Did global warming cause superstorm Sandy?

Climate scientists warn that global warming is likely to increase the incidence of serious events like Hurricane Sandy. Warming water and rising sea levels may be contributing to what New York politicians are calling their 'new reality.'?

By Seth Borenstein,?Associated Press / October 30, 2012

This NOAA satellite image taken Tuesday, shows superstorm Sandy slowly moving westward while weakening across southern Pennsylvania.

AP Photo/NOAA

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Climate?scientist Michael Oppenheimer stood along the Hudson River and watched his research come to life as Hurricane Sandy blew through New York.

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Just eight months earlier, the Princeton University professor reported that what used to be once-in-a-century devastating floods in New York City would soon happen every three to 20 years. He blamed global warming for pushing up sea levels and?changing?hurricane patterns.

New York "is now highly vulnerable to extreme hurricane-surge flooding," he wrote.

For more than a dozen years, Oppenheimer and other?climate?scientists have been warning about the risk for big storms and serious flooding in New York. A 2000 federal report about global warming's effect on the United States warned specifically of that possibility.

Still, they say it's unfair to blame?climate?change?for Sandy and the destruction it left behind. They cautioned that they cannot yet conclusively link a single storm to global warming, and any connection is not as clear and simple as environmental activists might contend.

"The ingredients of this storm seem a little bit cooked by?climate?change, but the overall storm is difficult to attribute to global warming," Canada's University of Victoria?climate?scientist Andrew Weaver said.

Some individual parts of Sandy and its wrath seem to be influenced by?climate?change, several?climate scientists said.

First, there's sea level rise. Water levels around New York are a nearly a foot (0.3 meters) higher than they were 100 years ago, said Penn State University?climate?scientist Michael Mann.

Add to that the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean, which is about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (.8 degrees Celsius) warmer on average than a century ago, said Katharine Hayhoe, a?climate?scientist at Texas Tech University. Warm water fuels hurricanes.

And Sandy zipped north along a warmer-than-normal Gulf Stream that travels from the Caribbean to Ireland, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director for the private service Weather Underground.

Meteorologists are also noticing more hurricanes late in the season and even after the season. A 2008 study said the Atlantic hurricane season seems to be starting earlier and lasting longer but found no explicit link to global warming. Normally there are 11 named Atlantic storms. The past two years have seen 19 and 18 named storms. This year, with one month to go, there are 19.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/P7jnT6k7ov8/Did-global-warming-cause-superstorm-Sandy

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U.S. economists win Nobel for applying match-making

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Life-saving kidney exchange programs and ways for schools to select students are just two practical applications of the market-matching theories for which U.S. economists Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley won the Nobel prize for economics on Monday.

Pairing up employers with job seekers - for instance doctors and lawyers taking up their first appointments - are other examples of how Roth, 60, and Shapley, 89, have separately applied game theory to daily life.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the 8 million crown ($1.2 million) prize, called their work an outstanding example of economic engineering.

Roth and other economists who study market design are essentially exploring how matching procedures can be improved to produce better results for all concerned.

Speaking to Reuters over an early-morning cup of coffee from California, Roth gave the example of Stanford, his alma mater, to which he recently returned after a long spell at Harvard.

Stanford competes for students with the likes of Harvard and Princeton, and who is admitted does not depend solely on price. Stanford keeps its tuition costs low enough to attract plenty of applicants and selects among them.

"So there is choice going on, on both sides. It's a little like getting married. Taking a job is like this too," Roth said.

"And it turns out that, to some extent, getting an organ for transplantation is a little like it. So there are a lot of things that you get in life that you can't just choose. You also have to be chosen. And that's what we study. We study matching."

MATCHING MARKETS, SAVING LIVES

Roth, in a series of empirical studies, built on separate work much earlier by Shapley, an emeritus professor at the University of California Los Angeles, who had used game theory to compare various matching methods and make sure the matches were acceptable to all counterparts.

