Tag: Science

Hello, all.  I did not have research time to finish up the next installment about nuclear fusion in stars, so we will have to do with this.  I began planting my garden last week, so the subject of canning food came to mind.

Most people do not realize that canned foods are relatively recent developments, not counting wine and beer, which are at least technically, canned in many cases.

Here’s the latest GOP “stall tactic” in a very long parade of stall tactics:

Global-Warming Scientists ‘Need to Go Back to Square One,’ Rep. Barton Says

By Karen Schuberg, March 03, 2010

“Science is verifiable, science is something that can be replicated,” Barton, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told CNSNews.com.

“This whole theory of global warming is just that:  It’s a theory.  It’s based on models.  Models are based on variables, and conditions that the modelers that develop the models put into them.  And the models don’t replicate what’s happened,” Barton said. “So (scientists) need to go back to square one, look at the empirical data, look at alternative theories, and see if they can find a theory that actually fits the facts.”

http://news.google.com/news/se…

Sounds much more like Fudging the Science, to me …

Scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have published a study, Evidence for a recent increase in forest growth, suggesting that climate change can quite literally be measured by treehuggers. Like the average American citizen, American trees look to have had increasingly bulging middles in recent decades.  Having spent their careers quite literally hugging trees, SERC scientists Geoffrey Parker and Sean McMahon have written a study documenting

evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change.

For over 20 years, Parker has gone into a set of forests in the mid-Atlantic, tape measure in hand, and giving them a hug to measure their size. Parker’s own hugging has been extended with a robust group of volunteers conducting regular measurements of specified trees. (The boy scout to the right, while in a SERC forest, isn’t engaged in actual measurements for the study.) Some 250,000 hugs later, he has quite a database in hand.

The results of analyzing hugs surprised these researchers. Based on the data from these 100,000s of hugs, Parker’s and McMahon’s analysis documents

that the forest is packing on weight at a much faster rate than expected. … on average, the forest is growing an additional 2 tons per acre annually. That is the equivalent of a tree with a diameter of 2 feet sprouting up over a year.

Now, there are many things that contribute to plant growth, from soil quality to rainfall to temperatures to CO2 concentrations. Parker and McMahon have concluded that the driver for the bulging middles of the studied groves is best explained through human impacts: the rising levels of CO2 (a nutrition); and the warmer temperatures and extended growing season due to global warming (driven, in no small part, due to the rising CO2 levels).

Mr Luntz is at it again, doing what he does best:   Making Stuff Up for purely Politcal Gain!

Wall St Consultant Frank Luntz Pens Memo On

How To Channel Economic Anxiety Into Protecting Wall St Abuses

Lee Fang, ThinkProgress – 02/01/2010

[…] Luntz, who gained national recognition for his role in shaping the buzzword-heavy Contract for America with Newt Gingrich in 1994, has built a sizable business selling his messaging advice to both corporations and Republican campaigns.

The new memo instructs opponents of financial reform to simply lie about reform legislation, and to twist economic anxiety resulting from the recession into fear of any government effort to fix the underlying cause of the financial crisis. The most dishonest argument is that financial reform would “punish” taxpayers while rewarding “big banks and credit card companies.” In reality, top financial industry lobbyists are not only fighting proposed oversight regulations, but have said recently that they are opposed to “any regulation” at all.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/…

How DOES this Man sleep at night?

Some say that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But what do we know about our early universe and how we got here? How do we know that our ideas about the early universe are right? What is dark matter and dark energy and why do we think it exists in the first place?

All of the matter in the universe expanded from a single point. It doesn’t matter much what that means, though. To beg the question is to ask what happened before time began. And because of events that happened during the the inflationary epoch, we can no longer see all of the details of how the universe looked at the beginning of time.

But we won’t ask those questions today. Here we will talk about the current state of cosmology given by The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe — the reigning Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation [CMBR] experiment that gives us our best data from the early universe. Within a year, though, we expect a new and improved data set from The Planck Satellite.

Things get expensive from time to time.  Right now, with the cold weather, heat is expensive.  At other times, being cool is expensive.

Please follow me over the fold to talk about cutting expenses starting now.  Most of them will not affect your comfort, but one the most important one just might.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Today, Americans are engrossed in earthquake coverage.  The tremor in Haiti bought unimaginable death and destruction just south of our borders.  Events related to the recovery and rescues emerge as banner headlines.  Haitians Seek Solace Amid the Ruins. For a week now, the struggle to survive, revive the injured, and retrieve the bodies strewn on the streets of Port-au-Prince was also the central theme of most every broadcast.  In the midst of the misery, many Americans, felt desperate for a reprieve from the devastation that emotionally drained them. Millions took time to escape in a welcome distraction.  Sassy, former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin Made Her Debut appearance on Fox.  Tomorrow another reality will replace these stories, just as each superseded the hoopla over Harry Reid’s reference to race.  Metaphorically, the tales provide persons, policies, and, or practices fifteen minutes of fame.  In actuality, these  fade from our mind quickly.  

Carbonated water is incredibly common, and, in one form or another, just about everyone drinks it.  Sometimes it is enjoyed alone, but often it is mixed with flavoring ingredients.  Just about all soft drinks are flavored carbonated water, and in a sense beer, ale, champagne, and spumati are as well, except the traditional carbonation method for the alcoholic drinks is different from that of carbonated water.

Carbonated water with no other ingredients is usually called seltzer in the United States, whilst carbonated water with some added minerals is usually referred to as club soda.  Please join me in looking at the history of this material and its unlikely contribution to modern chemistry.

Carbonated water is incredibly common, and, in one form or another, just about everyone drinks it.  Sometimes it is enjoyed alone, but often it is mixed with flavoring ingredients.  Just about all soft drinks are flavored carbonated water, and in a sense beer, ale, champagne, and spumati are as well, except the traditional carbonation method for the alcoholic drinks is different from that of carbonated water.

Carbonated water with no other ingredients is usually called seltzer in the United States, whilst carbonated water with some added minerals is usually referred to as club soda.  Please join me in looking at the history of this material and its unlikely contribution to modern chemistry.

It is still cold here in the Bluegrass, as it is in much of the country.  The last time that it was freezing or above was at 02:00 on New Year’s Morning.  My thermometer right now reads 17.4 degrees F, and it made it up to nearly 30 when the sun came out for a little while this afternoon.  There is still snow all over the ground, but the road crews have done a good job with the roads, although two people were killed on the highway off of which I live when it fist started, one only about two miles from me.  Drive carefully, please.

Someone asked me the other day why static electricity is so noticeable in winter and not so much so in the summer.  I thought this would make a good topic for Pique the Geek, but to understand that it is important to understand what static electricity is in the first place.  Please follow for fun and information.