Welcome to the Era of Politically Correct Web Browsing -TIME

Welcome to the Era of Politically Correct Web Browsing

http://time.com/49136/brendan-eich-mozilla-firing-firefox-gay-marriage/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Nick Gillespie @nickgillespie
 

April 3, 2014

    

Now, apparently, we’re boycotting free products and demanding companies dance to the tune called by socially conscious customers.

Just days after being named the new head of web-browser maker Mozilla, Brendan Eich has stepped down after being outed as an opponent of gay marriage. On Tuesday, dating site OK Cupid urged its members who use Mozilla Firefox to “consider using different software for accessing OK Cupid.” It turns out that Eich had given money to California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in the Golden State (last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Prop. 8 invalid and same-sex unions are once again legal in California).

Welcome to the brave new world of socially conscious… web-browsing. In the past, consumers might patronize certain businesses (Whole Foods, say, or Ben & Jerry’s) whose stated missions extended beyond increasing shareholder value and avoided others that might have politically objectionable CEOs or reputations for being anti-abortion (Domino’s Pizza, say) or public positions opposed to certain forms of birth control (Hobby Lobby, for instance). Now we’re boycotting free products such as Firefox and demanding companies dance to the tune called by customers. I think that’s a good thing overall — but it may end up being just as difficult for consumers to live with as it will be for corporations.

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Whether you care about gay marriage or politically correct web experiences, Eich’s resignation shows how businesses respond to market signals. “Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech,” writes Mitchell Baker, the organization’s executive chairwoman, in announcing Eich’s stepping down. “And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.”

Just as the Internet has empowered consumers to find cheaper prices, more-extensive reviews, and a wider variety of goods than ever before, it’s also made it easier for them to call out companies for all sorts of dastardly actions, screw-ups, and problems. I like that OKCupid’s intervention wasn’t a call for government action to limit people’s choices or ban something. Indeed, OKCupid didn’t even block Firefox users from its site — rather, it politely asked them to consider getting to the site via a different browser.

But this sort of action complicates the simple act of shopping for both traditional conservatives and liberals in ways that are not yet fully clear. Conservatives should like the fact that this was done without calling for government action, even if they aren’t fans of gay marriage. For liberals, they surely like the outcome — a corporation pledges itself to supporting marriage equality — even as they will have to rethink the idea that corporations or businesses don’t have “personhood” or can’t take stances on issues (as liberals like to claim when it comes to campaign-finance questions). In fact, we ascribe intention to businesses all the time, based on their practices and leadership.

It wasn’t that long ago — in fact, it seems like just last week — that we accessed the web to hunt for the best deal on a new cell phone or a pair of shoes. Now we must be aware not simply of the deep politics of the companies we actually buy from, but even the company whose free downloads we use. Increasingly, we will be asking ourselves what sorts of non-business-related policies companies have and whether we want to associate with all that — even when we don’t pay a dime for a particular good or service.

That’s fine. After all, now that we’re well past a subsistence economy, we live in a world of largely symbolic exchange, where we don’t simply choose something because we’re hungry or naked but because we want to make a statement about what sort of person we are, what sort of taste we possess, and what sort of values we share.

But socially conscious web browsing will also be a time-consuming and hugely complicating activity too. One of the great promises of the Internet was that it would allow all of us to sift through vast amounts of information and arrive at the best answer in record time. We all know it hasn’t quite worked out that way. We spend more time than ever hunting for new things and then even more energy comparing this option to that option. And now, we have even more to consider every time we fire up our browser.

Climate Change Is a Game of Risk - TIME

Climate Change Is a Game of Risk

http://time.com/50148/climate-change-is-a-game-of-risk/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Bryan Walsh @bryanrwalsh
 

April 4, 2014

    

Climate change could increase the risk of catastrophic events like Hurricane Sandy.

