Source: www.countrylife.co.uk --- Saturday, August 03, 2013
Is photo-voltaic Energy worth the installation costs? Pippa Cuckson looks at the pros and cons ...
Source: http://www.countrylife.co.uk/property/article/531334/Solar+energy%3A+should+I+invest%3F.html
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01.08.13
RYANAIR?S BARGAIN THURSDAY!
?
100,000 seats on over 1,000 European routes in September, October & November
?from only ?19.99
?
Ryanair, Europe?s only ultra-low cost carrier (ULCC), announced that from midnight (24:00hrs) tonight (Thur 1 Aug), passengers can fly from London Stansted to Brno from just ?19.99 in September, October and November as part of its weekly ?Bargain Thursday? promotion.
?
Ryanair is releasing 100,000 seats across its European network at prices starting from just ?19.99 for travel on Mon, Tue, Wed & Thur in September, October and November and these ?all in? low fares will be available on over 1,000 of Ryanair?s European routes, but must be booked on www.ryanair.com before midnight (24:00hrs) Mon, 5 Aug.?
Ryanair?s ?19.99 sale fare includes all non-optional taxes, charges and fees, so passengers who only travel with carry-on luggage and decline our priority boarding service can book, check-in online and fly for this advertised ?19.99 fare on these ?Bargain Thursday? flights.
?
Ryanair?s Robin Kiely said:
?
?Only Ryanair sells Europe?s lowest fares with no fuel surcharges guaranteed, across over 1,600 routes, connecting 180 destinations, while delivering Europe?s No 1 customer service, with the most on-time flights, fewest cancellations and least mishandled bags.
?
From midnight tonight (1 Aug), passengers can book 100,000 ?Bargain Thursday? seats on over 1,000 European routes, including London Stansted to Brno, at prices starting from just ?19.99, for travel in September, October and November.?These seats are only available until midnight (24:00hrs) Monday (5 August) and at these mad prices are sure to be snapped up fast, so we urge passengers to book them on www.ryanair.com before they sell out.??
Source: http://www.ryanair.com/en/news/fly-london-to-brno-from-just-19-99-pounds
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HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) ? Zimbabwe's longtime President Robert Mugabe won 61 percent of the presidential vote, trailed by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai at 33 percent, election officials announced Saturday.
Mugabe, 89 and in power for 33 years, has another five-year term in office, according to the results.
Mugabe's party won 158 of the 210 parliament seats, giving it a two-thirds majority in the legislature that enables it to make amendments to the new constitution and existing laws, according to the results announced by the state Election Commission. Tsvangirai's party captured 50 seats and two went to independent candidates.
Tsvangirai earlier Saturday rejected the results as fraudulent and called for fresh elections. He urged a peaceful response to the alleged massive rigging by Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.
Tsvangirai said his Movement for Democratic Change party has in its possession evidence of massive rigging by Mugabe's ZANU-PF party in the just-ended polls and will challenge results from Wednesday's voting.
"People of Zimbabwe must be given another chance to participate in a free, fair and credible election. They have been shortchanged by a predetermined election," he said.
Tsvangirai told a news conference that the outcome of the polls has extended Mugabe's rule which has plunged the nation into economic and political turmoil.
He said Mugabe's victory in the polls has "dashed people's hopes and aspirations."
"There is no celebration, there is national mourning," Tsvangirai said.
He said his party will not "participate in any government institutions" in protest but stopped short of saying it will boycott its reduced seats in the Harare parliament.
Mugabe's loyalist army and police have set up security posts in Harare Saturday, apparently in case there are any protest demonstrations.
"We are rejecting the results because they are fraudulent," Tsvangirai said. "We will go back to our people. Our people are the ones hurting. Our people are disciplined. We don't want a violent resolution to this crisis."
He said a complete audit is needed of the shambolic voters' lists, which was only made available at the time of the election.
Official results have shown large disparities between votes cast for Tsvangirai's party in the violent and disputed polls in 2008 and a higher turnout than at the March referendum when all parties supported a "yes" vote and voters' lists were not used.
Tsvangirai's party lost several seats in its Harare urban strongholds by massive margins compared to their overwhelming votes in 2008.
In one Harare constituency, Tsvangirai's party won with 9,538 votes to 8,190 captured by Mugabe's party. In 2008 the same district voted for the MDC candidate, Tendai Biti, by about 8,300 ballots against Mugabe's 2,500 votes.
