HAINAN, China ? Matt Kuchar and Gary Woodland ended the United States' 11-year drought in golf's World Cup by shooting a 5-under 67 on Sunday to win by two strokes.
The American pair fired six birdies in the alternate-shot final round at Mission Hills Blackstone course to finish at 24-under, 264 overall, notching the 24th U.S. win in the history of the tournament.
English pair Ian Poulter and Justin Rose had the final day's best round with a 63 to tie for second at 22-under with Germany's Martin Kaymer and Alex Cejka (69).
Ireland's Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell led by two strokes going into the final round but could only manage an even-par 72 to finish tied for fourth with Australia, the Netherlands and Scotland.
The American victory was the first since Tiger Woods and David Duval claimed the title 11 years ago. The event was annual up until 2009, and this year's tournament was the first in the new biennial format.
"We really clicked. It's fantastic to win for the U.S.," Woodland said.
The U.S. duo built a two-point lead over Germany midway through the round and after a rare slip with a bogey at the par-3 11th, the Americans responded with birdies on the next two holes and then pars the rest of the way to claim victory.
"Undoubtedly the shots on the 12 and 13th were key. It was a great moment and to shoot a par when you expected a bogey," Kuchar said.
England seemed well out of contention heading into the final day eight shots off the lead, but soared into contention. However they needed more than one of the leading teams to falter. Instead it was only Ireland which came back to the field.
World No. 2 McIlroy was well below his best, hitting some loose shots, including a putt on the 18th which would of given Ireland a share of the runner-up check. The tournament favorites had a run of misfortune, including a penalty stroke on the 6th and four bogeys on the card.
They shared fourth with Australia's Richard Green and Brendan Jones (69), plus Scotland's Stephen Gallacher and Martin Laird (66) and the Dutch pairing of Robert-Jan Derksen and Joost Luiten (68).
Like Ireland, South Africa also had a pair of major winners who faltered on the final day, with Charl Schwartzel and Louis Oosthuizen only able to record a 74 to quickly drop out of contention.
Defending champions Italy, represented by Edoardo and Francesco Molinari, also had a final-round 74 to finish 17th, 10 shots back.
Big crowds on Black Friday can be both a blessing and a curse.
Early signs point to bigger crowds at the nation's malls and stores as retailers like Target and Macy's opened their doors at midnight on the most anticipated shopping day of the year and a few others opened on Thanksgiving Day. Shoppers were mostly peaceful across the country, but a few violent incidents broke out as millions of shoppers rushed into stores and tensions flared.
It started on Thanksgiving, when Los Angeles authorities say 20 people at a local Walmart store suffered minor injuries when a woman used pepper spray to gain a "competitive" shopping advantage shortly after the store opened.
Then, early Friday in Fayetteville, N.C., gunfire erupted at Cross Creek Mall and police say they're looking for the two suspects involved. Separately, police say two women have been injured and a man charged after a fight broke out at an upstate New York Walmart. And a central Florida man is behind bars after a fight broke out at a jewelry counter in Walmart in Kissimmee, Fla.
Later Friday morning, a Phoenix television station KSAZ reported that witnesses say police slammed a grandfather in a Walmart in Buckeye, Ariz., to the ground after he allegedly put a game in his waistband so that he could lift his grandson out of the crowd.
The incidents are the result of two converging trends on Black Friday. The crowds continue to get bigger as retailers offer more incentives and longer hours. At the same time, shoppers are competing for a small group of products, instead of years past when there were several hot items from which they could choose.
"The more the people, the more the occurrences," says Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst with market research firm The NPD Group.
Indeed, a record number of shoppers are expected to head out to stores across the country this weekend to take advantage of discounts of up to 70 percent. For three days starting on Black Friday, 152 million people are expected shop, up about 10 percent from last year, according to the National Retail Federation.
"I came here for the deals," said Sidiki Traore, 59, from Roosevelt Island, N.Y. who was among about 10,000 people who were standing outside of Macy's store in New York's Herald Square for its midnight opening.
The crowds are good news for retailers, many of which depend on the busy holiday shopping season for up to 40 percent of their annual revenue. To draw in shoppers this year, they pulled out of their bag of tricks. In addition to several retailers opening much earlier than previous years, some began offering to match the prices of competitors and rolling out layaway programs.
Shoppers on Friday, though, say they mostly are being lured into stores by the deals, including discounts of 20 to 60 percent on many items at The Gap and a $400 Asus Transformer 10-inch tablet computer for $249.99 at Best Buy.
After showing up at Best Buy in New York on Wednesday at 3 p.m., Emmanuel Merced, 27, and his brother were the first in line when it opened. On their list was a Sharp 42-inch TV for $199, a PlayStation 3 console with games for $199.99 and wireless headphones for $30. Merced says he likes camping out for Black Friday and he figures he saved 50 percent.
"I like the experience of it," says Merced, who plans to spend $3,000 to $4,000 on gifts this season.
To be sure, not every store was filled to the brim with people looking for deals on Black Friday. With so many major stores opening at midnight, crowds shopped early, staying up late to snag the best deals. That meant there was an unusual lull during the typically bustling pre-dawn hours when stores used to open their doors.
At a Target on Chicago's north side, for instance, crowds were light four hours after the store opened. And door-buster deals, including the typically quick-to-sell out TVs and gaming systems, remained piled up in their boxes. Shoppers pushed carts through mostly empty aisles while thumbing through circulars and employees - some in Santa hats - roamed the store. There was no Christmas music ? or any music ? playing.
Rebecca Carter, a graduate assistant, began Black Friday shopping at 11 p.m. on Thursday night and left Target around 4 a.m. carrying a bag full of pillows. Carter, who prowls Black Friday deals every year, said crowds were noticeably lighter this year as she and a friend picked up a television set ($180 for a 32-inch TV) and a laptop for $198, along with toys and pajamas.
"It's quiet," she says. "There were all these televisions still there. It was shocking."
It was the first year that Melody Snyder, 34 of Vancouver, Wash. had ventured out for Black Friday. She had braced herself for crowds and mayhem when she got to Walmart at 6 a.m. but was pleasantly surprised when she pulled in the parking lot. She found a number of gifts for her three kids but said she did find the store was sold out of a few of the big sale items, including certain Barbies and other toys she'd considered.
"It was a little intimidating," she said. "Then I got here and thought `Where is everyone?'"
David Bassuk, managing director of retail at AlixPartners, a consultancy, says retailers are going to have to do a lot of discounting during the holiday shopping season to keep customers coming back.
