Russian Navy Reports UFO Ocean Traffic

 We pick up a bit more data here from these reports, so they are worth reviewing.

The claim is made that the craft achieve remarkable speeds approaching 400 kps in the submerged state. That is certainly well beyond our capabilities and I think it surpasses the speed of sound in water.

Alternatively, the sensing hardware picked up a false image that produced this apparent speed. Either real or a false image, it would beg explanation.

The second claim is that the level of activity is much higher than anyone guessed. I had already presumed as much and it is nice to see this opinion been shared.

I have little doubt that these craft are designed to spend time underwater in order to enter Gates that access underground habitation that is sealed of from the sea. It is simply the best way for an advanced Space based society to operate on Earth. It is only now that we even have technology that is up to the task of working in this environment.

We can make the reasonable conjecture that the majority of UFO traffic is from Space habitats to underground habitats on Earth. These habitats are way more extensive than we can imagine and likely house a huge population in light of the level of traffic. Importantly little of this UFO traffic has anything to do with us at all.

Russian Navy UFO records state aliens prefer oceans

http://naturalplane.blogspot.ca/2012/07/just-facts-russian-navy-states-aliens.html

The Russian navy has declassified its records of encounters with unidentified objects technologically surpassing anything humanity ever built, reports Svobodnaya Pressa news website.

The records dating back to soviet times were compiled by a special navy group collecting reports of unexplained incidents delivered by submarines and military ships. The group was headed by deputy Navy commander Admiral Nikolay Smirnov, and the documents reveal numerous cases of possible UFO encounters, the website says.

Vladimir Azhazha, former navy officer and a famous Russian UFO researcher, says the materials are of great value.

“Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more – with lakes. So UFOs tend to stick to the water,” he said.

On one occasion a nuclear submarine, which was on a combat mission in the Pacific Ocean, detected six unknown objects. After the crew failed to leave behind their pursuers by maneuvering, the captain ordered to surface. The objects followed suit, took to the air, and flew away.

Many mysterious events happened in the region of Bermuda Triangle, recalls retired submarine commander Rear Admiral Yury Beketov. Instruments malfunctioned with no apparent reason or detected strong interference. The former navy officer says this could be deliberate disruption by UFOs.

“On several occasions the instruments gave reading of material objects moving at incredible speed. Calculations showed speeds of about 230 knots, of 400 kph. Speeding so fast is a challenge even on the surface. But water resistance is much higher. It was like the objects defied the laws of physics. There’s only one explanation: the creatures who built them far surpass us in development,” Beketov said.

Navy intelligence veteran, Captain 1st rank Igor Barklay comments:

“Ocean UFOs often show up wherever our or NATO’s fleets concentrate. Near Bahamas, Bermudas, Puerto Rico. They are most often seen in the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, in the southern part of the Bermuda Triangle, and also in the Caribbean Sea.”

Another place where people often report UFO encounters is Russia’s Lake Baikal, the deepest fresh water body in the world. Fishermen tell of powerful lights coming from the deep and objects flying up from the water.

In one case in 1982 a group of military divers training at Baikal spotted a group of humanoid creatures dressed in silvery suits. The encounter happened at a depth of 50 meters, and the divers tried to catch the strangers. Three of the seven men died, while four others were severely injured.

“I think about underwater bases and say: why not? Nothing should be discarded,” says Vladimir Azhazha. “Skepticism is the easiest way: believe nothing, do nothing. People rarely visit great depths. So it’s very important to analyze what they encounter there.”

Meanwhile Russian Navy officials have denied the collection of UFO-related encounters exists. A source in the Navy’s service staff said the story may have its roots in the reports of vessel commanders, which describe locating objects of unclear but Earthly origin. - RT

Antarctic Rift

It is certainly large but significance may be another matter. A mile deep is impressive, yet is only five thousand feet which describes every mountain range anyway. Besides the weight of ice has driven the floor downward. Nothing is said regarding how long the structure may be, nor if there is related volcanism. Both have a huge impact on importance geologically.

Otherwise we are slowly mapping the real surface of the Antarctic and that is interesting anyway.

This is part of a long process that is clearly well underway.

Antarctic: Grand Canyon-sized rift 'speeding ice melt'

By Richard Black

Environment correspondent, BBC

25 July 2012 Last updated at 13:11 ET

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18959399

A rift in the Antarctic rock as deep as the Grand Canyon is increasing ice melt from the continent, researchers say.

