Year: 2016

Suspicious climate data manipulation at NASA

1:59 pm

The uncertainty of modern climate science isn’t merely because of the overall complexity of the data and the climate. Though there are numerous factors that contribute to the long term fluctuations of the climate that we do not yet completely understand or can quantify with any precision (the sun, dust, soot, volcanoes, carbon dioxide increase, to name just a few), there is a more tragic uncertainty that global warming scientists at NASA and NOAA have added to the mix, one that is entirely unjustified and harmful to the field of science and the questions that it is trying to answer.

In the case of this post, that tragic uncertainty has to do with sea level rise and the “adjustments,” without explanation, that NASA is making to its sea level data. Below is a graph taken from the link, showing the changes that have been made to published data from 1982 in order to eliminate a long period of almost no sea level rise from the mid 1950s through 1980.
» Read more

28 comments

House votes ease rules for firing VA employees

10:14 am

The House today voted 310-116 to make it easier to fire or punish employees of the Veterans Administration.

Rep. Mark Takano (Calif.), the VA committee’s ranking Democrat, led an unsuccessful floor fight to soften the misconduct provisions, as the Republican majority defeated every substantive amendment. In the end, with Miller citing support from 18 prominent veteran groups, 69 Democrats joined the united Republican front to pass the bill convincingly.

It would shorten the process to fire, demote or hear the appeal of rank-and-file VA employees, from an average of more than a year to no more than 77 days. It also would end involvement of the Merit Systems Protection Board in such actions for VA senior executives; give the VA secretary authority to recoup bonuses and relocation expenses from employees who misbehave, or to reduce pensions of senior executives convicted of felonies that influenced their performance reports. Additionally whistleblowers would get new protections from reprisals and the bill would mandate strict accountability to supervisors or colleagues who would reprise against them, the VA committee explained.

This bill should become the model for changing the rules for all federal employees. Right now it is so difficult to clean house of corrupt or incompetent federal employees that there are even circumstances where they actually commit crimes and steal federal money and still hold onto their jobs.

7 comments

Read the reviews for Hillary Clinton’s new book! Really!

9:59 am

It doesn’t matter who you support in the upcoming presidential election. You have to read the customer reviews on Amazon for Hillary Clinton’s new book. They are really hilarious, and do a nice job of poking big holes in the bloated pompousness of all politicians. Here is just one example:

I was going to read this book…..I really was. But just as I got started, I found myself under sniper fire, passed out, and fell and hit my head. After that I got double vision and had to wear glasses that were so damn thick I couldn’t even see to read. Then I had an allergic reaction to something and started coughing so hard I spit out what looked like a couple of lizard’s eyeballs, my limbs locked up, and I passed out and fell down again, waking up only to find out I had been diagnosed with pneumonia 2 days earlier. Somehow I managed to power through it all, but it’s a good thing I was able to make a small fortune on this random small trade in the commodities market (cattle futures or some such thing) and then, miracle of all miracles, a few banks offered me a few million to just talk to their employees for a few minutes – and all that really helped out because I swear I was dead broke and couldn’t figure out how I was gonna come up with the 6 bucks to pay for this book, let alone pay the $1,500 for my health insurance this month. I still want to read it, but, honestly, what difference at this point does it make? I hear it sucks anyway.

Then there is this: “”I bought the audio-book version and all I could hear was coughing.”

If you want a few more good laughs take a look. Quite entertaining.

11 comments

New NASA authorization bill introduced in Senate

9:52 am

A new NASA authorization bill was introduced in the Senate on September 15, calling for NASA to rethink its asteroid redirect mission as well as begin the process of shifting the operation of ISS from government to private enterprise.

Among [the bill’s policy provisions] is language regarding ARM, a mission that involves sending a robotic spacecraft to retrieve a boulder from a near Earth asteroid and place it in lunar orbit to be visited by astronauts. “It is the sense of Congress that the technological and scientific goals of the Asteroid Robotic Redirect Mission may not be commensurate with the cost,” the bill states, referring to the robotic portion of ARM. Alternative missions, it says, “may provide a more cost effective and scientifically beneficial means to demonstrate the technologies needed for a human mission to Mars.” The bill directs NASA to evaluate alternative mission concepts to compare their scientific, technical and commercial benefits, as well as their costs, with ARM. That study would be due to Congress 180 days after the bill’s enactment.