Climate change is uncertain, which is why the best way to understand how warming will change the world is through the language of risk

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The Latest on Climate Change’s Impacts and Other Fascinating News on the Web

Warming World Threatens Us All, Warns U.N. Report

Human Evolution May Outrace Climate Change and Other Fascinating News on the Web

Every new chapter of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment is boiled down into what is known as a policymaker’s summary—a 40-page or so document that is meant to contain the essential conclusions of the panel’s work and be used to guide politicians and the business community as they respond to global warming. Or at least that’s the idea.

Though chapter 2 of the fifth assessment—which was released on Mar. 31 in Yokohama—had no shortage of dire warnings about global warming, including projections that food could become scarcer as temperatures increased, it doesn’t seem as if many policymakers read the policymaker’s summary—let alone the full report, which runs over 1,000 pages. Kate Gordon, the director of the think tank Next Generation’s energy and climate program, noted that no speaker at the Wall Street Journal‘s ECO:nomics conference—a conference devoted to the intersection between the environment and business—actually brought up the issue of global warming until well into the afternoon of the summit’s second day. “Energy prices, energy volatility, future of utilities? Yes,” she wrote. “Climate change? No.”

If climate change is going to matter as a political and economic issue, it needs to be translated into political and economic terms. Out in San Francisco the hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer is trying to makeclimate matter for politics, promising to spend tens of millions of dollars in 2014 on attack ads targeting politicians who oppose action on global warming. And Steyer is also involved in an effort to make climate change matter for the business community, teaming up with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson on the Risky Business initiative, a wide-ranging project that will eventually produce a major report about the likely economic impact of climate change on U.S. business. “We came to this thinking how do we get to a place and a way of talking about climate change that is comfortable for the business community,” says Gordon, who also serves as the executive director of Risky Business. “And that’s the language of risk.”

Risk—you’ll be hearing that word a lot in the context of climate change. That’s because the best way of thinking about the impact of global warming—and especially the economic impact—is as a risk factor. As the climate warms, sea level will rise, which puts coastal communities—from tens of millions of poor people in Bangladesh to ultra-wealthy Manhattanites—at greater risk of flooding. Warming may also intensify tropical weather, potentially increasing the risk of catastrophic storms like Katrina. If climate change cuts into the yield of crops like wheat or corn—as the latest IPCC report predicts—that could raise the risk of violent conflict in already impoverished countries. Climate change is a risk multiplier.

Putting climate change in the context of risk also gets around the uncertainty inherent in trying to predict the effects of something as fiendishly complex as global warming. Read the IPCC report closely, and you’ll see that there’s a lot of hedging, especially when it comes to the impact that warming temperatures will have on extreme weather. That’s not evidence that global warming doesn’t exists; rather, it’s evidence that climate scientists are honest about what they know and what they don’t know. And it doesn’t give us a free pass—it’s possible that hurricanes might not be responsive to warming, and it’s also possible that warming could supercharge storms. “The very fact of uncertainty—that’s what we mean by risk,” says Hemant Shah, the CEO of Risk Management Solutions (RMS), a catastrophe risk modeling firm that is taking part in the Risky Business initiative.

And this is what’s really important: businesses already know how to deal with risk. They’re accustomed to operating in an uncertain world, and hedging that risk appropriately, whether it’s the threat of natural disaster, war or regulation. By making CEOs see that climate change is just another form of risk—albeit one that’s potentially on a scale larger than any we’ve faced before—the Risky Business initiative will hopefully nudge them towards taking some steps to mitigate that risk. “The question is, what decisions can we make to manage that risk appropriately,” says Shah. “We think this is incredibly important work.”

RMS, which uses complex analytics to model natural catastrophe risk in real time, will provide much of the science behind Risky Business. The company’s analysts will use climate data and models to map out how rising seas, warming temperatures and changing atmospheric patterns could alter the natural disasters that already cost the global economy tens of billions of dollars each year. The result won’t be a single figure—a dollar cost that we can hang on climate change—but it will help us understand the danger we face. The question then is whether we’ll finally listen.

