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Wednesday, November 2, 2011

NYC-sized iceberg being born on Antarctica




18-mile-long crack along unstable ice shelf spotted by NASA scientists
Image: Crack in ice shelf
Michael Studinger  /  NASA
Part of an 18-mile-long crack in the Pine Island Glacier ice 
shelf is seen from a NASA jet on Oct. 26.
msnbc.com
updated 11/2/2011 4:43:59 PM ET
Scientists on an aerial survey of Antarctica have come across an 18-mile-long break in an ice shelf — a sign that the sensitive area is giving birth to an iceberg that will be larger than New York City.
The scientists were aboard a NASA jet on Oct. 14, making measurements of Pine Island Glacier and its ice shelf, when they came across the crack."We are actually now witnessing how it happens," Michael Studinger, project scientist with NASA's IceBridge survey, said in a statement Wednesday. "It’s part of a natural process but it’s pretty exciting to be here and actually observe it while it happens."
Glaciers naturally give birth to icebergs, but scientists are concerned that warming temperatures might be destabilizing those in Antarctica and Greenland by eroding the ice shelves floating on water that hold them back up against the mainland.
Without the ice shelves, those glaciers could flow much faster into the ocean, raising sea levels.
Scientists call Pine Island Glacier "the largest source of uncertainty in global sea level rise projections," NASA noted in its statement.
"It is likely that once the iceberg floats away, the leading edge of the ice shelf will have receded farther than at any time since its location was first recorded in the 1940s," NASA noted.
The team estimated the ice might finally break away from the shelf "in the coming months" now that the Southern Hemisphere is entering its summer.
Pine Island Glacier last calved a large iceberg in 2001.
The NASA team measured the rift at about 820 feet apart at its widest, and about 260 feet wide along most of the crack.
The deepest points were nearly 200 feet.
Image: Crack in ice shelf
NASA
A close-up shot shows the depth of the rift.
The ice shelf around the rift is about 1,640 feet thick, the team estimated.
"When the iceberg breaks free it will cover about 340 square miles of surface area," NASA stated. By contrast, New York City comes in at 302 square miles.
As far as icebergs go, however, 340 square miles isn't anywhere near a record. A few have topped several thousand square miles and the record is a 12,000-square-mile behemoth spotted in 1956.
© 2011 msnbc.com Reprints

 InteractiveThe northern front: A forewarning of changes worldwide


Occupy Wall Street becomes global phenomenon




Rachel Maddow reports headlines from the Occupy Wall Street movement across America and around the world.



Tensions between “Occupy Oakland” protesters and the city’s police remain close to a boil after an Iraq War veteran was injured during a demonstration. NBC News’ Miguel Almaguer has the story.



Occupy Oakland protesters disrupt banks, march through streets



Solidarity rallies held in other cities as labor unions join call to action


Demonstrators with the Occupy movement gather Wednesday Oakland, Calif., where portesters called for a general strike.

msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 3 minutes ago
Thousands of Wall Street protesters marched in the streets of Oakland and picketed banks on Wednesday as they geared up to disrupt operations at the nation's fifth-busiest port.
Demonstrators in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia held solidarity actions Wednesday. In Seattle, protesters marched on a downtown Chase Bank branch and planned to descend on a speech Wednesday evening by Chase Bank's chief executive officer.
The Oakland protest escalated as demonstrators, elected officials and business leaders expressed optimism that a "general strike" would be a peaceful event. The city last week became a rallying point after police used tear gas to clear an encampment outside City Hall and then clashed with protesters in the street. An Iraq War veteran was injured in the melee.
A morning march of 1,000 people down Broadway to the State Building was loud but peaceful, according to NBC station KNTV. Police presence was minimal, officials said.
Protesters plastered signs and blocked customers from using ATMs at downtown banks, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Many downtown businesses closed for the day.
At noon hundreds of people surrounded a Chase bank, KNTV said. They chanted, "Banks got bail out. We got sold out." And, "Hey Chase what do you say? How many houses did you take today?"
An hour later, the Oakland Tribune reported, marchers pounded on the windows of a Bank of America branch and used markers to write on the glass. The branch was closed.
The Oakland Tribune reported that agitators dressed in black with masks threw paint balls, ripped up a picket fence and tried to break windows at a Whole Foods market before about two dozen people marchers forced them to stop. There was lots of shoving and punches thrown. At 2 p.m., they started another march after also shutting down Comerica, Wells Fargo, and Chase branches for a time. Windows were smashed at one Wells Fargo office.
Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said he expected about 5,000 people to march to the Port of Oakland at 5 p.m. and he said his officers would help them get there safely.
Along with protesting financial institutions that many within the Occupy Wall Street movement blame for high unemployment and the foreclosure crisis, supporters of the Oakland events are expanding their message to focus on local school closures, waning union benefits and cuts to social services.
Nurse, teacher and longshoremen unions are taking part in the protests, and Oakland is letting city workers use vacation or other paid time off to take part in the general strike.
"We are absolutely not calling for a strike," said International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union spokesperson Craig Merrilees.
However, "About 40" workers did not show up for assignment Wednesday morning at the union hall, Merrilees told KNTV. Unlike traditional jobs, port workers are free to decline work at any time. Each day the port fills roughly 325 jobs with whichever qualified union workers wish to work.
"We've always supported the goals of the 99-percent" Merrilees said, referring to the Occupy movement's slogan.
About 360 Oakland teachers didn't show up for work, or roughly 18 percent of the district's 2,000 teachers, said Oakland Unified School District spokesman Troy Flint. The district has been able to get substitute teachers for most classrooms, and where that wasn't possible children were sent to other classrooms, he said.
Embattled Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who has been criticized for her handling of the protests, said in a statement that she supported the goals of the protest movement that began in New York City a month ago and spread to dozens of cities across the country.
"Police Chief Jordan and I are dedicated to respecting the right of every demonstrator to peacefully assemble, but it is our duty to prioritize public safety," she said.
Occupy Oakland organizers said they want to halt "the flow of capital" at the Oakland port, a major point of entry for Chinese exports to the U.S.
On Oct. 25, Oakland police acting at the request of the city's administrator, who reports to the mayor, were asked to clear the protesters' campsite during an early morning raid. A confrontation with marchers protesting the raid followed that night, and an Iraq War veteran suffered a fractured skull and brain injury when officers moved in with tear gas, flash grenades and beanbag projectiles.
Quan allowed protesters to reclaim the plaza outside City Hall the next day. At least six dozen tents and a kitchen buzzing with donated food have been erected on the spot since then, while the crackdown has galvanized anti-Wall Street events elsewhere and made politicians in other cities think again about interfering with their local encampments.
Occupy Seattle protesters shut a Chase bank branch, the Seattle Times reported.
Police blocked about 200 protesters who marched on the bank, but five people who got there ahead of the march were lying on the bank's floor, arms linked, waiting to be arrested. The branch was closed. As police took the group to a paddywagon, other protesters lay down in front of the van, the Times said. Police used pepper spray and got into scuffles with protesters.
The lie-in came ahead of a planed planned 6 p.m. rally at Westlake Park to be followed by a march to the downtown Sheraton hotel where Chase Bank CEO Jamie Dimon was scheduled to address at a University of Washington Business School event, NBC station KING reported.

One protester said Dimon should hear why demonstrators are frustrated.

"You should be thankful that the taxpayers bailed you out, kept you afloat while you figured out what was going on internally, and you thank us with more fees," said the protester, who gave only one name, David.

Elsewhere:
  • In Philadelphia, police arrested about a dozen protesters who were sitting peacefully inside the lobby of the headquarters of cable giant Comcast. Officers moved in after they refused to leave. The protesters were handcuffed and led into police vans as supporters cheered.
  • In Boston, college students and union workers were expected to march on local Bank of America offices, the Harvard Club and the statehouse to protest the nation's burgeoning student debt crisis.
  • Occupy LA, a monthlong 475-tent encampment around Los Angeles City Hall, is planning a march and rally through downtown LA's financial district to express solidarity with the Oakland general strike and to protest police brutality.
  • In New York, about 100 military veterans marched in uniform through Manhattan to protest what they called police brutality against the Iraq War veteran injured in Oakland.
  • In Tulsa, Police Chief Chuck Jordan defended the overnight arrest of 10 protesters who refused to leave a city park about two hours after curfew early Wednesday morning. About 50 officers were involved in clearing out the park. Occupy Oklahoma City moderator Beth Isbell said in a news release that police used pepper spray while arresting protesters sitting on the ground in the park about 2:30 a.m.
  • Occupy Portland protesters planned a rally and march for Wednesday afternoon to show support for "Occupy Oakland," NBC station KGW reported. Portland’s rally was expected to begin around 4:30 p.m. at Terry Schrunk Plaza. The crowd planned to march through downtown Portland about an hour later.
  • In London, the leader of the world's Anglican Christians is backing a so-called Robin Hood tax on financial transactions as one response to the global financial crisis.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, in a commentary published Wednesday in the Financial Times, said "it was time we tried to be more specific" in finding answers to the vague demands represented by anti-capitalist protests outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London, a demonstration inspired by New York's Occupy Wall Street movement.

