TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| Annual Leonids meteor shower set to reach peak The annual Leonids meteor shower is set to reach its peak. news.bbc.co.uk |
Obama science advisers grilled over hacked e-mails WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Republicans pointed to controversial e-mails leaked from climate scientists and said it was evidence of corruption. Top administration scientists looking at the same thing found no such sign, saying it doesn't change the fact that the world is warming.... hosted.ap.org |
Roy Greenslade: Why did US papers fail to carry climate change leader? Why was the Miami Herald the only US newspaper to carry the leading article on climate change that was published in 56 titles in 45 countries?And, just as important, why did the Herald drop a key sentence from that leader? According to Michael Wolff, the failure of American papers to run the article was due to their pusillanimity. "They have no fight left in them," he writes.Much as I admire Wolff, and accept that he is writing about papers in his own backyard, I'm not so sure his answer is correct. I'm convinced the failure to take up the challenge had more to do with politics, misguided patriotism and also a good dose of editorial hubris.Wolff does concede that editors might have been nervous about the leader's liberal ethos and liberal, even left-wing, provenance. I think that is, in fact, the main reason for the papers rejecting joint publication with so many other titles around the worldLook at the content of the editorial: though it sees President Obama as likely to reverse "years of US obstructionism", it continues: Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.The leader also mentions that the US and China are "the world's biggest polluters."I would hazard a guess that many US editors couldn't stomach publishing those arguments, believing that readers might regard them as anti-American. (And I'm sure it plays a part in the Herald's omission).Editors would also be aware, of course, of the huge split among their readers of believers and deniers of man-made climate change. That's not to say that I disagree with Wolff over the lack of guts among American editors in failing to dare to publish home truths. So I nodded vigorously over his views in these paragraphs:One of the great marketing tools for a newspaper is a campaign. If you can move your readers, have them want to join you in a mission, you build brand loyalty. That's the Fox method. You would think the instant razzmatazz of a global editorial (even about climate change) would be a sure marketing advantage for liberal papers—I see the editorial in a big front-page box. Even the [New York] Times might have preserved the pride of its own editorial authorship by putting this common editorial on its op-ed page. This might have been a win for climate change reform and for newspaper identity.But I think the New York Times's reasoning had much more to do with journalistic snobbery. It sees itself as the big guy on the block and didn't see why it should be required to follow the lead of a British paper.Hubris probably played a part in other decisions by editorial boards at the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.And that viewpoint is implied in a snippy leader in today's Boston Globe, which said:A group editorial is just as likely to foster accusations of groupthink as it is to push the world toward decisive action on climate change. At a time when the climate debate is still plagued by the false notion that global warming is a myth perpetuated by an international conspiracy of liberal elites, a range of voices offering their own reasoning and routes to the same goal would have delivered a more potent message than a unified chorus.So, should we be ready to praise the Miami Herald for its lone stand? I'm afraid not. I was about to conclude this posting with a pat on the back for the Miami Herald's editorial board editor, Myriam Marquez, for daring to tread where others had feared to go.But my praise is altogether muted because, lo and behold, the Herald did NOT carry the editorial verbatim after all.It omitted the very sentence I highlighted above: Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.I emailed Ms Marquez two hours ago to ask why. I also called her without success. No word yet.US press and publishingClimate changeThe GuardianNew York TimesWashington PostRoy Greensladeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Russia's Armageddon plan to save Earth from collision with asteroid Space scientists in Russia are preparing to boldly go where no man has gone before, except for the actor Bruce Willis.The head of the Russian space agency said today that it was considering a Hollywood-style mission to send a spacecraft to bump a large asteroid from a possible collision course with Earth.Anatoly Perminov told the Russian radio station Golos Rossii: "People's lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people."The mission would be aimed at an asteroid called Apophis, he said, which is expected to pass close to the Earth in 2029 and again in 2036. "Calculations show that it's possible to create a special-purpose spacecraft within the time we have, which would help avoid the collision. The threat of collision can be averted."The Hollywood action films Deep Impact and Armageddon both featured space missions scrambling to avert catastrophic collisions, the latter led by Willis.But the creation of a system to deflect asteroids has long been the subject of scientific debate. Some experts have proposed sending a probe to circle around a dangerous asteroid and gradually change its trajectory. Others suggested sending a spacecraft to collide with it and alter its momentum, or using nuclear weapons.Perminov said details of the project still needed to be worked out. But he said the agency would invite Nasa, the European Space Agency and others to participate.When Apophis was discovered in 2004, astronomers made headlines when they said there was a one in 37 chance that the 350-metre-wide rock would collide with Earth in 2029. Further studies ruled out such an impact, but there remains a one in 250,000 chance it could strike in 2036.Perminov said he had heard from a scientist that Apophis is getting closer and may hit the planet. "I don't remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032," he said.Nasa has estimated that if the asteroid hit the Earth, it would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square miles would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere.Nasa experts have already discussed the option of landing an astronaut on an asteroid to test whether it could develop techniques to deflect a doomsday rock.Breaking it up with an atomic warhead could generate thousands of smaller objects on a similar course, which could have time to re-form. Scientists agree the best approach, given enough time, would be to nudge the object into a safer orbit.Matt Genge, a space researcher at Imperial College London, has calculated that something with the mass, acceleration and thrust of a small car could push an asteroid weighing a billion tonnes out of the path of Earth in just 75 days.Perminov said: "We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical council, to look at what can be done. "There won't be any nuclear explosions. Everything will be done according to the laws of physics."Mirrors, lights and even paint could change the way the object absorbed light and heat enough to shift its direction over 20 years or so. With less notice, mankind could be forced to take more drastic measures, such as setting off a massive explosion on or near the object to change its course.RussiaSpace technologySpaceDavid Adamguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
NASA: No word from Phoenix Mars lander PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- NASA says there's no word from the Phoenix lander that is presumed to be frozen near the Martian north pole.... hosted.ap.org |