A UK team found the Ferrigno rift using ice-penetrating radar, and showed it to be about 1.5km (1 mile) deep.

Antarctica is home to a geological rift system where new crust is being formed, meaning the eastern and western halves of the continent are slowly separating.

The team writes in Nature journal that the canyon is bringing more warm sea water to the ice sheet, hastening melt.

The Ferrigno rift lies close to the Pine Island Glacier where Nasa scientists found a giant crack last year; but the newly discovered feature is not thought to be influencing the "Pig", as it is known.

The rift lies beneath the Ferrigno Ice Stream on a stretch of coast so remote that it has only been visited once previously.

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) project revisited the area two years ago in the person of Aberdeen University glaciologist Robert Bingham.

The plan was to make ground observations that could link to the satellite data showing unexpectedly pronounced ice loss from the area.

The team towed ice-penetrating radar kit behind a snowmobile, traversing a total of about 2,500km (1,500 miles).

"What we found is that lying beneath the ice there is a large valley, parts of which are approximately a mile deeper than the surrounding landscape," said Dr Bingham.

\

"If you stripped away all of the ice here today, you'd see a feature every bit as dramatic as the huge rift valleys you see in Africa and in size as significant as the [US] Grand Canyon.

"This is at odds with the flat ice surface that we were driving across - without these measurements we would never have known it was there."

###

The shape of the rift is shown in a radar cross-section of ice and underlying rock

The Ferrigno rift extends into a seabed trough, called Belgica.

The scientists suggest that during Ice Ages, when sea levels were much lower than at present, the rift would have channelled a major ice stream through the trough.

Now, they suggest, the roles are reversed, with the walls of the Belgica trough channelling relatively warm sea water back to the ice edge.

Penetrating between the Antarctic bedrock and the ice that lies on it and lubricating the join, the water allows ice to flow faster into the sea.

"We know that the ice loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is governed by delivery of warm water, and that the warm water is coming along channels that were previously scoured by glaciers," said Prof David Vaughan of BAS.

"So the geology and the present rate of ice loss are intricately linked, and they feed back - if you have fast-flowing ice, that delivers ice to the edge where it can be impacted by warm water, and warm water makes the ice flow faster," he told BBC News.

Prof Vaughan doubted there would be more such features around the West Antarctic coast, though in the remoter still regions of the east, it was a possibility.

Ice loss from West Antarctica is believed to contribute about 10% to global sea level rise.

But how the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets respond to warmer temperatures is the biggest unknown by far in trying to predict how fast the waters will rise over the coming century and beyond.

A total melt of either sheet would raise sea levels globally by several metres.

East Antarctica, by contrast, is so cold that the ice is projected to remain solid for centuries.

"Since the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report [in 2007], which highlighted uncertainties connected with ice sheets, almost every significant piece of research we've produced has increased the significance of the ocean for West Antarctica and Greenland," said Prof Vaughan.

"There are changes in precipitation now and in future; but the really big, potentially fast, changes are connected to the oceans, and the goal for us is to model that system."

German Solar Sets Record

Whatever one thinks about the economics of solar energy, public policy has caused it to be fully built out to the extent that midday production provided half of Germany's energy needs. Do the same with wind power and you have an integrated system that is flexible and at least half sustainable.

Find some shale gas and we can then see off the coal burners and the balance of the nuclear before we even begin to explore the Rossi reactor and other pending power solutions.

One important strategic result is that Germany is far less vulnerable to fuel supply disruption than it ever was and becoming more so. In an emergency, it can simply shut down or ration industrial demand in order to power housing. The system is certainly that robust.

In the meantime, Russia's strategic leverage with gas supply is been whittled away with a global glut developing for gas.

Germany sets new solar power record, institute says

By Erik Kirschbaum

BERLIN | Sat May 26, 2012 2:02pm EDT

(Reuters) - German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-solar-idUSBRE84P0FI20120526

The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022.

They will be replaced by renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and bio-mass.

Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs.

"Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity," Allnoch told Reuters. "Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over."

The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed.

Government-mandated support for renewables has helped Germany became a world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its overall annual electricity from those sources.

Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone. It aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

SUNSHINE

Some critics say renewable energy is not reliable enough nor is there enough capacity to power major industrial nations. But Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany is eager to demonstrate that is indeed possible.

