Obama may round out natl. security team next week

FILE - In this June 26, 2008 file photo, then Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., speaks on foreign policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington. President Barack Obama may round out his new national security leadership team next week, with a nomination for defense secretary expected and a pick to lead the CIA possible. Hagel is the front-runner for the top Pentagon post. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke, File)

FILE - In this June 26, 2008 file photo, then Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., speaks on foreign policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington. President Barack Obama may round out his new national security leadership team next week, with a nomination for defense secretary expected and a pick to lead the CIA possible. Hagel is the front-runner for the top Pentagon post. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke, File)

(AP) ? President Barack Obama may round out his new national security leadership team next week, with a nomination for defense secretary expected and a pick to lead the Central Intelligence Agency possible.

Former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is the front-runner for the top Pentagon post. Acting CIA director Michael Morell and Obama counterterrorism adviser John Brennan are leading contenders to head the spy agency.

White House aides said the president has not made a final decision on either post and won't until he returns from Hawaii, where he is vacationing with his family. Obama is due back in Washington Sunday morning.

Obama nominated Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as his next secretary of state in December, his first step in filling out his second term Cabinet and national security team. Kerry, as well as the nominees for the Pentagon and CIA, must be confirmed by the Senate.

Hagel, the former senator from Nebraska, is a contrarian Republican moderate and decorated Vietnam combat veteran who is likely to support a more rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. If confirmed, Hagel would give Obama a whiff of bipartisanship in his Cabinet if confirmed.

Even before his nomination, Hagel's consideration for the top Pentagon job raised concerns among some of his former Senate colleagues, who questioned his pronouncements on Iraq, Israel and the Middle East. Troubling for some lawmakers are Hagel's comments and actions on Israel, including his reference to the "Jewish lobby" in the United States.

Hagel has also been criticized for comments he made in 1998 about an openly gay nominee for an ambassadorship. In an interview with the Omaha World-Herald in 1998, Hagel said he believed that for a U.S. ambassador, "it is an inhibiting factor to be gay" and referred to James C. Hormel as "openly, aggressively gay". He has since apologized for those comments.

If nominated and confirmed, Hagel would replace current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Morell has served as the CIA's acting director since early November, after David Petraeus resigned after admitting to an affair with his biographer.

Brennan, Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, worked at the CIA for 25 years, including a stint as station chief in Saudi Arabia. He also served as chief of staff to then CIA Director George Tenet from 1999 to 2001, when he was named the agency's deputy executive director.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-01-05-Obama-Personnel/id-eac2e59b999643b2a72f87baf83f61c1

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AP Sources: Syracuse's Marrone to take over Bills

(AP) ? The Buffalo Bills have reached an agreement to hire Syracuse's Doug Marrone as their next coach, two people familiar with talks told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Marrone will replace Chan Gailey, who was fired last Monday, a day after the Bills closed their second consecutive season with a 6-10 record. The 48-year-old Marrone went 25-25 in four seasons at Syracuse.

One person told the AP that the deal is done. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because there has not been an official announcement. A second person confirmed that the Bills were set on hiring Marrone, who was identified as the team's leading candidate Saturday night.

ESPN.com, citing league sources, first reported early Sunday that Marrone would be the Bills' next coach. Messages left with Syracuse officials and Marrone's agent, Jimmy Sexton, have not been returned.

Syracuse was 26-57 over a seven-year period before Marrone took over at his alma mater. The Orange finished this season 8-5, winning six of their last seven games, including a 38-14 win over West Virginia in the Pinstripe Bowl.

Now, he's set for another challenge two hours down the New York State Thruway.

Marrone takes over a Bills team that has not had a winning record since 2004, when it finished 9-7, and has missed the playoffs for 13 straight seasons. That's the NFL's longest active streak.

The Syracuse job was Marrone's first as a head coach. He has seven years of NFL experience. Marrone spent 2006-08 as the New Orleans Saints' offensive coordinator and was the New York Jets' offensive line coach from 2002-05.

