Catastrophic Climate Could Be Forestalled by Cutting Overlooked Gases [Slide Show]

Features | Energy & Sustainability

Carbon dioxide gets all the attention, but there are a host of compounds responsible for global warming

By David Biello ?| December 1, 2011

OVERLOOKED GASES: Methane, like that burning in the flame pictured, is one of several often overlooked greenhouse gases. Curbing their emissions could be both cheaper and easier than cutting carbon dioxide. Image: ? iStockphoto.com / Chris Pole

When the world talks climate change?as is currently under way in Durban, South Africa?the main issue is carbon dioxide emissions. CO2 is emanating from the negotiators' mouths and the power plants and cars of their home countries?and that simple molecule is responsible for the bulk of global warming to date.

But CO2 isn't the only molecule trapping heat in the atmosphere. The warm conditions of the earth get a big boost from water vapor as well as several other culprits, some of which never existed in the atmosphere prior to human influence. Together, the other greenhouse gases account for roughly a third of the molecules trapping heat in the atmosphere ? and more than a third of the overall warming of average temperatures globally.

What's more, cleaning up emissions of some of these other greenhouse gases may prove quite a lot simpler than cutting back on CO2?forestalling catastrophic climate change. In fact, some of the measures?such as capturing the methane released during oil production?actually save money in addition to the climate. The United Nations Environment Program estimates that cutting back on methane and soot emissions alone could prevent 0.7 degree Celsius of additional warming by 2040?and those cooling benefits could come faster than comparable cuts in CO2.

View a slideshow of the other greenhouse gases

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Steven Soderbergh signs on for "Bitter Pill" (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? Steven Soderbergh has signed on to direct a new thriller, "The Bitter Pill," TheWrap has confirmed.

Scott Burns wrote the script and is also producing. Other producers include Soderbergh's producing partner, Greg Jacobs, and Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

Soderbergh, Jacobs and Burns were also behind the Warner Bros. films "Contagion" (2011) and "The Informant!" (2009).

A studio has not yet been announced.

The thriller deals with psychopharmacology.

Soderbergh, who in March said he would be calling it quits from the film business after shooting the HBO Liberace biopic "Behind the Candelabra" and the George Clooney movie "Man from U.N.C.L.E.," recently exited the latter.

Warner Bros. said it remains committed to adapting the sixties espionage series into a film.

The drama "Magic Mike" and the thriller "Haywire," due in January and June, respectively, are also still on Soderbergh's plate.

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Mali: German killed; Dutch, SAfrican, Swede seized (AP)

BAMAKO, Mali ? Gunmen killed a German man in Mali's most famous city of Timbuktu and seized three men from the Netherlands, South Africa and Sweden, their tour guide said, as officials on Saturday ordered a plane to evacuate foreigners from the tourist destination.

Ali Maiga was with the tourists during Friday's attack at a Timbuktu restaurant. A witness and an official said gunmen burst into the restaurant, grabbed four tourists dining there and executed one when he refused to climb into their truck.

Officials on Saturday evacuated foreigners from Timbuktu to the capital, said a man who owns a hotel in Bamako where the tourists previously stayed. He asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ward Bezemer confirmed later that one Dutch man was among those kidnapped.

"In the interests of the people involved, we never comment on these cases," Bezemer told The Associated Press.

The kidnapping comes ahead of an official visit by Mali's president to the Netherlands next week.

Until a few years ago, Timbuktu was one of the most visited destinations in Africa, but it is now one of the many former tourist hotspots in Mali that have been deemed too dangerous to visit by foreign embassies because of kidnappings by the local chapter of al-Qaida.

Friday's incident comes after two French citizens were grabbed in the middle of the night from their hotel in the Malian town of Hombori on Thursday. French judicial officials have opened a preliminary investigation into their kidnappings.

Neither kidnapping has yet been claimed by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, whose members have kidnapped and ransomed more than 50 Europeans and Canadians since 2003.

If Friday's kidnapping is by AQIM, it will mark the first time they have taken a hostage inside of Timbuktu's city limits. Thursday's kidnapping would be another first ? the first hostage taking south of the Niger River.