"It is ZANU-PF's imagination that they have won this election, they know the truth," Tsvangirai said Saturday. "We have been robbed."
Independent monitors have charged that as many as 750,000 voters were prevented from casting their ballots on Wednesday because of irregularities in voters' lists.
They allege thousands of unregistered voters were allowed to vote.
The continent-wide African Union and regional monitors of the Southern African Development Community, or SADC, have generally endorsed the elections as peaceful, but have expressed misgivings over how voting numbers might have been manipulated and have demanded a full account of voter numbers from the official state election body before passing their final judgment on whether the polls were free, fair and credible.
Observers generally commended actual polling for being free of violence that has dominated campaigning against Tsvangirai in his two previous challenges for the presidency in 2002 and 2008.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/zimbabwe-officials-mugabe-wins-61-percent-163717642.html
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By Nate Raymond
NEW YORK (Reuters) - As the head of litigation for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Matthew Martens' main job is to oversee other lawyers. In his three years at the agency, he had not tried a case himself.
That is, until the SEC decided to bring a civil fraud suit against former Goldman Sachs Vice President Fabrice Tourre, the highest profile case to emerge from the agency's investigations into the causes of the 2008 financial crisis.
Martens, 41, tried the case himself and on Thursday secured a big win. A federal jury in Manhattan found Tourre liable on six of the seven charges against him.
Martens said in an interview it was important that a case deemed significant by the agency should garner attention from the top. He said the verdict should rebut critics of the SEC's trial record, which has taken hits amid setbacks last year in other financial crisis cases.
"If this doesn't convince people we can win these cases, I don't know what would," Martens said.
The SEC accused Tourre, 34, of misleading investors in a synthetic collateralized debt obligation called Abacus 2007-AC1. The SEC said Tourre failed to disclose that Paulson & Co Inc, the hedge fund of billionaire John Paulson, helped choose subprime mortgage securities linked to go into Abacus and also that the fund planned to bet against it.
During the trial, the 20th of his career, Martens told jurors, "Wall Street greed drove Mr. Tourre to lie and deceive."
He readily acknowledged to the jurors the complexities of the case, telling them "nobody is making a TV show any time soon about a CDO trial." But he sought to convince them the fraud Tourre committed was simple.
"You can't and don't need to teach them everything about the subject material," Martens told Reuters Friday.
U.S. ATTORNEY'S OFFICE
Martens joined the SEC in August 2010 from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Charlotte, North Carolina, which he joined as an assistant U.S. attorney and left as deputy criminal chief.
Before heading to Charlotte, Martens worked under Michael Chertoff, first as an associate at the law firm Latham & Watkins and later as chief of staff when Chertoff headed the Justice Department's criminal division.
While he was in Charlotte, Martens started a securities fraud practice. He also built up his trial experience, taking 14 cases to jury trials.
"His philosophy was to volunteer to try anything," said Chertoff, who later served as secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and now heads the Chertoff Group consulting firm. "He wanted to really get that experience."
When Martens began looking to join the SEC, he originally applied to run its Atlanta office, according to Robert Khuzami, who stepped down as the SEC's director of enforcement in January and joined Kirkland & Ellis last month.
Khuzami, who got to know Martens through that process, subsequently reached out when the position of chief trial counsel opened up.
Martens's arrival at the SEC came at a time of restructuring for the SEC's enforcement division, which had been criticized for failing to uncover Bernard Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme before it came to light in December 2008.
Khuzami called Martens a "very hands on manager" who instituted closer supervision of members of the trial unit. He also was part of an effort to create more integration between the trial lawyers and investigative units, Khuzami said.
"He generally set a high standard for performance and encouraged member of trial units to get involved earlier in the investigative process," Khuzami said.
Mary Schapiro, who chaired the SEC at the time of Martens' hiring and is now at the Promontory Financial Group consulting firm, said Martens had "this extraordinary ability to, in a very cogent, concise, logical way, pull all the information together that was necessary for us to make a decision."
COURT APPEARANCES
While at the SEC, Martens was the lead lawyer in a lawsuit against the Securities Investor Protection Corp seeking to force the industry-funded non-profit to initiate a court proceeding enabling investors who lost money in Allen Stanford's $7 billion Ponzi scheme to file claims.
Martens argued the case at the district court level, where a judge ruled against the SEC. The case is now on appeal.
