Saturday, August 27, 2005
A NATION OF GRASSHOPPERS LIVING IN AN ANT-BASED ECONOMY
Experts Warn Debt May Threaten Economy
By ROBERT TANNER, AP - You owe $145,000. And the bill is rising every day. That's how much it would cost every American man, woman and child to pay the tab for the long-term promises the U.S. government has made to creditors, retirees, veterans and the poor.
And it's not even taking into account credit card bills, mortgages all the debt we've racked up personally. Savings? The average American puts away barely $1 of every $100 earned.
Our profligate ways at home are mirrored in Washington and in the global marketplace, where as a society America spends $1.9 billion more a day on imported clothes and cars and gadgets than the entire rest of the world spends on its goods and services.
A new Associated Press/Ipsos poll finds that barely a third of Americans would cut spending to reduce the federal deficit and even fewer would raise taxes.
If those figures seem out of whack to you, if they seem to cut against the way you learned to handle money, if they seem like a recipe for a national economic nightmare well, then, at least you're not alone.
A chorus of economists, government officials and elected leaders both conservative and liberal is warning that America's nonstop borrowing has put the nation on the road to a major fiscal disaster one that could unleash plummeting home values, rocketing interest rates, lost jobs, stagnating wages and threats to government services ranging from health care to law enforcement.
David Walker, who audits the federal government's books as the U.S. comptroller general, put it starkly in an interview with the AP:
"I believe the country faces a critical crossroad and that the decisions that are made or not made within the next 10 years or so will have a profound effect on the future of our country, our children and our grandchildren. The problem gets bigger every day, and the tidal wave gets closer every day."
Federal Reserve Chairman
Alan Greenspan echoed those worries just last week, warning that the federal budget deficit hampered the nation's ability to absorb possible shocks from the soaring trade deficit and the housing boom. He criticized the nation's "hesitancy to face up to the difficult choices that will be required to resolve our looming fiscal problems."
Certainly, there are those who feel such comments bring to mind the preachers who predict the end of the world at a specific time and place, and have always been wrong. And undeniably, borrowing isn't all bad easy access to money has been a critical tool in building America's businesses, from mom-and-pops to multinationals.
But something has changed. More than two centuries ago, Benjamin Franklin warned: "He that goes aborrowing, goes asorrowing." Now, a laugh-til-you-cry commercial portrays a man with a beautiful home and car declaring: "I'm in debt up to my eyeballs. I can barely pay my finance charges. Somebody help me."
The epidemic of American indebtedness runs from home to government to global marketplace. To examine it, let's start at home.
Americans used to save, but no longer. Back in the 1950s, a generation of Americans who had survived the Depression and Second World War saved roughly 8 percent of their income. The savings rate rose and fell slightly over the decades it went as high as 11 percent and as low as 7 percent during the "greed is good" 1980s but now those days are only a memory.
In the charge-everything start of the new millennium, savings have plummeted: to just 1.8 percent last year, below 1 percent since January and at zero in the latest estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The lack of savings is mirrored by a rise in debt. In 2000, household debt broke 18 percent of disposable income for the first time in 20 years, meaning debt eats almost $1 in every $5 American families have to spend after they get past the bills that keep them fed and housed. (That figure hasn't dropped. Credit card debt alone averages $7,200 per household.)
Many people take comfort in the rising value of their homes, and its spurred record home-building and buying, with new construction making places like Las Vegas the fastest-growing in the nation. But a home translates into wealth only when you sell it and there's a vigorous debate over whether the housing boom is becoming a bubble that will burst.
"It seems like, with the younger generation, that they want to have now what it took us years to get," says Jo Canelon, a 46-year-old social worker in Statenville, Ga.
"I see people younger than me with comparable jobs that drive new vehicles and have a boat and mortgage and things," says Canelon, who responded to the AP/Ipsos poll. "And I just wonder about their debt."
Canelon sees echoes in the rise of obesity: a pervasive I-want-it-now attitude no matter what the consequences. To her, debt's a symptom of disease, and one that's spreading.
If she's right, the government is sick, too.
Leaders are elected by the people they serve, of course, and the American people seem to want the best of both worlds tax cuts and government services while they hope the dollars sort themselves out. They worry about the nation's problems, but not enough to agree on a course of action to fix them.
The AP/Ipsos poll of 1,000 adults taken July 5-7 found that a sweeping majority 70 percent worried about the size of the federal deficit either "some" or "a lot."
