Sunday, April 27, 2008

Scientist: Forget Global Warming, Prepare for New Ice Age

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Sunspot activity has not resumed up after hitting an 11-year low in March last year, raising fears that — far from warming — the globe is about to return to an Ice Age, says an Australian-American scientist.

Physicist Phil Chapman, the first native-born Australian to become an astronaut with NASA [he became an American citizen to join up, though he never went into space], said pictures from the U.S. Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) showed no spots on the sun.

He said the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7 degrees Centigrade.

"This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930," Chapman wrote in The Australian Wednesday. "If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over."

[Critics quickly pointed out that Chapman may have been "cherry-picking" the data. A strong La Nina formation in the Pacific pushed down January temperatures over much of the Northern Hemisphere from where they had been a year earlier, but average global temperatures are still much higher than the 20th-century average, and the NOAA said last week that last month was the warmest March on record.]

The Bureau of Meteorology says temperatures in Australia have been warmer than the 1960-90 average since the late 1970s, barring a couple of cooler years, and are now 0.3 degrees Centigrade higher than the long-term average.

A sunspot is a region on the sun that is cooler than the rest and appears dark.

An alternative theory of global warming is that a strong solar magnetic field, when there is plenty of sunspot activity, protects the Earth from cosmic rays, cutting cloud formation, but that when the field is weak — during low sunspot activity — the rays can penetrate into the lower atmosphere and cloud cover increases, cooling the surface.

But scientists from the U.S. National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Bolder, Colorado published a report in 2006 that showed the sun had a negligible effect on climate change.

The researchers wrote in the journal Nature that the sun's brightness varied by only 0.07 percent over 11-year sunspot cycles, and that that was far too little to account for the rise in temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.

Chapman proposes preventive, or delaying, moves to slow the cooling, such as bulldozing Siberian and Canadian snow to make it dirty and less reflective.

"My guess is that the odds are now at least 50:50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades," he writes.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Hurricane expert reconsiders global warming's impact

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Editor's note: As you read this article, you willl notice how vague and contradictory many of the scientists statements are.

For instance: "The take-home message is that we've got a lot of work to do," Emanuel said. "There's still a lot of uncertainty in this problem. The bulk of the evidence is that hurricane power will go up, but in some places it will go down."

It reminds me of a psychic who once told the police that they would find a missing child "either alive or dead in a wet or dry place". To build economic and political policies based on such bad science as global warming alarmism is dangerous for not only our country, but the rest of the world as well.

Houston- One of the most influential scientists behind the theory that global warming has intensified recent hurricane activity says he will reconsider his stand.

The hurricane expert, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, unveiled a novel technique for predicting future hurricane activity this week. The new work suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries.

The research, appearing in the March issue of Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is all the more remarkable coming from Emanuel, a highly visible leader in his field and long an ardent proponent of a link between global warming and much stronger hurricanes.

His changing views could influence other scientists.

"The results surprised me," Emanuel said of his work, adding that global warming may still play a role in raising the intensity of hurricanes. What that role is, however, remains far from certain.

Emanuel's work uses a new method of computer modeling that did a reasonable job of simulating past hurricane fluctuations. He, therefore, believes the models may have predictive value for future activity.

During and after the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, which were replete with mega-storms and U.S. landfalls, scientists dived into the question of whether rising ocean temperatures, attributed primarily to global warming, were causing stronger storms.

Among the first to publish was Emanuel, who — just three weeks before Hurricane Katrina's landfall — published a paper in Nature that concluded a key measurement of the power dissipated by a storm during its lifetime had risen dramatically since the mid-1970s.

In the future, he argued, incredibly active hurricane years such as 2005 would become the norm rather than flukes.

Other factors likely
This view, amplified by environmentalists and others concerned about global warming, helped establish in the public's mind that "super" hurricanes were one of climate change's most critical threats. A satellite image of a hurricane emanating from a smokestack featured prominently in promotions for Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

"Kerry had the good fortune, or maybe the bad fortune, to publish when the world's attention was focused on hurricanes in 2005," Roger Pielke Jr., who studies science and policy at the University of Colorado, said of Emanuel. "Kerry's work was seized upon in the debate."