He also acted as lead counsel in seeking court approval of a $285 million settlement with Citigroup Inc, which the SEC accused of misleading investors in the sale of a $1 billion collateralized debt obligation.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan rejected the settlement in November 2011, criticizing a provision in which the bank neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. An appeal of that ruling is pending.
Those court appearances notwithstanding, the Tourre case marked Martens's first actual trial at the SEC. He inherited it from Lorin Reisner, who handled the case as deputy director for enforcement until he left in 2011.
The Tourre verdict is a chance for the SEC to rebuff critics who have questioned its ability to win big cases stemming from the financial crisis.
How much longer Martens will be associated with the SEC is unclear. In May, Reuters reported he had been considering leaving to join a law firm.
Martens declined to discuss his future, other than plans to take a vacation this week.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by Eddie Evans, Tiffany Wu and Bill Trott)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fabulous-fab-verdict-vindication-sec-lawyer-142759536.html
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Anticipation mounts as the next generation of video game systems are starting to hit the market, promising more realistic graphics, better sound and a more movie-like experience.
Last year, Nintendo released the Wii U, the successor to the Wii. This fall, Sony will release the PlayStation 4, while Microsoft enters the ring with Xbox One.
But with all those shiny new gaming consoles comes a question: Which system is the most energy-efficient system on the market and waste the least amount of energy.
The good people at Enervee?have provided the answer:
With the tests being completed and the numbers crunched, its Sony who comes out the winner.?The PlayStation 4 out of a scale from 0 to 100 (100 being the top mark) received an efficiency score of 100.?Xbox One, was second at 96,?Ouya???an Android operating system micro console ? was third with a score of 78, while the?Nintendo Wii U has a ranking of 67, even below next generation systems.
Older systems??rank even lower on the energy efficiency scale: PlayStation 3 Slim 500GB has a rating of 69; the Wii finishes with 65; Xbox 360 at 63 out of 100; and last on the scale was the PlayStation 3 Slim 320 GB at 62.
While Enervee does give a very through list of environmental performance for electronics, its not the only website out their if you are looking for the greenest video game system or electronics.?Greenpeace every fall publishes their??Guide to Greener Electronics??which provides a comprehensive ranking of the best in eco-friendly gadgets.
Are video games the energy wasting vulture that many within the environmental community complain about? Or as the new generation of systems come out, starting to turn face??What do you people think?
Adam Johnston A University of Winnipeg graduate who received a three year B.A. with a combined major in Economics and Rhetoric, Writing & Communications. Currently attempting to be a freelance social media coordinator. My eventual goal is to be a clean tech policy analyst down the road while I sharpen my skills as a renewable energy writer. Currently working on a book on clean tech and how to relate it to a broader audience. You can follow me on Twitter @adamjohnstonwpg or at www.adammjohnston.wordpress.com
Source: http://feeds.importantmedia.org/~r/IM-cleantechnica/~3/r_fLA5lHTQ8/
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Source: http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2013/08/warmist-suzanne-goldenberg-after-taking.html
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4 hours ago
Matt Nighswander / NBC News
The Moto X is always listening for your voice. Just say "OK, Google Now," and it'll carry out your commands.
The Moto X, Google's customizable smartphone, and the first smartphone to be assembled in the United States, was unveiled Thursday, described as a reflection of the "new Motorola," a reboot of the brand that Google acquired last year.?
But how does the Moto X live up to expectations? It's a solid Android smartphone which combines the best of Motorola's hardware know-how and Google's software savvy. It starts at $199 and will be available in late August or early September.
"Smartphones today are incredibly powerful ? but they are not very smart," Rick Osterloh, Motorola's senior vice president of product management, told NBC News. "Smartphones today don't keep track of context very well. They don't anticipate what you want to do."
The Moto X is supposed to go against this trend. It's supposed to be a smartphone that responds to you, is made for you, and is designed by you.? (At least those are the themes the folks at Motorola tried to drive in.)?
And Google is serious about this device: It's got a?$500 million ad budget planned for it. Google is also emphasizing how the Moto X will be assembled in the U.S. ?- a first ? at a Fort Worth, Texas plant, ready to ship to customers within days once their customized orders for the phone have been placed. It's a bold gamble by Google, with stiff competition from Apple's iPhone as well as successful Samsung phones running Google's Android operating system.
It responds to you
The Moto X is always listening for your voice ? yes, your specific voice. As soon as you say "OK, Google Now," a command already familiar to those who've tried Google Glass, the smartphone springs into action. You can ask it about the weather, demand directions, tell it to set a reminder and so on. It's like a souped-up Siri that does everything without ever requiring that you touch your phone.
