The Saloon dot net

Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:41:34 -0500

Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.

Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.

H/t to our pal, Steve!

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Asteroid or comet strike? Child's play. Try space dust.

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:46:37 -0500

If this were some 1950s sci-fi thriller, the Doomsday Cloud would loom dark and ominous in the evening sky. Each night more stars would wink out along its edges. The cloud would sweep past Jupiter, swallowing it whole, and race on toward Earth. There would be an inky darkness at noon. And so on.

No, nothing is going to blot out the sun. But recent observations and numerical simulations suggest that eventually—in a few millennia, maybe—the solar system may plow into a cloud of gas and dust a thousand times denser than the space we travel through now. This interstellar fog could reduce the sun’s sphere of influence until most of the outer planets are sitting naked in space. Dust and gas will penetrate as far as Earth’s orbit and may begin eating away at the oxygen in our upper atmosphere. The solar wind, now greatly compressed, will no longer provide adequate protection from the high-speed electrons and ions ripping through space. These cosmic rays will tear into the atmosphere, to the detriment of the delicate molecules of life.

This will be one bad cloud.

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Quake swarms continue to plague Yellowstone

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:46:07 -0500

More earthquakes are rattling Yellowstone National Park. The small earthquakes that began in the park a week ago continue. They include three more earthquakes Friday that measured stronger than magnitude 3.0. A quake of magnitude 3.5 happened at 11:30 a.m., followed by quakes measuring 3.2 and 3.1 at 12:40 p.m. and 1:15 p.m., according to the University of Utah Seismic Stations

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The Warm Turns: The Earth has been warming ever since the end of the Little Ice Age. But guess what: Researchers say mankind is to blame for that, too

Roland, the Gunslinger — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:21:15 -0500

When the sun is active, it's not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop near zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins. But this year, the start of a new cycle, the sun has been eerily quiet.

The first seven months averaged a sunspot count of only three and in August there were no sunspots at all — zero — something that has not occurred since 1913.

According to the publication Daily Tech, in the past 1,000 years, three previous such events — what are called the Dalton, Maunder and Sporer Minimums — have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called the Little Ice Age (1500-1750).

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The World's Deadliest Conventional Weapons

Roland, the Gunslinger — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:08:02 -0500

Some are terrifying. Some are silent. But they're all very effective.

The five deadliest conventional weapons in the world are all part of the U.S. Armed Forces' arsenal, though many are used by other countries as well.

Some date back to World War II in concept, but they are still lethal and continue to be used in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan

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This Machine Might* Save the World

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 06:23:23 -0500

* that's a big, fat "might"

Two desktop-printer engineers quit their jobs to search for the ultimate source of endless energy: nuclear fusion. Could this highly improbable enterprise actually succeed?

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2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:41:02 -0500

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects....First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare....Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

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Home Generator -Zero Point Energy - Off the Grid

Roland, the Gunslinger — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:28:39 -0500

NASA: A Giant Breach in Earth's Magnetic Field

Roland, the Gunslinger — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:24:08 -0500

NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth's magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to "load up" the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms. But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics.

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Video>>>

Popular Science: Top 100 Innovations of 2008

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:12:00 -0500

For decades, we've fantasized about watching paper-thin TVs, soaring hundreds of feet with personal jetpacks, riding in cars that drive themselves, and re-growing organs.

The 21st annual Best of What's New celebrates all of those dreams coming true. Now we've collected them all into one single slideshow. Launch it here to learn about these achievements and 96 other breakthroughs that, whether long awaited or completely unexpected, are equally amazing.

(H/T: Steve)

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Men under threat from 'gender bending' chemicals

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:35:37 -0500

Scientists are warning that manmade pollutants which have escaped into the environment mimic the female sex hormone oestrogen...The authors claim that the chemicals found in food packaging, cleaning products, plastics, sewage and paint cause genital deformities, reduce sperm count and "feminise" males.

Although the report only looked at the impact of gender bending chemicals on the animal world, its authors say the findings have disturbing implications for human health.

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New US military report on global warming raises worry

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 15:43:19 -0500

FTA: ...a section of the 56-page report on climate change and natural disasters prompted criticism yesterday from some leading specialists who said that spreading the inaccurate perception that the causes of climate change remain an open question could result in government agencies not taking the issue seriously enough.

The report, titled Joint Operating Environment 2008, states that "the impact of global warming and its potential to cause natural disasters and other harmful phenomena such as rising sea levels has become a prominent - and controversial - national and international concern. Some argue that there will be more and greater storms and natural disasters, others that there will be fewer."

It adds: "In many respects, scientific conclusions about the causes and potential effects of global warming are contradictory."

