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Wednesday, November 23, 2011
As floods recede, Bangkok blame game begins
Apichart Weerawong / AP
A Thai couple and a dog ride on a floating material through a flooded road in Don Muang district of Bangkok, Thailand, on Nov. 14.
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
BANGKOK, Thailand ? One of the most striking things about the Thai floods is the sheer ingenuity people have shown to simply get around.
I've seen all manner of aquatic contraptions, from rafts made from empty drinking water bottles to crafts fashioned from larger plastic drums, with a bicycle mounted on the deck driving a home-made propeller through the increasingly fetid waters.
Thailand's National Science and Technology Development Agency even ran a competition called "Mobility in the Time of Flood," which attracted 89 entries and was won by another bicycle-driven raft cobbled together by a bunch of students. The Bangkok Post devoted most of its back page to the contest Tuesday under the headline "Amateur Inventors to the rescue.?
It provided a note of humor amid increasingly angry recriminations over who's to blame for a deluge that's swamped a third of the country and killed more than 600 people. The floods have also affected some 10,000 factories, and hit the global supply chain for automotive parts and hard disk drives.
Nearly half a million workers have been affected. Japanese-owned factories are particularly badly hit, and the government fears that many will curtail future investment plans. Japan is the largest foreign investor in Thailand.
The clean-up and recovery will cost billions of dollars, and shave an estimated 2.5 percent off economic growth.
The good news is that the floodwaters are receding to the north of the city. In Bangkok, the authorities say the eastern suburbs should be dry within a week or so, though it could be the new year before the water drains from western areas.
Don Muang airport and its surrounding areas still resemble a lake. The airport is only home to a couple of low-cost carriers these days, most flights now departing from a new airport, but it?s still a remarkable sight.
Blame game begins
Of course, few people now trust the predictions of the authorities, which have changed constantly, with officials frequently contradicting each other from day to day.
National government officials are in a constant sparring match with their city authorities, and, of course, rival political camps are accusing each other of mismanagement.
There's anger in the outer suburbs, where many believe they were sacrificed to keep downtown Bangkok dry. Angry residents have even ripped down dikes in some areas to allow the floodwaters to shift.
Some blame irrigation officials for failing to release water from up-country dams earlier in the year.
Deputy Prime Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong had a simpler explanation in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires. It was unfair to accuse the government of mismanagement, he said. "This has to be the result of climate change and global warming."
Well, up to a point, Mr. Kittiratt.
Many reports have suggested that low-lying Bangkok is vulnerable to rising sea levels, and, yes, Thailand had heavy rain this year ? roughly 25 percent more than normal by some estimates.
But the great flood of 2011 was a largely manmade disaster.
The country has seen years of mindless development, much of it on what has historically been a flood plain to the north of the capital. Paddy fields have been paved over with concrete to make way for vast industrial estates and urban sprawl. Natural drainage routes have been blocked.
In the city, too, a once massive network of klongs (canals), the city's drainage system, has been replaced by roads; housing developments sit where water used to flow.
That so many people and businesses were in harm's way in areas that are historically vulnerable to floods, with the waters left with nowhere to go, is the result of decisions taken over the years by short-sighted and often venal politicians. To blame it all on climate change is an enormous cop-out.
Photoblog: Thais adjust to life in waist-deep water?
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Faster-than-light neutrinos? New test confirms accuracy of experiment's initial measurement in flight time of neutrinos
ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2011) ? Following the OPERA collaboration's presentation at CERN on Sept. 23, inviting scrutiny of their neutrino time-of-flight measurement from the broader particle physics community, the collaboration has rechecked many aspects of its analysis and taken into account valuable suggestions from a wide range of sources.
One key test was to repeat the measurement with very short beam pulses from CERN. This allowed the extraction time of the protons, that ultimately lead to the neutrino beam, to be measured more precisely.
The beam sent from CERN consisted of pulses three nanoseconds long separated by up to 524 nanoseconds. Some 20 clean neutrino events were measured at the Gran Sasso Laboratory, and precisely associated with the pulse leaving CERN. This test confirms the accuracy of OPERA's timing measurement,?ruling out one potential source of systematic error. The new measurements do not change the initial conclusion. Nevertheless, the observed anomaly in the neutrinos' time of flight from CERN to Gran Sasso still needs further scrutiny and independent measurement before it can be refuted or confirmed.
On Nov. 17, the collaboration submitted a paper on this measurement to the peer reviewed Journal of High Energy Physics.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by CERN.
