Dwight Duncan To Retire

Earlier I had written on the impact of Premier Dalton McGuinty's resignation on the auto insurance system.  At the time I had speculated, as had others, that Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan would be running for Liberal leadership.

McGuinty had informed his Cabinet that ministers planning to run for leader would have to resign from Cabinet.  I can tell you from experience that this was a wise decision.  Back in 2002, when Mike Harris stepped down as premier of Ontario he did not ask his ministers to resign if there were running to replace him.  As a result Cabinet dissolved into competing factions and was pretty dysfunctional for a while.  I had an opportunity to observe this first hand when appearing before a Cabinet committee I witnessed a war break out over a minor regulation change being brought to the committee by the minister who was a leadership candidate where the committee chair was also leadership candidate.

My earlier post had suggested that with Minister Duncan resigning to run for leader, there would be little happening on the auto insurance file for some time.  Now that he appears to be staying in Cabinet there will be some opportunities over the next few months to move some auto insurance issues forward.  There will be no legislative changes with the legislature having been prorogued, but they may be opportunities to make some regulatory changes since Cabinet will continue to meet.

This window will be small with a leadership vote over the weekend of January 25th.  Shortly after the new premier will likely be appointing a new Cabinet before calling an election.  Since Minister Duncan has announced he will not be running for re-election, he will certainly be replaced shortly after the Liberal leadership convention.

So during this small window, if the outgoing minister still wants to make changes to the UDAP regulations or the definition of catastrophic impairment, it is possible.  In addition, since he is leaving office he may be may more willing to introduce changes that might be more contentious. 

So this change in events creates a different set of opportunities and possibilities, so stay tuned.  It could get interesting.

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Giving Customers What They Want

The headline is seemingly an easily understood concept but one which is rarely practiced by most companies, even big ones. Was on a flight on AirAsia, did you know you can get Chatime on the plane? What a surprising yet decisive move ... To me it tells of the strategy and mindset of Tony and his crew, to continually get the customers what they want. Yes, we still bitch about many things about AirAsia, but overall its a bloody great way to fly cheap.

An example of a company that does not give customers what they want is 7-11 Malaysia, and only Malaysia. 7-11 franchises in Thailand and HK are amazing. You do not just go there because its late and nothing else is open. You go there cause they have things you want 24-7.

Its so obvious that 7-11 Malaysia mostly stocks stuffs that "they can get a very long credit period". Am I wrong here? They probably operate as a cash flow cow, rather than investing in "real products consumers want", we only get to choose stuff whose "manufacturers can tolerate long periods without payment because their products are not so in demand in the first place". Naturally some things they cannot do without such as top tier soft drinks.

Just look at other competing 7-24 operations, they go the extra mile, heck one of them even has vegetables.

 

 

 

 

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Companies Buying Back Shares

It looks like share buybacks is back in the headlines again. My blogging life began officially in September 2005, and share buybacks was my very first posting. Seven years on, and the conclusions are still the same.
September 2005: Share Buybacks' Posting
What should investors’ opinion be of these share buybacks? Should companies make known their intentions?

We need to understand first why there is a stockmarket in the first place? First and foremost, it is there to allow companies to raise cheap funds to fund their growth strategies. Secondly, it is to allow for individuals and other entities to participate in the growth of these companies. Other reasons are secondary in nature. A company raises funds to facilitate corporate strategies, hopefully they will make money, preferably higher than the prevailing interest rate (if not, all funds should put money in the bank and close shop). Successful companies may keep accumulating profits to prepare itself for two general reasons: market down cycles, or in order to take advantage of opportunities when there is a market/industry correction/sell-down.

Companies should only indulge in share buybacks when accumulated funds are in excess for the above two reasons. This is because share buybacks will deplete reserves and may not be easily convertible to cash when there is a down cycle or market correction – the time when funds may be needed for those two purposes. Companies doing share buybacks must and should consider this aspect before embarking on the said exercise. Even then, the company can still decide on other options to do with the excess cash – give back to shareholders in the form of dividends or bonus – especially in a matured industry.