(The global warming side hasn't made its case. Simple as that. Leave the hyperbole at home, stop whining, and make. your. case. -Roland)

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Expert: Small Ark. earthquakes could be warning

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:10:55 -0500

While hundreds of earthquakes occur each year, including several in Arkansas, the location of the recent ones give Al-Shukri pause. Arkansas quakes generally occur in the state's northeast corner, part of the New Madrid Seismic Zone, where three temblors with magnitudes of around 8 struck during the winter of 1812 and smaller ones continue today.

But central Arkansas does not have any seismic history, Al-Shukri said.

"It is abnormal. It is significant," he said. "We need to carefully watch this activity."

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Witnesses: Large meteor streaks across Canada sky

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:50:31 -0500

Scientists say they're searching for remnants of a meteor that brilliantly lit up the sky before seemingly falling to earth in western Canada.

University of Calgary planetary scientist Alan Hildebrand called it one of the largest meteors visible in the country in the last decade.

"It would be something like a billion-watt light bulb," said Hildebrand, who also co-ordinates meteor sightings with the Canadian Space Agency.

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Evidence of vast frozen water reserves on Mars: scientists

Roland, the Gunslinger — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:01:30 -0500

NASA scientists have discovered enormous underground reservoirs of frozen water on Mars, away from its polar caps, in the latest sign that life might be sustainable on the Red planet.

Ground-penetrating radar used by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals numerous huge glaciers up to one half-mile thick buried beneath layers of rock and debris. Researchers said one glacier is three time the size of Los Angeles in area.

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Freeman Dyson Debunks Dire Forecasts on Global Warming and Other Tenets

Roland, the Gunslinger — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:06:00 -0500

In the absence of audience interruptions, Mr. Dyson had an argument anyway with the scores of people (like Al Gore) who weren’t present to defend their belief in the dire consequences of global warming. (“There’s no accounting for human folly,” Mr. Dyson said when asked about Mr. Gore’s Nobel Prize.) Saying that on a recent trip he and his wife found Greenlanders to be delighted with their warmer climate and increased tourism, Mr. Dyson suggested that representing “local warming by a global average is misleading.” In his comments at both the Nassau Club and Labyrinth, he decried the use of computer modeling to make “tremendously dogmatic” predictions about worldwide trends, without acknowledging the “messy, muddy real world” and the non-climatic effects of increased carbon dioxide. “There is no substitute for widely-conducted field operations over a long time,” he told the Nassau Club audience, citing the “enormous gaps in knowledge and sparseness of observation” that characterize the work of global warming experts.

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The world has never seen such freezing heat

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:17:57 -0500

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

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World asked to help craft online charter for religious harmony

Riley Jones — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:08:16 -0500

Co-founder of Google Larry Page smiles during the Clinton Global Inititative annual meeting in September 2008 in New York.

FTA- "A website launched Friday with the backing of technology industry and Hollywood elite urges people worldwide to help craft a framework for harmony between all religions.

The Charter for Compassion project on the Internet at www.charterforcompassion.org springs from a "wish" granted this year to religious scholar Karen Armstrong at a premier Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference in California.

"The chief task of our time is to build a global society where people of all persuasions can live together in peace and harmony"

Muslims? Live in 'Peace and Harmony?' ONLY for as long as they get their way. These Useful Idiots... they tried to sell us out to the Communists, now they can't wait to surrender to the Islamists.

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First fuzzy photos of planets outside solar system

Riley Jones — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:03:35 -0500

Earth seems to have its first fuzzy photos of alien planets outside our solar system, images captured by two teams of astronomers. The pictures show four likely planets that appear as specks of white, nearly indecipherable except to the most eagle-eyed experts. All are trillions of miles away — three of them orbiting the same star, and the fourth circling a different star.

(With 16 cool photos at the article)

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PC World Mag: 5 Reasons I Hope Classmates.com Gets Sued Into Oblivion

Riley Jones — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:03:28 -0500

Have you heard? Someone's suing Classmates.com over those e-mails it's been blasting the world with for the past decade. My reaction? It's about damned time.

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Major Source of Online Scams and Spams Knocked Offline

Riley Jones — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:08:11 -0500

A U.S. based Web hosting firm that security experts say was responsible for facilitating more than 75 percent of the junk e-mail blasted out each day globally has been knocked offline following reports from Security Fix on evidence gathered about suspicious activity emanating from the network.

For the past four months, Security Fix has been gathering data from the security industry about McColo Corp., a San Jose, Calif., based Web hosting service whose client list experts say includes some of the most disreputable cyber-criminal gangs in business today.

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A Different Type of Potato Gun

Riley Jones — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 12:18:42 -0500

Otzi, the prehistoric 'iceman,' probably has no modern descendants

Riley Jones — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:18:11 -0500

Otzi, Italy's prehistoric "iceman," probably does not have any modern-day descendants, according to a study published Thursday.

