(via)

Seven states cross the 50% mark overall as of our current estimates, but the generation gap is huge. If policy were set by state-by-state majorities of those 65 or older, none would allow same-sex marriage. If policy were set by those under 30, only 12 states would not allow-same-sex marriage.

It is only a matter of time before the older homophobes die off and equality comes to America. If you want to go down as a generation of bigots…by all means continue to vote against equality, but the trend is clear, when the kids grow up the gays will be married.

A decision will be made by the end of 2009 on whether the go ahead will be given to the massive Cape Wind electricity project off the shore of Massachusetts, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Monday.

Salazar said his department is currently consulting with state agencies, including the state historic preservation office, and the final decision will be made “hopefully by the end of this year.”

“There is a legal process,” Salazar told reporters outside a White House conference on developing a clean energy economy. “I have ordered my department to move forward with the expeditious conclusion of those processes.”(via)

You can read about the long legal and environmental history of Cape Wind on this blog, click here to start.

The $3.4 billion in Smart Grid Investment Grant awards are part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and will be matched by industry funding for a total public-private investment worth over $8 billion. Applicants state that the projects will create tens of thousands of jobs, and consumers in 49 states will benefit from these investments in a stronger, more reliable grid. Full listings of the grant awards by category and state are available HERE and HERE.  A map of the awards is available HERE.

An analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute estimates that the implementation of smart grid technologies could reduce electricity use by more than 4 percent by 2030. That would mean a savings of $20.4 billion for businesses and consumers around the country, and $1.6 billion for Florida alone — or $56 in utility savings for every man, woman and child in Florida.

One-hundred private companies, utilities, manufacturers, cities and other partners received awards today, including FPL which will use its $200 million in funding to install 2.6 million smart meters and other technology that will cut energy costs for its customers. In the coming days, Cabinet Members and other Administration officials will fan out to awardee sites across the country to discuss how this investment will create jobs, improve the reliability and efficiency of the electrical grid, and help bring clean energy sources from high-production states to those with less renewable generating capacity. The awards announced today represent the largest group of Recovery Act awards ever made in a single day and the largest batch of Recovery Act clean energy grant awards to-date.

Today’s announcement includes:

* Empowering Consumers to Save Energy and Cut Utility Bills — $1 billion. These investments will create the infrastructure and expand access to smart meters and customer systems so that consumers will be able to access dynamic pricing information and have the ability to save money by programming smart appliances and equipment to run when rates are lowest. This will help reduce energy bills for everyone by helping drive down “peak demand” and limiting the need for “stand-by” power plants – the most expensive power generation there is.
* Making Electricity Distribution and Transmission More Efficient — $400 million. The Administration is funding several grid modernization projects across the country that will significantly reduce the amount of power that is wasted from the time it is produced at a power plant to the time it gets to your house. By deploying digital monitoring devices and increasing grid automation, these awards will increase the efficiency, reliability and security of the system, and will help link up renewable energy resources with the electric grid. This will make it easier for a wind farm in Montana to instantaneously pick up the slack when the wind stops blowing in Missouri or a cloud rolls over a solar array in Arizona.
* Integrating and Crosscutting Across Different “Smart” Components of a Smart Grid — $2 billion. Much like electronic banking, the Smart Grid is not the sum total of its components but how those components work together. The Administration is funding a range of projects that will incorporate these various components into one system or cut across various project areas – including smart meters, smart thermostats and appliances, syncrophasors, automated substations, plug in hybrid electric vehicles, renewable energy sources, etc.
* Building a Smart Grid Manufacturing Industry — $25 million. These investments will help expand our manufacturing base of companies that can produce the smart meters, smart appliances, synchrophasors, smart transformers, and other components for smart grid systems in the United States and around the world – representing a significant and growing export opportunity for our country and new jobs for American workers.

The combined effect of the investments announced today, when the projects are fully implemented, will:

* Create tens of thousands of jobs across the country. These jobs include high paying career opportunities for smart meter manufacturing workers; engineering technicians, electricians and equipment installers; IT system designers and cyber security specialists; data entry clerks and database administrators; business and power system analysts; and others.
* Leverage more than $4.7 billion in private investment to match the federal investment.
* Make the grid more reliable, reducing power outages that cost American consumers $150 billion a year — about $500 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
* Install more than 850 sensors – called ‘Phasor Measurement Units’ – that will cover 100 percent of the U.S. electric grid and make it possible for grid operators to better monitor grid conditions and prevent minor disturbances in the electrical system from cascading into local or regional power outages or blackouts. This monitoring ability will also help the grid to incorporate large blocks of intermittent renewable energy, like wind and solar power, to take advantage of clean energy resources when they are available and make adjustments when they’re not.
* Install more than 200,000 smart transformers that will make it possible for power companies to replace units before they fail thus saving money and reducing power outages.
* Install almost 700 automated substations, representing about 5 percent of the nation’s total that will make it possible for power companies to respond faster and more effectively to restore service when bad weather knocks down power lines or causes electricity disruptions.
* Power companies today typically do not know there has been a power outage until a customer calls to report it. With these smart grid devices, power companies will have the tools they need for better outage prevention and faster response to make repairs when outages do occur.
* Empower consumers to cut their electricity bills. The Recovery Act combined with private investment will put us on pace to deploy more than 40 million smart meters in American homes and businesses over the next few years that will help consumers cut their utility bills.
* Install more than 1 million in-home displays, 170,000 smart thermostats, and 175,000 other load control devices to enable consumers to reduce their energy use. Funding will also help expand the market for smart washers, dryers, and dishwashers, so that American consumers can further control their energy use and lower their electricity bills.
* Put us on a path to get 20 percent or more of our energy from renewable sources by 2020.
* Reduce peak electricity demand by more than 1400 MW, which is the equivalent of several larger power plants and can save ratepayers more than $1.5 billion in capital costs and help lower utility bills. Since peak electricity is the most expensive energy – and requires the use of standby power generation plants – the economic and environmental savings for even a small reduction are significant. In fact, some of the power plants for meeting peak demand operate for only a few hundred hours a year, which means the power they generate can be 5-10 times more expensive than the average price per kilowatt hour paid by most consumers.

Here is the speech the president gave today talking about this new investment, it goes well with the MIT speech he gave a couple days ago.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, guys. Thank you very much. Please, have a seat. Thank you so much.

Well, first of all, let me thank Lew Hay and his visionary leadership at Florida Power & Light. It’s an example of a company that is doing well by doing good. And I think it’s a model for what we could duplicate all across the country.

To Greg Bove, who just gave me the tour and was a construction manager for this facility, congratulations. We’ve got a couple of special guests here: Representative Kathy Castor from Tampa, a great friend. (Applause.) Arcadia Mayor Dr. Roosevelt Johnson. (Applause.) And State Representative Keith Fitzgerald from Sarasota. (Applause.)

And I want to once again thank Lew for the generous introduction. I want to congratulate you and all the workers who are involved in this outstanding facility for Florida Power & Light.

