Posts tagged Washington
Scientists Boulder IMPROVED MEASUREMENTS OF SUN TO ADVANCE UNDERSTANDING OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Jan 15th
In a new study of laboratory and satellite data, researchers report a lower value of that energy, known as total solar irradiance, than previously measured and demonstrate that the satellite instrument that made the measurement—which has a new optical design and was calibrated in a new way—has significantly improved the accuracy and consistency of such measurements.
The new findings give confidence, the researchers say, that other, newer satellites expected to launch starting early this year will measure total solar irradiance with adequate repeatability – and with little enough uncertainty – to help resolve the long-standing question of how significant a contributor solar fluctuations are to the rising average global temperature of the planet.
“Improved accuracies and stabilities in the long-term total solar irradiance record mean improved estimates of the sun’s influence on Earth’s climate,” said Greg Kopp
of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) of the University of Colorado Boulder.
Kopp, who led the study, and Judith Lean of the Naval Research Laboratory, in Washington, D.C., published their findings today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
The new work will help advance scientists’ ability to understand the contribution of natural versus anthropogenic causes of climate change, the scientists said. That’s because the research improves the accuracy of the continuous, 32-year record of total solar irradiance, or TSI. Energy from the sun is the primary energy input driving Earth’s climate, which scientific consensus indicates has been warming since the Industrial Revolution.
Lean specializes in the effects of the sun on climate and space weather. She said, “Scientists estimating Earth’s climate sensitivities need accurate and stable solar irradiance records to know exactly how much warming to attribute to changes in the sun’s output, versus anthropogenic or other natural forcings.”
The new, lower TSI value was measured by the LASP-built Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM) instrument on the NASA Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) spacecraft. Tests at a new calibration facility at LASP verify the lower TSI value. The ground-based calibration facility enables scientists to validate their instruments under on-orbit conditions against a reference standard calibrated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Before the development of the calibration facility, solar irradiance instruments would frequently return different measurements from each other, depending on their calibration. To maintain a long-term record of the sun’s output through time, scientists had to rely on overlapping measurements that allowed them to intercalibrate among instruments.
Kopp said, “The calibration facility indicates that the TIM is producing the most accurate total solar irradiance results to date, providing a baseline value that allows us to make the entire 32-year record more accurate. This baseline value will also help ensure that we can maintain this important climate data record for years into the future, reducing the risks from a potential gap in spacecraft measurements.”
Lean said, “We are eager to see how this lower irradiance value affects global climate models, which use various parameters to reproduce current climate: incoming solar radiation is a decisive factor. An improved and extended solar data record will make it easier for us to understand how fluctuations in the sun’s energy output over time affect temperatures, and how Earth’s climate responds to radiative forcing.”
Lean’s model, which is now adjusted to the new lower absolute TSI values, reproduces with high fidelity the TSI variations that TIM observes and indicates that solar irradiance levels during the recent prolonged solar minimum period were likely comparable to levels in past solar minima. Using this model, Lean estimates that solar variability produces about 0.1o Celsius (0.18o Fahrenheit) global warming during the 11-year solar cycle, but is likely not the main cause of global warming in the past three decades.
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Notes for Journalists
Journalists and public information officers (PIOs) of educational and scientific institutions who have registered with AGU can download a PDF copy of this paper in press by clicking on this link:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL045777/abstract;jsessionid=7AE633544C9A94E3832D9F67B4F39D70.d02t02
Or, you may order a copy of the final paper by emailing your request to Peter Weiss at pweiss@agu.org. Please provide your name, the name of your publication, and your phone number.
Neither the paper nor this press release are under embargo.
Title:
“A new, lower value of total solar irradiance: Evidence and climate significance”
Authors:
Greg Kopp: Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder,
Colorado, USA;
Judith L. Lean: Space Science Division, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D. C., USA.
A new study names Boulder, Colo., home to the happiest people in the United States.
Nov 22nd
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
Feeling down? You might consider a move to Boulder, Colo.
A massive new study of Americans’ attitudes concludes that the city at the foot of the Rocky Mountains is home to the happiest, healthiest people in the United States. At the bottom of 162 large and medium-sized cities: Huntington, W.Va.
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, based on interviews with more than 353,000 Americans during 2009, asked individuals to assess their jobs, finances, physical health, emotional state of mind and communities.