A feature called "Active Display" puts the info you need at a glance right on the screen ? as soon as you turn the phone face up, take it out of your pocket, or move it. This means that you'll be able to peek at your phone more quickly, but never need to even touch the power button.
[CNBC: Why the Moto X is a long shot for Google]
Continuing the theme of "Look, ma! I don't have to touch buttons!" is the "Quick Capture Camera" feature. You can basically open the camera app simply by twisting your wrist twice (as if you are turning a screwdriver).
It's made for you
While designing the Moto X, the folks at Motorola looked at a lot of hands ... until they figured out the ideal size for their new smartphone. The Moto X is designed to fit comfortably into one hand and to balance a decent display with the ability to still use the device one-handed. It has a curved back for added comfort.
The Moto X has a 4.7-inch display with a resolution of 720 x 1280. It offers 316 pixels per inch. (For those keeping track: Apple's iPhone 5, with its "Retina display," offers 326 pixels per inch.)?
It has a 10-megapixel camera in the back and a 2-megapixel camera in the front. The device uses Motorola's custom designed X8 mobile computing system, which includes optimized software, a 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor with a quad-core GPU, a natural language processor, and a contextual computing processor. Thanks to the X8 system, the Moto X can go all day long on a single charge. (Without the X8 system, it "would take three batteries to run all the features," Iqbal Arshad, senior vice president of global product development, tells NBC News.)
Matt Nighswander / NBC News
You'll have 18 different back colors to choose from while ordering your Moto X.
Oh, and there's also a water-repellant nano-coating on the Moto X (and on its guts). It's not exactly meant to be dunked underwater, but it should handle splashes and rain just fine.
It's designed by you
By using the online Moto Maker tool, you can customize your Moto X. You can choose from 2 front colors, 18 back colors ? including red, purple, blue, green, and pink ? 7 accent colors, and even add a custom message on the back.
In the fall, Osterloh emphasizes that the Moto X will ship to you ? for free ? in four days or less. So no worries about a custom phone taking forever.
A 16 GB Moto X model will cost $199 and a 32 GB version will be available for $249.
If you're content with a black or white Moto X model, then you'll be able to snag the new device in late August or early September. It'll be available on Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular. If you want to customize your new phone, then you'll have to wait until the Moto Maker launches. (The Moto Maker will first support AT&T, then the other carriers.)
Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook posts, or circling her on?Google+.
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By Gerry Shih
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - LinkedIn Corp sailed passed Wall Street's expectations with second-quarter revenue jumping 59 percent, as its efforts to become a highly trafficked website and popular mobile app paid off with robust membership growth.
The company's shares surged 7 percent to record levels after the bell. It also raised its full-year guidance, although it gave a lower-than-expected forecast for the third quarter.
The money-making outlook for social media companies has brightened considerably with inroads made by sponsored ads, and the mobile-friendly format of LinkedIn's update stream, which includes sponsored ads, has begun to show serious promise as a new revenue source for the company.
Sponsored ads are social media posts that resemble organic, user-generated content but are in fact posts crafted by marketers, who pay for their distribution.
Underscoring that promise has been encouraging results from rivals. Earnings gains from sponsored newsfeed ads on mobile devices helped Facebook Inc's shares, which have languished for more than year, move past its IPO price this week. Twitter has reportedly also enjoyed swift revenue growth by selling sponsored tweets.
"When you look at how Facebook has been able to use sponsored content," said Ken Sena, an analyst at Evercore Partners. "LinkedIn will be able to do much of that as well."
LinkedIn, which currently makes much of its money by selling access to its members' resumes to corporate recruiters, has managed to surpass expectations for nine consecutive quarters since going public at $45 a share in mid-2011. After the bell the stock was trading at $228.50.
In the second-quarter, it booked revenue of $363.7 million, above a consensus estimate of $353.8 million. Excluding certain items, it reported earnings of 38 cent per share for the quarter, handily beating expectations of 31 cents per share.
"We have seen significant gains on the mobile side when compared versus desktop and that's very consistent with what we're seeing and hearing industry-wide," Chief Executive Jeff Weiner told analysts on Thursday.
"Content marketing within mobile has proven to be an effective form of marketing."
As the social network approaches a saturation point among white-collar workers in the United States, the company has also pursued growth by introducing blog posts by luminaries like Bill Gates in an attempt to draw Web traffic.