It’s an honor to be here on a very big day not just for Arcadia but for the cause of clean energy in America. With the flip of a switch, FP&L will — has moved the solar panels behind me into a position where they can catch the sun’s rays. And now, for the very first time, a large-scale solar power plant — the largest of its kind in the entire nation — will deliver electricity produced by the sun to the citizens of the Sunshine State. And I think it’s about time. (Applause.)

This plant will produce enough power to serve the entire city of Arcadia. Its construction was a boost to your local economy, creating nearly 400 jobs in this area. And over the next three decades, the clean energy from this plant will save 575,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions, which is the equivalent of removing more than 4,500 cars from the road each year for the life of the project. Think about that, 45,000 [sic] cars from the road each year for the life of the project.

And yet, to realize the full potential of this plant and others like it, we’ve got to do more than just add extra solar megawatts to our electrical grid. That’s because this grid — which is made up of everything from power lines to generators to the meters in your home — still runs on century-old technology. It wastes too much energy, it costs us too much money, and it’s too susceptible to outages and blackouts.

To offer one analogy, just imagine what transportation was like in this country back in the 1920s and 1930s before the Interstate Highway System was built. It was a tangled maze of poorly maintained back roads that were rarely the fastest or the most efficient way to get from point A to point B. Fortunately, President Eisenhower made an investment that revolutionized the way we travel — an investment that made our lives easier and our economy grow.

Now, it’s time to make the same kind of investment in the way our energy travels — to build a clean energy superhighway that can take the renewable power generated in places like DeSoto and deliver it directly to the American people in the most affordable and efficient way possible. Such an investment won’t just create new pathways for energy — it’s expected to create tens of thousands of new jobs all across America in areas ranging from manufacturing and construction to IT and the installation of new equipment in homes and in businesses. It’s expected to save consumers more than $20 billion over the next decade on their utility bills. And I know nobody minds seeing their utility bills cut. I’m sorry, Lew, but they really don’t mind that. (Laughter.) It will make our grid more secure and more reliable, saving us some of the $150 billion we lose each year during power outages. It will allow us to more effectively transport renewable energy generated in remote places to large population centers, so that a wind farm in rural South Dakota can power homes in Chicago. And by facilitating the creation of a clean energy economy, building this 21st century energy infrastructure will help us lay a foundation for lasting growth and prosperity.

So that’s why today, I’m pleased to announce that under the Recovery Act, we are making the largest-ever investment in a smarter, stronger, and more secure electric grid. This investment will come in the form of 100 grants totaling $3.4 billion — grants that will go to private companies, utilities, cities, and other partners who have applied with plans to install smart grid technologies in their area.

And throughout this week, the members of my Cabinet are going to be fanning across the country talking about some of the winning projects. Some of the projects involve modernizing old, inefficient transmission lines that just waste too much energy. And to speed that process along, nine federal agencies have signed an agreement that will help break down the bureaucratic barriers that currently make it slow and costly to build new transmission lines on federal lands.

But most of the projects that are receiving grants involve the installation of what are known as smart meters — devices that will have a direct benefit for consumers who want to save money on their electric bills. For example, even as Florida Power & Light is bringing this solar plant online today, it also is deploying hundreds of thousands of these smart meters in people’s homes throughout Florida. Much like the Recovery through Retrofit plan we launched last week to boost the weatherization and retrofit industry, these devices will help you greatly improve the energy efficiency in your own home.

Now, let me explain what’s going on with these smart meters. Smart meters will allow you to actually monitor how much energy your family is using by the month, by the week, by the day, or even by the hour. So coupled with other technologies, this is going to help you manage your electricity use and your budget at the same time, allowing you to conserve electricity during times when prices are highest, like hot summer days. Through these investments in a variety of smart grid technologies, utilities like Florida Power & Light will also be able to monitor the performance of its electricity grid in real time, which means they’ll be able to identify and correct service interruptions more quickly and effectively. And all this information will help increase renewable energy generation, provide support for plug-in electric vehicles, and reduce the carbon pollution that causes climate change.

Here in this region of Florida, this project will reduce demand for electricity by up to 20 percent during the hottest summer days that stress the grid and power plants. It will provide smart meters to 2.6 million more customers. And most importantly, it will create thousands of jobs — good jobs, by the way, that can’t be outsourced; jobs that will last and jobs that pay a decent wage.

On their own, the opening of this new solar plant or the installation of new smart meters or the investment in grid modernization will not be enough to meet the challenges posed by our dependence on fossil fuels. But together, we can begin to see what a clean energy future will look like. We can imagine the day when you’ll be able to charge the battery on your plug-in hybrid car at night, because your smart meter reminded you that nighttime electricity is cheapest. In the daytime, when the sun is at its strongest, solar panels like these and electricity stored in car batteries will be able to power the grid with affordable, emission-free energy. The stronger, more efficient grid would be able to transport power generated at dams and wind turbines from the smallest towns to the biggest cities. And above all, we can see all this work that would be created for millions of Americans who need it and who want it, here in Florida and all across the country.

So we’re on the cusp of this new energy future. In fact, a lot of it is already taking place. Even as I’m here today, Vice President Biden is in Delaware announcing the reopening of a once-shuttered GM factory that will soon put people back to work building plug-in, electric hybrid vehicles. On Friday, I was in Boston — that’s good news. (Applause.) On Friday, I was in Boston, where workers will soon be breaking ground on a new Wind Technology Testing Center that will allow researchers in the United States to test the world’s newest and largest wind turbine blades for the very first time. And there are recovery projects like this in cities and counties all across the country.

So at this moment, there is something big happening in America when it comes to creating a clean energy economy. But getting there will take a few more days like this one and more projects like this one. And I have often said that the creation of such an economy is going to require nothing less than the sustained effort of an entire nation — an all-hands-on-deck approach similar to the mobilization that preceded World War II or the Apollo Project. And I also believe that such a comprehensive piece of legislation that is taking place right now in Congress is going to be critical. That’s going to finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America — legislation that will make the best use of resources we have in abundance, through clean coal technology, safe nuclear power, sustainably grown biofuels, and energy we harness from the wind, waves, and sun.

The House has already acted and passed such legislation and the Senate is on the way. In fact, just today, the Environment and Public Works Committee, under the leadership of Senator Barbara Boxer, is holding the Senate’s first hearings on this bill.

The creation of a clean energy economy has to be made as swiftly and carefully as possible, to ensure that what it takes to grow this economy in the short, medium, and long term is no longer delayed. And I’m pleased to report that a consensus is growing to achieve exactly that — consensus between Democrats and Republicans, environmentalists and evangelicals, labor leaders and especially so many business leaders like Lew that are ready to jump on board because they understand that the growth of clean energy can lead to the growth of our economy.

