Google Lunar X Prize Update; THEMIS; New Mexico Spaceport; Pan-STARRS

More teams have joined the contest to win the Google Lunar X Prize.  Euroluna will try to deliver a relatively small rover to the Moon’s surface.  It’s without redundant systems, so their plan is riskier than most.  A refresher about the Lunar X Prize: the $20 million first prize is reserved for the first privately funded team to successfully land a mobile spacecraft on the moon, move it across a third of a mile (500 meters) and beam home high-definition television views from the lunar surface. A $5 million prize will go to the second place team and there is another $5 million in bonus prizes.

The Mystery Team that joined the Google Lunar X Prize contest over a year ago finally dropped their veil of secrecy: Next Giant Leap announced itself and its team members today.

I have high hopes that at least one team will succeed in the contest and the X Prize will be won.

Earth’s magnetosphere doesn’t actually work the way scientists had envisioned.  That’s what scientific research is all about: forming hypotheses and testing them.  The best part: new hypotheses are formed as a result.  If NASA wasn’t operating THEMIS, we’d be none the wiser.  We also would be at higher risk during the upcoming solar cycle.

In an important step toward increased commercialization of space, New Mexico’s Spaceport America has been granted a FAA launch license.  Construction of the spaceport is slated to begin in the first quarter of 2009.  Virgin Galactic wants to fly from the facility.  So do Lockheed Martin, Rocket Racing Inc., Armadillo Aerospace, UP Aerospace, Microgravity Enterprises and Payload Specialties.

Speaking of Virgin Galactic, SpaceShipTwo could have a test flight before the end of the year.

Pan-STARRS, which is a new telescope system, will be utilized to assist the hunt for Near Earth Asteroids, among other tasks.  The first of four telescopes will come online this month.  Each telescope will have 1.4 billion pixels available to them (38,000 pixels by 38,000 pixels).  That kind of resolution will allow for unprecedented work to be done.

2008 Financial Crisis & Transportation Pieces

Some viable proposals from someone who understands the complexity of financial markets.  Regulation as it was practiced in the 1950s and 1960s is in order.  We know the Bushies hated it; what will Obama do?

Slightly dated now, but how does the current bear market stack up against the post-1929 market, the post-oil crisis of 1973-74 and the early 2000′s tech crash?  It’s pretty bad.  I think since this graph was generated, things have leveled off.

Simple solutions to “too big to fail”.  If it’s too big to fail, it’s too big to exist.  It’s time to start breaking up corporations that are too big for their britches.

84% of Americans in 2007 were against privatization of roads.  Does that mean they recognize that government is better at managing some projects than the private sector?

Speaking of transportation, a reduction in gasoline-fueled vehicles doesn’t only mean a movement toward hybrids and electric vehicles.  High-speed rail deserves a good, hard look, followed up by some serious action.

I first heard of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Buses this summer.  They’re very expensive at the moment due to the lack of market penetration, the same problem every new technology faces.  After 1,000 roll off the assembly line, they should only cost $40,000 more than 20th century buses.  At which point, they’ll pay for themselves in fuel savings in just a few years.  And emissions are reduced by 90%.  As soon as carbon costs are included, PHEBs will be very sought after.

Arctic Ice Melt: How Much?

Scientists have come up with an astounding number: the amount of Arctic ice that has melted from land (not the Arctic Ocean) since 2003 is over 2 Trillion tons (that’s over 2,000,000,000,000 tons in just five years).  What effect does this monumental loss have?  Well, it’s very different than melting sea ice, which has also been dramatic since 2003.  When sea ice melts, sea levels only rise a tiny bit.  That’s due ice’s displacement of water volume as it floats.  When land ice melts, every bit of it raises sea levels.  For instance, the melted ice from Greenland alone has raised global sea levels by 0.5mm/yr.

