Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

A Knockout for Winter

This got me chuckling, so I thought I would post it here. I really liked the rant that went with it and the little image of ALGOR (a.k.a. OZONE) fretting over his champ having been K.O.’d.

From Sam Ryskind’s cartoon site, Fresh Meat: NOAA and NASA Want Antarctica To Melt

knockout.jpgYou don’t hear much about the ozone hole any more. Has it gone away? Nope. NOAA and NASA say in 2006 it was bigger and deeper than ever.

But wait, you say, we implemented the Montreal Protocols in 1989, eliminating ozone depleting CFCs. Kofi Annan called the Protocol, “Perhaps the most successful international agreement to date.” CFC concentrations have been falling since 1995. How can the ozone hole be worse?

It’s not worse, says NOAA, it’s better. It’s just that you can’t see how great the Protocol is working because colder than average temperatures in the Antarctic mask the benefit. Cold weather result[s] in larger and deeper ozone holes, while warmer weather leads to smaller ones.

Colder in Antarctica? Al Gore told me it was melting! Al Gore told me there was consensus. Consensus!

Hat Tip John at Power Line

08 Feb 2007 by Global Warming Humor Whacko Politics

Stargazer Lily

Last weekend we purchased a bouquet of stargazer lilies for the dining room table. I took this picture yesterday of two of the flowers already open. There are more to come today and later in the week. These are my favorite flowers — I found the “meaning” of them on a floral website:

Primary Significance: The floral celebrity, stargazer lilies are young, bold, beautiful, and dramatic. The meaning of these fragrant flowers can be one of wealth and prosperity, but their white variety can dress down to genuinely express purity and sympathy.

Read more about the meaning of the Stargazer Lily at proflowers.com.

stargazers

07 Feb 2007 by Home & Garden Photography

The Greenbat Mentality

I take a large interest in the visitors to this site. I regularly scan the logs to see where the hits are from, which sites have linked to us, and what search keywords score hits from the search engines. At one point today, if you Googled “sunspots global warming hoax NASA,” you would see us at the top of the page of returned websites. It makes me glad to see that we’re having an impact, even if somewhat minor, on the discussion in the blogosphere.

I also look at some of the referring sites to read some of the discussion there. One forum was in the referral list today, so I went there and looked at the thread. Someone had referenced our article Correlating Sunspots to Global Climate in a discussion about global warming. The person who referenced the article was in a cyber-discussion with some of those folks that have taken the position that warming is indeed an anthropogenic artifact rather than looking at the actual science involved.

After the link to the article was posted, one of the Al Gore fans responded after having looked at our website and the article. Despite the references in the article to peer-reviewed sources and the obvious relationship between sunspot count and global temperature, this individual dismissed the science because it was on a conservative website. He wrote: “Wow, capnbob’s blog… A far right wing website where he goas [sic] on and on with temper tantrums about democrats. I don’t see any scientific proof. [name deleted] are you and capnbob the same person?”

Typical of most liberal thinkers, this misguided individual is blind to the truth merely because the source is from someone who disagrees with their political views. Quoting an old adage, “there are none so blind as those who will not see” applies to this case of Greenbat induced myopia.

07 Feb 2007 by Blogosphere Cyberspace Greenbats

Painted Daisies

“Looks Fake!” That’s what I said the first time I saw the faces on Mount Rushmore. That’s what I said when I first saw Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon. We have all seen images of these places, yet when suddenly confronting them, they seem to have an air of having been painted there or something.

That’s the feeling I get when looking at some of the flowers in the local garden shop. I never get tired of flowers — especially the ones that look as if they are the product of an artist’s brush. And, when I think about it, maybe they are.

daisies

06 Feb 2007 by Home & Garden Photography

More Inconvenient Science

polar bearsScientists studying the history of climate variations in Arctic regions have confirmed that the Northern Polar regions were much warmer than today. Over the last quarter-million years, the most significant arctic warming took place some 130,000 years in the past. The warming then had a much greater effect on the ice and vegetation than could happen now with the relatively small increase in global temperature.

Image: Two polar bears sparring on the arctic tundra in Canada.

This is the conclusion from From World Climate Report where an excellent analysis of the scientific report may be found:

Arctic Lessons from the Last Interglacial (Polar bears survived)

The next time that you see Al Gore’s photo collection of decaying glaciers and polar bears drowning as the distance between icebergs and the shore is too far to swim, think of the LIG as a natural period in Earth’s history when hippopotamus and the water tortoise were widespread as far north as Great Britain and birch forests reached the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Remember that then, as now, the Arctic naturally warmed more dramatically than the rest of the world, and also keep in mind that our modern global climate models – those that sit next to the panic button – are stumbling around that reality.

06 Feb 2007 by Global Warming Science Whacko Politics

Marina Ripple

Today we took the day off — Bob went to the dentist -ouch! — but other than that, we had a pretty good day. We took a leisurely drive back from the dentist (who practices in the people’s republic of Santa Monica) along the California coastline through the beach communities back home. One stop was at Marina Del Rey where I snapped this nice picture of the morning sun rippling across the channel on a beautiful California morning.

marina ripple

05 Feb 2007 by California Photography

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