The group's footprint has grown dramatically since 2006, when the Algerian-led cell first joined al-Qaida. Security experts estimate the group has been able to raise around $130 million from ransom payments alone.

___

Associated Press writer Mike Corder contributed to this report from The Hague; writer Anita Powell contributed from Johannesburg.

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Texas Democrat Gonzalez won't run again for House (reuters)

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Fitch cuts Portugal rating on high debts, worse outlook (Reuters)

LISBON (Reuters) ? Fitch downgraded Portugal's credit rating to junk status on Thursday, citing large fiscal imbalances, high debts and the risks to its EU-mandated austerity program from a worsening economic outlook.

The ratings agency cut Portugal to BB+ from BBB-, which is still one notch higher than Moody's rating of Ba2. S&P still rates Portugal investment grade.

Fitch said a deepening recession makes it "much more challenging" for the government to cut the budget deficit but it still expects fiscal goals to be met both this year and next.

"However, the risk of slippage - either from worse macroeconomic outturns or insufficient expenditure controls - is large," Fitch said.

The challenging economic environment was clear in a Reuters poll on Thursday, where economists forecast Portugal's economy will contract by 2.9 percent next year, the deepest recession since the 1970s, and 1.6 percent this year, in line with the government's estimates.

Portugal's 10-year bond prices plunged, sending yields surging more than 100 basis points to 13.85 percent -- the second highest level in the euro zone after Greece. The spread to German Bunds also rose more than 100 basis points to 1,168.

The downgrade of Portugal came after the dramatic deterioration of the euro zone crisis in recent weeks as it spread to bigger countries like Italy and Spain.

"The worsening regional outlook helped inform the downgrade (of Portugal)," Rabobank said in an analyst note. "This, in turn, underlines the mounting risk of systemic downgrades."

Portugal sought a 78-billion-euro bailout from the European Union and IMF earlier this year and has adopted sweeping austerity measures to bring public accounts under controls.

Under the loan program Portugal must cut the budget deficit to 5.9 percent of gross domestic product this year from around 10 percent in 2010. Next year it must cut the deficit further to 4.5 percent.

STATE COMPANIES A RISK

Fitch said the state-owned "enterprise sector is another key source of fiscal risk" and has caused a number of upward revisions to the country's debt and budget deficit figures this year. The government has said there was an unexpected fiscal shortfall of about 3 billion euros this year.

"Given these downside risks, Fitch sees a significant likelihood that further consolidation measures will be needed through the course of 2012," Fitch said.

It sees Portugal total debt peaking at 116 percent of GDP in 2013 from 93.3 percent at the end of last year.

Filipe Garcia, an economist at Informacao de Mercados Financeiros, said that while the downgrade does not change the government's financing conditions as it is under a bailout, it could worsen the situation for companies.

"Where (the downgrade) has an impact is on companies, such as banks and other issuers like EDP or Brisa, whose ratings are greatly influenced by the sovereign rating, leaving them in a more difficult situation," said Garcia.

The agency said Portugal's debt crisis poses big risks for the country's banks. "Recapitalisation and increased emergency liquidity provision from the ECB to Portugal's banks will, in Fitch's view, be needed and provided," it said.

Under Portugal's bailout, 12 billion euros has been set aside for funding banks if necessary.

Fitch said a worsening fiscal or economic situation could lead to further downgrades. "Furthermore, although Portugal is funded to end-2013, sovereign liquidity risk may increase materially toward the end of the program if adverse market conditions persist," Fitch said.

The government hopes to return raising debt in financial markets at the end of 2013.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Rua; Editing by Toby Chopra/Anna Willard)

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Concurring Opinions ? On the New York Times and Legal Education

posted by Daniel Solove

Much has already been written about David Segal?s article in the N.Y. Times, What They Don?t Teach Law Students: Lawyering.? I join the strong critiques of this piece in condemning it as a lousy piece of journalism ? more of a one-sided hack job, riddled with errors.? It belongs on the op-ed page of a trashy paper.

