According to major news sources, including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, major budget shortfalls in Arizona will result in the closure of 13 state parks by June.  Eight others have already been closed.

The Los Angeles Times:

The action represents the largest closure of state parks in the nation, although several other states are considering similar moves.

“It’s a dark day for the Arizona state parks system,” said Renee Bahl, the system’s executive director.

“We have 65,000 acres around the state and the majority of them are closing.”

The Arizona parks receive about 2.3 million visitors per year who bring about $266 million into the state, Bahl said.

The New York Times:

The Arizona State Parks Board has voted unanimously to close 13 parks in response to budget cuts.

The Washington Post:

The Arizona State Parks Board is closing some of the state’s iconic Old West landmarks, including the Tombstone Courthouse in one of the West’s most storied towns, and the Yuma Territorial Prison, which housed hundreds of Old West outlaws and was portrayed in the film “3:10 to Yuma.”

The decision also closes parks such as Red Rock State Park near Sedona that draw tens of thousands of tourists a year.

The Legislature has cut 61 percent of the state parks budget since July.

In a Huffington Post editorial, Chad Campbell, the House Democratic Whip in the Arizona State Legislature, describes the reappropriation of a quarter of a million dollars meant for state parks:

GOP legislators recently pilfered a nearly $250,000 gift left by an elderly woman – now deceased – for the Arizona State Parks system.

The severity of budget cuts in Arizona is quite disturbing, but the cuts to State Parks have touched an especially raw nerve. In 2003, 82-year-old Asta Forrest left nearly $250,000 to the Arizona State Parks Board. This Danish immigrant’s gift to Arizona was inspired by her love of its beautiful natural surroundings.

It’s ironic that, in today’s rough economic times, state parks are being closed.  During the Great Depression, construction of state parks provided need work for thousands of young men in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

.

Many scientists and others who are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming would like the answer to one question that, so far, has not been answered:

While there is laboratory evidence that carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide and global temperature have both been rising, real world proof that CO2 has caused the rise in global temperature does NOT exist.

While, at times,  there appears to be a rough correlation between CO2 and global temperature, correlation does not prove causation.

Even though anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis, it is likely that some historical warming resulted from carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by humans. However, because of the physical properties of CO2, it’s done all the warming it can do.

Predictions of rising temperatures and the dire consequences of anthropogenic global warming are based on computer climate models.  The climate models include the assumption that global temperatures will rise as CO2 continues to rise.

Over the last decade, global temperatures have leveled off while CO2 continued to rise.  Temperature is trending below all of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictions.

Joanne Nova, an Australian freelance science presenter & writer: Professional speaker, author, and former TV host, has prepared and published two excellent — and free — booklets on global warming.  The first, The Skeptics Handbook, has been translated by volunteers into many other languages, including German, French, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Danish.

Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.  The main peak, 15 µM, is absorbed completely within about 10 meters of the ground meaning that there is no more to absorb.  Doubling the human contribution of CO2 would reduce this distance. Reducing the distance for absorption would not result in an increase in temperature.

The sun appears to have entered a less active period and is providing less warmth to the Earth.  The sun is in an extended solar minimum that was predicted to end in March 2008, nearly 20 months ago.  Since 2004 there have been 770 days without sunspots.  A typical solar minimum averages about 485 days.  Solar magnetic activity continues to drop.

A number of scientists are projecting that global warming is over, for now, and that global average temperatures will be dropping for the next 20 to 30 years.

“Tricks” apparently have been performed on more climate data than just the tree ring proxy information.  The figure below shows the adjustments made to the historical temperature record of Darwin, Australia.  The blue lines show the values for the original, “raw” temperature data. The red lines are the official NOAA/GHCN  ( National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — Global Historical Climate Network) data  after the values have been “homogenized” and averaged.  The black line are the values for the adjustment that was made (uses the scale on the right of the figure).

“Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century …” – Willis Eschenbach, The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero

American climate sceptics are now demanding a thorough investigation of NASA’s earth science programme, including the possibility that instruments on its satellites have been “tweaked” to give a “correct” result, and pointing out that the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data, going back to the 1930s. The common factor between CRU East Anglia and NASA is the destruction or withholding of research models and data which, if they are reliable, should be their pride and joy – documentation that would secure these institutions’ place in history, like Einstein’s equations. Telegraph.co.uk

“They’ve lost the raw data on which all the models, all the computer generated forecasts, the graphs and projections, are based.”

“Poor Al Gore”

Climate politics continue to be interesting.  Australia’s opposition Liberal Party has ousted its leader, Malcolm Turnbull, after the resignation last week of several senators from their “front-seat” positions.  The Aussie government’s climate change bill is now in jeopardy, raising the potential of an early general election in 2010.

The Climategate emails and documents are being investigated by a number of organizations, including an inquiry by Penn State University, where Michael Mann, creator of the discredited hockey stick graph – used by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth – is a professor. Inquiries are also under way at the University of East Anglia, the source of the leaked material.  Government investigations are either ongoing or pending and there has been at least one civil lawsuit filed.

At a minimum, the emails document the violation of UK Freedom of Information laws.

Many believe that the leaker was not a hacker, but, rather, was an insider acting as a anonymous whistleblower by leaking the emails and documents, including information that had been unsuccessfully been sought under the UK FOI statutes.

The emails are not the only incriminating material.  Computer codes and their documentation show fudged numbers and “blatant data-cooking” that tell a story of twisting reality to a desired view.

Many of the fantastic claims in the media about climate change are likely predicated on the same sort of skewed science.

An article in the Wall Street Journal titled The Climate Science Isn’t Settled, by Richard S. Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT gives a more balanced view of the state of climate science.

Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.

While I have been skeptical of global warming claims for quite some time, this Climategate fiasco appears to show  a conspiracy to doctor the evidence.

In my interest in climate change, I wasn’t looking for a conspiracy, just the truth.

While I haven’t blogged about it for a while, I read material related to global warming climate change every day, so it was with great interest yesterday morning that I read of the release of allegedly stolen anthropogenic global warming climate change correspondence.

I had woken early for some reason and was unable to get back to sleep.  By 4:30, I was up and checking email, blogs and the news-feeds that I subscribe to.

A little over an hour later, I was downloading the files.

It’s going to be interesting to see where this is going to end up.  Articles are already appearing in the mainstream media.

See new article: Climategate update.

There are several different, though similar, definitions of the word, “blog.”

The word “blog” is a contraction of the term “weblog” or “web log.”

The term actually originated from online diarists. Early web diaries (c. 1994) evolved into web journals, then web logs, and, today, blogs.

A blog is a type of website where material is published on some periodic basis in reverse chronological order through “entries” or posts.  In other words, for readers, the most recent post comes first.

Though blogs are most commonly used for personal online journals, blogs are used in wide variety of ways.  Types of blogs include business blogs, political blogs, news blog, travel blogs, fashion blogs, project blogs, education blogs, niche blogs, music blogs of all varieties, and much, much more.

Most bloggers are hobbyists motivated by self-expression and sharing expertise.  Contrary to the common perception of bloggers being controversial, snide, sarcastic, or pompous, most bloggers feel that their blogging style is sincere, conversational, or expert.

While many hobby bloggers enjoy blogging and stick with it, most blogs actually die quite quickly.  Other blogs die a slow death, with irregular, hit-and-miss posting, and then… nothing.  Last year, I took a look back at the blogs I had been reading a year earlier.  Less than a quarter of them were still active.

For more information on blogs and blogging see Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere – 2009 or Wikipedia’s article, Blog.

So far, my experience with Windows 7 has been positive.

All of my files on the old computer, including images, copied over to the new computer painlessly through a wireless connection using the “Windows Easy Transfer” wizard.  Of course, most of my files are on three external hard drives – photography files replicated on each of the three –, so there was no need to transfer most of them.