Climate change denyers and delayers will point out that 0.5mm/yr isn’t very much.  If that were all the melting to occur, they might have a good point.  Unfortunately, the climate isn’t a one-dimensional system.  You see, the rate at which the Greenland ice sheets are melting is increasing.  Here’s an example using made-up numbers to illustrate the point.  Let’s suppose in 2003, 100,000,000 tons of ice melted.  Due to our continued forcing of the climate system, in 2004, 150,000,000 tons of ice melted; in 2005, 200,000,000 tons of ice melted; in 2006, 260,000,000 tons of ice melted; in 2007, 340,000,000 tons of ice melted.  The rise in sea-level seen to date will be slower than what we are likely to see in the future.  How about 0.6mm/yr?  How about 1mm/yr?  How about 2 or 5mm/yr?  The oceans are already moving shorelines inland.  Coastal towns and islands have and are disappearing as I write this.  That sad state will only grow worse with time.

Oh, the same heat that is causing the land-based ice sheets to melt?  It’s expanding the volume that the already existing ocean takes up.  Since liquids expand with increasing temperature and since the oceans are collecting a good deal of the heat that has been added to the climate system, even if land-based ice were to stop melting immediately, sea level rise would still occur as the ocean responds to that heat content.  The heat content of the oceans is expected to have an impact on ocean volume on a multi-decadal to multi-century time-scale.  The Earth of the future will look quite different than the one we’re familiar with today.  That, of course, will have a direct impact on a majority of human and animal populations.  Most populations live near the coast.  As the character of that coast changes, populations will have to adjust also.

The total melt since 2003 is going to be presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting tomorrow.  I will try to look at the paper and monitor reaction to it thereafter.

[Update 12/18/08]: Just a quick note about the ice that melted from the Arctic Ocean the past few years.  The recent Arctic sea-ice retreat is larger than in any of the 19 IPCC climate models.  Remember that delayers and deniers claim those models overestimate the effects of climate change.  The opposite is true: real-world observations, ice extent among them, are outpacing the most severe model results used in the latest IPCC reports.  The IPCC policy recommendations are therefore also out-of-date.

Interest Rates, Inflation, Housing Starts and OPEC

The Federal Reserve cut its federal funds rate to a record low yesterday: it will hover between 0% and 0.25% for the forseeable future.  I don’t think this action will do anything very meaningful since there was very little room downward for rates to move anyway.  The Fed has cut the rate for a solid year and a half, which followed a steady rise in rates in an attempt to recover from “Bubbles” Greenspan’s rate cuts in the firt half of this decade.  Bernanke’s current approach looks too similar to Greenspan’s for me to have much confidence that it will manifest it’s supposed intended response: a rise in economic activity by a majority of Americans.  The last thing our economy needs right now is for another bubble to grow and pop.

Consumer prices in November fell by a record amount (don’t you love all the records the Republican economy is setting?).  Prices fell 1.7 percent, surpassing the previous record decline of 1 percent set in October. It was the largest one-month decline dating to February 1947.  Part of it really is good news: energy prices were the main driver, which means some money is freed back up to pay for other goods and services.  If prices continue to fall, we’ll see how devastating deflation can be.  The early signs aren’t good: companies that saw their profits slipping fired workers instead of taking a hit; workers (consumers) haven’t seen a real increase in wages in 20+ years, they’re carrying massive debt on their credit cards, and they tapped all the equity on their homes, which means they have no more money to spend; fewer sales mean fewer profits which means more fired workers.  Fewer employed consumers means less buying.  And so on.  Compounding all of this more recently was the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill, which mandated that borrowers pay off their credit cards before their mortgages, which led to more foreclosures than those just from the sub-prime lending fiasco.  Put all of this together and the picture moving forward isn’t pretty.  That’s why it will be necessary for President-elect Obama, as well as state and local officials, to initiate and sustain projects that will re-employ workers.  That’s the only way out of this mess.

The Commerce Department reported last Friday that retail sales dropped by 1.8 percent in November. The decline was the fifth straight monthly drop, a record stretch of weakness.

In other economic news, the Commerce Department reported that construction of new homes fell in November by 18.9 percent, the biggest drop in a quarter-century. The steep decline pushed construction down to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 625,000 homes, the slowest pace on records dating to 1959.  The Cons goal has been to make American life just like it used to be.  How’s that looking now?  Are home sales at 1959 levels a good thing?  From the article: “Builders continue to be discouraged by the prospects of a housing turnaround amid what’s likely to be the worst recession in decades, spurring rising unemployment and foreclosures.”  Things aren’t likely to change any time soon.

