Let's call it the Nero Syndrome

While history has pretty much absolved Nero of the dastardly act of 'fiddling while Rome burned' -- the violin wasn't invented until the 15th century -- the phrase has survived, and its meaning is clear: to neglect priorities during a crisis.

The modern crisis is global warming, and its latest evidence, clear navigation for the once eternally frozen Northwest Passage, has countries and corporations (bless their pecuniary hearts!) scrambling to capitalize on the new shipping lane.

Are we CRAZY? Are there people out there who actually listen to the claptrap spewed by Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the global warming naysayers? If we don't start thinking big picture soon, the third planet from the sun won't be included in it.


Canada wields the big stick here; because the gateway to the Passage sits in their territorial back yard, they can shut down this rush to plunder with some righteous environmental action -- and the U.S. could step up, too, by sweetening international trade pacts with the Canucks to help compensate for any 'benefits', however misguided, that are foreseen by the Limbaugh nutsos.


The Universe is watching, people; let's try to do the right thing, once!

Don't Cry For Me General Motors

And then there were three. That's capitalism, folks. Start out with a couple of dozen car manufacturers and eventually unbridled competition will crown a champion. We're down to the semi-finals now, and it doesn't look good for the homeys.

Everybody is kicking our butt, from an upstart Korean company most Americans can't spell OR pronounce (Hyundai) to luxury performance sedans that we don't even have competition for (BMW/Audi/Mazda/Mercedes etc.etc.) The automotive version of the OK Corral is here, and guess what? We're the Clantons!

The mighty have indeed fallen, and it's nobody's fault but theirs. From the 1970s on, America's big three had no answers for an increasingly sophisticated and knowledgable car-buying public. When we demanded economy, they gave us Chevettes and Pintos(we bought VWs and Hondas); if you had money to burn you could buy a dressed up Ford they called a Lincoln(We bought Benzes and Beemers.) Pickup trucks are about the only competition we can throw out there these days, and the Japanese have their sights squarely on our last gasps.

We used to make some pretty decent cars (see pics) but it's been decades since anything has really turned our heads.


So then, is it goodbye, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler? I'll shed a tear or two -- I loved my 1954 Ford Skyliner -- but my little MINI (90,000 miles and counting, no rattles, fun to drive and 40 MPG) will keep me smiling.


Curious about those beauties across the top? Top to bottom,left to right: 1936 Lasalle, 1951 Kaiser, 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk, 1936 Cord, and a 1936 Duesenberg.

And now for something completely scary

In 1940 New York was the world's largest city, with 7.4 million inhabitants. By 1997 it had dropped to tenth, replaced by Seoul, South Korea's, 10.2 million residents. The global population has grown rapidly in the past 50 years. Consequentially, humanity's impact on the environment is increasing.

When George Washington said farewell to his troops at Fraunces Tavern in New York city, the world had 800,000 inhabitants; when Bobby Thompson hit the homer that sunk the Dodgers in 1951, that figure had grown to 2 1/2 billion. The world's population is right now bucking up against seven billion. Can the planet sustain that kind of growth? All the signs point to a resounding NO.


By Steve Running, NASA's Earth Observation System
It is the moral imperative of our generation to pass on to our children and grandchildren a world that is equal in habitability to the world our parents gave to us. The problem is that as the global population passes 7 billion people, even if individual resource consumption stayed constant, impacts on the biosphere will increase.

However, we seem to be living in bigger houses, driving fancier cars, and flying off to more vacations than our parents did. So per capita resource consumption is not staying constant at all, but increasing. And the developing world is desperately trying to catch up to these living standards of the developed countries. Many developing countries are also making the same mistakes of "development at whatever the environmental cost" that we made 30 years ago. We learned back then that rivers catching on fire and air pollution that forces schoolchildren to stay in at recess is unacceptable. The progress in cleaning up regional pollution in the United States has been remarkable in the last few decades. But now at the end of the 1990s, as we see a globalized economy, we also now see a globally interconnected environment.

