Posts Made By: K. Michael Malolepszy

Aug. 10, 2010, 12:45 a.m. EDT
Reagan insider: 'GOP destroyed U.S. economy'

Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts. Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- "How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy." Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse."

Get it? Not "destroying." The GOP has already "destroyed" the U.S. economy, setting up an "American Apocalypse."

Jobs recovery could take years

In the wake of Friday's disappointing jobs report, Neal Lipschutz and Phil Izzo discuss new predictions that it could be many years before the nation's unemployment rate reaches pre-recession levels.

Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats' Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider -- someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology -- says about America, helps all of us better understand how America's toxic partisan-politics "holy war" is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reagan-insider-gop-destroyed-us-economy-2010-08-10

Newspapers Retract 'Climategate' Claims, but Damage Still Done

http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/06/25/newspapers-retract-climategate-claims-but-damage-still-done.html

http://tinyurl.com/2equdnx

" ..... quoting the retraction at some length:

The article "UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim" (News, Jan 31) stated that the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report had included an “unsubstantiated claim” that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could be sensitive to future changes in rainfall. The IPCC had referenced the claim to a report prepared for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) by Andrew Rowell and Peter Moore, whom the article described as “green campaigners” with “little scientific expertise.” The article also stated that the authors’ research had been based on a scientific paper that dealt with the impact of human activity rather than climate change.

In fact, the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence. In the case of the WWF report, the figure . . . was based on research by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) which did relate to the impact of climate change. We also understand and accept that . . . Dr Moore is an expert in forest management, and apologise for any suggestion to the contrary.

The article also quoted criticism of the IPCC’s use of the WWF report by Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds and leading specialist in tropical forest ecology. We accept that, in his quoted remarks, Dr Lewis was making the general point that both the IPCC and WWF should have cited the appropriate peer-reviewed scientific research literature. As he made clear to us at the time, including by sending us some of the research literature, Dr Lewis does not dispute the scientific basis for both the IPCC and the WWF reports’ statements on the potential vulnerability of the Amazon rainforest to droughts caused by climate change. . . . A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this."

Other than a 2 Brits (a former nurse and a former sailor), no one remains living who served in any capacity in the first world war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/us/01buckles.html

Frank Buckles, Last World War I Doughboy, Is Dead at 110

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Published: February 28, 2011

Frank Buckles, who drove an Army ambulance in France in 1918 and came to symbolize a generation of embattled young Americans as the last of the World War I doughboys, died Sunday at his home in Charles Town, W. Va. He was 110.

His death was announced by a family spokesman, David DeJonge, The Associated Press said.

He was only a corporal and he never got closer than 30 or so miles from the Western Front trenches, but Mr. Buckles became something of a national treasure as the last living link to the two million men who served in the American Expeditionary Forces in France in “the war to end all wars.”

Frail, stooped and hard of hearing, but sharp of mind, Mr. Buckles was named grand marshal of the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington in 2007. He was a guest at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day 2007 for a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns. He was honored by Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon and met with President George W. Bush at the White House in March 2008.

United States Senators played host to him at the Capitol in June 2008 for the impending 90th anniversary of the World War I armistice. And he appeared before a Senate subcommittee in December 2009 to support legislation named in his honor to bestow federal status on a World War I memorial on the National Mall built in the 1930s.

Sought out for interviews in his final years, Mr. Buckles told of having witnessed a ceremony involving British veterans of the Crimean War, fought in the 1850s, when he was stationed in England before heading to France. He remembered chatting with General John J. Pershing, the commander of American troops in World War I, at an event in Oklahoma City soon after the war’s end.

And he proudly held a sepia-toned photograph of himself in his doughboy uniform when he was interviewed by USA Today in 2007. “I was a snappy soldier,” he said. “All gung-ho.”

Frank Woodruff Buckles was born Feb. 1, 1901, on a farm near Bethany, Mo. He was living in Oakwood, Okla., when America entered World War I and he tried to enlist in the Marine Corps at age 16, having been inspired by recruiting posters.

Critics' review unexpectedly supports scientific consensus on global warming

A UC Berkeley team's preliminary findings in a review of temperature data confirm global warming studies.

A team of UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming is finding that its data-crunching effort is producing results nearly identical to those underlying the prevailing view.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called "the legitimate concerns" of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated.

But Muller unexpectedly told a congressional hearing last week that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is "excellent.... We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-climate-berkeley-20110404,0,772697.story

KMM

Volcanoes may have sparked 'Little Ice Age'

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/31/volcanoes-may-have-sparked-little-ice-age/

A mysterious, centuries-long cool spell, dubbed the Little Ice Age, appears to have been caused by a series of volcanic eruptions and sustained by sea ice, a new study indicates.

The research, which looked at chemical clues preserved in Arctic vegetation as well as other data, also pinpointed the start of the Little Ice Age to the end of the 13th century.

During the cool spell, which lasted into the late 19th century, advancing glaciers destroyed northern European towns and froze the Thames River in London and canals in the Netherlands, places that are now ice-free. There is also evidence it affected other continents.

"This is the first time anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age," said Gifford Miller, a geological sciences professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the lead study researcher. "We also have provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time."

The cause appears to have been massive tropical volcanic eruptions, which spewed tiny particles called aerosols into the atmosphere. While suspended in the air, the aerosols reflect solar radiation back into space, cooling the planet below.

