This nice animation of the August 21st Eclipse across America showed up on Astronomy Picture of the Day today. It is less than a minute in length and is a good graphic illustration of the path of totality.
The embedded video can be set to full screen for enlargement.
After the video finishes, there is another interesting video follow-up that animates the shadow of the moon as it crosses the country. You can see in detail where totality occurs with the shadow video.
The countdown has been underway here for almost five years since we first made our reservations at the RV campground near the centerline of the eclipse in Wyoming. Now, however, we’re down to the last few weeks before the big event. The Javascript countdown timer above shows the remaining time to the start of the eclipse (first lunar encroachment) in Arizona Time.
The date of the eclipse is August 21, 2017. The beginning of the eclipse is dependent on the location of the observer, but in our case is 16:22:20 UTC, The seven hour difference has been adjusted in the timer. Totality follows a bit over an hour later. The interactive eclipse map has moved to the NASA Eclipse pages:
https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/interactive_map/index.html
Old NFO posted the image above the other day. I stole it from there.
I found a good item via The Patriot Post that completely debunks the claim that an overwhelming number of scientists agree that Global Climate Change (can’t call it “warming” anymore) is due to anthropogenic activity. The article “Debunking the ‘97% of Climate Scientists Agree’ Claim” contains the following damning passage:
It appears that Cook et al. decided to compare only those scientists who had strong opinions. If that is the case, the first two categories represent scientists who believe man is causing all or most of the warming (986), while those in categories 6 and 7 believe man is causing none or almost none (24). This ratio is about 97%. But the most important result of this study is that almost 8,000 had no opinion or were uncertain. So much for the 97%.
Why were there only 24 papers published by skeptics? We found out in 2009, when 22,000 email exchanges between senior meteorologists in the U.S. and Europe were released. Many of the emails were published by Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller in “Climategate: The Crutape Letters” (nQuire Services, 2010). We learned the following things from this scandal:
Those promoting man-made global warming:
Controlled the meteorology and climatology journals in the U.S.;
Controlled non-meteorological science publication (Nature, Science, etc.);
Controlled Wikipedia;
Manipulated data;
Demonized skeptics.
Those of us who have studied, albeit casually, have determined the whole climate bugaboo is a hoax. It is only intended to cripple freedom and prosperity in the west and nothing more. There is a special warm place awaiting those who knowingly promote these falsehoods.
We observed Wickenburg’s first triple digit temperature for the year on our back patio this afternoon. It had been getting warmer for a week or so, but today it went over 100.
Damsel took a photo looking north from the road up the hill from our place as we were coming home from an errand to the grocery store. The scattered clouds did not aid in keeping it any cooler on the surface that we could notice.
The forecast is for continued warm days through Thursday when we should drop back into the high 80’s to low 90’s. There is no rain in the forecast (yet). Needless to say, the A/C went on yesterday and will likely stay on until we’re on the road again this summer.
Click on the image to enlarge.
Just a short one today . . .
We left Monument Valley this morning and drove through to Williams with one stop at Cameron Trading Post for souvenirs and another at a Safeway in Flagstaff for provisions. We had quite a bit of rain with some gusty winds in some places. This is the first time we have had to use the wipers on the windshield, with mediocre results – the blades chatter on the downstroke – another squawk for the dealer to resolve.
Our campground here in Williams (elevation 6750) is expecting freezing temperatures overnight and possibly some precipitation mostly before 11 PM. The precip could be rain, freezing rain or snow. We have not hooked up water or sewer, so we should be OK with an overnight freeze.
Tomorrow, we will be headed home again with at least one “touristy” stop along Old Route 66 for more souvenirs. The weather is expected to be generally good with slight chance of showers along the route.
We have been fortunate here in the Arizona upper Sonoran Desert region to have had increasing spring-like temperatures over the past two weeks. It seems like we have turned the corner for springtime with high temps in the upper 70’s to low 80’s. The overnight low temperatures are now at or above 60 degrees.
The three images above were taken this afternoon and are (left to right) cereus cactus buds, flowers on our plum tree and flower buds forming on our lemon tree. We also notice flower buds on many of the native cacti and there has been activity in the bird nests that we can see. As was mentioned on the other blog, we have spotted many of the migratory birds back in the area after their winter absence.
We realize that this is a poor time to brag about our wonderful climate since much of the north eastern part of our nation will be in blizzard mode for a couple of days. We pray for the safety and well being of those in that part of the country as they batten down the hatches.
Jordan Candler and Joe Bastardi each mentioned Bill Nye in their two articles about climate change. Candler wrote about “Shining the Light on Climate Science” and Bastardi wrote about “Fact-Checking Bill Nye.” Both articles took the “science” guy to task for his blatant misrepresentations of the facts concerning climate change. I used “scary” quotes in the last sentence to illustrate that Nye is a science suppressor rather than his science guy moniker that he has worn for so many years. His tactic is to attempt to silence the discussion rather than debating the facts.
Image: Indisputably, the major cause of Earth’s climate variations
In Candler’s report, he quotes Bastardi as follows:
In an email to The Patriot Post, meteorologist Joe Bastardi responds: “I have not read enough of the study to comment on aspects I have not researched. But given my stated position that the sun is the conductor of the climatic orchestra of the oceans, stochastic events and the very design of the system, it would make sense that the sun should be considered as the source of climatic variations rather than the increase of one molecule of CO2 out of every 10 thousand molecules of air over a 100-year period.” The lesson here is that man’s footprint isn’t just relatively small, it’s minuscule. Perhaps it’s not the skeptics who are, as Nye says, “denying the evidence,” but rather those who want to silence the discussion.
Both authors referenced here are contributors to The Patriot Post.
