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American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Navy Missile Hits Spy Satellite

Navy Missile Hits Spy Satellite

A missile launched from a Navy ship successfully struck a dying U.S. spy satellite passing 130 miles over the Pacific on Wednesday, a defense official said.

The BBC has a video on how the missile successfully brought down the satellite. The BBC reports that

Operatives had only a 10-second window to hit the satellite – USA 193 – which went out of control shortly after it was launched in December 2006.

Infographic BBC
During this morning’s press conference General James Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave details on the mission.

Monsters and Critics has information on the components. Central command was in Omaha. Several bloggers have commented that this was the hardest way possible to do the job, which I am sure the Russians and the Chinese have noticed, too, since the missile and the satellite had a closing speed of 22,000 miles per hour 130 miles over the Pacific, the satellite was the size of a school bus, and the launch was from a relatively small Navy ship in the middle of the ocean.

Richard Fernandez writes about what the launch means.

Moe Lane is rather more direct:

Anyway, note that it’s just “a Navy ship.” That means that the next Navy ship that you meet just might be one of the ones that can take out things in orbit. Best not to mess with her on general principles, no?

Yes.

The Tension has photos (h/t Ben)

UPDATE
A Consensus of Scientists Say…
Ace has the video:

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More icy roadblocks for Global Warming

UPDATED
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As I mentioned yesterday, winter hasn’t even started, and we have ice:

As I looked at the icy crust on the deck, the Beeb was interviewing a Friends of the Earth guy who travelled to Bali for the Conference. The 5-minute interview went like this:

BBC anchorwoman: question
FoE guy: Blame Bush, blame Bush, blame Bush, blame Bush, blame Bush…
BBC anchorwoman: question
FoE guy: Blame Bush, blame Bush, blame Bush, blame Bush, blame Bush…

and on and on for the full five minutes.

It’s starting to get repetitive: Al flew his private plane to Bali to do exactly that.

“Fresh from receiving the Nobel Peace prize”, let’s go to the videotape:

And it’s going to cost you money: Global Carbon Tax Urged at UN Climate Conference

The Bali roadmap is the new Kyoto treaty.

Meanwhile, 100 scientists urge the UN to give up the futile attempts to combat climate change:

“It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables,” the scientists wrote.

The letter states, UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction

The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by ­government ­representatives. The great ­majority of IPCC contributors and ­reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts.

Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:

*Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.

*The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.

*Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today’s computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.

In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is “settled,” significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed ( http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/wg1_timetable_2006-08-14.pdf ) to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.

The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Balanced cost/benefit analyses provide no support for the introduction of global measures to cap and reduce energy consumption for the purpose of restricting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the “precautionary principle” because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future.

Via Memeorandum, Ronald Bailey writes from Bali,

On December 11, Greenpeace distributed slices from a gigantic chocolate cake to participants at the U.N. Climate Change conference (COP-13) to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol. Since many Kyoto Protocol signatories are not meeting their obligations to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to levels below those of 1990, I’m not sure what the festivities are all about. In fact, Japan, Canada and many EU countries are emitting more GHG than they did in 1990.

Oh, well. It’s the thought that counts.

One of the hottest topics being negotiated the COP-13 is technology transfer. I was under the impression that technology usually got transferred when one party sold it to another. That’s how I got the Sony Vaio on which I am typing this dispatch. Apparently that’s old-fashioned thinking. Under the new post-Kyoto climate treaty, poor countries are demanding that rich countries create some kind of tech transfer fund that would be used to subsidize their purchases of new low-carbon energy and carbon sequestration technologies.

If that weren’t enough there are rumblings among poor country negotiators that they want the right to simply seize the patents (nicely called “compulsory licensing” in trade talks) and make the equipment themselves. “If there is insistence on the ‘full protection of intellectual property’ in relation to climate-friendly technology, it would be a barrier to technology transfer,” declared Martin Khor, director of the leftist Third World Network. Is threatening to confiscate their patents really the way to encourage companies and inventors to invest in creating the innovative low-carbon energy technologies that world is being told are vital to stopping dangerous climate change?

More on Global warming’s icy roadblocks and Pope Benedict – follow the links.