Keep in mind that Bush’s Treasury Department has largely wasted $300 billion by giving it to banks so they can buy up their competition.  No bad assets were taken care of, no jobs were created.  The economy will be the worst since the Great Depression and the “Compassionate Con-servative”, who has utilized the most expansive definition of executive power in our history, does nothing.  This will be a good lesson for Americans to learn: we can take action early on in a crisis and pay a little bit or we can delay action until the crisis grows out of control and pay a whole lot more.  Most Americans will end up paying a very high price for Bush’s actions.

Finally, in a move that should shock absolutely no one, OPEC decided to cut their production by 2.2 million barrels per day.  OPEC decided just a short time ago to decrease output by 2 million barrels per day.  So since oil has backed of its speculation-fueled record high price in July, OPEC has cut production of oil by 4.2 million barrels per day.  That’s a very significant cut: it’s 1/6th its total production.  Moving forward, America needs to promote hybrid and all-electric vehicles.  OPEC countries have no love for the U.S. and we’ve transferred too many billions of dollars to them as it is.  If we as a country can make oil more irrelevant, we should do so.  Our security and the state of our climate would benefit from such moves.

Sugar Molecule Found in Habitable Region of Our Galaxy

A sugar molecule, called glycolaldehyde, was spotted in a large star-forming area of space around 26,000 light-years from Earth in the outer regions of the Milky Way. Since the sugar had already been seen nearer the center of the galaxy, this suggests the sugar could be common across the universe, which is good news for extraterrestrial-life seekers.

Glycolaldehyde is a key ingredient for life. It helps to build Ribonucleic acid (RNA), which is thought to be the central molecule involved in the origin of life on Earth. Glycolaldehyde is a monosaccharide sugar, the basic unit of carbohydrates. It can react with the chemical propenal to form ribose, the building block of RNA.

Bush’s Bailout Update

An overriding theme to the Bush Presidency was reading after decisions were made that nobody thought Bush would do X.  Usually, that meant people just couldn’t fathom how Bush didn’t send enough troops to invade and occupy Iraq; how Bush didn’t prepare for Katrina or half a dozen other hurricanes, despite good forecasts of those storms; and on and on they go.  What’s the latest?  Why, Bush’s Bailout of his Wall St. buddies, of course.  I opposed the Bailout from the beginning, because just like the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Bush wasn’t providing enough information to accurately assess whether a real problem even existed.  In both cases, no problem existed.  But Democrats sure keep jumping around to keep him happy.  And even if they were going to do it again, couldn’t Democrats at least make sure that serious oversight was available for the biggest Bailout in history?  Of course not – that wouldn’t have been bipartisan.  Or something.  With no real oversight, what could possibly happen to the taxpayers’ money?

Well, executives will continue to earn their disgusting large compensations, despite running their corporations into the ground so far they had to beg the government to socialize their losses.

lawmakers included a mechanism for reviewing executive compensation and penalizing firms that break the rules.

But at the last minute, the Bush administration insisted on a one-sentence change to the provision, congressional aides said. The change stipulated that the penalty would apply only to firms that received bailout funds by selling troubled assets to the government in an auction, which was the way the Treasury Department had said it planned to use the money.

This is about the most clear-cut, simple example why Democrats shouldn’t yield an inch to Bush: he’ll take a mile.

In a reversal, the Bush administration has not used auctions for any of the $335 billion committed so far from the rescue package, nor does it plan to use them in the future. Lawmakers and legal experts say the change has effectively repealed the only enforcement mechanism in the law dealing with lavish pay for top executives.

