The United States had a huge supercell that is already noted on this blog. It occurred because of the dense carbon dioxide layer PRODUCED in this country. The six people that died are as much the responsibility of any of us. If we don't stop doing this to Earth we won't have an Earth to live on. It has gone to far and now the Oil Giants that the current administration compensates with American Tax Dollars are seeing their role as greater and more extensive all the time.
It can no longer be a priority to drill deeper and longer to sustain an oil supply. We need alternatives and we need them now !
6 Die in Storms and Flooding
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOUISVILLE, Ky., Sept. 23 (AP) — Heavy rain, strong winds and tornadoes pounded parts of the Midwest and the South on Friday and Saturday, killing seven people and causing flooding that stranded others in trees and shelters.
Areas in northeast Arkansas and southeast Missouri received more than 10 inches of rain in 24 hours, said David Blanchard, a National Weather Service forecaster in Paducah, Ky.
Officials in Sharp County, Ark., were trying to “find and rescue anyone else we might have missed throughout the night,” said Tamara Roberts of the Sheriff’s Office.
Two tornadoes swept through south-central Missouri on Friday afternoon, damaging more than 100 homes and tearing off part of a roof at a middle school in St. James. Students at St. James Middle School said they had just completed a tornado drill when they were forced to rush back into the hallway for the real thing. No teachers, children or staff members were injured.
In Kentucky, two women were killed after trying to cross a flooded roadway in Lexington early Saturday, said Mat Ragland, a battalion chief at the Fire Department.
A driver in Jessamine County, south of Lexington, died after driving her pickup truck into high water, the authorities said. Another driver and his 1-year-old daughter died after skidding off Interstate 65 near Elizabethtown, about 40 miles south of Louisville, and another driver died in the southwestern part of the state when her car struck a guardrail.
In northwest Arkansas, Deborah Massey, 51, died when the boat she was in was struck by lightning, said Sheriff Tim Helder of Washington County.
Mayor Jerry Abramson of Louisville said that flooding had forced more than 100 people out of an apartment complex and that parts of Interstate 64 were closed in both directions because of standing water.
“At one point, just about every road in the county was flooded,” said Michael Key, a 911 dispatcher in Hardin County.
Thousands of people across the region were without power on Saturday, including more than 5,000 Louisville Gas and Electric customers.
Branson Pledges to Finance Clean Fuels (click on)
By ANDREW C. REVKIN and HEATHER TIMMONS
Sir Richard Branson, the British magnate and adventurer, said yesterday that his personal profits from airlines and a rail company that he controls — a sum he estimated at $3 billion over the next 10 years — would be invested in developing energy sources that do not contribute to global warming.
He announced the plan on the second day of the Clinton Global Initiative, a three-day meeting in Manhattan that amounts to a competitive festival of philanthropy run by former President Bill Clinton.
The money, Sir Richard said, would be invested in a host of alternative energy enterprises, including existing businesses within his Virgin Group, which consists of about 200 different companies connected in some way to Sir Richard’s sprawling corporate empire.
“Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents,” Sir Richard said. “It is in our hands whether our children and their children inherit the same world. We must not be the generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the environment.”
Several people working in climate research said the pledge appeared to be the largest individual commitment of money aimed at avoiding dangerous climate change by reducing dependence on fossil fuels that add to the atmosphere’s load of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping greenhouse gas linked by scientists to rising temperatures.
But it was not clear how much money will ultimately go to the effort, because the businesses involved cannot necessarily count on generating as much in profits as Sir Richard has set as his goal.
Sir Richard said his companies were already engaged in developing an aviation fuel not derived from oil, along with better processes for making bio-fuels from grasses and other crops. Conventional bio-fuels now require a great deal of fossil fuel to manufacture.
Sir Richard said the prime goal was not making money, but financing research on ways to provide energy in a world of growing populations and economies without overheating the planet.
“Some will be profitable, some will not be profitable,” he said at a news conference. “But the only way global warming is going to be beaten is to invest in new fuels that can actually replace fossil fuels.”
