Sunday 17 December 2006

The Person of the Year is YOU!



Time magazine's "Person of the Year" is You

Sat Dec 16, 2006 10:30 PM ET

By Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK (Reuters) - You were named Time magazine "Person of the Year" on Saturday for the explosive growth and influence of user-generated Internet content such as blogs, video-file sharing site YouTube and social network MySpace.

"For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, Time's Person of the Year for 2006 is you," the magazine's Lev Grossman wrote.

The magazine has put a mirror on the cover of its "Person of the Year" issue, released on Monday, "because it literally reflects the idea that you, not us, are transforming the information age," Editor Richard Stengel said in a statement.
"These blogs and videos bring events to the rest of us in ways that are often more immediate and authentic than traditional media," Stengel said.

"These blogs and videos bring events to the rest of us in ways that are often more immediate and authentic than traditional media," Stengel said.

"Journalists once had the exclusive province of taking people to places they'd never been. But now a mother in Baghdad with a videophone can let you see a roadside bombing or a patron in a nightclub can show you a racist rant by a famous comedian," he said.

Tuesday 12 December 2006

Arctic sea ice 'faces rapid melt'


Arctic sea ice 'faces rapid melt'

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco

A new model forecasts largely ice-free summers by 2040

The Arctic may be close to a tipping point that sees all-year-round ice disappear very rapidly in the next few decades, US scientists have warned.

The latest data presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting suggests the ice is no longer showing a robust recovery from the summer melt.

Last month, the sea that was frozen covered an area that was two million sq km less than the historical average.

"That's an area the size of Alaska," said leading ice expert Mark Serreze.

"We're no longer recovering well in autumn anymore. The ice pack may now be starting to get preconditioned, perhaps to show very rapid losses in the near future," the University of Colorado researcher added.

The sea ice reached its minimum extent this year on 14 September, making 2006 the fourth lowest on record in 29 years of satellite record-keeping and just shy of the all time minimum of 2005.

'Feedback loop'

Dr Serreze's concern was underlined by new computer modelling which concludes that the Arctic may be free of all summer ice by as early as 2040.

The new study, by a team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the University of Washington, and McGill University, found that the ice system could be being weakened to such a degree by global warming that it soon accelerates its own decline.

"As the ice retreats, the ocean transports more heat to the Arctic and the open water absorbs more sunlight, further accelerating the rate of warming and leading to the loss of more ice," explained Dr Marika Holland.

"This is a positive feedback loop with dramatic implications for the entire Arctic region."

Eventually, she said, the system would be "kicked over the edge", probably not even by a dramatic event but by one year slighter warmer than normal. Very rapid retreat would then follow.

Sooner or later

In one of the model's simulations, the September ice was seen to shrink from about 5.9 million sq km (2.3 million sq miles) to 1.9 million sq km (770,000 square miles) in just a 10-year period.

By 2040, only a small amount of perennial sea ice remained along the north coasts of Greenland and Canada, while most of the Arctic basin was ice-free in September.

"We don't think that state has existed for hundreds of thousands of years; this is a dramatic change to the Arctic climate system," Dr Holland told the BBC.

Dr Serreze, who is not a modeller and deals with observational data, feels the tipping point could be very close.

"My gut feeling is that it might be around the year 2030 that we really see a rapid decline of that ice. Now could it occur sooner? It might well. Could it occur later? It might well.

"It depends on the aspects of natural variability in the system. We have to remember under greenhouse warming, natural variability has always been part of the picture and it always will be part of the picture."

The average sea ice extent for the entire month of September this year was 5.9 million sq km (2.3 million sq miles). Including 2006, the September rate of sea ice decline is now approximately -8.59% per decade, or 60,421 sq km (23,328 sq miles) per year.

At that rate, without the acceleration seen in the new modelling, the Arctic Ocean would have no ice in September by the year 2060.

Carbon 'credit card' considered


Watts in your wallet?