The San Francisco company projected sales of between $367 and $373 million for the third quarter, below some analysts' forecasts. But it raised its full-year revenue guidance to between $1.46 billion and $1.48 billion from an earlier estimate of $1.43 billion to $1.46 billion.
Membership grew at its fastest pace since late 2011. The site now has 238 million users, a 37 percent increase from a year ago and a 9 percent increase from the first quarter.
The rise in users, combined with the growing popularity of features such as a newsfeed similar to Facebook's, effectively doubled visits to the LinkedIn homepage over the past year, company executives said.
(Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/linkedin-revenue-soars-membership-growth-rate-rises-002537191.html
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Public release date: 1-Aug-2013
Share ] Contact: Noah Diffenbaugh
diffenbaugh@stanford.edu
650-223-9425
Stanford University
The planet is undergoing one of the largest changes in climate since the dinosaurs went extinct. But what might be even more troubling for humans, plants and animals is the speed of the change. Stanford climate scientists warn that the likely rate of change over the next century will be at least 10 times quicker than any climate shift in the past 65 million years.
If the trend continues at its current rapid pace, it will place significant stress on terrestrial ecosystems around the world, and many species will need to make behavioral, evolutionary or geographic adaptations to survive.
Although some of the changes the planet will experience in the next few decades are already "baked into the system," how different the climate looks at the end of the 21st century will depend largely on how humans respond.
The findings come from a review of climate research by Noah Diffenbaugh, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science, and Chris Field, a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science and the director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution. The work is part of a special report on climate change in the current issue of Science.
Diffenbaugh and Field, both senior fellows at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, conducted the targeted but broad review of scientific literature on aspects of climate change that can affect ecosystems, and investigated how recent observations and projections for the next century compare to past events in Earth's history.
For instance, the planet experienced a 5 degree Celsius hike in temperature 20,000 years ago, as Earth emerged from the last ice age. This is a change comparable to the high-end of the projections for warming over the 20th and 21st centuries.
The geologic record shows that, 20,000 years ago, as the ice sheet that covered much of North America receded northward, plants and animals recolonized areas that had been under ice. As the climate continued to warm, those plants and animals moved northward, to cooler climes.
"We know from past changes that ecosystems have responded to a few degrees of global temperature change over thousands of years," said Diffenbaugh. "But the unprecedented trajectory that we're on now is forcing that change to occur over decades. That's orders of magnitude faster, and we're already seeing that some species are challenged by that rate of change."
Some of the strongest evidence for how the global climate system responds to high levels of carbon dioxide comes from paleoclimate studies. Fifty-five million years ago, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was elevated to a level comparable to today. The Arctic Ocean did not have ice in the summer, and nearby land was warm enough to support alligators and palm trees.
"There are two key differences for ecosystems in the coming decades compared with the geologic past," Diffenbaugh said. "One is the rapid pace of modern climate change. The other is that today there are multiple human stressors that were not present 55 million years ago, such as urbanization and air and water pollution."
Record-setting heat
Diffenbaugh and Field also reviewed results from two-dozen climate models to describe possible climate outcomes from present day to the end of the century. In general, extreme weather events, such as heat waves and heavy rainfall, are expected to become more severe and more frequent.
For example, the researchers note that, with continued emissions of greenhouse gases at the high end of the scenarios, annual temperatures over North America, Europe and East Asia will increase 2-4 degrees C by 2046-2065. With that amount of warming, the hottest summer of the last 20 years is expected to occur every other year, or even more frequently.
By the end of the century, should the current emissions of greenhouse gases remain unchecked, temperatures over the northern hemisphere will tip 5-6 degrees C warmer than today's averages. In this case, the hottest summer of the last 20 years becomes the new annual norm.
"It's not easy to intuit the exact impact from annual temperatures warming by 6 C," Diffenbaugh said. "But this would present a novel climate for most land areas. Given the impacts those kinds of seasons currently have on terrestrial forests, agriculture and human health, we'll likely see substantial stress from severely hot conditions."
The scientists also projected the velocity of climate change, defined as the distance per year that species of plants and animals would need to migrate to live in annual temperatures similar to current conditions. Around the world, including much of the United States, species face needing to move toward the poles or higher in the mountains by at least one kilometer per year. Many parts of the world face much larger changes.
The human element
Some climate changes will be unavoidable, because humans have already emitted greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the atmosphere and oceans have already been heated.