Segal seems to believe that if law professors just wrote less theoretical scholarship and if law schools taught more skills, then suddenly, the legal market would become a bonanza once again for law students.? The problem with this argument is that a theoretical education and scholarship by faculty does not seem to have much connection to a student?s success in the job market.? If this were the case, then nobody would hire Yale Law School graduates.

But Yale Law School graduates are doing quite well in the legal marketplace, which demonstrates that despite all the grumblings we hear about too much theory being taught, legal employers are not behaving consistently with what they are saying.

I also think Segal?s article paints a very false picture of legal education ? there?s a lot of theory, but there?s also a lot of practical skills taught too as well as practical scholarship and law professors very involved in legal practice and policymaking.? One needs only to look at the many law professors who took leaves of absence from their law schools to work in government.? Countless members of my faculty have submitted briefs and argued cases.

Beyond this point, theory is not an irrelevant waste of time.? It is essential to practice.? True, there are lawyers out there who are nothing but glorified mechanics, but the best lawyers are often ones who think deeply, who are interested in legal scholarship and ideas,.? It is easy and glib to just brush aside all legal scholarship as ?irrelevant theory? but this seems to be just an excuse for laziness.? There are a lot of great scholarly pieces out there.? With anything, there?s a lot of bad stuff too.? I could readily find many practicing lawyers who aren?t very good.? That doesn?t mean that all aren?t good.? A member of the profession would say: ?Take a closer look and consider the best practitioners before you rush to judgment.??? The same holds true for legal scholarship.? It is far too easy to make glib generalizations and find one piece with an obscure title to illustrate the point.

There are certainly problems with legal education.? But when the thoughtful points being raised by Brian Tamanaha and others are misunderstood by ill-informed hacks, the discussion devolves into irrelevancies, and there isn?t a productive conversation about how to solve legal education?s problems.? There has been a lot of criticism of legal education of late, and although some of it is justified, it is important to note that a law school education actually is a good thing for many people.? There are a number of unfortunate cases where students would have been better off without having gone to law school.? But we shouldn?t forget that there are also many success stories ? students who went to law school and got the jobs they wanted.? Students should be given a more realistic picture going into law school ? there?s no guaranteed pot of gold at the end ? but there are students for whom law school is not a good investment.? It is a problem to entice students to law school when it isn?t a good investment, but it is also a problem to dissuade students for whom law school is a good investment.

?November 24, 2011 at 11:51 pm ? Posted?in:?Uncategorized ???Print This Post

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Bachmann: Fallon song choice shows sexism, bias (omg!)

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) ? GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann lashed out Wednesday at NBC for not apologizing or taking immediate disciplinary action for an off-color song played during her appearance on Jimmy Fallon's "Late Night."

In her first comments on the flap, Bachmann said on the Fox News Channel that the Fallon show band displayed sexism and bias by playing a snippet of a 1985 Fishbone song as she walked onstage for Tuesday's show. The title of the song is "Lyin' Ass B----."

"This is clearly a form of bias on the part of the Hollywood entertainment elite," Bachmann said. She added, "This wouldn't be tolerated if this was Michelle Obama. It shouldn't be tolerated if it's a conservative woman either."

Fallon has tweeted an apology to Bachmann, saying he was "so sorry about the intro mess." Bachmann said she hoped to speak with Fallon later Wednesday and wouldn't mind going on his show again.

But Bachmann expressed surprise that she's heard nothing from the TV network. She suggested that discipline for the show's Roots band was in order.

One of Bachmann's congressional colleagues, New York Democrat Nita Lowey, had called on NBC to apologize for its "insulting and inappropriate" treatment of its guest.

An NBC spokeswoman didn't immediately return a phone message from The Associated Press.

The Roots' bandleader, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, has said the song was a "tongue-in-cheek and spur-of-the-moment decision."

Bachmann, who is lagging in presidential polls, has spent the week promoting her new autobiography in national television interviews.

___

AP Television Writer David Bauder contributed to this report.

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