"Consumers have made it clear that they're only going to spend so much money, and the people who are going to get them to open their wallet first are going to win," he says. "This is a consumer who is smart and well informed but also cash-strapped and cautious."
_____
Retail writers Mae Anderson and Anne D'Innocenzio are in New York. Sarah Skidmore in Vancouver, Wash., Christina Rexrode in Cary, N.C., Ashley Heher in Chicago and Tamara Lush in St. Petersburg, Fla., contributed to this report.
Cattle raids are not new in South Sudan. But with a gun surplus left behind by two decades of civil war with Sudan, the raids are more violent, adding fuel to long-standing economic and ethnic rivalries?in the herding communities. South Sudan officially became Africa's 54th nation in July, but the young country continues to struggle with internal violence.
Tony Karumba / AFP - Getty Images
A herdsman from the Dinka tribe is pictured at a cattle-camp near south Sudan's central town of Rumbek.
BBC News describes the importance of cattle to the South Sudanese culture:
In many South Sudanese communities the cow is incredibly important.
It is a source of personal wealth, and young men cannot get married without paying a dowry of cows.
So, in what are very poor communities, cattle raiding has become a way of life for some.
To make matters worse, automatic weapons are everywhere, following decades of civil war.
In the past, cattle raids caused relatively few casualties. Now the guns boom, and scores or even hundreds die in a day - creating a commensurate desire for revenge.?
Tony Karumba / AFP - Getty Images
A herdsman stands among his cattle at a cattle-camp near south Sudan's central town of Rumbek on Nov. 13. One of Africa's longest-running wars left this land in ruins and battling a bitter legacy that threatens prospects for peace -- a stockpile of weapons spurring cattle raids and banditry.
Each year, several dozen smartphones land on our collective desks. They come in different shapes and sizes, boast different features and sell at different price points. We take each of them for a spin and review most of them, but only a handful really stand out. This is especially true with Android handsets, where incremental updates appear to be the modus operandi. Every now and then a device comes along that we really look forward to getting our hands on. Google's line of Nexus smartphones falls into this category, setting the new standard for Android each year.
In early 2010, the Nexus One became the yardstick for all future Android handsets and, later that year, the launch vehicle for FroYo. A year ago, the Nexus S introduced us to Gingerbread on the popular Galaxy S platform. Now, a few weeks after being unveiled with much fanfare, we're finally able to sink our teeth into Ice Cream Sandwich with the Galaxy Nexus, arguably the latest addition to Samsung's critically acclaimed Galaxy S II family. So, does this highly anticipated device live up to our expectations? Is the Galaxy Nexus the smartphone to beat? Most importantly, is Ice Cream Sandwich ready to take Android to the next level? In a word, yes. Read on for our full review.
You are here: Home / Featured / Experts Admit Fukushima is Causing Hidden Cancer Deaths
By Anthony Gucciardi Activist Post November 24, 2011
Health and radiation experts are now admitting that the Fukushima disaster is contributing to an unknown number of deaths as a result of increasing cancer rates around the globe.
They are also stating that these deaths will be ?hidden? from the public eye due to a lack of accurate identification when it comes to targeting Fukushima-related cancer deaths.
Of course the scientific experts are focusing primarily on the evacuation zone radiation and surrounding areas, despite the fact that Fukushima radiation is now so far reaching that it is?adversely affecting the health of United States citizens.
Another piece of vital information challenges the claims of many scientists that the radiation levels unleashed from the meltdown are too low to cause any public health concern.
The report, unleashed in late October, found that the amount of radiation released from the Fukushima meltdown actually?exceeded twice the amount that experts originally claimed.
Additionally, the study researchers stated that the amount of radioactive isotope caesium-137 released at the height of the crisis was equivalent to 42% of that from Chernobyl.
Officials cover up the severity of Fukushima and the true threat to public health
It seems that Japanese government officials and plant higher-ups are continuing to downplay the full effects of the Fukushima disaster.
From concealing integral information from the public to ignoring the real threat to public health, there is sincere lack of honesty and communication between many worldwide health officials and the citizens of the world.
Of course Fukushima impacts the health of citizens worldwide, not just inhabitants of the evacuation zone. In fact, researchers have found a large amount of radioactive material?exceeding that of the evacuation zone arrive in Tokyo.
Meanwhile, officials urge Tokyo residents not to worry.?What?s more, radioactive isotopes have even?been located in California, highlighting the ubiquitous nature of the radioactive material.
Maxim Shingarkin, an expert in nuclear and?radiation?security,?commented on the secretive and deceptive situation in Fukushima:
In fact, this statement came with a big delay. The operating company deliberately concealed this information. The explanation is simple ? the company is afraid that any checking by competent experts would reveal its inability to save the situation. Only recently, foreign experts founded a consultative body for the clean-up of the accident?s consequences. Moreover, the company is concealing the information about the amount of pollution of the environment.
Other experts have also begun speaking out. Marco Kaltofen, PE, of the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts, recently discussed current issues revolving around?radiation?exposure in Japan.
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A?Registered Professional Engineer investigating Fukushima nuclear material release, Kaltofen stated his findings?in a presentation entitled ?Radiation Exposure to the Population in Japan After the Earthquake?. Presented in Washington D.C. on Monday morning, Kaltofen stated:
The Fukushima nuclear accident dispersed airborne dusts that are contaminated with radioactive particles. When inhaled or ingested, these particles can?have negative effects on human health that are different from those caused by exposure to external or uniform radiation fields.
A field sampling effort was undertaken to characterize the form and concentration of radionuclides in the air and in environmental media which can accumulate fallout. Samples included settled dusts, surface wipes, used filter masks, used air filters, dusty footwear, and?surface soils.
Isolated US soil samples contained?up to 8 nanoCuries per Kg of radiocesium, while control samples showed no detectable radiocesium.
While experts have started admitting that radiation from the Fukushima disaster is breeding diseases like cancer after extensive denial, it?s about time that they also warned the public about the true severity of the issue.
Former Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer recently offered a critique of current Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, not because of the way Tebow plays the game but because of the way Tebow expresses his religious beliefs before, during and after every game. Today Tebow responded.
In an interview on ESPN First Take, Tebow was asked about Plummer saying that he doesn?t need to say he loves Jesus Christ all the time. Tebow responded that, in fact, he does feel the need to say he loves Jesus Christ all the time, and he has no intention of stopping.
?If you?re married, and you have a wife, and you really love your wife, is it good enough to only say to your wife, I love her, the day you get married? Or should you tell her every single day when you wake up and have the opportunity? And that?s how I feel about my relationship with Jesus Christ,? Tebow said. ?It is the most important thing in my life, so every opportunity I have to tell him I love him, or I?m given an opportunity to shout him out on national TV, I?m going to take that opportunity.?