The jump above the 20 GW level was due to increased capacity this year and bright sunshine nationwide.

The 22 GW per hour figure is up from about 14 GW per hour a year ago. Germany added 7.5 GW of installed power generation capacity in 2012 and 1.8 GW more in the first quarter for a total of 26 GW capacity.

"This shows Germany is capable of meeting a large share of its electricity needs with solar power," Allnoch said. "It also shows Germany can do with fewer coal-burning power plants, gas-burning plants and nuclear plants."

Allnoch said the data is based on information from the European Energy Exchange (EEX), a bourse based in Leipzig.

The incentives through the state-mandated "feed-in-tariff" (FIT) are not without controversy, however. The FIT is the lifeblood for the industry until photovoltaic prices fall further to levels similar for conventional power production.

Utilities and consumer groups have complained the FIT for solar power adds about 2 cents per kilowatt/hour on top of electricity prices in Germany that are already among the highest in the world with consumers paying about 23 cents per kw/h.

German consumers pay about 4 billion euros ($5 billion) per year on top of their electricity bills for solar power, according to a 2012 report by the Environment Ministry.

Critics also complain growing levels of solar power make the national grid more less stable due to fluctuations in output.

Merkel's centre-right government has tried to accelerate cuts in the FIT, which has fallen by between 15 and 30 percent per year, to nearly 40 percent this year to levels below 20 cents per kw/h. But the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, has blocked it.

($1 = 0.7992 euros)

San Artifacts 44,000 Years Old

What this continues to do is establish modernity back to 45,000 years ago. This is important because the conjecture that a first emergence of advanced technology on the continental shelf demands the global presence of this level of modernity within this time window. The prehistory of this level traces back at least another thirty thousand years on a global basis and may ultimately be traced back another 100,000 years in specific locales prior to global radiation. We have a lot of digging to do all over the globe.

Another key coincidence that has gone unremarked is that the Neanderthals largely disappeared from the archeological record around 40,000 years ago. Since they were our equals at least, it is not unreasonable that they merely gave up their hunter gatherer lifestyle and joined other peoples in developing the modern world on the continental shelf. Alternatively, they were subsumed into a rapidly expanding human population, except that likely failed to occur until 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture.

Recall the San survived outside the zone of agriculture rather well. The Neanderthals were surely as capable.

In the meantime, while we figure it all out, the San live as they always have for at least 45,000 years and we can read their artifacts because they are a living culture.

Researchers: South African fossils show modern culture may have emerged 30,000 earlier

By Associated Press, Published: July 30

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/researchers-south-african-fossils-show-modern-culture-may-have-emerged-30000-years-earlier/2012/07/30/gJQAcXEhKX_story.html

JOHANNESBURG — Poisoned-tipped arrows and jewelry made of ostrich egg beads found in South Africa show modern culture may have emerged about 30,000 years earlier in the area than previously thought, according to two articles published on Monday.

The findings published in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” show that the 44,000-year-old artifacts are characteristic of the San hunter-gatherers. The descendants of San people live today in southern Africa, so the items can clearly be traced forward to modern culture, unlike other archaeological finds, researchers said.

South African researcher Lucinda Backwell said the findings are the earliest known instances of “modern behavior as we know it.” Backwell said the discovery reinforces the theory that modern man came from southern Africa.

The carbon dating on the items shows that traces of the San culture may have existed earlier than the previous estimate of somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, the journal said.

The find, discovered at Border Cave close to South Africa’s northeastern border with Swaziland, is a comprehensive package of hunting kits and jewelry made of ostrich egg and marine shell beads.

Backwell, who was part of the team of international researchers that made the find, said the artifacts created as many as 44,000 years ago served the same purposes as they would today.

“They all have a specific reason we understand, that’s why we can name them,” Backwell said.

The researchers’ articles said the Border Cave people used poisoned arrows to hunt and put spiral engraving on arrowheads to indicate ownership. The latter practice has been preserved in the San culture, they said.

Professor Francesco d’Errico of the French National Research Centre, who led the research team, said that the findings tell of a people who were highly evolved.

“They were fully modern genetically and cognitively,” d’Errico said.

Their cognitive development is evident in their symbolic behavior, the professor said. The ostrich egg beads were not only ornaments, but played a major role in bartering with neighboring groups, he said. That practice continues today.