Still, there was 13 gigabytes to transfer wirelessly, and that took several hours.  I spent that time reading, watching TV, and sleeping, since it wasn’t done by bedtime.

There are a number of ways that Windows 7 is significantly different from XP.  It’s going to take a while to get used to some of the ones I’ll be using.

I realize, of course, that most of the features of Windows 7 first appeared in Vista.  In fact, one article I read complained that Windows 7 was little more than a service pack for Vista.  The argument was that, for the price of Windows 7,  there was no reason to upgrade Vista to Windows 7 and that the only good reason to go to Windows 7  was if you were buying a new computer.

However, going from Windows XP to Windows 7, many Windows features are very new to me.

The biggest change is the way the task bar at the bottom of the screen is used.

I usually have a lot of windows open at one time.  In XP, I would have the entire bar filled with  application icons and I would use the bar to navigate between them.

In Windows 7, a newly open application’s icon will appear on the task bar if it’s not already there. In this instance, when you close the application, its icon also closes.

One of the features that I like is that you can “pin” useful applications to the task bar.  Then, to open the application, all you have to do is click on it’s icon on the task bar.

When there are multiple windows of an application open, holding the mouse’s pointer over the application’s icon in the task bar displays all of the open windows for that application, as shown in the image below, which shows 7 open Firefox windows .

Microsoft has had some real flops over the years and I understand how a lot of IT professionals are going to be hesitant to move to Windows 7.

Large companies, though, are often slow to adopt new platforms.  The company I worked for had only just moved to XP about the time that Vista was coming out.

I still have not loaded Office on to my new machine, though I probably will install Office 2003.  I have installed Open Office and want to play with that for a while before I decide.

This blog post  my first WordPress post written using Windows Live Writer.

Mesa Verde National Park, September 13, 2009

I figure she was just thinking about seeing the cliff dwellings up close and personal.

It was obvious, though, to us, that she’s not a regular on trails.

The shoulder bag is a dead giveaway.

Generally, the only places we ever see women with purses on trails are relatively short trails that go to gotta-see sights.

Cliff Palace is certainly a gotta-see, but really….

And the footwear.

Granted, we did see a lot of people wearing sandals and flip-flops, but, again, I doubt that many of them are out on trails of any kind on a regular basis — I think her flip-flops were to show off her pretty red toe-nails.

But the real question was the skirt.

I doubt that she was thinking about the climb up out of the canyon — or maybe didn’t know, until it was too late.

The way out was very steep — and included near-vertical ladders.

___________

The image on the right was taken from across the canyon.  I processed it on my computer to lighten it so that the dark crack in the rocks where the exit climb was could be seen.

I really have intended to work my way through the photos from our September trip. However, I have managed to find other activities to keep me from that goal.  I do, however, have a new photo gallery for Day 3 of Rocky Mountain National Park.

This new notebook sure is small compared to her old one.

Check out Day 3 of Rocky Mountain National Park and my other Haw Creek photo galleries.

Work, of course, takes a huge chunk of time and my time is shifted since the simulator is primarily available for the students in the evening. While I was planning for the contract to be over at the end of 2009, there is a distinct possibility that I will be there until the second week of March.

Karen has a new notebook computer. I spent the better part of a day installing all of her old programs and transferring files.  The notebook runs on Windows 7.

I’m going to also be moving from XP to Windows 7.  After restoring my laptop to near original configuration, there are still times where I am waiting an excessive time  for processes to finish.  My new laptop is on order and will be assembled and shipped next week.

Early this year, I rediscovered a love for reading.  I used to read three or more novels a week on a regular basis.  After many years of only a few books a year, I’m now reading at least a couple of books a week.

This has been the wettest year of all the years we have lived in Arkansas.  Much of the state is well over 20″ over the normal rainfall amounts for the year to date.  This is already about the 12th or 13th wettest year on record for Little Rock.  From what I understand, the wettest year on record was in the 1880s, and there was a little more than ten inches more than what Little Rock has already so far this year — and there is still two more months of 2009 to go.