The bill also addresses planning for the eventual end of the ISS in the 2020s, stating that there is a need for an “orderly transition” from the current NASA-led management of the station to “a regime where NASA is one of many customers of a low Earth orbit commercial human space flight enterprise.” That provision would require NASA to assess its needs for continued research in low Earth orbit after the ISS is retired, the existing and projected commercial capabilities to meet those needs, and steps NASA can take to stimulate both the supply of commercial facilities and demand for their use. The bill also calls on NASA to study an extension of the ISS “through at least 2028” to identify the technical issues, scientific benefits, and costs of such an extension.

The authorization also endorses SLS and Orion, which isn’t surprising considering that most of the Senators proposing this authorization come from states with big contracts for that boondoggle.

In recent years authorization bills have not meant that much. While they express the desires of some members of Congress, which does influence policy, their specifics are usually ignored in subsequent years. Nonetheless, the new focus here on private space suggests that the advantages of competition and private enterprise is finally beginning to leak into the tiny little brains of our elected officials. That they are still pushing SLS and Orion, however, shows that the leak is still tiny, and somewhat limited.

Give it time, however. Give it time. When private companies have begun regular launches of their big rockets, well before SLS completes its first manned flight, these legislators should finally realize what most people already know, that SLS and Orion is a complete waste of money.

0 comments

NOAA signs first contract for private weather satellites

9:38 am

The competition heats up: NOAA this week signed its first contracts, totaling just over a million dollars, with two different private cubesat companies.

The small deals—$695,000 to GeoOptics and $370,000 to Spire—come as part of NOAA’s Commercial Weather Data Pilot. The deals will allow the agency to evaluate the quality of the firms’ data for forecasts and warnings, and could be the first step in a broader embrace of commercial satellites. Until now, NOAA has gathered data by building and launching its own expensive weather satellites rather than buying data from private companies.

…Plagued by cost overruns on its own satellites, NOAA has been pressured by Congress to explore commercial weather satellites, which included a mandate for the commercial weather pilot in its 2016 appropriations.

There is no reason NOAA cannot shift from being the maker of satellites to being a customer buying weather data from private satellites, much as NASA has been shifting from being a builder of rockets and spaceships to being a buyer of privately built rockets and spaceships. The shift will create competition and innovation while saving the taxpayer a lot of money.

0 comments

New Zealand government okays commercial launches by Rocket Lab

9:29 am

The competition heats up: The New Zealand government has signed an interim contract authorizing commercial launches by the private company Rocket Lab, pending passage of permanent authorizing legislation next year.

Rocket Lab, which operates a private satellite launch site on the Mahia Peninsula between Napier and Gisborne, intends to start launch operations later this year, Minister for Economic Development Steven Joyce said in a statement. The contract is an interim measure, preceding the Outer Space and High Altitude Activities Bill which will be introduced to Parliament this month to provide a regulatory regime for space launches from New Zealand.

The government wants the bill passed into law by mid-2017, Joyce said. In June, New Zealand signed the Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA) with the United States government, which allows commercial entities, including Rocket Lab, to import launch technology and satellites from the US.

2 comments

Thirty ton meteorite excavated in Argentina

9:10 am

In what is one of the largest asteroid chunks ever found on Earth, an excavation team from a local astronomy club this week excavated a thirty ton iron-nickel meteorite from the ground.

Dubbed Gancedo after a nearby town, it isn’t a record-holder, but it sure is big. What I found interesting from the article, however, is this:

Gancedo’s fall to Earth occurred between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago. Locals knew of the fall for centuries, even making iron tools from meteorites found in the strewnfield. In the 16th century, the Spanish became interested in stories of a piece of iron that fell from the sky, and in 1774 don Bartolomé Francsico de Maguna led an expedition that came across a mass of iron, referred to as Mesón de Fierro (“Table of Iron” in Spanish). Another 1,400-pound fragment from Campo del Cielo named Otumpa now resides at the British Museum in London. With more than 100 tons of meteorite recovered, Campo del Cielo is the top producer in terms of pure meteorite mass worldwide.

The Campo del Cielo strewnfield extends over an ellipse 3 km wide by 19 km long over an area northwest of Buenos Aires, and meteorites found here have a polycrystalline coarse octahedrite composition characteristic of iron-nickel meteorites. They are also unusually pure even among iron-nickel meteorites, consisting of 93% iron. Most of the remaining 7% is nickel, and less than 1% are trace elements.