The Bills' decision to go with Marrone came on a day they were scheduled to interview Broncos offensive coordinator Mike McCoy. The meeting, however, was postponed by McCoy, according to a person familiar with the coach's plans. The person said McCoy asked that the Bills reschedule the meeting because he was already interviewing for several other coaching vacancies this weekend.

The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the Bills and McCoy have not revealed their plans.

As the AFC's top seed, the Broncos are off until opening the playoffs Jan. 12. They allotted time for interested teams to interview McCoy in Denver this weekend. McCoy is a candidate for jobs in Philadelphia, Arizona and Chicago.

The Bills opened their coaching search Tuesday, when newly promoted President Russ Brandon and several executives traveled to Arizona, where they interviewed candidates. They met with former Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt and current Cardinals defensive coordinator Ray Horton. The Bills also interviewed Oregon coach Chip Kelly and former Bears coach Lovie Smith.

On Friday, the Bills confirmed they had interviewed Marrone, but they did not reveal when or where that meeting took place.

Marrone had also interviewed with the Cleveland Browns for their vacancy.

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-01-06-FBN-Bills-Marrone/id-8095d42955474d468a7af17ac2c20786

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SanDisk releases Ultra Plus and X110 SSDs with speed on a budget

SanDisk releases Ultra Plus and X110 SSDs with speed on a budget

SanDisk is coming to CES with the aim of democratizing solid-state drives, and its new Ultra Plus (X110 for PC builders) just might do the trick. The 2.5-inch drive (not yet pictured here) musters 530MB/s peak read speeds and 445MB/s writes, like many higher-end SSDs, but promises to ditch some of the premium we commonly associate with that breakneck pace. The 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities on offer will cost just $75, $110 and $220 -- low enough that we could see them easily slotting in as a fast boot drive or a full-fledged replacement in a laptop. Anyone looking for a quick storage pick-me-up should already find the Ultra Plus waiting at Amazon, Microcenter and Newegg.

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AP Interview: Palestinian PM blasts Arab donors

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad gestures during an interview with The Associated Press in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. Fayyad is blaming Arab countries that haven?t delivered promised financial aid for an escalating financial crisis in the Palestinian territories. In an interview Sunday Fayyad said that the cash crunch is pushing an additional 25 percent of the Palestinian population, or 1 million people, into poverty. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad gestures during an interview with The Associated Press in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. Fayyad is blaming Arab countries that haven?t delivered promised financial aid for an escalating financial crisis in the Palestinian territories. In an interview Sunday Fayyad said that the cash crunch is pushing an additional 25 percent of the Palestinian population, or 1 million people, into poverty. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad pauses during an interview with the Associated Press in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. Fayyad is blaming Arab countries that haven?t delivered promised financial aid for an escalating financial crisis in the Palestinian territories. In an interview Sunday Fayyad said that the cash crunch is pushing an additional 25 percent of the Palestinian population, or 1 million people, into poverty.(AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad gestures during an interview with the Associated Press in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. Fayyad is blaming Arab countries that haven?t delivered promised financial aid for an escalating financial crisis in the Palestinian territories. In an interview Sunday Fayyad said that the cash crunch is pushing an additional 25 percent of the Palestinian population, or 1 million people, into poverty. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

(AP) ? The Palestinian self-rule government is close to being "completely incapacitated," largely because Arab countries haven't delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in promised aid, the Palestinian prime minister said in an interview Sunday.

If allowed to continue, the Palestinian Authority's unprecedented financial crisis will quickly double the number of Palestinian poor to 50 percent of a population of roughly 4 million, Salam Fayyad told The Associated Press.

Fayyad said the malaise is further boosting the political appeal of the Islamic militant Hamas while discrediting him and other proponents of a nonviolent path to statehood in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Hamas seized Gaza from Fayyad's boss, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a 2007 takeover, leaving Abbas with only the West Bank.

The failure of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to deliver on many of its promises, coupled with recent Israeli concessions to Hamas, "has produced a reality of a doctrinal win for what Hamas stands for, and correspondingly a doctrinal defeat for the Palestinian Authority," Fayyad said.