First, this is more proof this wasn’t the crisis Bush tried to convince Americans it was.  His administration had worked on this bill for months, waiting for the best time to introduce it.  His administration clearly thought of the numerous ways in which Democrats were likely to try to enforce things and developed strategies to get around them.  Democrats agreed to the small change.  Now, executives can rip Americans off even more.  I want to challenge people to think about this a little differently, Democratic voters especially.  Do you really think Democrats were bamboozled on this?  Would they benefit at all from agreeing to the change?  The alternative is that Democrats are just plain stupid – too stupid to think Bush would nix the enforcement at the first opportunity.  No, I’m betting it’s the former – they think they’re receiving some kind of benefit from what they had to have known would be a subversion of the weak mechanism included in the bill.  Why else would Democrats feel no urgency to correct this matter?  $335 billion have been used in ways that were not authorized by legislation.  That violates Constitutional boundaries of use of power.  Instead of correcting this, I bet Democrats are instead working to benefit from the situation themselves.  Future actions, even those taken after Jan. 20th, will indicate whether Democrats were complicit or stupid.  I don’t see much room for any other alternative.

2012 Emissions Standards; California Climate Plan; Northwest Energy Project

GM and Ford could easily meet the most stringent emissions standards in the U.S. if their fuel efficiency plans presented to Congress were implemented.  If their 2012 fuel efficiency goals were met, which is quite frankly easily done, and California’s emissions standards were enforced nationwide, those standards would already be met.  Watch the auto corporations come out with a request for even more money next year to meet those standards.

California has approved a climate plan that will address global warming in a more aggressive fashion.  In 2006, a law was passed in California mandating 1990 emissions levels be met again by 2020.  Air regulators approved 31 rules for homes and businesses to achieve that goal.  In typical fashion, Republicans are thinking only as far as the next 3 months as they cry about increased costs.  It’s very simple: we can pay a little bit now or a whole lot more later.  Most Americans have figured out that the former is the better plan.

One big hurdle facing a renewable energy-based future is the sorry state of our current energy transmission system.  Put simply, it is not up to the task of delivering the necessary power from remote locations to where energy consumers are.  The Pacific Northwest provides a good example of this.  Wind projects going up are set to provide 4,700 additinal megawatts of energy to the Seattle/Portland corridor.  The required upgrades and new transmission lines are expected to cost $1.5 billion – not chump change.  That’s where Obama’s plan to invigorate the economy by funding green projects comes in.  Lots of winners result: Americans are paid well for solid jobs, the economy recovers, greenhouse gas emissions will slow down and the climate is forced a little less.  Multiply the WA/OR plan by dozens or hundreds across the country and the winners multiply too.

Anti-Jared Polis Piece Stinks

I read a dKos diary yesterday that left me disappointed in that community.  DavidNYC tried taking CO-02 Representative-elect Jard Polis to task for daring to publish an op-ed piece about business in the … gasp … Wall Street Journal.  The irony that a New York City blogger would attack a Westerner’s work based on a perceived “presumptuous”-ness is rich.  The fact that numerous Kossacks jumped on DavidNYC’s bandwagon in attacking Jared is a clear signal to me that the role of the site has indeed shifted over the years, as another SquareStater observed recently.

I read the WSJ piece the day it was published (Thursday, I think).  I thought it was both daring and humble.  In it, Jared proposed a number of steps he thought might be tried in order for the auto industry to emerge from its crisis.  But he also made sure to drive attention to the fact that members of this Congress, and those elected to the next Congress, likely didn’t know the best solutions in their attempt to ensure the Big 3′s survival.

DavidNYC took an approach that I hope not to see much more of: he simply cound’t believe a progressive from Colorado would have the audacity to question whether Congress had the experience to determine how the auto companies would be run.  And make no mistake about it – the bill the House and Senate voted on last week went much further towards dictating how business was to be conducted than the similar Bush-Wall St. Bailout passed earlier.  Looking at how Congress has approached regulating the auto industry in the past 20 years, I agree that they may not be the go-to group to decide how it should operate in the future.

Another facet of the diary irked me: more time was spent on questioning Jared’s “progressive credentials” and intelligence than was spent seriously addressing the proposals Jared wrote about.  First of all, I don’t know who DavidNYC thinks he is deciding who is progressive and who isn’t.  The same goes for the band-wagoners who decided to take the same approach in the comments section.  Either we’re a big tent or we’re not.  Second of all, if DavidNYC thinks his experience and ideas are so much more superior than anyone else’s, I recommend he run for the U.S. House also.  It’s easy to throw things from the sidelines.  It’s much harder to get directly involved with the legislative process and be responsible to constituents.  Jared had good reason to choose the WSJ for his op-ed.  He reached a much different audience that he would have had he posted a diary at dKos or HuffPo or SquareState.  Further, the voters of CO-02 had every opportunity to examine the kind of legislator Jared would be and approved of him, for better or worse.  Jared never claimed to be a perfect politician or the ultimate progressive.

