You don’t say.
“…if you look at the raw data, as opposed to NASA’s revisions, you’ll find that since 1940 the planet has been cooling, not warming.”
Like good little feds, they knew how to make the boss happy. But like dumb little feds they didn’t know how to keep from getting caught. Maybe if their client scientists squeal loud enough?
Via Breitbart
Our Barry Hussein and the climate change scammers keep warning that the world’s deserts will expand north unless we give up abundant electricity, the internal combustion engine and other conveniences of a fossil-fueled economy.
Au contraire:
“According to [2013] research reported in the Geophysical Research Letters, increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) over the past three decades have caused an 11 percent increase in green foliage over the globe’s arid regions through a process called CO2 fertilization.”
The research finding, that desert margins are shrinking, not expanding, is two years old. Unless you’ve never seen it, in which case it’s as new as this morning. It’s the hidden benefit of CO2 available to all with satellite data. Funny how our own president, his agencies and his “green” cronies never seem to mention it.
Via Sci-News
Just about the time you think NASA’s groaning bureaucracy can groan no more, along comes a triumph to make it seem almost vivacious again —even if the triumph was managed by outsiders. And, in bringing distant Pluto (on right with moon Charon left) into closeup for the first time, the achievement reveals more mysteries than it explains. Making another distant (in miles and in time) visit likely, which should keep the groaning going for another decade or two. (Click to biggerize.)
“Even given everything we’ve learned, the odds of succeeding on our third attempt to land on a drone ship (a new one named “Of Course I Still Love You”) are uncertain, but tune in here this Sunday as we try to get one step closer toward a fully and rapidly reusable rocket.”
Good explanation, with pix and video, from SpaceX. Good luck, y’all.
UPDATE: The SpaceX rocket Sunday never had a chance to attempt a landing. It blew up shortly after launch. The first loss in 19 tries. Thank goodness it wasn’t manned.
Posted in Evolution, Obsessions, Science/Engineering, Space
Novelist Neal Stephenson’s latest, Seveneves, uncharacteristically concerns contemporary scifi’s usual destruction of the Earth. Uncharacteristically because Stephenson is a technology-optimist. At least his destruction (which is not, thankfully, of the global warming, climate-change variety) leads to a greater future, albeit 5,000 years later.
Along the way his epic tweaks some contemporary politics, including creating a duplicitous Hildabeast-like American president. She, alone among the world’s leaders, contrives to survive, almost destroys the other survivors, and eventually claims a place among the seven Eves of the title who will reestablish humankind and the Earth.
And the restoration (with the indispensable aid of an Elon Musk-like private space entrepreneur and a science popularizer who almost mirrors Neil deGrasse Tyson) is more spectacular than most of the destroyed achievements.
Political Correctness has never been Stephenson’s hobby horse. The villains of his previous novel Reamde, for instance, were jihadist Muslims. So his Hillary (her husband and daughter dead and a Muslim woman sidekick her only initial solace) is every bit as untrustworthy and unlikable as the real one. Even her principal descendant in the novel is dishonest.
Stephenson’s stories generally are more about technology than writing style and Seveneves is no exception, though his characters are convincingly and usually sympathetically drawn. In the main, Seveneves is hard science fiction with some engineering, genetic and orbital-mechanics complexity. As usual with this author, however, it’s explained well and is worth the effort it takes to follow it.
Comments Off on Hildabeast survives end-of-the-world
Posted in Evolution, Library, Science/Engineering, Space
Tagged Epic dystopia with a difference, Hillary survives end-of-the-world, Seveneves
Next time you have a good view of the Moon. Or better yet, a binocular view. It will be like flipping Little Barry the bird (as he was wont to do in debates in ’08) over his rejection of American exceptionalism. Here’s Sky & Telescope mag’s explanations. And, someday…
Posted in Science/Engineering, Space, The Culture
Quite a sight, Blue Origin’s first rocket launch southeast of El Paso off I-10 near Van Horn in far West Texas. It’s the latest example of the Lone Star rising.
With SpaceX’s new launch facilities at Boca Chica Beach on a sandy peninsula just east of Brownsville on the Gulf Coast, expected to be ready for Falcon Heavy launches in 2018, Texas will claim an ever-larger share of space commerce.
If the federal socialists can only control their desire to tax or regulate everything that moves.
Posted in Science/Engineering, Space, Texana
Tagged Blue Origin, SpaceX, Texas space facilities
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 