The Palestinian Authority was established nearly two decades ago, as part of interim peace deals with Israel, and was meant to make way after five years for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. However, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations repeatedly broke down, at times amid bursts of violence, and failed to produce a final deal.

After the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, which resulted in harsh Israeli restrictions on Palestinian trade and movement, the Palestinian Authority became heavily dependent on foreign aid. It has received hundreds of millions of dollars each year since then, but has struggled to wean itself off foreign support.

Fayyad said his budget deficit has widened in recent years, blaming Arab states that broke aid promises.

"The financing problem that we've had ... in the last few years is solely due to some Arab donors not fulfilling their pledge of support in accordance with Arab League resolutions," Fayyad said. European countries kept all their aid commitments and the U.S. honored most, with the exception of $200 million held up by Congress last year, he added.

The crisis worsened sharply after the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in late November, at the request of Abbas, to recognize a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, the territories Israel captured in 1967. Israel objected to the U.N. upgrade, accusing Abbas of trying to bypass negotiations.

Starting in December, Israel halted the monthly transfers of about $100 million in tax rebates it collects on behalf of the Palestinians. That sum amounts to about one-third of the monthly operating costs of the Palestinian Authority. Fayyad said he now only takes in about $50 million a month in revenues.

On Sunday, Abbas declared that his Palestinian Authority would be known as the State of Palestine from now on, in keeping with U.N. recognition of Palestine as a non-member observer state in November.

Fayyad's heftiest monthly budget item is the government payroll. The Palestinian Authority employs some 150,000 people, including civil servants and members of the security forces. About 60,000 live in Gaza and served under Abbas before the Hamas takeover, but they continue to draw salaries even though they've since been replaced by Hamas loyalists.

In recent months, the government has paid salaries in installments.

Fayyad said he managed to pay half the November salaries by getting another bank loan, using as collateral a promise by the Arab League to cover whatever money Israel might withhold in retaliation for the U.N. bid. The money from the Arab states never came, and Fayyad said he can't pay the rest of the November salaries, let alone December wages.

The Palestinian Authority already owes local banks more than $1.3 billion and can't get more loans. It also owes hundreds of millions of dollars to private suppliers, and some have stopped doing business with the government.

Fayyad said his government is on "the verge of being completely incapacitated." About 1 million Palestinians who depend on government salaries "are at a very serious threat of being pushed into a circle of poverty," he said. This would double the poverty rate, which currently stands at 25 percent in the West Bank and Gaza, he said.

Fayyad said these dire consequences would happen in "short order," but he would not give specifics.

The deputy chairman of the 22-nation Arab League, Mohammed Sbeih, acknowledged Sunday that the Palestinian Authority is in a "critical situation." He said the head of the league has written to member states urging them "to pay the pledged $100 million."

The growing hardships have sparked repeated protests in the West Bank. Civil servants have held several warning strikes. On Sunday, the union decided to step up protests, calling for four days of strikes over the next two weeks.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-01-06-Palestinians/id-d41857b431b443239ae43faaeda135e7

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La Crosse 810-163TWR tornado alert radio eyes-on

La Crosse 810163TWR

Live in Tornado Alley? Just generally afraid of being swept away by a cyclone? You may want to cast those eyes in the general direction of the La Crosse 810-163TWR weather alert radio. The walkie-talkie-like device is up to all of the NOAA standards, tuning you in to national weather alerts. You can set an alarm on the gadget that'll turn radio alerts on any time there's a national disaster. New this time out is a devoted tornado button. Click that and it will only trigger when faced with that specific disaster. The device is due out in April and should you around $50. Sadly the unit present here at CES was just a dummy, so if there are any tornadoes in the area, we're all out of luck.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/06/la-crosse-810-163twr-tornado-alert-radio-eyes-on/

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West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life

Attention, basketball fans: Jerry West?s bestselling autobiography is now available in paperback.? ?

By Ross Atkin,?Staff writer / January 4, 2013

West by West By Jerry West Little, Brown 352 pp.

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?If you?re a fan of the National Basketball Association, Hall of Famer Jerry West can never be far from your mind, even subliminally. West, you see, is the player depicted since 1969 in the league?s silhouetted logo.

