2012 February » jad.Blog

La Niña Draws To Close, El Niño For Winter 2012/13?

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Feb 292012

Departure from normal of water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean on December 26, 2011 (left), and February 27, 2012 (right), show a rapid eroding of La Niña and the potential start of an El Niño pattern.

A large change in ocean temperature patterns is underway in the equatorial waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean, as it appears La Niña – the colder than average water temperature phenomenon which has lingered in varying strengths for the past two years – is drawing to a close.

While offset in the eastern 2/3 of the North American continent by Atlantic-based atmospheric influences, the first year of La Niña helped contribute to an active, cold weather pattern across much of the United States. This winter the effects were more limited to the western coast of North America and especially Alaska, where snow pummeling by the foot have continued throughout the winter.

La Niña has also influenced the last two Atlantic hurricane seasons – providing more favorable wind conditions over the regions of the ocean where storms spin up, helping contribute to back-to-back 19-storm seasons, which was 97.9% above the 1950 – 2000 average of 9.6 storms per year. (Tropical storms becoming hurricanes was suppressed in 2011 by an unusual amount of dry air from Africa, in spite of favorable winds.)

La Niña has also helped keep global temperatures from setting monthly and yearly records, with a huge region of the Pacific kept with air temperatures a couple of degrees below normal to compensate for the lower water temperatures.

Typically the pendulum swings from one state to the other (though not necessarily with similar extremes) so as La Niña departs, conditions appear favorable for its much more well known counterpart - El Niño – to develop by year’s end. What will that mean, in general, for weather patterns over the next year?

Yemen First Nation to see Arab Spring Failure

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Feb 272012

Some 66% of Yemen's voting public turned out to end a multi-decade dictatorship. Unfortunately for all their efforts, the only ballot choice was another member of the same party.

Officially on the 25th of February, Yemen became the fourth country to see an overthrow of a dictatorship thanks to the Arab Spring movement. Protests began on the 27th of January last year, demanding government reforms and an end to the single party state that has dominated the country for decades. President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had ruled the country since 1990, decided to step down and hand over power after being nearly killed in a shelling attack on his compound during some of the more violent stages of the uprising. The end result was an “election” for a new leader, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Al-Hadi, who has gone on to become the country’s new president.

Al-Hadi didn’t have what could be considered a difficult campaign season – in fact he had little of any to speak of whatsoever. He was the only candidate on the ballot and, according to state sources, with some 65% turnout Al-Hadi won the ‘election’ with a 99.8% margin. A vote total that great puts him right there in the upper echelon of products of sham dictatorial elections and illusions of democracy so transparent, only those with their head willingly buried in the sand could miss it.

Sadly, topping the list of having said heads buried in the sand is the United States, which enthusiastically embraced the “election” results:

President Barack Obama called Hadi to congratulate him and to say that the United States “will stand with the people of Yemen as they continue their efforts to forge a brighter future for their country,” according to a White House statement.

“Under President Hadi’s leadership, Yemen has the potential to serve as a model for how peaceful transitions can occur when people resist violence and unite under a common cause,” Obama said, warning that much work still lies ahead.

Before Hadi took power, the Yemeni government had been engulfed in anti-Saleh protests and for years has been fighting al Qaeda militants.

With that official recognition and ceremonies wrapping up to mark the occasion, Yemen becomes the first state to see an outright Arab Spring failure. The most the country was able to do was overthrow one dictatorship for another with a member of the exact same party with, largely, the exact same political infrastructure surviving intact.

Greece Gets New Bailout, Offers Some Public Sector Workers Negative Wages

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Feb 232012

Unemployment almost tripling in four years, the stock market in an 85% death dive, and more austerity on the way, the situation for Greece continues to look hopeless at best.

The austerity expiernment continues in Greece with progressively worse results. The latest chapter in this multi-year disaster was announced to the Greek people earlier this week, as Euro-backing countries had agreed to send Greece another €130 billion in loans to stave off a potential default by the end of March – a potential default that would probably see Greece ejected from the Euro currency, triggering a hyper-inflation environment there and shaking the foundation of the rest of the Euro countries, potentially leading to a disintegration of the currency zone itself.

In essence, Greece agreed to keep the Euro alive a bit longer.

The debt payments coming up at the end of March that need to be made to avoid a default, by the way, are primarily to European banks and European countries. Of the roughly €340 billion in total Greek debt out there €40 billion is held by France, €24 billion by Germany, and just over €10 billion by the United Kingdom. Those three countries make up over 20% of all the outstanding debt. Another 21% is held by the European Central Bank & International Monetary Fund. The ECB and IMF are two of the major powers dictating the amounts and terms of the loans to Greece, which will in turn be used to pay them back for money they loaned earlier.

