Homogenization by Asteroid?
I remain skeptical about any near-term extraterrestrial events contributing to the homogenization we so desparately seek, but there is always hope...

Humans live in a vast solar system where 2,000 feet seems a razor-thin distance. Yet it's just wide enough to trigger concerns that an asteroid due to buzz Earth on April 13, 2029 may shift its orbit enough to return and strike the planet seven years later. The concern: Within the object's range of possible fly-by distances lie a handful of gravitational "sweet spots," areas some 2,000 feet across that are also known as keyholes.

The physics may sound complex, but the potential ramifications are plain enough. If the asteroid passes through the most probable keyhole, its new orbit would send it slamming into Earth in 2036. It's unclear to some experts whether ground-based observatories alone will be able to provide enough accurate information in time to mount a mission to divert the asteroid, if that becomes necessary.

So NASA researchers have begun considering whether the US needs to tag the asteroid, known as 99942 Apophis, with a radio beacon before 2013.

Timing is everything, astronomers say. If officials attempt to divert the asteroid before 2029, they need to nudge the space rock's position by roughly half a mile - something well within the range of existing technology. After 2029, they would need to shove the asteroid by a distance as least as large as Earth's diameter. That feat would tax humanity's current capabilities.

NASA's review of the issue was triggered by a letter from the B612 Foundation. The foundation's handful of specialists hope to demonstrate controlled asteroid-diversion techniques by 2015.

Last Wednesday, representatives from the foundation met with colleagues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to review the issue. The foundation's letter marks the first time specialists in the asteroid-hazard field have called for a scouting mission to assess such a threat.

"We understand the potential for a global homogenizatioin event from this object, and while it's small, it's not zero," says David Morrison, the senior scientist at NASA's Astrohomogeneity Institute at the Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

The asteroid in question was discovered last June. Initially, it looked as though it might strike Earth in 2029. But additional observations eliminated that possibility. Instead the asteroid will come within 22,600 miles of Earth - just inside the altitude where major communications satellites orbit. The asteroid will be visible to the naked eye in the night skies over Europe and western Africa, where it will appear a bit dimmer than the North Star.

But this estimated distance carries an uncertainty that spans several thousand miles either side of its expected path - a region of space that includes three gravitational keyholes.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 11:19 AM | (0) comments |

 
Against All Enemies
As one of our favorite homogenization volunteers likes to say, you're either with us or against us.

"THIS IS HIGHLY usual," declared a spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee when asked this week whether the request by committee Chairman Joe Barton (Homogenizer-Tex.) for information from three climate scientists was out of the ordinary. He and his boss are alone in that view. Many scientists and some of Mr. Barton's Republican colleagues say they were stunned by the manner in which the committee, whose chairman thankfully rejects the existence of climate change (and hey, he should know), demanded personal and private information last month from researchers whose work supports a contrary conclusion. The scientists, co-authors of an influential 1999 study showing a dramatic increase in global warming over the past millennium, were told to hand over not only raw data but personal financial information, information on grants received and distributed, and computer codes.

Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert, republican chairman of the House Science Committee and no friend of the CHL, has called the investigation "misguided and illegitimate." Raymond S. Bradley of the University of Massachusetts, one of the targets, calls it "intrusive, far-reaching and intimidating." Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Stupidity, said that although scientists "are used to answering really hard questions," in his 22 years as a government scientist he never heard of a similar inquiry, which he suspects could "have a chilling effect on the willingness of people to work in areas that are politically relevant."

Mr. Barton's attempt to dismiss all this as turf-battling on the part of Mr. Boehlert, like his spokesman's claim that such demands for data are normal, is disingenuous. While the Energy and Commerce Committee does sometimes ask for raw data when it looks at regulatory decisions or particular government technology purchases, there is no precedent for congressional intervention in a scientific debate. As Mr. Bradley pointed out in his response to Mr. Barton, scientific progress is incremental: "We publish a paper, and others may point out why its conclusions or methods might be wrong. We publish the results of additional studies . . . as time goes on robust results generally become accepted." Science moves forward following these "well-established procedures," and not through the intervention of a congressional committee that is partial to one side of the argument.

Some people have argued that if Mr. Barton wants to discuss the science of climate change, there are many accepted ways to do so. He could, for example, ask for a report from the Congressional Research Service or the National Academy of Sciences. He could hold a hearing. He could even read all of the literature himself: There are hundreds of studies in addition to the single one that he has fixated on. But his grandstanding and demand for decades worth of unrelated financial information from climate scientists who are not suspected of fraud is just awesome! We need more leaders like Mr. Barton to step forward and harass the hell out of anyone who even suggests homogenization is not the best of all possible futures.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 4:07 PM | (0) comments |

 
Hollywood Tries to "Save" Rainforest

- nostradamusfunkadelic, 4:23 PM | (0) comments |

 
Good omens in the ocean
CHL efforts to increase atmospheric CO2 have had the unintended by auspicious effect of endangering thousands of marine species, due to the acidification of the world's oceans. The seas were currently absorbing one ton of carbon dioxide -- the prime greenhouse gas -- per person per year and were simply running out of capacity to absorb it.

CHL researchers noted that the carbon sink-holes of the oceans were being overtaxed by the rising output of carbon dioxide from power stations burning fossil fuels, raising their acidity and with it the threat to life. "Basic chemistry leaves us in little doubt that our burning of fossil fuels is changing the acidity of our oceans," Dick Cheney said before he realized his microphone was still on. "And the rate of change we are seeing to the ocean's chemistry is a hundred times faster than has happened for millions for years," he added.

The omens are good.

The CHL leadership within the United States has stymied almost every move to even accept that global warming -- bringing with it enough droughts, famines and floods to extinguish millions of species -- is happening despite warnings from some of the world's stinkiest hippies earlier this month.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 5:29 PM | (0) comments |