I’m going to be concentrating on posting the rest of the material from our September trip and building photo galleries. I’ll post on other topics as I have the time and the inclination.

On my blogs, I like to share some of what we’ve seen and done while we are traveling.   I always seem to get behind and come up short with what I had planned hoped to do.

The same thing goes with my photos, but then, perhaps, that’s part of the problem.  I’m doing fairly well this time with the photos.  I have 3 1/2 days worth of images to go through.  Unfortunately, I’ve not finished with going through the photos from several prior trips.

I have a new solution that I think will work rather well.

Instead of trying to keep up with blogging while we are traveling, I will be journaling and photographing as we go.  The journal will be a pocket-sized moleskine notebook, where I will keep both brief notes as well as extended entries.  These, along with photographs, will be used to develop blog posts with “Commentary and images from the road.”

I started doing some of that this time, which is what enabled me to finish the trip with most of the images processed.  I will pick back up with the travel journal blogs from September 5th.

I am publishing all posts specifically related to our travels on two blogs, Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.  Apart from our travels, these two blogs otherwise have different focuses.

Some of the days of our trip warrant  more than one blog post.  I will be mixing mostly topical posts with mostly pictorial.

We got back home on Friday and Karen headed out today for a week in Wisconsin where she will be taking care of the grandkids while our daughter goes to New York City with her husband on a business trip.

I get to stay home and go to work.

__________________________________

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About

Most days, my hours at work go from 11:30 AM to 8 PM.

When I first started in the middle of July, the sun was still up when I left in the evening. Each day, though, it’s been darker and darker when I leave the building.

Image originally uploaded to flickr by Polarimetric

Last night, I left the parking lot around 8:20.  It was getting pretty dark by that time.

About a half mile after I turned on highway 64, I came up behind a car that was driving about 40 miles an hour — in a 55 mph speed zone.  I knew I wouldn’t be behind him long because I would be getting on the interstate at Exit 78, which was just ahead.

He started hitting his brakes and I realized he was probably in an unfamiliar area looking for something.

His turn signal came on and I realized what he was looking for.

I started flashing my high beams on and off at him.

“Don’t turn there, fool! You really don’t want to turn there!”

He started to turn anyway.  He probably thought I was some crazy person, flashing my high beams at him like that.

I pushed down on the horn and held it down and continued to flash my lights, while hitting my brakes to allow him to swing back into my lane — if he got my message.

“DON’T TURN THERE, FOOL!  THAT’S THE OFF RAMP!  YOU’LL BE GOING THE WRONG WAY!

He was almost all the way across the other lane of traffic when he jerked his wheel back to the right and turned away from the east bound exit from the interstate.  After getting back into the correct lane of traffic, he drove just a little bit further and turned at the right point to get to the Exit 78 east bound entrance to the freeway.

The interchange at Exit 78 is rather unusual.  When it was originally constructed, there was only an east bound exit and a west bound entrance.  The east bound exit went right to the highway, while the west bound entrance had a different access point from the highway and had an overpass.

When a west bound exit and an east bound entrance was added a few years back, they were tied in to the old west bound ramp and overpass.

It can be confusing.

The guy I was following last night was obviously unfamiliar with the area.  He probably had gotten off on the previous exit and was following the highway, looking for a way to get back on.  He thought he had found it when he saw vehicles at the exit waiting for traffic to clear.

He was wrong… and lucky.

I’ve only turned down one way roads a couple of times that I can remember.  Last year, I almost turned on to the west bound off ramp of Exit 78. The “new” on ramp is where the old turn was for a road paralleling the interstate that I sometimes use on my way home.

Have you ever made a turn and went the wrong way on a “one-way?”

day 79

We are the products of choices.

The path our lives take is the result of many, many choices.  We make choices that decide our future and impact the lives of others.   Decisions and choices by others affect us every day.

