UPDATE: (moved to top) More signatures still needed — it only takes you 20 seconds to sign the petition.

Sign the Patriot Petition — Stop Albert Gore — Reject the United Nations’ Global Warming Treaty! Go to PATRIOT PETITIONS to sign. One hundred thousand signatures are needed, so do it now and let others know about it.
Continue reading » Sign the Stop Gore Petition

Last weekend, as a diversion to running errands and shopping, we took a quick drive to the Interpretive Center next to the Point Vicente Lighthouse on the Southwest side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. As we passed the lighthouse, I snapped this picture through the open car window. Catalina Island can be seen across the channel.

Imagine having your own domain name for your weblog — you know, like yourname.com or yourorganization.org or yourpetproject.us — think of how much cooler that would be than yourblog.blogspot.com. But wait — there’s more — you also get custom eMail addresses such as nickname@yourblog.com or family@yourblog.com or friend@yourblog.com and so on. Setting up and managing your own weblog domain may be less expensive and easier than you think.

Continue reading » Upgrading from Blogspot

I’m having a busy day today, errands, working, installing the new computer, etc. So I will stick up a picture I took last weekend during a little side trip we took to a local whale watching site. They happened to have a few botanical specimens around the grounds, so I snapped this picture of an aloe something or another. Damsel usually takes these flower photos but her camera was having a ‘retarded blond’ moment where it didn’t seem be able to focus or function. Damsel is a summer blond — those are her words and she says she’s entitled to say that.

The bulbs are all actively producing beautiful flowers in the garden today. We were on the backyard swing cleaning up our guns after a trip to the shooting range when I grabbed the camera and got this shot of these three daffodils with the sunlight a little behind them. Great colors, don’t you think?

These red and orange tulips look to me like little torches. They are on the coffee table in my Waterford Seahorse Crystal Rose Bowl. The morning sun brings out the tulip colors and makes the crystal sparkle.

Once upon a time, I thought I could support John McCain as the next Republican presidential candidate. We had him on our short list of favorable candidates. Over the last couple of years, however, he has eroded our support for his candidacy because of his positions on several key issues:

• McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act
• Participation in the “Gang of 14″ against the nuclear option
• Disparaging remarks about Donald Rumsfeld — “Worst Secretary of Defense ever” (has the Senator forgotten about Vietnam — Robert McNamara, Clark Clifford and Melvin Laird?)

And now there’s this:

John McCain, applauding Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for taking on the “compelling issue of global climate challenge,” pledged Wednesday to make California’s global warming fight the model for a national effort to curb greenhouse gases.

Appearing with the governor at the Port of Long Beach, the Arizona senator said he will fight in the Senate — and if elected president — to adopt low carbon standards for vehicle fuels to cut pollution blamed for climate change.

McCain sharply criticized the Bush administration for only belatedly acknowledging the global warming threat and for failing to come up with solutions.

“I would assess this administration’s effort on global warming as terrible,” McCain said.

He called for a national program based on two efforts already begun in California.

It sounds as though the Senator has finally found a religion of sorts - a belief in intangibles founded in rumor, innuendo and superstition rather than in fact.

A Danish scientist, Henrik Svensmark, Director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research of the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen, has conducted experiments and studies to validate his theory that interstellar galactic cosmic rays may have a considerable effect on global climate.

Right: Cosmic rays affect global cloud cover

The theory is that when cosmic rays hit the Earth’s atmosphere, they speed up the process where ions combine with sulphuric acid. These combine to form condensation nucleii, or tiny specs of matter that allow water droplets to form. The widespread condensation of water droplets accumulate to form lower-atmospheric clouds, which serve to reflect sunlight back into space and allow the Earth’s surface to cool off. In the absence of heavy cosmic radiation, fewer clouds form and the surface of the planet heats up again.

The Sun affects cosmic rays entering into the Earth’s atmosphere by virtue of particle emission (solar winds) and solar magnetic flux — when particle emission and the magnetic field is strong due to high solar activity, cosmic rays are deflected away and thus allow fewer clouds to form.

Svensmark concludes “it now seems clear that stellar winds and magnetism are crucial factors in the origin and viability of life on wet earth-like planets,” as are “ever-changing galactic environments and star-formation rates.” When you consider the context of this galactic radiation effect, the impact of CO2 emissions caused by humanity literally fade away into climatic insignificance.”

References:

CO2 Science — Cosmoclimatology: A New Perspective on Global Warming

Telegraph.co.uk — Cosmic rays blamed for global warming

Thanks to my colleague Rick for bringing this to my attention.

Rome apples in a monkeypod bowl under the morning light make a nice still life photo subject.

To see is to know — that’s an old science and engineering principle that has been around for most of the history of human technological progress. If you hypothesize you can develop a theory about a topic. If you have a theory, it isn’t much good unless you test it. Testing, it seems, isn’t always easy nor is it infallible. And once in a while, when testing your theories, you come up with a real head-scratcher. Like why is the Sun’s south pole cooler than it’s north pole? Why does that hold true regardless of the solar magnetic field’s north-south orientation?

Image: Ulysses and the Solar Magnetic Field (click image for full-size view) ESA Solar Image Gallery

I know, I know! It must be industrial pollution on planet Earth and greenhouse gasses . . . well, maybe Al Gore can explain it better.

Continue reading » Assymetrical Solar Polar Mystery

A couple of days ago I showed a photo of some crimson tulips. Today, I took this photo of a tulip indoors in a vase. The morning sunlight was muted by passing clouds to give this beautiful pastel pink over white effect.

Today was a fun day at the shooting range — Damsel is getting really good at emptying the magazine in her 20 gauge Remington 870 in just a couple of seconds. She maintains good accuracy also.