After the 2005 hurricane season, a series of other papers were published that appeared to show, among other things, that the most intense hurricanes were becoming more frequent.

What has not been as broadly disseminated, say Pielke and some hurricane scientists, is that other research papers have emerged that suggest global warming has yet to leave an imprint on hurricane activity. One of them, published late last year in Nature, found that warming seas may not increase hurricane intensity.

That paper's co-author, Gabriel Vecchi, a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Emanuel's new work highlights the great uncertainty that remains in hurricane science.

"While his results don't rule out the possibility that global warming has contributed to the recent increase in activity in the Atlantic, they suggest that other factors — possibly in addition to global warming — are likely to have been substantial contributors to the observed increase in activity," Vecchi said.

Scientists wrangling with the hurricane-global warming question have faced two primary difficulties. The first is that the hurricane record before 1970 is not entirely reliable, making it nearly impossible to assess with precision whether hurricane activity has increased during the last century.

The second problem comes through the use of computer models to predict hurricane activity. Most climate models, which simulate global atmospheric conditions for centuries to come, cannot detect individual tropical systems.

Emanuel's new research attempts to get around that by inserting "seeds" of tropical systems throughout the climate models and seeing which develop into tropical storms and hurricanes. The "seeds," bits of computer code, tend to develop when simulated atmospheric conditions, such as low wind shear, are ripe for hurricane formation.

'A lot of work to do'
In the new paper, Emanuel and his co-authors project activity nearly two centuries hence, finding an overall drop in the number of hurricanes around the world, while the intensity of storms in some regions does rise.

For example, with Atlantic hurricanes, two of the seven model simulations Emanuel ran suggested that the overall intensity of storms would decline. Five models suggested a modest increase.

"The take-home message is that we've got a lot of work to do," Emanuel said. "There's still a lot of uncertainty in this problem. The bulk of the evidence is that hurricane power will go up, but in some places it will go down."

The issue probably will not be resolved until better computer models are developed, said Judith Curry, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, a leading hurricane and climate scholar.

By publishing his new paper, and by the virtue of his high profile, Emanuel could be a catalyst for further agreement in the field of hurricanes and global warming, Curry said.

The generally emerging view, she said, seems to be that global warming may cause some increase in intensity, that this increase will develop slowly over time, and that it likely will lead to a few more Category 4 and Category 5 storms. How many? When? No one yet knows.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Former US president Jimmy Carter betrays victims of terrorism

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Jimmy Carter, the former US president, visited the West Bank in Israel today and met with leaders of Hamas, a terrorist organization that is responsible for hundreds of deaths and is devoted to wiping out Israel as a country. Carter also visited the grave of terrorist Yasser Arafat and laid a wreath at his gravesite.

Carter did all this against the wishes of Israel and the US State Department. His involvement in having talks with a known terrorist organization that is currently fighting other Muslims for control of Palestine is beyond reproach and is a slap in the face to the victims of Hamas and their families. To this day, Hamas routinely fires rocket mortars into Israel in an attempt to extort more concessions from the Israeli government.


Hamas official policy towards Israel is this: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors." Obviously, there are no conditions under which Hamas will abandon it's Jihad (struggle) against Israel, including a face-to-face with Carter. Hamas is financed by dozens of countries and Muslim charities all over the world, including millions of dollars from Muslims inside the United States.



The organization's first mass attack was a car bomb that blew up at a bus stop in Afula in April 1994, murdering 8 and wounding 51. Among the most horrific Hamas attacks were the following:

* 22 people killed and 56 wounded in a suicide bombing attack on the No. 5 bus on Dizengoff St. in Tel Aviv, Oct. 1994
* 26 killed by suicide bomber on a #18 bus near the Jerusalem Central Bus Station, Feb. 1996
* 16 killed in the Mahane Yehuda open market in Jerusalem in a double suicide attack, July 1997
* 23 dead and 115 wounded when a Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up on a No. 2 bus line coming from the Western Wall
in Jerusalem, August 2003
* 45 murdered within the space of five days in March 2002: a suicide Hamas terrorist blew himself up in a Haifa restaurant,
killing 15, and another one did the same in the Park Hotel in in Netanya during a Passover Seder, murdering some 30 and
wounding 144.

