Year: 2011

Downgrade could come as soon as Friday

9:58 am

The day of reckoning looms even closer: Credit rating downgrade for the U.S. government could come as soon as Friday. Key quote:

It’s not the debt ceiling that’s triggering a potential ratings change — it’s the trajectory of debt generated by the federal government.

And this:

The problem, as [the ratings agencies] see it, is not that America can’t pay its debts next month, but that America has grown its debt to such a degree that we can’t pay them in the long run without serious restructuring of the federal government — and this administration refuses to consider it:

1 comment

Conservatives bridle at trillions in ‘phony’ cuts

9:13 am

Trillions in “phony” cuts?

The devil is in the details,” says a Republican strategist closely involved in the debt fight. “When you’re talking about $1 trillion [over ten years], you’re talking about $100 billion a year, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be evenly distributed among the years.” Does that mean it might be loaded mostly at the end of the decade, when it might not even happen? “That’s where you get into the details,” the strategist says.

0 comments

Enceladus rains water onto Saturn

8:45 am

The Herschel space telescope has discovered that the water expelled from the tiger stripes on Enceladus eventually rains down on Saturn.

Enceladus expels around 250 kg of water vapour every second, through a collection of jets from the south polar region known as the Tiger Stripes because of their distinctive surface markings. These crucial observations reveal that the water creates a doughnut-shaped torus of vapour surrounding the ringed planet. The total width of the torus is more than 10 times the radius of Saturn, yet it is only about one Saturn radius thick. Enceladus orbits the planet at a distance of about four Saturn radii, replenishing the torus with its jets of water.

0 comments

Thank the Gods for Climategate

1:03 pm

Thank the gods for climategate.

We are certainly in a far different world vis-a-vis global warming than 21 months ago. The [global warming] climatologists are, to a very large extent, being ignored. Yes, there is an IPCC coming up, and perhaps we should wait until that is over. But I will predict that no matter what hoohah comes out of it, it will not have 50% of the energy of the previous IPCCs, because governments just aren’t listening with baited breath anymore. If there is any place where the mojo counted, it was with governments. But it ain’t there any more.

0 comments
1 … 106 107 108 109 110 … 263