El Segundo - July 22, 2002
Predicting climate conditions and weather accurately all of the time may still be impossible, but scientists appear to be getting closer to this elusive goal.
Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are now using one of the world's largest supercomputers to evaluate the Earth's climate and predict the effects of events such as volcanic eruptions and global warming on the weather.
NASA engineers, working with El Segundo, Calif.-based Computer Sciences Corporation, installed and integrated a HP AlphaServer SC45supercomputer at NASA's Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS), located at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. With the new computing capabilities, NASA scientists will be able to increase the accuracy of their predictions of the effects of climate changes, such as how much the Earth's temperature will rise in the future or where an approaching hurricane will go.
"Using the information from NASA's Earth- observing satellites to make more quantitative assessments of climate change and its relation to weather is a key part of NASA's Science strategy," said Dr. Richard Rood, Acting Chief of NASA's Earth and Space Data Computing Division.
In December of 2000, NASA, working with the General Services Administration Millennia contract, awarded a seven-year contract to CSC to help the agency achieve a 32-fold improvement in computational power for climate prediction. The installation of the new HP system marks the first step towards achieving the agency's goal.
"NASA scientists sought to improve their climate modeling and simulation capabilities," said Bob Scudamore, vice president of CSC's High Performance Computing Center of Excellence.
"This objective drove the requirements for greater computational power, memory and data storage. With this new technology in place, NASA scientists will be better able to understand the Earth's systems and improve our predictions of climate, weather and natural hazards."
CSC's High Performance Computing Center of Excellence installed the 512-processor HP SC45supercomputer at the NCCS. The system, which Scudamore estimates is one of the 20 fastest supercomputers in the world, more than doubles the center's current capacity.
CSC also installed a 32-processor HP SC45 system at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) at Columbia University in New York City as part of the Agency's overall computational plan. The new system will enable scientists to pursue climatic research at the Goddard Institute.
This September, CSC will help NASA increase its computing power further as it expands the center's computational capability another three fold with the installation of 880 additional processors to the existing HP system at Goddard Space Flight Center.
Simon has been given a platform on a silver platter, he could even get on the good side of all the labor Unions, who are against this.
Mr. Hickox, maybe that is because the average person understands the fact that "global warming" has yet to be proven; absent proof, people are not very likely to lend much credence to arguments such as yours and instead realize the state is acting arbitrarily to use its power to impose decisions grounded solely on emotion, not on fact.
Global warming, from the evidence that is available to date, has not been substantiated as real; however, Mr. Hickox, the temperature of the air eminating from your oral orifice has been substantied by the evidence at hand as truly being hot.
Published 4:15 a.m. PDT Saturday, July 20, 2002
SACRAMENTO (AP) - An $11.1 billion bond sale, believed to be the largest one-time borrowing by a government agency in U.S. history, is set to alleviate a deficit built during the state's electricity crisis of 2000 and 2001.
The money is intended to replace $6.5 billion California spent buying electricity in the winter and spring of 2001 and to retire a $4.3-billion loan also used to purchase power.
Lawmakers also are counting on the bond sale as a $23.6-billion shortfall in the overdue state budget looms. Without the sale, the state would have to take out short-term loans to keep cash flowing.
Within weeks, Wall Street rating agencies expect to grade the riskiness of buying the California bonds.
"This is a very unique situation," Dan Aschenbach, senior vice president for Moody's Investors Service, one of three major Wall Street rating agencies told the Los Angeles Times for Saturday editions.
"I don't think there's any other type of bond issue that's had to be put in place to resolve an issue as significant as a $6-billion deficit to the state."
The cost of retiring the new bonds is built into utility rates, so the debt will be paid off dollar by dollar, month by month as customers of Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric get their bills over the next 20 years.
The bond sale is designed to spread the financial pain of an extraordinary year of threatened blackouts and astronomical power prices.
State Treasurer Phil Angelides had sought to sell the bonds 14 months ago, but a deal was delayed by concerns over possible lawsuits and a dispute between the California Public Utilities Commission and Gov. Gray Davis' administration.
Even with an "A" rating and interest rates between 5 percent and 6 percent, over the next two decades, utility ratepayers will have to pay nearly as much in interest on the bonds as the $11.1-billion in principal borrowed.
Anyhow, a link to a more serious news article will be appreciated.