The ten worst Oslo War Hamas attacks, in which a total of 186 were murdered, also included the following:
* June 1, 2001 - Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv, 21 killed - mostly new-immigrant teenagers from the former Soviet Union
* Aug. 9, 2001 - Sbarro's Pizzeria in Jerusalem, 15 killed, including the parents and three children of the Schijveschuurder family
* Dec. 2, 2001 - Haifa bus, 15 killed
* May 7, 2002 - Rishon Letzion hall, 16 killed
* June 18, 2002 - #32 bus from Gilo, Jerusalem, 19 killed
* March 5, 2003 - #37 bus in Haifa, 15 dead
* June 11, 2003 - #14 bus, Jerusalem, 17 murdered
click here for a full list of Hamas terrorist attacks

Jimmy Carter was an embarrassment as a US president, and is now an embarassment as he tries to build a legacy by reconciling the Palestinian/Israeli divide. The State Department should revoke his passport for giving aid and comfort to the enemy and refuse his re-entry into the United States

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Marines help rebuild Islamic schools in Bangladesh

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Four months after deadly storms struck Bangladesh, 40 Marines and sailors with 1st Engineer Platoon, Fuel Company, 9th Engineer Support Battalion, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, continued relief efforts alongside 100 Bangladesh Army and Navy service members by rebuilding two schools March 6 – 30.

The construction project was part of the III Marine Expeditionary Force Bangladesh Interoperability Program, a joint effort focused on helping Bangladeshi communities rebuild from the storm that killed an estimated 3,500 people and caused an estimated $450 million in damage.

The platoon was assign to the town of Mongla in the southwest corner of Bangladesh. In January, an advanced party of Marines was sent to survey the conditions of two Islamic schools, known as Madrasahs, which were identified for repair. The team found little to survey.

“The buildings were gone,” said Gunnery Sgt. David Dickens, platoon sergeant. “They were destroyed. So basically it was just two open lots.”

The engineers immediately went to work designing two new schools from the ground up. Instead of using their standard construction templates, the 9th ESB Marines modified the design to ensure the buildings could be maintained with materials readily available in Bangladesh after they left. They decided on using tin for the roofs and bamboo sheathing for walls instead of the plywood and shingles more common in Western construction.

Building the schools with unconventional materials required the assistance of a Bangladesh Army engineer platoon who worked alongside the U.S. service members.

“As Americans we don’t do a lot of tin roofing any more,” Dickens said. “We had to lean on the expertise of the Bangladesh Army for that.”

Members of the Bangladesh Navy provided security during the project.

Some platoon members found working with the Bangladeshi soldiers difficult at first due to the language barrier as communications were often reduced to hand signals.

“We were basically playing charades in order to construct a building,” said Cpl. Michael Spivey, a squad leader for the platoon.

Over time, both parties began to pick up on the other’s language, making communication smoother. A common phrase emerged as a constant on the job site - “Shu•muh•sha•ne”, a Bangladeshi phrase meaning “no problem”.

“That was the motto of the mission. Any time there was a debate over a problem it always ended with ‘Shu•muh•sha•ne,’ we’ll figure it out,” Dickens said.

The appreciation of the townspeople was evident each day as the Marines drove through town on their way to the construction site, said squad leader Cpl. Amanda Wilson.

“They were really, really grateful and excited when we came by,” she said. “They stood on the side of the streets just waving as we passed. I’ve always wanted to do something for a country like that, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

Dickens shared the sentiment. “It’s probably one of the best projects I’ve ever done in my 16 years in the Marine Corps,” he said.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

The "Real" Rainbow Fish Story


Out in the countryside was a very large pond with all kinds of animals, fish, and plants. The smartest creatures were the fish, who had been there as long as anyone could remember.