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Journal Reference:
- The OPERA Collaboraton. Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2011; (submitted) [link]
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111121150457.htm
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011
UN: Greenhouse gases up 29 percent since 1750
GENEVA?? Global warming gases in the world's atmosphere are rising, with concentrations up 29 percent since the start of the industrial era in 1750, the U.N. weather agency said Monday.
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Emissions of carbon dioxide, the most widespread greenhouse gas, were up 39 percent.
The new figures for 2010 from the World Meteorological Organization show that CO2 levels are now at 389 parts per million, up from about 280 parts per million 250 years ago. The levels are significant because the gases trap heat in the atmosphere.
WMO Deputy Secretary-General Jeremiah Lengoasa said CO2 emissions are to blame for about four-fifths of the rise.
He also noted the lag between what gets pumped into the atmosphere and its effect on climate.
"With this picture in mind, even if emissions were stopped overnight globally, the atmospheric concentrations would continue for decades because of the long lifetime of these greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," he said in a statement.
Negotiators from virtually all the world's nations will gather later this month in South Africa to try to agree on steps to head off the worst of the climate disruptions that researchers say will result if concentrations hit around 450 parts per million.
That could happen within several decades at the current rate, though some climate activists and vulnerable nations say the world has already passed what they consider the danger point of 350 parts per million and must somehow undo it.
The WMO said the increase of 2.3 parts per million in CO2 in the atmosphere between 2009 and 2010 shows an acceleration from the average 1.5 parts per million increase during the 1990s.
But there are seasonal fluctuations, too. During the summer growing season, plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In winter, the concentration of C02 rises as vegetation and other biomass decompose.
Since 1750, WMO says, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen 39 percent, those of nitrous oxide have gone up 20 percent and concentrations of methane jumped 158 percent.
Its report Monday cites fossil fuel-burning, loss of forests that absorb CO2 and use of fertilizer as the main culprits.
Nitrogen-based fertilizers are the main source for nitrous oxide, which can trap almost 300 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. Those fertilizers have "profoundly affected the global nitrogen cycle," the report stated.
The impact of fertilizer use is so marked that more nitrous oxide is detected in the northern hemisphere, where more fertilizer is used, than in the south.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45387320/ns/us_news-environment/
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Obama and Wen Jiabao of China Talk at Asian Meeting
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Source: www.nytimes.com --- Saturday, November 19, 2011
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China and President Obama met unexpectedly after a week in which the United States sought to make clear that it was re-engaging in Asia. ...
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Monday, November 21, 2011
Passive Occupy protesters take pepper spray blast
In this image made from video, a police officer uses pepper spray as he walks down a line of Occupy demonstrators sitting on the ground at the University of California, Davis on Friday, Nov. 18, 2011. The video - posted on YouTube - was shot Friday as police moved in on more than a dozen tents erected on campus and arrested 10 people, nine of them students. (AP Photo/Thomas K. Fowler)
In this image made from video, a police officer uses pepper spray as he walks down a line of Occupy demonstrators sitting on the ground at the University of California, Davis on Friday, Nov. 18, 2011. The video - posted on YouTube - was shot Friday as police moved in on more than a dozen tents erected on campus and arrested 10 people, nine of them students. (AP Photo/Thomas K. Fowler)
In this image made from video, a police officer uses pepper spray as he walks down a line of Occupy demonstrators sitting on the ground at the University of California, Davis on Friday, Nov. 18, 2011. The video - posted on YouTube - was shot Friday as police moved in on more than a dozen tents erected on campus and arrested 10 people, nine of them students. (AP Photo/Thomas K. Fowler)
In this frame grab from video provided by Jamie Hall, a police officer pepper sprays Occupy demonstrators Friday, Nov. 18, 2011, at the University of California, Davis. (AP Photo/Jamie Hall)
University of California, Davis, student Mike Fetterman, receives a treatment for pepper spray by UC Davis firefighter Nate Potter, after campus police dismantled an Occupy Wall Street encampment on the campus quad in Davis, Calif., Friday, Nov. 18, 2011. UC Davis officials say eight men and two women were taken into custody. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Protesters sitting on the ground supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement on the campus of the University of California, Davis took a face full of pepper spray at close range from an officer in riot gear in an incident that was captured on cellphone video and spread virally across the Internet Saturday.
UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi described the video images as "chilling" and said she was forming a task force to investigate even as a faculty group called for her resignation because of the police action Friday.
