Eideard

WRC is the closest of all world class motorsport competition to the genuine road environment, though conditions vary considerably across the 13 race, five continent series from last weekend’s first round in Sweden where blizzards and -28ºC temperatures necessitated tungsten-tipped studded Michelin tyres, through to the gravel and rocks and 40ºC temperatures the cars will encounter a fortnight from now in Mexico.

New “environmentally aware” regulations were introduced this year based around 1600cc turbocharged, 4WD cars, and Ford’s all-new Fiesta RS made a dream debut with a 1-2-3 finish…

RTTFA for all the details – and lots of photos. Most countries show at least delayed coverage of each event. VersusTV is the likely source here in the USA.

Good thing there’s no permafrost in the United States, eh?

Up to two-thirds of Earth’s permafrost likely will disappear by 2200 as a result of warming temperatures, unleashing vast quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, says a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

The carbon resides in permanently frozen ground that is beginning to thaw in high latitudes from warming temperatures, which will impact not only the climate but also international strategies to reduce fossil fuel emissions, said CU-Boulder’s Kevin Schaefer, lead study author. “If we want to hit a target carbon dioxide concentration, then we have to reduce fossil fuel emissions that much lower than previously thought to account for this additional carbon from the permafrost,” he said. “Otherwise we will end up with a warmer Earth than we want.”

The escaping carbon comes from plant material, primarily roots trapped and frozen in soil during the last glacial period that ended roughly 12,000 years ago, he said. Schaefer, a research associate at CU-Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center, an arm of CIRES, likened the mechanism to storing broccoli in a home freezer. “As long as it stays frozen, it stays stable for many years,” he said. “But if you take it out of the freezer it will thaw out and decay.”

While other studies have shown carbon has begun to leak out of permafrost in Alaska and Siberia, the study by Schaefer and his colleagues is the first to make actual estimates of future carbon release from permafrost…

Schaefer and his team ran multiple Arctic simulations assuming different rates of temperature increases to forecast how much carbon may be released globally from permafrost in the next two centuries. They estimate a release of roughly 190 billion tons of carbon, most of it in the next 100 years…

“The amount we expect to be released by permafrost is equivalent to half of the amount of carbon released since the dawn of the Industrial Age,” said Schaefer. The amount of carbon predicted for release between now and 2200 is about one-fifth of the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere today, according to the study…

Greater reductions in fossil fuel emissions to account for carbon released by the permafrost will be a daunting global challenge, Schaefer said. “The problem is getting more and more difficult all the time,” he said. “It is hard enough to reduce the emissions in any case, but now we have to reduce emissions even more. We think it is important to get that message out now.”

Using importance and science in the same sentence won’t mean much to politicians, pundits – or the pipsqueaks who prance around at the behest of fossil fuel profiteers. And the average consumer isn’t as likely to be impressed by computational analysis as how much their pocketbook is being squeezed for fuel oil and gasoline.

Fortunately, the Oil Patch Boys and their bubbas in the Middle east are doing a reasonably effective job of the last-named activity.

On being told that the 8 year old German Shepherd Zak had sunk his teeth into a thief’s buttock, Judge Julian Lambert exclaimed “Good! I hope it hurt. Well done Zak..!”

But sitting at Gloucester Crown court today the judge had no hesitation in locking up persistent thief John Davies for nine months. Davies, 35, of Summerfield Gardens, Evesham, had admitted trying to steal a £3,000 bronze statue from a park in Cheltenham, Glos, on the night of 4th August last year.

His efforts were foiled by a couple walking through Sandford Park who spotted him and raised the alarm.

Davies fled when he saw police arriving but Zak was unleashed and sent after him.

“The dog followed the scent to a nearby courtyard where the defendant was hiding,” said prosecutor George Threlfall. “Zak detained him by by biting his left buttock…”

After the hearing Zak’s handler Pc Rich Hunt said it had been the dog’s last bite in the course of duty because he has since retired.

“He’s now living a quieter life with me in Cheltenham and is perfect with children and families.”