Now, I have to be honest with you, though. The closer we get to this new energy future, the harder the opposition is going to fight, the more we’re going to hear from special interests and lobbyists in Washington whose interests are contrary to the interests of the American people. Now, there are those who are also going to suggest that moving towards a clean energy future is going to somehow harm the economy or lead to fewer jobs. And they’re going to argue that we should do nothing, stand pat, do less, or delay action yet again.

I just want to point out we’ve heard such arguments before. We’ve engaged in this same type of debate a lot of times through our history. People don’t like change, and they get nervous about it. Lew and I were just talking about it. He said especially utility executives get nervous about change. (Laughter.)

It’s a debate between looking backwards and looking forward; between those who are ready to seize the future and those who are afraid of the future. And we know which side the United States of America has always come down on. We know that we’ve always been a people who were unafraid to reach for that more promising future. We know that the promise of places like DeSoto and projects like the creation of a modern electricity grid mean a continuation of that long march of progress in this country. And we refuse to believe that our politics are too broken to make the energy future we dream of a reality.

I know what the American people are capable of when they’re called upon to meet big challenges. I know it because of I’ve seen here in Arcadia and I’ve seen it all across America. This is the nation, after all, that harnessed electricity and the energy contained in an atom; that developed the steamboat and the modern solar cell; that connected a continent with a massive system of highways and railroads. And I believe we can blaze such trails again, and I commend all of you for being so critical in these early first steps. Congratulations to you on your extraordinary achievement, and when it comes to the development of clean, renewable energy, I hope there are going to be a lot of days like this one to come. I know I’m going to be working as hard as I can to make it possible.

And while I’m here, I just want to introduce Carol Browner, who works with me in our White House, and she is helping to lead the charge in Washington. (Applause.) She just happens to be from Florida and so she knows a little bit about the Sunshine State. We are so excited by what you’ve done and we are absolutely confident we’re just going to keep on building on the great progress that you’ve already made.

Thank you, Arcadia. Thank you, Florida. (Applause.)

I thought he did one thing right. He made it very clear that the economy that most adopts renewable energy will be the leader of the world moving forward. One thing I thought he did poorly was he made it seem like these technologies were at best almost here, and at worst “to be developed” when in fact all the tech we need is here and ready to go, we just need to implement them. It is really a policy problem not a technology one.

Remember that date, because in the future hundreds of thousands of people who took part in thousands of events worldwide will look back and say to themselves: “Why did I think that would do any good?”

Those thousands upon thousands of people are not the people I am blaming for thinking that by marching, letter writing, lobbying, petitioning and otherwise taking part in all sorts of conventional “actions” great changes would begin to take place. No, I have no problem with those people because, quite frankly, what else are they supposed to do? After all, the environmental groups, writers and high-profile campaigners that are regarded as the leaders of the “environmental movement” (sorry for all the quotes) told them that’s what they needed to do — and promised so much. To quote the website largely responsible for this most recent phenomenon:

To tackle climate change we need to move quickly, and we need to act in unison—and 2009 will be an absolutely crucial year. This December, world leaders will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark to craft a new global treaty on cutting emissions. The problem is, the treaty currently on the table doesn’t meet the severity of the climate crisis—it doesn’t pass the 350 test.

In order to unite the public, media, and our political leaders behind the 350 goal, we’re harnessing the power of the internet to coordinate a planetary day of action on October 24, 2009. We hope to have actions at hundreds of iconic places around the world – from the Taj Mahal to the Great Barrier Reef to your community – and clear message to world leaders: the solutions to climate change must be equitable, they must be grounded in science, and they must meet the scale of the crisis.

If an international grassroots movement holds our leaders accountable to the latest climate science, we can start the global transformation we so desperately need.

To take this at face value, it would be inconceivable to think that by taking thousands of photos and getting them into the media, these leaders (our leaders, we are told) would not make sufficient changes in policy to bring atmospheric carbon dioxide down to that critical figure of 350 parts per million. Why would you think any other way — these people told you it would be enough:

Bill McKibben
Rajendra Pachauri
Vandana Shiva
Abp. Desmond Tutu
Dr. James Hansen
Liz Thomson
Pres. Mohamed Nasheed
Bianca Jagger
David Suzuki
Van Jones
George Monbiot
Sheila Watt-Cloutier
Will Steger
Barbara Kingsolver
Hermann Scheer
Alex Steffen
Mathis Wackernagel
Colin Beavan
Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt
Homero Aridjis
Paul Loeb
Deepa Gupta
Ross Gelbspan
Keibo Oiwa
Claudio Angelo
Thomas Homer-Dixon
Bo Ekman
Bulu Imam

Well, perhaps not those precise words, for in the world of soundbites and voxpops, it’s very easy to get carried away and lend your name to something simply because it seems like a good thing to do.

“If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.”

That’s James Hansen, quoted on www.350.org. Where did he say that by taking photos and getting them on the agendas of political high-ups the problem would be consigned to history? It wouldn’t be too strong to suggest that some of these people have been duped by 350.org, and that the people behind the campaign are so deluded by their own concept of “action” that they couldn’t possibly imagine that anyone would think anything different.

I’m not making this up; here is an exchange from way back in May 2008, when the group was first set up, and I found their MySpace page:

From: Keith
Date: May 28, 2008 4:33 AM

Hi 350 (or rather sub-350)

Glad to see someone taking a realistic look at things. I wrote a short article recently on The Sietch, which you might like to look at, based around this subject:

http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2008/04/03/climate-stability-we-have-already-passed-the-limit-time-to-go-in-reverse/

Keep up the good work, and if you have any radical (not symbolic) ideas for “things to do” then let me know.

keith@theearthblog.org

Best

Keith

Keith,

Thanks for the note. Something radical (not symbolic) that you can do is raise awareness in your community by holding a 350 event, and then make sure everybody calls their elected leaders asking them to push for legislation that has strong enough carbon cuts to get to 350 ppm.

Best,

Phil Aroneanu
350. org

At the time I had nearly completed writing my book, and had come to understand very clearly the huge gulf between the effectiveness of Symbolic and Non-Symbolic actions. Phil’s response demonstrated a level of delusion I had not come across since that realisation: he really thought that by holding an event and appealing to “elected leaders” the 100% cuts in industrial nations’ emissions necessary by 2030 (or earlier) would happen. He really did.

Dear Phil

I need to take this discussion off MySpace, as I think your response (see below) has doomed any chance of 350.org working, and you need to know this as soon as possible.

“Something radical (not symbolic) that you can do is raise awareness in your community by holding a 350 event, and then make sure everybody calls their elected leaders asking them to push for legislation that has strong enough carbon cuts to get to 350 ppm.”

Could you please explain in what way doing exactly the same thing that has repeatedly failed in the past to achieve even modest cuts in emissions is going to achieve the 100% cut required to return to 350ppm? Could you please explain how “holding a 350 event” is radical?

I really thought 350.org was the cusp of something different, yet you still are still trying to convince people that “their elected leaders” will do anything that turns its back on the existing consumer culture (a.k.a. Culture of Maximum Harm) — the very culture these “elected leaders” and the brainwashed public are convinced is the only way to live.