Ruling’s Breadth Hints That More Campaign Finance Dominoes May Fall - New York Times

Ruling’s Breadth Hints That More Campaign Finance Dominoes May Fall

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/us/politics/ruling-hints-more-campaign-finance-dominoes-may-fall.html?emc=edit_cn_20140403&nl=us&nlid=56381892&_r=2

By ADAM LIPTAKAPRIL 3, 2014

James Bopp Jr. is challenging an Iowa law that bans political contributions from corporations but allows them from unions. CreditDrew Angerer/Getty Images

Continue reading the main story

WASHINGTON — The sweeping language and logic of Wednesday’sSupreme Court decision on campaign finance may imperil other legal restrictions on money in politics.

The 5-to-4 decision, which struck down overall limits on contributions by individuals to candidates and parties, was the latest in a series of campaign finance decisions from the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. that took an expansive view of First Amendment rights and a narrow one of political corruption. According to experts in election law, there is no reason to think that the march toward deregulating election spending will stop with the ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.

“Those who support limits see the court right now as the T. rex from ‘Jurassic Park,’ ” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “What’s next? ‘Just don’t move. He can’t see us if we don’t move.’ ”

For now, federal law bars corporations from making contributions to candidates, though they can spend what they like independently to support or oppose candidates. Contributions from individuals to candidates are capped at $2,600 per election. Individual contributions to political parties are capped, too. Public financing of elections is allowed.

All of those limits may be vulnerable under the reasoning of the McCutcheon and Citizens United decisions, as well as the “soft money” ban, which limits individual contributions to political parties even if the money is to be spent on activities unrelated to federal elections.

The next case may arrive soon. At their private conference on Friday, the justices are scheduled to consider whether to hear Iowa Right to Life Committee v. Tooker, No. 13-407, a petition from James Bopp Jr., one of the lawyers on the winning side in the McCutcheon case. It challenges an Iowa law that bans contributions from corporations but allows them from unions.

Mr. Bopp said he had scoured Chief Justice Roberts’s controlling opinion in the McCutcheon case for hints and clues. “I didn’t see any real blatant signals about what they would entertain in the future,” he said. “On the other side, this is the latest in a series of cases from a five-member majority that is very friendly to the First Amendment.”

Mr. Bopp made both narrow and broad arguments in the Iowa case. The distinction the law makes between corporations and unions violates equal protection principles, he told the justices. In any event, he added, “banning corporate political contributions violates the First Amendment.”

The Supreme Court may announce on Monday whether it will hear the case.

“The real question after McCutcheon,” said Nathaniel Persily, a law professor at Stanford, “is whether the ban on corporation and union contributions or the limits on individual contributions are vulnerable.”

“I think that a majority on the court would like to strike both down, but that the backlash from Citizens United may prevent Roberts from moving too quickly on this,” he said. “The corporate ban is more likely to fall sooner, in part because it is hard to justify a complete ban, rather than limits, following Citizens United.”

In his dissent in the McCutcheon case, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the majority had left the campaign finance system in tatters.

“Taken together with Citizens United,” he wrote, “today’s decision eviscerates our nation’s campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve.”

On the issue of soft money, the Supreme Court upheld the ban in 2003, inMcConnell v. F.E.C., reasoning that large contributions to parties “are likely to create actual or apparent indebtedness on the part of federal officeholders” and “are likely to buy donors preferential access to federal officeholders.”

On Wednesday, Chief Justice Roberts seemed to reject that thinking. “Government regulation,” he wrote, “may not target the general gratitude a candidate may feel toward those who support him or his allies, or the political access such support may afford.”

In 2010, the Supreme Court affirmed without comment a ruling upholding the soft money ban, which was challenged by the Republican National Committee. Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas voted to hear the case.

The lower court had seemed to issue its ruling reluctantly. The argument in favor of allowing soft money contributions “carries considerable logic and force,” Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for a three-judge panel of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia.