Companies raise cash for investing in growth, if they find no good investing opportunities after a prolonged period and cash flow is healthy, the funds should be returned to shareholders. Companies doing share buybacks are basically saying that that is the best way to spend their excess cash. To arrive at that decision, they must be convinced that their share is undervalued compared to their company's prospects. A company’s share price may not reflect its true potential – who knows the company’s fundamentals better than the people running them.

Then we have to look at why management is doing this – is it to improve share price via reducing the free float; and/or improve the earnings per share (but that only happens when they cancel the shares). If a company has to resort to improving their share price by reducing free float, it is usually not successful – a simple glance at the past 2 years' price performance of most of these companies will tell you that. By reducing free float, it is a futile exercise as the company will have to accumulate a significant amount to prop up the share price – that seems artificial no matter how you look at it as the only group really keen to own the shares is the company themselves.

Of course, share buybacks can successfully engineer higher share prices by massively reducing free float but they will have to meet regulations for minimum free float in the market place. The danger is that share buybacks can be taken advantage as “insider trading” by management as it involves market timing – hence the authorities must be more vigilant when it comes to the timing of share buybacks. If a company buyback the shares and do not cancel them, are they waiting to unload when price is higher? That is tantamount to trading in their own shares or having an investment portfolio. Is that part of the company’s normal course of business? Can this activity account for a substantial amount of profit for the company? How should analysts regard this profit – probably not enthusiastically as it is considered as a “one-off.”

It is safe to say that companies should make their intention known to the public when doing share buybacks – is it for future placements to institutions; to be cancelled, if so please state a time frame; not to be cancelled, but to be sold back into the market when price is higher; or to be disbursed as bonus. To me, that is vital information and I believe investors will rate the stock accordingly with the new information.



Bottom line, if it is not going to be cancelled, share buybacks are not really that big a positive in rating the company. Most times, companies who do share buybacks will not see significant improvements in their share price – investors do not rate a company higher because of that as investors are not buying the stock in the first place for various other reasons, and the free float is not really a major reason. Any worthy share buyback has to be cancelled for it to be effective.

Companies not doing that, need to ask themselves more questions as to why their share price is not at a level where it should be – are investors not happy with the management’s vision; is the company not communicating its plans effectively; has the company not been able to chart a credible track record; have the financial results for the company been haphazard or inconsistent; is the company too unfocused or too diverse that nobody even wants to follow/research the company; how is the management track record been in treating minority shareholders; have transactions or deals been really fair to all shareholders or been forced down investors’ throat (oops, getting too specific here) – chances are the stock will be rated properly if the above concerns have been addressed. Hence most share buybacks will not be entirely successful as it is fighting against the “enemy” when the “enemy” is really internal not and not external.

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TOP 10 SPACE STORIES OF THE DECADE

10. Saturn Moon Titan Explored

Saturn Moon Titan Explored

On Jan. 14, 2005, the European Space Agency's Huygens probe dropped through Titan's atmosphere after a seven-year trek attached to NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Huygens wasn't designed to live for very long after atmospheric reentry, but it unveiled a mysterious outer solar system world to us for the first time.

Before this mission, very little was known about Saturn's largest moon, and scientists were unsure whether Huygens would land on a rocky surface or in an ocean. Titan's thick atmosphere -- composed of primarily nitrogen and clouds of methane and ethane, about 50 percent thicker than our atmosphere -- signaled to scientists that Titan was similar to a young Earth.

Observations from the Huygens probe and Cassini spacecraft tell us that Titan and Earth share many features, such as sand dunes and lakes. But these features are heavily laced with organic molcules that could support life, leading researchers to speculate about Titan's potential to nurture microbes.

9. Moon Water Confirmed

 Moon Water Confirmed

India's Chandrayaan-1 satellite confirmed the presence of water on the moon in September 2009, building on flyby observations by other probes on their way elsewhere.

Although the lunar surface is still drier than Earth's driest desert, evidence of water is there, hinting at a solar wind interaction with the moon's surface that produces water and hydroxyl molecules.

It may not be an oasis up there, but future moon colonists could extract and purify the traces of water from the surface to use for drinking, food cultivation, oxygen and fuel. Or, our colonists could take a trek to the moon's poles to mine water from the deepest craters.

