Polar Ice: 101

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m sick and tired (mostly tired) of reading the same stories about “global warming” and how it’s melting the polar ice caps. Case in point…

from The New York Times today…

TO the relief of climate scientists around the world, it appears that the polar ice cap hasn’t shrunk as much this summer as it did last summer.

The ice cap usually reaches its smallest extent around now, and although the total area of ice in September fluctuates from year to year, in the last two decades it has generally declined, probably because of carbon-driven global warming. Last year, the ice cap shrank at a record-breaking pace; at its minimum it was almost 39 percent smaller than the average from 1979 to 2000. This year it’s down about 33 percent.

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m not interested in probably. What a bunch of sloppy reporting? The word “probably” indicates that what follows is the author’s opinion. I just want the report, not the opinion.

In a story from July 3rd of this year in the Register (the UK. No. I’m not making that up), Steven Goddard writes a piece about how wrong the so-called “global warming” evidence is as it relates to the melting polar ice caps. Here’s a sample

Satellite records have been kept for polar sea ice over the last thirty years by the University Of Illinois. In 2007 2008, two very different records were set. The Arctic broke the previous record for the least sea ice area ever recorded, while the Antarctic broke the record for the most sea ice area ever recorded. Summed up over the entire earth, polar ice has remained constant. As seen below, there has been no net gain or loss of polar sea ice since records began.

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Last week, Dr James Hansen from NASA spoke about how CO2 is affecting the polar ice caps.

“We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes… The Arctic is the first tipping point and it’s occurring exactly the way we said it would,” he said.

Well, not exactly.

Hansen is only telling half the story. In the 1980s the same Dr Hansen wrote a paper titled Climate Sensitivity to Increasing Greenhouse Gases [pdf], in which he explained how CO2 causes “polar amplification.” He predicted nearly symmetrical warming at both poles. As shown in Figure 2-2 from the article, Hansen calculated that both the Arctic and Antarctic would warm by 5-6 degrees Centigrade. His predictions were largely incorrect, as most of Antarctica has cooled and sea ice has rapidly expanded. The evidence does not support the theory.

Do yourself a big favor. Read the whole thing. If you are one of those folks who believe that man made “Global Warming” is real then please read the many articles that explain why it doesn’t exist.

Please don’t believe everything you read, even on this website.

Do you trust less than 2,000 scientists or over 32,000?

32,000 + scientists believe that man made “Global Warming” is a big bunch of crap.

I believe THOSE guys.

How Sore Am I?

I got home early this morning after working an hour and a half of overtime. I was exhausted and loading trailers by hand takes a lot out of you.

NOTE: When I’m NOT stuck at my desk, I’m stuck in a trailer.

I was soooo sore from the extra time last night, I fell asleep while playing with the kitteah on the office floor.

I ended up sleeping on the office floor for most of the day.

Bad Mike.

The Ring

Years ago. My little brother found a class ring buried in the dirt near the corner stone of our church.

Our goal. To find out who owns the ring and to return it to it’s rightful owner.

We have almost no information to go on.

This will be fun.

UPDATE: 09/16/08 – I haven’t really had time to formally begin the investigation. I’ll keep everyone posted.

Cross-Dressing Bandit On The Loose!

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This is a funny one.

from Fox News

CHICAGO — The FBI is searching for the person who robbed a suburban Chicago bank wearing a large pink sun hat and a pink-and-black dress.

And authorities say he accessorized his outfit with long white gloves and a black metal handgun.

The gunman FBI agents are calling the Cross-Dressing Bandit held up the MB Financial Bank branch in Park Ridge on August 13.

Today, Special Agent Robert Grant asked the public for help in the search.

The FBI made public a wanted poster with photos of the bandit standing at a teller window in his unusual outfit.

Scientists Confirm: They Don’t Know Anything!

It’s almost like watching a train wreck. I love watching scientists trying to figure something out only to turn around and claim that they really don’t know anything.

To me, they could save so much time if they just admitted their ignorance in the first place. Ha!

This story comes from National Geographic

Far from besting their competitors in a long struggle to become Earth’s dominant land animals, dinosaurs may have just gotten lucky, new research suggests.

The first dinosaurs appeared during the late Triassic period about 240 million years ago.

Their main competitors were a closely related group of reptiles called the crurotarsans, from which modern crocodiles and alligators descended.

Crurotarsans and dinosaurs coexisted for about 30 million years. But about 200 million years ago, Earth suffered a mass extinction, possibly caused by rapid global warming.

Wow. We Didn’t Explode

The collider didn’t destroy half the planet as many had predicted.

from the AP

GENEVA (AP) — The world’s largest particle collider passed its first major tests by firing two beams of protons in opposite directions around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.
After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:26 a.m. (0826 GMT) indicating that the protons had traveled clockwise along the full length of the 4 billion Swiss franc (US$3.8 billion) Large Hadron Collider — described as the biggest physics experiment in history.

This is Stuck at my Desk?

Hey everyone!

This website is an idea that an ex-co-worker and I came up with a few months ago. We were never really sure what the site would be about but a few more months after we grabbed the name…

…I still don’t know.

Therefore, I have decided to make this website about everything and all about nothing. The things that tickle my fancy during the day, I’ll post them here.

Have fun.