There, you have it. It’s official. Dinosaurs did not walk with man. Pat Robertson has declared that the earth is older than 6,000 years.
He references carbon dating and dinosaurs as proof. No big bang theory yet but give him time. He may get around to including that.
This post is a companion piece to the Grand Canyon article.
Fabulous pics of the Grand Canyon:
http://www.lovethesepics.com/2011/03/grand-canyon-proof-that-nature-rocks-35-pics/
To stand on the South Rim and gaze into the Grand Canyon is to behold an awesome immensity of time. The serpentine Colorado River has relentlessly incised a 280-mile-long chasm that in some places stretches 18 miles wide and more than a mile deep. Visitors to Grand Canyon National Park will encounter an exhibit titled the Trail of Time, and learn that scientists believe the canyon is about 6 million years old — relatively young by geological standards.
Now a few contrarian scientists want to call time out. The canyon isn’t 6 million years old, they say, but more like 70 million years old. If this order-of-magnitude challenge to the orthodoxy holds up, it would mean the Grand Canyon has been around since the days of T. rex.
No! It can’t be the same age as T-Rex!
So much for the advancement of the flat-earthers!
I do believe the segment on Governor Christie is the very best.
Jon Stewart was off the air on Monday and Tuesday. They couldn’t get to the studio.
Here is the Tribute to Institutional Competence:
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| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| A Daily Show Tribute to Institutional Competence | ||||
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Drop, cover, and hold on. How many folks knew what to do here in Virginia in Augus 22t, 2011, the day of OUR big earthquake? I sure didn’t so I sat there yelling ” earthquake!!!!” Probably not as dumb of an idea as what some people did but not real productive.
What I do remember afterwards is all the people who insisted that you were supposed to run outside. Probably 75% of the people I talked to swore on a stack of bibles the “getting outside” thing was right off the earthquake civil defense how-to page. Well, not so.
Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, is dead at age 82. He is best remembered for his famous words:
“One small step for man…one giant leap for mankind.”
He had had heart surgery 3 weeks ago and was thought to be recovering without complications.
He had a long, distinguished career in the NASA Space Program. He commanded the Apollo 11 mission and landed on the moon in July 1969. He was truly a great American hero. Many of us remember where we were when we sat breathlessly and heard those words….one small step for man. No one today can imagine our excitement and yes, fear, for those astronauts. We Americans were so proud that summer of 1969 when much of America had been divided by the Vietnam War. Neil Armstrong and those other astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, united the nation like no one else could.
Please leave your own tributes to Neil Armstrong. Neil slipped the surly bonds of earth today…
“Touchdown confirmed,” said engineer Allen Chen. “We’re safe on Mars.”
“The wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars,” said NASA chief Charles Bolden.
The Rover might very well unearth secrets that man has wanted to know for centuries. Here is our chance to discover that we are not alone.
Talk about unbridaled enthusiasm! Go Team Curiosity.
From The Sun Chronicle:
Over the next several days, Curiosity is expected to send back the first color pictures. After several weeks of health checkups, the six-wheel rover could take its first short drive and flex its robotic arm.Read More
The Roswell incident turned 65 this week. The above video is from 1989 and is excellent, but it is lengthy. So is Roswell for real or just another bunch of nut jobs with conspiracy theories?
The Huffington Post:
Happy anniversary, Roswell, N.M. It was 65 years ago today that the Roswell Daily Record blasted an infamous headline claiming local military officials had captured a flying saucer on a nearby ranch. And now, a former CIA agent says it really happened.
“It was not a damn weather balloon — it was what it was billed when people first reported it,” said Chase Brandon, a 35-year CIA veteran. “It was a craft that clearly did not come from this planet, it crashed and I don’t doubt for a second that the use of the word ‘remains’ and ‘cadavers’ was exactly what people were talking about.”
From ABC News:
Some of Mann’s main points and charges in include:
– “New McCarthyism” in US legislature directed at US climate scientists; details
– Death threats, dead rats, scientists’ families threatened.
– Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., campaign has aimed to discredit climate scientists…
– Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, misrepresented Mann’s science
– National Science Foundation and other panels have cleared Mann
– Koch Brothers, Scaife Foundation, involved in fossil fuel efforts to discredit the climate science
– Organized email and letter campaigns have intimidated and silenced climate scientists; details
– Believes intimidation campaigns will fail if “exposed to the light of day”
The political war against scientists has been described as the new McCarthyism because scientists have been so bullied and intimidated, many just do their work and keep their mouths shut. This behavior has been going on for over 10 years. Our own attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli sued for Mann’s emails. He was told he didn’t have standing.
The tobacco industry attempted to silence science for years. The attitudes in Europe are quite different than in the United States, for example. There has been a strong attempt to silence the entire science community who researches changes in climate. I wonder who could be trying to silence them? Hmmmmmmm …the fossil fuel industry? Perhaps.
I am simply not willing to bet the ranch on industry being right and the preponderance of scientific findings being wrong. That just makes no sense and there is only one earth. You screw that up, and there is no place else to go. The bullying and McCarthyism must stop. The use of government to thwart distribution of scientific discovery and discussion is a serious violation of trust and use of taxpayer money.
The entire transcript can be seen at ABC News.
Nye brings up an important point. Thousands of scientists can agree and all it takes a few naysayers to have people in denial. Most scientists believe that there is climate change.