“Under current law, outside groups — unlike candidates and political parties — may receive unlimited donations both to advocate in favor of federal candidates and to sponsor issue ads,” Judge Kavanaugh wrote. But he added that the arguments about a disparity that “discriminates against the national political parties in political and legislative debates” should be directed to the Supreme Court.

Richard H. Pildes, a law professor at New York University, said the logic of the McCutcheon decision may cause the court to return to the question, adding that a larger role for political parties would be a welcome development.

“Particularly with the court’s greater recognition, expressed in the McCutcheon oral arguments, that its own law has weakened the parties and encouraged the rise of outside groups,” he said, “McCutcheon could pave the path for the fourth vote needed for the court to reconsider this issue.”

Heather Gerken, a law professor at Yale, said she feared that the court would build on its 2011 decision in Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett, which struck down an Arizona law that provided escalating matching funds to candidates who accepted public financing. But it left more straightforward systems intact.

“My fear is that the court’s next target is the most revered pillar of campaign finance: public financing,” Professor Gerken said. “The lines are in the water, and we’ll see if the Roberts court bites.”

She added that the court sometimes seemed blind to the real-world consequences of its rulings. “We want judges to be shielded from politics,” she said, “but we don’t want them to be naïve about politics.”

IMF boss Lagarde warns economy 'too weak for comfort' - BBC NEWS

IMF boss Lagarde warns economy 'too weak for comfort'

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26861903

3 April 2014

Christine Lagarde warned that without "brave action" the world could fall into a "low growth trap".

She said the global economy would grow by more than 3% this year and next, but that market volatility and tensions in Ukraine posed risks.

Ms Lagarde also urged more action to tackle low inflation in the eurozone.

'Unconventional measures'

Low inflation in the eurozone has been caused by the presence of a greater level of spare capacity in the economy, meaning it is not growing to its full potential due to underinvestment, compared to the US or UK.

The Bank of England believes the amount of spare capacity in the UK is equal to about 1% to 1.5% of overall GDP.

The strength of the euro relative to the pound and the dollar since 2012 has also lowered the cost of imports, forcing the price of goods to come down.

That has meant inflation in the eurozone is currently running at 0.5%, compared to 1.7% in the UK and 1.1% in the US.

The fear attached to lower inflation is it could harm the eurozone's nascent economic recovery, weakening consumer demand for goods and services as household's put off spending believing prices will continue to fall.

Low inflation also means that governments and businesses find it more difficult to repay their debts.

Ms Lagarde called on the European Central Bank (ECB) to pursue "more monetary easing, including through unconventional measures".

Eurozone warning

"There is the emerging risk of what I call 'low-flation', particularly in the euro area," she added.

"A potentially prolonged period of low inflation can suppress demand and output, and suppress growth and jobs."

Her advice to the ECB, in a speech on Wednesday, came the day before a meeting of the central bank's policymakers.

Economists do not expect them to announce any measures to reverse a drop in the region's rate of inflation, which fell to 0.5% in March, its lowest since 2009.

It was also the 6th month in what ECB President Mario Draghi has called "the danger zone" below 1%.

'Low growth trap'

The IMF's managing director said that global economic signs were positive overall, but that "without sufficient policy ambition, the world could fall into a medium-term low-growth trap".

She called for governments to reform labour markets to encourage job creation, and for more public investment such as transport and communications networks in rich and emerging countries.

In a speech seen as a precursor to the IMF's spring meetings in Washington next week, Ms Lagarde specifically referred to the US Federal Reserve's gradual winding down of monetary stimulus.

The US central bank is slowly reducing the rate at which it buys bonds, which has been pumping money into the country's economy.

But it has had a damaging impact on emerging markets, as investors withdrew money back to the US in the hope of achieving higher interest rates.

Ms Lagarde said there needed to be greater cooperation among policymakers to limit the impact of the Fed's tapering, and warned the problem could also "spill back" to the US.

