Digital TV or FCC Sneak Attack

Maybe you've heard that the federal government is requiring all television transmissions to be carried on a digital signal by 2009. Of course this requires anyone who wants to continue to receive television signals to mess with upgrade equipment (if it works at all) or buy a new TV(what a boon to TV manufacturers). However, it doesn't seem that the public is overly upset about it. Maybe that's because we the people have not really considered the implication of this technological shift.

Granted, I have not studied up on the actual cold facts concerning the conversion, but I have learned not to trust those in charge of commissions such as the FCC which has been trying whole-heartedly to deprive us of any semblence of media diversity by changing the rules to allow megaconglomerates to buy up whatever they want. It's bad enough that the overwhelming majority of media worldwide is now controlled by five huge transnationals, but it now seems they are going to deprive us of recourse to arguments about the public airwaves.

Most Americans are unaware that, as it currently stands, television is broadcast over public airwaves and that means it belongs to us. Networks are responsible under the law to provide programming in the public interest. So what happens when it goes digital? One must assume that digital signals require transmission through satellites. Who owns those satellites? Care to guess?

A cynical person might conclude that the digitizing of television is a subtle (or not-so-subtle) coup over public control of network programming.

Warm enough for you?

First, let's be clear; the problem is methane as well as CO2. However, CO2 is the most talked about greenhouse gas, so let's take a look at the history here. It's a long, detailed article with links, so it's really only for those who want an understanding of how our understanding of the growth, in ppm, of CO2 in our atmosphere has progress over the centuries. The article, though, is not up-to-date, and I'll cover that here. Perhaps I'll do an article on methane in the future, since it's showing a similar rise.

Basically, the CO2 concentration has grown from a low of 180 ppm to today's concentration of 380ppm. The chart covers from 1958 to today. In the past 400,000 years, the concentration in the atmosphere has never exceeded 280 ppm - until 1950, when it surpassed the 280 ppm mark. The chart goes to 2004; the ppm today is > 385 ppm.


What does this mean for global temperature? How about this (thru 2006); the source, very long, article is here.



The picture below should tell you something. The summer melt in Greenland has grown by the shaded amount in just 10 years. 10 freakin' years.



How about other ice indicators around the world? Back in 2002, the alarm about glacier melting was already being sounded, as in this article from The National Geographic. Here's just one quote from the article:

Most of Earth's 160,000 glaciers have been slowly shrinking and thinning for more than a century as the climate warms up from both natural causes and human activity.

But scientists say the melt rate has accelerated dramatically since the mid-1990s, which was the hottest decade in a thousand years, according to data from ancient ice cores and tree rings.

A glacier in the Peruvian Andes, Qori Kalis, is losing as much ice in one week as it used to surrender in a year, according to Lonnie Thompson, a geologist at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University in Columbus.

Here's a before and after picture of a glacier in Montana (sourced here)


We know that the melting rate today is much larger than it was in 2002. Back in 2002, scientists thought that the Arctic might be free of ice during the summer by 2100; now, they think it will happen by 2030. Even just 9 months ago, the date was put at 2040 or later; in just 9 months, they've moved the date up by 10 years.

Something that's not talked about, outside of scientific communities, is that the RATE of CO2/methane increase in the atmosphere is increasing at about .3 ppm per year. So, in 3 years, the RATE of Co2 increase goes up about 1 percent; right now, the rate of increase is about 2.6 ppm/year.

Take a look at the amount of CO2 projected to be released in the future - and this graph is now out of date, since it didn't properly take into account the growth that would hit China and India.



The point is: we're screwed. 30 years ago, it was already too late not to get where we are - and we're still not doing anything, meaningful, about it. We're also not preparing people to move away from the coasts, and we face a 16 foot rise by 2030-2040. That doesn't mean that, in the last 10 minutes of 2030, the sea-level will come up 16 feet. In my lifetime, the world is going to change dramatically; warming, sea level rise, increased strength of storms, energy shortages, food riots, drought, floods, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Obviously, some Chinese guy has cursed the world with the old curse of:
May you live in interesting times.

Our times are WAY too interesting for my taste.

Have a nice day!

Larry Wilson

The Destruction of Public Television

Maybe you've noticed the changes that have occurred on PBS under the guidance of the current administration and the last congress. These changes are said to have no effect on the programming. However, it seems this is yet another Orwellian attempt at double speak, i.e. no change means major change.

The inclusion of sponsors such as Boeing and ADM are having serious ramifications on the quality of news programming. Case in point: While the diversity of viewpoints was always sorely lacking on programs such as The Newshour, the recent transition from established, although by no means objective, sources to what can only be described as front organizations is destructive to say the least. To allow organizations such as Freedom's Watch (a poorly disguised front for the pro-war position of the Bush administration) airtime to smear a prominent senator for disagreeing with the president and to make seriously specious claims about him (although one can have little sympathy for Mr. Warner)is an abuse of the public airwaves.

But even beyond allowing egregious agenda promotion, a.k.a. commercial propaganda, to parade as news, one must wonder how it seems to go unnoticed that groups such as Freedom's Watch are actually proselytizing for the position of the so-called sponsors. Not only does Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. get to plaster their logo all over a formerly citizen-supported media, but they apparently get to inject what is to their economic benefit into the discourse. One must wonder if at every news program on PBS there is a corporate rep now standing over the editing process or if their is a corporate goon under the ombudsman's desk.

So once again it seems the Bushie's are getting their way with little or no opposition - replace funding with mandatory scripting.