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The NBA has never officially confirmed this, but former league commissioner Walter Kennedy once told the Los Angeles Laker great, ?That?s you.? As a result, one of West?s nicknames is ?Logo,? a fact related in his autobiography, West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life, a bestselling hardback now available in softcover.?

When first published in 2011, much attention was given to the revelation that West has long battled depression and was physically abused by his father. But the real essence of this book, written with Jonathan Coleman (ironically, a lifelong Celtics fan), is West?s fascinating life in basketball, from his high school stardom in Chelyan, W.Va., to his playing days at both the University of West Virginia and the Los Angeles Lakers, to his years as a coach, and later, an executive with the Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies.

Today, West is an adviser to the Golden State Warriors and a member of the team?s executive board.

He is uncommonly forthright about his experiences and eccentricities, both on and off the court. He acknowledges that even his own sons sometimes consider his behavior ?weird? and jokingly call him Cement Head because of his impeccably combed hair.

West was a 14-time NBA all-star known for his cool under pressure, his shooting marksmanship, and his intense competitiveness.

The watershed event in West?s young life occurred in 1951, when his beloved older brother, David, was killed in action in the Korean War. Dealing with that shock drove him ever deeper into playing basketball, which became his sanctuary and refuge, the place where he says ?I felt most alive, where I was most in control.?

In 2010, after years of resisting, West finally traveled to South Korea in a cathartic journey that he calls the trip of his life. He visited the spot where his brother had fallen in an emotional experience which he says was both comforting and unsettling.

This episode constitutes a biographical window on West?s motivational fires, the ones that have driven him to a life that reads like a modern history of basketball, replete with stories of the greats, including Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, Pat Riley, Shaquille O?Neal, and Kobe Bryant.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/0GNAvzYMWoc/West-by-West-My-Charmed-Tormented-Life

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Japanese Yoga & Martial Arts for Kids | Albany Sports & Recreation ...

Tomorrow, January 7, 2013, 5:45 pm

Sennin Foundation Center for Japanese Cultural Arts, 1053 San Pablo Ave, Albany, CA | Get?Directions??
$70.00

Since 1981, we've been offering a fun and well-structured program in Japanese yoga and martial arts for children age five and above. These affordable classes are taught by experienced instructors and are non-competitive. Class sizes are small, and instruction is personalized. The Sennin Foundation Center presents training in Saigo Ryu aiki-jujutsu, a traditional martial art. Our class features a wide variety of powerful throwing, pinning, and grappling techniques stemming from older methods (kobudo) originating in the Aizu-Wakamatsu area of Japan. Children improve their health while learning martial arts as meditation, which helps them to remain calm under pressure. Instruction in the Shin-shin-toitsu-do system of Japanese yoga and meditation is included at no extra charge. Japanese yoga training makes it easier to master the martial arts, and it helps children to realize their full potential in other activities as well. Studying Japanese yoga and aiki-jujutsu gives young people a great opportunity to learn self-discipline, self-confidence, and self-defense.

37.885639

-122.297464

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Japanese Yoga & Martial Arts for Kids

Weekly on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, 5:45 pm?6:45 pm

Sennin Foundation Center for Japanese Cultural Arts

1053 San Pablo Ave, Albany, CA

Www.senninfoundation.com

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Source: http://albany.patch.com/events/japanese-yoga-martial-arts-for-kids-e446b1cf

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Watertown Real Estate Agent Completes Course Focusing on ...

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?The following information was provided by the Real Estate Buyer?s Association Council:?

Watertown?s Robert Airasian?with Realty Executive W. Suburban has been awarded the Accredited Buyer?s Representation (ABR) designation by the Real Estate Buyer?s Agent Council (REBAC) of the National Association of Realtors.

Robert Airasian joins more than 30,000 real estate professionals in North America who have earned the ABR designation. All were requires to successfully complete a course in buyer representation and an elective course focusing on a buyer representation specialty, both in addition to submitting documentation verifying professional experience.