"There is already some inertia in place," Diffenbaugh said. "If every new power plant or factory in the world produced zero emissions, we'd still see impact from the existing infrastructure, and from gases already released."
The more dramatic changes that could occur by the end of the century, however, are not written in stone. There are many human variables at play that could slow the pace and magnitude of change or accelerate it.
Consider the 2.5 billion people who lack access to modern energy resources. This energy poverty means they lack fundamental benefits for illumination, cooking and transportation, and they're more susceptible to extreme weather disasters. Increased energy access will improve their quality of life and in some cases their chances of survival but will increase global energy consumption and possibly hasten warming.
Diffenbaugh said that the range of climate projections offered in the report can inform decision-makers about the risks that different levels of climate change pose for ecosystems.
"There's no question that a climate in which every summer is hotter than the hottest of the last 20 years poses real risks for ecosystems across the globe," Diffenbaugh said. "However, there are opportunities to decrease those risks, while also ensuring access to the benefits of energy consumption."
###
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Public release date: 1-Aug-2013 Share ] Contact: Noah Diffenbaugh
diffenbaugh@stanford.edu
650-223-9425
Stanford University
The planet is undergoing one of the largest changes in climate since the dinosaurs went extinct. But what might be even more troubling for humans, plants and animals is the speed of the change. Stanford climate scientists warn that the likely rate of change over the next century will be at least 10 times quicker than any climate shift in the past 65 million years.
If the trend continues at its current rapid pace, it will place significant stress on terrestrial ecosystems around the world, and many species will need to make behavioral, evolutionary or geographic adaptations to survive.
Although some of the changes the planet will experience in the next few decades are already "baked into the system," how different the climate looks at the end of the 21st century will depend largely on how humans respond.
The findings come from a review of climate research by Noah Diffenbaugh, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science, and Chris Field, a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science and the director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution. The work is part of a special report on climate change in the current issue of Science.
Diffenbaugh and Field, both senior fellows at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, conducted the targeted but broad review of scientific literature on aspects of climate change that can affect ecosystems, and investigated how recent observations and projections for the next century compare to past events in Earth's history.
For instance, the planet experienced a 5 degree Celsius hike in temperature 20,000 years ago, as Earth emerged from the last ice age. This is a change comparable to the high-end of the projections for warming over the 20th and 21st centuries.
The geologic record shows that, 20,000 years ago, as the ice sheet that covered much of North America receded northward, plants and animals recolonized areas that had been under ice. As the climate continued to warm, those plants and animals moved northward, to cooler climes.
"We know from past changes that ecosystems have responded to a few degrees of global temperature change over thousands of years," said Diffenbaugh. "But the unprecedented trajectory that we're on now is forcing that change to occur over decades. That's orders of magnitude faster, and we're already seeing that some species are challenged by that rate of change."
Some of the strongest evidence for how the global climate system responds to high levels of carbon dioxide comes from paleoclimate studies. Fifty-five million years ago, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was elevated to a level comparable to today. The Arctic Ocean did not have ice in the summer, and nearby land was warm enough to support alligators and palm trees.
"There are two key differences for ecosystems in the coming decades compared with the geologic past," Diffenbaugh said. "One is the rapid pace of modern climate change. The other is that today there are multiple human stressors that were not present 55 million years ago, such as urbanization and air and water pollution."
Record-setting heat
Diffenbaugh and Field also reviewed results from two-dozen climate models to describe possible climate outcomes from present day to the end of the century. In general, extreme weather events, such as heat waves and heavy rainfall, are expected to become more severe and more frequent.
For example, the researchers note that, with continued emissions of greenhouse gases at the high end of the scenarios, annual temperatures over North America, Europe and East Asia will increase 2-4 degrees C by 2046-2065. With that amount of warming, the hottest summer of the last 20 years is expected to occur every other year, or even more frequently.
By the end of the century, should the current emissions of greenhouse gases remain unchecked, temperatures over the northern hemisphere will tip 5-6 degrees C warmer than today's averages. In this case, the hottest summer of the last 20 years becomes the new annual norm.
"It's not easy to intuit the exact impact from annual temperatures warming by 6 C," Diffenbaugh said. "But this would present a novel climate for most land areas. Given the impacts those kinds of seasons currently have on terrestrial forests, agriculture and human health, we'll likely see substantial stress from severely hot conditions."
The scientists also projected the velocity of climate change, defined as the distance per year that species of plants and animals would need to migrate to live in annual temperatures similar to current conditions. Around the world, including much of the United States, species face needing to move toward the poles or higher in the mountains by at least one kilometer per year. Many parts of the world face much larger changes.