I wish you well with your campaign: I don’t want to say it will fail, but it will. If you want to know how to actually get the carbon levels down adequately then the non-technological, non-political, non-symbolic answers are out there — I have some of them, as do a number of other people who have been ostracised by the environmental mainstream: you only have to ask. Bill McKibben was *almost* there about three-quarters of the way through “The End of Nature” then he seemed to lose his nerve, and has deradicalised considerably in the last few years. The environmental movement has singularly failed to address the root cause of the problem, largely because the environmental movement is a big part of the problem.

Please read this quote from my book (www.amatterofscale.com) and then maybe you will start to understand:

—– Start of quote —–

So, go and protest, make some noise, wave some banners, sign a petition: just make sure you stay within the law. I mean it – protest of some form or another is permitted in most nations, but the severity and the type of protest allowed depends in the legislation that is in place; both standing legislation and the widely used “state of emergency” which, in fact is simply an extension of the existing laws. As the Zimbabweans ponder their electoral fate, the Mugabe regime has imposed “emergency” laws to prevent any form of gathering that may threaten the government. What the Mugabe regime knows only too well is that in Zimbabwe, as with many other African, South American and Asian states, protest often takes an entirely different form to the type of protest the people of the industrial West have become accustomed too. The Mugabe regime know that real protest is capable of overthrowing governments; whereas in the USA, for instance, it almost goes without saying that protest will lead to nothing more than a warm feeling in the hearts of those taking part:

One will find hundreds, sometimes thousands, assembled in an orderly fashion, listening to selected speakers calling for an end to this or that aspect of lethal state activity, carrying signs “demanding” the same thing.and – typically – the whole thing is quietly disbanded with exhortations to the assembled to “keep working” on the matter and to please sign a petition.

Throughout the whole charade it will be noticed that the state is represented by a uniformed police presence keeping a discreet distance and not interfering with the activities. And why should they? The organizers will have gone through “proper channels” to obtain permits. Surrounding the larger mass of demonstrators can be seen others.their function is to ensure the demonstrators remain “responsible,” not deviating from the state-sanctioned plan of protest.[i]

Laughable, isn’t it, that such a well controlled event – and this is the way every official rally I have ever been on works – should be considered a “protest” by the organisers? The laws in each country are tailored to suit the appetite of the population for change: a country full of people that want to fight for change needs to be kept tightly controlled; a country full of catatonic, drip-fed consumers can march all they like, be given a well-controlled soapbox on TV – and the voltage on the tasers can be turned right down.

That is, unless someone decides to break the law.

….

Every day, in all sorts of ways, we hand over the responsibility of our actions to other parties. We entrust religious leaders to act as proxy supreme beings, to give us blessings and pray for the delivery of our souls and, as is becoming more common, the protection of the natural environment. We entrust politicians to justly run districts, states, countries, the whole planet, on our behalf, and deliver whatever is in their jurisdiction from whatever evils we have asked them to deal with. We ask the heads of corporations to use profits wisely, to provide fair wages, allow union representation and listen to their staff and respond appropriately – we ask them not to destroy the planet. We ask environmental organisations to look after the planet on our behalf, to lobby fiercely and petition prudently, to give us a world worth living in.

We are guilty of a mass dereliction of responsibility.

When we vote we hope the politicians will do the right thing after they have been elected. When we buy a product from a company, we hope that company are acting in the best interests of everyone and every thing they impact. When we sign a petition, go on a protest march or write a letter, we hope that it will change things for the better. But it is never that simple.

Voters vote for different things: your hope that a politician will increase pollution controls will be running counter to the hope of another voter that pollution controls will be weakened. Your entrustment of a company that they will act ethically runs contrary to the basic needs of a shareholder in that same company, that demands an increase in profits, which requires poorer labour standards, increased use of natural resources, corner cutting and cost slashing across the board. Your petition or protest march may give you hope that something will change when in fact you have simply channelled your anger and concern into a symbolic action that threatens not a single media executive, company director or head of state. You innocently believed that right would out simply because you placed your demands on the wings of dear hope.

When we stop hoping for external assistance, when we stop hoping that the awful situation we’re in will somehow resolve itself, when we stop hoping the situation will somehow not get worse, then we are finally free – truly free – to honestly start working to thoroughly resolve it. When hope dies, action begins.[ii]

——————————————————————————–

[i] Ward Churchill, “Pacifism As Pathology”, AK Press, 2007.
[ii] Derrick Jensen, “Endgame Volume I: The Problem Of Civilization”, Seven Stories Press, 2006.

—– End of quote —–

Your campaign seems to be based on the hope that something magical will change through holding “events” and lobbying politicians and corporations to change. This approach has pointedly failed for the last 40 years, and yet continues because it feels like something is being done, even while, all the time, the emissions keep going up. There is not one shred of evidence to suggest such an approach will ever work. The point is, emissions will keep going up all the time industrial civilization owns humanity.

I don’t expect you to understand, though, just as 99% of people brainwashed by this culture do not understand. The answers do not lie within the system, the answers lie within ourselves — people who may be addicted to the system but are still individuals who can decide to step out of the toxic river, and maybe knock out a few shopping malls, power plants and TV stations as they go.

Yours in desperate times

Keith Farnish
keith@theearthblog.org
www.theearthblog.org
www.sub350.org

He never did respond. I didn’t expect him too.

If you are planning to go to a 350.org event, then please go, but don’t go expecting the group’s aims to change anything: go with a view to helping people understand that only by rejecting the system that the group’s organisers are still pandering to, can the atmospheric carbon levels go below 350 parts per million. Either that, or the Earth will reject humanity.

———-
This was taken from The Unsuitablog. Keith Farnish is author of “Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution To A Global Crisis.”
.
.
.
EDIT: Have amended the title because, as we all know, even 350ppm isn’t low enough, and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for giving anyone a false sense of security.

A widely cited 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock’s Long Shadow, estimates that 18 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions (which is more than cars) are attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs, and poultry. But recent analysis by Goodland and Anhang finds that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.

Reviewing both direct and indirect sources of GHG emissions from livestock, the study finds that previous calculations have both underestimated and overlooked certain emissions sources as well as assigned emissions they deem to be livestock-related to the wrong sectors. The authors locate these discrepancies in previous analyses of livestock respiration, land use, and methane.

Based on their research, Goodland and Anhang conclude that replacing livestock products with soy-based and other alternatives would be the best strategy for reversing climate change. “This approach would have far more rapid effects on GHG emissions and their atmospheric concentrations—and thus on the rate the climate is warming—than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”

Basically stop eating meat (and fish) if you really want to make a big change in stopping global warming. It is a simple and easy step you can take that will have far reaching consequences.

And in case you missed it part 1

Suck it chamber of commerce. Frankly it is an embarrassment that the US. Chamber of Commerce still denies the sound science behind climate change. Which is why corporations like Nike, Apple and others are leaving it. I would urge everyone to stop being a member of the chamber until they change their views to come in line with the rest of the sane people in this world.