The evidence here is that a very dense asteroid, weighing a minimum of 100 tons but probably several times that, smashed into the Earth about five thousand years ago. Yet, all life on Earth was not wiped out, as is repeatedly suggested might happen whenever a similarly sized asteroid zips close past the Earth. In fact, there is no evidence this impact had any significant global environmental effects.

Remember this the next time another asteroid of similar size zips past the Earth and the media doom-sayers begin to sing their siren song again.

1 comment

Atlas 5 launch scrubbed

8:47 am

ULA scrubbed its Atlas 5 commercial launch today after detecting “a small ground side LH2 leak.”

Friday’s launch was proceeding to the final minutes of the countdown, prior to a decision to standdown due to a small ground side LH2 leak resulting in an ice ball forming on an umbilical. ULA CEO Tory Bruno noted this was outside of ULA’s historic experience, thus resulting in a scrub – for at least 24 hours – to resolve.

Later, a ULA source noted the next attempt would be Sunday, in order to allow time to replace a Fill and Drain (F&D) valve that was deemed to be the problem during Friday’s attempt.

I must say I am intrigued by the language used by Bruno here, especially coming so soon after SpaceX’s somewhat unprecedented launchpad explosion September 1st.

0 comments

News media pushes the idea of President Obama demanding and releasing Donald Trump’s tax returns, without his permission

10:46 pm

The death of freedom and the rule of law: A Politico reporter — having researched the law and found that under very special circumstances a president has the authority to demand from the IRS the confidential tax records of any American citizen and then release them to the public without that citizen’s permission — made sure to let White House spokesman Josh Earnest know about those provisions.

Earnest response was amazingly non-committal. “I’ve not heard of this potential option. I think it is rather unlikely that the president would order something like that.”

In reading the story at the link, it seems to me that Earnest had no idea the law allowed the President to do this. However, the Politico reporter had done his research very well, and outlined that research in great detail, describing in chapter-and-verse how it would be legal for a President to abuse his power in just this way.

Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code provides: “Upon written request by the President, signed by him personally, the [Treasury] Secretary shall furnish to the President, or to such employee or employees of the White House Office as the President may designate by name in such request, a return or return information with respect to any taxpayer named in such request.”

Another passage in the law says returns obtained that way should not be further disclosed “without personal written direction of the President,” suggesting that with such an instruction the returns could be made public by the government.

I don’t know what is worse, the fact that Earnest doesn’t seem horrified by the suggestion, or the fact that it was a reporter who suggested it. Either way, my impression here is that the reporter’s goal was not to catch the Obama administration in an abuse of power but to educate the White House so that they would be aware of this wonderful method for using the law to destroy their political opponents.

Think about it. The reporter here seems to be actually advocating that a President abuse his power and obtain and release a citizen’s confidential tax returns, without the citizen’s permission, entirely for the sole purpose of political gain. Considering the IRS’s track record under the Obama administration, where the IRS clearly acted as a tool of the Democratic Party and harassed its political opponents, it would not surprise me now if this proposal eventually gets acted upon by this or future presidents.

I weep for America and the death of freedom.

24 comments

Are thousands of Kurds abandoning Islam?

10:18 pm

The article, published by a Kurdish news source, describes what appears to be a growing disenchantment with Islam in that region as a result of the violence and destruction of the Islamic State.

Many Muslims are confronted by the violent extremism of the Islamic State (ISIS) and wonder how to reconcile their personal beliefs with the actions of the extremist group. The Kurdish population is approximately 94% nominally Muslim. Recently, however, there have been many reports of Kurds leaving Islam or converting to other religions. The Zoroastrian movement claims to have as many as 100,000 followers in Iraqi Kurdistan. Christian organizations assert that thousands in the region have been seeking out Christianity as they reject ISIS’ interpretation of Islam. There are also reports of growing numbers of atheists and agnostics.

This quote however by an ordinary citizen I think is more significant:

[Sanger Najim, a young man living in Erbil] points the finger of blame at religious leaders for the rise of extremism and growing number of people turning away from Islam. “We don’t have [a] response when people from [the] West [are] telling us that Islam is cruel, Islam is Daesh. We don’t have a response for this. Why? The Mullahs never tell us what real Islam is. They are just reading us some history facts. They are just telling us some history… from old times. They are not able to link it with present society… They have to link Quran with the real life.”

He is horrified by the actions of the Islamic State, but cannot get a satisfactory answer about why this is not Islam from his own Islamic Mullahs.

52 comments
1 … 48 49 50 51 52 … 171