But only 35 percent were willing to cut government spending and experience a drop in services to balance the budget. Even fewer 18 percent were willing to raise taxes to keep current services. Just 1 percent wanted to both raise taxes and cut spending. The poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
The nation's political leaders could hardly be said to have a mandate calling for fiscal responsibility.
A few years ago, government finances were the strongest they've been in a generation. Then came a turnaround and a stunningly quick one. The budget surplus of $236 billion in 2000 turned into a deficit of $412 billion last year. The government had to borrow that much to cover the hole between what it took in and what it had to spend; a difference that's called the federal deficit.
Blame the bust of the dot-com boom, the ensuing recession,
President Bush's federal tax cuts, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent wars in
Afghanistan and
Iraq.
Bush has gotten his share of brickbats, from both the right and the left, for the spending while he's in office. Still, the federal deficit isn't as big as it was in the worst of the years under President Reagan as a percentage of the overall economy.
Some note things are getting better: The latest reports project a deficit of $331 billion for 2005, nearly $100 billion less than expected. Outstanding debt the amount of securities and bonds that must be repaid is far below what it was in the early 1990s.
But bigger worries lie ahead.
The nation's three biggest entitlement programs
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid make promises for retirement and health care (for the elderly and the poor) which carry a huge price tag that balloons as the population grows and ages.
Add it up: current debt and deficit, promises for those big programs, pensions, veterans health care. The total comes to $43 trillion, says Walker, the nation's comptroller general, who runs the
Government Accountability Office. That's where the $145,000 bill for every American, or $350,000 for every full-time worker, comes from.
Simply hoping for good times to return won't erase numbers like that, Walker says.
"There's no way we're going to grow our way out of our long-range fiscal imbalance," he says, adding that the country must re-examine tax policy, entitlement programs and the entire federal budget.
"I really do not believe the American people have a real idea as to where we are and where we're headed, and what the potential implications are for the country if we don't start making some tough decisions soon," he says.
The dangers are clear as day to Felicia Brown in Saginaw, Mich. To her, it's the leaders who ignore them, she says.
"We're stealing from our children's future and our grandchildren's future," says the cashier and mother of three, who also responded to the AP/Ipsos poll. "We're led off on this belief that we should buy, buy, buy. Everyone needs a big house, everyone needs a new car every two years. We're spending all this money on that, and we're not saving anything."
Some people, however including economists think the picture isn't so gloomy.
Ben Bernanke, who recently left the Federal Reserve Board to serve as President Bush's top economic adviser, has argued that the problem is not with the United States. The trouble lies overseas, where people want to save rather than spend their money. The key is to encourage other countries to spend and invest more, he says, though he also believes that the federal budget needs to be balanced.
By raising the issue of foreign investment, Bernanke touches on another area that scares economists America's inexhaustible desire for foreign goods.
The trade deficit the difference between what America imports and what it exports is the highest it's ever been, both in absolute numbers and in comparison to the size of the economy.
As a society, Americans are on track this year to spend $680 billion more on foreign goods such as Chinese-made clothes, Japanese-made cars and Scandinavian cell phones than overseas buyers do on American goods. The crush of arriving, Asian-made products recently spurred the Port of Los Angeles to switch to 24-hour operations.
Nearly two decades ago, the country fretted over a trade imbalance equal to 3.1 percent of the overall economy, or the gross domestic product. It's more than twice as big now, roughly 6.5 percent.
Here's how economists, from former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to analysts at the
International Monetary Fund, explain the danger: Americans, who go into debt to keep living a life beyond their means, are spending more and more of that borrowed money to buy goods from overseas.
At the same time, the government provides more services to the public than it can afford to and goes into debt to cover the cost.
Other nations actually purchase that debt, in the form of U.S. Treasury bonds and notes. Those bonds have increasingly been snapped up not just by private investors but by foreign banks. Japanese investors hold the most U.S. debt, but China has been buying more than any other country in recent months.
The biggest trade deficit is with China, too, at $162 billion. Japan is next, at $75 billion.
In a very real sense, the U.S. economy is dependent on the central banks of Japan, China and other nations to invest in U.S. Treasuries and keep American interest rates down. The low rates here keep American consumers buying imported goods.
But the lack of fiscal discipline in the United States is undermining the value of the American dollar, thereby lowering the value of the U.S. Treasuries in foreign banks. As the dollar's value drops, other nations' willingness to keep investing cannot last, says Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University.