On Oct. 9, 2009, NASA dropped a spent rocket into a crater to produce a 100-foot-wide hole. They found water there too. That rocket produced a massive plume of dust that was analyzed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and ground-based observatories. At least 25 gallons of water ice was detected in the plume.

8. Organic Chemistry Collected from Comet's Tail

Organic Chemistry Collected from Comet's Tail

In 2004, the NASA Stardust mission chased after Comet Wild 2 to find out if the icy mass contained the building blocks for life, since meteorites found on Earth contained organic chemistry that originated from space. Sure enough, in August 2009, NASA announced that they had found samples of glycine -- an amino acid -- in Stardust's collection plates.

It didn't stop there, there's increasing evidence that exoplanets orbiting distant stars contain organic chemistry in their atmospheres.

In 2008, organic chemicals were detected in the disk surrounding a star called HR 4796A, 220 light-years from Earth. And most recently, NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes detected carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called HD 209458b.

These discoveries, sparked by Stardust, have transformed our understanding about how life may have formed on Earth. They also give us a strong hint that life may not be unique to Earth; the universe appears to be manufacturing organic chemistry everywhere.

7. A Supermassive Black Hole on Our Doorstep

A Supermassive Black Hole on Our Doorstep

There's a monster living in the center of our galaxy, 26,000 light-years from Earth.  By 2008, astronomers tracking the behavior of stars orbiting an invisible point confirmed that the monster is a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*.

A lone star called "S2," with a very fast orbit, has been tracked since 1995 around this invisible point. In 2002, Rainer Schödel and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics announced that the only explanation for S2's fast orbit was that it was circling a very compact, massive object -- a supermassive black hole -- that was stopping the star from flinging out of its orbit into space.

In 2008, after S2 completed one 16-year orbit, it was confirmed that the star was orbiting a black hole with a gargantuan mass of approximately 4.3 million suns.

The confirmation of a supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way boosted the theory that most galaxies contain a supermassive black hole at their cores.

6. Big Bang "Echo" Mapped for the First Time

 Big Bang "Echo" Mapped for the First Time

In June 2001, NASA set out to find the ancient "echo" of the Big Bang by mapping the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation that buzzes like static throughout the cosmos, using the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) .

When the universe was born, vast amounts of energy were unleashed, which eventually condensed into the stuff that makes up the mass of what we see today. The radiation that was created by the Big Bang still exists, but as faint microwaves.

By mapping slight variations in the CMB radiation, the probe has been able to precisely measure the age of the universe (13.73 billion years old) and work out that a huge 96 percent of the mass of the universe is made up of stuff we cannot see. Only 4 percent of the cosmic mass is held in the stars and galaxies we observe; the rest is held in "dark energy" and "dark matter."

5. Hubble Gets to Grips with Dark Energy

 Hubble Gets to Grips with Dark Energy

In 2002, the Hubble Space Telescope was upgraded with a new instrument,  the Advanced Camera for Surveys, that revealed the presence of a mysterious force called "dark energy."

The camera was set up to help researchers understand why Type Ia supernovae were dimmer than expected. Hubble's observations of these supernovae discovered that they weren't dimmer because the stars were different (they should all explode with the same brightness). The only explanation was that the universe's expansion was unexpectedly and inexplicably speeding up. This accelerated expansion was making the light dim over vast cosmic distances.

Hubble's discovery led to a better understanding of what dark energy is -- an invisible force that opposes gravity, causing the universe's expansion to speed up.

4. Eris Discovered; Pluto Demoted

Eris Discovered; Pluto Demoted

In January 2005, Mike Brown and his team at Palomar Observatory, Calif. discovered 136199 Eris, a minor body that is 27 percent bigger than Pluto. Eris had trumped Pluto and become the 9th largest body known to orbit the sun. 

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided that the likelihood of finding more small rocky bodies in the outer solar system was so high that the definition "a planet" needed to be reconsidered. The end result: Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet and it acquired a "minor planet designator" in front of its name: "134340 Pluto." 

Mike Brown's 2005 discovery of Eris was the trigger that changed the face of our solar system, defining the planets and adding Pluto to a growing family of dwarf planets.


3. Dark Matter Detected

Dark Matter Detected

In the summer of 2006, astronomers made an announcement that helped humans understand the cosmos a little better: They had direct evidence confirming the existence of dark matter -- even though they still can't say what exactly the stuff is. 

