We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:
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So, Charles Barkley is a semi-wonderful, candid announcer, and we fully respect his NBA career. A gifted meteorologist, however, Barkley is not - but that may be a good thing:
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Bless Manti Te'o and his silly story. Bless Katie Couric for devoting time to ask the Notre Dame football star about his silly story. But most of all, bless whoever put together this catchy and entertaining auto-tuning of the entire boondoggle:
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Australia, you are scary:
And finally, this is a baby raccoon who has learned to give people high-fives. Send him your way, because you, you rock star, just made it through a Monday:
Monday, January 28, 2013
'Charities' Funnel Millions to Climate-Change Denial
A British newspaper claims to have discovered the convoluted way oil billionaires in the United States can funnel huge amounts of cash toward climate change-denial campaigns, while reaping tremendous tax advantages in the process.
A shadowy group called the Donors Trust is largely funded by billionaire Charles Koch and his wife Liz, according to an investigation by The Independent. The trust indirectly receives millions of dollars in funding from a third-party group called the Knowledge and Progress Fund, which the Koch family operates, the paper claims.
Charles Koch and his brother David are majority shareholders in Koch Industries, an immense conglomeration of oil and gas companies with a global reach - and a definite interest in denying any link between fossil-fuel use and climate change.
A recent profile in Forbes called Charles Koch 'one of the 50 most powerful people in the world, one of the 20 wealthiest - and one of the dozen most vilified.'
The IRS recognizes the Donors Trust as a charitable organization due to its status as a 'donor-advised trust.' These trusts 'are individual accounts administered by tax-exempt organizations, such as community foundations and national charities,' according to the Wall Street Journal.
Because the IRS considers these organizations charitable groups, money donated to them is tax-deductible, and the popularity of such trusts is growing quickly. Contributions to donor-advised trust funds increased 10.6 percent in 2011 over 2010, the Journal reports. [The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted]
'It's becoming the vehicle of choice,' said Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, referring to the donor-advised trust. 'It's an attractive conduit of funding to these conservative think tanks,' Brulle told LiveScience.
But what do the recipients of the estimated $500 million in donor funding since 2003 actually do with the money? 'A lot of it is just unknown,' said Brulle. 'It goes into the black box of Donors Trust' where the money is, for the most part, untraceable.
The website for Donors Trust provides some clues to their interests: 'The current environment on university campuses values Diversitas over Veritas - but cultural diversity is a poor substitute for truth, which must be the prevailing aim of the university. And discovering truth is impossible without a commitment to freedom of inquiry and the broadest possible range of viewpoints - what we call intellectual pluralism.
'Typically, we provide top-notch professors with substantial seed capital, spread over three years. After these professors have demonstrated progress with their 'centers,' we assist them in identifying other funding sources - alumni, institutional or foundations - to sustain their efforts.'
According to the Independent's investigation, Donors Trust has given significant funding to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank. Climatologist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University has sued that group, claiming it accused him of scientific fraud and compared him to a child molester. (Nine investigations of Mann's climate research, including one by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and another by the National Science Foundation, have found no evidence of academic fraud. The CEI removed the harsh claims several days after publication.)
Mann, however, remains committed to promoting a science-based approach to climate change. 'I like to think we're turning the corner on this issue. The damaging impacts that climate change is already having on us here in the U.S. . are increasingly clear to the person on the street,' Mann told LiveScience in an email interview.
'Climate-change denial, despite the great degree of funding and organization behind it, is simply no longer credible to the vast majority of the public,' Mann said. 'It is my hope - and my expectation - that we will soon transition from the unworthy debate about whether the problem even exists to the worthy debate to be had about what to do about it.'
Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
A shadowy group called the Donors Trust is largely funded by billionaire Charles Koch and his wife Liz, according to an investigation by The Independent. The trust indirectly receives millions of dollars in funding from a third-party group called the Knowledge and Progress Fund, which the Koch family operates, the paper claims.
Charles Koch and his brother David are majority shareholders in Koch Industries, an immense conglomeration of oil and gas companies with a global reach - and a definite interest in denying any link between fossil-fuel use and climate change.
A recent profile in Forbes called Charles Koch 'one of the 50 most powerful people in the world, one of the 20 wealthiest - and one of the dozen most vilified.'
The IRS recognizes the Donors Trust as a charitable organization due to its status as a 'donor-advised trust.' These trusts 'are individual accounts administered by tax-exempt organizations, such as community foundations and national charities,' according to the Wall Street Journal.