There?s a distinction, however, between what Plummer criticized Tebow for and what Tebow responded to. Plummer wasn?t objecting to Tebow saying ?I love you? to Jesus. Plummer was objecting to Tebow saying ?I love Jesus? to the public, and saying it in just about every public appearance he makes. There?s nothing wrong with a man saying ?I love you? to his wife every day, and there?s nothing wrong with a man saying ?I love you? when he prays every day. What Plummer was saying is that he doesn?t think Tebow should inject his religious beliefs into a football discussion. Just as Plummer would, presumably, think it a little weird if an NFL player mentioned that he loves his wife in every interview.
But that leads to the next thing Tebow said in his interview ? that his love for Jesus is greater than a man?s love for his wife, greater than Tebow?s own love for his family and greater than Tebow?s own love for football, and so it doesn?t matter to Tebow what Plummer thinks. Tebow said his relationship to Jesus is more important than anything else.
?I look at it as a relationship I have with him, I want to give him the honor and glory every time I get the opportunity,? Tebow said. ?And then after I give him the honor and glory I always try to give my teammates the honor and glory, and that?s how it works. Because Christ comes first in my life, and then my family, and then my teammates. I respect Jake?s opinion, and I really appreciate his compliment of calling me a winner, but I feel like every time I get the opportunity to give the Lord some praise he is due for it because what he did for me, and what he did on the cross for all of us. I really appreciate his opinion and I respect him, but I still will give all the honor and glory to the Lord because he deserves it.?
Tebow added that he thinks being a Christian has helped him as a football player ?because it gives me a peace beyond all understanding and it gives me a sense of comfort.?
But Tebow did say he has no hard feelings toward Plummer, who has said he thinks it?s great that the Broncos are winning games with Tebow at the helm.
?Thank you,? Tebow reiterated he would say to Plummer, ?for the compliment of calling me a winner.?
Climate sensitivity to CO2 more limited than extreme projectionsPublic release date: 24-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andreas Schmittner aschmittner@coas.oregonstate.edu 541-737-9952 Oregon State University
CORVALLIS, Ore. A new study suggests that the rate of global warming from doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide may be less than the most dire estimates of some previous studies and, in fact, may be less severe than projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2007.
Authors of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and published online this week in the journal Science, say that global warming is real and that increases in atmospheric CO2 will have multiple serious impacts.
However, the most Draconian projections of temperature increases from the doubling of CO2 are unlikely.
"Many previous climate sensitivity studies have looked at the past only from 1850 through today, and not fully integrated paleoclimate date, especially on a global scale," said Andreas Schmittner, an Oregon State University researcher and lead author on the Science article. "When you reconstruct sea and land surface temperatures from the peak of the last Ice Age 21,000 years ago which is referred to as the Last Glacial Maximum and compare it with climate model simulations of that period, you get a much different picture.
"If these paleoclimatic constraints apply to the future, as predicted by our model, the results imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought," Schmittner added.
Scientists have struggled for years trying to quantify "climate sensitivity" which is how the Earth will respond to projected increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The 2007 IPCC report estimated that the air near the surface of the Earth would warm on average by 2 to 4.5 degrees (Celsius) with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial standards. The mean, or "expected value" increase in the IPCC estimates was 3.0 degrees; most climate model studies use the doubling of CO2 as a basic index.
Some previous studies have claimed the impacts could be much more severe as much as 10 degrees or higher with a doubling of CO2 although these projections come with an acknowledged low probability. Studies based on data going back only to 1850 are affected by large uncertainties in the effects of dust and other small particles in the air that reflect sunlight and can influence clouds, known as "aerosol forcing," or by the absorption of heat by the oceans, the researchers say.
To lower the degree of uncertainty, Schmittner and his colleagues used a climate model with more data and found that there are constraints that preclude very high levels of climate sensitivity.
The researchers compiled land and ocean surface temperature reconstructions from the Last Glacial Maximum and created a global map of those temperatures. During this time, atmospheric CO2 was about a third less than before the Industrial Revolution, and levels of methane and nitrous oxide were much lower. Because much of the northern latitudes were covered in ice and snow, sea levels were lower, the climate was drier (less precipitation), and there was more dust in the air.
All these factor, which contributed to cooling the Earth's surface, were included in their climate model simulations.
The new data changed the assessment of climate models in many ways, said Schmittner, an associate professor in OSU's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. The researchers' reconstruction of temperatures has greater spatial coverage and showed less cooling during the Ice Age than most previous studies.
High sensitivity climate models more than 6 degrees suggest that the low levels of atmospheric CO2 during the Last Glacial Maximum would result in a "runaway effect" that would have left the Earth completely ice-covered.
"Clearly, that didn't happen," Schmittner said. "Though the Earth then was covered by much more ice and snow than it is today, the ice sheets didn't extend beyond latitudes of about 40 degrees, and the tropics and subtropics were largely ice-free except at high altitudes. These high-sensitivity models overestimate cooling."
On the other hand, models with low climate sensitivity less than 1.3 degrees underestimate the cooling almost everywhere at the Last Glacial Maximum, the researchers say. The closest match, with a much lower degree of uncertainty than most other studies, suggests climate sensitivity is about 2.4 degrees.
However, uncertainty levels may be underestimated because the model simulations did not take into account uncertainties arising from how cloud changes reflect sunlight, Schmittner said.
Reconstructing sea and land surface temperatures from 21,000 years ago is a complex task involving the examination of ices cores, bore holes, fossils of marine and terrestrial organisms, seafloor sediments and other factors. Sediment cores, for example, contain different biological assemblages found in different temperature regimes and can be used to infer past temperatures based on analogs in modern ocean conditions.
"When we first looked at the paleoclimatic data, I was struck by the small cooling of the ocean," Schmittner said. "On average, the ocean was only about two degrees (Celsius) cooler than it is today, yet the planet was completely different huge ice sheets over North America and northern Europe, more sea ice and snow, different vegetation, lower sea levels and more dust in the air.
"It shows that even very small changes in the ocean's surface temperature can have an enormous impact elsewhere, particularly over land areas at mid- to high-latitudes," he added.
Schmittner said continued unabated fossil fuel use could lead to similar warming of the sea surface as reconstruction shows happened between the Last Glacial Maximum and today.
"Hence, drastic changes over land can be expected," he said. "However, our study implies that we still have time to prevent that from happening, if we make a concerted effort to change course soon."
