Archive for December, 2007
An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.Greenland’s ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer’s end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.
“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.
Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.
This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”
So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models?
“The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming,” said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. “Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines.”
It is the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, responsible for man-made global warming. For the past several days, government diplomats have been debating in Bali, Indonesia, the outlines of a new climate treaty calling for tougher limits on these gases.
What happens in the Arctic has implications for the rest of the world. Faster melting there means eventual sea level rise and more immediate changes in winter weather because of less sea ice.
In the United States, a weakened Arctic blast moving south to collide with moist air from the Gulf of Mexico can mean less rain and snow in some areas, including the drought-stricken Southeast, said Michael MacCracken, a former federal climate scientist who now heads the nonprofit Climate Institute. Some regions, like Colorado, would likely get extra rain or snow.
More than 18 scientists told The AP that they were surprised by the level of ice melt this year.
“I don’t pay much attention to one year … but this year the change is so big, particularly in the Arctic sea ice, that you’ve got to stop and say, ‘What is going on here?’ You can’t look away from what’s happening here,” said Waleed Abdalati, NASA’s chief of cyrospheric sciences. “This is going to be a watershed year.”
2007 shattered records for Arctic melt in the following ways:
- 552 billion tons of ice melted this summer from the Greenland ice sheet, according to preliminary satellite data to be released by NASA Wednesday. That’s 15 percent more than the annual average summer melt, beating 2005’s record.
- A record amount of surface ice was lost over Greenland this year, 12 percent more than the previous worst year, 2005, according to data the University of Colorado released Monday. That’s nearly quadruple the amount that melted just 15 years ago. It’s an amount of water that could cover Washington, D.C., a half-mile deep, researchers calculated.
- The surface area of summer sea ice floating in the Arctic Ocean this summer was nearly 23 percent below the previous record. The dwindling sea ice already has affected wildlife, with 6,000 walruses coming ashore in northwest Alaska in October for the first time in recorded history. Another first: the Northwest Passage was open to navigation.
- Still to be released is NASA data showing the remaining Arctic sea ice to be unusually thin, another record. That makes it more likely to melt in future summers. Combining the shrinking area covered by sea ice with the new thinness of the remaining ice, scientists calculate that the overall volume of ice is half of 2004’s total.
- Alaska’s frozen permafrost is warming, not quite thawing yet. But temperature measurements 66 feet deep in the frozen soil rose nearly four-tenths of a degree from 2006 to 2007, according to measurements from the University of Alaska. While that may not sound like much, “it’s very significant,” said University of Alaska professor Vladimir Romanovsky.
Greenland, in particular, is a significant bellwether. Most of its surface is covered by ice. If it completely melted - something key scientists think would likely take centuries, not decades - it could add more than 22 feet to the world’s sea level.
However, for nearly the past 30 years, the data pattern of its ice sheet melt has zigzagged. A bad year, like 2005, would be followed by a couple of lesser years.
According to that pattern, 2007 shouldn’t have been a major melt year, but it was, said Konrad Steffen, of the University of Colorado, which gathered the latest data.
“I’m quite concerned,” he said. “Now I look at 2008. Will it be even warmer than the past year?”
Other new data, from a NASA satellite, measures ice volume. NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke, reviewing it and other Greenland numbers, concluded: “We are quite likely entering a new regime.”
Melting of sea ice and Greenland’s ice sheets also alarms scientists because they become part of a troubling spiral.
White sea ice reflects about 80 percent of the sun’s heat off Earth, NASA’s Zwally said. When there is no sea ice, about 90 percent of the heat goes into the ocean which then warms everything else up. Warmer oceans then lead to more melting.
“That feedback is the key to why the models predict that the Arctic warming is going to be faster,” Zwally said. “It’s getting even worse than the models predicted.”
NASA scientist James Hansen, the lone-wolf researcher often called the godfather of global warming, on Thursday will tell scientists and others at a meeting of researchers in San Francisco that in some ways Earth has hit one of his so-called tipping points, based on Greenland melt data.
