Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Aircraft Contrails Click here to view full image (556 kb) NASA scientists have found that cirrus clouds, formed by contrails from aircraft engine exhaust, are capable of increasing average surface temperatures enough to account for a warming trend in the United States that occurred between 1975 and 1994. According to Patrick Minnis, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., there has been a one percent per decade increase in cirrus cloud cover over the United States, likely due to air traffic. Cirrus clouds exert a warming influence on the surface by allowing most of the Sun’s rays to pass through but then trapping some of the resulting heat emitted by the surface and lower atmosphere. Using a general circulation model, Minnis estimates that cirrus clouds from contrails increased the temperatures of the lower atmosphere by anywhere from 0.36 to 0.54°F per decade. Minnis’s results show good agreement with weather service data, which reveal that the temperature of the surface and lower atmosphere rose by almost 0.5°F per decade between 1975 and 1994. This enhanced infrared image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), aboard NASA’s Terra satellite, shows widespread contrails over the southeastern United States during the morning of January 29, 2004. Such satellite data are critical for studying the effects of contrails. The crisscrossing white lines are contrails that form from planes flying in different directions at different altitudes. Each contrail spreads and moves with the wind. Contrails often form over large areas during winter and spring. For information about why NASA studies contrails, read: Clouds Caused By Aircraft Exhaust May Warm The U.S. Climate. 7:22:58 PM    comment []

Compassionate, sensible government on the chopping block Debate over long-term budget policy tends to neglect spending on critical functions of government such as education, the environment, enforcement of federal laws, infrastructure, and new technology for medical care and manufacturing.  Such "non-security discretionary" (NSD) spending effectively receives lower priority in budget procedures.  For example, administration budget documents this year emphasize specific budget commitments on deficits, taxes, entitlements (such as Social Security and Medicare), defense, and homeland security.  Sustaining its commitments in all those categories of the budget would require that the last remaining budget category, spending for NSD purposes, absorb all the adjustment. The squeeze on NSD spending—currently 3.7% of gross domestic product—would be more apparent if the administration produced the customary 10-year budget numbers instead of just the five-year budget numbers that it has provided.  The 10-year numbers consistent with administration policies paint a disturbing picture, especially given that the administration has argued in favor of making all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent.  The green line in Figure 1 shows revenue as a share of GDP with the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts made permanent.   The administration's goals of maintaining the tax cuts, moving toward a balanced budget, and keeping other spending policies intact leave almost no room for domestic discretionary spending. The blue line shows spending on entitlements, security (defense, homeland security, and international), and interest as projected by the Congressional Budget Office under the administration's budget policies.  This line actually understates the true administration budget policy because its budget omits any costs for Iraq or Afghanistan after September 30, 2004 and the costs of some expensive weapons systems. The administration's promise to cut the deficit in half over five years implies the goal of a balanced budget in 10 years.  That goal cannot be achieved—while maintaining its policy commitments on tax cuts, entitlements, and security spending—without devastating cuts in fundamental government programs. The U.S. government is currently spending $1,436 per person on non-security discretionary spending.  As shown in Figure 2, that spending in 2014 would be cut: to 8% below the current level if NSD spending grows only with inflation and not with population, by 21% with the administration's 2009 budget adjusted for inflation between 2009 and 2014 (and maintaining a budget deficit), and by 63% if the 2014 budget is balanced solely by cutting spending on non-security discretionary programs. Today's snapshot was written by EPI Research Director Lee Price. 7:20:48 PM    comment []

FTC Outlines Appeal in Rambus Case Associated Press April 27, 2004 7:34 p.m. SAN JOSE, Calif. – Computer-chip designer Rambus Inc. could pocket up to $3 billion in royalties and raise prices for consumers of all manner of computing devices if an administrative law judge's ruling in its favor is allowed to stand, the Federal Trade Commission argued in an appeal. In the filing, the FTC legal staff said Chief Administrative Law Judge Stephen J. McGuire's ruling was "fatally flawed" as well as based on factual and legal errors. In February, Judge McGuire dismissed charges that Rambus had lulled chip makers into including its patented technology in their standards. "This decision is wrong in its premises, wrong in its analysis, and wrong in its outcome," according to the appeal, which was made public last week. The filing warns that any Rambus royalties collected by chip makers would ultimately be paid by consumers who buy personal computers, gadgets and a variety of other devices that rely on silicon-based memory. The commission is expected to hear the FTC staff's appeal, though the timing hasn't been announced. Any decision could then be brought before a federal appellate court. Rambus licenses technology that speeds up computer memory. In its June 2002 complaint, the FTC alleged Rambus failed to disclose a patent and applications that involved several technologies that were eventually adopted by a standards-setting group. As a result, the Los Altos, Calif.-based company actively sought royalties and sued semiconductor makers who based their fast memory chips on the standard. But in his 334-page decision, Judge McGuire found the rules for the standards-setting group were vague. He also cited numerous cases in which chip makers appeared to be working together to stop Rambus' RDRAM memory from making inroads in the PC industry. At the time, Rambus seemed to have considerable momentum. Its technology was backed by Intel Corp., the leading maker of microprocessors. In e-mails quoted by Judge McGuire, memory chip makers complained they didn't want to pay royalties to Rambus or have their business decisions dictated by Intel, which had stopped making memory in the 1980s. Ultimately, Intel backed off its support of Rambus and supported alternative memory designs. "We think the administrative law judge devoted an extraordinary amount of time analyzing a very complicated set of facts," said John Danforth, Rambus' general counsel. "[The decision] holds up on a number of independent grounds." Mr. Danforth also took issue with the FTC staff's claims that Rambus stands to earn up to $3 billion in royalties from its alleged anticompetitive behavior. "Those numbers have been inflated significantly," he said. "We don't give out information about royalties. Even the analysts who cover us don't have numbers like that." Separately, Rambus said the retrial of its patent claims against Infineon Technologies AG has been pushed back from June 10 to the fall because of a number of pretrial issues that need to be resolved, as well as the possible time needed for Rambus to appeal certain of those rulings prior to the trial. A new date is expected to be set before the end of May. Mr. Danforth said the judge's move to delay the trial shows he is being "mindful of the complexity" of the trial. He expects the new date will be set for some time in September or early October. 6:20:36 PM    comment []