What's New Friday, 18 Dec 09

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park    Friday, 18 Dec 09   Washington, DC

1.  CYBERGOONS: THE ETHICS OF HACKING OTHER PEOPLE’S FILES.
"If you believe in scientific openness," warming critics wrote me, "you 
should be pleased that the climate-gate files became public."  Well, I do 
believe in openness.  The success and credibility of science is anchored in 
openness; new ideas and findings must be exposed to the scrutiny of other 
scientists.  By contrast, governments insist on the need for diplomatic and 
military secrecy; the result of which is perpetual warfare.  But contrary 
to the impression conveyed by the media, the U.S., thankfully, has no 
official-secrets act.  Conscientious government workers, willing to risk 
their careers by leaking classified information, may be the only check on 
government excesses carried out behind a screen of national security  
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN03/wn100303.html .  But it was no Daniel 
Ellsberg who hacked the climate-gate files.  The unauthorized release of e-
mail files from a climate unit at the University of East Anglia had no such 
high-minded purpose. It has the smell of goons hired by an Exxon or a 
Peabody Coal. 

2.  CERES: SO WHAT WAS IN THE CLIMATEGATE E-MAILS?
A hacked e-mail passage that was widely quoted in media accounts of climate-
gate, begins: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at 
the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."  Francisco Valero, Director 
of the Atmospheric Research Laboratory at the Scripps Institution for 
Oceanography, says the statement is totally correct.  The problem began 
where most of our problems began: at the start of The Bush administration.  
Because Al Gore initiated it, the Bush administration postponed and 
eventually canceled the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR),  meant to 
continuously monitor Earth's radiance from the L1 point between Earth and 
Sun.  Instead NASA began a program to get the information from low Earth 
orbit: CERES, Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES).  The 
problem is that the low-Earth orbit satellite is so close that it sees only 
a narrow swath on each pass around the planet. Climate models require 
accurate radiance measurements over the diurnal cycle, and those data are 
not at hand. DSCOVR was designed to provide what the low-Earth orbit 
satellites cannot. An $18.7 billion NASA budget sent to the White House 
last Sunday includes only $5 million for continued refurbishing of DSCOVR. 
That is also a travesty.

3.  CYBERWAR:  INSURGENTS IN IRAQ HACK U.S. DRONES.
It's known as “underestimating your enemy.”  Militants in Iran were 
intercepting live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones.  The US hadn’t 
bothered to encrypt the image data coming from the drones.  Using off-the-
shelf software programs such as SkyGrabber, available on the web for as 
little as $26, the Iranian-backed insurgents see what we see.  It’s 
reminiscent of the ways the Vietcong found to counter the huge US advantage 
in technology.

4.  ARDIPITHECUS RAMIDOUS: BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR.
Today’s issue of Science Magazine names Ardi’s discovery as 
the “Breakthrough  of the Year” 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN09/wn100209.html .  The 4.4 million year 
old skeleton completely revised our thinking of how we came to be, and how 
far we are from the Chimpanzee.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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