“I’m going to take every single sick day even if I don’t get sick; they’re mine.” — or — “I only take days off sick if I’m really feeling lousy.”

“I choose to have a positive attitude at work regardless of the problems or issues. ” –  or — “How can I have a positive attitude with all the mickey mouse stuff they want us to do.”

“There aren’t any decent jobs around here, so I guess I’ll just take what I can get.” — or — “There aren’t any decent jobs around here that I’m qualified for, so I’ll do what I need to do to be able to get a better job, even if it means leaving.”

“I’m going to deal with other people based on who they are, not what they are.”  — or — “You just can’t deal with those people; they aren’t like us.”

“I’m just here to earn my paycheck; I’m just going to do what I’m told.” — or — “I’m going to do what I need to do in order to be the very best that I can at this job.”

“I’m tired and grumpy because it’s been a long day, but I sure won’t take it out on the worker at the checkout counter when the product I’m buying doesn’t scan.” — or — “I don’t care about her; I just want to get done here so I can go home and have some beer.”

What are some other examples of choices that shape our lives?

day 68

Peter Sissons, a veteran British newsman, left BBC’s Television Centre for the last time in June, without a “pang of regret.”

In The Mail of Sunday, July 15th,  he launched a blistering attack on the BBC, claiming standards have dropped and producers are too concerned about being politically correct to do anything about it.

His article was an interesting read and, given my growing disillusion over the news media and what I believe to be a misrepresentation of the facts on climate change, I was particularly interested in the part of the article that talked about the BBC position on global warming.

Mr. Sissons writes:

On a wintry Saturday last December, there was what was billed as a major climate change rally in London.

The leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, went into the Westminster studio to be interviewed by me on the BBC News channel. She clearly expected what I call a ‘free hit’; to be allowed to voice her views without being challenged on them.

I pointed out to her that the climate didn’t seem to be playing ball at the moment. We were having a particularly cold winter, even though carbon emissions were increasing. Indeed, there had been no warming for ten years, contradicting all the alarming computer predictions.

Well, she was outraged. I don’t have the actual transcript, but Miss Lucas told me angrily that it was disgraceful that the BBC – the BBC! – should be giving any kind of publicity to those sort of views.

I believe I am one of a tiny number of BBC interviewers who have so much as raised the possibility that there is another side to the debate on climate change.

The Corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’, when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t.

But it is effectively BBC policy, enthusiastically carried out by the BBC environment correspondents, that those views should not be heard – witness the BBC statement last year that ‘BBC News currently takes the view that their reporting needs to be calibrated to take into account the scientific consensus that global warming is man-made’.

Politically the argument may be settled, but any inquisitive journalist can find ample evidence that scientifically it is not.

I was not proud to be working for an organisation with a corporate mind so closed on such an important issue. Disquiet over my interview with Miss Lucas, incidentally, went right to the top at the BBC although, naturally, they never sought to discuss it with me.

For me, this is not an issue about the climate, it is an issue about the duty of the journalist.

I suspect the policy of most major media outlets on climate change is similar to the BBC’s.

day 61

We don’t watch much TV and we’ve already seen way too much of the current Michael Jackson media circus and the morbid fascination of the public and  some of the Michael Jackson fans.

Most people realized that Jackson had problems, but there seems to be some sort of sick fascination of the man and those problems. The media seems to think that the public wants or needs every detail of his life and the aftermath.

While I like much of his music, he was just another wealthy celebrity with problems that were exacerbated and enabled by his wealth and influence as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t need or want excruciating details about his funeral, his will, his mom, his dad, his kids, his ex-wife, etc., etc.

Just report whatever is actually newsworthy in this story and move on, please.  If there’s anything new, update us tomorrow.

I just find it annoying when there are so many more important things going on in the world that are being under reported because of this sensationalism.

Comments?

day 27

I discovered just a little while ago that access to individual posts on this blog was unavailable and commenting was not available. This was because of something I did with some files on the server earlier today — not a web host issue. I knew that I should have checked after I was done, but didn’t.