###
Other authors on the study include Peter Clark and Alan Mix of OSU; Nathan Urban, Princeton University; Jeremy Shakun, Harvard University; Natalie Mahowald, Cornell University; Patrick Bartlein, University of Oregon; and Antoni Rosell-Mele, University of Barcelona.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Climate sensitivity to CO2 more limited than extreme projectionsPublic release date: 24-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andreas Schmittner aschmittner@coas.oregonstate.edu 541-737-9952 Oregon State University
CORVALLIS, Ore. A new study suggests that the rate of global warming from doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide may be less than the most dire estimates of some previous studies and, in fact, may be less severe than projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2007.
Authors of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and published online this week in the journal Science, say that global warming is real and that increases in atmospheric CO2 will have multiple serious impacts.
However, the most Draconian projections of temperature increases from the doubling of CO2 are unlikely.
"Many previous climate sensitivity studies have looked at the past only from 1850 through today, and not fully integrated paleoclimate date, especially on a global scale," said Andreas Schmittner, an Oregon State University researcher and lead author on the Science article. "When you reconstruct sea and land surface temperatures from the peak of the last Ice Age 21,000 years ago which is referred to as the Last Glacial Maximum and compare it with climate model simulations of that period, you get a much different picture.
"If these paleoclimatic constraints apply to the future, as predicted by our model, the results imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought," Schmittner added.
Scientists have struggled for years trying to quantify "climate sensitivity" which is how the Earth will respond to projected increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The 2007 IPCC report estimated that the air near the surface of the Earth would warm on average by 2 to 4.5 degrees (Celsius) with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial standards. The mean, or "expected value" increase in the IPCC estimates was 3.0 degrees; most climate model studies use the doubling of CO2 as a basic index.
Some previous studies have claimed the impacts could be much more severe as much as 10 degrees or higher with a doubling of CO2 although these projections come with an acknowledged low probability. Studies based on data going back only to 1850 are affected by large uncertainties in the effects of dust and other small particles in the air that reflect sunlight and can influence clouds, known as "aerosol forcing," or by the absorption of heat by the oceans, the researchers say.
To lower the degree of uncertainty, Schmittner and his colleagues used a climate model with more data and found that there are constraints that preclude very high levels of climate sensitivity.
The researchers compiled land and ocean surface temperature reconstructions from the Last Glacial Maximum and created a global map of those temperatures. During this time, atmospheric CO2 was about a third less than before the Industrial Revolution, and levels of methane and nitrous oxide were much lower. Because much of the northern latitudes were covered in ice and snow, sea levels were lower, the climate was drier (less precipitation), and there was more dust in the air.
All these factor, which contributed to cooling the Earth's surface, were included in their climate model simulations.
The new data changed the assessment of climate models in many ways, said Schmittner, an associate professor in OSU's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. The researchers' reconstruction of temperatures has greater spatial coverage and showed less cooling during the Ice Age than most previous studies.
High sensitivity climate models more than 6 degrees suggest that the low levels of atmospheric CO2 during the Last Glacial Maximum would result in a "runaway effect" that would have left the Earth completely ice-covered.
"Clearly, that didn't happen," Schmittner said. "Though the Earth then was covered by much more ice and snow than it is today, the ice sheets didn't extend beyond latitudes of about 40 degrees, and the tropics and subtropics were largely ice-free except at high altitudes. These high-sensitivity models overestimate cooling."
On the other hand, models with low climate sensitivity less than 1.3 degrees underestimate the cooling almost everywhere at the Last Glacial Maximum, the researchers say. The closest match, with a much lower degree of uncertainty than most other studies, suggests climate sensitivity is about 2.4 degrees.
However, uncertainty levels may be underestimated because the model simulations did not take into account uncertainties arising from how cloud changes reflect sunlight, Schmittner said.
Reconstructing sea and land surface temperatures from 21,000 years ago is a complex task involving the examination of ices cores, bore holes, fossils of marine and terrestrial organisms, seafloor sediments and other factors. Sediment cores, for example, contain different biological assemblages found in different temperature regimes and can be used to infer past temperatures based on analogs in modern ocean conditions.
"When we first looked at the paleoclimatic data, I was struck by the small cooling of the ocean," Schmittner said. "On average, the ocean was only about two degrees (Celsius) cooler than it is today, yet the planet was completely different huge ice sheets over North America and northern Europe, more sea ice and snow, different vegetation, lower sea levels and more dust in the air.
"It shows that even very small changes in the ocean's surface temperature can have an enormous impact elsewhere, particularly over land areas at mid- to high-latitudes," he added.
Schmittner said continued unabated fossil fuel use could lead to similar warming of the sea surface as reconstruction shows happened between the Last Glacial Maximum and today.
"Hence, drastic changes over land can be expected," he said. "However, our study implies that we still have time to prevent that from happening, if we make a concerted effort to change course soon."
###
Other authors on the study include Peter Clark and Alan Mix of OSU; Nathan Urban, Princeton University; Jeremy Shakun, Harvard University; Natalie Mahowald, Cornell University; Patrick Bartlein, University of Oregon; and Antoni Rosell-Mele, University of Barcelona.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Richard Muller used to be a global warming skeptic. A prominent physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, Muller didn't trust the level of rigor ? or the results ? of past climate studies. As he explained in editorials that were often cited by other skeptics, he thought the dramatic global temperature rise reported by NASA and many other groups may have stemmed from systematic measurement errors rather than an environmental catastrophe.
Instead of leaving it at that, Muller founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study in 2010 to do the job right. His team of statisticians, physicists and climate experts conducted an exhaustive analysis of 200 years of global temperature data, running 1.6 billion temperature reports from 39,000 recording stations through a complex process that filtered out questionable data and averaged the rest.
Today, Muller no longer doubts the reality of global warming.
The BEST team's rigorous analysis showed that the average global land temperature has risen by 1 degree Celsius since the 1950s. The finding exactly matches those of past studies by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA and others. But this time, Muller says that because his team cleaned up the data in ways no other study has, their result is rock-solid.
Earth's climate is extremely sensitive to temperature fluctuations: That one degree of rapid warming is believed to be driving major changes to weather patterns ? causing, for example, drought and rapid desertification in arid regions of the globe. The effects have been felt in the United States, with the Southwestern part of the country experiencing its worst drought in centuries. Global warming is also melting the polar ice caps, which, consequently, is raising sea levels worldwide and threatening to drown hundreds of coastal cities.
