While Griff and his Bush Administration cronies dust off their tie-dye shirts, smoke a bowl and try to relive NASA's Apollo golden years with their mission back to the Moon, it's good to know someone's paying attention to the Asteroid threat.

Of the many different methods proposed for altering space rocks' course — or blowing them up — gravity tractoring seems to be the most attractive. By launching a satellite towards a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) and hanging out close by, the vehicle's gravitational influence will slowly, and ever so slightly alter the asteroid's course. The process requires a lot of advaned notice, but should work without the use of lasers, nuclear weapons, or Bruce Willis.

From B612's mission statement:

The reality of concern to us, among others, is that the discovery of a NEA headed toward an impact with Earth could be announced at any time by the Spaceguard program. If this were to happen the public would be extremely concerned and demand to know what is being done about it.

Unfortunately the answer is "nothing". This, it seems to us, is intolerable and could cause widespread alarm. For this reason the B612 Foundation, recognizing that national governments feel (to the extent that they have considered the matter) that they are not in a position to spend public money on mitigation, are taking the initiative now to begin this process with the use of private funds. We believe that there are adequate numbers of intelligent and concerned people to support the critical initial planning work that needs to be done to eventually reach an operational system to deflect incoming NEAs.

Our conviction is that there is nothing more powerful to convince the public that this audacious challenge can be met than to actually do it. Our goal is to physically deflect a representative asteroid as a demonstration that a longer term, more challenging operational system can become a reality.

Now of course it's a possibility that B612 could take a rock that's not an imminent threat to Earth and make it one by altering its course, but that's pretty unlikely. More important is that someone is serious about saving humanity from a space rock strike, but they're seriously underfunded — $50,000 is a drop in the bucket, and we're going to need an X-Prize style contest, or some mega-rich asteroid geek to pony up some bucks if we're ever going to dodge the big one.

Source: LiveScience

Image: B612 Foundation

Al Gore may be the #1 movie star of the neo-green, anti-global warming set, but Hansen's the guy with the scientific chops — so when he talks, Congress listens. Sort of. More like they listen in the 'let's call a hearing, we're somewhat concerned' way, rather than the 'holy shit we'd better do something' way.

Now Hansen's got another shot at a hearing, and he wants the heads of big oil companies behind bars for what he sees as their purposeful attempts to trick the world into thinking that global warming is no big deal:

Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.

He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated. Hansen's speech to Congress on June 23 1988 is seen as a seminal moment in bringing the threat of global warming to the public's attention. At a time when most scientists were still hesitant to speak out, he said the evidence of the greenhouse gas effect was 99% certain, adding "it is time to stop waffling".

He will tell the House select committee on energy independence and global warming this afternoon that he is now 99% certain that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has already risen beyond the safe level.

The current concentration is 385 parts per million and is rising by 2ppm a year. Hansen, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, says 2009 will be a crucial year, with a new US president and talks on how to follow the Kyoto agreement.

He wants to see a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, coupled with the creation of a huge grid of low-loss electric power lines buried under ground and spread across America, in order to give wind and solar power a chance of competing. "The new US president would have to take the initiative analogous to Kennedy's decision to go to the moon."

His sharpest words are reserved for the special interests he blames for public confusion about the nature of the global warming threat. "The problem is not political will, it's the alligator shoes - the lobbyists. It's the fact that money talks in Washington, and that democracy is not working the way it's intended to work."

Anyone who's willing to speak truth to power is OK in my book, but one hopes Dr. Hansen isn't committing political suicide here. Going before Congress with plans to strip out lobbyists' influence and jail the leaders of some of the most profitable companies in America? Noble, but not likely. And maybe you don't want to mention the part about trying to have members of Congress unseated? Telling people 'listen to me or I'm going to have you fired' isn't really a good idea unless you're their boss.

Source: The Guardian, via SciGuy