It’s all back to normal now. It was only a 30 second fix, because it’s something that happened before and I knew where to look.

——

A couple of days ago, a park visitor from Spain was injured by a Yellowstone National Park bison (aka American buffalo).

“At approximately 11:25 a.m., the woman and her husband were using a pay phone in the Canyon lodging area with their backs to the road. According to witnesses, two bull bison walked down the road, passing within 20 feet of the couple. One of the bison left the road, walked up behind the woman and butted her into the air. The couple, who were facing away from the road, did not see the bison.”

The woman was taken to the Lake Clinic where she was treated for minor injuries and released.

This quite an unusual event. Bison are not usually aggressive unless someone has encroached upon their space. We have seen numerous instances where people have gotten way too close to these critters and nothing happened. Park regulations require that a minimum distance of 25 yard must be maintained from bison.

Bison are very, very common in the Canyon area.

We still hope to make it to Yellowstone this year. However, we may not have as much time available as we had originally thought.

——

Climate change legislation — The Waxman/Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act pass by a very slim margin today in the US House of Representatives. I actually watched some of the debate on CSPAN. I’ve got just a few comments.

• They didn’t even have a properly collated official copy of the bill in the room during the debate. Three hundred pages were revised overnight and one of the House staff was in the process of inserting pages into the correct place in the “official copy” during the closing minutes of the floor debate.
• The debate on the floor was limited to 3 hours for a bill that may be one of the largest tax bills in the history of the country.
• While virtually every American would end up with higher energy costs as a result of the bill, as I understand it, it’s requirements would have negligible impact on global warming, if anthropogenic (human caused) global warming (AGW) were a proven fact rather than an unproven hypothesis.
• The premise of the bill is predicated on the assumption that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a proven scientific fact. The earth has been warming up until the last ten years. Global carbon dioxide levels have been rising, at least in part due to human activities, even during the last ten years as global temperature anomalies have been stable or dropping. While it would seem obvious to blame rising temperatures on carbon dioxide produced by man, there is no proof that continued rising CO2 will result in a continued rise in global temperatures. The predictions of rising temperatures are the product of computer climate models that assume that anthropogenic global warming is a proven scientific fact rather than an unproven hypothesis.
• Our Representative, voted against it. I think I voted against him in 2008. He’s got my vote in 2010.

——

Climate change — I read material on climate change almost every day.

I am absolutely appalled at the gloom and doom, the-sky-is-falling alarmism that is in the media on a daily basis.

I’m not sure at what point I stopped simply accepting anthropogenic (human caused) global warming. I can say that for well over a year I’ve been reading a lot of climate change related material and have a much better understanding of the topic than I once had. My first blog post on climate was It’s not a hypothesis… It’s not a theory… it’s a CONSENSUS! last year.

Below is some of what I’ve come to believe and understand related to the Earth’s climate.

• Anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis.
• Even though anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis, it is likely that some warming has resulted from carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by humans.
• There is no proof that continued rise in CO2 will result in continued rise in global temperatures.


Carbon Dioxide Absorption Peaks

• Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.  The main peak, 15 µM, is absorbed completely within about 10 meters of the ground meaning that there is no more to absorb.  Doubling the human contribution of CO2 would reduce this distance. Reducing the distance for absorption would not result in an increase in temperature.
• The science of climate change is not settled.  Science is never settled. There is always more to learn, more to add.
• Consensus on climate change is not science.  It’s politics.  Science isn’t done by consensus, as I understand it.
• For a scientist to be a skeptic on climate change is not a bad thing.  Scepticism and questioning are important aspects of science.
• The Earth appears to have been cooling overall for most of this young century — 2000 to 2009.
• The reports of the danger to polar bears are premature.  They are also recycled over and over again.
• The prediction of an Arctic free of  ice is  premature.  AMSRE-A Sea Ice Extent has 6 1/2 years of history. The sea arctic sea ice extent currently is higher than any of the other years at this point in the annual cycle. AMSRE-A (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer – Earth Observing System).
• Antarctic sea ice extent is getting larger.
• A recent survey found Arctic ice to be thicker than expected.  (radiobremen)
• The heat content of the world’s ocean is dropping – Q = mc∆T. (The Global Warming Hypothesis and Ocean Heat)

day 22

While we were traveling, though unintended, I only watched television a few hours.