Roth, who was sleeping when Stockholm came on the phone and missed the first call to inform him of his prize, described his work as studying "courtship" of many kinds.

"You can't just have what you want; you also have to do some courtship and there is courtship on both sides and we study the marketplace processes by which those types of courtship are resolved."

The economics prize, officially called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established by Sweden's central bank in 1968. It was not part of the original group of awards, for sciences and promoting peace, that was set out in dynamite tycoon Nobel's 1895 will.

"This is very much what economics is about," said Tore Ellingsen, a Nobel committee member and a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics. "How to allocate scarce resources as well as possible, to economize."

Roth has applied market design theory to the public schools admissions process in New York and Boston.

He is also a co-founder of the New England Program for Kidney Exchange, www.nepke.org, which draws on his work on matching markets to bring together pairs of compatible kidney donors and recipients.

"Here is an economic theorist who hasn't just made things more efficient. He has actually saved lives. It is unclear whether it is the economics Nobel he deserved or the Nobel prize for medicine," Joshua Gans, a professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto, wrote on www.digitopoly.org.

(Additional reporting by Patrick Lannin and Niklas Pollard in Stockholm and Edward Krudy and Ros Krasny in Boston; Writing by Alan Wheatley; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/americans-roth-shaply-win-nobel-prize-economics-110737894.html

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Barely A Blog ? Who Will Be Our 'Massa'? The Mormon Or The ...

We all live on the ?plantation?; we are all ?moocher-hiddeen,? says Barely A Blog contributor, Myron Pauli.

Who Will Be Our ?Massa?? The Mormon Or The Mulatto?
By Myron Pauli

Unless you are hiding in the Unabomber?s Montana shack and consuming rabbits and berries, we all give to and take from the government. However, some give more than they take and some take more than they give.

Just how large is the sector that depends upon government?

Children and the elderly have become virtual wards of the state ? so that 50% already falls into the ?moocher-hiddeen? (to use an Islamic term!). That leaves the ?working age population? of roughly 25 to 65 supporting the rest. Of course, if ?Joe the Plumber? has kids or elderly parents, then the government acts as a conduit from him to his extended family. Even addressing just those working age people with neither children nor parents ? are they the ones who pay more than they receive? Maybe.

Remove government employees and the government contractors from that. Then you have the governmental corporations such as Fannie Mae and academia who are funded via government largesse. And what to make of GM, Chrysler, the bailed-out-financial sector, etc., kept afloat by government? Public utilities are governmentally regulated monopolies. Automobile Dealers function only thanks to governmentally legislated monopoly. Pharmaceutical firms, publishers, and the entertainment industry function on patents and copyright for their financial status. Sectors in agribusiness, health care, insurance, energy, and transportation (Amtrak!) are so heavily regulated that those employees are de-facto governmental workers even if there is a semblance of profit. The less said about lawyers and lobbyists, the better!

Truly private workers such as waiters, plumbers, and preachers are quite independent of government; but in locations like metropolitan Washington DC, nearly all their customers come out of the ?oink sectors.? Even worse is that when Americans invest their money, the Roth?s, IRA?s, 401k?s, 529?s, HSA?s, ?cafeteria plans? are so controlled by governmental rules that one wonders who owns the money ? you or the government ? or is that even a distinction?

The sad and pathetic truth is that we are all living on a large plantation with a quadrennial democratically elected ?Massa? and a bureaucracy of overseers. It is to the credit of racial and religious tolerance that we can have a Mormon vs. mulatto fighting for the job of ?Massa?.

The fact is that government has entangled itself from cradle to grave like a metastasizing cancer. Rhetorical flourishes aside, the only government programs downsized in the last 40 years was transportation deregulation under Carter and welfare reform under Clinton (nothing eliminated under Republican presidents), and the budget was in near-balance (ignoring raids on the ?Social Security Trust Fund!?) by Clinton. I mean, this not as an endorsement of the unabashed big government Obama but merely to point out that the odds of Romney downsizing the Federal Government is smaller than the odds that the Chinese politburo will make Yom Kippur a Chinese holiday!