Furthermore, the vast majority of climate scientists attribute global warming to deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels ? coal, oil and natural gas. These activities have poured millions of tons of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), into Earth's atmosphere over the past few decades. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from about 280 parts per million (ppm) in preindustrial times to 392 ppm today, its highest level in at least 800,000 years (as far back as the ice core record goes), and probably higher than in the past 20 million years. Like the roof of a greenhouse, the thickening layer of CO2 traps heat at the Earth's surface, and if the rate of human carbon emissions continues to increase, global warming is expected to accelerate in the near future, so that by 2100, Earth will be at its warmest in millions of years. [5 Ways the World Will Change Radically This Century]
This is the consensus view among scientists. However, a small but vocal handful of academics ? some of them climatologists, others in outside fields ? believe the whole thing is a case of alarmism. Some argue that global warming isn't actually happening. Others concede that Earth is warming, but believe the process is natural (and has nothing to do with us humans). If they're right, then there's no need for the fossil fuel industry to cap carbon emissions, lesser developed countries should feel free to industrialize in the cheapest way possible (i.e. with carbon-spewing coal), and the rest of us can stop worrying about the fate of future generations.
But the Berkeley study shows with a high level of confidence that global warming is real, and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that we're causing it. So what, exactly, are the skeptics' remaining arguments?
It's urban warming
Pat Michaels, a climatologist and senior research fellow for policy and economic development at the Cato Institute, has written several books arguing that the danger of global warming is overblown. Michaels believes CO2 emissions are having a warming effect on the Earth, but it's so small as to be negligible. Based on his calculations, "it amounts to about four-hundredths of a degree [Celsius] of spurious warming in a global temperature record since 1979," Michaels told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. That's orders of magnitude less than the total warming observed by BEST, NASA and NOAA and others.
He attributes the rest of the warming detected by those groups to inaccurate temperature measurements made in "urban heat islands": cities where the temperature reads higher than in surrounding areas because of the way concrete, stone and brick building materials retain heat.
However, several past climate studies have debunked the claim that urban heat islands are so hot that they're being mistaken for global warming; the BEST study thoroughly debunked that notion again. Muller and his colleagues compared temperature data recorded at thousands of rural and urban stations around the world and found a negligible difference in the upward temperature trend exhibited by both. If anything, cities have recently heated up at an ever-so-slightly slower rate than rural areas (though the difference is not statistically significant). "The key conclusion," the researchers wrote, is that "urban warming does not unduly bias estimates of recent global temperature change."
Michaels, who has been criticized for accepting research funding from the fossil fuel industry, rebuts this by arguing that BEST's negative urban effect couldn't possibly be correct, and so the whole study should be disregarded. "Muller's study says that the effect of cities on temperatures is to cool the temperature. Well, I don't think there's a climate scientist around who believes that that could happen ? unless the cities are so polluted that the haze around them keeps the sunlight from hitting the ground," he said. "In China, there is some evidence that cities are cooler because of pollution." (In short, Michaels agrees that urban cooling can and does happen, but disagrees about the degree to which it does.)
It's actually getting cooler
Still, Michaels attributes almost all of the apparent 0.16 degrees Celsius warming per decade observed by climatologists to the bias of urban heating, rather than carbon emissions from fossil fuel use. However, he also says that even that warming seems to have stopped in the past decade. Similarly, Dennis Avery, a food policy analyst at the conservative think tank the Hudson Institute, and an outspoken advocate of pesticides and industrial-scale agriculture, argues that there is scientific evidence that the Earth has now entered a period of cooling, rather than warming.
"The U.S. Solar Observatory is now projecting decades of cooling as the current sunspot minimum continues ? and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation has shifted into its 30-year cool phase," Avery wrote in an email. "The outlook for Dr. Muller?s position is shaky indeed, following the cool winters since 2007." [If Global Warming Is Real, Why Is It Still Snowing?]
It is true that the U.S. Solar Observatory recently detected a decrease in sunspots, pointing to a decline in magnetic activity on the sun's surface. A drop in solar activity also occurred in the 17th century, and it partly overlapped with a period of unusually cold weather now known as the "little ice age."
However, mainstream climatologists do not believe that variations in sunspot activity actually cause ice ages, little or otherwise. The 17th century cold spell is thought to have resulted from an upsurge in volcanic activity at that time that cloaked Earth in sunlight-blocking soot. Climate models show that reduced solar activity can produce no more than 0.3 degrees Celsius of cooling, and a 2010 study in Geophysical Research Letters showed that, even if we are entering another solar minimum period like the one that occurred in the 17th century, its cooling effect will be (and is being) completely dwarfed by the warming effect of greenhouse gas emissions.
In short, Avery's global cooling hypothesis is not supported by scientific research. But he makes another, more compelling argument ? typically viewed as the most viable alternative to the mainstream view on climate change.
It's natural
Before he'll be convinced that humans are impacting the climate, "I would like some evidence that this modern warming is not part of the 1,500-year Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle, coming as it does at the appropriate time," Avery wrote in an email.
Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events are natural climate fluctuations that occurred 25 times during the last ice age, approximately every 1,500 years. The events are relatively brief, but can have dramatic, lasting effects on Earth's temperature. Ice core samples taken in Greenland reveal that, when these events happened, they were marked by rapid warming of up to 8 degrees Celsius in the Northern Hemisphere in just 40 years, followed by gradual cooling.
Avery says such an event is happening now. His argument that global warming is part of this natural climate cycle was the subject of his book, "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), co-authored with atmospheric physicist Fred Singer (who has also been criticized for receiving funding from the fossil fuel industry). Theirs may be the most common argument espoused by climate change skeptics.
However, most climatologists say this scientific-sounding argument is greatly flawed. First, D-O events did not cause the same global warming patterns observed today, but rather acted to redistribute Earth's warmth. Ice cores drilled in Antarctica show that equal-and-opposite cooling in the Southern Hemisphere balanced out the warming that occurred to the Northern Hemisphere during D-O events.
Secondly, D-O events happened during the last ice age, not afterward. There is some evidence that the current interglacial period may also be experiencing 1,500-year climate cycles, called "Bond events," and that these may be related to D-O events. But Bond events have a much smaller impact on temperature than did D-O events ? so small that not all scientists believe Bond events actually exist. If they do, then rather than being marked by dramatic rises in global temperature, they too cause a weak redistribution of heat around the globe.
Today, by contrast, all indicators point in only one direction: warming of the entire planet, and at a rate not seen during any past Bond event. The climatologist Gerard Bond, for whom Bond events are named, strongly disagrees with efforts by climate skeptics to use his research as proof that global warming is a natural phenomenon. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in a recent report, "The rapid warming is consistent with the scientific understanding of how the climate should respond to a rapid increase in greenhouse gases like that which has occurred over the past century, and the warming is inconsistent with the scientific understanding of how the climate should respond to natural external factors." [See graph]
It's an error
Some skeptics just don't trust the quality of global temperature data enough to believe that it can reliably show a warming trend.