Re-read the last couple sentences a few times until it makes sense.

Now, what sort of terms have been dictated to the Greeks, as part of participating in this wild debt game?

The Ads Are Right: BP Recovers from Deepwater Horizon Spill. As for the South?

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Feb 222012

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill is still causing tremendous ill effects on the wildlife of the Gulf Coast long after the most visible pictures faded away, and BP's profits recovered.

This April 20th will mark two full years since the start of one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. It was on that date that the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig caught fire and sank, killing 11 on board and kicking off the release of as much as 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. British Petroleum, the company with the most visible ties to the oil platform and subsequent disaster, saw its value plummet by nearly 55% within two months. Beaches from Florida to Texas saw tarballs, oil, and dead aquatic life wash up on their shores. The fishing industry was all but wiped out in 2010 – with as much as 36% of the Gulf closed at one time to fishing, and fears from the public driving down demand and cost for what was hauled in from the catch.

Time heals wounds though, for BP at least:

On Tuesday, Robert W. Dudley, BP’s chief executive, told reporters in London that BP was “on the right path” as the company reported $7.7 billion in profit for the fourth quarter of 2011, a 38 percent increase from a year earlier. BP said production was up substantially from the previous quarter, and it expected its cash flow by 2014 to surge 50 percent past that of 2011, giving the company the financial strength to invest in exploration and pay even higher dividends.

While not back to its pre-spill valulation, BP has gained more than 76% in value since June of 2010. The company suspended its dividend in 2010 but reinstated it in 2011, albeit at half of what it once was before the crisis. Still, U.S. investors have received more than $5.3 billion in dividend payments from the company since 2011, and things are looking on the up and up. What about for the Gulf coast states, though? It’s a slightly different story.

Then One Day the U.S. Decides You Shouldn’t Have a Business

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Feb 212012

JotForm is a website that allows users to create surveys and forms to collect information. On the 16th of February, without explanation, the U.S. Secret Service decided this site should no longer exist.

In the wake of the Megaupload take down, and the proposition for a myriad of new bills in Congress that would severely curtail freedom on the Internet, the spotlight of U.S. authorities actions on the Internet has perhaps never been as bright as it is today. Enter the story of JotForm.

JotForm is an online application that allows someone to create forms for surveys to collect information – polls or otherwise. It is free for anyone to create a form, though there are priced options available for professional organizations or anyone who winds up having an extremely popular form to fill out and bandwidth becomes a concern. When ruminations about regulating sites that allow for “user-generated content” are discussed, JotForm is one of the countless websites that falls under that banner – they provide the back end, users create the forms on their own.

JotForm has had a problem with nefarious users taking advantage of their form software to collect information from unknowing Internet users – a process commonly referred to as phishing. The company, using filtering, discovered and deleted over 65,000 such forms within the past year – but that was apparently not enough, or not the right ones for the U.S. Secret Service. Apparently a simple order from the Secret Service to the company that controlled JotForm’s domain name, GoDaddy, was enough to remove the business from the internet without so much as a notice to the actual site owner:

Popular site JotForm doesn’t host music or movies or child pornography, all of which have led US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to seize other Internet domain names without advance warning (sometimes making serious mistakes). JotForm also doesn’t create content itself. Instead, it helps customers create online forms that can then be embedded in their websites for easy data collection.

But that didn’t spare the site from having its entire business shuttered without warning yesterday as the site’s domain name was shut down at the request of the US Secret Service. JotForm’s domain name registrar, GoDaddy, redirected the site’s nameservers to NS1.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM—and with that, JotForm.com became unreachable and the site’s two million user-created forms all broke.

And it all may have been done without a court order.

When he saw his site was down, JotForm cofounder Aytekin Tank scrambled. He checked in with GoDaddy, which told him that the site had been suspended as part of an ongoing investigation.

“We’re very sorry, but your business can no longer exist.”

2013 Budget Proposes $39m in cuts to National Weather Service

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Feb 202012

The National Weather Service uses the Internet to disseminate warning information to people all around the country. Under the proposed 2013 U.S. Budget, all the staff who ensure those systems work would be cut.

With the 2013 budget proposal now released by the Obama Administration, priorities of the White House can be more accurately determined. Science continues to take a back seat in the United States, with another year full of NASA-gutting, which I’ll get into at a later time. I suppose if it is no big deal to cut the budget for scientific space exploration, it isn’t that much of a leap of faith to arrive at the reality of cutting the budget for terrestrial science in general and meteorology specifically.