Carbon 'credit card' considered

Mr Miliband called for Labour to get its idealism back
Carbon "credit cards" could be issued as part of a nationwide carbon rationing scheme, Environment Secretary David Miliband has suggested.
An annual allowance would be allocated, with the card being swiped on various items such as travel, energy or food.
Mr Miliband said people who used less than their allowance could sell any surplus to those who wanted more.

A feasibility study says many questions remain on such a plan, but Mr Miliband says "bold thinking" is needed.
Mr Miliband told the Guardian that the scheme had "a simplicity and beauty that would reward carbon thrift".
Mr Miliband, who commissioned the feasibility study, said the scheme could be working within five years.

You cannot just rely on the state
David Miliband

Send us your comments

Individuals and communities had to be empowered to tackle climate change - "the mass mobilising movement of our age".
"You cannot just rely on the state," he said.

The feasibility study was carried out by the Centre for Sustainable Energy for the Department of the Environment (Defra).
It says there are questions over whether a scheme would be acceptable for politicians and the public, but could be fairer than imposing carbon taxes.
The report seeks to separate a carbon trading scheme from the proposed ID card scheme, to avoid it being attacked on the same civil liberty basis as identity cards.

'Consistent radicalism'

Defra said the government was now developing a work programme "which should provide the information to lead to a decision on whether or not a personal carbon allowance is a realistic and workable policy option".
Mr Miliband predicted the environment would be a key issue in the next election, requiring Labour to "change our policies and our politics in fundamental ways so that we are seen as the change in the next election".
"I'm a great believer in the Arsene Wenger school of management - which is, you don't worry about the opposition, you just get your own act together," he said.

He insisted that climate change required "cumulative, consistent radicalism" rather than "one shot wonders".

Watts in your wallet?

Environmental measures in last week's pre-Budget report, including a 1.25p per litre increase in fuel duty and a doubling in air duty, were called "pretty feeble" by green groups.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth said the principle of using a limited "budget" of carbon per person was sound, but the implementation - especially as it would involve a government IT project - was a cause for concern.

Friends of the Earth climate change campaigner Martin Williams said: "What worries us is that it could take quite a long time to implement it and really we don't have that long to tackle climate change."

At a meeting in Downing Street on Monday, the prime minister met business, media and religious leaders to promote "collective action" against climate change.

The Bishop of London and the chief executives of B&Q, BSkyB, the Carphone Warehouse, HSBC UK, Man Investments, Marks & Spencer, O2, Starbucks UK, the director general of the BBC and Tesco formed a partnership to publicise "practical, simple solutions". A public campaign will be launched in March 2007.

MORE : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4479226.stm

Sunday 10 December 2006

When science depends from industry!


Industry 'paid top cancer expert'

Sir Richard was an acclaimed scientist but he hiddens that he was paid by Monsanto and falsified the results of his research! said Jean-Luc Roux
His views on the chemical were used by the manufacturers' trade association to defend it for more than a decade, The Guardian said.

The scientist who first linked smoking to lung cancer was paid by a chemicals firm while investigating cancer risks in the industry, it has emerged. Professor Sir Richard Doll held a consultancy post with US firm Monsanto for more than 20 years.

During that time he investigated the potential cancer causing properties of the powerful herbicide Agent Orange, made by the company. But a former colleague said he gave money he was paid to charity.

It does not in any sense suggest that his work was biased
Professor Sir Richard Peto

Professor Sir Richard Peto, a fellow expert in cancer, said there were no rules governing disclosure of consultancies of this type 20 years ago.

He said: "Everybody working in this area knew that Richard worked for industry and consulted for industry, and would do court cases.

"It does not in any sense suggest that his work was biased. He was incredibly careful to avoid bias."

The BBC has seen private letters which show that Sir Richard, who died in 2005 aged 92, received a US$1,500-a-day consultancy fee from Monsanto in the mid-1980s.

During that period, Sir Richard wrote to an Australian commission on the results of his investigation into whether Agent Orange, famous for its use by the US during the Vietnam War, caused cancer.

He argued in his letter that there was no evidence that Agent Orange caused cancer.

