Deja Vu Horizon

This clip is 7:54 long, but watch it anyway.



So, basically the deep-water oil drilling companies are currently using 30-year-old technology to contain the Deepwater Horizon spill.

I'm sick of seeing BP's Tony Hayward being held up as the single face of villainre in all of this. Sure, BP's involvement is egregiously negligent. But let's see Steven Newman and David J. Lesar put through the ringer. In my point of view, they're all involved, so they're ALL deserving of the same excoriation.

In 1979, it took them nine months to stop the spill coming from a well 200 feet underwater. We're now three months and 3 days into Deepwater Horizon oil spill. How long will it take them to stop this well that's 5,000 feet underwater?

So THAT'S what the sun looks like.

I wouldn't know. The weather's been very weird 'round these here parts.

Not to mention the ginormous migraine that I like to call the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill Clusterfrench is giving me high blood pressure.

So I need calm down and focus on something beautiful and awe-inspiring. Like this:

The big yellow thing is the Sun. But look at the upper right section. See those two dark blips? The one on the left is the Shuttle Orbiter Atlantis and on the right is the International Space Station! Incredibly, Thierry caught them as they passed directly in front of the Sun! To give you an idea of how talented Thierry is, the entire transit lasted just over half a second.

... Mind you, Atlantis had just started its pitch maneuver, designed to show its belly to the crew on the ISS so they can inspect it for heat tile damage. That means this image was taken shortly before the Orbiter docked with the station, on May 16th. Thierry was in Madrid specifically to get this shot.

Get a good look. This is the last mission of Atlantis (unless it’s needed as a rescue mission later this year), so we won’t get too many more views like this.

Aaaah. I feel better now.

(link)

Vindication for Al Gore

Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) won the Nobel Peace Prize today for his work to fight global climate change.

"The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has today made it clear that combating climate change is a central peace and security policy for the 21st century," Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Environment Programme, said in a statement.

"The IPCC and Mr. Gore have contributed to the unprecedented momentum on the climate-change challenge in 2007," Steiner added.

Tony Juniper, executive director of environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth, said of the Nobel announcement: "This is a very welcome signal that the world is beginning to wake up to how environmental challenges are going to shape many aspects of human welfare long into the future.

"We hope that politicians everywhere will see this signal and take heed," he added.

Seems like proper vindication for the Man Who Should Have Been President to me. I only hope Al Gore's ability to influence more action regarding global climate change continues.

Uh-oh.

Anyone who's watched a zombie movie or two knows this can't be good:

Aug. 7, 2007 — Microorganisms locked in Antarctic ice for 100,000 years and more came to life and resumed growing when given warmth and nutrients in a laboratory.

Researchers led by Kay Bidle of Rutgers University tested five samples of ice ranging in age from 100,000 years to 8 million years.

"We didn't really know what to expect. We knew that microorganisms were really hardy," Bidle, an assistant professor of marine and coastal sciences, said in a telephone interview.

Global Warming, Schmobal Warming

The recent snowstorms in Denver have global warming detractors reveling in their incredulousness.

Why?

Because, according to them, if you think global warming has anything to do with that, you're deluded, and that it's proof that there's some kind of "Northeast bias" regarding this issue.

[thud]

Sorry, that was the sound of my forehead hitting my laptop.

Climate skeptic Pat Michaels on FOX's Your World with Neil Cavuto, according to Think Progress:

Uh, Neil, if you believe that warming causes cooling, you’re like my neighbors down in Virginia who think that if you put hot water in the ice cube tray, it freezes faster. It doesn’t work that way.

And in fact, in Denver, there were very few people who, I think, tried to conflate the snowstorm with warming, they just tried to ignore the fact, that in fact it’s snowing like crazy in Denver, despite the fact that unlike in the East, where there is no warming trend in the winter temperatures, there is a warming trend in the winter temperatures in Colorado.

Look. We all know it snows in Denver. We also know the Gulf states get hit with a hurricane from time to time. But for fuck's sake, anything out of the ordinary, while a possible outlier, can't be ignored as possible evidence supporting the theory of global warming. If you don't know for sure, why not err on the side of caution?

Oh, and P.S., hot water does freeze faster than cold water in the ice cube tray. Potential energy. Didn't you take physics? Hello, Mpemba effect (Props to the folks at UC Riverside for that).