All climate models rely heavily on temperature records from thousands of recording stations around the world; if the stations are inaccurate, they can skew the results. In fact, it was Muller's concern that past climate studies might rely on too much erroneous temperature data that led him to found BEST. Statisticians on his team employed complex error analysis, averaging methods, and clever data filtering to minimize uncertainty in their set of 1.6 billion temperature reports; the team also separately analyzed a subset of the data coming from only the highest quality stations.
Though they ended up finding the same 1 degree C of warming since the 1950s that past climate studies found, they reduced the statistical uncertainty in that result nearly to zero.
But Michaels has written several editorials since late October arguing that it isn't surprising that the BEST team detected the same degree of warming as other studies, because they used the same set of temperature data.
This is not the case. In their analysis, the BEST researchers used more than five times more data than prior studies; they also looked at subsets of data that excluded all data analyzed previously. "Using only these previously unused data, we find no statistically significant difference [in warming trends]," Muller wrote in an email. When Michaels' error was pointed out to him, he responded that he meant a different part of the study corresponding to temperature reports from 1800 to 1850.
Muller said that data was also new. "Our analysis from 1800 to 1855 obviously uses new data sets, since no other group has ever published results prior to 1855. From 1855 onwards, we have now done the work that I described above using the 77 percent of the stations unused by the other groups."
Muller added that the BEST study has been met with a flurry of similar false criticisms in the past several weeks. "Be aware that many people are giving their knee-jerk reactions ? without careful reading of our papers. That is unfortunate, but an inevitable consequence of the great interest our work has engendered. Our goal is not to convince people in the week or two following our release, but to convince them in the months that follow as they begin to appreciate the care that we took, and the validity of our analysis methods," Muller said.
It's unknowable
Some scientists believe that climate change and global warming are real, but think that their causes are unknown. In this small camp is Freeman Dyson, a prominent physicist at Princeton University.
"Of course climate change and global warming are real," Dyson wrote in an email to Life's Little Mysteries. "I am skeptical not about the facts, but about the claims of climate experts to understand the facts. To the question whether either the causes or the consequences of climate change are understood, I answer no."
Dyson believes carbon dioxide does have a warming effect on the Earth, but questions the extent of its influence. He believes climate models that strongly link global warming to the rapid rise in atmospheric CO2 are based on false assumptions about the effects of atmospheric carbon. However, in the past, Dyson has admitted that he does not know much about the technical facts involved in climate modeling.
These are the primary arguments made against global warming. The large platform given to those who voice them ? prominently by some media outlets ? has had an astounding impact on public opinion in the United States. A May 2011 survey found that only 47 percent of Americans attribute global warming to human activities, while 36 percent blame it on natural causes. A staggering 95 percent of people who reported being "disengaged," "doubtful" or "dismissive" of global warming had no idea that 97 percent of publishing climate scientists believe global warming is happening and that it is caused by humans.
It seems the media has inaccurately portrayed the climate debate by paying disproportionate attention to many of the unscientific claims laid out here. Is the damage irreparable?
This story was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on Facebook.
This is a big year coming up for Jeremy Renner. He has a major role in the upcoming "Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol," is one of the titular superheroes in "The Avengers" and is also launching a new branch of the Jason Bourne franchise. The latter is arguably his biggest project in the future, and [...]
Sustainability has not only become a science in the past 25 years, but it is one that continues to be fast-growing with widespread international collaboration, broad disciplinary composition and wide geographic distribution, according to new research from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Indiana University.
The findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were assembled from a review of 20,000 academic papers written by 37,000 distinct authors representing 174 countries and over 2,200 cities. Authors of the paper, Los Alamos research scientist Lu?s M. A. Bettencourt, and Jasleen Kaur, a Ph.D. student in Indiana University Bloomington's School of Informatics and Computing, also identified the most productive cities for sustainability publications and estimated the field's growth rate, with the number of distinct authors doubling every 8.3 years. The study covered research generated from 1974 through 2010.
By analyzing the temporal evolution (distinct authors), geographic distribution, the discipline's footprint within traditional scientific disciplines, the structure and evolution of sustainability science's collaboration network, and the content of the publications, the authors ascertained that the field "has indeed become cohesive over the last decade, sharing large-scale collaboration networks to which most authors now belong and producing a new conceptual and technical unification that spans the globe."
While specialized fields like the natural sciences have generally been concentrated in a few cities in developed nations, Bettencourt and Kaur found that sustainability science had a very different geographic footprint.
"The field is widely distributed internationally and has a strong presence not only in nations with traditional strength in science -- the U.S., Western Europe and Japan -- but also elsewhere," Kaur said. "It is also perhaps surprising that the world's leading city in terms of publications in the field is Washington, D.C., outpacing the productivity of Boston or the Bay Area, which in other fields are several fold greater than that of the U.S. capital."
Countries producing sustainability publications of noteworthy magnitude were Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Brazil, China, India, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Turkey. Productive cities included London, Stockholm, Wageningen in the Netherlands, Seattle, and Madison, Wis.
When they dissected the discipline's footprint with respect to other fields contributing to sustainability science, social sciences accounted for 34 percent of the output, followed by biology with 23. 3 percent and engineering at 21.6 percent. Within each of those leading fields, the authors then identified leading subfields in each group: Environmental policy was 20.2 percent of the social science output; weed management was 16.8 percent of the biology total; soil science was 23.6 percent of the engineering total.
The authors also found that sustainability science had a strong presence in smaller universities and laboratories and that the field had received support from cities and nations that transcended locations more commonly recognized in terms of strength of scientific production.
"The presence of political and economic capitals, rather than traditionally more academic places is a common trend throughout the world," the paper noted. Regional centers with high production included Nairobi, Cape Town, Beijing, Melbourne and Tokyo.
"We believe that all of this evidence, when taken together, establishes the case for the existence of a young and fast-growing unified scientific practice of sustainability science," Kaur said. "And it bodes well for its future success at facing some of humanity's greatest scientific and societal changes."
###
Indiana University: http://newsinfo.iu.edu
Thanks to Indiana University for this article.
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21 November 2011Last updated at 16:13 ETBy Paul RinconScience editor, BBC News website
A healed fracture found on an ancient skull from China may be the oldest documented evidence of violence between humans, a study has shown.