UPDATE
Via Gateway Pundit, Arctic Sea Ice Re-Freezing at Record Pace

The Sound of Silenced Science

UPDATE, Saturday 15 December
Via Marzo, (PDF file) Carbon Emmissions Don’t Cause Global Warming

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The End of the Stem-Cell Wars

As I posted last Wednesday, scientists have Induced Pluripotent Stem cells (iPS) to generate patient- and disease- specific stem cells. (Pluripotent means that the cells are capable of developing into any type of body tissue.)

This is a spectacular achievement. In today’s Weekly Standard (via Real Clear Politics) Ryan Anderson writes about The End of the Stem-Cell Wars:

Leading scientists are telling us that they can pursue the most promising stem cell research without using–much less killing–human embryos. This breakthrough enables researchers to create human embryonic stem cells directly from adult cells. In fact, the new method may actually prove superior to embryo-destructive alternatives. This is the biggest stem cell advance since James Thomson became the first scientist to isolate embryonic stem cells, less than a decade ago.

It is a new study by Thomson himself that has caused the present stir, but this time Thomson is not alone. Accounts of independent research by two separate teams of scientists were published on November 20–one in the journal Cell and one in the journal Science–documenting the production of pluri-potent human stem cells without using embryos or eggs or cloning or any morally questionable method at all.

The new technique is so promising that on November 16, Ian Wilmut announced that he would no longer seek to clone humans. Wilmut, you may remember, is the scientist who cloned Dolly the sheep. He recently sought and received a license from the British government to attempt to clone human embryos for research purposes. Now, citing the new technique, he has abandoned his plans.

Here’s what’s important:

The new technique produces patient-specific stem cells with all the benefits of stem cells from embryos, but without the production and destruction of human embryos or the use of human eggs.

Ryan Anderson explains how

Having political leaders of principle who insist on ethical standards in scientific research, then, is always of the utmost importance.

Go read it all.

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The Hubble anniversary, and today’s items

When I first moved to the Princeton area I had the opportunity to see parts of the Hubble Telescope being assembled. Today Maria reminds me that the Hubble is 17 years old HubbleSite.

Now, that’s real science.

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Maria also sent this link to this article about a new magazine, Salvo
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Via Larwyn, Gates of Vienna writes about Naser Khader, A democratic Muslim
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Also from Larwyn, The Anchoress wants to Stow the Summer Concerts, Save the World

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Lost in space

From the International Herald Tribune, the EU branch of the NYT: EU’s satellite navigation system loses its way, by Judy Dempsey

BRUSSELS: Talk to satellite officials in Brussels and the mood is one of frustration and bitterness. The reason is that the European Union’s most ambitious technological project, a satellite navigation system designed to provide users with unprecedented accuracy, faces disaster.

Galileo, as it is called, was supposed to have challenged the Pentagon’s Global Positioning System. There were even hopes it would eventually provide a crucial security component for Europe’s defense ambitions. Galileo, alas, has become mired in vicious disputes among the eight companies chosen to build and operate the system.

As the article points out,

It is not as if the EU had no experience in big projects: witness the most recent example of Airbus and its new A380 aircraft.

Because it was initially subsidized, and because the EU needed companies to build Airbus, it allowed the biggest shareholders, France and Germany, to decide in which city and country parts of the aircraft would be built. The soaring costs and missed deadlines for the A380 recently forced the resignation of its chairman. Thousands of jobs are threatened and big international orders are at risk. Despite that, France and Germany are still squabbling over which will bear the brunt of job losses.

Then there is the Nabucco gas pipeline project, the EU’s attempt at having a common energy policy that would reduce its dependence on Russia. Conceived in 2002, the consortium consisting of Austrian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Turkish companies has yet to deliver the final feasibility study that will allow financing to be arranged. Again, there is fighting inside the consortium. Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány of Hungary prefers to support a Russian pipeline project that would undermine Nabucco. Ankara wants to use Nabucco so that Turkey can become an energy hub.

There is also uncertainty over orders for the Eurofighter jet, which is being built by Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain. Austria’s new coalition is embroiled in a corruption scandal about placing orders and Saudi Arabia agreed to finalize a €14.7 billion contract this year only after the British government dropped a fraud inquiry into previous fighter jet sales to the kingdom.