The unprecedented evidence came from the careful weighing of gas and stars flung about in the head-on smash-up between two great clusters of galaxies in the Bullet Cluster. 

Until then, the existence of dark matter was inferred by the fact that galaxies have only one-fifth of the visible matter needed to create the gravity that keeps them intact. So the rest must be invisible to telescopes: That unseen matter is "dark." 

The observations of the Bullet Cluster, officially known as galaxy cluster 1E0657-56, did not explain what dark matter is. They did, however, give researchers hints that dark matter particles act a certain way, which they can build on.

2. Mars Surface Gives up Signs of Water

Mars Surface Gives up Signs of Water

In 2008, NASA's Mars Phoenix lander touched down on the Red Planet to confirm the presence of water and seek out signs of organic compounds. 

Eight years before, the Mars Global Surveyor spotted what appeared to be gullies carved into the landscape by flowing water. More recently, the Mars Expedition Rovers have uncovered minerals that also indicated the presence of ancient water. But proof of modern-day water was illusive. 

Then Phoenix, planted on the ground near the North Pole, did some digging for samples to analyze. During one dig, the onboard cameras spotted a white powder in the freshly dug soil. In comparison images taken over the coming days, the powder slowly vanished. After intense analysis, the white powder was confirmed as water ice. 

This discovery not only confirmed the presence of water on the Red Planet, it reenergized the hope that some kind of microbial life might be using this water supply to survive.

1. Alien Planets Spotted Directly

Alien Planets Spotted Directly

The first alien planets -- called exoplanets -- were being detected in the early 1990s, but not directly. In 2000, astronomers detected a handful by looking for a star's "wobble," or a star's slight dimming as the exoplanet passed in front of it. Today we know of 400 exoplanets. 

In 2008, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and the infrared Keck and Gemini observatories in Hawaii announced that they had "seen" exoplanets orbiting distant stars. The two observatories had taken images of these alien worlds. 

The Keck observation was the infrared detection of three exoplanets orbiting a star called HR8799, 150 light-years from Earth. Hubble spotted one massive exoplanet orbiting the star Fomalhaut, 25 light-years from Earth. 

These finds pose a profound question: How long will it be until we spot an Earth-like world with an extraterrestrial civilization looking back at us?

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Cairo Confidential

Wanna feel like Indiana Jones? Here’s just the place for you ....

A diversion from the norm. Four years back I had the opportunity to go to Cairo. It was part business and some post-conference partying. That was when I still had a 9-5 job. Well, after the uprising in Egypt and ouster of Mubarak, no one should be visiting Cairo anytime soon till things settle down. I am so glad I was there before the whole thing blew up.
 
The long ride from the airport to the hotel was an eye opener. If you thought the drivers in Malaysia and Thailand were nuts, wait till you get in a car in Cairo. They cannot drive without their horns for sure. Cars slide in and out of lanes like well oiled machines. After ten minutes, I found a way to de-stress myself, just keep looking out the side windows, don't look ahead.

Crossing the roads would be a cinch for Malaysians as we are so used to dancing and weaving through the traffic – Malaysia's national sport? The difference being, its less stressful crossing the roads in Cairo than in KL. At least motorists in Cairo do not accelerate just as they have spotted you trying to cross the road. I have always wondered why Malaysians do that – do we really want to kill or scare the daylights out of pedestrians?

The buildings are in all shades of brown. I asked a colleague why is that and he explained that the buildings were brown, not by design, but as a result of the dust from the desert. Eventually, all the buildings ended up looking the same.

Egypt is an Islamic nation but you can easily find good places to drink yourself silly. Most hotels have a small casino (ten tables or less) but they are opened to foreigners only – still an interesting fact. And it has a fair share of dancing – there's dancing during dinner and at hotel lobbies, people simply break out in song and impromptu dancing in celebration. Extremely refreshing, to say the least. 

Walking around on the tourist trail, visiting the pyramids, the sphinx and museums can easily delude one into believing he or she is having an Indiana Jones moment. You almost feel like stealing some treasure or rescuing some maiden. 