If those banks reduced their dollar holdings or were simply less willing to invest so much, it could spark a sharp fall in the value of the dollar. And that could create a host of economic problems.
Economists and business leaders are closely watching China's decision last month to uncouple the value of its currency, the yuan, from the dollar and tie it instead to a basket of different currencies. The move could make the dollar's position less exposed to a quick shift by international investors or it could spur those investors to look elsewhere and leave the United States' position more precarious.
In the end, Roubini, Walker and others say, disaster is still avoidable, but it's going to require the American people and the country's leaders to clean financial house to reduce the federal deficit and the trade deficit. Global economics may drive some changes: if Japanese cars cost more, for example, Americans may buy less-expensive GMs.
If not, the future poses some frightening what-ifs:
What if the dollar plummets? Do stocks follow? How about pensions?
What if interest rates soar? How would all the new homeowners, who stretched to buy with adjustable and interest-only loans, cover their mortgages?
How would consumers with record credit-card debt make their payments? Would they stop buying? Stop taking vacations? What will happen if they go bankrupt? New rules going into effect later this year make it harder on such debtors.
How would government, which depends on the taxes of a strong economy to operate, keep all its promises?
Roubini says time is critical because the worse debt becomes, the more vulnerable America is to shocks in the global economic systems another spike in oil prices, another major terrorist attack, another major military conflict.
OK, now back to you. No one's asking you to write a check to cover that $145,000, not yet. But the pressures are building around the world, in Washington, and in America's homes to straighten out our finances or get ready for a real mess.
"We're living beyond our means," Roubini says, "and we have to get our act together."Saturday, August 27, 2005
IF ALAN SEZ IT, THEN IT WILL BE SO
"home price increases will slow and prices could even decrease"
Greenspan warns end of US housing boom inevitable
JACKSON HOLE, Wyoming (Reuters) - U.S. home prices could fall as the housing boom "inevitably" slows, Federal Reserve Chairman
Alan Greenspan said on Saturday as he cast doubt on central banks' ability to sway such asset values.
Greenspan offered the warning about the U.S. housing market in concluding remarks to an annual Kansas City Fed symposium, his last as Fed chairman and one focused this year on a retrospective of his 18-year tenure.
In unusually explicit terms, the central bank chief gave his reading of challenges he sees facing his still-unknown successor and laid out his own views on issues such as inflation targeting, fiscal policy and economic imbalances.
"The housing boom will inevitably simmer down," Greenspan said in the prepared remarks. "As part of that process, house turnover will decline from currently historic levels, while home price increases will slow and prices could even decrease."
Greenspan said while he expects continuing debate over whether the Fed could and should use its power over interest rates to try to influence prices for assets such as stocks and homes, he did not think it was feasible to do so.
"The configuration of asset prices is already an integral part of our evaluation of the large array of forces that influence financial stability and economic growth," he said.
"But given our current state of knowledge, I find it difficult to envision central banks successfully targeting asset prices any time soon."
He said he would not rule out the possibility that better knowledge of how asset prices behave could in the future affect the conduct of monetary policy.
Home prices have surged by double-digit percentages in some U.S. regions, especially along the coasts. Nationwide, average prices are up 50.5 percent over the past five years.
BENEFITS FOR BROADER ECONOMY
And despite the pain it will cause many Americans, Greenspan implied the slowing in home price gains could yield some benefits for the broader economy.
"The surprisingly high correlation between increases in home equity extraction and the current account deficit suggests that an end to the housing boom could induce a significant rise in the personal savings rate, a decline in imports and a corresponding improvement in the current account deficit," the Fed chief said.
Greenspan said the degree to which these changes are "wrenching" depends on whether the United States and its key trading partners maintain flexible economic policies that allow needed trade and other adjustments.
The large gap in the U.S. current account, the broadest measure of trade since it includes investment flows, has many in Congress worried.
The Fed chief has long warned that trade protectionism, including tariffs and other barriers to the global flow of goods, are a threat to world economic stability.
In what could be seen as a parting shot at those who maintain the U.S. central bank should adopt specific and openly stated targets for inflation -- similar to those at many of the world's major central banks -- Greenspan reiterated his steadfast opposition.
"I remain unpersuaded that explicit numerical inflation targets are a key characteristic that distinguishes behavior among the world's central banks," he said, adding that the Fed, and most others, already pursue price stability as a goal.