Because the IRS considers these organizations charitable groups, money donated to them is tax-deductible, and the popularity of such trusts is growing quickly. Contributions to donor-advised trust funds increased 10.6 percent in 2011 over 2010, the Journal reports. [The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted]
'It's becoming the vehicle of choice,' said Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, referring to the donor-advised trust. 'It's an attractive conduit of funding to these conservative think tanks,' Brulle told LiveScience.
But what do the recipients of the estimated $500 million in donor funding since 2003 actually do with the money? 'A lot of it is just unknown,' said Brulle. 'It goes into the black box of Donors Trust' where the money is, for the most part, untraceable.
The website for Donors Trust provides some clues to their interests: 'The current environment on university campuses values Diversitas over Veritas - but cultural diversity is a poor substitute for truth, which must be the prevailing aim of the university. And discovering truth is impossible without a commitment to freedom of inquiry and the broadest possible range of viewpoints - what we call intellectual pluralism.
'Typically, we provide top-notch professors with substantial seed capital, spread over three years. After these professors have demonstrated progress with their 'centers,' we assist them in identifying other funding sources - alumni, institutional or foundations - to sustain their efforts.'
According to the Independent's investigation, Donors Trust has given significant funding to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank. Climatologist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University has sued that group, claiming it accused him of scientific fraud and compared him to a child molester. (Nine investigations of Mann's climate research, including one by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and another by the National Science Foundation, have found no evidence of academic fraud. The CEI removed the harsh claims several days after publication.)
Mann, however, remains committed to promoting a science-based approach to climate change. 'I like to think we're turning the corner on this issue. The damaging impacts that climate change is already having on us here in the U.S. . are increasingly clear to the person on the street,' Mann told LiveScience in an email interview.
'Climate-change denial, despite the great degree of funding and organization behind it, is simply no longer credible to the vast majority of the public,' Mann said. 'It is my hope - and my expectation - that we will soon transition from the unworthy debate about whether the problem even exists to the worthy debate to be had about what to do about it.'
Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
- 8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World
- Image Gallery: One-of-a-Kind Places on Earth
- Understanding the 10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors
Wild Week Of Weather Starts With Wintry Mix
s:fb='http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml' xmlns:addthis='http://www.addthis.com/help/api-spec' > Wild Week Of Weather Starts With Wintry Mix « CBS Philly
Energy-Guzzling Cities Changing Weather 1,000 Miles Away
The heat released by everyday activities in energy-guzzling cities is changing the weather in far-away places, scientists report today (Jan. 27).
The released heat is changing temperatures in areas more than 1,000 miles away (1609 kilometers). It is warming parts of North America by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) and northern Asia by as much as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius), while cooling areas of Europe by a similar amount, scientists report in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The released heat (dubbed waste heat), it seems, is changing atmospheric circulation, including jet streams - powerful narrow currents of wind that blow from west to east and north to south in the upper atmosphere.
This impact on regional temperatures may explain a climate puzzle of sorts: why some areas are having warmer winters than predicted by climate models, the researchers said. In turn, the results suggest this phenomenon should be accounted for in models forecasting global warming.
'There's a tendency in climate science to overlook the effects of cities,' Brian Stone, a professor of city and regional planning at Georgia Tech, told LiveScience. 'Cities occupy just a few percent of the global land surface, but the amount of energy released as waste heat is contributing downwind to pretty significant changes in climate. I hope this will encourage us to focus more on cities as important drivers of climate change,' added Stone, who was not involved in the current study. [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World]
Hot in the city
Cities are known to be warmer than their surroundings due to what's known as the urban heat island effect - pavement, buildings and other building materials retain heat, preventing it from reradiating into the sky.
In the new study, the researchers looked at another kind of 'urban heat,' this one produced directly by transportation, heating and cooling units, and other energy-consuming activities.
'The burning of fossil fuel not only emits greenhouse gases, but also directly affects temperatures because of heat that escapes from sources like buildings and cars,' said study researcher Aixue Hu, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in a statement. 'Although much of this waste heat is concentrated in large cities, it can change atmospheric patterns in a way that raises or lowers temperatures across considerable distances.'
Hu and colleagues studied the energy effect using the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) model, a widely used climate model that takes into account the effects of greenhouse gases, topography, oceans, ice and global weather. The researchers ran the model with and without the input of human energy consumption, to see whether it could account for large-scale regional warming.
When man-made energy was included in the model, it led to winter and autumn temperature changes of up to 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C) in mid- and high-latitude parts of North America and Eurasia. The modeling is based on estimates, however, and more studies are needed to measure how much heat is actually released by urban areas.