So when ?Tea Party Conservatives? start bitching about Obama endangering their Medicare, it is because the addiction to government is nearly universal. Some of us on the plantation may be more productive than others, but we all live under the rules and, regrettably, most inhabitants (or inmates) generally support the system.

A few libertarian ?nutcases? like Paul or Johnson may point the other way, but even most billionaires are as happy to have the Warfare-Welfare state as the poor. Who do you think pays for the TV commercials and the spin doctors and the political ?think tanks? ? Christian coalminers and Hispanic gardeners, or guys named Koch, Adelson, Soros, and Spielberg?

Nothing short of a major non-violent libertarian revolution? (Constitutional restoration) is needed ? but until then, we can all stick our hand out for our share of the public gruel.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the ?hostages? and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the ?good looks? were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the ?BAB?s A List? category to access the Pauli archive.

Source: http://barelyablog.com/who-will-be-our-massa-the-mormon-or-the-mulatto/

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Are Cost-effective Internet Hosting Deals Certainly Low-priced ...

Blog form performs very important position to some online business. On one particular hand, net styles of organisations furnish them a chance to achieve their viewers world-wide. Concerning the added hand, Internet Create Agency can properly wreck the country?s firm if organisation conducts a few missteps from the technique for her word wide web enlargement. Consequently, corporations may want to confirm their online page style does perhaps not drop while in the class of WEBDESIGN Provider with critical website style flaws.

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They have been the majority of within the most simple internet site flaws undergone by website visitors regarding the web page. A particular actually must stay away from finishing up these issues to be able to make a considerably better loving relationship employing its buyers. Merely talking, online businesses may want to purchase blog development products within just the experienced webdesign specialist to ensure the perfection on its website design and style.

Maybe reading through Focused Different Kinds Of Reasonably-priced Web Hosting Products And Services would help you pick up an improved recognizing around the issue.

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3. The Best Way To Decide Upon the Appropriate Internet Hosting Provider in Your Firm: Corporation Internet Hosting
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Source: http://www.hugohosting.com/are-cost-effective-internet-hosting-deals-certainly-low-priced.html

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New NASA mission to take first look deep inside Mars

ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2012) ? NASA has selected a new mission, set to launch in 2016, that will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars to see why the Red Planet evolved so differently from Earth as one of our solar system's rocky planets.

The new mission, named InSight, will place instruments on the Martian surface to investigate whether the core of Mars is solid or liquid like Earth's, and why Mars' crust is not divided into tectonic plates that drift like Earth's. Detailed knowledge of the interior of Mars in comparison to Earth will help scientists understand better how terrestrial planets form and evolve.

"The exploration of Mars is a top priority for NASA, and the selection of InSight ensures we will continue to unlock the mysteries of the Red Planet and lay the groundwork for a future human mission there," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "The recent successful landing of the Curiosity rover has galvanized public interest in space exploration and today's announcement makes clear there are more exciting Mars missions to come."

InSight will be led by W. Bruce Banerdt at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. InSight's science team includes U.S. and international co-investigators from universities, industry and government agencies. The French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, and the German Aerospace Center are contributing instruments to InSight, which is scheduled to land on Mars in September 2016 to begin its two-year scientific mission.

InSight is the 12th selection in NASA's series of Discovery-class missions. Created in 1992, the Discovery Program sponsors frequent, cost-capped solar system exploration missions with highly focused scientific goals. NASA requested Discovery mission proposals in June 2010 and received 28. InSight was one of three proposed missions selected in May 2011 for funding to conduct preliminary design studies and analyses. The other two proposals were for missions to a comet and Saturn's moon Titan.

InSight builds on spacecraft technology used in NASA's highly successful Phoenix lander mission, which was launched to the Red Planet in 2007 and determined water existed near the surface in the Martian polar regions. By incorporating proven systems in the mission, the InSight team demonstrated that the mission concept was low-risk and could stay within the cost-constrained budget of Discovery missions. The cost of the mission, excluding the launch vehicle and related services, is capped at $425 million in 2010 dollars.