"That said, I am certain this will remain a topic of lively discussion here and at other monetary forums in years to come," said Greenspan.
While the White House has not yet chosen a successor to the 79-year-old Fed chief, at least one of those cited as a potential heir -- former Fed board governor and current Bush administration economic adviser Ben Bernanke -- is a staunch proponent of inflation targets.Thursday, August 25, 2005
GOOD TIME TO BE IN CASH, PART DEUX
Dot.com bust echoes in nation's housing boom
USAToday - In some parts of the country, it's hard to talk to a neighbor without the conversation turning to real estate prices - the house down the street that's on the market for twice what it went for in 2001, the friend who has made a fortune on the side buying and selling properties.
Sound familiar? A few years ago, the friend getting rich might have been a day trader rather than a condo flipper. And the surging prices were not in real estate but in stocks.
The Internet stock bubble ended badly. The same could happen, in slower motion, with housing prices.
A cooling of the real estate market is both desirable and essential, not only to make housing more affordable, but also to decrease the risk of a sudden downturn in the economy caused by a housing bust.
For the past several years, home prices have surged in select regions of the country, in part because developers, real estate brokers and mortgage lenders have spread the myth that they have nowhere to go but up. Small investors have put their money into real estate. Institutional investors have done the same, pouring cash into portfolios of loans, known as mortgage-backed securities. That has kept interest rates low and prompted banks to make riskier, more exotic loans.
In some cities, real estate costs have surged well beyond growth in salaries. The National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday that the median price of existing homes in the USA surged more than 14% - to $218,000 - in the year ending July 31.
Although the bubbles are concentrated in certain areas, they are tied to the health of the overall economy in several ways:
Surging borrowing. Housing-related debt has swelled from $4.8 trillion in 2000 to $8 trillion today, as buyers have struggled to get into pricey markets. That puts consumer spending at risk if interest rates rise.
Unbalanced economy. Almost 56% of all new non-farm jobs created since the end of the recession in 2002 were in housing-related areas such as construction, finance and home furnishing, according to a study by Wells Fargo. If job growth is concentrated in one sector of the economy, it creates the risk of a sudden downturn if that sector falters.
False sense of affluence. Many economists see the same kind of "wealth effect" today with real estate that they saw with stocks in the 1990s. As homeowners' investments rise in value, they feel richer and are more likely to spend, often tapping into their equity. This behavior could reverse abruptly if prices retreat.
Those who profess to be unconcerned argue that today's sky-high prices are brought about by heavy demand and short supplies. They are correct - to a point. In places like the San Francisco Bay area, natural barriers and restrictive land-use polices make it difficult to build housing.
Even so, their argument ignores the increasingly global nature of the real estate industry. Today's prices are sustained by investors worldwide buying everything from mortgage-backed securities to Treasury bonds. If they get skittish about Americans' borrowing, they could pull their money out of U.S. debt markets, sending interest rates up and property values down. All of which is good reason for the
Federal Reserve's steady push to nudge interest rates higher.
The housing boom has helped the economy. But if it doesn't take a rest, it will not only be a topic of casual conversation but also a matter of considerable concernThursday, August 25, 2005
YEAH, DUDE. CRAZY LIKE A FOX LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK.
Like I posted earlier, I sold my house in South Florida because I knew in my bones that storms were gonna get worse in the area - more of them, and bigger.
The sale closed yesterday, and the money is in my account this morning. Tonite, Hurricane Katrina is scheduled to hit Fort Lauderdale head on. She's not a big one, but I find the timing deliciously ironic, seeing as how FTL has not been hit head-on in 50 years... :D
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
TOP GEEK QUITS OVER BUSHCO PANEL PLAYING FAST AND LOOSE WITH FACTS
Colorado Scientist Quits Global Warming Panel
DENVER (Associated Press) - Colorado State University scientist Roger Pielke Sr. has resigned from a Bush administration science advisory team in a disagreement over research into the causes of global warming.
Pielke, who is also the state climatologist, said the Climate Change Science Program had minimized evidence that factors other than greenhouse gases can contribute to global warming.
Pielke also said other members of the team went behind his back to rewrite a final chapter of its report. Pielke said he was the primary author of the original chapter.
Pielke said he agrees with many other researchers that human activity is changing the climate in significant ways, but he has focused on such factors as clearing land for cities and agriculture, which he said can affect temperature, wind and humidity.