The cooling was sustained after the aerosols had left the atmosphere by a sea-ice feedback in the North Atlantic Ocean, the researchers believe. Expanding sea ice would have melted into the North Atlantic Ocean, interfering with the normal mixing between surface and deeper waters. This meant the water flowing back to the Arctic was colder, helping to sustain large areas of sea ice, which, in turn, reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere. The result was a self-sustaining feedback loop.

Miller and colleagues came to these conclusions by looking at radiocarbon dates — based on how much of the radioactive form of carbon they contain — from dead plants revealed by melting ice on Baffin Island, in the Canadian Arctic. Their analysis found that many plants at both high and low altitudes died between A.D. 1275 and A.D. 1300 — evidence that Baffin Island froze over suddenly. Many plants also appeared to have died at around A.D. 1450, an indication of a second major cooling.

These periods coincide with two of the most volcanically active half centuries in the past millennium, according to the researchers. [History's Biggest Volcanic Eruptions]

They also found that the annual layers in sediment cores from a glacial lake linked with an ice cap in Iceland suddenly became thicker, indicating increased erosion caused by the expansion of the ice cap in the late 13th century and in the 15th century .

"This gave us a great deal more confidence that there was a major perturbation to the Northern Hemisphere climate near the end of the 13th century," Miller said.

Simulations using a climate model showed that several large, closely spaced eruptions could have cooled the Northern Hemisphere enough to spark sea-ice growth and the subsequent feedback loop.

It's unlikely decreased solar radiation, a separate theory to explain the Little Ice Age, played a role, according to the researchers.

The research will appear Tuesday (Jan. 31) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Anyone seen this strange atmospheric feature imaged independently on March 20, 2012 by at least 3 different amateurs, including Don Parker?

Amateur astronomer photographs curious cloud on Mars
Posted on March 22, 2012 by astrobob

http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2012/03/22/amateur-astronomer-photographs-curious-cloud-on-mars/

S&T article on it:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/Strange-Happenings-on-Mars-143959576.html

Michael M.

The New York Times June 26, 2012
Court Backs E.P.A. Over Emissions Limits Intended to Reduce Global Warming
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that heat-trapping gases from industry and vehicles endanger public health, dealing a decisive blow to companies and states that had sued to block agency rules.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia declared that the agency was “unambiguously correct” that the Clean Air Act requires the federal government to impose limits once it has determined that emissions are causing harm.

The judges unanimously dismissed arguments from industry that the science of global warming was not well supported and that the agency had based its judgment on unreliable studies. “This is how science works,” they wrote. “The E.P.A. is not required to reprove the existence of the atom every time it approaches a scientific question.”

The rest of story at

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/science/earth/epa-emissions-rules-backed-by-court.html

News & Analysis
Glaciology
Experts Agree Global Warming Is Melting the World Rapidly
Richard A. Kerr

Science 30 November 2012:
Vol. 338 no. 6111 p. 1138
DOI: 10.1126/science.338.6111.1138

Forty-seven glaciologists have arrived at a community consensus over all the data on what the past century's warming has done to the great ice sheets: a current annual loss of 344 billion tons of glacial ice, accounting for 20% of current sea level rise. Greenland's share—about 263 billion tons—is roughly what most researchers expected, but Antarctica's represents the first agreement on a rate that had ranged from a far larger loss to an actual gain. The new analysis, published on page 1183 of this week's issue of Science, also makes it clear that losses from Greenland and West Antarctica have been accelerating, showing that some ice sheets are disconcertingly sensitive to warming.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6111/1138.summary

I have the UO 1.25" Konig II 32mm and I love it. I've been using it with a 10" SCT, a 6" MakCass (Intes mk66) and it has very generous eye relief, no blackouts, excellent light throughput and is relatively cheap, especially in comparision to TV Panoptics & Naglers. I have yet to use it in a fast system such as a f/5 newt (will be shortly).

In general, I think the UO oculars are a bargain, great performers for slower scopes. My UO orthos are as good as my Takahashi LEs when it comes to contrast & light throughput.

Can't say much about their performance on fast scopes, though...on those systems I hear that the Televues have the advantage.

K. Michael M.

I have a C 9.25" with an Intes 2" diagonal.

Balancing can be a problem with these diagonals. I just have to move the OTA farther along the mounting rail. Be careful about this!

UO orthos are one of the best deals ever. They are almost as good as my Takahashi LEs on planets in terms of contrast and brightness. Eye relief is bad in the shorter focal lengths (which is why I got the LE 5, 7.5mm), but still useable if you don't need glasses while observing.

Those expensive diagonals are made using dielectric coatings which are milspec in origin. Made for use in dusty, sandy environments, hard to damage, supposed to last muc, much longer than aluminum & silver diagonals.






------------------------
Jorge wrote:
Who is using 2" accessories on a C9.25?
Posted by Jorge on 7/24/2002 1:04:09 AM

Hi guys,

I just got an AP 2" adapter that screws into the rear of my OTA because I want to use 2" eyepieces if I can. I plan on using that with a 2" refractor style diagonal, 2" barlow and UO 25mm and 40mm Konig eyepieces. My questions are as follows:

1. Anyone running a simmilar set-up? Any problems, tips etc..
2. What should I do for higher power eyepieces? How are UO 1.25 Konigs? Should I stick with some type of plossl? Money is an issue!
3. Do you think there will be any problems bringing objects into focus with this type of setup?
4. What is the deal with these $200.00 - $300.00 2" diagonals?

Thanks in advance

P.S. Anyone have any weights for a losmandy counterweight bar assembly or AP Maxbright they want to sell? I have the bar (picked up used) now I need the weights.