“We have passed that and some other tipping points in the way that I will define them,” Hansen said in an e-mail. “We have not passed a point of no return. We can still roll things back in time - but it is going to require a quick turn in direction.”
Last year, Cecilia Bitz at the University of Washington and Marika Holland at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado startled their colleagues when they predicted an Arctic free of sea ice in just a few decades. Both say they are surprised by the dramatic melt of 2007.
Bitz, unlike others at NASA, believes that “next year we’ll be back to normal, but we’ll be seeing big anomalies again, occurring more frequently in the future.” And that normal, she said, is still a “relentless decline” in ice.
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On the Net:
National Snow and Ice Data Center on 2007 Arctic sea ice:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007-seaiceminimum/20070810-index.html
NASA’s “Tipping Points” panel and slide show materials:
Best Buy Co. Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and six other retailers will sell equipment enabling owners of analog television sets to continue to view programming after the 2009 nationwide switch to digital broadcasting, the federal government said Tuesday.Starting Jan. 1, an estimated 13 million to 21 million households that rely on an antenna to watch TV can contact the government to receive two coupons worth $40 each to buy converter boxes.
The $1.5 billion program — which is enough to fund 33.5 million coupons — ends March 31, 2009.
Retailers will begin selling the devices, which translate the digital signal for such TV sets, in mid February.
The other major retailers include Circuit City Stores Inc., Target Corp., Sears Holdings Corp. and its Kmart outlets and RadioShack Corp. Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club stores will also sell the devices.
“Over 100 retailers have been certified including a variety of small stores retail chains and these very large retailers,” said Meredith Baker, who is the acting administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is overseeing the coupon program.
“We have nationwide coverage with over 14,000 brick and mortar stores involved as well as with online participation,” she added during a telephone conference with journalists.
The nation’s broadcasters on Feb. 17, 2009 will be turning off their analog over-the-air broadcasts. Cable and satellite TV providers said they will ensure their subscribers continue to view programming after the switch.
©2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Citigroup Inc. named Vikram Pandit, the head of its investment banking business, as its chief executive officer Tuesday, charging him with restoring the bank’s profitability and reputation after missteps in lending and investing left Citi with billions of dollars in losses this year.
The banking company named Sir Win Bischoff, who has been Citi’s acting CEO, as its chairman, replacing Robert E. Rubin, who had stepped into the role when former CEO and chairman Charles Prince was ousted last month.
Pandit, who ran a hedge fund bought by Citi earlier this year, is seen as a careful, decisive investment banker—qualities Citi needs following the revelation that Citi’s writedowns of soured mortgages could amount to as much as $17.5 billion by the end of the year.
The appointments came after a two-day meeting of Citi’s board.
Pandit is well known on Wall Street, having worked at Morgan
Stanley for two decades until 2005, when he and a few other disgruntled colleagues left the brokerage and founded the hedge fund Old Lane Partners.
Earlier this year, Citigroup bought Old Lane for $800 million and put Pandit in charge of Citi’s alternative investments. A few months later, Pandit took over the bank’s markets and banking unit as well, and then reconfigured the business to mirror the Morgan Stanley structure he was familiar with.
His performance as Citi’s leader will undoubtedly be scrutinized by investors until they see positive results—including his willingness to challenge the Citi strategy of the past several years. One question on Wall Street is whether Pandit will be beholden to the Citi board, which has remained steadfastly loyal to the Sanford Weill regime. Weill, a board member, built Citigroup through a series of mergers and acquisitions over the past few decades, and many have attributed the bank’s failings this year to the Weill culture: Prince was his hand-picked successor.
Bischoff was the chairman of the British investment bank Schroders PLC, then joined Salomon Smith Barney Inc., a subsidiary of Citi, when it acquired Schroders. He began his current position in May 2000.
Unlike Merrill Lynch & Co., which took just two weeks to find a replacement for Stan O’Neal, its embattled CEO and another casualty of the mortgage crisis, Citi’s search dragged on. Merrill’s nab of John Thain, a Goldman Sachs alum who turned around the once-troubled New York Stock Exchange, eliminated him as a possibility for Citi.