Heat disrupts jet stream
Here's how the scientists think it works: Energy-hungry metropolitan areas are located on the east and west coasts of North America and Eurasia, beneath major 'hot spots' of atmospheric circulation. The waste heat from these cities creates thermal mountains, or taller-than-normal columns of heated air, which cause air jets moving eastward to deflect northward and southward.
As a result, the jet stream in upper latitudes widens and strengthens, bringing up hot air from the south and causing warming far from the urban areas (and concurrent cooling in others).
'The energy consumption in highly populated areas can cause changes in wind patterns, and that causes climate change far away from the heating source,' said meteorologist and study author Ming Cai of Florida State University.
Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
This article is sponsored by real estate news.
The released heat is changing temperatures in areas more than 1,000 miles away (1609 kilometers). It is warming parts of North America by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) and northern Asia by as much as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius), while cooling areas of Europe by a similar amount, scientists report in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The released heat (dubbed waste heat), it seems, is changing atmospheric circulation, including jet streams - powerful narrow currents of wind that blow from west to east and north to south in the upper atmosphere.
This impact on regional temperatures may explain a climate puzzle of sorts: why some areas are having warmer winters than predicted by climate models, the researchers said. In turn, the results suggest this phenomenon should be accounted for in models forecasting global warming.
'There's a tendency in climate science to overlook the effects of cities,' Brian Stone, a professor of city and regional planning at Georgia Tech, told LiveScience. 'Cities occupy just a few percent of the global land surface, but the amount of energy released as waste heat is contributing downwind to pretty significant changes in climate. I hope this will encourage us to focus more on cities as important drivers of climate change,' added Stone, who was not involved in the current study. [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World]
Hot in the city
Cities are known to be warmer than their surroundings due to what's known as the urban heat island effect - pavement, buildings and other building materials retain heat, preventing it from reradiating into the sky.
In the new study, the researchers looked at another kind of 'urban heat,' this one produced directly by transportation, heating and cooling units, and other energy-consuming activities.
'The burning of fossil fuel not only emits greenhouse gases, but also directly affects temperatures because of heat that escapes from sources like buildings and cars,' said study researcher Aixue Hu, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in a statement. 'Although much of this waste heat is concentrated in large cities, it can change atmospheric patterns in a way that raises or lowers temperatures across considerable distances.'
Hu and colleagues studied the energy effect using the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) model, a widely used climate model that takes into account the effects of greenhouse gases, topography, oceans, ice and global weather. The researchers ran the model with and without the input of human energy consumption, to see whether it could account for large-scale regional warming.
When man-made energy was included in the model, it led to winter and autumn temperature changes of up to 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C) in mid- and high-latitude parts of North America and Eurasia. The modeling is based on estimates, however, and more studies are needed to measure how much heat is actually released by urban areas.
Heat disrupts jet stream
Here's how the scientists think it works: Energy-hungry metropolitan areas are located on the east and west coasts of North America and Eurasia, beneath major 'hot spots' of atmospheric circulation. The waste heat from these cities creates thermal mountains, or taller-than-normal columns of heated air, which cause air jets moving eastward to deflect northward and southward.
As a result, the jet stream in upper latitudes widens and strengthens, bringing up hot air from the south and causing warming far from the urban areas (and concurrent cooling in others).
'The energy consumption in highly populated areas can cause changes in wind patterns, and that causes climate change far away from the heating source,' said meteorologist and study author Ming Cai of Florida State University.
Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
- The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted
- Night Lights: Stunning Views of Earth from Above
- Infographic: Earth's Atmosphere Top to Bottom
This article is sponsored by real estate news.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Series of collisions in wintry weather closes stretch of Highway 401
NEWTONVILLE, Ont. - A section of a busy Southern Ontario highway has been closed due to a multi-vehicle collision that has resulted in several injuries.
Ontario provincial police say a 10-kilometre stretch of Highway 401 is closed between Newcastle and Newtonville, about 80 kilometres east of Toronto.
Reports say dozens of vehicles were involved, but police say they don't yet have a count as officers are still too busy dealing with the scene.
Paramedics in Kawartha, Ont., report several serious injuries, but say there's more wreckage than injuries.
Firefighters say one driver had to be cut from his rig.
Const. Linda Wolf says police are looking into today's blast of winter weather as a possible factor in the crashes.
Environment Canada had warned of snow squalls off Lake Ontario in the area.
'The weather is not ideal at this point,' Wolf said.
Ontario provincial police say a 10-kilometre stretch of Highway 401 is closed between Newcastle and Newtonville, about 80 kilometres east of Toronto.
Reports say dozens of vehicles were involved, but police say they don't yet have a count as officers are still too busy dealing with the scene.
Paramedics in Kawartha, Ont., report several serious injuries, but say there's more wreckage than injuries.