The human element
Some climate changes will be unavoidable, because humans have already emitted greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the atmosphere and oceans have already been heated.
"There is already some inertia in place," Diffenbaugh said. "If every new power plant or factory in the world produced zero emissions, we'd still see impact from the existing infrastructure, and from gases already released."
The more dramatic changes that could occur by the end of the century, however, are not written in stone. There are many human variables at play that could slow the pace and magnitude of change or accelerate it.
Consider the 2.5 billion people who lack access to modern energy resources. This energy poverty means they lack fundamental benefits for illumination, cooking and transportation, and they're more susceptible to extreme weather disasters. Increased energy access will improve their quality of life and in some cases their chances of survival but will increase global energy consumption and possibly hasten warming.
Diffenbaugh said that the range of climate projections offered in the report can inform decision-makers about the risks that different levels of climate change pose for ecosystems.
"There's no question that a climate in which every summer is hotter than the hottest of the last 20 years poses real risks for ecosystems across the globe," Diffenbaugh said. "However, there are opportunities to decrease those risks, while also ensuring access to the benefits of energy consumption."
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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-08/su-cco073113.php
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WASHINGTON - The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East is getting push back from a Republican Louisiana House member for its lawsuit demanding that 97 oil, gas and pipeline companies restore damages to wetlands that make coastal areas vulnerable to flooding.
The damages could be in the billions of dollars.
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, clearly not happy with the suit, said he's demanding transparency from the authority about its contract with the trial lawyers who filed the historic lawsuit. The suit was filed last week in New Orleans Civil District Court.
"As a public body, the SLFPA-E has a responsibility to be open and transparent," Scalise said. "According to the contract, the trial lawyers' meter is now running and our flood protection assets will be in jeopardy if the lawsuit is dropped. Louisiana has fought too hard for levee board reform to have our flood protection assets placed in jeopardy by the whims of some unelected body."
"If funding isn't available to cover the legal expenses incurred, Scalise said. "The levee board could be forced to sell flood protection assets in order to pay"
John Barry, vice president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, said no flood protection assets are in jeopardy.
"The whole point of the suit is to get the money needed to protect people from hurricanes," Barry said. "The choice really is simple: protect oil companies from having to keep their written word and also obey the law, or protect people's lives and property from hurricanes. It really is that simple."
Scalise isn't the first Republican to criticize the lawsuit. Gov. Bobby Jindal has demanded the authority drop the lawsuit. Barry and other authority members have refused.
The historic lawsuit asks the court to order the companies to immediately begin filling in canals and restoring wetlands, and to provide money to the authority to compensate for past damage. Part of the compensation asked for by the suit also could be used to pay part or all of the local levee districts' share of the $14.6 billion levee improvements being made by the Corps of Engineers, and for future storm surge protection projects, Barry said.
Attorney Gladstone Jones, who specializes in environmental and class action suits with the firm of Jones, Swanson, Huddell & Garrison LLC, is the lead attorney for the authority. Three law firms were hired by the authority to handle the suit, and are working for a contingency fee of 32.5 percent of the first $100 million paid by the companies, if the authority wins.
The firm would receive a smaller percentage of amounts above $100 million, and nothing if the case is lost.
A provision in the contingency contract requires that the lawyers' expenses be paid if the authority unilaterally drops the lawsuit.
In his letter to the authority, Scalise asked what would happen if the board decides to drop the suit. Barry responded this way:
"We would withdraw the lawsuit only if it is shown to us that it is in the best interest of flood protection to do so," Barry said. "The only thing we care about is protecting people from hurricanes and river flooding. We did this after a lot of consideration because we thought it was the only way to protect people from this threat."
Political pressure, he said, won't cause the authority to drop the suit.
Scalise sent a letter to the board Wednesday with questions about the lawsuit: Among them: Where would the authority come up with money if it decides to drop the lawsuit? How were lawyers selected for the suit? What is the billable hourly rate? Were other lawyers considered and who has the authority to sign contracts for the authority?
Barry said he went through a lengthy process that included looking for recommendations from a diverse group of legal experts on the best lawyers to bring a complicated environmental lawsuit. He said that process included looking for a lawyer, law firm or academics willing to mount the litigation "pro bono."
