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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (58455)	2/16/2006 7:13:11 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 362563

Greenland ice swells ocean rise By Paul Rincon BBC News science reporter, St Louis Greenland's glaciers are sliding towards the sea much faster than previously believed, scientists have told a conference in St Louis, US. It was thought the entire Greenland ice sheet could melt in about 1,000 years, but the latest evidence suggests that could happen much sooner. It implies that sea levels will rise a great deal faster as well. Details of the study, by Nasa and University of Kansas researchers, are also reported in the journal Science. The comprehensive analysis found that the amount of ice dumped into the Atlantic Ocean has doubled in the last five years. If the Greenland ice sheet melted completely, it would raise global sea levels by about 7m. Greenland's contribution to global sea level rise today is two to three times greater than it was in 1996. Sleeping giant "We are concerned because we know that sea levels have been able to rise much faster in the past - 10 times faster. This is a big gorilla. If sea level rise is multiplied by 10 or more, I'm not sure we can deal with that," co-author Eric Rignot, from the US space agency's (Nasa) Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told the BBC News website. Previous estimates suggested it would take many hundreds of years for the Greenland ice sheet to melt completely. The new data will cut this timescale, but by how much is uncertain. It takes a long time to build and melt an ice sheet, but glaciers can react quickly to temperature changes Dr Eric Rignot, Nasa "It depends on how fast the glaciers can go and how sustainable the acceleration can be," said Dr Rignot. He added: "It takes a long time to build and melt an ice sheet, but glaciers can react quickly to temperature changes." In 1996, Greenland was losing about 100 cubic km per year in mass from its ice sheet. In 2005, this had increased to about 220 cubic km. By comparison, the city of Los Angeles uses about one cubic km of water per year. Rising surface air-temperatures seem to be behind the increases in glacier speed in the southern half of Greenland since 1996; but the northward spread of warmer temperatures may be responsible for a rapid increase in glacier speed further north after 2000. Satellite monitoring Over the past 20 years, the air temperature in south-east Greenland has risen by 3C. Warmer temperatures cause more surface melt water to reach the base of the ice sheet where it meets the rock. This is thought to serve as a lubricant, easing the glaciers' march to the sea. The study's results come from satellites that monitor glacier movement from space. Rignot and colleague Pannir Kanagaratnam, from the University of Kansas, built up a glacier speed map from the data for 2000 and then used measurements from 1996-2005 to determine how glacier velocity had changed in the last decade. The researchers plan to continue their monitoring of the Greenland glaciers using satellite data. The Greenland ice sheet covers 1.7 million sq km and is up to 3km thick. The scientists described their results at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Story from BBC NEWS: news.bbc.co.uk Published: 2006/02/16 18:58:37 GMT

To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (58455)	2/16/2006 7:21:38 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 362563

Judge Orders Surveillance Info Released By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer A federal judge ordered the Bush administration Thursday to release documents about its warrantless surveillance program or spell out what it is withholding, a setback to efforts to keep the program under wraps. At the same time, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said he had worked out an agreement with the White House to consider legislation and provide more information to Congress on the eavesdropping program. The panel's top Democrat, who has requested a full-scale investigation, immediately objected to what he called an abdication of the committee's responsibilities. U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy ruled that a private group will suffer irreparable harm if the documents it has been seeking since December are not processed promptly under the Freedom of Information Act. He gave the Justice Department 20 days to respond to the request from the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "President Bush has invited meaningful debate about the wireless surveillance program," Kennedy said. "That can only occur if DOJ processes its FOIA requests in a timely fashion and releases the information sought." Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said no decision had been made about the government's next steps. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers also have been seeking more information about Bush's program that allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop — without court warrants — on Americans whose international calls and e-mails it believed might be linked to al-Qaida. After a two-hour closed-door session, Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the committee adjourned without voting on whether to open an investigation. Instead, he and the White House both confirmed that they had an agreement to provide more information on the nature of the program to lawmakers. The White House has also committed to make changes to the current U.S. law, according to Roberts and White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino. "I believe that such an investigation at this point ... would be detrimental to this highly classified program and efforts to reach some accommodation with the administration," Roberts said. Still, he promised to consider the Democratic request for a vote in a March 7 meeting. Earlier, President Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, left the impression that any deal with Congress would not allow for significant changes. He said the White House continued to maintain that Bush does not need Congress' approval to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping and that the president would resist any legislation that might compromise the program. "There's kind of a high bar to overcome," McClellan said. West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, said the White House had applied heavy pressure to committee Republicans to prevent them from conducting thorough oversight. He said legislation can't be considered by the full Senate because lawmakers don't have enough information. "No member of the Senate can cast an informed vote on legislation authorizing or conversely restricting the NSA's warrantless surveillance program, when they fundamentally do not know what they are authorizing or restricting," Rockefeller said. It remains unclear what any changes in law may look like. Roberts indicated it may be possible "to fix" the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to authorize the president's program. Perino said the White House considers suggestions put forward by Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, the starting point, particularly his proposal to create a special subcommittee on Capitol Hill that would regularly review the program. DeWine's proposal would authorize Bush's program and exempt it from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That law set up a special court to approve warrants for monitoring inside the United States for national security investigations. Yet Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., left the closed hearing saying he has been working on a different legislative change to FISA. "It seems that's a logical place to start — to upgrade FISA given the extraordinary expanse of technology in the 30 years that have lapsed," he said. And Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., is drafting legislation requiring the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review Bush's program and determine if it is constitutional. Specter's committee will continue to investigate the program's legality at a Feb. 28 hearing. The Justice Department strongly discouraged him from calling former Attorney General John Ashcroft and his deputy, James Comey, to testify about the surveillance program. Just as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could not talk about the administration's internal deliberations when he appeared before the committee earlier this month, neither can Ashcroft or Comey, Assistant Attorney General William Moschella said in a letter to Specter obtained Thursday. "In light of their inability to discuss such confidential information, along with the fact that the attorney general has already provided the executive branch position on the legal authority for the program, we do not believe that Messrs. Ashcroft and Comey would be in a position to provide any new information to the committee," Moschella said. ___ Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven and Mark Sherman contributed to this report.