The $911 million 2012 fiscal year operating budget of the National Weather Service is set to be cut by over 4% to $872 million. The trimming would save $39 million dollars or expressed another way, 26.557 minutes of the Pentagon’s expected 2013 budget. So, what do you lose by trimming less than 27 minutes of Pentagon activity? All of the information technology operator positions, ITOs, across the country would be let go. The ITO is the person who ensures all the technology at a local weather office is working, provides an extra set of eyes in busy severe weather situations if needed, and helps facilitate the transfer of information from weather forecasting systems to the much-easier-on-the-eyes output that one would see on the National Weather Service’s website.

Acceptable Birth Control: Crossing Your Legs

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Feb 172012

In spite of my best efforts to avoid the clown-car-falling-down-a-steep-cliff show that has been the Republican nomination contest for the 2012 general election, I can’t help but be drawn in by how progressively mind numbing the rhetoric from the right has gotten – in relative short order. I remember the good old days of 2004 when the hot button issue was merely riding to an electoral victory on the back of getting bigots out to vote on ban-gay-marriage state constitutional amendments, and while they were in the neighborhood, push the button for Bush. Those days seem civil. Where are we now? What are we talking about now? We are right here, in this video:

Canada in on Online Censorship Party: Safety Minister Calls Opponents Child Pornographers, Drops Mic

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Feb 152012

Canadian public safety minister Vic Toews (Con-MB) has a message to all you supporters of your rights online: stop watching child porn.

The dizzying array of newly introduced and back from the dead Internet censorship legislation from western democracies continues to grow like weeds. Originally under the guise of protecting “content creators”, these bills have faced stiff and quickly assembled grassroots resistance from an online public that doesn’t want to see the last free place in our existence turn into a regulated, metered, and corporately controlled nightmare. Facing the defeat at the hands of logic, the proponents of online censorship have moved to plan B: you’re with us or you watch kiddie porn.

First shots across the bow were fired in the United States by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), with the loaded title of “Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011“, or PCIP. Provisions of the bill would require ISPs to maintain upwards of eighteen months of all your online information just in case a judge somewhere in the country was called upon to grant a wide-ranging, ill-defined search for “something”. It makes the Stop Online ~~Privacy~~ Piracy Act seem downright benign by comparison. The implicit charge for standing against this bill would be, as the title goes, that you support child pornography.

Enter public safety minister Vic Toews (Con-MB) and a piece of legislation called the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act“, or PCI… hey neat, this one is called PCIP too! With a name so similar, you have to wonder if the same clandestine interests are behind both pieces of legislation. Anyway.

Mr. Toews didn’t just stop at the suggestive name to define the opposition of the bill as Mr. Smith did. The implication that anyone standing against a piece of legislation would be in league with some of the most disgusting people that humankind has to offer is repugnant enough in its own right, but amid a debate that was already heating up in the House of Commons as to the full implications of this bill, Mr. Toews decided to go for the gold:

Critics of a bill that would give law enforcement new powers to access Canadians’ electronic communications are aligning themselves with child pornographers, Canada’s public safety minister says.

“He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers,” Vic Toews said of Liberal public safety critic Francis Scarpaleggia during question period on Monday, after Scarpaleggia asked about a bill expected to be tabled Tuesday.

Iran Cuts Access to Popular E-mail, Social Networking Sites

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Feb 132012

Iran is currently seeing some of its heaviest Internet restrictions since the aftermath of the disputed 2009 Presidential elections.

As parliamentary elections slated for the 2nd of March draw closer, Iran continues to tighten its grasp on the ability for information to flow freely from the Internet to its citizens. Not yet launching a rumored “country intranet” which would effectively sever connections between the Iran citizenry and the outside world, the Islamic Republic has shuttered access to popular e-mail services GMail, Yahoo Mail, and Microsoft’s Hotmail, as well to preeminent social networks Facebook and Twitter. Thus far no explanation has been offered to citizens as to why the sites are inaccessible or when they might become view-able again – if ever.

At present, more technically savvy Iranians are able to circumvent the restrictions by using VPN servers hosted elsewhere in the world, or proxy connections – indicating that the websites are being filtered at the Internet Service Provider level. As soon as Iran completes its alleged new Intranet infrastructure, evading the Iranian censors will become significantly more difficult:

Last month the country’s information minister told the Islamic Republic News Agency that a firewalled national Internet would soon become operational. There was no word on when the government might plan to throw the switch on what essentially would be a vast “intranet,” but it could happen any day. And that prospect has cyber activists in Iran concerned. It would give the government a hand up in its cyber cat-and-mouse battle with opponents.