But Barry said the suit is likely to cost millions of dollars of legal work and that he could not find any lawyers with the needed background and resources willing to conduct the suit for free. The authority couldn't finance the suit itself, he said, and therefore agreed to a contingency arrangement: It will pay a percentage of proceeds collected by the litigation.
Barry said Scalise has been helpful to the authority over the years, and that it looks forward to continuing to work with him on issues "we agree on."
Source: http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/07/rep_scalise_questions_historic.html
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Brothers Hypnotic is the documentary about the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a family of incredible musicians from Chicago that highlights family and creativity. Film director Reuben Atlas shows the film to us and explains the experience beyond the screen of the family that is way too real for America?s Got Talent.
Watch new episodes of BYOD live each week on Tuesdays at noon on TheLip.TV, or tune in for the archived replay starting here on the following Thursday.
ABOUT BYOD:
BYOD is hosted by Ondi Timoner, director of ?DIG!,? ?JOIN US? and ?WE LIVE IN PUBLIC,? and has the rare distinction of winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance twice. Each week the show explores a different documentary filmmaker or aspect of filmmaking, with special guests and a live Q&A? diving deep into creative process and the business realities of producing and distributing films. Ondi shares her insider views, opinions, and personal stories, welcoming audience participation. BYOD aims to entertain, inform, and elevate documentaries in general by bringing attention to films and film makers that deserve exposure.
GUEST BIO:
Reuben Atlas is a New York based producer, director, and entertainment lawyer. He directed videos for many artists including Pyeng Threadgill, Luthea Salom, Jon Skerik, Peter Afelbaum, Eric Deutsch, the SF Jazz Collective, and Charles Burnham.
Brothers Hypnotic is his first feature length documentary. The film premiered at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival and has been screening all over the world including Hot Docs and LA Film Festival.
The film has received support for the film from ITVS, the Jerome Foundation, the National Black Programming Consortium, the New York State Council on the Arts, and NPS Dutch TV. The project was also selected to participate in the IFP Independent Film Week 2009 ?Spotlight on Documentaries.?
In addition to filmmaking, Reuben has worked in counseling at a maximum-security prison, taught English in Costa Rica, and lived and worked in Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles.
ADD?L LINKS:
http://www.hypnoticbrassfilm.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BrothersHypnotic
EPISODE BREAKDOWN:00:01 Welcome to BYOD .
00:19 Introducing Reuben Atlas of Brothers Hypnotic.
02:05 Following the family of the Hypnotic Brass Band.
04:58 The mystique behind the father.
09:09 Putting the brothers into Chicago music and social context.
15:00 Time spent shooting and editing.
17:16 Seba and focusing in on the music.
20:35 The bravery in raising a family in a non-traditional way.
23:05 BROTHERS HYPNOTIC, footage.
Posted on August 1, 2013 in Bring Your Own Doc, Features by Ondi Timoner
Source: http://www.filmthreat.com/features/69964/
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NEW YORK (AP) ? Tens of thousands of negatives of Marilyn Monroe and other stars by celebrity photographer Milton Greene have sold at auction for $1.8 million.
The archive includes 3,700 negatives and slides of Marilyn Monroe. All the material was sold with copyright.
Profiles in History auction house says the highlights included a collection of color transparencies of the Hollywood siren with Laurence Olivier from the "The Prince and the Showgirl" movie. It sold for $42,000.
A group of transparencies of Monroe from the film "Bus Stop" fetched $39,000.
The seller is an American photography collector who purchased the archive 10 years ago. The items came from the Greene estate.
The buyers weren't identified.
Like his contemporaries Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, Greene is credited with elevating fashion photography to fine art.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/milton-greene-slides-marilyn-others-snag-1-8m-185012146.html
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Eyeview, a company with technology that personalizes video ads, has raised $8.1 million in Series C funding. You can see some examples of Eyeview's personalization below. For example, the visuals in an ad for a national retailer could be tailored to highlight local stores and deals. The examples in the video are mostly focused on location, but CEO and co-founder Oren Harnevo said ads can also be personalized based on things like weather and time of day.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/BtA9oRlT6YA/
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AT AMAZON, Back-to-School Deals In Electronics.
Also, today only: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX200V Digital Camera, $249.99 (48% off). Amazing what you can get for under $250 now: ?Its 18.2MP sensor and 30X optical/60X Clear Image zoom capture breathtaking photos at up to 10fps, plus ultra-stabilized Full HD 1080/60p videos.?
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instapundit/podcast/~3/LQxvWr4-A2k/
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