REBAC, founded in 1988, is the world?s largest association of real estate professionals focusing specifically on representing the real estate buyer. There are more than 40,000 active member of the organization world-wide. The National Association of Realtors, ?The Voice of Real Estate,? is the world?s largest professional association, representing over 1 million members involved in all aspects of the real estate industry.?

You may contact the Real Estate Buyer?s Agent Council by phone, 800-648-6224, by email, rebac@realtors.org, or by the REBAC website, www.rebac.net.

Source: http://nationalrealtynews.com/national-association-of-realtors/watertown-real-estate-agent-completes-course-focusing-on-representing/

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Fishy Business | The Alcalde

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Walk into almost any pet store in the United States, and you?ll find a kaleidoscope of colorful fish. Among the most eye-catching are GloFish: small zebrafish and tetras in neon hues like Sunburst Orange and Galactic Purple. Under UV light, the fish emit a captivating fluorescent glow.

You?d never guess it, but they?re also tiny revolutionaries. The world?s first genetically modified pets, GloFish made front-page news when they hit stores in 2003. Naysayers called them unnatural, enthusiasts rushed to buy them, and California banned them. Today, they?re ubiquitous. Behind it all is GloFish CEO and co-founder Alan Blake, BBA ?01, who started the company just months after earning a bachelor?s in finance from UT.

?We?re at the intersection of biotechnology, aquarium fish, and politics,? Blake says. ?It?s been interesting.? That would be an understatement.

?We?re at the intersection of biotechnology, aquarium fish, and politics. It?s been interesting.?

Soft-spoken and slight, Blake seems much younger than his 35 years. He?s just gotten married?to a kindergarten teacher who uses GloFish in her classroom?and fidgets with his ring as he tells the company?s story.

Blake?s entrepreneurial bent is what brought him to UT in the first place. A native of Yorktown, New York, he followed a friend to Arlington, Texas, at age 18 in hopes of starting a landscaping business together. When that didn?t pan out (?We had exactly one customer,? he laughs), Blake took classes at UT-Arlington and found a job selling insurance. He was so good at it that the company asked him to open an office in Austin?so he transferred to UT-Austin and juggled school and work.

It was 1997, the height of the dot-com bubble, and startups were everywhere.? ?You could drive down South Congress, toss your r?sum? out the window, and have five messages waiting from employers when you got home,? Blake says. ?It was an incredible time to be in Austin.?

After his junior year, Blake took time off to start ClassMap, a Blackboard-like classroom software competitor. The company grew to 50 employees, $4 million in venture capital, and customers at 75 colleges. After two years, it went under.

Blake wasn?t dismayed. He returned to school, finding himself in the odd position of taking classes like Marketing 101 after having already been a CEO. Then he got a call from an old friend, Richard Crockett.

A Yale biology grad, Crockett told Blake about some fascinating research. Scientists at the National University of Singapore had engineered fluorescent zebrafish by splicing a bit of jellyfish or sea anemone DNA into fish embryos. Their eventual goal was to create fish that would glow in the presence of toxins, signaling a polluted river, but Crockett and Blake saw a commercial use: glow-in-the-dark pets. So the duo got to work licensing the technology, securing funding, and wading through legal red tape. ?I was too na?ve to know how hard it would be, and too stubborn to quit,? Blake says.

UT?s John Butler, now director of the University?s entrepreneur-focused IC2 Institute, and former UT chancellor Bill Cunningham were the company?s first investors.? After two years of preparation, GloFish sales began in 2003.

It wasn?t long before the press caught wind of the story?a ready-made headline for its mix of entrepreneurial flair, innovative technology, and playing-God controversy. ?The genetically modified pet appears to have arrived,? proclaimed the New York Times. The debate over genetic modification, previously focused on food, had reached the fishtank. ?For me it?s a question of values,? then-California Food and Game Commissioner Sam Schuchat told the Associated Press. ?I think selling genetically modified fish as pets is wrong.? GloFish are still banned in California, where critics fear the fish could breed in nature, affecting wild populations.

Blake says the tropical fish can?t live in the wild, and he calls the controversy manufactured. ?I like to say that there were more reports of Elvis flying a UFO over Los Angeles than there are negative comments we got in a year,? he says. ?The press created the debate.?