More on the Yes Men here here and here.

I actually did get a chance to preview a copy of The Yes Men Save The World, and it was fantastic. Satire, and pranks have seldom been used to such amazing effect by they two clever men. I would suggest that all of you go out and watch it as soon as possible.

Or recycling bottles.

or throwing away trash.

Love it.

The element nitrogen is a critical part of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, and therefore essential to all life. Although nitrogen is plentiful on Earth–it represents 78 percent of the atmosphere, by volume–the element is usually found strongly bonded to itself.

3-D fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) image of symbiotic microbes from the deep sea.

To be biologically useful, a nitrogen atom must be released from this coupling and converted to a reduced, or “fixed,” state; reduced nitrogen atoms gain an electron, which makes them chemically reactive.

Although lightning, combustion, and other non-biological processes can create reduced nitrogen, far more is generated by nitrogen-fixing microorganisms such as bacteria, in particular, photosynthetic aquatic cyanobacteria. These organisms produce the bulk of the nitrogen available to living things in the ocean.

When researchers add up all known sources of fixed nitrogen–biological and otherwise–in the global nitrogen cycle, and compare it to the sinks (biological uptake for growth and energy), they come up short.

Scientist Anne Dekas collects methane-seep sediments from the deep-sea submersible Alvin.

More nitrogen appears to be used than is being made. The “nitrogen budget,” in effect, does not balance.

The question has been whether the nitrogen cycle is out of balance, or whether the known inventories of sources and sinks are incomplete, says Victoria Orphan, a geobiologist at Caltech.

Orphan, along with Caltech graduate student Anne Dekas and Caltech postdoctoral researcher Rachel Poretsky, suggest the answer is, at least in part, an incomplete catalogue of the sources of fixed nitrogen.

Cores retrieve deep-ocean methane-seep sediment beneath white bacterial mats.

The team studied ocean sediment samples in methane cold seeps 20 miles off northern California at a depth of 1,800 feet. The area, known as the Eel River Basin, is in a region that supports high levels of natural methane seepage at the sea-floor.

In the laboratory, the researchers examined the methane-rich sediment and the tiny microbial conglomerations that live within.

These spherical cell conglomerates, averaging 500 cells each, consist of two types of anaerobic microorganisms living in a unique symbiotic relationship fueled by methane.

The first is a bacterium that reduces the chemical sulfate into sulfide (the process that produces the rotten-egg odor of salt marshes and mud flats) to generate energy.

The second is a methane-oxidizing archaeon; the archaea are a group of non-bacterial single-celled microorganisms.

Working together, these two symbionts are responsible for consuming the majority of the naturally-released methane in the deep sea.

Although these symbiotic associations themselves are not new–the conglomerations were found about a decade ago–the scientists discovered something unexpected: the methane-consuming archaea were actively fixing nitrogen, and sharing it with their bacterial neighbors.

This is the first time nitrogen fixation has been documented in methane-oxidizing archaea, say the scientists.

A core from a deep-sea methane seep and clam bed collected by scientists aboard Alvin.

“The past discovery that archaeal/bacterial consortia were the agents of methane oxidation led to a paradigm shift in our view of carbon cycling at the bottom of the ocean,” says Matt Kane, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s division of environmental biology, which funded the research, along with NSF’s division of ocean sciences. “This new finding extends that paradigm shift to the nitrogen cycle.

“Such discoveries are revolutionizing how we think about microbial physiological ecology and its impact on Earth’s biogeochemical cycles.”

Although the organisms have a nitrogen-poor diet of methane gas, they live in an environment that has reduced nitrogen in the form of ammonium and other chemicals, which means they shouldn’t need to create their own.

It’s possible that they do need to because they are living in a crowded community, say Orphan and colleagues, a tightly packed ball that prevents some organisms from having access to nitrogen.

The organisms have ultra-slow growth rates, doubling once every three to six months. “But they are passing on some nitrogen to their neighbors, which means they are producing more than they need, despite the energy cost of doing so,” Dekas says.

“We don’t know what benefit the archaeal organisms get from sharing it, but we know they need the bacterial symbiont to stay alive.”

It also gives scientists an ingenious new way to take images of the Moon and any other airless body in the Solar System.

The lunar surface is a loose collection of irregular dust grains, known as regolith. Incoming particles should be trapped in the spaces between the grains and absorbed. When this happens to protons they are expected to interact with the oxygen in the lunar regolith to produce hydroxyl and water. The signature for these molecules was recently found and reported by Chandrayaan-1’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument team.

The SARA results confirm that solar hydrogen nuclei are indeed being absorbed by the lunar regolith but also highlight a mystery: not every proton is absorbed. One out of every five rebounds into space. In the process, the proton joins with an electron to become an atom of hydrogen. “We didn’t expect to see this at all,” says Stas Barabash, Swedish Institute of Space Physics, who is the European Principal Investigator for the Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer (SARA) instrument, which made the discovery.

Although Barabash and his colleagues do not know what is causing the reflections, the discovery paves the way for a new type of image to be made. The hydrogen shoots off with speeds of around 200 km/s and escapes without being deflected by the Moon’s weak gravity. Hydrogen is also electrically neutral, and is not diverted by the magnetic fields in space. So the atoms fly in straight lines, just like photons of light. In principle, each atom can be traced back to its origin and an image of the surface can be made. The areas that emit most hydrogen will show up the brightest.

Whilst the Moon does not generate a global magnetic field, some lunar rocks are magnetised. Barabash and his team are currently making images, to look for such ‘magnetic anomalies’ in lunar rocks. These generate magnetic bubbles that deflect incoming protons away into surrounding regions making magnetic rocks appear dark in a hydrogen image.

The incoming protons are part of the solar wind, a constant stream of particles given off by the Sun. They collide with every celestial object in the Solar System but are usually stopped by the body’s atmosphere. On bodies without such a natural shield, for example asteroids or the planet Mercury, the solar wind reaches the ground. The SARA team expects that these objects too will reflect many of the incoming protons back into space as hydrogen atoms.

This knowledge provides timely advice for the scientists and engineers who are readying ESA’s BepiColombo mission to Mercury. The spacecraft will be carrying two similar instruments to SARA and may find that the inner-most planet is reflecting more hydrogen than the Moon because the solar wind is more concentrated closer to the Sun.

Really you are against him because he wants to bring about peace? I am sad to say that I think all you are doing is assuring that history will look back poorly on you.

This would be one good thing religion could do, and I am pretty sure Jesus would be totally down with it.

The Copenhagen climate change conference is coming and, quite frankly, I don’t expect it to change a thing: the focus will still be on ensuring economic growth in the face of a heating Earth, and most of the money pledged will go into building walls (both metaphorical and actual) to make people feel like they are being protected from the striking changes in environmental conditions expected when the full impact of climate change starts to hit us. If anything is agreed then it won’t be anything like enough to even slow down the impact of climate change, let alone stop it — as leaders in a world dominated by consumption and industrial might, the decision makers at Copenhagen can either say goodbye to power and the way of life they have become accustomed to; or they can make us all think everything is going to be fine in their hands.