Citi, with all its bad debt—not to mention the hemorrhaging funds known as structured investment vehicles that it manages—appeared to be a beast no one wanted to tame. According to various media reports, Citi’s overtures to big names in the banking industry such as Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann and Royal Bank of Scotland CEO Frederick Goodwin were spurned.
Pandit faces multiple challenges. He must not only attract more cash to offset Citi’s debt and bulk up the bank’s risk management, but he also needs to strengthen Citi’s lackluster consumer-oriented businesses and clean up its reputation.
Citi has shed about $120 billion in market capitalization this year, putting its market cap below that of Bank of America Corp. Citi is still the largest U.S. bank by assets, though, so while most major financial companies have seen problems navigating a surge in foreclosures and a freeze-up in credit, Citi’s losses have been seen on Wall Street as particularly egregious.
Citi’s cash levels will get a boost by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which in late November bought a 4.9 percent stake in Citi for $7.5 billion. But the investment, while helpful in offsetting some of Citi’s bad debt, is not a panacea. Many analysts and shareholders believe Pandit needs to sell more assets to bring in cash and make the huge conglomerate leaner. Citigroup has said non-essential assets selloffs are in the works, but many shareholders are hoping for more ruthless spinoffs—such as Citi’s brokerage arm, Smith Barney.
The board has been adamant, though, about not breaking up the bank.
Rubin, who led the search committee, said after Prince’s resignation that they were looking for someone to focus on Citigroup’s “multiplicity of businesses.”
“It is very important that whoever we have has a strong international focus—not necessarily enormous international experience, but can relate to the globalization of this institution and Chuck’s (Prince’s) strategy of having to ever increase that involvement,” Rubin said at the time.
A few analysts have even tossed around the idea of another big bank like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. buying or merging with Citi. But given regulatory obstacles and the credit market problems facing even the best-positioned banks, other analysts say such a deal is unlikely at this time.
It has been a rough year for celebrity wrestler Hulk Hogan and family.
His wife, Linda, has filed for divorce after 24 years of marriage, and the couple’s 17-year-old son, Nick Bollea, is facing charges of reckless driving after an Aug. 26 crash in Florida that left a friend critically injured.
«I’m leaning into the wind,» Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, told syndicated TV entertainment show «Access Hollywood» on Monday. «I’m trying to stay very, very positive. You know, I just pray that things get better for my family.
«As far as my son goes, we’re going to be very happy when the truth really comes out of what really (happened), instead of all the speculation and all the mentality that’s going on,» Hogan, 54, said. «As far as my divorce goes, I love my family and I love my wife to death and I just don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring.
When asked about a possible reconciliation with his wife, Hogan said: «There’s always a chance. You can never say never.
Hogan and Laila Ali co-host NBC’s «American Gladiators,» a revival of the ’90s competition series. The new edition debuts Jan. 6.
«Things are bigger and faster,» Hogan said of the show. «Now we’ve got water _ and I wish it was shark-infested.
NBC is a unit of General Electric Co.
On the Net
NBC
www.nbc.com/American_Gladiators
«Access Hollywood
www.accesshollywood.com
Hulk Hogan
www.wwe.com/superstars/halloffame/hulkhogan
IBM Helps Media & Entertainment Businesses “Go Green” and Reduce Impact of Technology Use on Environment.
HOLLYWOOD, CA–(Marketwire - December 11, 2007) - “HOLLYWOOD GOES GREEN” — At the Hollywood Goes Green conference today, IBM (
“Consumers can have a significant impact on the environment if they do simple things like use energy efficient light bulbs or drive hybrid vehicles. But just think, if businesses are as savvy about how they operate their data centers, they could have massive impact,” said Tom Burns, director of post-production infrastructure, Technicolor. “At Technicolor, we are always looking for opportunities to reduce our power footprint. It makes good business sense, and we look forward to hearing from IBM on how we can improve efficiency in our data centers worldwide — both to reduce our environmental impact and to support our global service offerings to the media and entertainment industry.”