CHECK THE INDEX: How does your city rank?
STATES: See how yours rates
POLITICS: See how your state leans
“Most of our highest-scoring cities are found out West and most of our lowest-scoring cities are in the South,” says research director Dan Witters. Wealthier communities typically score higher.
Residents of large cities — those with a population of 1 million or more — generally report higher levels of well-being and more optimism about the future than those in small or medium-sized cities. In small cities, at 250,000 or less, people are more likely to feel safe walking alone at night and have enough money for housing.
The study provides a city-by-city portrait of the nation’s mood and a potential tool for policymakers.
Nine of the 10 cities that fare best on “life evaluation,” assessments of life now and expectations in five years, boast a major university, a big military installation or a state Capitol — institutions that presumably provide some insulation from recession.
Overall, the top 10 cities include four in California, two in Utah and one each in Colorado and Hawaii. Of them, only the Holland, Mich., and Washington, D.C., metro areas are located in the Eastern or Central time zones.
Many of the bottom 10 are in economically embattled regions. Three are in the Alleghenies and three in the Rust Belt. Only Shreveport, La., and Modesto, Calif., are west of the Mississippi.
Boulder’s setting, including a greenbelt of public lands around the city, may help explain its top ranking, Mayor Susan Osborne says. “We tend to have lots of opportunities for being outside,” she says. The jobless rate is 5.7%, below the nation’s 9.7%.
In his annual “state of the city” address Saturday, Huntington Mayor Kim Wolfe said budget cuts and layoffs were needed for his city to deal with the economic downturn. The city’s jobless rate is 7.8%.
There are some places where people seem naturally upbeat. Baton Rouge is 44th overall, but in “life evaluation,” the Mississippi River city is first.
How does your city rank in well-being?
A city-by-city look at how Americans feel about their jobs, their health, their lives and their futures.
Source: Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which included more than 353,000 landline and cellphone interviews in 2009. Margins of error range from 5 percentage points in the smallest cities to less than 1 point in the largest cities.
What each of the six indexes mean:
Life Evaluation: Personal assessments of one’s present life and life in five years, on a scale of 0 to 10.
Emotional Health: Measures a composite of respondents’ daily experiences, including laughter, happiness, worry, anger and stress.
Work Environment: Measures job satisfaction, ability to use one’s strengths at work, trust and openness in the workplace and whether one’s supervisor treats him or her more like a boss or a partner.
Physical Health: Measures chronic diseases, sick days, physical pain, daily energy and other aspects of physical health.
Healthy Behaviors: Measures smoking, consumption of fruit and vegetables and exercise.
Basic Access: Measures basic needs optimal for a healthy life, such as access to food and medicine, having health insurance and feeling safe while walking at night.
READERS: Were you surprised by your city’s rank/result
NPR won't back down: puts funding on chopping block. Williams gone Fox wins Dumb
Oct 23rd
NPR fires Juan Williams
(NECN: Jim Braude) – Fallout continues from the firing of Juan Williams. It’s turning into a major PR headache for public radio.
Consider this: Williams’ so-called offense was telling Bill O’reilly he sometimes gets nervous when flying with people in muslim dress. For that, NPR canned him.
NPR’s complaint line was so jammed that it crashed. Even newspapers like the Washington Post said NPR overreacted.
Fox rewarded Williams with a $2 million contract.
So who really came out ahead? Williams re-joined O’reilly last night to trash NPR.
Gone from NPR, Williams begins bigger role on Fox:
BYBRETT ZONGKER
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — As listeners and angry citizens complained to NPR and public radio stations across the country over the firing of Juan Williams, the news analyst kept up his own criticism of his former employer as he began a bigger role with Fox News Channel.
As the guest host Friday night of “The O’Reilly Factor,” Williams, who was axed for saying he gets nervous on a plane when he sees Muslims, mentioned several remarks made by other NPR commentators that didn’t result in firings.
“My comments about my feelings supposedly crossed this line, some line, somewhere. That crossed the line?” Williams said. “Let me tell you what you can say on National Public Radio without losing your job.”
Williams went on to note that commentator Nina Totenberg said 15 years ago that if there is “retributive justice,” former Republican North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms or one of his grandchildren will get AIDS from a transfusion.