Occupy Wall Street began on Sept. 17 as an anti-corporate greed protest in the privately owned block-long Zuccotti Park, near Wall Street, and has morphed and spread over six weeks into a multinational series of protests.


The Federal Reserve chairman responds to a question about Occupy Wall Street, saying he understands frustration with the economy. "I am dissatisfied with the state of the economy," Bernanke said. "Unemployment is too high."








Some of the criticism has come from the left, including the widening Occupy Wall Street protest movement, which faults the Fed for bailing out bankers who made the risky bets that led to the collapse. Those critics, Bernanke said, don’t fully understand the reasons for the Fed’s massive intervention following the financial meltdown.
"A very simplistic interpretation of that was because we wanted to preserve bankers' salaries,” he said. “That obviously wasn't the case. What we were doing was trying to protect the financial system in order to prevent a serious collapse of both the financial system and the American economy."

Recession threatens generation of young adults, inspires 'Occupy' protests





Don Emmert / AFP - Getty Images


An Occupy Wall Street protester on Tuesday holds up an American flag with corporate logos replacing the stars.
By Bob Sullivan

Their employment prospects are dim, their debt is high, their lives are on hold and a stunning number are living with their parents, even into their 30s. They are young adults, 18 to 34, struggling to begin their adult lives during the worst economy since the Great Depression, and they risk becoming a lost generation, according to an extensive new study released Wednesday by two advocacy groups.

While begun long before the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, the research may help explain why so many young people are taking part in the protests.

Some data unearthed by the study by the advocacy groups Demos and The Young Invincibles, which combined an independent telephone poll with U.S. Census Bureau data, is stark and stunning. Rent is taking up nearly 33 percent more of young adults’ income than a decade ago -- at least for those who have their own place. But nearly 20 percent live with their parents. They are postponing buying a home, having children, even getting married.

Despite accumulating historic piles of student loan debt, nearly 50 percent aren't working in their chosen field. That might suggest college is a waste of time, but young adult men who hold high school degree earn only 75 percent of what their high-school-educated fathers did, creating an educational Catch-22.

While government underemployment data tells a sobering story – that 16.5 percent of U.S. adults don’t have a job, are being forced to take part-time work or have given up looking for work -- it may markedly understate the problem for young adults. About 60 percent of working young adults questioned by pollsters said they wish they could work more hours for more pay, likely offering a much better approximation of underemployment.

"A lot of the findings in this report could have cause serious economic scarring going forward," said Lauren Strayer, a spokeswoman for New York-based Demos, a non-partisan think tank that says it promotes economic equality and democratic values. “People who have no hope for the future don't plan for it.”

The report, “Young America: Economic Barriers to the American Dream,” was released Wednesday to highlight the groups’ year-long effort to focus attention to economic issues facing young people.

“About half of young Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 believe that a fundamental tenet of the American dream is broken — that the next generation will be better off than they are,” the report concludes.

The research comes at a time when the Occupy Wall Street movement is approaching a crossroads. Now past the mere curiosity stage, can its organizers continue momentum when news interest lulls and winter weather makes Wall Street parks much more inhospitable?

Whether it survives or not, the anger being expressed at Zuccotti Park isn't going anywhere anytime soon, said Demos spokesman Tim Rusch. Demos began its young adult research six years ago, and has been seeing the worsening plight of young Americans for a while.

"Young people were restless and frustrated before the recession," he said. "The 'Occupy' movement is the expression of how much worse it's gotten in last three years, a direct result of how disgusted people are. ... We reached a tipping point."

The themes of poor economic opportunities and a sense that "things are unfair" have permeated the movement, but the data released Wednesday "gives some texture to that," Rusch said.

Only half of young adult workers earn more money than they did four years ago, while only 47 percent earned more than $30,000 last year. Twenty percent of those in the 25-to-34 age bracket are only working part-time, while 12 percent say they've given up looking for work, assuming they have no prospects. Roughly 25 percent are uninsured.

But even among those who work, there's widespread dissatisfaction. An astonishing 57 percent said they would work "more hours for more pay" if given the option.

"They are not underemployed in the (government data) sense, but in their own minds," said Robert Hiltonsmith, a Demos researcher who worked on the report. "That's a huge proportion."

Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that young adults need the money, given their soaring rent costs and debt. The report found that nearly 10 percent of undergraduate students leave school with more than $40,000 in debt and begin life saddled with a typical monthly payment of $460. Meanwhile, rent is devouring most young people’s paychecks. In 1980, rent consumed 23.7 percent of 18-to-24 year olds' pre-tax income. By 2009, that had jumped to 32.1 percent, with most of the increase hitting during the past decade. Meanwhile, the share of 25- to 34-year olds spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent -- a critical threshold often cited by landlords -- jumped from 28 percent to 41.3 percent over the same time period.

Those bleak numbers have many young adults putting off critical life decisions, and is imposing a kind of extended adolescence on them. Almost half (46 percent) have delayed purchasing a home, while 30 percent have put off starting a family, and 25 percent said they had delayed getting married.

Meanwhile, the number of older young adults living at home with parents has skyrocketed. In 1980, 10 percent of 25- to 34-year-old men lived at home. In 2010, 21 percent of that age group told the researchers that they'd lived with parents at some point during the prior year.

This social shift has far-reaching consequences, even beyond the young adults, said Hiltonsmith.

"When you have 30-year-olds living with parents, they are putting an extra burden on the older generation, perhaps forcing them to postpone retirement," he said. Other recent data Demos has examined suggest that older women are facing economic instability, and the two trends could be related. "Many of them are caretakers for adult children. This could be a long-term negative trend that we've just begun."

College was sold to young people as the surest route to a secure spot in the middle class, something that has turned out to be, at best, a half-truth. Clearly, their peers without college degrees are struggling even more during the recession. Men and women with college degrees earn about $20,000 more annually than their less-educated peers, a gap that has doubled since 1980.

On the other hand, college degrees are hardly a guarantee of good employment. One third of young adults holding a four-year college degree told researchers that they are not working in their chosen profession. And 29 percent of those who attended graduate school said they weren't working in the field they'd studied. Among students who attended "some college," the figure jumped to 54 percent

The disappointing results almost certainly mean college graduates are not earning as much as they would if they were working in their chosen field, but the results suggest something even more sobering, Hiltonsmith said.

"The bigger point here is that college was sold as the only way to get into middle class. But with these people not working in their field, the connection between school and career has broken down,” he said. “They really are at risk of college being a complete wash for them."

All this negativity carries with it societal risks that might last for decades. Only 12 percent of those polled believe their generation will be better off than their parents’ generation, and nearly all of them indicating they have serious concerns about their ability to save money for retirement.

"We're at risk of losing them and seeing permanent effects," Hiltonsmith said. "These conditions really could set this generation of young people on a different trajectory."

But despite all this pessimism, researchers were surprised to find a glint of old-fashioned American optimism within their research. About 70 percent of survey responders said they still believed the American Dream "is achievable."

"We were surprised by that," Rusch said. But he said the seeming paradox of simultaneous generational pessimism with a belief in the American Dream suggests that young people believe things don't have to be as bad as they are.

"It tells me they think there's something possible we can do as a society, but I don't think people see the resources or the opportunity in front of them right now," he said.

Other interesting findings in the research:

*Across categories, young women worried than more men. Women's biggest concern was being able to afford to send their future children to college.

*Young war veterans are faring far worse than other young adults. The unemployment rate for the 2.2 million Gulf War-era veterans 18- to 24-years-old was 20.9 percent in 2010 -- 3.6 percent higher than the unemployment rate for all 18- to 24-year-olds, and over 11 percent higher than the unemployment rate for the general population.

*Young whites are the most pessimistic that their generation will be worse off than previous generations, with 55 percent expecting they'll be worse off. Only 40 percent of African Americans and 36 percent of Latinos feel that way.

*A debt-distressed household puts 40 percent or more of its monthly wages toward debt service payments. In 2007, 16 percent of all households headed by 25 to 34-year-olds qualified as distressed, up from 13 percent in 1989.

*The price of child care, a major concern in two-income households, is rising faster than inflation. The average monthly child care fees for two young children exceed median rent in nearly every state.

*Unemployment hits young adults hard, even according to official government statistics. In 2010, unemployment among those 35 and older was 7.6 percent, compared to 10.1 percent for the 25-to-34 group and 17.3 percent for the 18-to-24 group. The recession has made that disparity worse, with unemployment increases of 4.4 percent for those 35 and over, 5.4 percent for 25- to 34-year-olds, and 7.7 percent for 18- to 24-year-olds.

The nationwide survey reached a total of 872 adults ages 18 to 34. The sample included 472 young adults reached on landlines and 400 young adults reached on cellphones. Its margin of error is plus or minus 3.32 percent. The survey was conducted Sept. 24-Oct. 4.