Documenting and monitoring biospheric health, just like human health, should not be a political topic. Biospheric health, and more specifically the sustainability of human life on planet Earth, is a topic that cuts across liberals and conservatives, republicans and democrats. We all want the best for our grandchildren, and to pass on to them a livable world. However, until now, global biospheric health has been largely unmeasurable, so discussions and policy development have been handicapped by a paucity of data.

The purpose of EOS is to provide this factual information on trends of change in our biosphere. How we interpret these data, and the course of action we embark on in the next millennium will be a critical political topic. If global change trends turn out to be relatively modest, then only small adjustments in social behavior may be necessary. However if impacts appear to be harmful and accelerating at an unpredictable pace, how can we ignore these early warnings in good conscience? It is essential the new political discussion be based on facts, not conjecture. These are lofty, long range, visionary objectives, similar intellectually to searching for other life in the universe. But global habitability has more immediate significance to us all. Let us hope that EOS allows us to start the new millennium with an enlightened understanding of the changing biosphere.

Another problem Barack faces

You think the economy's in the tank? Worried about Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan? Will we ever get universal health care? Well, you better get your priorities in order, because O Sole Mio is fixin' to take center stage, and when this hot number starts barking, everybody listens.

See those two little dots in the sun's northeast quandrant? Well, my friends, those little spots mark the beginning of Solar Cycle number 24, and before it's over several years from now,well just about anything could happen, most of it bad. Mini Ice Age, disruption and/or destruction of anything electronic, drought, flood... name your poison. Here's the skinny from NASA:

Science Daily (Nov. 11, 2008) � After two-plus years of few sunspots, even fewer solar flares, and a generally eerie calm, the sun is finally showing signs of life.

"I think solar minimum is behind us," says sunspot forecaster David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

His statement is prompted by an October flurry of sunspots. "Last month we counted five sunspot groups," he says. That may not sound like much, but in a year with record-low numbers of sunspots and long stretches of utter spotlessness, five is significant. "This represents a real increase in solar activity."

Even more significant is the fact that four of the five sunspot groups belonged to Solar Cycle 24, the long-awaited next installment of the sun's 11-year solar cycle. "October was the first time we've seen sunspots from new Solar Cycle 24 outnumbering spots from old Solar Cycle 23. It's a good sign that the new cycle is taking off."

Old Solar Cycle 23 peaked in 2000 and has since decayed to low levels. Meanwhile, new Solar Cycle 24 has struggled to get started. 2008 is a year of overlap with both cycles weakly active at the same time. From January to September, the sun produced a total of 22 sunspot groups; 82% of them belonged to old Cycle 23. October added five more; but this time 80% belonged to Cycle 24. The tables have turned.

At first glance, old- and new-cycle sunspots look the same, but they are not. To tell the difference, solar physicists check two things: a sunspot's heliographic latitude and its magnetic polarity. (1) New-cycle sunspots always appear at high latitude, while old-cycle spots cluster around the sun's equator. (2) The magnetic polarity of new-cycle spots is reversed compared to old-cycle spots. Four of October's five sunspot groups satisfied these two criteria for membership in Solar Cycle 24.

The biggest of the new-cycle spots emerged at the end of the month on Halloween. Numbered 1007, or "double-oh seven" for short, the sunspot had two dark cores each wider than Earth connected by active magnetic filaments thousands of kilometers long. Amateur astronomer Alan Friedman took this picture from his backyard observatory in Buffalo, New York:

On Nov. 3rd and again on Nov. 4th, double-oh seven unleashed a series of B-class solar flares. Although B-flares are considered minor, the explosions made themselves felt on Earth. X-rays bathed the dayside of our planet and sent waves of ionization rippling through the atmosphere over Europe. Hams monitoring VLF radio beacons noticed strange "fades" and "surges" caused by the sudden ionospheric disturbances.

Hathaway tamps down the excitement: "We're still years away from solar maximum and, in the meantime, the sun is going to have some more quiet stretches." Even with its flurry of sunspots, the October sun was mostly blank, with zero sunspots on 20 of the month's 31 days.

But it's a start. Stay tuned for solar activity.