That’s my position, and it isn’t going to change: you have my word. On the other hand, there are an increasing number of good people who really do want to change the way that they live; oridinary people who are growing increasingly restless and just need a bit of help to guide them down the road out of the industrial, consuming way of life. These are the people that the latest climate change denial groups, CO2 Is Green and Plants Need CO2, are determined to push back into the wheels of the machine.

Both of them are fronted by H. Leighton Steward, a geologist and wetland geographer who has taken a recent interest in denying the science of climate change (remember, even the conservative IPCC are more than 90% sure that [civilized] humans are behind the suddenly changing climate). He has the following biography (my emphasis):

Leighton Steward is a geologist, environmentalist, author, and retired energy industry executive. He has written about the reasons for the loss of much of the Mississippi River delta (Louisiana’s National Treasure) and has given advice on how the nation can achieve “no net loss” of wetlands in the future; advice that has been accepted by the EPA and U. S. Corps of Engineers. Leighton was lead author on a book about nutrition and health (Sugar Busters) that gave advice on how to lose weight and prevent and or treat diabetes. The book became a #1 New York Times Best seller for sixteen weeks and made a significant contribution to the changes that have occurred regarding the availability of no-sugar-added, higher fiber, and low-glycemic products in the super markets. More recently, he has written a book (Fire, Ice and Paradise) that is an endeavor to educate the non-scientist about the many causes of global climate change so that the reader will be better prepared to understand what they hear, see, and read about in the media and from the politicians. In recognition of his many environmental efforts, Leighton has received numerous environmental awards, including the regional EPA Administrator’s Award for environmental excellence.

He is Chairman of the Board of The Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at SMU, was Chairman of the National Wetlands Coalition, and was twice Chairman of the Audubon Nature Institute. Leighton currently serves on the boards or boards of visitors of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, EOG Resources, The Buffalo Bill Historical Center, the Southwest Research Institute, and is an emeritus member of the Tulane University board.

Leighton’s current interest lies in helping to educate the general public and the politicians about the tremendous benefits of carbon dioxide (CO2) as it relates to the plant and animal kingdoms and their related ecosystems and habitats, and the general health of humanity.

That biography, taken from the site, “Plants Need CO2” conveniently forgets to mention a few key things, which are elucidated so well by this more objective version, from the Forbes website:

————————————————————
H. Leighton Steward
Director
EOG Resources, Incorporated
Houston , TX
Sector: BASIC MATERIALS / Independent Oil & Gas

74 Years Old
Mr. Steward is author-partner of Sugar Busters, LLC, a provider of seminars, books and products related to helping people follow a healthy and nutritious lifestyle. He retired from Burlington Resources, Inc., an oil and gas exploration, production and development company, in 2000, where he had served as Vice Chairman since 1997. Mr. Steward is former Chairman of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association and the Natural Gas Supply Association, and is currently an honorary director of the American Petroleum Institute.
————————————————————

Isn’t it strange that he missed out so many things that would link him to the oil and gas industry so intimately; aspecially the API which is one of the most active climate change denial advocacy groups in the world, and whose 1998 Global Science Communications Plan was leaked to DeSmogBlog. Among the explosive statements contained in this pro-oil plan were the following words:

Unless “climate change” becomes a non-issue, meaning that the Kyoto proposal is defeated and there are no further initiatives to thwart the threat of climate change, there may be no moment when we can declare victory for our efforts. It will be necessary to establish measurements for the science effort to track progress towards achieving the goal and strategic success.

“Victory” was essentially to be achieved when the public were utterly confused about the realities of climate change, and thus could be manipulated to support the views of the oil and gas industry — the “strategic success”.

H. Leighton Steward is a director of this organisation, yet he describes himself as an “environmentalist”.

Given the rather inauspicious motives of the two groups, CO2 Is Green and Plants Need CO2 it’s clear that they are dangerous. I encourage you to spend a little time navigating the sites and seeing exactly how much peer-reviewed science they quote in defence of their position: you will find none. What you will find are lots of former oil cronies and PR companies employed by the oil and gas industry. One of these PR companies is The Patriot Group, whose Principal, Ryan Gravatt has set up a Facebook Group on behalf of Plants Need CO2.

In fact, Facebook is a major part of the efforts of these groups: the CO2 Is Green Facebook Group is rather slick, and has been expertly managed so that “discussions” are filtered to different tabs, and “fans” are banned from posting should they say anything too challenging.

This is where you come in. In order to counter the toxic messages these groups are putting around (remember, they use no objective science and are funded by the oil industry), there are two really good things you could do:

1) Repost the videos and links to their web sites with a clear message that these groups are a complete joke and are surely hoaxes because they are so laughable. Make the same kinds of comments on their YouTube videos and channels:

http://www.youtube.com/user/co2isgreen
http://www.youtube.com/user/plantsneedco2

2) Join the Facebook groups and cause havoc. Post contrary comments and links (if you are allowed to) everywhere:

CO2 Is Green: http://www.facebook.com/pages/CO2-is-Green/129006936661
Plants Need CO2: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=115687686620

Have fun!

.
Keith Farnish is an environmental blogger and campaigner who has written a book which might help fix this mess, called “Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution To A Global Crisis.“

Sierra Club’s Campuses Beyond Coal campaign

Now that is how you talk to your fellow representatives. Remind them exactly who they work for (us, not the big health care companies) and say it like it is (republicans would rather see America suffer than give Obama a win)

Transcript Below :

October 08, 2009 C-SPAN. Rep. Alan Grayson has a few words for both Democrats and Republicans on health care reform.

Grayson: Maddam Speaker I have words for both Democrats and Republicans tonight. Let’s start with the Democrats. We as a party have spent the last six months– the greatest minds of our party dwelling on the question, the unbelievably consuming question of how to get Olympia Snowe to vote for health care reform. I want to remind us all… Olympia Snowe was not elected president last year. Olympia Snowe has no veto power in the Senate. Olympia Snowe represents a state with one half of one percent of America’s population.

What America wants is health care reform. America doesn’t care if it gets fifty one votes in the Senate or sixty votes in the Senate, or eighty three votes in the Senate– in fact America doesn’t even care about that. It doesn’t care about that at all.

What America cares about is this. There are over one million Americans who go broke every single year trying to pay their health care bill. America cares a lot about that. America cares about the fact that there are forty four thousand seven hundred eighty Americans who die every single year on account of not having health care. That’s a hundred and twenty two every day. America sure cares a lot about that.

America cares about the fact that if you have a pre-existing condition even if you have health insurance, it’s not covered. America cares about that a lot. America cares about the fact that you can get all the health care you need as long as you don’t need any. America cares about that a lot.

