I gotta take a look at Ria Novosti more often. Past, brief glances at the English language products of this Russian news agency left an impression it's after the same sort of audience as the Daily Mail in the UK, with the same relationship with truth and perspective. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it has revamped things. Maybe both. Maybe I mixed it up with pravda.ru (which really is odd, as see this lunatic rant on its page today). Check out RIA Novosti's science home page. It looks reasonably reasonable with some but not too many extravagant flourishes and the likes of !!!!! in heds. As an old aviation buff I was amazed to read there that the Pentagon is buying 30 Russian Mi-17 military transport helicopters from their state-corporation manufacturer. Say what? Turns out we won't use them. They are gifts from the US to the Afghan military.
Such thoughts arise due to this, featured also on the preceding link to RN's daily science roundup:
- Ria Novosti – Karin Zeitvogel: Space Storm Could Black Out US East Coast for Two Years – Expert. The story does lede with a most extreme and rather unlikely yet inevitable possibility – a mega solar storm and resulting geomagnetic chaos that fries transformers and blows out other power and communicaition lines. But the story generally holds up, to the eye, with multiple sources, well-cited quotes, and links to match. There is nothing radically new in science's view of the threat posed by powerful and extensive coronal mass ejections that might be ejected straight at Earth. But this story is a service. The writer is a DC-based, general-assignment multi-media freelancer. Could it be that Ria Novosti is a place to consider for story pitches?
Other Stories:
- Gannett (via CentralJersey.com) Ledyard King: Space weather needs more attention ; Not nearly as apocalyptic in verbiage as the RIA Novosti story. It does say we could be in for some tough times – such as that the total economic damage of a major solar storm washing across Earth "could reach $2 trillion, some 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina." That's up there – like what'll occur should another mega-disaster occur in our lifetimes and that geologists say could blow up any time: a Cascadia subduction zone 9.0 magnitude quake off northernmost California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. It'd be like and maybe worse than the big one that hammered and flooded Japan, knocking out the Fukushima reactor. Hmm. Gotta stop free-associating and get back on subject now.
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Space.com – Denise Chow: Space Weather on Par With Tornado Threat, NASA Chief Says ; Good story as far as it goes but one bets that somebody at NOAA is grinding teeth about now. This dispatch lets NASA steal the show. NOAA hosted the meeting (organized jointly by several gov't agencies) and runs the nation's Space Weather Prediction Center. NASA honcho Charles Bolden in that photo gave his remarks from behind NOAA's podium. NOAA had its people at the meeting saying ominous things as well. A reporter's free to go with the news flow. NASA is vital in this area. Bolden's not nobody and NASA did put out its own bulletin inviting press to the program. But the public should also be told, in a story about this meeting, which agency has the space weather warning job.
Grist for the Mill: Space Weather Enterprise Forum agenda with some pdfs of talks; General Meeting site ;
Hardly related discovery :
While putting together this posts and thinking about the overlaps in NOAA and NASA missions, two very similarly-titled web operations but in very different spirits crossed the screen. One is the celebrated NASA Watch site that Keith Cowing founded ever so many years ago. It is an independent cheering and gadfly outlet to ride herd on NASA's politics and missions. Cowing and his stable of contributors love NASA, which is why the site includes pot shots whenever the space agency screws up or wanders off what one might perceive as the sensible path. It even ran a post referring to the RIA Novosti story highlighted above. The other is NOAAWatch. Great, I first thought on seeing a link to it. Somebody is doing a Cowing on NOAA. Every agency should get one. No such luck. NOAAWatch is an official NOAA site that shares with the public its version of current hazards and other news from fields in its purview. That's a decent service by a vital federal agency. But, perhaps inadvertently, it trades and treads upon a name with a more yeasty news association.
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