When a dKos front-pager first writes about a person, they usually couch their language in polite and respectful tones.  The method of call-out seen in this diary is usually reserved for people who have a demonstrated history of being on the “wrong” side of numerous issues.  Has DavidNYC front-paged diaries about John or Ken Salazar, two elected officials from Colorado with a history of voting against human and progressive interests?  I don’t claim to know for sure one way or the other.  But it’s a question that is relevant to the treatment Jared received.  DavidNYC made little effort to directly engage Jared, despite the large number of ways to do so.  Quite frankly, I expect much more out of one of the premier liberal blogosphere sites.  Valid criticism of Jared’s piece was available to make – I am not advocating for a further devolution to an echo chamber.  But too many people took the opportunity to make personal attacks against a just-elected Representative.  The bias against a different viewpoint presented by someone from the Western U.S. was disturbing.  It was why I stopped reading diaries about Presidential candidates early this year.  It will make me hesitate to read future diaries about Western politicians, espeically by DavidNYC.  Okay, this rant is done.

Some Poznan Climate Meeting Results

World diplomats met at Poznan, Poland last week in an effort to work toward a 2009 Copenhagen Conference where a draft to replace the Kyoto Protocol is expected.  U.S. diplomats, at the direction of lame-duck Bush, hemmed and hawed and stymied efforts to make progress in North America.  Joining Bush’s efforts to delay action were Germany, Japan, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.  The news from the European Union was slightly more positive – they announced preliminary efforts to cut CO2 emissions by 2020.  The rate at which they do so is up for discussion, as there are different ways to measure cuts.  Diplomats claimed they are shooting for a 20% reduction of CO2 emissions by 1990 standards by 2020.  Some environmental groups countered that the net effect of the system presented would only reduce emissions by 4%.

At this early stage, I think I’m closer to agreeing with the critics due to the methods announced.  EU countries would be able to sponsor green projects in developing countries – use offsets in other words.  That doesn’t reduce their actual emissions, which is what will have to be done eventually.  The longer we wait to do so, the more expensive and disruptive it will be.  Further, it seems liklier to me that officials are willing to say they’re doing something in feel-good gestures rather than force a shift of their constituents’ lifestyles.  Too many people are passing the responsibility down to the next generation.  If a crisis occurs, it will be too late to continue this deceitful practice.  That’s the biggest problem with having politicians deciding which actions to take.  I suppose the good news is taking some action today could help decisions to take more action later.

What will change things worldwide is a new American President.  Thankfully, President-elect Obama appears to be making a new energy and climate change policy a priority in his future administration.  It will take somebody that is bold to bring bold change to the way things are done.  The biggest question right now is can Obama make a difference prior to the 2009 Copenhagen Conference?  Given the plate-full of disasters that Bush is merrily passing along (see a trend?), I’m starting to think action within the U.S. will be difficult to achieve in the first year of an Obama presidency.  It won’t be impossible and I am in no way advocating for Obama to do nothing.  But I think an honest assessment of the possibilities before us should be made.  I do think that an economic recovery is dependent on the development of green economy and not the other way around.  Another point of good news: states that have taken the lead in initiating action will help Obama’s programs get off the ground.  Real-life examples of how 21st century energy policies create good American jobs and boost economies can already be made.  They just need to be publicized better.

That assessment includes realizing that the fossil fuel industries will fight every little piece of progress that Obama and others can and will put forward.  Nothing that involves a change from the status quo will meet with their approval.  Remember that as you continue to pay high prices for every kind of fuel: your money is going to pay for executives and lobbyists to convince Congress not to change any energy policies.  That’s millions of dollars of your and my hard-earned money.  They’ll happily use our money to fund PR campaigns to tell us they’re fighting for us to keep our hard-earned money.  They’ve done it for a generation and look where it’s left us.