The first impression, like most first impressions of things so widely talked, written and read about ....  is that the pyramids are much smaller than what you had envisioned in your mind. They are barely 10-12 stories high. 

The highlight of my trip was the camel ride. Its not the pussy 5-10 minute camel ride, mind you.

When the bus pulled up to this group of 70 camels and their drivers, I thought it was only going to be a five-minute joy ride and photo opportunity. But hey, it was the real deal. Imagine riding in a huge pack of 70 camels for 45 minutes traversing across the desert. Imagine Lawrence of Arabia leading a band of troopers to conquer some tribe.

In the distance you get to see the setting sun and images of the pyramids as well. That was golden. Many of my friends have warned me about the ruthless camel drivers who will try and fleece you for huge tips at the end of the ride. I was prepared for that.

My guide was a boy, probably 15, or 16 tops. The funny thing was he tries his best to “connect” with his customer with his limited English.

Here was the best memory from the trip. He kept asking me “Are you happy?” ... the first couple of times, I gave my polite short answers. When he gave me the same drivel for the tenth time, I lost it. He was like an old zen master disguised as a young camel driver. For the first few times, you'd answer “Yes, I am happy” but when continuously prodded on, you start to ask yourself “Am I really happy?”
You laugh out in sheer frustration, but against such a glorious backdrop you cannot help but marvel at the same question. 

Here I was on a camel ride watching the sunset, feeling a bit like Lawrence of Arabia, in the historical land of Moses ... seeing the sphinx and the pyramids in a distance ... If you are not happy NOW, right here, when will you ever be? 

But isn't happiness a lot more than just that? Do I have a happy soul? Am I really content? The temporary grandeur and material comforts fade into obscurity. Wow. It was more than just a camel ride (which in itself was excellent). Thanks to my “zen master”, I now “know” that I AM happy.

If you get the chance to go to Cairo, book yourself into one of 3 better hotels on the Nile (the Four Seasons, Hyatt and Sofitel). The room rates have not exploded yet and are about the same as in Malaysia. Funnily, there are about 5 casinos within 5 hotels in Cairo. They are not huge, open only to foreigners. Only 10 odd tables per hotel, but its fun to be in a casino (half empty) with table all to yourself.

Naturally you should go to any one of their museums, its incredible but go to one is more than enough unless you are a big historic buff.

One should also go on a dinner cruise on the Nile. It's frightfully romantic and serene. To think that things existed centuries ago in this exquisite historic city added layers of connectedness and warmth to the experience.

Not all things are wonderful, many of the retail outlets operate much like Petaling Street – you have to bargain like hell. Taxi fares are highly negotiable and many of the tourist destinations will be full of “modern day pirates” – plenty of people dressed in ancient Egyptian garbs wanting to take photos with you for free. But it's never free. 

In that sense the Egyptians are actually fighting with Malaysian taxi drivers for the trophy as the worst place on earth to get a cab. Not a place for two ladies, go in a group of 3-4 for safety in numbers.

 It was a unique experience to go to one where it is still very Egyptian and very local. I was never one to go abroad and clamour for McDonalds or KFCs but honestly, I found myself dying for some KFC after the fourth day. As it turns out, there is only so much of hummus, chickpeas, kebabs and bread one can consume. Can't wait for things to get better to go back to Cairo again.

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Woman Accused Of Committing Insurance Fraud From Inside Ambulance

This is an interesting story from Philadelphis where woman tried to commit insurance fraud — from an ambulance — after her vehicle was involved in an accident.

On the way to the hospital after she was involved in a four-car accident last October, Regina Whitehead did what most people do: She called her insurance company.

Only she didn’t call to report the accident, but to add comprehensive, collision and rental coverage, according to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office.

Recently, Whitehead was charged with insurance fraud and criminal attempt/theft by deception. The 22-year-old Ambler woman was arraigned before Bensalem District Judge Joseph Falcone, who set her free on $25,000 unsecured bail.

Both charges are third-degree felonies punishable by up to seven years in prison.

According to the AG’s office, Whitehead’s 1998 Ford Taurus was involved in the accident Oct. 6, 2011, shortly before 4 p.m. on West Chester Pike in Chester County. At the time, Whitehead was insured through Infinity Insurance, which has an office in Bensalem, according to a probable cause affidavit.

