Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

From Nasa news, Oct 1. Contact information at end of article.

NASA EXAMINES ARCTIC SEA ICE CHANGES LEADING TO RECORD LOW IN 2007

A new NASA-led study found a 23-percent loss in the extent of the Arctic’s thick, year-round sea ice cover during the past two winters. This drastic reduction of perennial winter sea ice is the primary cause of this summer’s fastest-ever sea ice retreat on record and subsequent smallest-ever extent of total Arctic coverage.

A team led by Son Nghiem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., studied trends in Arctic perennial ice cover by combining data from NASA’s Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) satellite with a computing model based on observations of sea ice drift from the International Arctic Buoy Programme. QuikScat can identify and map different classes of sea ice, including older, thicker perennial ice and younger, thinner seasonal ice. Between winter 2005 and winter 2007, the perennial ice shrunk by an area the size of Texas and California combined. This severe loss continues a trend of rapid decreases in perennial ice extent in this decade. Study results will be published Oct. 4 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The scientists observed less perennial ice cover in March 2007 than ever before, with the thick ice confined to the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. Consequently, the Arctic Ocean was dominated by thinner seasonal ice that melts faster. This ice is more easily compressed and responds more quickly to being pushed out of the Arctic by winds. Those conditions facilitated the ice loss, leading to this year’s record low amount of total Arctic sea ice.

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From the San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/30/MN7QRSUKA.DTL

Microcredit movement tackling poverty one tiny loan at a time

Patricia Yollin, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, September 30, 2007

A Peruvian widow borrowed $64 and bought a few pigs. For $55, a villager in Ghana went into the mineral-water trade. A mother of nine in Guatemala upgraded her grocery store with $250.

These women from three continents have something in common: They are beneficiaries of microcredit - very small loans to very poor people for very small businesses. The benefactors, in many cases, are ordinary individuals inspired by a movement that is reshaping philanthropy and making it as accessible as the click of a mouse or a visit to a house party.

More and more of us are becoming convinced that lending even tiny amounts of money to destitute people in the developing world can transform lives - theirs and ours.

“My life has changed because of this loan,” said 27-year-old Patience Asare-Boateng, in a phone interview from Ghana.

“This is something that people want: a sense of connection and a sense of community,” said Bob Graham, founder of NamasteDirect, a microcredit organization in San Francisco. “Because it’s decreasing in our daily lives.”

The microcredit approach carved out in Bangladesh three decades ago by 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has inspired a war on poverty that blends social conscience and business savvy - especially in Northern California.

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I urge you to take a look at this blog entry by my friend Richard, which may be found at http://thesacredpath.wordpress.com/

I particularly like his line about the fact that typing “global warming” into the Google search box “will return about 66 million hits. This will of course bring you the full gamut from pros to cons, from rants to raves, and all sorts of experts (and morons) on both sides claiming their truth is the only real truth, and their scientific god is the only true god.”

Global warming, deforestation and bark beetles

Oct 15th, 2007 by Richard

I decided that I would participate in Blog Action Day. Participants have been asked to blog about the environment today, October 15, 2007. Part of the reason I decided to take part was my recent journey that I shared with you in my post titled Consequences, and since I have a strong connection to nature and the nature spirits it seemed only, well… natural.

John Whitehead’s column datelined October 11, 2007. Tabb, Virginia, is down in the Hampton Roads area.

I would say that the continuing quiet assault on Christian presence in American society — in utter defiance of history and tradition — is proceeding just as it did in Britain a generation or so ahead of us, and is leading to an equally directionless society.

U.S. Supreme Court Lets Stand Appeals Court Ruling Stripping Christian Teacher of Right of Expression in the Classroom

WASHINGTON, DC—The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal brought by attorneys for The Rutherford Institute on behalf of a Virginia teacher who had news articles and a poster removed from his classroom by school officials because they considered the materials “too religious.” In asking the Supreme Court to reverse the appeals court ruling, Institute attorneys argued that Tabb High School engaged in viewpoint discrimination when it removed select materials posted by Spanish teacher William Lee in his classroom even though teachers are permitted to post matters of personal and public interest on their classroom walls. The petition filed with the Supreme Court charged that the lower court decision not only violated Lee’s First Amendment rights but set a dangerous precedent allowing school officials to censor any and all teacher expression.