All time records are being set. In the last 17 years, 16 of those years have been the hottest on record. We need to invest in electrical storage systems. We can lead the world change to meet these challenges. We can also improve our economy.
The weatherman on WRC 4, Doug Kammerer, has blamed global warming for this heatwave. Some conservative bloggers have called him a nut case. Pot meet kettle.
Nye is relating the forest fires to global warming and the dehydration of the forests because of the heat. Ever seen an entire tree do what appears to be spontaneous combustion? No lightning strikes, no fire wall…just burst in to flame. I saw it once. It made me a believer. Where did I see this? Utah, in the desert.
Eugene Robinson on climate change
Richard Leakey, son of world renown anthropologists Louis and Mary Leaky, tells us that fairly soon, the topic of evolution will be indisputable, even to its strongest critics. Discoveries in anthropology and science are progressing along at such a clip that soon sceptics will have no choice but to accept.
Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that “even the skeptics can accept it.”
“If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it’s solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive,” Leakey says, “then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges.”
prepare for Mother Nature at her best. Turn up your sound.
More info about Salomonsen and his photography work:
facebook.com/arcticlightphoto
arcticlightphoto.no
Celestial Lights from Ole C. Salomonsen on Vimeo.
Tonight and Sunday night the Lyrid Meteor Shower should dominate the sky, weather permitting. There is a new moon so no full moon to contend with.
From Spaceweather.com:
LYRID METEOR SHOWER: The annual Lyrid meteor shower peaks this weekend on the night of April 21-22 when Earth passes through a stream of debris from ancient Comet Thatcher. Usually the shower is mild (10-20 meteors per hour) but unmapped filaments of dust in the comet’s tail sometimes trigger outbursts ten times stronger. This year’s peak coincides with a new Moon, which has prompted NASA to attempt an unusual 3D meteor photography experiment.
From the Washington Post:
Just 48 hours ago it was in the low 80s, but in another 30 hours, temperatures may dip near or even below freezing in the metro region. The National Weather Service has issued a freeze watch late Monday night into early Tuesday morning everywhere in the greater Washington, D.C. metro region except for Calvert and St. Mary’s county – due to the moderating Bay waters.
Temperatures are likely to dip to about 31-34 inside the beltway and and east of town, but 27-32 west and north of the beltway.
Impatiens are greatly at risk. The pansies that have survived the winter will be fine. Daffodils will be ok, if there are any left. I am not so sure about the tulips and hyacinths.
We are really in uncharted territory this spring. I have blue bells in front of my front porch. The latest last freeze was April 29, 1874.
Will fruit trees be damaged? How about the non-fruit producing flowering trees?
The Bluebell Festival will be held on Sunday, April 15, 2012 at Merrimac Farm Wildlife Management Area in Prince William County, Virginia. I hope there are still bluebells left.
Oooops…look what I just found! Why it’s Charlie Grymes giving us the inside story on Merrimac Farm and whats planned for the festival this year.
Bluebell Festival at Merrimac Farm from Elizabeth Lockard on Vimeo.
We may get to see the aurora Tuesday night, with clear skies and a little luck. The northern lights are rare this far south and are generally seen only in the higher lattitudes. Tomorrow night might just be the exception. Last night the sun hurled another coronal mass ejection at the earth, just as it had done last week. CME’s are energetic blasts of radiation and heavily charged plasma. They can disrupt the earth’s magnetic field as well as radio and satellite communication. They also cause spectacular light shows in the form of the Aurora Borealis. According to the Washington Post:
The solar storm is the biggest since 2005, he added.
The storm will peak Tuesday when a speeding cloud of plasma and charged particles blasts past Earth, distorting the planet’s magnetic field with impacts possibly ranging as far south in latitude as Texas and Arizona.
“We expect moderate to potentially strong geomagnetic storming that can cause pipeline corrosion effects and power grid fluctuations,” Biesecker said.
NASA scientists predict that the storm will peak about 9 a.m. Tuesday, although it could peak up to seven hours earlier or later, said Michael Hesse of NASA’s Space Weather Laboratory, at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. The storm is expected to continue through Wednesday.
“It’s not going to be a catastrophe, but there could be noticeable geomagnetic current induced on the electrical grid,” he said.
Winter Solstice is just of the holidays observed during December. It marks the beginning of Yule in the ancient world. Stonehenge and Newgrange in Ireland are both key spots for observing the solstice. There are many others although these two spots are king.
How the ancients knew the math and science to move huge stone into place remains a mystery to the scientific and anthropological communities. The British Isles are replete with pagan sites that marked various astrological events.
The ancients were afraid of the world around them. Winter was especially horrifying. Starvation, exposure, and illness were commonplace. Many of the religious customs were guards against the impending doom of winter and were put in place for protection until the harshness of winter subsided, the lambs were born and the greenery came back.
Holiday traditions like mistletoe, holly, evergreen garland, trees and yule logs came from the ancients. It’s easier to incorporate old traditions with new so they have carried on down through the ages. Today marks the beginning of a new year. Each day will get a little longer as the earth’s axis tilts back towards the sun little by little.
Some of our friends who drop by practice ancient earth centered religions. Happy Solstice to all those who observe this seasonal special day.
Special Winter Solstice Link shows the source of Stonehenge boulders as well as a brief film.
Newgrange, Ireland link and video
Feel Free to use this thread as an open thread. There really isn’t much to say about it.