About an hour after the accident -- during an ambulance ride to Chester County Hospital for treatment -- Whitehead allegedly called the insurance company to add extra coverage to her car, according to court documents.

A few hours later on the night of the accident, she called Infinity to report she was involved in an accident and to verify that she had comprehensive collision coverage. She was told during the phone call that if she didn't have the coverage in place at the time of the accident, the insurer wouldn't cover the damage, according to the attorney general.

The next day, Whitehead spoke with an Infinity representative in Bensalem and specifically affirmed that her collision coverage was added “before the accident,” according to the affidavit. Later that same day, though, she withdrew her insurance claim.

The attorney general said Whitehead admitted last month that she added the coverage after being injured in the accident and while in the ambulance and then lied about it. “Whitehead said she did this at the advice of a friend so she would be covered by the insurance company,” according to the attorney general.

source

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TOP 10 EARTH STORIES OF THE DECADE

10: Four-Dollar Gasoline


Before the financial crisis took the global economy down a few pegs, soaring oil prices were among the biggest stories of 2008. A barrel of oil topped out at $147.50 that summer and many forecasters found it fashionable to predict that $200 oil was just around the corner.

Sale of gas-guzzling SUVs and other fuel-inefficient vehicles plummeted in the United States in the face of expensive oil. Huge amounts of money were funneled into alternative fuels and politicians rediscovered a verve for "energy security," -- a convenient rhetorical two-step that allowed lawmakers to leave the words "global warming" and "climate change" out of what had become a purely economical argument for fixing our energy woes. 

But oil is back down to about $70 a barrel, and the old 'energy security' line may be coming back to bite us. There are signs that Congress' climate bill is being diluted with provisions that encourage increased offshore oil and gas drilling on America's continental shelves. It makes you to wonder: If money (in the form of prohibitively high fuel prices) isn't going to deliver the kick in the pants necessary to get us off our addiction to dirty fuels, then what will?

Four-Dollar Gasoline

9: Pharma at the Tap


The waters we and other animals depend on is getting demonstrably richer in estrogen-mimicking drugs, as well as BPA, flame retardants, phthalates, atrazine and many other chemicals. 

The discoveries first came in the form of frogs and, most recently in 2009, fish changing sexes. 

That new research found far more of these chemicals in our lakes and streams than anyone realized, from plastic water bottles to prescriptions, pesticides and other man-made chemicals. 

And chemicals in the water might affect human health as well.

Pharma at the Tap

 8: Rapid Evolution


When Charles Darwin formulated his theory of evolution, he was thinking in terms of evolution over geologic time -- tens of millennia at least -- to affect genuine species-level changes in animals and plants. This decade has seen some science that seriously challenges that idea. 

Invasive cane toads in Australia were found to have evolved longer legs at the beginning of their invasion. Some of the native snakes the toxic toads have encountered have evolved smaller jaws so they can't eat the deadly toads. 

Elsewhere, one of Darwin's famous Galapagos finch is showing signs of evolving.
The list of animals that are showing signs of evolving before our eyes has been growing, providing a ray of hope that perhaps some species may adapt to and survive such challenges as climate change. 

Rapid Evolution

7: The Species Shuffle


This decade has seen some species pushed over and others pulled back from the brink, while others are going invasive in new ranges. 

In November, 2009, it was reported that more than 17,000 animals were near extinction.

Here are handful of other examples:

Polar bears: Whether they're going extinct or not, they have been iconic and arguably have created some momentum for acting to minimize human-induced climate change. 

Baiji: This cetacean has been wiped out by China’s rapid industrialization. 

Wolves, grizzlies, eagles: all are coming off the endangered species lists. 

Meanwhile, the Pine bark beetle, emerald ash borer, cane toads, zebra mussels and even many reticulated pythons have found some very nice new homes and expanding ranges due to human activities and climate change.

The Species Shuffle

6: Sichuan Earthquake


On May 12, 2008, the 19th-deadliest earthquake of all time struck, in southern China. 

The 7.9-magnitude event was the strongest quake to rock China since the 8.5 Richter Magnitude Chayu event 58 years earlier, when China was a drastically different -- and certainly financially less able -- country than it is today. 