“The U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear this case is a major strike against free speech in the classroom and should be considered a setback for educators everywhere, Christian or otherwise,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “If teachers are so constrained that they have no latitude in the classroom, they’re going to have trouble teaching, and it will be the students who end up suffering.”

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From North Country Times (California)http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/09/30/lifeandtimes/20_37_059_29_07.txt

The truth is out there: Roswell incident recalled by local vet who was there 60 years ago

By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer

Something happened in Roswell, New Mexico, 60 years ago this summer.

In June or early July 1947, a farmer found strange debris while working on a ranch about 70 miles north of Roswell. He put some of it in a box and drove to the local sheriff. Neither man knew what to make of it, so the sheriff called Roswell Army Air Field, which sent two men to investigate.

On July 9, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record, a newspaper, printed a story with the alarming headline: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region.”

Other than those facts, there appear to be few things people agree on regarding what has become known as “the Roswell incident.”

Six decades later, competing UFO enthusiasts promote their own theories, skeptics dismiss the spaceship claims as outrageous, and the military, which originally claimed all the fuss was over a weather balloon, now sticks to its story that it was an experimental spy craft.

Escondido resident Milton Sprouse, 85, said he knows what happened in Roswell —- not because he favors one theory over another, but because he was there.

As for the outrageous stories of mysterious metal, alien corpses and a military coverup?

It’s all true, he said.

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From The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2184139,00.html

It is undoubtedly true that Russia has yet to come to terms with the Stalin era. Closer to home, neither have Liberals. The pattern continued, too. I can remember when liberals (me too, sometimes) regarded Mao as a hero rather than a horror. It comes from concentrating on what people do as opposed to what they say, and what they profess as opposed to what they personify. Free example closer to home, George Bush and his entire fascist administration. But how can liberals remove the mote from the eye of conservatives before tehy have taken the beam from their own?

Great Terror returns to haunt Russia as 34 skeletons discovered in cellar

· Remains may be victims of Stalin’s purges, say police
· Rusty pistol also unearthed in aristocratic mansion

Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Friday October 5, 2007

The skeletons of 34 people have been found along with a rusty pistol in a Moscow basement, which appears to be the site of a massacre carried out during the Great Terror, the political purge orchestrated by Stalin in the 1930s.

The remains were found by builders on Wednesday as they worked on a renovation at 8/1 Nikolskaya Street, a 19th-century mansion halfway between Red Square and the Lubyanka, the former headquarters of the dreaded KGB.

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From the San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/10/MNH4SNBLJ.DTL

ENRICO BANDUCCI: 1922-2007
The impresario of North Beach

Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

(10-09) 18:45 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — Enrico Banducci, the impresario who was the heart and soul of San Francisco’s North Beach entertainment scene during its golden years, died in his sleep Tuesday morning.

Banducci suffered from a variety of ailments, including heart failure, kidney problems and old age. “He just shut down,” said his niece, Chi Chi Banducci. He was 85.

He was a night club and restaurant owner and a man with an incredible eye for talent. He was the owner of the famous hungry i, a night club with a three-sided stage in a brick-walled cellar at 599 Jackson Street. It was a classic club of the 1950s and early ’60s: The space was full of smoke, and the tiny stage was full of talent.

Woody Allen got his start here; so did Barbra Streisand and Mort Sahl. Banducci booked Dick Gregory, Lenny Bruce, the Kingston Trio, the Limeliters, Bob Newhart, Ronnie Schell, (who billed himself as the world’s slowest rising comedian), Bill Cosby, Jonathan Winters and dozens of others.

Later Banducci opened Enrico’s on Broadway, the city’s first sidewalk cafe. The patrons included crooks and cops, celebrities and nobodies. Frank Sinatra and his rat pack pals went there, and so did movie stars and shady ladies.

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From the Independent, of Britain: http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article3021309.ece

(22C is about 72 degrees real temperature To translate, remember that 0C=32F, 100C=212F and that therefore each 10 degrees C = 18 degrees F. So, 15C, for example = [27F+32 starting point] = 59F.

