Tuesday, November 29, 2011

UN conference to deal with carbon reductions

People walk below power pylons at Hartebeespoort, South Africa, Friday Nov. 25, 2011. Eskom is Africa's biggest power utility, accounting for more than 60 percent of all the electricity generated on the continent, according to the World Bank. It also exports across southern Africa. Critics and even supporters say Eskom should have started its move toward renewable sources of energy earlier, and now needs to set its ambitions higher. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

People walk below power pylons at Hartebeespoort, South Africa, Friday Nov. 25, 2011. Eskom is Africa's biggest power utility, accounting for more than 60 percent of all the electricity generated on the continent, according to the World Bank. It also exports across southern Africa. Critics and even supporters say Eskom should have started its move toward renewable sources of energy earlier, and now needs to set its ambitions higher. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

DURBAN, South Africa (AP) ? The U.N.'s top climate official said she expects governments to make a long-delayed decision on whether industrial countries should make further commitments to reduce emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases.

Amid fresh warnings of climate-related disasters in the future, delegates from about 190 countries were gathering in Durban for a two-week conference beginning Monday. They hope to break deadlocks on how to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.

Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. climate secretariat, said Sunday the stakes for the negotiations are high, underscored by new scientific studies.

Under discussion was "nothing short of the most compelling energy, industrial, behavioral revolution that humanity has ever seen," she said.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a hero of the movement that ended apartheid in South Africa, led a rally at a rugby stadium later Sunday urging negotiators to be more ambitious during what were expected to be difficult talks. Unseasonably cold, windy weather kept the crowd to a few hundred spectators.

Tutu, dressed in ecumenical purple robes, he said the struggle to end the racist regime in his homeland is now followed by a fight against "another huge enemy, and no country can fight this particular enemy on its own."

He chided countries that have been reluctant to renew pledges to cut carbon emissions. Whether rich or poor, "we have only one home. This is the only home we have," he said. "For your own sakes, you who are rich, we are inviting you: Come on the side of right."

In Rome, Pope Benedict XVI ? sometimes called the "green pope" for his outspokenness on environmental issues ? also called for the delegates in Durban to heed the needs of the world's poor.

"I hope that all members of the international community agree on a responsible and credible response to this worrisome and complex phenomenon, taking into account the needs of the poorest and future generations," he said during his traditional Sunday blessing from his studio overlooking St. Peter's Square.

Hopes were scrapped for an overall treaty governing global carbon emissions after the collapse of talks at a climate summit in Copenhagen two years ago. The "big bang" approach has been replaced by incremental efforts to build new institutions to help shift the global economy from carbon-intensive energy generation, industries and transportation to more climate-friendly technologies.

But an underlying division between rich and poor countries on the future of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol has stymied the negotiators.

Figueres said she hoped for a decision on extending emission reduction commitments under the Kyoto accord, which has been postponed for two years. Previous commitments expire next year.

"It's a tall order for governments to face this," but they show no interest in yet another delay, she said.

High on the conference agenda is the management of a fund scaling up over the next eight years to $100 billion annually to help poor countries cope with changing climate conditions.

Questions remain how the money will be governed and distributed, but more immediately, how those funds can be generated from new sources beyond established development channels from the West.

Ideas on the table include a carbon surcharge on international shipping and on air tickets, and a levy on international financial transactions ? sometimes called a Robin Hood tax.

A committee of 40 countries worked for the past year on drawing up a plan to administer the Green Climate Fund, but agreement on the final paper was blocked by the United States and Saudi Arabia, and the final contentious issues will have to be thrashed out in Durban.

Todd Stern, the chief U.S. delegate, said the negotiations had been too rushed.

"I am pretty confident that we're going to be able to work these things out," he told reporters last week, without naming the problematic issues.

But Figueres said the future of the Kyoto accord, which calls on 37 wealthy nations to reduce carbon emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels by the end of next year, is the most difficult political issue that nations face.

"If it were easy we would have done it years ago," she said.

Poor countries want the industrial nations to commit to more cuts for a second period, saying the protocol is the only legal instrument ever adopted to control carbon and other gases that trap the Earth's heat.

But the wealthy countries, with growing consensus, say they cannot carry the burden alone, and want rapidly developing countries like China, India, Brazil and South Africa to join their own legally binding regime to slow their emissions growth and move toward low-carbon economies.

