and most of its reductions so far have been illusory.

The compliance bookkeeping for this new "market" is vastly complex, and a McCain Administration would create a public-private "Climate Change Credit Corporation" to oversee it all. This new regulatory body is likely to morph over time into an "Energy Fed," similar to the one Warner-Lieberman would create. Such an agency would set the price of energy indirectly by fiddling with carbon levies, which will undoubtedly lead to economy-wide distortions.

Given the distance between Mr. McCain's rhetoric and the policy reality, we wonder if he even knows what he's proposing. This is of a piece with his approach to many domestic issues, where the policy contradictions and cul-de-sacs overwhelm his professed political convictions. The McCain campaign believes his global-warming plan will appeal to independents and young people, as well as separate the Senator from President Bush.

But he will never be green enough for the climate-change fundamentalists. The Obama campaign and Democrats were already dinging Mr. McCain yesterday for half-measures. His concessions won't help him much in November, but they will make his governing decisions in 2009 that much more difficult if by some chance he does win.

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Wall Street Journal | Tuesday, May 13, 2008

 

February 27, 2008

Scientists Predict When World Will End

Scientist have nailed down how and when the Earth will cease to exist.

The sun will slowly expand into a red giant, pushing the Earth farther out into space, but not far enough.

Our home planet will be snagged by the sun's outer atmosphere, gradually plunging to its doom inside the fiery stellar furnace.

"The drag caused by this low-density gas is enough to cause the Earth to drift inwards, and finally to be captured and vaporized by the sun," explains astronomer Robert Smith of the University of Sussex in southern England.

Previous projections had all figured that the Earth would avoid falling into the sun, even during our star's red-giant phase.

The good news: This won't happen for another 7.6 billion years.

The bad news: Life on Earth will end long before then.

That may sound like a long time, but in fact life on Earth's been around a lot longer than that — a total of 3.7 billion years, according to the latest estimates.

For those first three billion years, true, we were nothing but pond scum. Still, the new figures indicate the long story of life on our fair blue-green planet may be entering its last act.

Is there any way our future descendants can save themselves? Why, yes, explains Smith.

He cites a recent study emanating from the University of California, Santa Cruz. It proposes taming an asteroid to swing by the Earth every few thousand years, slowly nudging the Earth into higher solar orbit, enough to outpace the sun's own outward growth.

"This sounds like science fiction," says Smith. "But it seems that the energy requirements are just about possible and the technology could be developed over the next few centuries."

In fact, we've only got a billion years left before the slowly expanding sun boils off the oceans and reduces our planet to an uninhabitable cinder, says Smith.

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Fox News | Wednesday, February 27, 2008

 

January 7, 2008

Bill Gates eyes next "digital decade"

Microsoft Corp chairman Bill Gates took center stage at the world's largest technology show for the last time on Sunday and predicted that his industry was on the cusp of the next "digital decade."

Gates, who plans to switch in July to a more limited role at the company he co-founded in 1975 with childhood friend Paul Allen, said computing will become a pervasive part of everyday life through devices like televisions, mobile telephones.

"Everything will connect up. You'll just take it for granted. No longer will users have to bridge between devices and remember what's where," Gates told the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

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Daisuke Wakabayashi - Reuters | Monday, January 7, 2008

 

December 26, 2007

Online social networking frenzy points to Internet's future

Online social networking websites saw their ranks swell and values soar this year as everyone from moody teenagers and mellow music lovers to mate-seeking seniors joined online communities.

Google's freshly released "Zeitgeist 2007" reveals that seven out of the 10 hottest topics which triggered Internet queries during the year involved social networking.

A Top Ten list compiled by the world's most-used search engine includes British website Badoo, Spanish-language Hi5, and US-based Facebook.

Video-sharing websites YouTube and Dailymotion are on the list, along with the Club Penguin online role playing game where children pretending to be the flightless birds "waddle about and play" together.

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Associated Press | Wednesday, December 26, 2007

 

December 13, 2007

"w00t" crowned word of year by U.S. dictionary

"w00t," an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary.

Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said "w00t" -- typically spelled with two zeros -- reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging.

It's like saying "yay," the dictionary said.

"It could be after a triumph or for no reason at all," Merriam-Webster said.

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Reuters | Thursday, December 13, 2007

 

November 29, 2007

A "cyber cold war" waged over the world's computers threatens to become one of the biggest threats to security in the next decade

A "cyber cold war" waged over the world's computers threatens to become one of the biggest threats to security in the next decade, according to a report published on Thursday.