However, a law enforcement official who watched the clip called the use of force "fairly standard police procedure."
In the video, an officer dispassionately pepper-sprays a line of several sitting protesters who flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop.
"The use of the pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this," Chancellor Linda Katehi said in a message posted on the school's website Saturday.
The protest was held in support of the overall Occupy Wall Street movement and in solidarity with protesters at the University of California, Berkeley who were jabbed by police with batons on Nov. 9.
The UC Davis video images, which were circulated on YouTube and widely elsewhere online, prompted immediate outrage among faculty and students, with the Davis Faculty Association saying in a letter Saturday that Katehi should resign.
"The Chancellor's role is to enable open and free inquiry, not to suppress it," the faculty association said in its letter.
It called Katehi's authorization of police force a "gross failure of leadership."
At a news conference later on Saturday, Katehi said what the video shows is "sad and really very inappropriate." The events surrounding the protest have been hard on her personally, but she had no plans to resign, she said.
"I do not think that I have violated the policies of the institution. I have worked personally very hard to make this campus a safe campus for all," she said.
Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department's use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a "compliance tool" that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.
"When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them," Kelly said. "Bodies don't have handles on them."
After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of "active resistance" from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques.
"What I'm looking at is fairly standard police procedure," Kelly said.
Images of police actions have served to galvanize support during the Occupy Wall Street movement, from the clash between protesters and police in Oakland last month that left an Iraq War veteran with serious injuries to more recent skirmishes in New York City, San Diego, Denver and Portland, Ore.
The forcible Oakland protest eviction, the first of its kind on a large scale, marred the national reputation of the city's mayor and police department while rallying encampments nationwide beset with their own public safety and sanitation issues.
Police chiefs and mayors held conference calls to discuss containment strategies in the days after the Oct. 25 Oakland eviction. The use of rubber bullets and tear gas dropped off, though police departments have turned to pepper spray when trying to quell large crowds.
Some of the most notorious instances went viral online, including the use of pepper spray on an 84-year-old activist in Seattle and a group of women in New York. Seattle's mayor apologized to the activist, and the New York Police Department official shown using pepper spray on the group of women lost 10 vacation days after an internal review.
In the video of the UC Davis protest, the officer, a member of the UC Davis police force, displays a bottle before spraying its contents on the seated protesters in a sweeping motion while walking back and forth. Most of the protesters have their heads down, but several were hit directly in the face.
Some members of a crowd gathered at the scene scream and cry out. The crowd then chants, "Shame on You," as the protesters on the ground are led away. The officers retreat minutes later with helmets on and batons drawn.
Ten people were arrested.
University spokeswoman Karen Nikos said nine people hit by pepper spray were treated at the scene. Another two were taken to hospitals and later released.
Nikos declined to release the identity of the officer in the video.
At Saturday's news conference, UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza said the decision to use pepper spray was made at the scene.
"The students had encircled the officers," she said. "They needed to exit. They were looking to leave but were unable to get out."
Many Twitter and Facebook comments supported the students and criticized the response.
"Stomach churning video of police using pepper spray on seated anti-Wall Street protesters in Davis, Calif.," actress and model Mia Farrow wrote in a retweet of the video.
Elsewhere in California on Saturday, protesters in Oakland tore down a chain-link fence surrounding a city-owned vacant lot where they planned to set up a new encampment.
After a march, several hundred Occupy Oakland protesters breached the fence and poured into the lot next to the Fox Theater on Telegraph Avenue, police said.
One organizer shouted "More Tents! More Tents!" over a loudspeaker, the Oakland Tribune reported.
Police removed the main Occupy Oakland encampment Monday at City Hall, and city officials said they won't tolerate new camps.
Police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said surrounding streets had been closed and officers were protecting surrounding buildings.
Watson said there had been no arrests or citations, but the city's position remains that the protesters can't stay overnight.
San Francisco public works crews removed tents at two Occupy sites in the city. The San Francisco Chronicle reports (http://bit.ly/ui5yIa ) that the workers moved in on the encampments in Justin Herman Plaza and in front of the Federal Reserve Bank, removing dozens of tents on grassy areas.
There were no reports of violence, according to San Francisco police spokesman Albie Esparza. He said the action was not a raid.
Police were present but did not become involved.
___
Associated Press reporters Nigel Duara in Portland, Ore., and Meghan Barr in New York City contributed.
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