"We need to protect the Kyoto Protocol as the bedrock of the global climate regime," Tim Gore, the climate strategist for the aid agency Oxfam International, told The Associated Press.

In the weeks preceding the conference delegates have been bombarded by new research and scientific reports predicting grim consequences for failing to act.

The U.N. weather agency reported last week that greenhouse gases have reached record-level concentrations in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial era in 1750. New figures for 2010 from the World Meteorological Organization show that carbon dioxide levels are now at 389 parts per million, up from about 280 ppm 250 years ago.

This week the weather agency is due to report on global temperatures for 2011, which are expected to show a continuing long-term trend of global warming. The Geneva-based agency said last year that 2010 was the hottest year in the books.

Oxfam released a report Monday showing that extreme weather events, which scientists say are related to global warming, are driving up food prices and putting an impossible burden on people living on the margins.

In the last 18 months, Russia lost 13.3 million acres of crops, or about 17 percent of its production, due to a months-long heat wave. Drought in the Horn of Africa has killed 60 percent of Ethiopia's cattle and 40 percent of its sheep. Floods in September have raised the price of rice by 25 percent in Thailand and 30 percent in Vietnam, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

The Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said "unprecedented extreme weather" caused by global warming will become increasingly frequent and make some places unlivable.

___

Nicole Winfield contributed to this report from Rome.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-11-27-AF-Climate-Conference/id-60bf3df16f99471a9884e6096d8d8841

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Monday, November 28, 2011

Obama turning to Biden for help in 3 key states

The Associated Press
By Julie Pace?

A year from Election Day, Democrats are crafting a campaign strategy for Vice President Joe Biden that targets the big three political battlegrounds: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, states where Biden might be more of an asset to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign than the president himself.

The Biden plan underscores an uncomfortable reality for the Obama team. A shaky economy and sagging enthusiasm among Democrats could shrink the electoral map for Obama in 2012, forcing his campaign to depend on carrying the 67 electoral votes up for grabs in the three swing states.

Obama won all three states in 2008. But this time he faces challenges in each, particularly in Ohio and Florida, where voters elected Republican governors in the 2010 midterm elections.

The president sometimes struggles to connect with Ohio and Pennsylvania's white working-class voters, and with Jewish voters who make up a core constituency for Florida Democrats and view him with skepticism.

Biden has built deep ties to both groups during his four decades in national politics, connections that could make a difference.

As a long-serving member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden cemented his reputation as an unyielding supporter of Israel, winning the respect of many in the Jewish community. And Biden's upbringing in a working class, Catholic family from Scranton, Pa., gives him a valuable political intangible: He empathizes with the struggles of blue-collar Americans because his family lived those struggles.

"Talking to blue-collar voters is perhaps his greatest attribute," said Dan Schnur, a Republican political analyst. "Obama provides the speeches, and Biden provides the blue-collar subtitles."

While Biden's campaign travel won't kick into high gear until next year, he's already been making stops in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida this fall, speaking at events focused on education, public safety and small businesses and raising campaign cash. Behind the scenes, he's working the phones with prominent Jewish groups and Catholic organizations in those states, a Democratic official said.

Biden is also targeting organized labor, speaking frequently with union leaders in Ohio ahead of a vote earlier this month on a state law that would have curbed collective bargaining rights for public workers. After voters struck down the measure, Biden traveled to Cleveland to celebrate the victory with union members.

The Democratic official said the vice president will also be a frequent visitor to Iowa and New Hampshire in the coming weeks, seeking to steal some of the spotlight from the Republican presidential candidates blanketing those states ahead of the January caucus and primary.

And while Obama may have declared that he won't be commenting on the Republican presidential field until there's a nominee, Biden is following no such rules. He's calling out GOP candidates by name, and in true Biden style, he appears to be relishing in doing so.

During a speech last month to the Florida Democratic Convention, Biden singled out "Romney and Rick", criticizing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for saying the government should let the foreclosure crisis hit rock bottom, and hammering Texas Gov. Rick Perry's assertion that he would send U.S. troops into Mexico.

And he took on the full GOP field during an October fundraiser in New Hampshire, saying "There is no fundamental difference among all the Republican candidates."

Democratic officials said Biden will follow in the long-standing tradition of vice presidents playing the role of attack dog, allowing Obama to stay out of the fray and appear more focused on governing than campaigning.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal strategy. The Obama campaign has been reluctant to publically define Biden's role in the re-election bid this early in the run, though campaign manager Jim Messina did say the vice president would deliver an economic message to appeal for support.