About 120 countries are developing ways to use the Internet as a weapon to target financial markets, government computer systems and utilities, Internet security company McAfee said in an annual report.

Intelligence agencies already routinely test other states' networks looking for weaknesses and their techniques are growing more sophisticated every year, it said.

Governments must urgently shore up their defenses against industrial espionage and attacks on infrastructure.

"Cybercrime is now a global issue," said Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Avert Labs. "It has evolved significantly and is no longer just a threat to industry and individuals but increasingly to national security."

The report said China is at the forefront of the cyber war. It said China has been blamed for attacks in the United States, India and Germany. China has repeatedly denied such claims.

"The Chinese were first to use cyber-attacks for political and military goals," James Mulvenon, director of the Center for Intelligence and Research in Washington, was quoted as saying in the report.

The report was compiled with input from academics and officials from Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and NATO.

Cyber-attacks on private and government Web sites in Estonia in April and May this year were "just the tip of the iceberg", the report warned.

Estonia said thousands of sites were affected in attacks aimed at crippling infrastructure in a country heavily dependent on the Internet.

The attacks appeared to have stemmed initially from Russia although the Kremlin denied any wrongdoing.

"The complexity and coordination seen was new," the report quoted an unnamed NATO source as saying. "There were a series of attacks with careful timing using different techniques and specific targets."

EU Information Society commissioner Viviane Reding said in June that what happened in Estonia was a wake-up call. NATO said "urgent work" was needed to improve defenses.

The McAfee report predicted that future attacks would be even more sophisticated.

"Attacks have progressed from initial curiosity probes to well-funded and well-organised operations for political, military, economic and technical espionage," it said.

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Reuters | Thursday, November 29, 2007

 

November 22, 2007

Missouri City Outlaws Internet Harassment

City officials unanimously passed a measure Wednesday making online harassment a crime, days after learning that a 13-year-old girl killed herself last year after receiving cruel messages on the Internet.

The six-member Board of Aldermen made Internet harassment a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $500 fine and 90 days in jail. Mayor Pam Fogarty said the city had proposed the measure after learning about Megan Meier's death.

"It is our hope that by supporting one of our own in Dardenne Prairie, we can do our part to ensure this type of harassing behavior never happens again, anywhere," Fogarty said, adding, "after all, harassment is harassment regardless of the mechanism or tool."

Several dozen people broke into applause after the measure was passed.

Authorities have said they could not find a crime to charge anyone with in the case of Meier, who thought she had met a good-looking 16-year-old boy on the social networking site MySpace last year. But he began sending her mean messages and others joined in, her family said, then abruptly ended their friendship.

Megan hanged herself within minutes of receiving the last messages on Oct. 16, 2006, and died the next day.

Megan's parents, Ron and Tina Meier, learned about six weeks after Megan's death that the boy, Josh Evans, was not real. The boy was created by a mother down the street who wanted to know what Megan was saying about her own daughter, who had had a falling out with Megan.

Her father said he found a message from Josh, which he said law enforcement authorities have not been able to retrieve. It told the girl she was a bad person and the world would be better without her, he has said.

The four-page measure defines both harassment and cyber-harassment, essentially making it illegal to engage in a pattern of conduct that would cause a reasonable person to suffer "substantial emotional distress," or for an adult to contact a child under 18 in a communication causing a reasonable parent to fear for the child's well-being.

City attorney John Young said constitutionally protected activity would be exempt. The measure would apply when one of the people communicating was in Dardenne Prairie.

During a break in the meeting, Fogarty embraced Megan's mother with tears in her eyes. She said she was sorry there had not been a law previously in place to prosecute Megan's harassers.

Tina Meier said she was thrilled that the city had passed the new measure.

"This is not a stopping point," she said. "We're not done."

City officials also passed a resolution encouraging state and federal officials to outlaw cyber-harassment and cyber-stalking. A state lawmaker has questioned how state law could be altered without running afoul of First Amendment issues.

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Associated Press | Thursday, November 22, 2007

 

November 21, 2007

Moveon.org Takes on Facebook: The advocacy group says the site's ad system violates users' privacy

Liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org launched a campaign Tuesday on Facebook against Facebook, raising privacy concerns for users of the fast-growing social network. At issue is Facebook's new advertising program that lets its members notify friends about movies they rent, items they auction and movie tickets they buy at partner sites elsewhere on the Web.

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Jessica Guynn - Los Angeles Times | Wednesday, November 21, 2007