The 66th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has ended with the Palestinian statehood bid being referred to the Security Council for lengthy consideration meaning that the most exciting development was an actual fight between members of the Turkish delegation and building security. It all could have been so different though.
Before the general debate the assembly hosted a high level discussion on resolution 65/160 which covers drought, desertification and poverty. This is a stand alone environmental problem that has affected humanity for hundreds, if not thousands of years. However it is a problem that seems to be getting worse and many people blame the change on global warming/climate change. So by choosing this topic for discussion the UN was hoping to build momentum towards the 17th Conference of Parties (COP17) global warming/climate change conference that takes place in South Africa at the end of November 2011.
COP17 should be one of the most exciting global warming/climate change conferences ever held. At present there are two main schools of thought on what is causing global warming/climate change. Either it is man made caused by greenhouse gases trapping heat in the earths atmosphere or it is a natural phenomenon caused by fluctuations in the amount of heat given out by the sun (solar energy). Solar energy levels are currently as close to constant as they're going to get and at their lowest level in decades. As a result the data collected about global temperature during this period will go a long way towards settling the argument between the two schools of thought one way or another. However for this to happen the nations with the resources to collect this data - basically the United States and China - will have to agree to share that data with each other and others so it can be properly analysed.
Unfortunately this isn't going to happen in time for COP17 and that is mainly the United States' fault. Rather then trying to co-operate with China and ring fence climate data as far a possible for the common good the US has been trying to force a much wider range of scientific data out of China by putting them under pressure on issues like the Israel/Palestine conflict and the European economic crisis which both require a lot of maths. If these efforts are successful it would put China at a disadvantage making it harder for them to co-operate and share data. Also the US allowed itself to get bogged down in the Libya conflict wasting a lot of energy and complicating matters further.
However the US President Barack Obama has promised a lot of people both domestically and internationally that he is going to be different from his predecessors and under his leadership the US will finally take the issue of global warming/climate change seriously. So it would be hugely embarrassing for him and a massive set back for the US if it looks like the US is once again blocking global efforts on global warming/climate change. This fear of discovery prompted the US to focus a lot of attention on it's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) as it crashed back to earth during the UNGA.
Although launched in order to study the effect of CFC's and other aerosols on the atmosphere UARS has also gathered data on how solar energy effects certain chemical elements (photochemistry) along with data on fluctuations in solar energy and solar winds. So a first glance apart from provoking speculation on how I would spend that Friday night (in the drink apparently) it looked as though that the US was sharing information in order to start a conversation with China about atmospheric research satellites and the climate data they produce. However in terms of COP17 it is now far too late to be starting this type of complex conversation so the US was really trying to make it look like they were trying to help while really piling a whole lot of extra pressure on China ahead of the Security Council meeting on Palestinian statehood and that weekend's IMF meeting on Europe.
The Italians also tried to force their way in on the act. On that Friday (23/9/11) Antonio Ereditato, an Italian scientist working at the OPERA collaboration held a press conference claiming to have discovered particles moving faster then the speed of light. This contradicts Einstein's famous relativistic mass formula (E=mc^2) which has governed the way we consider the behaviour of particles for the best part of 100 years. So if these OPERA results are accurate everything we think we know about what light is, how it travels to earth and how it effects chemical elements along with many other things is probably wrong and will have to be re-written.
In the first instance the OPERA results caused arguments between the possibly 10,000 people world wide who properly understand them and gave everyone else a massive headache*. It also seemed to be an Italian attempt to hedge it's bets by starting to argue that if the climate data does prove the man made school of thought then the data itself and the way it was collected and analysed must be incorrect. However the OPERA results seem to be so so sensationalist and likely to be disproved it also seemed to me to be Italy mocking the US' attempts with UARS.
The relationship between US President Barack Obama and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has never been close with Berlusconi once appearing to racially abuse Obama. Berlusconi is currently under intense pressure domestically with several criminal prosecutions against him on going, the Italian economy close to crisis and the financial markets openly calling for his resignation. The main point of tension between Italy and the US at the moment though is over the Amanda Knox case. If you are unfamiliar with the case Amanda Knox is a US citizen who was convicted of the murder of Meredith Kercher, a British citizen in Perugia, Italy in 2007. She is currently appealing against her conviction and her 26 year prison sentence. Although her guilt is hardly in question on Monday (3/10/11) Knox is widely expected to be freed and allowed to return to the United States. The reason for this is Amanda Knox appears to be an actual sociopath. Although that term is not well defined and often over used genuine sociopaths are fortunately incredibly rare and female sociopaths are the rarest of them all. This means that Ms Knox's research value is immense and Italy and the US are actually arguing over who gets the opportunity to study her.
So while this years UNGA saw many plays, much pouting and a few childish tantrums around the issue of global warming/climate I saw little progress on the topic being made. As a result I'm not holding out much hope for COP17.
*seriously don't start thinking about the special theory of relativity when you're a bit stoned.
Edited at 23:18 on 30/9/11: Sorry I'm a little bit late but having being forced to wake up the physics bit of my brain I was equally forced to drink enough alcohol to kill it again whilst listening to Bob Dylan's re-recording of U2's Judas Tree album. I felt this was excellent but I'm still sending the tab to the Italians.
As for Micheal Jackson's doctors trial. I think it all started out as a rather rude enquiry as to why I'm unable to keep LA time. The simple answer to that is I woke up at about midnight this morning.
Anyway as for the OPERA results one possible explanation that has been suggested by string theorists is that the neutrinos were travelling at the speed of light. However they were travelling in a previously undocumented fifth dimension. If true this would finally unite string theory with the theory of relativity creating what has been dubbed "the theory of everything." Personally I don't see what's wrong with watching Strictly Come Dancing. After all Holly Vallance certainly seems to be packing them in.
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