The paper claimed that the fossils show that all modern culture came from southern Africa, though the researchers acknowledged it remains difficult to pinpoint where in history that modernity began.

Eric Delson, a paleoanthropologist at Lehman College of the City University of New York, said that while the testing used by the researchers to determine the age of the fossils was very clear and reliable, the findings didn’t support the idea that all modern human cultures are connected to this find.

He said there is evidence that a modern culture already existed in Europe around the time the new find is dated.

“They say, ‘Modern human behavior first found!’” Delson said. “Well, not exactly.”

He did, however, applaud the research for finding the origins of one specific group of modern people.

Scientists from Britain, France, Italy, Norway, South Africa and the U.S. all took part in the research, helmed out of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Solar Energy Conversion Sprint

As mentioned this is a sprint race in the labs to pass the fifty percent mark. Forty three percent is pretty well down the road.

What no one bothers to mention is that commercial product is still running a marathon. The best is shipping with conversion levels closer to fifteen. See last story.

In fact, we cannot be too optimistic that this will improve soon. After all, we have been trying for years to make it better. We have unending lab improvements but a very slow transmission into deliverable hardware.

I would like to see more focus on structured quantum waveguides to see if that can change things.

The good news is that once you set aside the effort to maximize yield and turn to lowering costs, we are getting progress. Nanosolar likely achieves yields of around 10 to 13% but using print methods is bringing costs down to under $1.00 per watt. So we need 400 square miles of desert instead of 100 square miles of desert. No one will care because the cost is right and any improvement is easily implemented on a plug and play protocol.

The real sprint race is in the real world as the race is on to supply solar power at $1.00 per watt to everyone.

We are entering a new energy world in which we have a huge national grid, solar roofing and siding perhaps, geothermal and ample wind power and were needed and small nuclear were necessary to supply a central heat supply.

There are three separate stories appended.

Australians Break Solar Power Record

August 25, 2009

http://blogs.discovery.com/news_sustainable/2009/08/solar_power_record.html

In a record reminiscent of a 100-meter dash, scientists at the University of South Wales in Sydney, Australia, have created the world's most efficient solar power cell ever...by a hair.

Professor Martin Green and his colleague Anita Ho-Baillie led a team of U.S. researchers to victory with a multi-cell combination that is able to convert 43 percent of sunlight into electricity. The previous record was 42.7 percent.

To capture light at the red and infrared end of the spectrum, the researchers threw everything into the cells--gallium, phosphorous, indium, and arsenic, plus silicon. While a bunch of the semiconductors used are expensive, the scientists did raise the efficiency bar.

Ho-Baillie and Green broke a different solar record with a silicon solar cell last October. If they continue to combine their efficient cells with technology from the folks at the National Renewable Energy Lab and Emcore, maybe they'll make ones that can convert 50 percent. I can't wait for the sunny day when that happens.

New solar cell efficiency record set

By Noel McKeegan
22:36 January 26, 2009 PST

New world record solar cell (Image: Fraunhofer ISE)

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE have set a new record for solar cell efficiency. Using concentrated sunlight on a specially constructed multi-junction solar cell, the research group lead by Frank Dimroth has achieved 41.1% efficiency for the conversion of sunlight into electricity.

The breakthrough, which surpasses the 40.7 percent efficiency previously demonstrated by Spectrolab , involved the use of sunlight concentrated by a factor of 454 and focused onto a small 5 mm? multi-junction solar cell made out of GaInP/GaInAs/ Ge (gallium indium phosphide, gallium indium arsenide on a germanium substrate). Even at a higher sunlight concentration of 880, an efficiency of 40.4% was measured.

“We are elated by this breakthrough,” says Frank Dimroth, head of the group “III-V – Epitaxy and Solar Cells” at Fraunhofer ISE. “At all times the entire team believed in our concept of the metamorphic triple-junction solar cells and our success today is made possible only through their committed work over the past years.”

Multi-junction solar cells combine semiconductor compounds in layers to absorb almost all of the solar spectrum. The problem is that in combining these materials in a process known as metamorphic growth, defects occur in the lattice structure making it difficult to grow the III-V semiconductor layers with a high crystal quality. The Fraunhofer ISE researchers have overcome this issue by discovering a way to localize these defects in a region of the solar cell that is not electrically active, meaning that the active regions stay relatively defect free and higher efficiencies can be achieved.

