New Orleans on Obama’s radar. Office of the Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding will remain in place. Two Cabinet secretaries will visit New Orleans and other storm-ravaged parts of the Gulf Coast starting tomorrow: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan.
Scientists made an exploration of the East Antarctic continent – one of the least sampled places on Earth when it comes to climate change. Considering the implications of the ice sheets melting, this is obviously not a good thing. Their initial finding? A slight warming trend in East Antarctica. Not a cooling, as denialists have claimed for years now (incorrectly citing sparse datasets is never a good idea). No – they found warmer conditions than they thought they would.
NASA will of course investigate the data from launch in an attempt to determine cause. It’s too early to tell what future plans regarding similar efforts might be. To my knowledge, I don’t think NASA or climate researchers have an operating satellite that can do what OCO was designed for. It took eight years to plan and build this satellite, so any future replacement wouldn’t be ready for quite some time.
I was disappointed to read that President Obama has taken NAFTA renegotiation of the table. American workers are suffering because of failed “free-trade” policies. If he wants high employment and a strong economy, protecting our workers is a primary way to get there. This is a result of the people Obama has put into power.
Another 627,000 jobs were lost in the Economy Bush Built. Net job losses could total 700,000 for February. Good thing corporate profits were setting records as late as last year. I’d hate to think the economy was bad or something.
About one in four people with a mortgage owe more than their homes are worth. One of Obama’s solutions is to force lenders to re-negotiate mortgage terms. The lending industry, who got us into this mess in the first place, is objecting to the plan. As usual, they’re also not proposing any kind of solution. Doing nothing will all but destroy our economy.
David Harsanyi continues his crusade against America with his op-ed this week. He claims taxes, extreme government spending and wealth redistribution are patriotic in an attempt to slam President Obama’s recovery plans. In Con Fantasy Land, it seems tax reductions are now called tax increases. Similarly, the past 8 years of keeping occupations off the budget and creating the largest government program in 30 years (that doesn’t work with its peers) went by uncommented since it was a Con “president” who proposed the “extreme government spending”. Last but not least, Harsanyi’s characterization of wealth redistribution comes across as pathetic after we’ve seen the effects of Bush’s “tax cuts”. Americans were sure glad to get one two grand back (the first year only) they were passed weren’t they? Oh, except for the richest 1%. They’re keeping hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per year thanks to Bush’s tax cuts. Wealth redistribution indeed. And what’s up with this:
Yes, the same Freddie and Fannie — once implicitly guaranteed by government and now explicitly run by government — that helped, through social engineering, to push us into recession.
I wish the rest of us had figured out what the great sage Harsanyi did – Fannie and Freddie (with Cons leading them right up through the beginning of this horrible recession) were so unbelievably powerful. Cons love their conspiracy theories. I learned an important lesson during the Bush years. When a Con says something, the reality is exactly opposite.
A Colorado constitutional rewrite is being seriously considered by more and more people. State spending is affected by numerous, conflicting amendments. Colorado can either lose out on education, health care and prisons or a group of adults (hopefully) can come together and implement realistic solutions. If a Constitutional Convention is called, one potential flaw is they can rewrite any part of the Constitution they want. It would be nice if people who were convinced government can’t operate weren’t put in charge of that government. It simply makes no sense.
On a positive note for science, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory is scheduled to launch Tuesday. The polar-orbiting satellite will measure oxygen-to-carbon ratios to indicate where carbon sources and sinks are at. My fear is that carbon sources will be found to be larger and more prevalent than carbon sinks. There are already indications that the warming oceans are soaking up less carbon every year, allowing the atmosphere and oceans to warm up even further.
The economy shrank at a 3.8% annual rate in the last quarter. That’s a preliminary reading – one which is expected to get worse as the numbers are looked at in more depth. That number won’t get better any time soon. Millions are losing their jobs and their houses. Millions more have lost access to credit, which was the economy’s driving force for the past twenty years. Americans are going to realize they aren’t being paid enough when their credit lines are shut down as the recession deepens and lasts longer than most people are estimating right now. All these things are the direct results of Con-servative policies being implemented (exactly as Cons wanted them to be, by the way) in the U.S. It’s happened to every other country in the world where America tried to export “capitalistic democracy”. The Cons finally got their chance to implement their policies to their fullest extenet here in America. We’re living with the consequences now. What are Cons doing in Congress? Pushing the same failed policies that got us here. Thankfully, voters made better choices in this last election.