An NPR spokeswoman said Totenberg has repeatedly apologized for her comments.
Meanwhile, a number of major stations said they were meeting or surpassing their fundraising goals in the wake of the furor over Williams’ dismissal, despite it being pledge season.
“We find ourselves kind of caught between NPR and the audience,” said Craig Curtis, program director at KPCC in Pasadena, Calif., which won’t hold its pledge drive until next month. He said the station had received about 150 comments on the firing, mostly disapproving, and three people asked to cancel their memberships.
Conservative leaders including Sarah Palin called on Congress to cut off NPR’s federal funding – an idea that was also raised in the 1990s and didn’t get very far.
Williams was fired Wednesday over comments he made on “The O’Reilly Factor.”
“When I get on a plane,” he said, “I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
After his remarks, Fox announced it had re-signed Williams, who has been with the network since 1997, to a multiyear deal that will give him an expanded role.
NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller held a staff meeting Friday and said management was standing by its decision, spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said. Schiller acknowledged that NPR didn’t handle the firing perfectly and executives would review their process, Rehm said.
Veronica Richardson, 38, a paralegal from Raleigh, N.C., said the firing revealed that NPR had a “political agenda.” She said she would stop listening and donating to her local station, WUNC-FM in Chapel Hill.
“I think it’s unfair to fire someone for a comment that was innocuous to begin with. It’s how many people feel,” said Richardson, who describes herself as a libertarian.
Teresa Kopec, 42, of Spartanburg, S.C., backed the firing, saying, “I thought what he said was kind of offensive. I think it was probably the last straw. He had a pattern of saying things that were not appropriate.” But she said his association with conservative Fox News may have been more troubling, because it damaged NPR’s reputation for objectivity.
At KUNC, an NPR affiliate in Colorado, general manager Neil Best said that Thursday, the start of a pledge drive, was one of the station’s best fundraising days ever. Best said some callers who criticized the firing seemed to be reading from a script since they used some of the same words, such as “totalitarian.”
Rehm said several other stations also reported callers may be reading from a script. In other cases, it was clear the callers weren’t listeners or supporters, she said.
“When people say, `I’m never going to watch you again,’ that’s an indicator,” she said, because NPR isn’t on TV.
Stations in some big cities such as New York, Washington and Philadelphia, all three of which have been holding pledge drives, said fundraising remained strong even as complaints rolled in. In Denver, Colorado Public Radio President Max Wycisk said the episode could boost fundraising. “It might actually help, because it reinforces how seriously public radio takes its integrity,” Wycisk said.
At least one station wants to distance itself from the firing. In Miami, WLRN general manager John Labonia said he was hearing dozens of complaints from angry citizens and loyal donors. He said one called to cancel a $1,000 pledge. The station’s fundraising drive had already ended when the furor erupted.
“We don’t want that negative halo of NPR’s decision to affect us, so we are making it perfectly clear that we were not part of this decision and we do not agree with it,” Labonia said. “It was a short-sighted and irresponsible decision by NPR.”
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said he will introduce legislation to end federal funding for public radio and television.
“Once again, we find the only free speech liberals support is the speech with which they agree,” he said in a statement. “With record debt and unemployment, there’s simply no reason to force taxpayers to subsidize a liberal programming they disagree with.”
In June, Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., introduced similar legislation in the House. He said the Williams firing will help his bill.
NPR radio stations are independently owned and operated and, like the nation’s public TV stations, receive government funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which got about $420 million this year from Washington.
As for NPR’s headquarters operation, federal grants account for less than 2 percent – or $3.3 million – of its $166 million annual budget. It is funded primarily by its affiliates, corporate sponsors and major donors.
This isn’t the first time public broadcasting has been in the crosshairs of conservative politicians. In 1994, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich called for an end to all federal funding for public broadcasters.
NPR’s Rehm warned that if Congress cut off funding, “stations across the country would be hurt by that and would have to make up that balance elsewhere. In many places that would be difficult to do.”
Associated Press Writers Dan Elliott in Denver, Jeff Wilson in Los Angeles, Ben Nuckols in Baltimore, Suzette Laboy in Miami, Kendal Weaver in Birmingham, Ala., Ula Ilnytzky in New York City and JoAnn Loviglio in Philadelphia contributed to this report.