Global warming, is still a farce, Al Gore.
New Iceland current could sway N. Atlantic climate
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A newly discovered deep, cold current flowing off Iceland's coast may reveal that the North Atlantic is less sensitive to climate change than previously thought, researchers reported Sunday.
The new current, the North Icelandic Jet, feeds the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a giant pattern known as the "great ocean conveyor belt," or by the disconcerting acronym AMOC.
Because this pattern is critically important for regulating Earth's climate, including European and North American climates, any strong influences on it, and their response to a warming Earth, are of keen scientific and practical interest.
The "conveyor belt" current, introduced to movie-goers in the Al Gore environmental film "An Inconvenient Truth," carries warm surface water from the tropical Atlantic toward the Arctic. In the process, the water warms the air in high latitudes, then cools, sinks and returns toward the equator, flowing as a deep stream at lower ocean depths.
Climate specialists reckoned that most of the cold water that made up that deep south-flowing stream came from off the Greenland coast and was made up of fresh glacier-melt water, produced by new warmth in glacier-covered Greenland.
Because fresh water freezes at a higher temperature than salt water, these specialists suggested that this fresh water from glaciers and other warming-related phenomena would get into the North Atlantic, where it could freeze and prevent the water from sinking to make up the bottom of the conveyor belt.
AMOC RUNNING AMOK?
If that happened, and the AMOC was disrupted or slowed at the place in the far north where the warm water at the surface cools and sinks -- called the overturning -- it could eventually lead to a colder Northern Hemisphere.
However, the newly confirmed North Icelandic Jet appears to contribute more to the deeper part of the AMOC than the Greenland current does, according to research published in the journal Nature Geoscience. (For a graphic, see: http://link.reuters.com/qev33s)
"Present thinking contends that increased fresh water delivered to the North Atlantic, due to melting ice and increased precipitation under a warming climate, will slow down or halt the overturning" of the AMOC, said study co-author Robert Pickart of Woods Hold Oceanographic Institution.
This might not be the case if the overturning occurs in the interior of the Iceland Sea, which feeds the North Icelandic Jet, Pickart said in an email interview from Reykjavik.
"It is not inconceivable that this open-ocean process is less sensitive to fresh water forcing than the presently accepted mechanism ... which might lead one to speculate that the deepest part of the overturning may be less sensitive to climate change," he said.
The existence of the NIJ was suspected for decades but was only confirmed recently by Icelandic researchers using underwater velocity measurements taken from a ship. The NIJ current can't be seen by satellites or detected by its temperature or salinity, but it does move a bit faster than the surrounding water, Pickart said.
Pickart and researchers from Norway and Iceland don't know whether the North Icelandic Jet flows year round or how it varies with time. They are beginning a research voyage this week to deploy oceanographic instruments to directly measure the NIJ over the course of a full year to try to figure out where and how this current forms.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-iceland-current-could-sway-n-at
US government asset seizures on the rise
The Wall Street Journal published a disturbing article earlier this week entitled “Federal Asset Seizures Rise, Netting Innocent With Guilty.”
You can already imagine the crux of the article.
In the United States, there are hundreds of regulations which authorize dozens federal agencies to confiscate private property– homes, cars, bank accounts, gold, company shares, and even personal effects.
Ironically, most Americans still think that they live in a country where you’re innocent until proven guilty. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it’s just another clear example of how the US Constitution has become a worthless piece of toilet paper for the federal government.
The Fifth Amendment states that “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Tell that James Lieto, a New York businessman who was relieved of $392,000 when the armored car company used by his check-cashing firm was taken down by the FBI.
Lieto was innocent and not implicated in any wrongdoing, but the FBI took his money regardless as it just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Last October, another businessman named Raul Stio was suspected of wrongdoing by the Treasury Department. The government seized over $150,000 from his account, yet in the 10-months that followed, Stio has still not been charged with a crime.
According to Justice Department statistics, the total value of confiscated property exceeded $2.5 billion in 2010, more than double from five years ago. The average take per case? $166,000… and the vast majority of cases were non-criminal.
It’s truly staggering to think about how much can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye, all without any judicial oversight or right to a hearing.
The reason could be anything. Maybe you violated some arcane, meaningless regulation among the hundreds of thousands of pages of US Code (ignorance of the law is NOT an excuse!). Maybe you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe they had no real reason at all other than mere suspicion.
One minute you have money, the next you’re completely locked out of your wealth and livelihood. They force YOU to prove to them that you aren’t guilty, but they take away any means you had to defend yourself.
Look, this is the new reality in America. The entire country has become a nation of criminals– there isn’t a single man, woman, or child alive who is not in violation of some obscure regulation or cannot be ‘suspected’ of wrongdoing.
This is really just a form of cannibalism– a government feeding on its own citizens in order to keep the party going just a little bit longer. They’ll raise taxes, seize assets, take over pension funds, erode freedoms, start wars and send people to die– whatever it takes to maintain the status quo.
I’ve long advocated for an internationalization strategy: diversifying various assets and interests overseas so that no one single government has total control over your livelihood.
Store your gold in Switzerland. Open a bank account in Hong Kong. Register your company in the BVI. Establish a ‘backup’ residency in Chile. Expand your business in Brazil. Get a better job in Singapore. Obtain a second passport in Malta. Open a brokerage account in the Cayman Islands.
This approach is NOT just for the super rich. In fact, I’ve helped all kinds of people to internationalize, young and old, rich and poor.
Taking some simple steps to protect yourself will give you extraordinary peace of mind. You’ll know that, without doubt, you have some savings socked away that NOBODY can touch. You’ll know that you have a solid emergency backup plan. You’ll know that everything you’ve worked for won’t vanish in an instant.
A few months ago we held a comprehensive, hands-on workshop in Panama that was a sort of ‘internationalization crash course.’ It fed years worth of experience and actionable information into a three-day event.
My personal contacts– bankers, residency experts, gold dealers, corporate specialists, trustees, tax attorneys, etc. came from all over the world to teach people how to implement these tactics and maintain full compliance with the law.
Because the event sold out so quickly, we hired the most professional Hollywood film crew we could find to record the event and put together a video series for people who couldn’t attend.
http://www.sovereignman.com/expat/government-asset-seizure
No comments:
Post a Comment