Now most of the fish were pretty happy with the way things were. They swam around finding food to eat, going to school, talking about the weather, saying things like “Is it wet enough for you?”

Two fish that never seemed very happy though were Jimmy and Kyle.

What made them unhappy, very unhappy, was a fish named Bill.

Bill was different from all the other fish because he had scales that were very different from everyone else’s. Bill’s scales were all kinds of flashy colors, orange, blue, red, purple, yellow, bright green, just about every color you could imagine. All the other fish, including Jimmy and Kyle, had gray scales, some lighter or darker. Jimmy and Kyle would see Bill go by with his bright scales and get very jealous and angry.


Jimmy and Kyle started talking about Bill’s bright colorful scales with all the other gray fish in the pond.

“Don’t you all think Bill should share his scales with everyone else?” they asked their friends.

Their friends like Jane and Karl hadn’t really thought about Bill’s bright scales before, but now that they looked at him and then looked at themselves, they started to get jealous too.

The four fish decided to talk to Bill about sharing his scales. One evening as the warm sun was setting on the edge of the pond, they saw Bill coming back from the south end of the pond.

Jimmy decided to start off the conversation. “Bill, we have noticed how bright and colorful your scales are, and we would like you to give us some of them. Then we’ll be colorful too and finally be happy.”






Bill floated gracefully as he thought about what they were asking. “Well,” he said, “I don’t think the scales would last very long once I give them to you. But I can tell you how you can get some colorful scales of your own”.

“All you have to do is go down to the south end of the pond and find some plants that look like little trumpets growing in the deeper water. After you eat the plants for a few weeks, you’ll start to get more color in your scales, and after a year, you’ll look like me, if not better. My father taught me about this, and his father taught him also.”

The four jealous fish listened to his story, but it sounded like a lot of work and they didn’t want to wait for weeks, and certainly a year was too long. So they swam off together and tried to figure out a plan to get Bill’s scales.

Kyle was listening to the other three when he saw Big Sam swim by. Big Sam was the biggest, ugliest , meanest fish in the pond. Everyone was afraid of him, and even though he was slow, he was very scary.

Kyle told the other three “Hey, let’s get Big Sam to go over there and take Bill’s scales and give them to us.”

“Why would he help us?” Jane asked.

“Let’s make him the king of the pond,” said Karl. “We can tell him how nasty Bill is and that Bill stole all those scales from the other fish. Tell Big Sam that he would be doing a good thing by taking the scales from Bill and giving them equally to everyone else.” Everyone thought the plan was great, and decided to talk to Big Sam as soon as possible.

Early the next morning, the four jealous fish, Jimmy, Kyle, Karl, and Jane, along with some of their not-so-bright friends, found Big Sam floating on his back sleeping like a log.

They woke Big Sam up and told him their plan to make him king. When they told him how Bill had stolen the scales from everyone else, which was a lie, and that Big Sam would be a hero if he could take Bill’s scales and give them to everyone else, Big Sam readily agreed to be their king.

That evening, as the warm sun was setting on the edge of the pond, Bill came along as he usually does from the south end to go home. Big Sam and the jealous fish and their friends all swarmed around Bill, making Bill very afraid.

“I am now the King of the Pond,” declared Big Sam. “My first act as the good king that I am is to take your bright scales and give them to the less fortunate fish in the pond. You have plenty of scales, and we will not take them all, but everyone deserves to have bright scales. And besides that, you don’t deserve these scales, you stole them from the other fish.”

Before Bill could say a word, Big Sam was ripping the scales from Bill’s skin, leaving big colorless patches of gray like the other fish. The jealous fish cheered for Big Sam, who finally seemed to have found something he was good at.

When Big Sam finally finished taking Bill’s scales, Bill silently slipped away while Big Sam turned to other fish.