Did you hear that even poor ol’ Exxon Mobil is huring – just like the rest of us – in the recent economic downturn? Okay, maybe not just like the rest of us. After all, their 2008 profits were only$45,200,000,000. Only $45.2 Billion. Does anybody remember $4.50 gas last summer? Guess where it went. Autocratic regimes in the Middle East and mega-corporations like Exxon Mobil. That’s correct – that disgusting number is only the profits of one corporation. Keep those numbers in mind when you see their advertising claiming they’re doing all kinds of critical research, developing better things for tomorrow. In the face of the worst economic downturn since the last Republican Great Depression, in the face of record energy prices, the mega-fossil fuel corporations are making billions in profits and distributing millions more to executive bonuses. When will their new technologies and “cleaner” fuels be available? Eh, just keep buying gas for a few more decades. Maybe after another $500 Billion or so in profits, they’ll actually come up with something. Or Americans can continue to play the sucker in the relationship and continue buying their fossil fuels and never expect more out of them.
I heard about this last night on the radio. Plenty of people in the eastern half of the U.S. are without power from … an average January winter storm. The excellent questions raised were the following. How many billions of dollars is the Dept. of “Homeland Security” sucking down every year? The purpose of DHS is to protect the “homeland”, correct? What kind of target do you think terrorists would like to strike? Maybe power plants or power infrastructure more generically? Our economy would certainly suffer even more if extensive power outages occurred. Do you think DHS is doing its job protecting the homeland if a common, well-forecasted winter storm puts millions of people into the dark and cold? I certainly don’t. Given these circumstances, I have no faith in DHS to protect any American from a terrorist attack. There are plenty of problems with our current infrastructure. This kind of problem should receive some attention in the recovery package making its way through Congress now.
NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has had it’s pre-ship checkout and delivery to Cape Canaveral milestones completed. It is designed to search for Earth-like planets around other stars – 140,000 stars are on tap to be examined. The mission is currently scheduled to last 3.5 years, but if other recent NASA spacecraft are a guide, that mission could be extended. Just look at Hubble or the Mars rovers. Launch is set for March 5.
Methane plumes have been found by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter (starting in 2003 and seen every Martian spring to summer since). They do not automatically mean microbes are outgassing them. Their source has not been positively identified. One planetary science team is planning to develop a new device for a future rover to track the origin of the methane (some details here). To do so, the future rover would have to be sent to a site where methane has been detected.
SpaceX has begun assembly of its first rocket at Cape Canaveral, FL. The company wants to launch 5 rockets this year: a maiden flight sponsored by a U.S. government customer that the company will not name and two demonstration flights under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. The demo flights are intended to prove that SpaceX is ready to begin making regular cargo runs to the International Space Station under a $1.6 billion contract NASA awarded a few weeks ago.
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.
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.
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.
Just prior to the scheduled launch of the last Hubble Space Telescope’s repair/upgrade mission, an onboard data router failed. The shuttle launch was delayed until next year. Scientists and engineers worked to use an onboard backup (thank you, redundancy!). That backup unit is up and running. A test photo was released by NASA and things look real good! Unfortunately, the already delayed upgrade mission was delayed a little more. NASA wants to send up a replacement part to the unit that failed last month. It won’t be ready for another six months. That could delay NASA’s plans to reconfigure the launch pad to accomodate the next generation of launch vehicles. Fortunately, Endeavour’s Nov. 14th launch to the International Space Station remains on schedule.
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander entered an inactive safe mode late Tuesday. Very cold overnight temperatures and a dust storm has reduced Phoenix’s ability to generate enough power to conduct full science. It’s not supposed to be a permanent condition. Phoenix’s primary mission phase ended in August. It has had its mission extended ever since. Eventually, Phoenix will not be able to power itself.
NASA’s shuttle replacement might come online one year sooner than originally planned. Plans are being drawn up to try to move the first test launch date up from 2015 to 2014. They will be finalized in December. This news came out prior to NASA’s announcement that the Hubble upgrade mission was going to be delayed again. As I wrote above, the launch pad needs to be reconfigured for the Orion vehicle launch aboard the Ares rocket.
