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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (202857)	9/13/2006 5:01:59 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

A declaration of war isn't necessary for the government to control its military. The constitution explicitly makes the president the commander in chief and gives congress the power of the purse and to make laws (including to fund and direct the military). The exact limit of presidential powers without express congressional authorization is often battled over, but its irrelevant to the fact that together the two branches control the US military (the judicial branch can way in on specific issues but generally has no day to day control). Also in this case congress did authorize the use of force.

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (202857)	9/13/2006 8:58:49 PM
From: sylvester80	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

NEWS: Arctic sea ice shrinking faster, NASA finds Researchers cite global warming in one study, winds in another By Jeanna Bryner LiveScience URL: msnbc.msn.com Updated: 2:35 p.m. MT Sept 13, 2006 These satellite-derived images show the minimum Arctic perennial sea ice measured in 1979, left, and 2003. The coverage declined by 9 percent per decade during that time. Two new studies found the rate of shrinking has accelerated. A pair of new studies shows that winter sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk dramatically in the past two years and that perennial ice in particular is disappearing. Two types of sea ice cover the Arctic Ocean: thick perennial ice that resists thaw year-round and thinner seasonal ice that melts during the summer and freezes again in the winter. Both types are experiencing decline, according to analyses of microwave satellite data. Researchers led by Joey Comiso of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland found that the amount of ice covering the Arctic has declined by 6 percent over each of the last two winters, compared to a loss of merely 1.5 percent per decade since 1979. Comiso's team did not distinguish between perennial and seasonal ice, but he told LiveScience most of the loss was likely seasonal ice. "This amount of Arctic sea ice reduction the past two consecutive winters has not taken place before during the 27 years satellite data has been available," Comiso said. The researchers said that warming temperatures and a shorter winter-ice season are likely to blame. "In the past, sea-ice reduction in winter was significantly lower per decade compared to summer sea ice retreat," Comiso said. "What's remarkable is that we've witnessed sea ice reduction at 6 percent per year over just the last two winters, most likely a result of warming due to greenhouse gases." Losing perennial ice Another study led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory measured the extent and distribution of perennial sea ice in the Arctic using NASA’s QuikScat satellite. In addition to finding a loss of the ice cover extent, the team found a stark change in ice distribution. The perennial ice shrunk abruptly by 14 percent between 2004 and 2005, with an overall decrease of 280,000 square miles (725,200 square kilometers) — an area the size of Texas. That's a much faster rate than NASA's earlier data, which found that between 1979 and 2003 Arctic perennial sea ice had been decreasing at a rate of 9 percent per decade, with the most significant loss in 2001, 2002 and 2003. While perennial ice can reach a thickness of more than 10 feet (3 meters), seasonal ice thickness ranges from 1 to 7 feet (0.3 to 2 meters). The team is still trying to figure out the reason for the shrinking ice cover. Typically, a loss of sea ice results from an increase in temperatures, which causes the ice to melt. However, Nghiem suggested that, in this case, strong winds pushed the thicker sea ice from the East to the West Arctic Ocean, sending giant chunks of ice along the eastern coast of Greenland toward warmer climes. That means this once melt-resistant ice could melt. Possible consequences More seasonal ice floating atop the Arctic Ocean could have dire consequences for the surrounding water. Seasonal ice "can absorb more sunlight during the summer, because it has a lower albedo,” Nghiem told LiveScience. Albedo is a measure of how much light a surface reflects. The thick ice, which has increased in thickness as layer upon layer of snow melts and freezes on top of it, contains loads of air bubbles. “These bubbles scatter the sunlight out of the ice so less solar energy can be absorbed,” Nghiem said. The seasonal ice doesn’t contain these sun-scattering bubbles, and thus absorbs more sunlight. If the perennial sea ice cover continues to decline and be replaced by thinner ice, the surrounding ocean could get warmer, further accelerating summer ice melts and impeding fall freeze-ups, the scientists said. URL: msnbc.msn.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (202857)	9/13/2006 9:01:42 PM
From: sylvester80	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

NEWS: Study says global warming isn’t sun’s fault Analysis disputes claims that solar radiance is behind rising temperatures Reuters URL: msnbc.msn.com Updated: 12:43 a.m. MT Sept 13, 2006 OSLO, Norway - The sun’s energy output has barely varied over the past 1,000 years, raising chances that global warming has human rather than celestial causes, a study shows. Researchers from Germany, Switzerland and the United States found that the sun’s brightness varied by only 0.07 percent over 11-year sunspot cycles, far too little to account for the rise in temperatures since the Industrial Revolution. “Our results imply that over the past century climate change due to human influences must far outweigh the effects of changes in the sun’s brightness,” said Tom Wigley of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research. Most experts say emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars, are the main cause of a 1.1-degree Fahrenheit (0.6-degree Celsius) rise in temperatures over the past century. But some scientists say the dominant cause of warming is a natural variation in the climate system, or a gradual rise in the sun’s energy output. Based on satellite observations conducted since 1978, “the solar contribution to warming over the past 30 years is negligible,” researchers wrote in Thursday's issue of the the journal Nature. The researchers also found little sign of solar warming or cooling when they checked telescope observations of sunspots against temperature records going back to the 17th century. They then checked more ancient evidence of rare isotopes and temperatures trapped in sea sediments and Greenland and Antarctic ice, finding no dramatic shifts in solar energy output for at least the past millennium. Sun judged not guilty “This basically rules out the sun as the cause of global warming,” Henk Spruit, a co-author of the report from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, told Reuters. Many scientists say greenhouse gases might push up world temperatures by perhaps another 5 degrees F (3 degrees C) by 2100, causing more droughts, floods, disease and rising global sea levels. Spruit said a “Little Ice Age” around the 17th century, when London’s Thames River froze, seemed limited mainly to western Europe and so was not a planetwide cooling that might have implied a dimmer sun. And global Ice Ages — such as the last one, which ended about 10,000 years ago — seem linked to cyclical shifts in Earth’s orbit around the sun rather than to changes in solar output. No evidence on long-term time scales “Overall, we can find no evidence for solar luminosity variations of sufficient amplitude to drive significant climate variations on centennial, millennial or even million-year time scales,” the report said. Solar activity is now around a low on the 11-year cycle after a 2000 peak, when bright spots called faculae emit more heat and outweigh the heat-plugging effect of dark sunspots. Both faculae and dark sunspots are most common at the peaks. Still, the report also said there could be other, more subtle solar effects on the climate, such as from cosmic rays or ultraviolet radiation. It said those effects would be hard to detect. URL: msnbc.msn.com