The individual, who lived 150,000-200,000 years ago, suffered blunt force trauma to the right temple - possibly from being hit with a projectile.
But the ancient hunter-gatherer - whose sex is unclear - survived to tell the tale: the injury was completely healed by the time of the person's death.
Details are published in PNAS journal.
"There are older cases of bumps and bruises - and cases of trauma," said co-author Erik Trinkaus from Washington University in St Louis, US.
Continue reading the main story
?Start Quote
Can we completely rule out a hunting accident? No. But it's less likely to be that than getting hit on the side of the head with a missile?
End QuoteProf Erik TrinkausWashington University, St Louis
"But this is the first one I'm aware of where the most likely interpretation is getting whooped by someone else - to put it bluntly."
The skull was unearthed at a cave near Maba, southern China, in 1958. Before it was buried, a large rodent - probably a porcupine - gnawed on the bone, removing a significant portion of the face.
Prof Trinkaus, who was part of an international team that re-examined the specimen, said the depressed fracture in the right temple region was the result of an impact that was "very directed, very localised".
Being struck hard with a stone cobble might produce this type of injury, the researcher told BBC News.
But he added: "One of the problems was that these people led rough lives. They were hunting medium-to-large animals at close quarters. And when you stick a spear in an animal, they usually do not appreciate it.
"They tend to kick and fight - and many of these animals had horns and antlers.
"Can we completely rule out a hunting accident? No. But it's less likely to be that than getting hit on the side of the head with a missile."
Survival instinct
In addition to the severe headaches it undoubtedly caused Maba man - or woman, experience of present-day injuries like this one suggests the person probably suffered some temporary amnesia.
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote that life in the natural condition of mankind was "nasty, brutish and short"; and the Chinese discovery is unlikely to change any modern preconceptions about the lifestyles of our ancient forbears.
But the Maba individual survived for weeks or months "at least" after sustaining the injury, based on the completely healed state of the fracture. And according to Professor Trinkaus, this presents an important flip side to the latest finding.
He told BBC News: "It's another individual in a growing number of human fossils going back in excess of a million years who show long-term survival with serious injuries and congenital problems - a variety of things along these lines.
"We have many instances of trauma - some serious, some minor. We also have a surprisingly high incidence of conditions that occur in the modern world but are extremely rare. So the probability of finding them in our meagre fossil record is extremely low."
Support networks
Whatever the reason behind this latter observation, he said, "they are surviving them remarkably well".
Researchers believe such evidence points to the existence of care and support networks within ancient human groups.
"They hit each other, they squabbled, they had weaponry - so it became serious. But at the same time, they were helping each other out," Prof Trinkaus explained.
The Maba individual was not a modern human like us; it instead belonged to a poorly defined population of so-called "archaic" people who were living in East Asia at the same time the Neanderthals dominated Europe.
It is possible that the Chinese specimen is linked to a mysterious population known as the Denisovans, who have been identified as a distinct group of ancient humans on the basis of DNA alone.
However, Prof Trinkaus thinks there was a population continuum across the Eurasian landmass.
The Neanderthals were the western representatives of this continuum, with Maba and other specimens representing an eastern physical form. "It's just that the Neanderthals have a name," he said.
SINGAPORE (AP) ? The effects of the European debt crisis and sluggish U.S. growth are radiating into Asia's export-driven economies, putting brakes on the rebound from the 2009 global recession.
Singapore, seen as a bellwether of Western demand because of its very high reliance on trade, said Monday its economy would likely suffer a sharp slowdown next year as export orders from developed countries wane.
Adding to the pessimism, Japan suffered its first drop in exports in three months and a top Chinese official predicted the current malaise in the world economy would be long lasting. The slew of dour news helped send Asian stock markets lower.
"Although resilient domestic demand in emerging Asia will provide some support to global demand, it will not fully mitigate the effects of an economic slowdown in the advanced economies," Singapore's Trade and Industry Ministry said in a statement.
Europe's economy is barely growing amid its ever widening debt crisis and sharp government spending cuts might tip the region back into recession. At the same time, the U.S. is dogged by high unemployment, making it difficult for the world's No. 1 economy to stage a healthy comeback from the recession sparked by the 2008 financial crisis.
Asia, led by China's enormous stimulus spending, bounced back quickly from the last worldwide downturn and gained increased global clout as a result. But the region remains reliant on Western demand for its cars, electronics, clothing and other goods.
The Asian Development Bank estimated that the 2008 financial crisis that sparked the global recession added 60 million people in developing Asia to the ranks of those already trapped in extreme poverty. That was in addition some 900 million Asians already living on $1.25 or less a day.
In bluntly negative terms, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan, who oversees trade and finance, described the global economic situation as "extremely serious," state media reported on the weekend.
"In a time of uncertainty the only thing we can be certain of is that the world economic recession caused by the international crisis will last a long time," Wang was quoted as saying ahead of annual talks between U.S. and Chinese trade officials.
In Japan, exports fell for the first time in three months in October, eroded partly by a strong yen. Exports declined 3.7 percent from a year earlier to 5.51 trillion yen ($71.7 billion), the finance ministry said. Shipments to key markets such as China, North America and the European Union weakened.
The world's No. 3 economy relies heavily on overseas demand to drive growth. The slowdown suggests that its recovery from the March 11 tsunami and earthquake is fading in the face of global headwinds.
Rising energy prices pushed imports up almost 18 percent to 5.79 trillion yen ($75.3 billion). That resulted in an unexpected trade deficit of 273.8 billion yen ($3.56 billion).
Economists predict Japan's gross domestic product will contract in the last three months of the year after a recovery in exports helped it surge 6 percent in the July-September quarter.
Momentum is also being sapped by a strong yen, which shrinks the value of overseas earnings when repatriated and makes Japanese products less price competitive. The currency levels have forced manufacturers including Nissan Motor Co. and Panasonic Corp. to shift some production overseas, a trend that could further undermine Japan's exports.
The Singapore government forecast that economic growth will probably drop to between 1 percent and 3 percent in 2012 from 5 percent this year. The island of 5.1 million people off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, relies on exports, finance and tourism to maintain one of the world's highest levels of GDP per head.
Citigroup said it expects Singapore's economy to shrink as much as 7 percent in the fourth quarter of this year from the previous quarter. That would be followed by a bigger contraction in the first quarter of next year, it said.
Economic growth in the U.S. and Europe will likely be hamstrung by government austerity, lower lending to households and weak labor and housing markets, Singapore's trade ministry said. It said its GDP forecast does not factor in "a worsening debt situation or a full-blown financial crisis in the advanced economies."