Big Sam had thousands of bright colorful scales, and started to hand them out a few at a time to the other fish. “Isn’t this great?” said Jimmy and Kyle to the others, as they put some of the colorful scales over their own gray scales. All the fish swam around looking at each other, admiring the new scales, and even happier now that Bill was not as beautiful as he used to be.

They all looked at Big Sam , and were surprised that instead of having a few scales like them, he had hundreds of the bright scales. When Big Sam saw them looking at all the scales he had kept to himself, he smirked “It’s good to be the king,” and swam off to his home.

The next morning, the fish of the pond went about their usual business. Jimmy saw Kyle swimming over his way when he noticed something was wrong with Kyle’s new scales.

“Your new scales are turning gray!” Jimmy shouted.

Kyle shouted back “Jimmy, your new scales are turning gray too!”

As the fish all came out to enjoy the day, they noticed that all the colorful scales were now gray, and that they all looked exactly like they did before they made Big Sam king. Even the hundreds of scales Big Sam had kept for himself were now gray and falling off.

They all were even more jealous and angry when they saw Bill swimming toward the south end of the pond with his patchy skin starting to turn bright and colorful again. And even more shocking than that, two other fish were following Bill to the south end of the pond.

This went on for several days. Each day, Bill and his two friends would come back from the south end of the pond, brighter and more colorful than the day before. Big Sam and the other fish were really angry now.

Big Sam caught them the next day, and took even more of their scales, giving some of them away to the other fish, but still keeping more of them for himself. For weeks this went on. Bill and his two friends kept having their scales taken, Big Sam got bigger and scarier, and the other fish would get a few scales once in a while, just to have them turn gray and fall off the next day.

Meanwhile, more fish were going to the south end of the pond and learning from Bill how to grow their own colorful scales. There were plenty of the trumpet-shaped plants for them to eat if they would just put forth some effort. The jealous fish were getting even more angry, calling them traitors, and demanding that Big Sam do something about the trend.

They told Big Sam that if all the fish got their own bright scales, then they wouldn’t need Big Sam to be king anymore. When Big Sam heard this, he was angry and started looking for a way to stop the colorful fish permanently.

The warm days in the pond had been growing longer and Jane noticed something unusual. The pond was getting lower!!!!!

Now the pond wasn’t very much lower at all. In fact, it had lowered so little that nobody had noticed it but Jane, since she was always measuring the pond.

Jane told Jimmy and Kyle that day how the pond had recently lowered. Jimmy and Kyle had heard of the pond lowering and raising before, but they had never seen it personally. But an idea came to them, an incredible, powerful, devious idea that would put and end to Bill and his friends and their colorful scales.

They called all the fish of the pond to a general meeting around the giant cat-tail plant. This was a very rare occasion, so all of the fish were interested in what was going on.

Jimmy opened the meeting. “We have found out some very alarming news. Jane discovered that the pond we live in is getting lower. Other fish have confirmed this fact. The pond is drying up and we have only one chance to stop it before we all end up dead!”

There was a huge gasp from the crowd. All the fish started yelling, talking, shouting, and crying. “What has caused this to happen?” they asked.

Jimmy slowly pointed his fin in the direction of Bill and his two almost fully-colored friends. “Ever since those three have been feeding at the south end of the pond, and getting more colorful, the pond has slowly been lowering. I propose that Big Sam be given the authority to stop them from going to the south end. Hopefully, we can stop the pond from drying up.”

The crowd heard a cough from the back of the crowd. It was Gerry, the oldest fish in the pond, and he asked for the opportunity to speak.

“I’ve lived in this pond for many seasons,” he said, “more than anyone here I suppose. I’ve seen the pond lower before, and I’ve seen it raise too. I suppose long after I die, the raising and lowering will still go on. I don’t see any evidence that Bill and his friends have caused this to happen, and I propose that they be left alone.”

The fish turned back to Jimmy. He shouted “This old fish is a Lowering denier, and anyone who denies this has to be silenced! Who will you believe, the old denier or Jane with her new scientific measuring stick?”