Good for you, PC Hunt. And good for you, Zak. I wish you a quiet and long-lasting retirement.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Hawaii’s Senate has given final passage to a measure legalizing same-sex unions in the state, and Gov. Neil Abercrombie has said he will sign it.

The state House had already passed the bill, which “extends the same rights, benefits, protections and responsibilities of spouses in a marriage to partners in a civil union,” according to the Legislature’s website. It will take effect January 1, 2012…

“I have always believed that civil unions respect our diversity, protect people’s privacy and reinforce our core values of equality and aloha,” Abercrombie said in a statement. “For me, this bill represents equal rights for all the people of Hawaii…”

Five states and the District of Columbia issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Hawaii will join New Jersey in allowing civil unions.

Voters in Hawaii appear to have elected someone capable of bringing their personal politics into the 21st Century. Here in New Mexico we’ve been relegated to a “same old solution” resolution to our last election. Being Hispanic, Catholic, much beloved by police departments was an edge unable overcome by an exceptionally lackluster Democrat.

History tends to resolve the stupidity and inequity of human behavior grounded in superstition and hatred. But, it seems to take an inordinate length of time. Extending equal civil rights to all citizens seems to be a no-brainer; but, we often have an excess of fools without brains. They also get one vote apiece.

Colin Powell, the US secretary of state at the time of the Iraq invasion, has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein’s bio-weapons capability.

Responding to the Guardian’s revelation that the source, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi or “Curveball” as his US and German handlers called him, admitted fabricating evidence of Iraq’s secret biological weapons programme, Powell said that questions should be put to the US agencies involved in compiling the case for war. In particular he singled out the CIA and the Defence Intelligence Agency – the Pentagon’s military intelligence arm. Janabi, an Iraqi defector, was used as the primary source by the Bush administration to justify invading Iraq in March 2003. Doubts about his credibility circulated before the war and have been confirmed by his admission this week that he lied.

Powell said that both the CIA and DIA should face questions about why they failed to sound the alarm about Janabi. He demanded to know why it had not been made clear to him that Curveball was totally unreliable before false information was put into the key intelligence assessment, or NIE, put before Congress, into the president’s state of the union address two months before the war and into his own speech to the UN…

On 5 February 2003, just a month before the invasion, Powell went before the UN security council to make the case for war. In his speech he referred to “firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails … The source was an eyewitness who supervised one of these facilities”. It is now known that the source, Janabi, made up the story.

Curveball told the Guardian he welcomed Powell’s demand. “It’s great,” he said tonight. “The BND [German intelligence] knew in 2000 that I was lying after they talked to my former boss, Dr Bassil Latif, who told them there were no mobile bioweapons factories. For 18 months after that they left me alone because they knew I was telling lies even though I never admitted it. Believe me, back then, I thought the whole thing was over for me.

“Then all of a sudden [in the run up to the 2003 invasion] they came back to me and started asking for more details about what I had told them. I still don’t know why the BND then passed on my information to the CIA and it ended up in Powell’s speech.”

Neocon lies, the self-fulfilling prophecies based on their lies, even the gullible rightwingers who still babble on about the necessity of regime change in Iraq based on these fearsome – and wholly non-existent – weapons of mass destruction need to have their foolishness turned on its head.

Creeps like Cheney and Rumsfeld still trundle about the political landscape making political hay and retirement income from their deceit. True Believers line up cash in hand to plight their fealty.

Last March, a group broke into military contractor iGov Technologies’ Tampa, Florida, warehouse, where about 3,000 laptops were being stored. While a gang of about 10 were loading the computers onto semi-trucks, police say, the ringleader, Rolando Coca, was caught on a nearby McDonald’s security camera, going through the drive-through.

“That’s really what this came down to,” said Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee.

During the day, witnesses had noticed a red Lincoln Navigator in the area. A canvassing of local businesses by investigators, uncovered the videotape of Coca, in the driver’s seat, ordering a meal at the Tampa McDonald’s.