"I think each member of the committee is an outstanding scientist, and each is sincere ... but they're missing the broader view we need to have of climate change," Pielke said.Tuesday, August 23, 2005
GREAT TIME TO BE IN CASH
Merrill analyst sees housing price fix
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prices in the hot U.S. housing market are poised to decline as demand dries up due to the inability of first-time buyers to afford a home, a Merrill Lynch analyst said in a research report on Monday.
"The housing market has become so stretched that the affordability ratio for first-time buyers, the folks who drive the incremental demand in the real estate sector, has deteriorated to levels last seen in the third quarter of 1989," wrote David Rosenberg.
The price of an average starter home in the United States has climbed 14 percent over the past year, while the average income for the first-time buyer family has risen just 4 percent, Rosenberg said, calling that an "unprecedented gap."
In the third quarter of 1989, bids evaporated and new home sales dropped 20 percent the following year in response to lofty prices that first-time buyers could not afford, the analyst said.
The inventory of unsold new homes rose to a 8.4 months' supply from 7.1 months' and that inventory buildup led to a 5.8 percent drop in the median price of a new home, he said.
Low mortgage rates have supported the U.S. housing sector for five years, driving sales and construction to record levels. Robust demand has sent prices soaring, up more than 50 percent on average over the past five years, according to government data.
That has led some analysts to wonder whether the market is a bubble set to burst, although many economists note that price softness will materialize locally and not cause a nationwide decline in home prices.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Short View: House party finally over?
Stephen Schurr, Financial Times - Is the US housing market partying like it's 1989, the peak of the previous housing boom? No, say mortgage industry officials. Those who see a housing bubble agree: this time, they say, it's much worse.
"Prices have been increasing more quickly than is customary," writes the Mortgage Bankers Association in the sanguinary tone that runs through the white paper it published on Tuesday. The report addresses risk factors in the housing market, but offers offsetting "risk mitigants", including a healthy economy with strong consumer spending; a well-capitalised banking system; and an alignment of incentives among mortgage borrowers, lenders and investors.
While the housing market may cool - and US existing home sales for July did ease 2.6 per cent - there is no bubble, the MBA concludes.
However, those who think we are in a bubble take exception. "The MBA putting out a bullish report on the housing market is like the Nasdaq putting out a bullish report on equities in 1999," says David Rosenberg, Merrill Lynch's chief US economist and a leading voice among the housing-bubble Cassandras.
Mr Rosenberg finds some similarities to 1989, chief among them that affordability for first-time buyers has fallen to levels last seen in the third quarter of that year. In the following 12 months - which was also a period of rising interest rates and surging energy prices - new home sales fell 20 per cent.
The differences are more troubling. Interest rates were at 10 per cent back in 1989 and a declining rate environment helped restore affordability to the market - unlike today. To restore affordability, one of two things must happen: salaries must go through the roof to catch up with rising prices, or house prices must come down.
However, there is a more frightening distinction. The home itself has become a liquid asset that can be tapped to boost consumer spending. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research notes, the housing market has created more than $5,000bn in "bubble wealth", equivalent to $70,000 for the average family of four.
In other words, the risks in the housing market this time are not about consumer confidence, but consumer spending.Tuesday, August 23, 2005
WE'RE MELTING, WE'RE MELTING, WHAT A WORLD, WHAT A WORLD...
Panel Sees Growing Melting Arctic Threat
WASHINGTON (Associated Press) - The rate of ice melting in the Arctic is increasing and a panel of researchers says it sees no natural process that is likely to change that trend.
Within a century the melting could lead to summertime ice-free ocean conditions not seen in the area in a million years, the group said Tuesday.
Melting of land-based glaciers could take much longer but could raise the sea levels, potentially affecting coastal regions worldwide.
And changes to the permafrost could undermine buildings, drain water into bogs and release additional carbon into the atmosphere.
"What really makes the Arctic different from the rest of the non-polar world is the permanent ice in the ground, in the ocean, and on land," said Jonathan T. Overpeck of the University of Arizona and chairman of the
National Science Foundation's Arctic System Science Committee that issued the report.
"We see all of that ice melting already, and we envision that it will melt back much more dramatically in the future, as we move towards this more permanent ice-free state," Overpeck said in a statement.
The panel's findings were published in Tuesday's issue of Eos, the weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union.