But America does not care about procedures, processes, personalities– America doesn’t care about that at all. So we have to remember that as Democrats. We have to remember that’s what’s at stake here is life and death, enormous amounts of money and people are counting upon us to move ahead. America understands what’s good for America.

America cares about health care. America cares about jobs. America cares about education, about energy independence. America does not care about process or politicians, or personalities or anything like that.

And I have a few words for my Republican friends as well. I guess I do have some Republican friends. Let me say this. Last week I held up this report here and I pointed out that in America there’s forty four thousand seven hundred eighty nine Americans who die every year according to this Harvard report– published in a peer reviewed journal– because they have no health insurance.

That’s an extra forty four thousand seven hundred eighty nine Americans who die, whose lives could be saved– and their response was to ask me for an apology… to ask me for an apology. That’s right… to ask me for an apology. Well, I’m telling you this– I will not apologize. I will not apologize.

I will not apologize for a simple reason. America doesn’t care about your feelings. I violated no rules by calling this report to America’s attention. I think a lot of people didn’t know about it before hand.

But America does care about health care in America and if you’re against it, then get out of the way. Just get out of the way. You can lead. You can follow– or you can get out of the way. And I’m telling you now to get out of the way.

America understands that there’s one party in this country that’s in favor of health care reform and one party that’s against it and they know why.

They understand if Barack Obama were somehow able to cure hunger in the world, the Republicans would blame him for over-population.

They understand that if Barack obama could somehow bring about world peace, they’d blame him for destroying the defense industry.

In fact they understand that if Barack Obama has a BLT sandwich tomorrow for lunch, they will try to ban bacon.

But that’s what America wants. America wants solutions to its problems and that begins with health care. And that’s what I’m speaking for tonight.

Metallic hydrogen is predicted to be a high-temperature superconductor. A superconductor is a state of matter where electrons, and thus electricity, can flow indefinitely and without resistance.

In a paper published this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists from Cornell University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook announce a theoretical study that predicts the metallization of hydrogen-rich mixtures at significantly lower pressures.

By adding small amounts of lithium to hydrogen, the study calculates that the resulting system may be metalized at around one-fourth the pressure required to metalize pure hydrogen. Hydrogen and lithium are the first and third lightest elements in the universe, respectively. Under the temperature and pressures found on Earth, hydrogen is a gas and lithium is a metal. In hydrogen gas, the atoms are robustly bonded together in pairs and each hydrogen atom contributes one electron to the bonding. In chemistry shorthand, hydrogen is called H2.

Hydrogen and lithium normally react with each other to form a stable compound. This lithium-hydrogen compound, or LiH, is not metallic.

Metallic hydrogen is thought to be present in the interiors of planets like Jupiter and Saturn because of the intense gravitational forces and pressures that are found there.

On Earth, researchers have tried to pry loose hydrogen’s electron by squeezing it between the facets of a diamond anvil cell under pressures up to 3.4 million atmospheres. The pressure at sea level is one atmosphere. The pressure at the center of the Earth is around 3.5 million atmospheres. Scientists have not been successful with this method of steady pressures. They have been, however, with shock-wave methods.

To get around hydrogen’s decidedly fixed stance of not becoming a metal under currently accessible laboratory pressures, the research team used sophisticated computer programs.

The programs theoretically calculate if hydrogen can be metalized by combining a lithium atom with varying numbers of hydrogen atoms. The programs also compute if metallic hydrogen can be made under pressures achievable in a laboratory.

The lithium and hydrogen combinations predicted by the study currently do not exist on Earth.

Ball-and-stick image of hypothetical metallic crystal cells composed of one lithium, or Li, atom and six hydrogen, or H, atoms. The lithium-hydrogen compound is predicted to form under approximately 1 million atmospheres, which is one-fourth the amount of pressure required to metalize pure hydrogen. The pressure at sea level is one atmosphere and the pressure at the center of the Earth is around 3.5 million atmospheres. Li atoms are green and H atoms are white.

One of the combinations predicted by the team contains one lithium atom for every six hydrogen atoms or LiH6. The complex calculations predict that in the hypothetical compound the Li atom is triggered to release its lone outer electron, which is then distributed over the three H2 molecules.

Under pressure, the hypothetical reaction forms a stable and metallic hydrogen compound.

The calculations also predict that LiH6 could be a metal at normal pressures. However, under these conditions it is not stable and would decompose to form LiH and H2.

“The stable and metallic LiH6 compound is predicted to form around 1 million atmospheres, which is around 25 percent of the pressure required to metalize hydrogen by itself,” said Eva Zurek, lead author of the paper and an assistant professor of chemistry at The State University of New York, Buffalo.

“Interestingly, between approximately 1 and 1.6 million atmospheres, all the LiH combinations studied were stable or metastable and all were metallic,” said Roald Hoffmann, co-author, recipient of the 1981 Nobel Prize in chemistry and Cornell’s Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Emeritus.

Ball-and-stick image of predicted metallic lithium-hydrogen crystal cells made of one lithium, or Li, atom and two hydrogen, or H, atoms. Li atoms are green, hydrogen pairs are white, and negatively charged H atoms are mauve.

Another one of the hypothetical compounds studied by the team was composed of one lithium atom and two hydrogen atoms or LiH2.

“The theoretical study opens the exciting possibility that non-traditional combinations of light elements under high pressure can produce metallic hydrogen under experimentally accessible pressures and lead to the discovery of new materials and new states of matter,” said Daryl Hess, a program director in the NSF Division of Materials Research.

“Once again, these researchers have taken chemistry to a new frontier,” said Carol Bessel, a program director in the NSF Division of Chemistry. “They have described, through their theories and calculations, molecules that test our fundamental assumptions about atoms, molecules and structures. In doing so, they challenge the experimentalists to make what they have imagined in their minds a reality to be held in the hand.”

The team members believe the information gleaned from the study suggests that one may combine large amounts of hydrogen with other elements. The information may also some day assist with the design of a metallic hydrogen-based superconductor.

“We have already been in touch with laboratory experimentalists about how LiH6 might be fabricated, starting perhaps with very finely divided forms of the common LiH compound along with extra hydrogen,” said Neil W. Ashcroft, co-author, and Cornell’s Horace White Professor of Physics, Emeritus.

The new belt lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system, with an orbit tilted 27 degrees from the main ring plane. The bulk of its material starts about six million kilometers (3.7 million miles) away from the planet and extends outward roughly another 12 million kilometers (7.4 million miles). One of Saturn’s farthest moons, Phoebe, circles within the newfound ring, and is likely the source of its material.

Saturn’s newest halo is thick, too — its vertical height is about 20 times the diameter of the planet. It would take about one billion Earths stacked together to fill the ring.

“This is one supersized ring,” said Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. “If you could see the ring, it would span the width of two full moons’ worth of sky, one on either side of Saturn.” Verbiscer; Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland, College Park; and Michael Skrutskie, of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, are authors of a paper about the discovery to be published online tomorrow by the journal Nature.

