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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (68986)	6/14/2006 10:58:53 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Not about science "There is a conceit among the American left that the American right cleaves to bad science out of deference to religion, while the left is all-science, all-the-time. Former Veep Al Gore's new movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' however, shows how unscientific -- and downright faith-based -- the left has become," San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders writes. "Gore was wrong in 1992 when he wrote that 98 percent of scientists agreed with him on global warming. Witness the survey cited above," the columnist said. "Now, he is wrong when he argues in his movie that there is a complete consensus on global warming today. As proof Gore cites a 2004 study that looked at 928 climate abstracts and found none that refuted global-warming dogma. That says more about the researcher than the scientific community. "There are a number of well-known scientists who don't believe that global warming is human-induced, or who believe that if it is, it is not catastrophic. Hurricane expert William Gray of Colorado State University believes the Earth will start to cool within 10 years. Neil Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center, told The Washington Post that global warming is 'a hoax.' Climate scientist Robert Lindzen of MIT believes that clouds and water vapor will counteract greenhouse gas emissions. "So you have to ask yourself: Why does Gore pretend that apostates do not exist? Scientists acknowledge contradictory data. But the faith-driven Gore argues that all scientists agree with him -- well, except for those who are bought and paid for by big polluters. "Because this is a crusade -- and not about science -- Gore is drawn not to the most reasoned scenarios, but the most apocalyptic."

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (68986)	6/14/2006 11:12:11 PM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

June 15, 2006 Editorial A Leap of Faith, Off a Cliff On Monday, the Bush administration told a judge in Detroit that the president's warrantless domestic spying is legal and constitutional, but refused to say why. The judge should just take his word for it, the lawyer said, because merely talking about it would endanger America. Tomorrow, Senator Arlen Specter wants his Judiciary Committee to take an even more outlandish leap of faith for an administration that has shown it does not deserve it. Mr. Specter wants the committee to approve a bill he drafted that tinkers dangerously with the rules on wiretapping, even though the president has said the law doesn't apply to him anyway, and even though Mr. Specter and most of the panel are just as much in the dark as that judge in Detroit. The bill could well diminish the power of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, which was passed in 1978 to prevent just the sort of abuse that Mr. Bush's program represents. The committee is considering four bills. Only one even remotely makes sense now: it would give legal standing to groups that want to challenge the spying in court. The rest vary from highly premature (Senator Dianne Feinstein's proposed changes to FISA) to the stamp of approval for Mr. Bush's claims of unlimited power that Senator Mike DeWine drafted. Mr. Specter's bill is not that bad, but it is fatally flawed and should not go to the Senate floor. He is trying to change the system for judicial approval of government wiretaps in a way that suggests Congress is facing a technical problem with a legislative solution, when in fact it is a constitutional showdown. There is also a practical problem: a bill on the floor of this Senate becomes the property of the Republican leadership, which will rewrite it to the specifications of Vice President Dick Cheney, the man in charge of this particular show of imperial power. Mr. Specter, of all people, should have no doubt of that, having been forced to watch in embarrassment last week as Mr. Cheney seized control of the committee's deliberations on the spying issue. Mr. Specter says his bill would impose judicial review on domestic spying by giving the special court created by FISA power to rule on the constitutionality of the one program that Mr. Bush has acknowledged. But the review would be optional. Mr. Specter's bill would eliminate the vital principle that FISA's rules are the only legal way to eavesdrop on Americans' telephone calls and e-mail. It would give the president power to conduct surveillance under FISA "or under the constitutional authority of the executive." That merely reinforces Mr. Bush's claim that he is the sole judge of what powers he has, and how he exercises them. Mr. Specter's lawyers have arguments for many of these criticisms, and say the bill is being improved. But the main problem with the bill, like most of the others, is that it exists at all. This is not a time to offer the administration a chance to steamroll Congress into endorsing its decision to ignore the 1978 intelligence act and shred constitutional principles on warrants and on the separation of powers. This is a time for Congress to finally hold Mr. Bush accountable for his extralegal behavior and stop it.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (68986)	6/15/2006 2:34:06 AM