Right now, if Iran now blocks proxy servers and VPN connections for more than a few days, companies with branches or headquarters in the country are cut off from communicating with fellow employees around the world other than by telephone. That forces the government to open the spigot for everyone. Once the new network goes into effect, ordinary Iranians would wake up to a more censored Internet.

“I don’t know the the infrastructure that they will use but I don’t think we have a way out of that one,” said the Iranian person. “We are getting closer and closer to North Korea.”

Unplugging the country from the Internet became a key weapon in trying to fight protesters from getting the word out about the goings on inside the country after the highly controversial 2009 Presidential election that saw a new term awarded to incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even though a large percentage of the citizenry believed Mir Hossein Mousavi was the actual victor. Violent Iranian repression of its people in the weeks and months after were broadcast to the world via YouTube – and when simple blocks were not working well enough for the country, Iran shuttered all access to the Internet for days at a time. Business interests in the country were severely harmed by the lack of communication with the outside world, and could be hurt yet again if Iran moves forward with the nationwide “intranet” scheme.

The moves thus far are drawing the ire of politicians within the country, though:

But the Mehr news agency said the restrictions were not related only to email.

“It has been a while that Internet users have had difficulty accessing domestic and news websites as well as foreign search engines and email services,” it said on its website.

These difficulties include “low speed, outage and blocking” of websites, Mehr said.

A top conservative lawmaker, Ahmad Tavakoli, criticised the new “annoying” filtering and said it should be explained.

“The new filtering measure and cutting of access to the services used by most people without prior notice… will raise the ire of educated” people, he told Mehr.

“Such annoying filtering will cost the regime dearly.”

It remains to be seen if the government will speak out publicly about this issue at all before the legislative elections, or if the Internet restrictions will have any real impact on those elections.

Greece Gripped By Fresh Austerity, Riots

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Feb 132012

Sign of the times: Greek riot police, running out of tear gas, resort to tossing protesters' rocks back at them during an Athens riot on Sunday.

Shortly after midnight local time this morning, the Greek parliament passed a highly controversial new austerity bill by a 199 – 74 margin. The vote came after a day that saw 100,000 people march through the streets of Athens by daylight, descending into riot-filled chaos by nightfall. Perhaps a sign of the times for just how cash-strapped the country really is – riot police resorted to throwing stones back at protesters that were tossed their way as forces ran out of tear gas amid pleas for reinforcements.

On its economic death bed since the middle of 2010, Greece has managed to stay afloat through emergency loans and financial measures by other members of the European Union – spearheaded by the efforts of Germany. The danger of letting Greece fail could potentially be a full collapse of the entire Eurozone currency, which could usher in a severe recession that many countries will spend the rest of this decade recovering from. Each round of bailout money allocated to Greece has only been able to come after new promises to deeper and deeper cuts and more robust austerity programs. The latest round of funding that will prevent a March bankruptcy for the country is $170 billion, and came for the price of 20% public sector job cuts, a 22% minimum wage cut, and a “liberalization” of labor laws – making it easier to fire people – weakening the power of unions.

Having suffered under austerity cuts for almost two years running now, Greeks once more resorted to rioting as a last measure of protest since no other peaceful route – including elections – can seem to stop the cycle of Europe offering Greece money at gunpoint, and the country having no choice but to accept or face potential relegation to a third world country if they were forced to reintroduce their own currency once again.

Political upheavals continued before and after the vote – the week prior seeing the departure of six members of the Greek cabinet, and some 40 MPs expelled from their parties for failing to fall in line and support the passage of this bill.

In addition to protesting the bill, austerity, and a rapidly declining standard of living, Greeks directed a significant amount of anger toward Germany:

“We’ve fought several times for liberation, but this slavery is worse than any other,” said Stella Papafagou, 82, pulling down a surgical mask worn over her mouth to keep out tear gas being fired by the police to push back protesters from Parliament. “This is worse than the ’40s,” she said, referring to the Nazi occupation.

“This time the government is following the Germans’ orders,” she said. “I would prefer to die with dignity than with my head bent down.”

Germany, being the economic powerhouse of the European Union – and one of the last healthy economies left standing after the 2008 crash, has been taking a more active role in stepping in to ‘save’ Greece. Germany has been in a position to dictate the terms on which the country will be allowed to economically survive and remain on the Euro, as the alternative world of a Euro collapse would also spell significant trouble for even their mighty economy.

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