Firefighters say one driver had to be cut from his rig.
Const. Linda Wolf says police are looking into today's blast of winter weather as a possible factor in the crashes.
Environment Canada had warned of snow squalls off Lake Ontario in the area.
'The weather is not ideal at this point,' Wolf said.
Analysis: Obama climate push to benefit energy efficiency firms
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's promise to attack climate change is likely to light a fire under federal agencies slow to comply with a mandate to cut energy use - which could be very good news for companies that specialize in systems that save power.
Waiting in the wings are the likes of Honeywell International Inc, Johnson Controls Inc and Ameresco Inc that are ready to carry out heating and cooling system upgrades, lighting retrofits and similar projects in some of the government's 500,000 buildings.
Efficiency projects, according to many, are a key way the government can reduce its own energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions without seeking additional funds from Congress.
Many of these projects are implemented under so-called energy savings performance contracts in which a company develops, installs and arranges financing for improvements to boost energy efficiency and lower costs. The energy service company guarantees the project's energy savings and services are repaid through those savings.
In late 2009, Obama mandated that federal agencies make significant reductions in energy consumption. The aim was for the government to 'lead by example' by upgrading many of its facilities. Two years later, the administration tried to jumpstart that work by setting a goal for federal agencies to enter into at least $2 billion of energy efficiency projects within two years.
'There is a lot more potential in the program than what's been done today,' said Adam Procell, executive vice president at Lime Energy Co, which works with larger companies such as Johnson Controls to design and install energy efficiency projects for federal customers.
With Obama renewing his commitment to combat climate change in his second inaugural address this week, some expect to see more pressure on agencies to get going on those projects.
'If President Obama was to let all of his administrators know that this was an important priority of his, you could see reacceleration of this market in a relatively short period of time,' said Wedbush Securities analyst Craig Irwin, who follows energy efficiency companies.
$2 BILLION GOAL
With less than a year left to reach the $2 billion goal, major efficiency companies have been working to develop project proposals and expect a string of contracts to be awarded this year.
'In the last six months, federal government activity has heated up,' Paul Orzeske, president of Honeywell Building Solutions, said in an interview. 'That's going to step up as the year goes on.'
In October, Honeywell won an $80.6 million project to improve energy efficiency at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, the largest such project ever awarded by the federal government, according to Orzeske. Most such projects are in the $10 million to $15 million range, he added.
The upgrades are expected to save more than $170 million over 20 years, guaranteed by Honeywell through the contract.
Other energy service companies poised to benefit from federal project awards include Ameresco and United Technologies Corp's Noresco unit, both of which have been active in the federal market in recent years. Other companies that have done federal projects in the past include Clark Energy Group LLC, Siemens AG and Schneider Electric SA.
The U.S. market for energy efficiency and services topped $5.1 billion in 2011, according to Pike Research, and is expected to reach $16 billion in sales by 2020. The market is dominated by municipal, university, school and hospital projects, but demand from federal agencies has increased because of the Obama administration's mandate and economic stimulus programs, the report said.
Johnson Controls Building Efficiency's vice president of government relations, Mark Wagner, said the government has not yet addressed what will happen once it meets its $2 billion goal, but he was encouraged by Obama's renewed pledge to address climate change.
'The budget is going to be tight in the federal government for the foreseeable future,' Wagner said. 'If government agencies want to make their facilities more efficient, performance contracting is the way to address their needs and to address climate change.'
Johnson Controls won a $16 million contract in late 2011 to put in a solar energy installation and make other efficiency improvements at Fort Bliss, the nation's largest military installation.
Smaller companies that supply equipment or software to the project developers could also see a boost from federal projects, according to Aditya Ranade, who leads the sustainable building materials team at technology research firm Lux Research.
Specifically, Ranade called out LED and lighting systems companies Acuity Brands Inc and Digital Lumens and Optimum Energy LLC, which uses software and cloud computing to optimize heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, as companies that could see a boost in orders from federal contracts.
Acuity Brands' stock is already up 2.4 percent since Obama's speech on Monday and Ameresco's shares have gained about 3 percent.
(Reporting by Nichola Groom.; Additional reporting by Tej Sapru in Bangalore; Editing by Patricia Kranz)
Waiting in the wings are the likes of Honeywell International Inc, Johnson Controls Inc and Ameresco Inc that are ready to carry out heating and cooling system upgrades, lighting retrofits and similar projects in some of the government's 500,000 buildings.
Efficiency projects, according to many, are a key way the government can reduce its own energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions without seeking additional funds from Congress.