She also warned the situation in Ukraine could have "broader spillover implications" if not well managed.

The IMF last week announced financial support of $14-18bn (£8.5-£11bn) for Kiev in exchange for tough economic reforms.

Bitcoin set for fresh Chinese regulatory attack - Financial Times

Bitcoin set for fresh Chinese regulatory attack

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ed3ee914-ba4f-11e3-aeb0-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz2xjEVG4Dh

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April 2, 2014 11:39 am

Bitcoin set for fresh Chinese regulatory attack

By Simon Rabinovitch in Shanghai

©Reuters

Already reeling from a regulatory onslaught, Bitcoin exchanges in China are braced for yet another blow from the central bank that would imperil their survival.

The People’s Bank of China is considering whether to order the country’s banks to close Bitcoin trading accounts, according to people familiar with the matter. If that order goes through, it would eliminate the last major remaining channel by which people in China can buy the virtual currency.

Caixin, a local financial magazine, first reported the ban last week, saying it would come into effect by April 15. But the country’s Bitcoin exchanges say they have not yet received notices from their banks and that business continues as usual, for now.

More

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• John Gapper Bitcoin needs to grow up
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“This would be a bad thing for the exchanges. But it is certainly within the realm of what the government is allowed to do. We are taking things one day at a time,” said Bobby Lee, chief executive of BTC China, one of the country’s top exchanges.

The price of Bitcoin in China has fallen to Rmb2,950 ($475), down 17 per cent since Thursday when the Caixin report was published. Bitcoin has fallen nearly 60 per cent from its peak in November, shortly before the Chinese authorities announced the first of their measures to rein in the virtual currency’s then-explosive growth in China.

Beijing ruled in December that individuals were free to buy and sell Bitcoin at their own risk. But after deeming it to be an online product rather than a currency, the government prohibited all Chinese financial institutions from conducting any Bitcoin transactions. It also barred third-party payment providers from serving Bitcoin exchanges.

China’s plucky Bitcoin exchanges – many of which are run by tech entrepreneurs who chafe against government regulations – thought they had found a way around the ban on payment providers. By accepting payment from customers directly in their corporate accounts, the exchanges themselves filled the gap left by payment providers and allowed people to continue buying Bitcoins.

The new central bank document threatens to end that, by preventing China’s Bitcoin exchanges from even holding corporate bank accounts.

Nevertheless, an executive with one of China’s leading Bitcoin exchanges, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he believed the new regulations were in draft stage and that they would not be as harsh as feared. He also said exchanges would still have workarounds if corporate accounts are closed

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“Our core concern is whether Bitcoin is legal. The PBoC notice, if it comes, might increase transaction fees and reduce trading volume, but Bitcoin would still be legal,” he said.

The regulations to date have already undercut the Bitcoin market in China, with daily transaction volumes down by as much as 80 per cent from their peak last year, according to industry estimates.

Bitcoin offered people an easy route around China’s tight capital controls, and many observes believe the central bank’s crackdown was aimed at reinforcing the country’s defences against cross-border capital flows.

Mark Zuckerberg Made a Killing on Facebook Stock Last Year - TIME

Mark Zuckerberg Made a Killing on Facebook Stock Last Year

http://time.com/44899/facebook-fb-mark-zuckerberg/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Dan Hirschhorn @DanH_TIME
 

4:23 AM ET

    

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers a speech in the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Feb. 24, 2014David Ramos—

The co-founder and CEO of the social network brought in $3.3 billion by exercising stock options in 2013, a year after he made $2.3 billion from selling shares. The company's stock has been on the rise over the last year thanks to stronger mobile ad sales



Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a whopping $3.3 billion last year by exercising stock options for his shares in the social-networking company he co-founded, according to new documents.

The massive haul was revealed in regulatory documents filed Monday, the Associated Press reports. This after he made $2.3 billion from Facebook stock options in 2012, the year the company went public. The initial public offering was notoriously troubled, but the stock has performed well recently, more than doubling in value in the last year on the strength of mobile-ad sales.

