Buffett ‘becomes world’s richest’

US investment guru Warren Buffett has ousted his friend and occasional bridge partner Bill Gates as the world’s richest man, Forbes magazine says. The Microsoft co-founder had topped the Forbes business magazine’s rich-list for the past 13 years. Mr Buffett’s wealth increased by $10bn (£5bn) last year to $62bn. Mr Gates’s fortune climbed by $2bn during the same period, dragging him down to third on the list with a fortune of $58bn. He was narrowly pipped into second place by the Mexican communications magnate Carlos Slim Helu, whose $60bn net worth has doubled in the past two years, Forbes reports. A record 1,125 individuals with a combined net worth of $4.4 trillion made it into Forbes’ 2008 list of billionaires. The reason for this explosion in wealth is that we’re in the midst of a phenomenal global boom,” said Steve Forbes, chief executive of Forbes magazine.

“Never before in human history have so many people in so many parts of the world advanced so quickly economically as has happened in recent years.” Two-thirds of those on the list are classified as self-made billionaires, and 50 of them are under the age of 40.

Mark Zuckerberg, 23, the founder of the social networking site Facebook, joins the list as the world’s youngest billionaire. His $1.5bn fortune makes him the world’s 785th richest person, Forbes reports. Patrice Motsepe joins the list as South Africa’s first black billionaire with a net worth of $2.4bn. The world’s richest woman is the French L’Oreal chief, Liliane Bettencourt, 17th on the Forbes list with a net wealth of $22.9bn. Other inclusions in the ultra-rich list include US chat-show host Oprah Winfrey, ($2.5bn), property mogul Donald Trump ($3bn), and Harry Potter author JK Rowling ($1bn).

Wow. JKR’s a billionaire!? That’s pretty cool. I inspired a billionaire!

Dept of Homeland Security issues an alert… about itself.

Bribery. Drug trafficking. Migrant smuggling.U.S. Customs and Border Protection is supposed to stop these types of crimes. Instead, so many of its officers have been charged with committing those crimes themselves that their boss in Washington recently issued an alert about the ”disturbing events” and the “increase in the number of employee arrests.”Thomas S. Winkowski, assistant commissioner of field operations, wrote a memo to more than 20,000 officers nationwide noting that employees must behave professionally at all times — even when not on the job.

”It is our responsibility to uphold the laws, not break the law,” Winkowski wrote in the Nov. 16 memo obtained by The Miami Herald.

Winkowski’s memo cites employee arrests involving domestic violence, DUI and drug possession. But court records show Customs officers and other Department of Homeland Security employees from South Florida to the Mexican border states have been charged with dozens of far more serious offenses.

Among them: A Customs and Border Protection officer at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport was charged in February with conspiring to assist a New York drug ring under investigation by tapping into sensitive federal databases. – miamiherald

Why do many Americans think that their government is some big perfect godlike thing that will protect them? It isn’t. Neither is it an evil force. It is a human force and as such it needs constant working checks and balances to keep people from exploiting power. That’s why Bush’s Patriot Act and other Big Brother ideas must be undone or reworked to include public oversight.

Ozone: Deplete it and the Earth cools.

click to enlarge

The information about the ozone layer on wikipedia is a bit difficult to understand, but basically, “ozone warms the stratosphere by absorbing both infrared and ultraviolet radiation; thus ozone loss in that region should lead to cooling.” – ucar

Although ozone depletion cools the Earth’s surface, repairing stratospheric ozone is important to block harmful ultraviolet radiation. – spacetoday

Detail from wiki:

• The same CO₂ radiative forcing that produces near-surface global warming is expected to cool the stratosphere. This cooling, in turn, is expected to produce a relative increase in ozone (O₃) depletion and the frequency of ozone holes
• Conversely, ozone depletion represents a radiative forcing of the climate system. There are two opposing effects: Reduced ozone causes the stratosphere to absorb less solar radiation, thus cooling the stratosphere while warming the troposphere; the resulting colder stratosphere emits less long-wave radiation downward, thus cooling the troposphere. Overall, the cooling dominates; the IPCC concludes that “observed stratospheric O₃ losses over the past two decades have caused a negative forcing of the surface-troposphere system“^[37] of about −0.15 ± 0.10 watts per square meter (W/m²).^[38]

• One of the strongest predictions of the greenhouse effect theory is that the stratosphere will cool. Although this cooling has been observed, it is not trivial to separate the effects of changes in the concentration of greenhouse gases and ozone depletion since both will lead to cooling. However, this can be done by numerical stratospheric modeling. Results from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory show that above 20 km (12.4 miles), the greenhouse gases dominate the cooling.^[39]

• Ozone depleting chemicals are also greenhouse gases. The increases in concentrations of these chemicals have produced 0.34 ± 0.03 W/m² of radiative forcing, corresponding to about 14% of the total radiative forcing from increases in the concentrations of well-mixed greenhouse gases.^[38]