Former Astronaut Speaks Out on Global Warming

Former Astronaut Speaks Out on Global Warming
(article by the Associated Press, 02/15/2009)


AP article, Santa Fe, NM- Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesn't believe that humans are causing global warming.

“I don't think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect,” said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York.

Schmitt contends that scientists “are being intimidated” if they disagree with the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels, temperatures and sea levels.

“They've seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven't gone along with the so-called political consensus that we're in a human-caused global warming.” Schmitt said.

Dan Williams, publisher with the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is hosting the climate change conference, said he invited Schmitt after reading about his resignation from The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to space exploration.

Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity. In his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the “global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making.”

Williams said Heartland is skeptical about the crisis that people are proclaiming in global warming.

“Not that the planet hasn't warmed. We know it has or we'd all still be in the Ice Age,” he said. “But it has not reached a crisis proportion and, even among us skeptics, there's disagreement about how much man has been responsible for that warming.”

Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by 1 degree per century since around 1400AD., and the rise in carbon dioxide is because of the temperature rise.
Schmitt also said geological evidence indicates changes in sea level have been going on for thousands of years. He said smaller changes are related to cahnges in the elevation of land masses – for example, the Great Lakes are rising because the earth's crust is rebounding from being depressed by glaciers.

Schmitt, who grew up in Silver City and now lives in Albuquerque, has a science degree from the California Institute of Technology. He also studied geology at the University of Oslo in Norway and took a doctorate in geology from Harvard University in 1964.

In 1972, he was one of the last men to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission.
Schmitt said he's heartened that the upcoming conference is made up of scientists who haven't been manipulated by politics.

Of the global warming debate, he said: “It's one of the few times you've seen a sizable portion of scientists who ought to be objective take a political position and it's coloring their objectivity.”

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Ref. Santa Fe New Mexican, http://www.sfnewmexican.com/
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/national/general/view/2009_02_15_Former_astronaut_speaks_out_on_global_warming/srvc=home&position=recent

Number 6,000 from Van's Aircraft Flown

Got this little tidbit from AOPA...

Louis Palmenteri of Rhome, Texas, recently piloted the 6,000th airplane from from a kit by Van's Aircraft.

Palmenteri said it took him to three to four years to build his airplane from the kit supplied by the 33-year-old manufacturer.

"We have shipped starts for more than 1,200 aircraft in the last two years," says founder Richard VanGrunsven.  He notes that newer models are designed to require less building time, so "we look forward to seeing the next thousand RVs fly in an even shorter time that the last thousand."  AOPA Online dated 02/12/2009.

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Ref. Van's Aircraft ( http://www.vansaircraft.com/ and http://www.vansairforce.net/ ).

Untapped Oil Reserves in the United States in 2008

Thanks to a email from a old flying buddy of mine, I am writing this post for both of my blogs (http://aerospacedreams.blogspot.com/ and http://flash255bunker.blogspot.com/ ).

While the email that was sent to me delt with the Bakken Formation in Montana and North Dakota, I also found a fact sheet dealing with the Permian Basin – a region that I live in. Please use the links provided below and print these out for yourself and your friends. Email your friends with those links or a link to this blog for their own education. The news about the Bakken MUST get out to the general public. It must evade the efforts of the green party (I.e. The Democratic Party and their propaganda machine – the mainstream news media).
Quoting the United States Geological Survey report for the Permian Basin, "The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently assessed the undiscovered oil and gas potential of the Permian Basin Province of West Texas and southeast New Mexico. The assessment was geology based and used the total petroleum system concept. The geologic elements of a total petroleum system are petroleum source rocks (quality, source rock maturation, generation, and migration), reservoir rocks (sequence stratigraphy, petrophysical properties), and traps (trap formation and timing). This study assessed potential for technically recoverable resources in new field discoveries only; field growth (or reserve growth) of conventional oil and gas fields was not included. Using a this methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated a mean of 41 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas and a mean of 1.3 billion barrels of undiscovered oil in the Permian Basin Province."

This is good news if the US had the strength to ignore those voices on the left and not harming the planet, etc, etc. But, the news is even better with what is known as the “Devonian-Mississippian Bakken Formation” This is a area that covers North and South Dakota and parts of Montana. USGS estimates a mean “undiscovered” volume of 3.6 Billion barrels of oil, 1.85 TRILLION cubic feet of associated/dissolved natural gas. And finally, 148 million barrels of natural gas liquids in this region.

And since this is a light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16.00 per Barrel!