Zuckerberg still owns Facebook shares worth about $25.7 billion.

Climate impacts 'overwhelming' - UN - BBC NEWS

Climate impacts 'overwhelming' - UN

31 March 2014

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26810559

By Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondent, BBC News, Yokohama, Japan

Scientists fear a growing impact of global warming on humans

The impacts of global warming are likely to be "severe, pervasive and irreversible", a major report by the UN has warned.

Scientists and officials meeting in Japan say the document is the most comprehensive assessment to date of the impacts of climate change on the world.

Some impacts of climate change include a higher risk of flooding and changes to crop yields and water availability.

Humans may be able to adapt to some of these changes, but only within limits.

An example of an adaptation strategy would be the construction of sea walls and levees to protect against flooding. Another might be introducing more efficient irrigation for farmers in areas where water is scarce.

Natural systems are currently bearing the brunt of climatic changes, but a growing impact on humans is feared.

Members of the UN's climate panel say it provides overwhelming evidence of the scale of these effects.

“Start Quote

Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change”

Rajendra PachauriChairman, IPCC

Our health, homes, food and safety are all likely to be threatened by rising temperatures, the summary says.

The report was agreed after almost a week of intense discussions here in Yokohama, which included concerns among some authors about the tone of the evolving document.

This is the second of a series from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) due out this year that outlines the causes, effects and solutions to global warming.

Analysis

Roger HarrabinEnvironment analyst

The prognosis on the climate isn't good - but the doctor's changing his bedside manner with the people in charge of the planet's health.

The report's chair, Dr Chris Field, is worried that an apocalyptic tone will frighten politicians so much that they'll abandon the Earth to its fate.

There is nothing inevitable about the worst impacts on people and nature, Dr Field says. We can cut emissions to reduce the risks of catastrophe and adapt to some changes that will inevitably occur.

We have to re-frame climate change as an exciting challenge for the most creative minds.

Cutting local air pollution from, say coal, can also reduce carbon emissions that cause warming; creating decent homes for poor people in countries like Bangladesh can improve lives whilst removing them from the path of flood surges.

Some will criticise Dr Field for being too upbeat. But many politicians have gone deaf to the old-style warnings. Maybe it's worth a new approach.

This latest Summary for Policymakers document highlights the fact that the amount of scientific evidence on the impacts of warming has almost doubled since the last report in 2007.

Be it the melting of glaciers or warming of permafrost, the summary highlights the fact that on all continents and across the oceans, changes in the climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems in recent decades.

In the words of the report, "increasing magnitudes of warming increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts".

"Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,'' IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri told journalists at a news conference in Yokohama.

Dr Saleemul Huq, a convening lead author on one of the chapters, commented: "Before this we thought we knew this was happening, but now we have overwhelming evidence that it is happening and it is real."

Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said that, previously, people could have damaged the Earth's climate out of "ignorance".

"Now, ignorance is no longer a good excuse," he said.

Mr Jarraud said the report was based on more than 12,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies. He said this document was "the most solid evidence you can get in any scientific discipline".

US Secretary of State John Kerry commented: "Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy. Denial of the science is malpractice."

He added: "No single country causes climate change, and no one country can stop it. But we need to match the urgency of our response with the scale of the science."

Ed Davey, the UK Energy and Climate Secretary said: "The science has clearly spoken. Left unchecked, climate change will impact on many aspects of our society, with far reaching consequences to human health, global food security and economic development.

"The recent flooding in the UK is a testament to the devastation that climate change could bring to our daily lives."

The report details significant short-term impacts on natural systems in the next 20 to 30 years. It details five reasons for concern that would likely increase as a result of the warming the world is already committed to.

A perspective on the UKDavid ShukmanScience editor, BBC News

British winters are likely to become milder and wetter like the last one but cold spells still need to be planned for, says the UK Met Office.