The report comes just days after environmental ministers and officials from 23 countries met in Greenland to call on governments to stop arguing over global warming and start acting.
That session was held in the town of Ilulissat, near the edge of the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier that has retreated nearly seven miles since 1960 and has become a symbol of fears that the planet is approaching a dangerous warming.
The report was issued following a weeklong meeting of scientists that examined how the Arctic environment and climate interact and how that system would respond as global temperatures rise.
In the past, Arctic climate has included glacial periods with ice sheets extending into North America and Europe, and other times of relative warming.
After studying how various parts of the climate system interact, the researchers said there are two major feedback systems influencing the region ocean circulation in the North Atlantic and the amount of precipitation and evaporation that takes place.
Feedback can accelerate changes in the system, they said. For example, the white sea ice reflects solar radiation back into space, but as the ice melts the dark water will absorb some of the light, warming and melting more ice.
The scientists said they did not see any natural mechanism that could stop the loss of ice.
"I think probably the biggest surprise of the meeting was that no one could envision any interaction between the components that would act naturally to stop the trajectory to the new system," Overpeck said.
In addition to sea and land ice melting, Overpeck said that the frozen soil layer called permafrost will melt and eventually disappear in some areas. That could release additional greenhouse gases stored in the permafrost for thousands of years, he said.
___
On the Net:
American Geophysical Union: http://www.agu.orgMonday, August 22, 2005
"A TODAY ISSUE"
The Ilulissat glacier, a wonder of the world melting away
ILULISSAT, Greenland (AFP) - The Ilulissat glacier in Greenland, a UN heritage site considered one of the wonders of the world, has shrunk by over 10 kilometers in just a few years, in one of the most alarming examples of global warming in the Arctic region.
"We are witnesses to one of the most striking examples of climate change in the Arctic," US expert Robert Corell said during a recent helicopter flight over the glacier.
The lower extremity of the glacier "has receded by more than 10 kilometers (six miles) in two or three years after having been relatively stable since the 1960s," he said.
Corell was in charge of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a 1,400-page report written by more than 250 scientists and published in November 2004 which sounded alarm bells for the region.
The report warned that less than a century from now, the Arctic ice could melt completely during the summer, threatening many species and the lifestyle of the indigenous Inuit population.
Corell, a senior fellow with the American Meteorological Society in Washington D.C., took 22 environment ministers and other officials from around the world, meeting in Ilulissat last week for a conference on global warming, on a tour of the glacier to see the effects first-hand.
"We can't find any more concrete example of Arctic warming, which is twice as fast as in any other part of the world," Corell told AFP.
He said the glacier shrank by seven kilometers (4.3 miles) in a 12-month period from 2002 to 2003.
"The glacier front is calving (scientific term meaning to release) huge ice rocks and moving 35 meters (yards) per day or around 13 kilometers (eight miles) a year, and discharging icebergs in the sea," he said.
"When a glacier recedes, it means that it is diminishing, which is an obvious sign of global warming," Corell said.
The drastic effects of climate change on the glacier have also been studied by Jason Box, a professor with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University in the United States.
He recently led a research project on the glacier financed by US space agency NASA, with logistical support from environmental group Greenpeace.
His team used a small inflatable boat outfitted with special equipment to measure the depth of the ice cap's lakes, and found that water production had increased by 30 percent in just 17 years.
"We've observed an increase in the melt rates in recent years, consistent with warming observed at coastal weather stations," he said in a Greenpeace video report from the area.
The environmental group sent its vessel Arctic Sunrise to Greenland for two months this summer to raise awareness about global warming, with the final days of the campaign taking place in the Ilulissat fjord.
"More water is moving through the Greenland ice sheet system and there appears to be a link between more abundant melt water and the observed increase in ice flow acceleration," Box said.
The volume of water in the inland ice is important because it affects the speed with which the icebergs travel to the sea, and thereby affects the water level of the world's oceans.
"It's not a tomorrow issue, but a today issue," Corell told the 22 ministers.
"There is no time to lose. Urgent action must be taken to respond to this problem," Martina Krueger, the head of the Greenpeace expedition to Greenland told AFP.
If global warming continues the way experts fear it will, Greenland's ice cap could melt within a few hundred years, raising the water level of the world's oceans by six to seven meters (20 to 23 feet).