Fact: Today information and communications technology accounts for approximately 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.(1)
IBM also declared a vision at Hollywood Goes Green today to design new technologies as part of Project Big Green that will use 50 percent less power by the end of the decade and increase compute capacity by a factor of 10 — dramatically increasing performance without the need to build new datacenters, conserving resources from trees to gasoline. IBM will also introduce new server designs and extend the use of its patented liquid cooling technologies to eliminate the need for air conditioning in data centers altogether, greatly impacting bottom line energy costs.
Fact: The six million servers in America’s data centers today consume more energy than the 300+ million televisions in the United States.(2)
For media and entertainment businesses ‘going green’ means more than just turning off the lights or recycling soda cans. Blockbuster films that attract millions of moviegoers around the world and generate billions of dollars in revenue, as well as the rapidly emerging online game market, are two examples of key industries that rely on high performance technologies to power “virtual backlot studios,” transforming the way next generation digital entertainment is created and delivered. Rich 3D-game experiences and digital imagery that sweep film-goers into imagined worlds have become more vivid and life-like than ever before and rely on data centers with vast pools of computers that devour energy resources to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
IBM’s Project Big Green includes technologies and services to sharply reduce data center energy consumption, helping to transform the world’s business and public technology infrastructures into “green” data centers. Some of the significant technologies Project Big Green delivers today include servers, software, specialty microprocessors, and breakthrough IBM research innovations, such as:
-- IBM Blue Gene Supercomputer: the world's most powerful computer that
delivers the most performance per kilowatt of power consumed and was
recently ranked on the Green500 list (www.green500.org) of the world’s most
energy-efficient supercomputers. The new Green500 list shows IBM Blue Gene
supercomputers capturing 26 of the top 27 spots.
– IBM Cell Broadband Engine: a microprocessor that can deliver extreme
performance compared with conventional processors.
– IBM Rear Door Heat eXchanger: patented liquid “cooling doors” that can
reduce server heat output in data centers by up to 60 percent by utilizing
chilled water to dissipate heat generated by computer systems.
– IBM Mobile Measurement Technology: a technology from IBM Research that
measures 3D temperature distributions within data centers. The mobile
measurement machine includes a position monitoring system with a network of
up to 100 sensors used to gather thermal data at a granular level, with
unprecedented speed and accuracy as it travels through the data center.
– IBM Active Energy Manager: an energy management software tool that can
provide clients with a view of the actual power used, as opposed to
benchmarked power consumption, and can effectively allocate, match and cap
power and thermal limits in the data center at the system, chassis or rack
level.
– IBM Global Asset Recovery Services (GARS): can help data center owners
simply and efficiently deal with the proper environmental disposal of all
of their old IT equipment consistent with local, state and federal
regulations worldwide. In addition, IBM GARS can help enterprises protect
and keep confidential the data stored on hard drives slated for disposal.
“IBM clients around the world are increasingly expressing concern over their growing need for energy and the associated costs, but the issue is becoming particularly acute for media and entertainment companies because they rely so heavily on high performance technologies to deliver their content,” said Jim Gargan, Vice President, Brand Management, IBM BladeCenter and System x. “IBM as a company has made strides in addressing this need, but Project Big Green will allow IBM to further help the media and entertainment industry support sustained business growth with zero increase in consumption and environmental impact.”
About Project Big Green
Announced in May 2007, Project Big Green is a $1 billion investment to increase the efficiency of IBM products. New IBM products and services, announced as part of Project Big Green, include a five step approach to energy efficiency in the data center that, if followed, could sharply reduce data center energy consumption and provide energy savings of up to 42 percent for an average data center. The initiative includes a new global “green team” of more than 850 energy efficiency architects from across IBM. To learn more about IBM Project Big Green, go to www.ibm.com/press/greendatacenter.
Note to Editors: Learn more about IBM at Hollywood Goes Green at www.ibm.com/press/hollywoodgoesgreen. Images and broadcast-quality b-roll are available for download by registered journalists at www.thenewsmarket.com/ibm
Bloggers: Images and video are available for download by registered bloggers at www.thenewsmarket.com/videocafe
(1) Green IT: A New Industry Shock Wave, Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, October 2007.
(2) IDC: Power and Cooling Multi-Client-Study, 2007.