The science of the quake and its thousands of aftershocks is still underway.

But the immediate reaction of the world was a dramatic reversal of the international animosity that had been building up regarding the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and the issues it had raised about human rights, air pollution and even the independence of Tibet. 

Many Chinese nationalist bloggers and radio personalities were startled by the outpouring of international support for the people of Shichuan.

Sichuan Earthquake

5: Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake and Tsunami


Viewed from space, perhaps, or the disinterested bird's eye views of computer simulations, the great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of 2004 would've been a quiet, curious event; a seismic pebble dropped in the Indian Ocean. 

To the small humans inhabiting this planet, the ripples that spread from Indonesia to the shores of East Africa were far more significant, a horrifying example of what Earth's tectonic twitches are capable of. 

The magnitude 9.1 temblor and the massive tsunamis that followed claimed close to a quarter of a million lives, making it one of the worst natural disasters in human history.

In the aftermath of the disaster, tsunami research has enjoyed a renaissance of funding and media attention. It's common knowledge, for example, that the giant quake sped up Earth's rotation and changed wobbled its axis. Efforts to educate people living in tsunami-prone areas have been stepped up.

Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake and Tsunami

4: Hurricane Katrina


Katrina was part of the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record. 

In 2005, there were 28 named storms, including Rita and Wilma, two more giant, intense hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Such a super-cyclonic season heightened public awareness and media interest in the possibility that global warming was making itself felt.

But does global warming mean more Katrinas? This question spawned several new investigations into a line of research that was first suggested by MIT meteorologist Kerry Emanuel in a study published a month before Katrina. 

His data showed an  increase in the strength of North Atlantic hurricanes in the past 30 years. 

The final answer may not yet have been written, but the most recent research suggests while the number of Atlantic hurricanes may not increase, the warming ocean temperatures is leading to more powerful hurricanes.

Hurricane Katrina

3: Emerging Diseases


New scourges from the animal world have been steadily slipping into humans and beginning fresh attacks, most notably in 2009 with H1N1, but also with Avian Flu, SARS, and Monkey Pox.

Also in this decade, tuberculosis has made a comeback with help from the HIV pandemic. 

Even wildlife faced increased threats -- outbreaks of old and new viruses and even algal blooms began to cause huge die offs—hundreds of bodies covering the beaches. 
Climate change is playing a role. Our impact on the earth: loss of biodiversity, dumping of pollutants, fertilizers into waterways, over-fishing the oceans -- all these factors have a role in the emergence of our oldest, and newest, enemies.

Emerging Diseases

2: Oceans in Crisis


The idea that our oceans are too vast to be hurt by puny human activities died a terrible death this decade. 

True, the oceans are vast, but human activities are anything but puny. Giant gyres of plastic have been found in every ocean, entangling wildlife and killing seabirds.

Excessively hot waters in the Caribbean and elsewhere have shocked scientists by causing coral bleaching. Overfishing is driving one species after another off our dinner plates, with one study predicting the collapse of most fish species by 2048.

If we keep adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, it could all get a lot worse because that gas enters the oceans and makes the water acidic, hostile to the shell-making animals crucial to marine ecosystems worldwide.

Oceans in Crisis

1: Glaciers Melt Down


When the 21st century began, scientists studying Earth's climate thought the gigantic ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica would melt slowly around the edges and lag behind the overall global warming of climate. 

But this past decade, the warmest on record, proved the climate modelers wrong.
Glaciers have been melting much faster than ever expected and researchers have been playing a hard game of catch up trying to understand why.

The uptick in melting ice has not been restricted to the Arctic and Antarctic. Europe’s glaciers are now thought to be entering their final decades. 

The famous snows of Kilimanjaro and other low-latitude mountains could disappear completely. The thick, perennial sea ice of the Arctic is fast disappearing, which will likely bring ice-free summers to the Arctic Ocean.

There are global consequences to this melting. Rising seas will make more cities and islands vulnerable to catastrophic flooding like that which nearly killed New Orleans. Mountain glaciers around the world bring fresh water to billions. Any way you slice it, an Earth with less ice is a less hospitable planet.

Glaciers Melt Down

source: http://news.discovery.com/human/discoveries-of-the-decade.html

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