Singapore lowered its forecast for this year's export growth to between 2 percent and 3 percent from 6 to 7 percent after sales abroad contracted 1.1 percent in the third quarter.
The economy grew 6.1 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier.
___
Associated Press writers Tomoko A. Hosaka in Tokyo and Pamela Sampson in Bangkok contributed to this story.
MADRID (Reuters) ? Spain's center-right opposition stormed to a crushing election victory on Sunday as voters punished the outgoing Socialist government for the worst economic crisis in generations.
The People's Party, led by former Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy, won an absolute majority in parliament and is expected to push through drastic measures to try to prevent Spain being sucked deeper into a debt storm threatening the whole euro zone.
Voters vented their rage on the Socialists, who led the country from boom to bust in seven years in charge. With 5 million people out of work, the European Union's highest jobless rate, Spain is heading into its second recession in four years.
Spaniards, who voted in pouring rain on Sunday, were the fifth European nation to throw out their leaders because of the spreading euro zone crisis, following Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Italy.
The PP won the biggest majority for any party in three decades, taking 186 seats in the 350-seat lower house, according to official results with 99.95 percent of the vote counted.
The Socialists slumped to 111 seats from 169 in the outgoing parliament, their worst showing in 30 years.
Rajoy's bitter medicine for the economy will probably make things worse before they get better. But he has said Spaniards are prepared for the painful austerity that is needed to reduce a swollen public deficit threatening to push the euro zone's fourth economy toward a perilous bail-out.
"I ask you all to keep helping me. Difficult times are coming," Rajoy, 56, told ecstatic supporters in his victory speech at PP headquarters.
"Spain's voice must be respected again in Brussels and Frankfurt... We will stop being part of the problem and will be part of the solution."
RESIGNATION
Most Spaniards are resigned to deep spending cuts and see Rajoy as a better steward for the economy than the discredited Socialists, who they blame for failing to act swiftly enough to head off the crisis and then belatedly imposing biting austerity measures that slashed wages, benefits and jobs.
"Being a civil servant I'm not optimistic," said Jose Vazquez, 45, after he voted in Madrid.
"We can choose the sauce they will cook us in, but we're still going to be cooked."
Many leftist voters are fearful Rajoy will destroy Spain's treasured public health and education systems, but they were so angry at the Socialists that they fled to smaller parties such as the United Left, which made huge gains .
The PP, formed from other rightist parties in the 1980s after Spain returned to democracy at the end of the Franco dictatorship, won their biggest majority ever.
The Socialists lost badly even in their traditional strongholds such as Andalucia, the olive-growing region in Spain's sunny south. In some parts of rural southern Spain more than four out of 10 workers are jobless.
"Something's got to change here in Spain, with 5 million people on the dole, this can't go on," said Juan Antonio Fernandez, 60, a jobless Madrid construction worker who switched to the PP from the Socialists. "People like us just want to work."
Spain's borrowing costs are at their highest since the euro zone was formed and yields on 10-year bonds soared last week to close to 7 percent, a level that forced other countries such as Portugal and Greece to seek international bail-outs.
Rajoy will not be sworn in until around December 20, which could prove an agonizing transition if volatile markets push Spain's borrowing costs even higher because of uncertainty.
Closing his campaign on Friday Rajoy pleaded with investors to give him time to act, and could try to agree immediate measures with the outgoing government.
ESCALATING DEBT CRISIS
But a resolution may well now be out of the hands of individual governments, whatever action they take, with the escalating euro zone crisis now spreading under its own momentum in the absence of a united European response.
"Mr. Rajoy is coming to power when the euro zone's very existence is in question. Spain is now a test case of the measures needed to restore market confidence and improve creditworthiness," said Nicholas Spiro, head of Spiro Sovereign Strategy.
Socialist candidate Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba conceded defeat after a campaign where he had given up hope of winning but vainly tried to block the PP from taking complete control of parliament.
He failed to persuade voters that he was any different from his long-time boss, deeply unpopular outgoing Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
When the Socialists took power in 2004 Spain was riding a construction boom fueled by cheap interest rates, infrastructure projects and foreign demand for vacation homes on the country's warm coastlines.
Droves of young men dropped out of high school to take building jobs and bought flashy BMWs with their inflated wages.
But the government, consumers and companies were engulfed in debt when the building sector collapsed in 2007, leaving the landscape dotted with vacant housing developments, empty airports and underused highways.
In 1.4 million Spanish households no one has a formal job and bank foreclosures are rising. Close to half of young people are without work, and many of the rest are in temporary jobs with low pay and no benefits.
Facing a bleak future, tens of thousands of young Spaniards took to the streets earlier this year in the "Indignados" (or Indignant) movement, calling for complete political change and inspiring the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Like many Spaniards, Pablo Cortes, 27, who can only find occasional restaurant work despite his degree in architecture, saw no reason for optimism from the result.
"Does anyone really believe the PP is going to solve this? How, with more austerity for the have-nots and favors for the rich?" he asked bitterly.
(Additional reporting by Nigel Davies, Sarah Morris, Martin Roberts and Carlos Ruano in Madrid; Editing by Barry Moody and Angus MacSwan)
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? Filmmaker Christopher Nolan is finally ready to remove the shroud from his much-anticipated final "Batman" movie.
While the director's "The Dark Knight Rises" isn't due in theaters until July 20, fans will be reunited with Bruce Wayne -- and rival Bane -- via a prologue hitting IMAX screens December 21, Empire magazine reported Monday.
Nolan told the British film magazine that the prologue is "basically the first six, seven minutes of the film" and will serve as "an introduction to Bane, and a taste of the rest of the film." (Representatives for the movie's studio, Warner Bros., weren't available for further comment or confirmation.)
Nolan also told Empire that "The Dark Knight Rises" would be set eight years after its predecessor.
Christian Bale's hero is "an older Bruce Wayne; he's not in a great state," Nolan said. "Perhaps surprisingly for some people, our story picks up quite a bit later, eight years after 'The Dark Knight.'"
The filmmaker also discussed the movie's villain.
"With Bane, we're looking to give Batman a challenge he hasn't had before," Nolan added. "With our choice of villain and with our choice of story we're testing Batman both physically as well as mentally."
The "Dark Knight Rises" prologue will be screened in advance of Paramount's "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" and be rated PG-13.
This isn't the first time Warner Bros. has whetted Batman fans' appetites in this fashion.
In December 2007, the prologue to "The Dark Knight" was shown along with some IMAX screenings of the sci-fi film "I Am Legend."
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Public release date: 24-Nov-2011
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