"Our Discovery Program enables scientists to use innovative approaches to answering fundamental questions about our solar system in the lowest cost mission category," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. "InSight will get to the 'core' of the nature of the interior and structure of Mars, well below the observations we've been able to make from orbit or the surface."

InSight will carry four instruments. JPL will provide an onboard geodetic instrument to determine the planet's rotation axis and a robotic arm and two cameras used to deploy and monitor instruments on the Martian surface. CNES is leading an international consortium that is building an instrument to measure seismic waves traveling through the planet's interior. The German Aerospace Center is building a subsurface heat probe to measure the flow of heat from the interior.

JPL provides project management for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Discovery Program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver will build the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information about InSight, visit: http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov .

For more information about the Discovery Program, visit: http://discovery.nasa.gov .

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov .

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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120820202248.htm

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The Stigma on Traditional and Indigenous African Religions ?

Africa is a continent that has long been cloaked in a shroud of misunderstanding and stigma. The general misconceptions about Africans are widespread and attack nearly every aspect of African culture and societies including religion. The stigma placed on the pagan beliefs and religions that are intrinsic to African cultures has in my opinion, left the continent devoid of one of the factors that adds to its ?mystical allure.?

Adequately defining African religions in their totality would be an arduous task with results riddled with error. Nonetheless, if I had to give a grossly general definition, I would say that ancient African religious beliefs are complex, intricately developed systems that gracefully intertwine the values of a people, with a love for the land and ancestors. Though African religions vary greatly by region, country, and even within the same ethnic groups, there are some concepts that remain constant. Many African religions focus on perpetuating the well being of a people through the appeasement of a deity, a group of ancestors or the land. This appeasement often involves systems of ritual and sacrificial practices. Another common strand is the interrelatedness of religion and government. In many religions, the ruler or figurehead is viewed as the link between the people and the supernatural entities of that religion and are revered as spiritual custodians. Though they differ greatly in the particulars of their rituals, beliefs and mythology, African religions are deeply rooted in ancestral worship, great concern for the land that is inhabited and spiritualism. There is an undeniable beauty in the dynamic mystery of African religions that is displayed in folklore, music, art, dance and other characteristic components of African cultures. Contemporary African cultures exist with a conspicuous imprint of ancient religions and practices.

Despite this, the arrival of foreign religions and recent film propaganda has cast a dark shadow over indigenous religions. Because of the fact that indigenous religions tend to be rooted in spiritualism, ritual and sacrifice, they have been made to seem malicious, satanic and evil. The beliefs that once governed the lives of a people are now detested and regarded as taboo my most. This makes me wonder if an amicable balance can be found.

Can foreign religions such as Christianity be practiced while maintaining the values of past religions? Can the stigma of ancestral worship be lifted? Can it instead be replaced with pride in a charismatic and mystical past? And more importantly, why must such a vital fragment of history be regarded as evil? With the progression of time comes new concepts which are developed and adopted, but I believe the test of a dynamic society is its ability to embrace innovation while keeping the successes of the past on a pedestal. In my opinion the key to finding a healthy balance is finding a pride in the past.

-Joy Otibu

Tagged: africa, african religions, christianity, religion

Source: http://africaisdonesuffering.com/2012/07/21/the-stigma-on-traditional-and-indigenous-african-religions/

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Snuggie Simulation: Beyonce Fan Recreates "Countdown" Video

Let there be no doubt now over the biggest Beyonce fan on the planet.

We don't know this young man's name, but a kid has recreated the artist's entire "Countdown" video, shot for shot, move for move... all while donning a Snuggie. For what reason?

Perhaps as an odd tribute to Blue Ivy. All we can say for certain is that the guy has some impressive moves. And maybe too much time on his hands.

 

Beyonce Fan Recreates "Countdown" Video

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/07/snuggie-simulation-beyonce-fan-recreates-countdown-video/

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