An artist’s concept of the newfound ring:

This artist's conception shows a nearly invisible ring around Saturn -- the largest of the giant planet's many rings. It was discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The artist's conception simulates an infrared view of the giant ring. Saturn appears as just a small dot from outside the band of ice and dust. The bulk of the ring material starts about six million kilometers (3.7 million miles) away from the planet and extends outward roughly another 12 million kilometers (7.4 million miles). The ring's diameter is equivalent to roughly 300 Saturns lined up side to side. The inset shows an enlarged image of Saturn, as seen by the W.M. Keck Observatory at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, in infrared light. The ring, stars and wispy clouds are an artist's representation.

The ring itself is tenuous, made up of a thin array of ice and dust particles. Spitzer’s infrared eyes were able to spot the glow of the band’s cool dust. The telescope, launched in 2003, is currently 107 million kilometers (66 million miles) from Earth in orbit around the sun.

The discovery may help solve an age-old riddle of one of Saturn’s moons. Iapetus has a strange appearance — one side is bright and the other is really dark, in a pattern that resembles the yin-yang symbol. The astronomer Giovanni Cassini first spotted the moon in 1671, and years later figured out it has a dark side, now named Cassini Regio in his honor.

A stunning picture of Iapetus taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft:

Saturn’s newest addition could explain how Cassini Regio came to be. The ring is circling in the same direction as Phoebe, while Iapetus, the other rings and most of Saturn’s moons are all going the opposite way. According to the scientists, some of the dark and dusty material from the outer ring moves inward toward Iapetus, slamming the icy moon like bugs on a windshield.

“Astronomers have long suspected that there is a connection between Saturn’s outer moon Phoebe and the dark material on Iapetus,” said Hamilton. “This new ring provides convincing evidence of that relationship.”

Verbiscer and her colleagues used Spitzer’s longer-wavelength infrared camera, called the multiband imaging photometer, to scan through a patch of sky far from Saturn and a bit inside Phoebe’s orbit. The astronomers had a hunch that Phoebe might be circling around in a belt of dust kicked up from its minor collisions with comets — a process similar to that around stars with dusty disks of planetary debris. Sure enough, when the scientists took a first look at their Spitzer data, a band of dust jumped out.

The ring would be difficult to see with visible-light telescopes. Its particles are diffuse and may even extend beyond the bulk of the ring material all the way in to Saturn and all the way out to interplanetary space. The relatively small numbers of particles in the ring wouldn’t reflect much visible light, especially out at Saturn where sunlight is weak.

“The particles are so far apart that if you were to stand in the ring, you wouldn’t even know it,” said Verbiscer.

Spitzer was able to sense the glow of the cool dust, which is only about 80 Kelvin (minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit). Cool objects shine with infrared, or thermal radiation; for example, even a cup of ice cream is blazing with infrared light. “By focusing on the glow of the ring’s cool dust, Spitzer made it easy to find,” said Verbiscer.

These observations were made before Spitzer ran out of coolant in May and began its “warm” mission.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The multiband imaging photometer for Spitzer was built by Ball Aerospace Corporation, Boulder, Colo., and the University of Arizona, Tucson. Its principal investigator is George Rieke of the University of Arizona.

For additional images relating to the ring discovery and more information about Spitzer, visit here and here

OOI will provide a network of undersea sensors for observing complex ocean processes such as climate variability, ocean circulation, and ocean acidification at several coastal, open-ocean and seafloor locations.

Continuous data flow from hundreds of OOI sensors will be integrated by a sophisticated computing network, and will be openly available to scientists, policy makers, students and the public.

The geographic locations of the OOI components are depicted in this illustration.

“Through the Recovery Act, we are putting people to work today to find answers to some of the major scientific and environmental challenges that we face,” said Arden L. Bement, Jr., director of NSF.

“The oceans drive an incredible range of natural phenomena, including our climate, and directly impact society in myriad ways,” Bement explained. “New approaches are crucial to our understanding of changes now happening in the world’s oceans. OOI will install the latest technologies where they can best serve scientists, policymakers and the public.”

Added Julie Morris, NSF division director for ocean sciences, “Moving a large project to the construction phase requires rigorous planning. Remarkable cooperation and commitment from the OOI team is translating a long-held dream into a new reality for the ocean sciences research community.”

As part of OOI, a global mooring array to collect continuous data will be built.

Advanced ocean research and sensor tools are a significant improvement over past techniques. Remotely operated and autonomous vehicles go deeper and perform longer than submarines. Underwater samplers do in minutes what once took hours in a lab. Telecommunications cables link experiments directly to office computers on land. At sea, satellite uplinks shuttle buoy data at increasing speeds.

Sited in critical areas of the open and coastal ocean, OOI will radically change the rate and scale of ocean data collection. The networked observatory will focus on global, regional and coastal science questions. It will also provide platforms to support new kinds of instruments and autonomous vehicles.

“OOI is an unprecedented opportunity for, and whole new approach to, advancing our understanding of how the ocean works and interacts with the atmosphere and solid Earth,” said Robert Gagosian, president and CEO of COL. “It will allow scientists to answer complex questions–questions only dreamed of a few years ago–about the future health of our planet, such as the ocean’s role in climate change. It’s very exciting to be part of this huge step forward in the ocean sciences.”

An OOI regional scale node will be located at the deep-sea Axial Volcano and Hydrate Ridge.

The five-plus-year construction phase, funded initially with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 funds, will begin this month.

The first year of funding under the Cooperative Agreement will support a range of construction efforts, including production engineering and prototyping of key coastal and open-ocean components (moorings, buoys, sensors), award of the primary seafloor cable contract, completion of a shore station for power and data, and software development for sensor interfaces to the network.

Subsequent years of funding will support the completion of coastal, deep-ocean, and seafloor systems, with initial data flow scheduled for early 2013 and final commissioning of the full system in 2015.

A close-up shows a cabled mooring that will be used on the regional scale nodes of OOI.

The OOI is managed and coordinated by the OOI Project Office at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington, D.C., with three major implementing organizations responsible for the construction of the components of the full network:

• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and its partners, Oregon State University and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, are responsible for coastal and global moorings and their associated autonomous vehicles. Raytheon will also serve as a WHOI partner and provide project management and systems engineering support.
• The University of Washington is responsible for cabled seafloor systems and moorings on the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate.
• OOI’s cyberinfrastructure component is being implemented by the University of California at San Diego.

In 2010 the program will add an education and public engagement team as the fourth implementing organization; it will take advantage of the technology and combined science and education vision of the OOI.

“This award represents the fulfillment of more than a decade of planning and hard work by hundreds of ocean scientists, and reflects the commitment of the National Science Foundation to new approaches for documenting ocean processes,” said Tim Cowles, OOI program director at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership.

“The OOI project team is excited to play a role in implementing this unique suite of observing assets. We’re building an infrastructure that will transform ocean sciences.”

This diagram outlines the cyberinfrastructure component of the Ocean Observatories Initiative.