That would threaten the lives of the more than 1.2 billion people who live within 30 kilometers (20 miles) of ocean shorelines.Monday, August 22, 2005
WE WERE BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
Synthesizer Innovator Robert A. Moog Dies
RALEIGH, N.C. (Associated Press) - Robert A. Moog, whose self-named synthesizers turned electric currents into sound and opened the musical wave that became electronica, has died. He was 71.
Moog died Sunday at his home in Asheville, according to his company's Web site. He had suffered from an inoperable brain tumor, detected in April.
A childhood interest in the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments, would lead Moog to a create a career and business that tied the name Moog as tightly to synthesizers as the name Les Paul is to electric guitars.
Despite traveling in circles that included jet-setting rockers, he always considered himself a technician.
"I'm an engineer. I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians are my customers," he said in 2000. "They use the tools."
As a Ph.D. student in engineering physics at Cornell University, Moog rhymes with vogue in 1964 developed his first voltage-controlled synthesizer modules with composer Herbert Deutsch. By the end of that year, R.A. Moog Co. marketed the first commercial modular synthesizer.
The instrument allowed musicians, first in a studio and later on stage, to generate a range of sounds that could mimic nature or seem otherworldly by flipping a switch, twisting a dial, or sliding a knob. Other synthesizers were already on the market in 1964, but Moog's stood out for being small, light and versatile.
The arrival of the synthesizer came as just as the Beatles and other musicians started seeking ways to fuse psychedelic-drug experiences with their art. The Beatles used a Moog synthesizer on their 1969 album, "Abbey Road"; a Moog was used to create an eerie sound on the soundtrack to the 1971 film "A Clockwork Orange".
Keyboardist Walter (later Wendy) Carlos demonstrated the range of Moog's synthesizer by recording the hit album "Switched-On Bach" in 1968 using only the new instrument instead of an orchestra.
"Suddenly, there was a whole group of people in the world looking for a new sound in music, and it picked up very quickly," Deutsch, the Hofstra University emeritus music professor who helped develop the Moog prototype, said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press.
The popularity of the synthesizer and the success of the company named for Moog took off in rock as extended keyboard solos in songs by
Manfred Mann, Yes and Pink Floyd became part of the progressive sound of the 1970s.
"The sound defined progressive music as we know it," said
Keith Emerson, keyboardist for the rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
Along with rock, synthesizers developed since Moog's breakthrough helped inspire elements of 1970s funk, hip-hop, and techno.
Charles Carlini, a New York City concert promoter, staged Moogfest in May 2004 to mark a half-century since Moog founded his first company while still in college. Emerson, Rick Wakefield of Yes, and Bernie Worrell of Parliament/Funkadelic were among those who played, and a second Moogfest was held a year later.
Moog had "this absent-minded professorial way about him," Carlini said.
"He's like an Einstein of music," Carlini said. "He sees it like, there's a thought, an idea in the air, and it passes through him. Passing through him, he's able to build these instruments."
"A lot of people today don't realize what this man brought to the masses," Carlini said. "He brought electronic music to the masses and changed the way we hear music."
But the now-pervasive synthesizer's ability to mimic strings, horns, and percussion has also threatened some musicians.
In 2004, musicians extracted a promise from the Opera Company of Brooklyn to never again use an advanced kind of synthesizer, called a virtual orchestra machine, in future productions.
Born in 1934 in New York City, Moog paid for his studies at Queens College and Columbia University by building and marketing theremins, which are played by passing the hand through and around vibrating radio tubes. Theremins were used create the spooky "eww-woo-woo" sounds on the soundtracks of science fiction films such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
He went on to attach his name to a long list of synthesizers developed over the years among them Micromoog, Minitmoog, Multimoog and Memorymoog.
Moog, who had set up shop in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., sold R.A. Moog in 1973 and moved five years later to a remote plot outside Asheville, a scenic Appalachian Mountain city and center for new-age pursuits that Rolling Stone magazine once dubbed "America's new freak capital."
A deliberate man with brushed-back white hair and a breast pocket packed with pens, Moog drove an aging Toyota painted with a snail, vines and a fish blowing bubbles.
"When I drive that thing around, people smile at me," he said. "I really feel I'm enhancing the environment."
He spent the early 1990s as a research professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Asheville before turning full-time to running his new instrument business, which was renamed Moog Music in 2002. The roster of customers includes Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Beck, Phish, Sonic Youth and Widespread Panic.