And so to Galileo.

You’d think that after all that, someone would have thought of figuring out the financials ahead of time, would you?

But noooo,

Spain’s Hispasat and Aena have been chosen to operate the satellites. But Spain wants a big slice of the jobs and profits.

Now come the 5 stages of failed EU projects:
Denial:

“What problems?” asked Marta Navarro, its spokeswoman.

Anger:

“Get rid of them,” said one official.

Bargaining:

“Let’s have enhanced cooperation,”

Depression:

Commission officials who have spent years nursing Galileo said it was time to stop creating consortia whose members lobby more for their national interests than the bigger European goal.

Acceptance:

Galileo, at some stage, will get off the ground because too much money, time and prestige have already been invested.

Good luck on that, folks.

(h/t No Pasaran)
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Nancy plays with fire in today’s items

Nancy Pelosi is Playing With Fire

All that Pelosi’s trip can accomplish is to advertise American disunity to a terrorist-sponsoring nation in the Middle East while we are in a war there. That in turn can only embolden the Syrians to exploit the lack of unified resolve in Washington by stepping up their efforts to destabilize Iraq and the Middle East in general.

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My Blog Talk Radio guest Michael Fumento writes about Defeating Malaria with both High- and Low-Tech

Tren calls for a holistic approach in fighting the disease. That includes full rehabilitation of the use of the insecticide DDT.

I’ve been posting about why I favor the use of DDT for malaria for years now.

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Video: U.S. troops rescue kidnapped Iraqi man
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UCLA “Covering Lebanon” Conference: Media Criticism or Israel Bashing?
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86 RSC Members Sign Letter to President Bush Pledging to Sustain Veto on Pork-Corrupted War Spending Bill. Cassandra found one instance of Real Democrat Support For The Troops

Transparency takes a hit: With Democrats at the helm of Congress, the Congressional Reseach Service has decided it no longer needs to track the pork in spending bills.

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Maria sent me a link saying that Web MD’s symptom checker just got better. I don’t know what its symptoms were, but I tried that site once and ended up with symptoms for defective organs I wasn’t born with.
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Jeremayakovka first blogbirthday’s today. He’s been discussing Cuba.

Here’s my old post on Ricardo Arenas, originally posted on Oct. 11, 2004 (you might have to go to October archive and scroll down):

Saturday I wrote about The Motorcycle Diaries and its obsecene lyricism in idolizing a mass murderer. A commenter wrote,

Don’t forget all the Gays he had killed

Carlos Eire‘s book deals with the subject (page 256),

He thinks about that cruel ritual he has witnessed so many times, when the guards strip all the prisoners naked and parade the most handsome in front of the newly arrived inmates to find out who among them is gay. He thinks about how anyone who gets aroused is taken away for a special mandatory “rehabilitation” program that includes the application of electrical currents to the genitals.

Reinaldo Arenas was one among many gay men who were sent to Cuban concentration camps. Arenas’s work portrays Cuba as one big prison, “where sodomite hedonism is a clear protest against the cruel Castro regime”. A Gay News review of Arenas’s autobiography, Before Night Falls explains,

Gay men have indeed been persecuted in Cuba, but luckily things are a bit better these days. Authors add excusingly that Fidel Castro has done a lot of good for the Cubans as far as education and health-care are concerned. An important question is where the homophobia of Castro`s regime comes from. With nuances all authors point at traditional Latin-American machismo, though they also have to admit that socialism didn`t do much for the breaking down of male megalomania and hatred against gays.

The cowardice and half-heartedness of left wing, sometimes even homosexual Cuba adepts we`d better forget. Meanwhile it’s beyond a doubt gays have been imprisoned en masse in the so called UMAP camps: the military units supporting the production. Jan Lumsden cautiously objects these camps weren`t for gays in the first place, but has to admit gays were its main population. All boys and men unfit for military service, arrested for homosexuality or considered unsocial in any other way, ended up in the UMAP camps where they carried on forced labour in for instance the sugar cane crop. The camps were in existence from 1965 till 1970. Since then queers who were dangerous to the state landed in jail again or in a regular work camp. The mass escape of maricones” during the Mariel exodus to the paradise of capitalism and decadence, North America, in 1980 was not accidental

For Arenas’s prison experiences in his own words, go to Amazon click on the book icon with “Search Inside”, and do a “Search inside this book” for keyword “prison”.