Coca, an immigrant who came to the U.S. during the Mariel boatlift in 1980, was arrested in Miami, where about 1,900 of the laptops were being stored in a nearby abandoned warehouse in Opa Locka, Florida.

Police say they have bought back a handful of them in two sting operation, but about 1,000 remain on the street. “We continue to find these computers on Amazon and eBay,” said Sheriff David Gee…

The company, iGov Technologies, is a private contractor for U.S. Special Operations. They are classified as a top-secret facility supplying communications and computers to military forces. The laptops are heavy-duty, rugged computers that can be used by the military in extreme field conditions…

The computers are being sold on the street, on eBay and Amazon for 10-20% of normal retail. No one considered that unusual. Of course.

The sun unleashed its strongest solar flare in four years Monday night, hurling a massive wave of charged particles from electrified gas into space and toward Earth.

The solar storm sent a flash of radiation that hit Earth in a matter of minutes. Now a huge cloud of charged particles is headed our way. These coronal mass ejections, as they are called, typically take about 24 hours or more to arrive. They can spark spectacular displays of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, at high latitudes and sometimes even into the northern United States…

Class X flares are the strongest types of solar flares that can erupt from the sun…

Last night’s X2.2 flare is the most powerful solar eruption of the sun’s current weather cycle, called Solar Cycle 24…

The Monday flare came on the heels of another, only slightly less powerful, class M6.6 flare on Sunday, Feb. 13. Both events erupted from the same area on the sun, called active region 1158…

Such a flare can bathe the Earth in high doses of ultraviolet radiation and X-rays hurl a huge burst of solar wind in our direction. When this burst arrives at Earth, the electrons and protons from the solar wind come into contact with our planet’s magnetic field, and stream toward the magnetic poles.

The disturbance can create a geomagnetic storm in Earth’s magnetic field.

Get out your tinfoil hats!

Two TSA agents were busted Wednesday at Kennedy Airport for stealing $39,000 from a passenger’s bag, a law enforcement source said. The rogue agents, Coumar Persad and Davon Webb, have admitted to other thefts of up to $160,000, the source said…

They were charged with grand larceny, possession of stolen property and official misconduct.

The source said the agents worked in tandem. One would watch for money as the bags were screened, then notify the other about the loot. One would swipe the money once the luggage was placed in a baggage room.

Ain’t criminal teamwork inspiring? Especially within a system that is supposed to be dedicated to protection.

Prince Charles asks directions of a tree stump with dreadlocks

Republican Free Market version of a modern railroad

Vice President Joe Biden has announced an ambitious $53 billion U.S. program to build new high-speed rail networks and make existing ones faster over the next six years.

But the plan drew immediate fire from majority Republicans in the House of Representatives, who said building high-speed rail requires private investment rather than a government plan…

The ideological response doesn’t matter. They may as well have said their favorite Wall Street astrologer gets the whim-whams on train rides. They oppose the plan [1] because it’s a Democrat plan; [2] Obama probably thought of it; [3] it doesn’t especially increase profits for Big Oil.

“This is about seizing the future,” he said, making the announcement at Philadelphia’s busy 30th Street station with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

The United States should follow the example of Japan and China and build high-speed rail, Biden said. “If we do not, you tell me how America is going to be able to lead the world in the 21st century,” he said…

Advocates say U.S. investment in high-speed rail lags many other countries and point to China, which plans to invest $451 billion to $602 billion in its high-speed rail network between 2011 and 2015, according to the China Securities Journal.

China turned the portion of the Great Recession that affected their economy into an opportunity to expand and modernize infrastructure. This provided hundreds of thousands of jobs for unskilled workers and is laying the groundwork for an internal logistics system completely independent of highways.

The rest of the world gets to look at these questions and how they’re managed in nations with sensible infrastructure vs. the United States and the answers are easy. Rapid freight movement involves trucks and air. Serious freight movement involves rail. Passenger travel can involve rail, road and air. The United States offers the worst case examples for modern solutions.