Should come clean

Professor Lennart Hardell, of the Oncology Department at University Hospital Orebro, Sweden, has also studied the potential hazards posed by Agent Orange. He was one of the scientists whose work was dismissed by Sir Richard. He told the BBC Sir Richard's work was tainted. He said: "It's quite OK to have contacts with industry, but you should be fair and say 'well, I'm writing this letter as a consultant for Monsanto."

"But he does it as president, Green College, UK - a prestige position; also the Imperial Research Cancer Organisation in the UK. "And that makes a different position of the paper because you are an official university-employed person giving this position."

Further documents obtained by The Guardian newspaper allegedly show that Sir Richard was also paid a £15,000 fee by the Chemical Manufacturers Association, and chemicals companies Dow Chemicals and ICI for a review of vinyl chloride, used in plastics, which largely cleared the chemical of any link with cancers apart from liver cancer.

According to the newspaper, this is a view with which the World Health Organisation disagrees.

Sir Richard's views on the chemical were used by the manufacturers' trade association to defend it for more than a decade, The Guardian said.

Sir Richard was the first to publish a peer-reviewed study, in 1951, to demonstrate smoking was a major cause of lung cancer.

Saturday 9 December 2006

Alvin Toffler The increasing role of unformal economy

Alvin Toffler: The Thought Leader Interview
by Lawrence M. Fisher

Thirty-six years after his book Future Shock, the world’s most influential futurist sees the informal economy as a basis of revolutionary wealth.

Photograph by Vern Evans
When Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock (Random House) first appeared in 1970, Richard Nixon was in the White House, the United States was in Vietnam, and the first personal computers were still several years away. Yet with notable prescience, Mr. Toffler wrote that the years to come would be marked by information overload, an acceleration of technological change, and a resultant social upheaval that he likened to mental illness: “Citizens of the world’s richest and most technologically advanced nations will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterizes our time. For them, the future will have arrived too soon.”

In retrospect, Mr. Toffler was less a reliable prophet than a brilliant synthesist. Future Shock and its successors, The Third Wave (Morrow, 1980) and Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century (Bantam, 1990) were at their best not when predicting what would happen, but when drawing from a vast array of disciplines — science, technology, sociology, and religion — to explain the circumstances of the world at large.

That is true as well for the new book, Revolutionary Wealth (Knopf, 2006), this time credited to Mr. Toffler and his wife, Heidi, who collaborated on the earlier books as well. In their latest book, the Tofflers argue that more and more economic activity takes place through processes that do not involve the exchange of currency. The rapid rise of this nonmonetary wealth system has major implications for both the global economy and for humanity in general — implications that have been unmeasured and underestimated.

That will come as no surprise to Microsoft, which now battles for market share with Linux, the free operating system software maintained by a global army of volunteer programmers, or to the entertainment industry, which successfully blocked the music file-sharing Web site Napster only to see a dozen clones rise in its place, now joined by sites offering illegal downloads of feature films. According to the Tofflers, countless other industries and institutions face waves of “prosumers,” who produce and consume products and services outside the monetary economy. This is a historic change in the way wealth is created, the Tofflers write, spearheaded (for now, at least) by the United States.

The Tofflers also see a growing de-synchronization of society’s institutions. Financiers invent new derivatives faster than governments invent new regulations; schoolteachers working from dated textbooks struggle to retain relevancy for students who Google from cell phones; and audit firms search for a way to value increasingly intangible assets. Some de-synchronization is inevitable and even positive because it spurs innovation, the authors say, but too much risks the implosion of economies, governments, even whole civilizations.

Despite the gloomy language of some of their work, the Tofflers have never been doomsayers. Amid the current era of economic, ecological, and geopolitical anxiety, we thought it particularly worthwhile to hear the Tofflers’ vision of the years ahead. Mr. Toffler sat down with strategy+business at a hotel in San Francisco. The early days of the 21st century may indeed be challenging, but as Mr. Toffler, now 77, said in opening the conversation: “What an absolutely fascinating time to be alive.”