Many of these projects are implemented under so-called energy savings performance contracts in which a company develops, installs and arranges financing for improvements to boost energy efficiency and lower costs. The energy service company guarantees the project's energy savings and services are repaid through those savings.
In late 2009, Obama mandated that federal agencies make significant reductions in energy consumption. The aim was for the government to 'lead by example' by upgrading many of its facilities. Two years later, the administration tried to jumpstart that work by setting a goal for federal agencies to enter into at least $2 billion of energy efficiency projects within two years.
'There is a lot more potential in the program than what's been done today,' said Adam Procell, executive vice president at Lime Energy Co, which works with larger companies such as Johnson Controls to design and install energy efficiency projects for federal customers.
With Obama renewing his commitment to combat climate change in his second inaugural address this week, some expect to see more pressure on agencies to get going on those projects.
'If President Obama was to let all of his administrators know that this was an important priority of his, you could see reacceleration of this market in a relatively short period of time,' said Wedbush Securities analyst Craig Irwin, who follows energy efficiency companies.
$2 BILLION GOAL
With less than a year left to reach the $2 billion goal, major efficiency companies have been working to develop project proposals and expect a string of contracts to be awarded this year.
'In the last six months, federal government activity has heated up,' Paul Orzeske, president of Honeywell Building Solutions, said in an interview. 'That's going to step up as the year goes on.'
In October, Honeywell won an $80.6 million project to improve energy efficiency at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, the largest such project ever awarded by the federal government, according to Orzeske. Most such projects are in the $10 million to $15 million range, he added.
The upgrades are expected to save more than $170 million over 20 years, guaranteed by Honeywell through the contract.
Other energy service companies poised to benefit from federal project awards include Ameresco and United Technologies Corp's Noresco unit, both of which have been active in the federal market in recent years. Other companies that have done federal projects in the past include Clark Energy Group LLC, Siemens AG and Schneider Electric SA.
The U.S. market for energy efficiency and services topped $5.1 billion in 2011, according to Pike Research, and is expected to reach $16 billion in sales by 2020. The market is dominated by municipal, university, school and hospital projects, but demand from federal agencies has increased because of the Obama administration's mandate and economic stimulus programs, the report said.
Johnson Controls Building Efficiency's vice president of government relations, Mark Wagner, said the government has not yet addressed what will happen once it meets its $2 billion goal, but he was encouraged by Obama's renewed pledge to address climate change.
'The budget is going to be tight in the federal government for the foreseeable future,' Wagner said. 'If government agencies want to make their facilities more efficient, performance contracting is the way to address their needs and to address climate change.'
Johnson Controls won a $16 million contract in late 2011 to put in a solar energy installation and make other efficiency improvements at Fort Bliss, the nation's largest military installation.
Smaller companies that supply equipment or software to the project developers could also see a boost from federal projects, according to Aditya Ranade, who leads the sustainable building materials team at technology research firm Lux Research.
Specifically, Ranade called out LED and lighting systems companies Acuity Brands Inc and Digital Lumens and Optimum Energy LLC, which uses software and cloud computing to optimize heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, as companies that could see a boost in orders from federal contracts.
Acuity Brands' stock is already up 2.4 percent since Obama's speech on Monday and Ameresco's shares have gained about 3 percent.
(Reporting by Nichola Groom.; Additional reporting by Tej Sapru in Bangalore; Editing by Patricia Kranz)
Antarctic rescue mission for 3 Canadians continues as weather improves
Rescue officials say efforts to locate three Canadians missing in Antarctica will continue today as weather conditions improve.
The Canadians were on a plane that went missing Wednesday during a flight from the South Pole to Terra Nova Bay.
New Zealand's Rescue Co-ordination Centre says a plane is scheduled to fly to the area today to set up a base camp about 50 kilometres from where the missing plane's emergency beacon was transmitting.
As soon as the weather clears, two helicopters will then start an aerial search.
Aircraft tried twice to spot the missing plane in the mountainous area, but couldn't see it because of poor visibility and snow.
The rescue co-ordination centre says the crew of the missing aircraft have survival equipment and are well trained for the harsh environment.
The Canadians were on a plane that went missing Wednesday during a flight from the South Pole to Terra Nova Bay.
New Zealand's Rescue Co-ordination Centre says a plane is scheduled to fly to the area today to set up a base camp about 50 kilometres from where the missing plane's emergency beacon was transmitting.
As soon as the weather clears, two helicopters will then start an aerial search.
Aircraft tried twice to spot the missing plane in the mountainous area, but couldn't see it because of poor visibility and snow.
The rescue co-ordination centre says the crew of the missing aircraft have survival equipment and are well trained for the harsh environment.
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