Summers are likely to be hotter and drier, but washouts are still on the cards, it adds.

The assessment of future weather extremes finds the role of human influence is "detectable" in summer heatwaves and in intense rainfall.

However, the Met Office says a lot more work must be done to confirm the links.

If the study is correct, it means everything from gumboots to snowploughs and sunscreen to anoraks will still be needed.

• 
  

These include threats to unique systems such as Arctic sea ice and coral reefs, where risks are said to increase to "very high" with a 2C rise in temperatures.

The summary document outlines impacts on the seas and on freshwater systems as well. The oceans will become more acidic, threatening coral and the many species that they harbour.

On land, animals, plants and other species will begin to move towards higher ground or towards the poles as the mercury rises.

Humans, though, are also increasingly affected as the century goes on.

Food security is highlighted as an area of significant concern. Crop yields for maize, rice and wheat are all hit in the period up to 2050, with around a tenth of projections showing losses over 25%.

After 2050, the risk of more severe yield impacts increases, as boom-and-bust cycles affect many regions. All the while, the demand for food from a population estimated to be around nine billion will rise.

Many fish species, a critical food source for many, will also move because of warmer waters.

What is the IPCC?

In its own words, the IPCC is there "to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts".

The offspring of two UN bodies, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, it has issuedfour heavyweight assessment reports to date on the state of the climate.

These are commissioned by the governments of 195 countries, essentially the entire world. These reports are critical in informing the climate policies adopted by these governments.

The IPCC itself is a small organisation, run from Geneva with a full time staff of 12. All the scientists who are involved with it do so on a voluntary basis.

In some parts of the tropics and in Antarctica, potential catches could decline by more than 50%.

"This is a sobering assessment," said Prof Neil Adger from the University of Exeter, another IPCC author.

"Going into the future, the risks only increase, and these are about people, the impacts on crops, on the availability of water and particularly, the extreme events on people's lives and livelihoods."

People will be affected by flooding and heat related mortality. The report warns of new risks including the threat to those who work outside, such as farmers and construction workers. There are concerns raised over migration linked to climate change, as well as conflict and national security.

Report co-author Maggie Opondo of the University of Nairobi said that in places such as Africa, climate change and extreme events mean "people are going to become more vulnerable to sinking deeper into poverty".

While the poorer countries are likely to suffer more in the short term, the rich won't escape.

"The rich are going to have to think about climate change. We're seeing that in the UK, with the floods we had a few months ago, and the storms we had in the US and the drought in California," said Dr Huq.

IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said the findings in the report were "profound"

"These are multibillion dollar events that the rich are going to have to pay for, and there's a limit to what they can pay."

But it is not all bad news, as the co-chair of the working group that drew up the report points out.

"I think the really big breakthrough in this report is the new idea of thinking about managing climate change as a problem in managing risks," said Dr Chris Field.

"Climate change is really important but we have a lot of the tools for dealing effectively with it - we just need to be smart about it."

There is far greater emphasis to adapting to the impacts of climate in this new summary. The problem, as ever, is who foots the bill?

"It is not up to IPCC to define that," said Dr Jose Marengo, a Brazilian government official who attended the talks.

"It provides the scientific basis to say this is the bill, somebody has to pay, and with the scientific grounds it is relatively easier now to go to the climate negotiations in the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and start making deals about who will pay for adaptation."

Twitter May Be Getting Rid of the Word ‘Retweet’ - TIME

Twitter May Be Getting Rid of the Word ‘Retweet’

http://time.com/40563/twitter-may-be-getting-rid-of-the-word-retweet/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Victor Luckerson @VLuck
 

March 27, 2014

    

The “retweet” may be going the way of the “fail whale.” Select users of Twitter’s mobile app are now seeing the phrase “share with others” instead of “retweet” when they post another person’s tweet in their own timelines.