The crowd of fish roared in agreement, and passed a law giving Big Sam the power to stop Bill and his friends from going to the south end. They also passed a law stopping anyone from discussing the pond-lowering issue.

Bill and his friends did stop going to the south end of the pond. Slowly, their scales started to fade, turning paler and paler until they were as gray as the rest of the fish.

Jimmy and Kyle and the rest of the jealous fish were now very sad at their situation. They were still gray, just like before, but now they had Big Sam for a king, and he had gotten meaner and scarier. Not only did Big Sam not allow them to talk about the pond-lowering issue, they weren’t allowed to talk about anything, read anything, or do anything that Big Sam did not approve of.

The next spring, as the water warmed, and the snow on the banks of pond melted, the water did rise once again, just like the old fish Gerry had predicted. And all the gray fish swam around in misery, waiting for the day when Big Sam would finally float to the surface belly-up one last and final time.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Evolutionists surprised....AGAIN!

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Editor's note: Evolutionists are always being "surprised" and "amazed" and "having to rethink how we evolved" whenever they discover something new in their field of study. Yet, those who believe in creation and Intelligent Design are mocked as ignorant simpletons, with many scientists, teachers and professors being fired for their belief that God was behind the amazing universe we call home.
In the following article, the evolutionists admit that they were wrong about how they structured the "animal tree of life". While creationists never have to revamp their belief system, evolutionists are constantly finding evidence contrary to their current theories and revamping their system to fit the new "evidence". But never call Darwinism and evolution a "theory", you might lose your job or get a failing grade from your science teacher.

find a theater showing "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"

From LiveScience.com- Earth's first animal was the ocean-drifting comb jelly, not the simple sponge, according to a new find that has shocked scientists who didn't imagine the earliest critter could be so complex.
The mystery of the first animal denizen of the planet can only be inferred from fossils and by studying related animals today. To get to the bottom of that, scientists analyzed massive volumes of genetic data to define the earliest splits at the base of the animal tree of life.
The tree of life is a hierarchy of evolutionary relationships among species that shows which groups split off on their own evolutionary path first.
The new study surprisingly found that the comb jelly was the first animal to diverge from the base of the tree, not the less complex sponge, which had previously been given the honor.
"This was a complete shocker," said study team member Casey Dunn of Brown University in Rhode Island. "So shocking that we initially thought something had gone very wrong."

Dunn's team checked and re-checked their results and came up with the same result every time: the comb jelly came first. The results are detailed in the April 10 issue of the journal Nature, a journal that, like most respected journals, requires other scientists review a paper prior to publication.
Unlike sponges, comb jellies have connective tissues and a nervous system, and so are more complex. Though squishy and tentacled, they are not, however, true jellyfish as they lack the classic bell-shaped body and characteristic stinging cells.
The finding was unexpected because evolutionary biologists had thought that less complex animals split off and evolved separately first. Dunn says that two evolutionary scenarios can explain why the comb jellies would actually have been first among animals. The first is that the comb jelly evolved its complexity independent of other animals after branching off to forge its own path.
The second is that the sponge evolved its simpler form from the more complex form. This second possibility underscores the fact that "evolution is not necessarily just a march towards increased complexity," Dunn said.
Though scientists can say which animal branched off first, they can't date precisely when this early comb jelly diverged away. "Unfortunately, we don't have fossils of the oldest comb jelly," Dunn said. "Therefore, there is no way to date the earliest jelly and determine when it diverged."
Though comb jellies are a common creature in the seas today, these modern specimens likely look very different from their early ancestors.
Dunn and his team hope that their approach will fill other gaps in the tree of life, including where the branches of many of today's species belong.
Other researchers involved in the study, funded by the National Science Foundation: Gonzalo Giribet of Harvard University, Mark Martindale of the University of Hawaii and Ward Wheeler of the American Museum of Natural History.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"

Ben Stein's movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" chronicles the Stalinist-type persecution that teachers in academia have experienced for not believing the Darwinist theory of evolution. These teachers dare to believe in creation and Intelligent Design.

The movie opens April 18, be sure to be there and support conservative values.