From: d[-_-]b	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Probably has nothing to do with this: news.nationalgeographic.com Hydrothermal "Megaplume" Found in Indian Ocean Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News December 12, 2005 An enormous hydrothermal "megaplume" found in the Indian Ocean serves as a dramatic reminder that underwater volcanoes likely play an important role in shaping Earth's ocean systems, scientists report. The plume, which stretches some 43.5 miles (70 kilometers) long, appears to be active on a previously unseen scale. "In a nutshell, this thing is at least 10 times—or possibly 20 times—bigger than anything of its kind that's been seen before," said Bramley Murton of the British National Oceanography Centre. Scientists reported the finding last week at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. Researchers also announced newly discovered deep-sea hydrothermal fields in the Arctic Ocean and the south Atlantic. The appearance of hydrothermal vents around the world suggests that they are a far more common part of the ocean system than once believed and could be a major influence on circulation patterns and ocean chemistry. Scientists are only beginning to identify the tectonic conditions that may indicate where the fields can be found, but the possible locations are increasing. "I'd be surprised if in the next five years we didn't experience a mini-revolution in terms of finding these [fields] in places where they are not supposed to exist," said geophysicist Robert Reves-Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Volcanic Bombshell Hydrothermal vents are volcanic hotspots that emit gasses and mineral-enriched water as hot as 760°F (400°C). The heat from these vents supports unique ecosystems where creatures survive using thermal and chemical energy in place of sunlight. Megaplumes like the one found in the Indian Ocean are probably caused by undersea volcanic eruptions, though scientists aren't yet certain. "Once formed they can possibly hang around for years," Murton said. The heat from such events could have a dramatic effect on ocean circulation, which plays a role in determining Earth's climate. "The energy content is an order of magnitude greater [than ordinary plumes], and the thermal power may be many orders of magnitude greater," Murton said. "A normal hydrothermal vent might produce something like 500 megawatts, while this is producing 100,000 megawatts. It's like an atom bomb down there." Recent studies have attempted to factor the heat from the world's known hydrothermal ridges into ocean circulation models. "Some studies estimate that for the Pacific, background thermal heating might increase ocean circulation by up to 50 percent," Murton said. Regular hydrothermal fields stir the water for only a few hundred meters (about a thousand feet) above the ocean floor. "But these megaplumes can reach a column of 1,000 to 1,500 meters [3,280 to 4,920 feet], so it reaches right up into the midwater," he said. But even the Indian Ocean megaplume may be small compared to larger underwater eruptions that have as yet gone undetected. "At the moment those that we've seen have come from small eruptions in the larger scheme of things," he said. "But we know when we look at the ocean floor that there have been much larger eruptions, so we can only speculate about what magnitude of event plumes would come from those." The new data on hydrothermal fields and megaplumes underscores the fact that volcanic activity on the ocean floor remains a largely mysterious phenomenon. "Ninety percent of the Earth's volcanic activity takes place underwater," Murton said. "Just because we can't see it doesn't mean it's not there." Seafloor Treasures In addition to their potential impacts on ocean systems, hydrothermal vents provide scientists with a tectonic window below the planet's surface. The vents essentially form open rifts in the crust that allow chilled water to enter and cool the Earth's interior—offering scientists a peek at the geology inside. Researchers at the AGU meeting reported on the state of current research to uncover the vents' scientific secrets. They have determined, for example, that the vents are hotspots for precious metals, such as silver, gold, zinc, and copper. As yet, these resources lie beyond the reach of commercial interests because mining the ocean floor strains the bottom line. "The cost of working in the deep ocean is so extreme," explained Reves-Sohn of Woods Hole. "We have the same problem in the scientific community. We don't get to go to look at these places as much as we'd like." Although active deep-sea hot springs haven't yielded their precious metals to humans, they have surrendered living resources that could prove more valuable. "The oceans are a chemical soup," said Peter Rona, a marine geologist at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. "And the global diversity of these hot springs reported in these [AGU] sessions adds different chemical ingredients to that soup." One of these ingredients is the heat-tolerant microbes that provide the base for the vents' ecosystems—converting chemical energy much as plants convert sunlight during photosynthesis. "To everybody's surprise it is the microbes that live in these vents that are being used first [in commercial applications]," said Rona, who studies the microbes with support from the National Science Foundation and NOAA. "There are compounds in the microbes that are already being used for industrial and medical applications. Compound enzymes used in detergents, food preservatives, [and] DNA 'fingerprinting' for both research and forensic purposes." "Also, compounds are being tested by NIH for cancer treatment and other health applications," Rona added. "And it's just the dawn of exploration of these deep sea vents."