The change is one of Twitter’s many ongoing experiments to try to make its social network more engaging. User growth on Twitter has slowed continuously over time, andnew data shows that most people who sign up don’t keep tweeting over the long-term. Other tests, such as an overhaul of user profile pages to make them more visual, indicate that Twitter may be trying to imitate the interface of Facebook, a more popular website with higher levels of user engagement.

The retweet was first invented by Twitter’s users rather than the company. In the early days users had to manually type “RT” to indicate that they were posting someone else’s message. Though Twitter formally adopted the retweet feature in 2009, the word itself is one of the many bits of insider jargon that new users have to learn to use the service effectively. Other quirks of Twitter, like the use of the @ symbol to directly tweet to other users, are also being phased out in certain tests. CEO Dick Costolo has said these long-used terms are “confusing and opaque” to new members. 

EU can cope with Russian retaliation - Financial Times

March 28, 2014 10:06 am

EU can cope with Russian retaliation, says trade official

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/da0a2d32-b5cb-11e3-b40e-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fhome_us%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct&siteedition=intl#axzz2xFvrX6UW

By Christian Oliver and Shawn Donnan in Brussels

©EPA

Russian marines march at a military base in Sevastopol, Crimea, this week

Europe’s top trade official struck a defiant stance against Moscow on Thursday and argued that the EU would have a strong hand if the Crimea crisis descended into a broader economic showdown.

Karel De Gucht, the EU’s trade commissioner, said Europe had an array of weapons at its disposal including a long-awaited competition case against Gazprom, which can set restrictions on the Russian energy company’s ability to control supply routes and prices. “The idea that we are strangled by Russia is not true,” he told the Financial Times in an interview.

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More broadly, Mr De Gucht countered Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, who has argued that wider sanctions would inflict equal pain on Russia and the 28-nation bloc. In fact, Russia’s financial dependence on energy exports made it especially vulnerable, the commissioner argued.

“If you owe a little bit of money to the bank and you cannot pay it, then you have a big problem. If you owe a lot of money to the bank, the bank is in trouble. That also applies to our relationship with Russia. I am not impressed by their position,” he said.

Mr De Gucht’s perspective on Europe’s ability to resist a greater stand-off with Russia is critical as he is one of the leading commissioners charged with weighing up the feasibility of deeper sanctions against Moscow, most likely to be imposed if Russian troops enter eastern or southern Ukraine.

The Belgian commissioner rejected the assertion that Europe, which imports 30 per cent of its gas from Russia, could only build up greater resilience slowly. “Sometimes, history can move very fast,” he said. “If they were trying to strangle us, we would of course call on the US for access to their gas, independently from a free trade agreement. That would be a hugely political factor.”

In depth

Crisis in Ukraine

Russia has annexed the southern Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, raising fears of a return to the politics of the cold war

He argued that America’s increasing gas exports would pile greater pressure on Gazprom and added that a deal over Iran’s disputed nuclear programme could also open up the world’s second biggest gas reserves for export to Europe.

Although Gazprom is cutting prices in EU, the company paints a rosy picture of its prospects in Europe. Its market share rose to 30 per cent last year from 26 per cent in 2012 and Alexander Medvedev, the deputy chief executive, argues that trend is likely to continue.

But Mr De Gucht insisted Russia’s longer term prospects were more fragile because Europe was ramping up investment in infrastructure such as liquefied natural gas terminals and cross-border gas and electricity interconnectors, which allow countries to diversify their supplies.

In the event of a deeper Russian incursion in Ukraine, he said that the EU would have to take a snap political decision on how to divide the pain of sanctions between member states.

“That is the kind of decision you can only take when there’s the political need to do so but it’s obvious that if Russia were to proceed in the south and east of Ukraine that political need would exist [overnight].”

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, on Thursday added her voice to call for the EU to cut its energy dependence on Russia. “There will be a new approach to our overall energy policy.” In the EU there was a very high dependency on Russian oil and gas, with Germany being far from the most dependent, she said.