Arenas, as many hundreds of other gay men and lesbians, suffered from Che’s and Castro’s revolution. Arenas’s work, angry and hard-hitting, will endure, and he will be remembered. The names of those who died in the concentration camps are written on sand, washed by the tides.

Meanwhile, in Spain, it is business as usual when it comes to Cuba

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Medieval environmentalism

Medieval envoronmentalism is the “let’s get back to the way things were in Medieval times before these dreadful cars and machines” movement.

Pajamas Media has The Great Global Warming Swindle, where I found the above definition:

As a commenter in the PJM thread points out,

How many people realize the ridiculously small levels of carbon dioxide that are actually in the atmosphere? 390 parts per MILLION.

Richard North sheds some light on Light bulbs and Eco-Fascism,

In fact the virtues of these “low energy” bulbs are nothing like so wonderful as naïve (self-serving) enthusiasts like Ms Lucas imagine them to be. Indeed in many ways, the experts warn, by banning incandescent bulbs altogether the EU may have committed itself to an appallingly costly blunder.

Jules is Getting Warmer

First Channel Four’s “Great Global Warming Swindle,” now the New York Times, “hype” and “exaggeration.” The flood waters rising around Gore, warmglob enthusiasts. Oh, the treachery!

Dan’s examining Al Gore’s Global Swarming, and asks,

Should we really tell Africa and other nations they must not develop, thereby costing them years off their lives and actual lives because they will not have adequate services? Should we saddle everyone with hidden and seen taxes to combat a thing we don’t really know is there? Reading between the lines of the Times piece, the answer has to be no.

Scott casts a jaundiced eye on The Guardian of Hypocrisy, and ends in the perfect note:

Help me pay my outrageous gas bills. Thank you.

If you grew up in the 1960s and 70s you heard a lot about global cooling – best-selling books and all. Back then I was living in Puerto Rico, where cooling would have been a welcome respite from the hot humidity.

Now we have Global Warming. Now I’m living in NJ, where we had a really cold February, cold enough that Lake Carnegie totally froze over for the first time in years, and warming is most definitely welcome.

Last year I became convinced that belief in Medieval envoronmentalism and Global Warming is a religion. I was attending a conference and during lunch break the subject of global warming came up. I politely stated, “I’m not totally sold on global warming”.

Mind you, I didn’t say “I don’t believe in global warming”, or “antropologically-induced global warming is a scam”, or “this is such hooey”, or anything like it. I just said (in a near-whisper at that) that I wasn’t totally sold on global warming.

The reaction around the table was that of intense shock and disgust. One man put down his sandwich and turned red.

Had I verbalized the most appallingly obscene blasphemy I would not have received such disgust. I even speculate that some of those present might have even admired my “courage” and “honesty” in the name of “diversity”.

After much animated conversation, and intense placating from a very conciliatory lady sitting next to me who got everybody to calm down by agreeing not to kill me on the spot (I belive the sandwich guy was contemplating where to hide my corpse) and my saying that “climate changes”, I knew I was, definitely and beyond a doubt, in the presence of True Faith: they had Seen the Light, and the Light was set on Warm.

But you gotta give Al credit – he’s the only man in history to have won an Oscar for a souped-up powerpoint presentation.

Here’s a part of Friends of Science’s documentary, Climate Catastrophe Cancelled:
go watch the whole thing at YouTube, especially if you’re recovering from the frostbite:Trek Mounted To Prove Global Warming Ends Early When Explorers Suffer Frostbite

Again, there is no “consensus” on global warming. However, no matter what the evidence is,

“They were experiencing temperatures that weren’t expected with global warming,”

Al and his True Believers will carry on. After all, the hardest thing for Al to do is to admit he’s wrong – he used to be “America’s next president”, or something like that.

To paraphrase Bette Davis, Tighten your belts – it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Special thanks to Larwyn.
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