With Crockett busy in medical school, Blake was working overtime to manage the company. He did hundreds of interviews from his North Austin apartment, ?just trying to keep up,? he says. But eventually the frenzy died down, and sales kept growing. GloFish now come in three species and five colors. There are also more than 40 GloFish products, including aquarium plants and gravel.

Today, Blake visits UT business classes to speak with aspiring entrepreneurs. His advice? ?Don?t do it for the money,? he urges. ?It?s a lot easier to succeed by working for someone else than for yourself. But if you are willing to make the sacrifices, you can do great things.?

Photos from top: Electric Green GloFish; Alan Blake (courtesy Alan Blake).

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Tags: Alan Blake, aquariums, commercialization, entrepreneurship, fish, genetics, GloFish, mccombs school of business, pets, Richard Crockett, Yorktown

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Source: http://alcalde.texasexes.org/2013/01/fishy-business/

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Green Blog: An Antidote for Climate Contrarianism

I would guess a few Green readers had the experience, over the holidays, of arguing yet again about global warming with a parent or brother-in-law who thinks it?s all a big hoax. Maybe there?s some undiscovered substance in roast turkey that makes people want to pick fights around the dinner table.

Fortunately, the M.I.T. climate scientist Kerry Emanuel has provided us with a solution to this problem: an updated edition of ?What We Know About Climate Change,? his 2007 book explaining the science of global warming.

I?m happy to report that the new edition of this slender volume is an improvement ? perhaps even the single best thing written about climate change for a general audience. It is a little longer than the first edition, 93 pages instead of 85, but it?s still an easy read ? most people will get through it in a single sitting.

The new version updates the science to the latest numbers, of course, but it also adds a couple of chapters about the potential solutions to climate change and the bizarre politics that have cropped up around it in recent years.

The book is dead accurate, not only presenting scientifically what we know, but also leveling with readers about what we don?t. It conveys the risks posed by that ignorance. Yet Dr. Emanuel manages to keep the language so taut and simple that nobody is likely to be intimidated by the book or to feel put out at being asked to read it.

The point, he said in an interview, is to give people some ammunition when they encounter the kind of contrarianism about climate change that has become pervasive in the United States.

?Young adults who are disputing this problem with their own parents or an uncle or something ? they can hand the book to them and say, ?Will you at least read this?? ? Dr. Emanuel said. ?One at a time, you might change minds.?

The book is officially scheduled for publication on Tuesday, by M.I.T. Press, but it has long since moved into retail channels and is widely available in hardcover for $11. At Dr. Emanuel?s behest, the publisher set an especially low price, $7.50, for the digital edition.

He does not talk much about this in the book, but for anybody who plans to give it to a political conservative, it might be worth pointing out to them that Dr. Emanuel spent most of his adult life as a registered Republican. He changed his registration to independent recently, but he told me that his convictions have not shifted much ? he was driven out of the Republican Party by its embrace of global warming skepticism, among other recent positions.

?I came of age in the 1960s and ?70s,? Dr. Emanuel said. ?A lot of what was actually going wrong in the country was because of rigid ideology, and a lot of what I considered rigid ideology was on the left. Now I think it?s the right that?s guilty of that, that?s really gone off on this ideological tangent.?

Conservatives will find a few points in the book that especially resonate. For instance, while Dr. Emanuel assails the irrationality of dismissing an entire branch of science as some kind of elaborate hoax ? many Republicans have done lately ? as he also takes green groups to task on certain points, including their skepticism about nuclear power.

He sees nuclear energy as one of the few ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, on a large scale. And he is doubtful that renewable energy sources like wind and solar power can be ramped up fast enough to meet the challenge.

If Dr. Emanuel has been talking about his politics more lately, so have some of his colleagues, like Richard Alley of Penn State, one of the country?s most notable explainers of climate science, who describes himself as a churchgoing Republican.

These scientists are hoping that their conservative credentials will help open some otherwise closed minds, but their ultimate point is that the science itself has nothing to do with politics ? and everything to do with physics.

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/an-antidote-for-climate-contrarianism/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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