This is enough to fully fuel the American economy for Forty-One (41) straight years!

Now this next bit of information should really floor the reader. It was released several years ago (April 20, 2006, Stansberry Report Online). U.S. Oil Discovery – Largest Reserve in the World! Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world is more than 2 Trillion barrels. On August 8, 2005, President Bush mandated its extraction.

They reported this amazing news: We have more oil inside our own borders, than ALL the other proven reserves on the planet. Eight times as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Eighteen times as much oil as Iraq. Twenty-One and Twenty-Two times as much oil as Kuwait and Iran respectively. 500 times as much oil as Yemen. All right here in the United States of America.

And the reason WE are NOT extracting this?! You already know the answer to this question. It is because the environmentalists and others (I.e. The Greens and their lobby groups working on the Democratic party), have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil!

The head researcher of the study, James Bartis, says that we( the USA) got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East – more than TWO TRILLION barrels untapped. The Denver Post quoted him as saying, “That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today.”

Think about this, the current cost of a barrel of oil is: $40.41 as of February 8, 2009, but the prices of gas at the gas pump is still climbing again – getting ready to shock it to us again for the second year in a row. Why is this?

My thoughts on this is this. There are those who believe in Peak Oil – that oil is a finite resource. While there is talk (and only talk) of building more refineries – that will not happen. Because if one believes in Peak Oil – and that we have ALREADY crossed that dividing line, there will not be enough oil to process in 20-30 years. Which is also the amount of time it would take in order for a refinery to pay itself off. Here is a link about Peak Oil for you (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_Oil).

I no longer believe in Peak Oil myself. More and more discoveries of oil are being made at far greater depth than what one would expect to find dead dinosaurs and plant matter to be at. Oil, I think, is a geological byproduct. We've been taught about the theory of Continental Drift and how the continents of the earth move relative to one another. This is an old hypothesis put forth by Abraham Ortelius in 1596 and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912. (Check it out at Wikipedia yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift).

Is oil a byproduct of Continental Drift? For myself, as of this date; I think the answer is yes.

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References:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_Oil
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift
3. http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2007/3115/
4. http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911
5. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2008/1353/
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3021/pdf/FS08-3021_508.pdf
photo from http://www.fotosearch.com/ (1169611) royalty free photograph.

Comet Lulin Coming

Newly discovered comet Lulin is going to be more visible in the nightime skies soon.  Cloest approach will be on February 24th and the nights up to and afterwards.  It will appear more like a dim, fuzzy star according to the article on Space.com.

The comet was discovered by Chi Sheng Lin using a 16-inch telescope at the Lulin Obervatory at Nantou, Taiwn on July 11, 2007.  But 19-year old student Quanzhi Ye at Sun Yat-sen University in Mainland China who reconized the new object to be a comet.  It was part of the Lulin Ky Survey project to explore the various populations of small bodies in our solar  system.  Lulin comet, was formally known to astronomers as Comet C/2007 N3.

According to Brian Marsden of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Comet Lulin is in a parabola orbit.  It has passed through the perihelion point in its orbit around the sun on January 10, 2009, 113 million miles from the sun.  It is now outward bound from the sun, closing on Earth with a minimum of 38 million miles by February 24, 2009.  Comet Lulin also has a low inclination of just 1.6 degrees from the solar ecliptic. 

The comet is located in the constellation Libra and will appear to move on a northwest trajectoy, crossing over into the constellation of Virgo on Feb. 11 and passing 3 degrees north of the 1-st magnitude star Spica in Virgo on February 16.  Space.com reporter Joe Rao, gave a example of how to determine 10-degrees of width by using your clenched fist held out at arms length.  

Comets are visible because solar radiation releases gas and dust from the comet and thus that material is reflected in the sunlight, creating a cloudy head (also known as the coma) and either one or two tails.  Telescope observers might also be able to see a tiny spike which "leads" the comet, ot to put it another way, a real tiny tail oppsoite the main tail.

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Ref. article on Space. com by Joe Rao ( http://www.space.com/spacewatch/090206-ns-comet-lulin.html )

NASA's Singularity University

NASA announced on February 3, 2009 a new, narrowly focused graduate studies program. Called the Singularity University, or more simply, (SU); it plans to offer nine-week graduate studies program as well as a three day executive officer and management level programs beginning in June. Location will be at the Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.