If I subtract the time that the TV was on a food channel at my sister-in-law’s and watching Mama Mia at my brother-in-law’s, it’s down to less than an hour of TV for 27 days away from home — and that was primarily checking for weather forecasts.

It was a good break from television and some of the things that bug me about it.

Today, watching the evening news, it struck me just how much of what is presented as news really isn’t news, at least as far as I’m concerned.

I was watching a story about the shooting of two young soldiers  — one killed — in Little Rock at a joint Army – Navy recruiting office. The story is still new so there are a lot of unanswered questions and it’s understandable that the story is still rough and not fully fleshed out.

However, a couple of things about the story struck me the wrong way.

The alleged shooter was apprehended 30 minutes later and the story had to mention that their station was the only one that had a camera at the police station when the suspect was brought in.  That’s not news.  It’s gratuitous self-promotion.

As is fairly common, I guess, they found it necessary to get some local reaction from people at the scene.  They interviewed one young fellow who had driven down to shopping center that the recruiting office was in because his girlfriend works there, she gets upset easily and, besides checking on her,  he wanted to find out  what was going on.  I’m sorry, but local reaction is generally not news.

While the specifics may vary, local reaction to a shooting is going to be predictable, but it’s not news unless the reaction is something unexpected.

For instance, if the local reaction had been for citizens to have apprehended the suspect instead of the police, that would have been news.

Comments, anyone?

I’ve been looking at a LOT of material related to climate change.

I’ve learned enough about it that I’m NOT going to simply accept what is being put out by the media and by government.

However, in going down this path I didn’t want to hijack Exit78 and make it into a niche blog on climate change, so I created still another blog.

It’s called On Climate and it’s an Exit78 spin off. I’ll be posting on things that I’ve learned, views that I’ve developed, material that I’ve discovered, and climate related news.  I’ll also be posting links to videos, news, and other climate related pages.

While I may on occasion still mention things related to climate here, it’ll be an exception rather than the rule.

For those that might want to visit On Climate, I’ve added a link.  Right now it’s on the top menu bar, though it may move to another location.

If I get any comments there, I expect that they’ll be a lot more focused and, there may be some who flat out disagree with what I’m posting.  I’ll have to publish a comment policy, of course, and it will probably be very similar to the one that I have here.

On another note, I plan to get back to posting more photos here in the near future.

posted on Flickr by diaper

Remember 2008 and the price of fuel?

Time magazine had an article in its June 5th edition titled, “Will the Oil Bubble Burst?”

What a timely article!

Crude oil prices peaked the first week of July on the The New York Mercantile Exchange at $145 a barrel.

Oil is now selling at over $100 a barrel less.

I was confident that prices would drop.  The way prices were rising just didn’t make sense to me.  To me, the only thing that made sense was the idea that speculators bidding on the future price of oil was driving prices ever higher.

Several years ago, there was a piece on National Public Radio where a guy was talking about his new book on the coming bursting of the housing bubble.  I knew that home prices were outrageous, but, until that point, I never thought about there being a pricing bubble in housing.  It made complete sense.  Though I never read that fellow’s book, it didn’t take me by surprise when home prices started to free fall.

The free fall in home prices and the rising cost of fuel, along with the prices everything else related ina any way to fuel usage, exacerbated the problems of the already anemic economy.

My forecasts for the future?

1. The economy will begin recovering by the middle to the end of 2010.
2. Global temperatures will continue to drop until at least 2020.

(some of the sources I’ve been reading on climate change)