“The high efficiencies of our solar cells are the most effective way to reduce the electricity generation costs for concentrating PV systems,” says Dr. Andreas Bett, Department Head at Fraunhofer ISE. “We want that photovoltaics becomes competitive with conventional methods of electricity production as soon as possible. With our new efficiency results, we have moved a big step further towards achieving this goal!”

Via: Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/)

Suntech Claims New World Record in Silicon Panel Efficiency

The Fraunhofer Institute verifies that a Suntech Power multicrystalline silicon panel has beaten Sandia’s record. Suntech intends to have a 300MW capacity to produce its new Pluto cells in 2010.

http://us.mg4.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.gx=0&.rand=0gr538qal0d57

Suntech Power said Wednesday it now holds the world record in producing the most efficiency multicrystalline silicon panels, beating a record previously held by Sandia National Laboratories.

A panel sporting the company's newly developed Pluto cells was able to convert 15.6 percent of the sunlight that strike it into electricity, Suntech said.

The Fraunhofer Institute of Solar Energy Systems in Germany, one of the few labs in the world whose test results are recognized by the industry, verified the efficiency of the panel. The panel rolled off a new factory line China-based Suntech set up to start shipping Pluto panels earlier this year.

The new record will be included by the science journal Progress in Photovoltaics (PIP) that periodically publishes a list of record-holding efficiency for different types of solar cells and panels.

"Improving the conversion efficiency of multicrystalline silicon modules has proven particularly challenging and this is a very impressive achievement for such a large module from a commercial supplier," said Martin Green, research director of the ARC Photovoltaics Centre of Excellence at the University of New South Wales in Australia, in a statement.

"I can confirm that the 15.6% multicrystalline module result is the highest known conversion efficiency measured by a PIP-recognized test center," added Green, who is on the journal's committee.

Suntech's efficiency number isn't much higher than the 15.5 percent record previously held by Sandia. But Suntech contends its panel could have surpassed 16 percent if it were tested without its frame, as was the case with Sandia's panel.

The new record is a boost to Suntech's plan to market panels assembled with Pluto cells, which it developed with technology licensed from the University of New South Wales. Suntech's founder and CEO Zhengrong Shi taught at the university for years.

The university holds the world record for silicon cells made in a lab, which were tested by Sandia and yielded 25 percent efficiency. Cells made in the labs tend to be able to achieve higher efficiencies than those from commercial production lines.

The Pluto technology focuses on improving the cell's ability to trap light to boost electricity production. Pluto cells also use copper instead of silver for its collector and bus lines, which act as highways for transporting the electricity produced by the cells.

Silver is the common material from these lines, but it can be pricey. Copper has similar conductivity but is cheaper. Suntech also uses less copper to further reduce cost, said Steve Chan, Suntech's chief strategy officer, in an interview. Chan who declined to disclose Pluto's manufacturing costs.

Pluto can be used to make either monocrystalline or multicrystalline cells. The technology has produced monocrystalline cells with close to 19 percent efficiency and multicrystalline cells over 17 percent, Suntech said.

In general, monocrystalline cells are more expensive to make partly because growing single-crystal silicon is more time consuming and energy intensive, but they yield higher efficiencies. Most of the silicon panels on the market today are of the multicrystalline variety.

SunPower, in San Jose, Calif., is known for producing the most efficient monocrystalline silicon cells for the market today. It is making cells with 22.5 percent efficiency. Its panels could achieve a little over 19 percent efficiency.

Suntech started shipping Pluto panels earlier this year, but the volume has been small. Suntech is producing them at about 1 megawatt to 2 megawatts per month, Chan said.

The company expects to ship 10 megawatts to 15 megawatts of Pluto panels by the end of 2009. Pluto panels have been installed in China and Australia. Suntech is waiting for IEC and UL certification to sell them in Europe and the United States.

Suntech is ramping up its production to mass produce them in 2010, when Suntech is set to have the manufacturing capacity to produce 300 megawatts of Pluto cells per year, Chan said.

Suntech already has a 1-gigawatt capacity to produce silicon cells with an older technology, making it one of the few in the world with that much production capability.

The company plans to convert its existing lines to make Pluto products, a process that would take about three years, Chan said. Suntech has historically produced mostly multicrystalline silicon cells. Chan declined to say whether the company would shift that strategy with its Pluto lines.

Suntech is scheduled to announce its second-quarter earnings on Thursday.