Moog is survived by his wife, Ileana; his children, Laura Moog Lanier, Matthew Moog, Michelle Moog-Koussa and Renee Moog; a stepdaughter, Miranda Richmond; and his former wife, Shireleigh Moog.
A public memorial is scheduled for Wednesday in Asheville.
___
On the Net:
Moog Music Inc.: http://www.moogmusic.com/
Moog family Web site: http://www.caringbridge.com/visit/bobmoog/Sunday, August 21, 2005
WHEN REPUGLICANS ARE SAYING IRAQ IS A BUST, TIME TO RETHINK 'STAY THE COURSE' RHETORIC
Hagel Says Iraq War Looking Like Vietnam
WASHINGTON (Associated Press) - A leading Republican senator and prospective presidential candidate said Sunday that the war in
Iraq has destabilized the Middle East and is looking more like the Vietnam conflict from a generation ago.
Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record), who received two Purple Hearts and other military honors for his service in Vietnam, reiterated his position that the United States needs to develop a strategy to leave Iraq.
Hagel scoffed at the idea that U.S. troops could be in Iraq four years from now at levels above 100,000, a contingency for which the
Pentagon is preparing.
"We should start figuring out how we get out of there," Hagel said on "This Week" on ABC. "But with this understanding, we cannot leave a vacuum that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur."
Hagel said "stay the course" is not a policy. "By any standard, when you analyze 2 1/2 years in Iraq ... we're not winning," he said.
President Bush was preparing for separate speeches this week to reaffirm his plan to help Iraq train its security forces while its leaders build a democratic government. In his weekly Saturday radio address, Bush said the fighting there protected Americans at home.
Polls show the public growing more skeptical about Bush's handling of the war.
In Iraq, officials continued to craft a new constitution in the face of a Monday night deadline for parliamentary approval. They missed the initial deadline last week.
Other Republican senators appearing on Sunday news shows advocated remaining in Iraq until the mission set by Bush is completed, but they also noted that the public is becoming more and more concerned and needs to be reassured.
Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., another possible candidate for president in 2008, disagreed that the U.S. is losing in Iraq. He said a constitution guaranteeing basic freedoms would provide a rallying point for Iraqis.
"I think this is a very crucial time for the future of Iraq," said Allen, also on ABC. "The terrorists don't have anything to win the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq. All they care to do is disrupt."
Hagel, who was among those who advocated sending two to three times as many troops to Iraq when the war began in March 2003, said a stronger military presence by the U.S. is not the solution today.
"We're past that stage now because now we are locked into a bogged-down problem not unsimilar, dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam," Hagel said. "The longer we stay, the more problems we're going to have."
Allen said that unlike the communist-guided North Vietnamese who fought the U.S., the insurgents in Iraq have no guiding political philosophy or organization. Still, Hagel argued, the similarities are growing.
"What I think the White House does not yet understand and some of my colleagues the dam has broke on this policy," Hagel said. "The longer we stay there, the more similarities (to Vietnam) are going to come together."
The Army's top general, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, said Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press that the Army is planning for the possibility of keeping the current number of soldiers in Iraq well over 100,000 for four more years as part of preparations for a worst-case scenario.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record), a South Carolina Republican, said U.S. security is tied to success in Iraq, and he counseled people to be patient.
"The worst-case scenario is not staying four years. The worst-case scenario is leaving a dysfunctional, repressive government behind that becomes part of the problem in the war on terror and not the solution," Graham said on "Fox News Sunday.
Allen said the military would be strained at such levels in four years yet could handle that difficult assignment. Hagel described the Army contingency plan as "complete folly."
"I don't know where he's going to get these troops," Hagel said. "There won't be any National Guard left ... no Army Reserve left ... there is no way America is going to have 100,000 troops in Iraq, nor should it, in four years."
Hagel added: "It would bog us down, it would further destabilize the Middle East, it would give
Iran more influence, it would hurt
Israel, it would put our allies over there in Saudi Arabia and Jordan in a terrible position. It won't be four years. We need to be out."
Sen. Trent Lott (news, bio, voting record), R-Miss., said the U.S. is winning in Iraq but has "a way to go" before it meets its goals there. Meanwhile, more needs to be done to lay out the strategy, Lott said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"I do think we, the president, all of us need to do a better job, do more," Lott said, by telling people "why we have made this commitment, what is being done now, what we do expect in the process and, yes, why it's going to take more time."