The big picture is this: the next Protocol will need to call for countries to make challenging but attainable changes.  CO2 concentrations must be brought back under 350ppm, 37ppm less than what is present today.  That means emissions must slow down, stall, then decrease.  The next Protocol is supposed to take effect in 2012.  If our habits haven’t changed by then, it will be more difficult and more expensive to change those habits.  Of course, we’re likely to be responding to the climate forcing that has already occurred at the same time we paying to change our habits.  Those costs will compound quickly, leaving us with fewer oppurtunities in the future to do things we want to do, above and beyond the things we need to do.

Denver’s Major Papers Hate Workers

The editorial boards of Denver’s two largest newspapers penned screeds that once again displayed a stunning hatred of workers that stand up for their rights this weekend.

The Rocky Mountain News was the more overt of the two, which comes as no surprise to local progressives.  Their conservative bent has grown stronger over the years as they cheer on the race to the bottom America’s workers are facing.  Their lede: Caving to the UAW.  Their secondary lede: Concessions should precede bailout.

I have but one question for the Rocky and every other group that hates workers: what concessions have executives of America’s major auto manufacturers given in this crisis?  The auto labor unions of America have conceeded on every issue possible in the past 20 years.  What have executives given up for the privilege to continue in their positions?  It’s been those executives’ decisions that have placed their corporations at the precipice of failure, not the workers’.  The Rocky places all of the blame at the feet of the labor-friendly Democratic Congress.  What about the corporate-friendly Republicans that threatened to filibuster the deal or the corporate-friendly Republican supposedly running the country?  How many times has Bush issued executive orders in the past 8 years?  If he (his handlers) wanted to save the auto industry from itself, he would have done it already.

The Denver Post came no closer to trying to address some real issues associated with the Big 3′s failures.  They called out Michigan Gov. Granholm’s assessment of the vote in the Congress as un-American.  I don’t remember the Post chastising the Cons who called anti-invasion and anti-occupation Democrats as anti-American.  It’s actually much more applicable to those same Cons vis-a-vis the failed vote.  Con Senators from the South would rather see American auto manufacturers fail (their true goal is to break up the UAW) than help them out.  Con Senators from the South would rather see foreign auto manufacturers succeed – foreign car plants have begun to really populate the American South, instead of American car plants as they do in Michigan and other northern states.  Con Senators would rather see the world plunge into a second Republican Great Depression just so they can teach Big, Bad Labor the lessons they deserve than stand up as proud Americans and preserve some of our last in-country manufacturing.  Con Senators (and their un-American supporters) would literally rather have workers make no wages or receive any benefits than support what little Americans’ actually end up making today.  If that’s not un-American, I don’t know what is.

Why isn’t the Rocky or the Post supporting workers?  Because their right-wing benefactors don’t support workers.  Because they don’t receive anti-corporate messages from Con “think-tanks”.  Because they practice exactly what those Con Senators supported: they’ve shifted their “news” coverage from solid journalistic standards to focusing on entertainment instead.  An uneducated population of workers won’t want to stand up for their rights.  Instead, they’ll blame those workers who dare to do so just like their major corporate media outlets tell them to.

This race to the bottom must stop.  Stand up for your fellow worker, Coloradans and Americans.  Or get used to double-digit unemployment and another Depression.

***

In a related vein, the Rocky’s Ed Stein had a cartoon appear next to their screed that dealt with the nationwide collapse of the newspaper corporate industry.  Depicting newspapers as pillars of democracy that were falling over, Stein blatently ignored newspapers’ failure to uphold democracy these past 8 years under the worst president this country has suffered under.  Due to the corporate newspapers’  stunning lack of holding Con officials responsible for their actions, Bush leaves this country in much worse shape than he found it.  The media’s latest attempts to tie President-elect Obama to the corrupt Illinois Governor despite no evidence to support their witch-hunt is all the more disturbing when Bush’s actions remain univestigated.   For this reason and others, I honestly have zero pity that corporate newspapers are failing.  Just like the auto industry, they make their bed all too willingly.  Now they get to lie in it.