(Irritating, but what can you do? The British abandoned British measurement for this Celsius stuff just as they abandoned traditional measure for metric, and we’re stuck having to figure out what they’re saying. Is this fair?

At any rate, it seems clear that we are witnessing (and not quite yet realizing that we are seeing) a once-in-many-lifetimes event, the change of the North Pole’s normal state from permanently icebound to whatever the new state turns out to be. I’d be very surprised if this turned out to be only a statistical blip.

Record 22C temperatures in Arctic heatwave
By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Parts of the Arctic have experienced an unprecedented heatwave this summer, with one research station in the Canadian High Arctic recording temperatures above 20C, about 15C higher than the long-term average. The high temperatures were accompanied by a dramatic melting of Arctic sea ice in September to the lowest levels ever recorded, a further indication of how sensitive this region of the world is to global warming. Scientists from Queen’s University in Ontario watched with amazement as their thermometers touched 22C during their July field expedition at the High Arctic camp on Melville Island, usually one of the coldest places in North America.

“This was exceptional for a place where the normal average temperatures are about 5C. This year we frequently recorded daytime temperatures of between 10C and 15C and on some days it went as high as 22C,” said Scott Lamoureux, a professor of geography at Queen’s.

“Even temperatures of 15C are higher than we’d expect and yet we recorded them for between 10 and 12 days during July. We won’t know the August and September recordings until next year when we go back there but it appears the region has continued to be warm through the summer.”

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from http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1003/p06s01-woeu.html

Putin plan: more democratic?

If he became prime minister alongside a weaker president, some analysts say that would create a better balance of power.

By Fred Weir | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the October 3, 2007 edition

Moscow - Not unlike Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf or Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Russian president Vladimir Putin seems intent on extending his supreme power, even if his constitutional welcome is wearing thin.

Mr. Putin, who has repeatedly pledged to leave office when his second term expires next March, this week hinted that he may seek to become prime minister after stepping down as president.

Analysts say his immense popularity and his loyal political base would enable him to wield significant power in that post, while critics suggest he plans to modify the Constitution to weaken the presidency – effectively keeping his current role while switching titles.

Ironically, the net effect of such changes may be to democratize Russia’s top-heavy political system and give parliament more say than it has had under either former President Boris Yeltsin or his chosen successor – Putin.

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From the German periodical Der Spiegel. http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,434356,00.html via the Schwartzreport

ARCTIC HARVEST
Global Warming a Boon for Greenland’s Farmers

By Gerald Traufetter

Known for its massive ice sheets, Greenland is feeling the effects of global warming as rising temperatures have expanded the island’s growing season and crops are flourishing. For the first time in hundreds of years, it has become possible to raise cattle and start dairy farms.

Ferdinand Egede would be a perfectly normal farmer if it weren’t for that loud cracking noise. Wearing a plaid lumberjack shirt and overalls, he hurries through the precise rows of his potato field, beads of sweat running down his forehead.

Egede, 49, occasionally picks up a handful of earth and rubs it between his solid fingers, but he isn’t at all satisfied with the results. “It’s much too dry,” he says. “If I don’t get the irrigation going, I’ll lose my harvest.”

The cracking noise has turned into a roar. What’s happening in the sea below Egede’s fields doesn’t square well with what one would normally associate with rural life. The sound is that of an iceberg breaking apart, with pieces of it tumbling into the foaming sea.

Egede, a Greenland potato farmer, has little time to admire the view. He spends most of his days working in the fields and looking at the dramatically steep table mountains at the end of the fjord and the blue and white icebergs in the bay. But today he’s more concerned about a broken water pipe. “The plants need a lot of water,” he says, explaining that the soil here is very sandy, a result of glacier activity.

But he could still have a decent harvest. He pulled 20 tons of potatoes from the earth last summer, and his harvests have been growing larger each year. “It’s already staying warm until November now,” says Egede. And if this is what faraway scientists call the greenhouse effect, it’s certainly a welcome phenomenon, as far as Egede as concerned.

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