Ted Turner, one of the progenitors of 10-figure philanthropy with his $1 billion pledge to the United Nations in 1997, called Sir Richard’s plan a “brilliant move,” both as an investment and as a way to protect the global environment.
“I’m looking to make investments in renewable clean energy myself,” Mr. Turner said. “He’ll probably make more money off of this than he would off the airlines themselves.”
Sir Richard (he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1999 for promotion of entrepreneurship) is a household name in Britain, where he is known for outlandish self-promotional stunts, an avant-garde approach to business and a voracious appetite for new ventures, no matter how small or unusual.
Now 56, he began his career at 20 with a mail-order record business. It expanded into a record label that put out the first recording of the Sex Pistols, and went on to distribute Genesis, UB40 and others. Virgin Music was sold in 1992 for $1 billion.
His private company, Virgin Group, has played the parent to a host of different Virgin ventures from airlines to mobile phones to wine sales and railroads. The emphasis is always on presenting customers with a different, more entertaining way of doing something — often accompanied by blatantly sexy advertising or marketing.
Sir Richard usually owns a big chunk of most of these new companies. The complicated and often private books of the companies, some of which are registered offshore, are difficult for most outsiders to penetrate.
Like any entrepreneur, he has had some high-profile failures, like Virgin Cola, and a reality television show that never attracted much of an audience. But he has had equally high-profile successes. This year, for example, he sold Virgin Mobile in a deal that personally netted Sir Richard £690 million ($1.3 billion) in cash and stock.
His list of promotional stunts is long. He has dressed as a bride, a stewardess, a can of soda and a pirate. He has posed nearly nude in Times Square (to promote Virgin Mobile’s lack of hidden fees), and flown to press conferences via jet pack or dangling from wires off helicopters. Plans to sail around the world in a balloon were scrapped after several tries.
Like Donald Trump, to whom he is sometimes compared, Sir Richard usually operates with partners who often put up much of the money for his ventures. The transportation assets are co-owned by Sir Richard and other investors: Singapore Airlines owns 49 percent of Virgin Atlantic, for example.
Virgin Blue, the Australian carrier, is publicly traded, though Sir Richard retains a stake, as is Virgin Express, the European carrier.
In addition to the profits pledged to the effort, said Will Whitehorn, a Virgin Group spokesman, any money earned from sales of equity stakes in these businesses will be invested in the fuel ventures as well. He added that the group had already raised $300 million toward the investment, by selling thetrainline.com, a British Web site for selling train tickets.
Many experts say private and government research on nonpolluting energy options has lagged, even in the face of growing evidence of risks from rising concentrations of greenhouse gases. Should Sir Richard’s money flow as pledged, the research effort could end up exceeding similar efforts by individual governments.
In February, President Bush announced a bio-fuels initiative for 2007 of $150 million, nearly a 60 percent increase over spending on such fuels in the previous budget.
The overall United States budget for research in renewable energy sources like wind, solar, hydrogen and farmed fuels is a bit over $1 billion a year, but that amount is far less than what was spent during the oil shock of the 1970’s.
And while drug and semiconductor companies typically invest 10 percent or more of revenue into research, in the energy industry the typical research budget is about 0.3 percent of revenue, said Daniel M. Kammen, an energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley.
Kathleen D. McCarthy, director of the Center for the Study of Philanthropy at the City University of New York Graduate Center, said the scale, duration and style of Sir Richard’s pledge were indicative of a deep shift in the way wealthy people were pursuing a legacy.
“This is all new — the scale, the vision, the techniques and the decentralized nature of it,” she said. “Branson is also specifically focusing on an issue that’s not being adequately addressed.’’
Sir Richard said his new commitment grew out of a visit to his London home a few months ago by former Vice President Al Gore, who is on a prolonged worldwide speaking tour to promote “An Inconvenient Truth,” his documentary and book about global warming.
“You are in a position maybe to make a difference,” Sir Richard said Mr. Gore told him. “If you can make a giant step forward other people will follow.”
Andrew C. Revkin reported from New York and Heather Timmons from London.
A Series
The Energy Challenge
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/science/earth/energy.html