Nitrogen and the Ozone Layer

I find this particular conclusion rather odd and am rather curious how it is supported at all. There are two issues.

The first is that the bulk of atmospheric nitrous oxide is produced by lightning and a lot of that is at a high altitude making it easy enough to support injection into the stratosphere. The only high altitude nitrous oxide we produce would come from jet engines and it is hard to see how we could get reliable measurements to describe the effect globally.

The second is that it is a heavy enough molecule that combines with water vapor and becomes acid and is heading down to the earth as precipitation sooner than later. For this reason, it was left out of every one’s calculations when it came to treaty making. A more likely scenario, is that ammonia is oxidizing somehow as it rises to the troposphere and this factor may have been locally increased by human activity.

Beyond that, it again begs the question of why we need to be concerned. Here it is represented that it is affecting the ozone layer, but only in a way that is naturally occurring anyway and possibly going through major peaks every time a volcano blows up. Mother Nature is set up to process this particular gas. That was never true for the refrigerant that started accumulating up there.

The advent of the universal application of biochar in agriculture will lock up unused agricultural nitrogen as it is been deployed over the next few decades and this will bring all such types of concerns under proper control. Nitrogen will no longer escape into the hydraulic system and that which is there will be naturally consumed. Global agriculture will be able to operate with vastly less nitrogen been manufactured on a per acre basis with the biochar protocol.

If you are unfamiliar with biochar, search my blog. Otherwise, it is safe to assume that every acre of agricultural soil will by having a minimum of several tons of carbon in the form of biochar applied to the soil. The soil benefits are singular and the carbon naturally grabs free ions of nitrogen to hold until taken up by the root system.

Nitrous oxide is top destroyer of ozone layer: study

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Nitrous_oxide_is_top_destroyer_of_ozone_layer_study_999.html


by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Aug 31, 2009

Nitrous oxide emissions caused by human activity have become the largest contributor to ozone depletion and are likely to remain so for the rest of the 21st century, a US study has concluded.

The study by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency said efforts to reduce chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere over the past two decades were "an environmental success story.

"But manmade nitrous oxide is now the elephant in the room among ozone-depleting substances," said A. R. Ravishankara, lead author of the study, which was published Friday in the journal Science.

While nitrous oxide's role in depleting the ozone layer has been known for decades, the study marks the first time that its impact has been measured using the same methods as CFCs and other ozone depleting substances.

Emissions and production of those substances are regulated under the 1987 Montreal Protocol.

But the treaty excludes nitrous oxides, which are emitted by agricultural fertilizers, livestock manure, sewage treatment, combustion and certain other industrial processes.

Since nitrous oxide is also a greenhouse gas, the scientists said reducing emissions from manmade sources would be good for the ozone layer and help temper climate change.

Market Fears

I try not to comment on markets themselves because it is quickly a mug’s game once you begin paying attention to detail. However we are one full year past the 2008 market break. Since then the markets themselves have largely deleveraged. After all, brokers are never fond of extending much market debt in the best of times.

The first primary bottom shows on the charts in October of last year. After that the market deteriorated slowly toward a second bottom reached in the spring of this year a few percentage points lower. The joy got well spread around and during this phase markets consolidated as everyone checked their corporate health.

Since spring we have recovered back the few percentage points to the original primary bottom established during the initial collapse. At this point information is properly flowing again and corporate numbers are slowly improving. I emphasize the word slow here for the moment. The companies are still working with their banking arrangements to restore their own core liquidity.

This process needs a bit of time and we can also expect to see a lot of corporate debt offerings been peddled as companies replace gaps created in their balance sheets.

So the fear mongering presently been heard is a bit of too little too late. People see a rising market and think there is a building exposure while there is nothing of the sort. This rebound is reflecting a simple recovery of confidence to oversold markets. Not everyone is participating but those with strong balance sheets certainly are.

In the meantime, the US continues to avoid resolving the rolling foreclosure crisis by simply letting it accumulate. It will naturally reach the end of the road and we will have a massive inventory unsalable to those folks who have all lost their borrowing power. It will be long road back and we could well have a lost decade in terms of consumer borrowing. Also the consumer will be naturally cautious for a generation because of these events.

There is enough support out there to have a strong market quarter. It just needs a confidence trigger and we seem to be getting all the negatives expressed and eliminated. In short, it is time to be bullish.