A team of Italian and British scientists who sequenced his mitochondrial DNA -- which is passed down through the mother's line -- found that Otzi belonged to a genetic lineage that is either extremely rare or has died out.

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Michael Crichton dies of cancer

Roland, the Gunslinger — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:11:31 -0500

Chrichton was a brand-name author, known for his stories of disaster and systematic breakdown, such as the rampant microbe of "The Andromeda Strain" or dinosaurs running amok in "Jurassic Park," one of his many books that became major Hollywood movies.

"Through his books, Michael Crichton served as an inspiration to students of all ages, challenged scientists in many fields, and illuminated the mysteries of the world in a way we could all understand," his family said in a statement.

In recent years, he was the rare writer to get on well with President Bush, perhaps because of his skepticism about global warming, which Crichton addressed in the 2004 novel, "State of Favor." Crichton's views were strongly condemned by environmentalists, who alleged that the author was hurting efforts to pass legislation to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

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Hansen: Still a Media Darling

Roland, the Gunslinger — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:54:20 -0400

A month ago, Planet Gore reported that NASA climatologist James Hansen, a leading voice in proclaiming man’s role in climate change and a close advisor of Al Gore, had sided with the radical environmental group Greenpeace in advocating eco-vandalism to save the planet. Hansen’s controversial testimony at a London trial in support of activists accused of causing $60,000 in property damage to an English coal facility brought immediate condemnation from some in the science community.

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Nonsense By Any Other Name: Calling Carbon Dioxide A Pollutant Doesn't Make It A Pollutant

Roland, the Gunslinger — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:12:41 -0400

From NASA's own website: There is no more important greenhouse gas than water vapor. Water vapor affects global warming in both positive and negative terms, and offers a trail for scientists to follow towards a better understanding about how the planet functions as a whole. By applying integrated analytic tools to the study of climate and climate change, experts hope to learn more specifically how water vapor and other greenhouse gasses move and function throughout the atmosphere.

It is becoming increasingly fashionable to maintain that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, one that should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Seven Northeastern states have even announced their intention to sue the administration for its failure to regulate power plant emissions of carbon dioxide under the Act.

They claim to be doing this because fossil-fueled electric power plants are the source of nearly forty percent of the carbon dioxide emitted in the U.S. To underline the importance of doing something to reduce carbon dioxide emissions-like ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty on climate change which mandates reducing carbon dioxide emissions-they and others have repeatedly stated that carbon dioxide is the main global warming gas.

These claims are not only wrong, they are irresponsible...The principal greenhouse gas is water vapor.

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Barack Obama will classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated should he win the presidential election on Nov. 4, opening the way for new rules on greenhouse gas emissions.

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Fuel Cells Powered by Hydrogen from Sewage

Riley Jones — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:09:39 -0400

Researchers at the Oregon State University College of Engineering have discovered an efficient way to produce hydrogen from different types of biowaste, including municipal sewage.

The process uses 75% less energy than the traditional water electrolysis method of producing hydrogen, and can be done at a much lower cost, making it a good candidate for hydrogen fuel production. In the lab, researchers are already close to the Department of Energy’s goal of $2 to $3 per gasoline gallon equivalent for hydrogen fuel.

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Boise gets earliest snow on record

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 04:19:21 -0400

Big snow flakes fell early Friday evening, turning Downtown Boise into a giant snow globe for people on their way home from work. The snow caught many people off guard, including this bicyclist heading down Idaho Street between 8th and 9th around 5:45 p.m. Across the Treasure Valley, tree branches heavy with wet, snow-covered leaves fell on power lines, causing scattered power outages. This is the earliest measurable snowfall in Boise since recordkeeping began in 1898, according to the National Weather Service. At 10 p.m., the Weather Service said 1.7 inches of snow had fallen. The previous earliest recorded snowfall was Oct. 12, 1969, when a little more than an inch fell. And if the snow wasn't enough, meteorologists say winds across southwestern Idaho will average 25 to 40 mph through Saturday afternoon, with gusts up to 55 mph. Sustained winds of 30 to 40 mph are expected, which can make driving difficult.

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Wriggling Away From Cancer

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:25:45 -0400

Tiny strings of drug-laden iron particles could kill tumors

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The Flying Car Gets Real

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:11:46 -0400

The Transition is not a flying car. The vehicle, set to go on sale next year, will cruise smoothly on the road and through the sky. It will have four wheels, Formula One–style suspension, and a pair of 10-foot-wide wings that fold up when it switches from air to asphalt. And when the engineers at Terrafugia in Woburn, Massachusetts, let me sit inside their just-finished proof-of-concept vehicle and grab the steering wheel, it’s easy to imagine piloting this thing up and out of traffic, into the open skies.

But we’re not talking about a flying car. The Transition is a “roadable aircraft.”

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