According to the NASA statement, the SU curriculum will cover a borad range of interdisciplinary exposure to ten fields of study. Such as future studies and forecasting; networks and computing systems; biotechnology and bioinformatics; nanotechnology; medicine, neuroscience and human enhancements; artificial intelligence, robotics, and cognitive computing; energy and ecological systems; space and physical sciences; policy, law and ethics; and finance and entrepreneurship.

The university was founded on September 20, 2008, by S. Pete Worden, Ames Center Director; Ray Kurzweil, author and futurist Peter Diamandis; space entrepreneur and chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation; Robert Richards, who is the co-founder of the International Space University; Michael Simpson, president of the International Space University; and a group of Singularity University associate founders who have contributed time and capital.

Ray Kurzweil stated the purpose of Singularity University in his own words, “With its strong focus on interdisciplinary learning, Singularity University is poised to foster the leaders who will create a uniquely creative and productive future world.”

Here is the link that was posted with the NASA news release ( http://www.singularityu.org and http://singularity-university.org/ ).

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Ref. Space.com article by the Space.com staff ( http://www.space.com/news/090203-singularity-university.html ).  also http://singularity-university.org/ 

Iran Launches Its Own Satellite

 Iran announced that it had launched a domestically built satellite into orbit for the first time on Tuesday (February 3, 2009). Called Omid (meaning “Hope”), the satellite demonstrates the long-range ballistic technology that Iran has at its disposal. In other words, if a satellite can be put into orbit, so can a warhead. While Iran publically states it has no intention of doing so, the West doesn't believe them.

Quoting a statement from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from a televised statement, “Dear Iranian nation, your children have placed the first indigenous satellite into orbit.” Iranian state television showed footage of a rocket blasting off and lighting up the night. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also added the following: “With God's help and the desire for justice and peace, the official presence of the Islamic Republic was registered in space.” The television broadcast said that the Omid would return to earth with data after orbiting for one to three months. Omid joins another Iranian satellite in orbit. Called the Sina-1, it was launched by a Russian rocket in 2005.

Political analysts state that by sending the “Omid” into space is a message to the rest of the world that Iran is “very powerful” and you have to deal with them in the correct manner. Officials from six of the world powers (the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, and China) will meet on Wednesday to discuss the nuclear issue with Iran. It will be their first meeting since President Barack Obama took office. President Obama in the past stated that he will pursue direct talks with Tehran – but that also warned the Tehran government to expect more pressure if it(Iran) does not meet the U.N. Security Council demand to halt atomic work the West fears has military aims.

The Reuters article reported that Andrew Brookes of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a think-tank located in London, said the news would prompt concern in Israel and elsewhere in the region. “They will think that this civilian capability will soon be transformed to a military reconnaissance and intelligence gathering capability.

Former head of the Israel Space Agency, Isaac Ben-Israel, told Reuters reporters in Jerusalem: “If they managed to fire a satellite into space it means they can also reach Western Europe.” Speaking with Tal Inbar of the Space Research Center at Israel's think-tank (the Fisher Brothers Institute), said that Iran was only the ninth country in the world capable of both producing a satellite and sending it into space from a domestically made launcher. “We should regard this satellite as the “Iran Sputnik” he stated on Israeli radio. Israel joined the club in 1988 and now Iran has follow suit in 2009 – 21 years later. “The main value is ... propaganda.” he said.

Iran is still under both U.N. And U.S. Sanctions because of suspicions about Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Iran keeps stating that it's nuclear plans are for domestic power generating needs. Iranian technology is mostly modifications of other equipment supplied by other nations such as China, North Korea, etc.

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Ref. From Reuters.com, an artilce by Fredrik Dahl and Parisa Hafezi (Tehran) (http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5120NN20090203 )

Skydiver Instructor Dies in Mid-Jump

You know you are having a bad day when your instructor who is strapped to your back while the two of you are making a practice jump - has a heart attack and dies.  What do you do?  

Learn how to land of course.  This incident took place in Chester, South Carolina.  Twenty-five year old Daniel Pharr was wondering why his instructor, George Steele; went silent on him all of a sudden after they stepped out of their airplane at 13, 500 feet.  Pharr knew from watching TV programs before joining the Army, that you steered the chute with the toggles and he managed a good landing.  

That was when he discovered that his non-military instructor George Steele; had a heart attack on the way down.  While waiting for medical help to arrive, Pharr tired CPR on Steele - but to no avail. The skydiving lesson was a Christmas gift from his girlfriend.  Daniel Pharr is currently stationed at Fort Gordon, Georgia.  

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Ref.  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090202/ap_on_re_us/skydiver_death