"You'll see him in communities across the country next year laying out the choice we face: restoring economic security for the middle class or returning to the same policies that led to our economic challenges," Messina said.

Democrats say Biden will campaign for House candidates in swing states as the party tries to recapture some of the seats in Congress lost during the 2010 midterms.

And here again, the vice president's efforts in politically crucial Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida could be most important. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting 12 districts in those states that Obama and Biden carried in the 2008 presidential race but are represented by Republican representatives.

New York Rep. Steve Israel, who chairs the committee, said he believes Biden could be a "game-changer" in those districts.

"All he has to do is ask voters, has the Republican strategy of no worked for you?" Israel said.

Israel met with Obama and Biden at the White House earlier this month to discuss, among other things, their role in congressional campaigns. While Israel said he hopes Obama will actively campaign for Democratic House candidates, he said "the vice president has already volunteered."

Source: http://nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/26/9035894-obama-turning-to-biden-for-help-in-3-key-states

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Mars or Bust: NASA Launches Mars Science Laboratory

UPDATE, Nov. 26: NASA successfully launched the Mars Science Laboratory this morning, beginning the new rover's long journey to the Red Planet.

After a planned launch on Nov. 26, 2011, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), aka Curiosity, will reach Mars in August, the third Red Planet landing since the rovers Spirit and Opportunity touched down in 2004. Those machines were impressive, but they stand in the large shadow of Curiosity, which?at 10 feet long and 1984 pounds?is twice as long and five times as heavy as its predecessors. "The thing about MSL is how much bigger it is," Diana Blaney, a mission co-investigator, says. "The instruments are much more complex, plus we're on a mobile platform."

Curiosity picks up where the 2008 Mars Phoenix Lander left off; that mission proved the existence of water on Mars and discovered perchlorate, a potential food source for microbes. Curiosity hopes to show there's organic material on Mars, a requirement for habitability. "If you have sources of food and water and organic material, you could say, you have the building blocks of life," Curiosity co-investigator Nilton Renno says.

The Power Source


Engineers hope Curiosity will rove for at least two years, relying on a unique power source. NASA is forgoing solar panels of the past, and instead packing the rover with nuclear-powered batteries called Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs). Drawing energy from the natural decay of plutonium-238, RTGs produce almost five times more power than solar panels on previous rovers. They also perform well in conditions that are dusty or without sunlight.

The SAM


Among its other functions, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite features a remote-sensing device capable of targeting pinhead areas on rock formations from up to seven meters away. ChemCam, as it is known, can then shoot a laser beam at the rock and analyze the vaporized material using a light-reading spectrograph. "It has the potential to really study chemical evolution at a different scale than before," co-investigator Blaney says. "We'll be able to map composition at a fine scale." The SAM suite consists of three instruments. The aforementioned tunable laser beam, a Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (QMS), and a Gas Chromatograph (GC). This scientific trinity will work to analyze samples on the surface, inside Martian boulders and below ground, searching for the organic building blocks of life.

Wheels and Actuators


At 20-inches in diameter, Curiosity's wheels are larger than those of an average car?and twice the size of those on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. To maneuvering over rough Martian landscape, each wheel features high-traction cleats and a dedicated motor. The front and rear wheels actually have two motors apiece, enabling independent steering. All of this makes for impressive handling: Curiosity can turn 360 degrees in place. But its impressive mobility came at a price. A snafu in the development and testing of the actuator motors caused a two-year launch delay, and added $560 million to the cost of building and deploying the rover.

The Landing System


Unlike its smaller roving cousins, which used airbags to cushion their entry on Mars, MSL is far too large and heavy (nearly a ton) to bounce to safety on Mars. Engineers devised a unique, only-in-the-dreams-of-a-NASA-engineer, precision system based on a rocket-powered backpack called Sky Crane. In the initial stages of descent, a parachute 165 feet in diameter deploys. The parachute jettisons, and rockets kick in, providing upward thrust to further slow the rover's descent. Radar detects the landing surface and orients the crane upright. Hovering with the aid of the rocket streams, the crane lowers the rover to the surface on cables, then releases Curiosity to begin its amazing mission.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/moon-mars/nasa-launches-mars-science-laboratory-curiosity-6595259?src=rss

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