New Climate Report Too Rosy

From SeattlePI:

"Many top U.S. scientists reject the rosier numbers. Those calculations don't include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations:

They "don't take into account the gorillas – Greenland and Antarctica," said Ohio State University earth sciences professor Lonnie Thompson, a polar ice specialist. "I think there are unpleasant surprises as we move into the 21st century."

Michael MacCracken, who until 2001 coordinated the official U.S. government reviews of the international climate report on global warming, has fired off a letter of protest over the omission."

Promises: Less Oil, Cleaner Energy

In his 2007 State of the Union speech George W. Bush promised the US will use less oil and will strive for cleaner energy in several ways:

'It's in our vital interest to diversify America's energy supply - the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power, by even greater use of clean coal technology, solar and wind energy, and clean, safe nuclear power. We need to press on with battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and expand the use of clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol using everything from wood chips to grasses, to agricultural wastes.

Let us build on the work we've done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next 10 years. When we do that we will have cut our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.

To reach this goal, we must increase the supply of alternative fuels, by setting a mandatory fuels standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017 - and that is nearly five times the current target. At the same time, we need to reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars the way we did for light trucks - and conserve up to 8.5 billion more gallons of gasoline by 2017.

Achieving these ambitious goals will dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but it's not going to eliminate it. And so as we continue to diversify our fuel supply, we must step up domestic oil production in environmentally sensitive ways. And to further protect America against severe disruptions to our oil supply, I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.'

WEF Coming Up

Over 2,000 leaders from business, politics, academia, the media and civil society will once again meet at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, from 24-28 January. This year’s theme, The Shifting Power Equation, reflects the elements that will shape the global agenda in 2007.

Many of the fundamental challenges set forth in the programme are familiar. But the setting has changed dramatically as distinct new influences have appeared which cast these challenges in a different light. They include the growing prominence of emerging economies, the increasing leverage of commodity suppliers, the enhanced voice of individuals or small groups over institutions and the stronger role of consumers over producers.

These new influences are woven into a rich and varied programme that groups the issues into four sub-themes, economics, geopolitics, technology and society, and business.

Economics: New drivers

Geopolitics: The Need for Fresh Mandates

Technology and Society: Identity, Community and Networks

Business: Leading in a Connected World

Globalisation and the rise of inequality

According to The Economist a poisonous mix of inequality and sluggish wages threatens globalisation.

"If globalisation depends upon voters who, as workers, no longer think they gain from it, how long before democracies start to put up barriers to trade? If all the riches go to the summit of society and that summit seems beyond everybody else's reach, are the wealth-creators under threat?

The panic comes in part from a rush to lump all the blame on globalisation. Technology—an even less resistible force—is also destroying white- and blue-collar tasks in a puff of automation and may play a bigger role in explaining rising wage inequality and the sluggish growth of middling wages. The distinctions between technology and globalisation count, if only because people tend to welcome computers but condemn foreigners (whether as competitors or immigrants). That makes technology easier to defend.

For economists, the debate about whether technology or globalisation is responsible for capital's rewards outpacing those of labour is crucial, complicated and unresolved. One school, which blames globalisation, argues that the rocketing profits and sluggish middling wages of the past few years are the long-lasting results of trade, as all those new developing-country workers enter the labour market. This school says that technology helps workers by increasing their productivity and eventually their wages. The opposing school retorts that technology does not increase wages immediately, and some sorts of information technology seem to boost the returns to capital instead (think of how much more a dollar's worth of computing power can do these days). And it questions whether Western incomes will remain flat: recent wage rises in America and pay claims in Europe and Japan may start to reverse the balance back away from capital."

Five Minutes To Final Catastrophe

Today the Doomsday Clock time was pushed forward two whole minutes. Every five years since 1947 this clock has been set anew. Now we have only 5 minutes left . . .

See also the announcement four posts ago.

Forecasts on Climate Change

We completely agree with this eloquently phrased appraisal by the editors of Scientific American for the RealClimate weblog, which started roughly two years ago:

"A refreshing antidote to the political and economic slants that commonly color and distort news coverage of topics like the greenhouse effect, air quality, natural disasters and global warming, Real Climate is a focused, objective blog written by scientists for a brainy community that likes its climate commentary served hot."

One Billion New Cars

Booz Allen Hamilton report the following in their Strategy+Business magazine. Go there and register to read the whole story.

"Imagine how the world would be transformed if the number of people who owned cars doubled in a decade. In fact, as the rate of personal vehicle ownership soars in Asia, a new kind of global automotive manufacturing industry is emerging to capitalize on this new customer base. Automakers (and the financial markets and supply chains that support them) already know their world is going to change; the media are beginning to pay attention to fledgling motor vehicle companies such as Chery (in China) and Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M, in India). But few people realize the full implications. If the auto markets of developing nations evolve on a par with established markets by, say, 2020, that development could upend today’s prevailing notions of what a car costs, how it is produced, and how it is used."

This picture is from The National Geographic Magazine, Oct 4, 1923.

The New China Stripped Bare

Will Hutton is The Guardian's economics editor. His last book discusses the pace of developments in contemporary China. Tho get an idea, read these two articles:

New China. New crisis and Power, corruption and lies.

A New Time Will Be Set

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has informed the world what time it is since 1947, when its now-famous "Doomsday Clock" first appeared of the cover of the magazine. Since then, the minute hand of the clock has moved forward and back to reflect the global level of nuclear danger and the state of international security.

The Future of Wireless

William Webb, head R&D at the British regulator Ofcom and a former Motorola strategy director, sketches out the future of wireless communication.

An interview is here.
A BBC article is here.
And Webb's new book here.

Globalization Shifting Gear

Daniel Altman reports:

"Lately it has become fashionable to question whether globalization and its benefits have peaked or are even about to reverse themselves. Pundits cite protectionist pronouncements by politicians and predict a backlash against global economic integration. But their statements are usually short on data, and that's no surprise. The numbers tell a decidedly different story."