Arctic Ice

I saw an article today about how the Arctic sea ice is at it's second lowest level since they started recording the levels. Here's a little clip of the article from the AP...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Arctic Ocean sea ice has melted to the second lowest minimum since satellite observations began, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Sea ice melt recorded on Monday exceeded the low recorded in 2005, which had held second place.
With several weeks left in the melt season, ice in summer 2008 has a chance to diminish below the record low set last year, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Environmental groups said the ice melt was another alarm bell warning of global warming.
"It's an unfortunate sign that climate change is coming rapidly to the Arctic and that we really need to address the issue of global warming on a national level," said Christopher Krenz, Arctic project manager for Oceana.
"This is not surprising but it is alarming," said Deborah Williams, a former Interior Department special assistant for Alaska. "This was a relatively cool summer, and to have ice decrease to the second lowest minimum on record demonstrates that global warming's ongoing impact is profound."
Original link... http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,411521,00.html

Okay, let that digest for a minute and pay attention to the quote I subtly highlighted in blazing yellow. Now, completely unrelated to arctic sea ice melting and surprisingly so under-reported that I'm sure you haven't heard about it is the following article... (can be seen at http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gRI87Fyr-TpE6OBYfAcYxFKSXRJg)

Volcanic eruptions reshape Arctic ocean floor: study
Jun 25, 2008
PARIS (AFP) — Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday.
The eruptions -- as big as the one that buried Pompei -- took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain chain snaking 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia.
Scientists suspected even at the time that a simultaneous series of earthquakes were linked to these volcanic spasms.
But when a team led of scientists led by Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts finally got a first-ever glimpse of the ocean floor 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) beneath the Arctic pack ice, they were astonished.
What they saw was unmistakable evidence of explosive eruptions rather than the gradual secretion of lava bubbling up from Earth's mantle onto the ocean floor.
Previous research had concluded that this kind of so-called pyroclastic eruption could not happen at such depths due to the crushing pressure of the water.
"On land, explosive volcanic eruptions are nothing exceptional, although they present a major threat," said Vera Schlindwein, a geologist with Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Sea and Polar Research, which took part in the study.
But the new findings, published in Nature, showed that "large-scale pyroclastic activity is possible along even the deepest portions of the global mid-ocean ridge volcanic system."
The mid-ocean ridge runs 84,000 kilometres (52,000 miles) beneath all the world's major seas except the Southern Ocean, and marks the boundary between many of the tectonic plates that make up the surface of the Earth.
When continental plates collide into each other, they can thrust up mountain ranges such as the Himalayas.
But along most of the mid-ocean ridge -- including the Gakkal Ridge -- the plates are pulling apart, allowing molten magna and gases trapped beneath the crust to escape.
Sohn and his colleagues gathered their data in July last year aboard the ice breaker Oden, using state-of-the-art instruments including a mutlibeam echo sounder, two autonomous underwater vehicles and a sub-ice camera designed for the mission.
Both sonar and visual images showed an ocean valley filled with flat-topped volcanos up to two kilometres (1.2 miles) wide and several hundred metres high.

Now, I'm no scientist, but I am a thinker... what do volcanoes do besides make land? Anyone?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Bueller?

Second First Day of School

First Day of School

The Messiah is here...not.

Is anybody else getting creeped out by the love affair the media and the democrats have with Barrack Obama? The latest example of their worship comes from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's introduction of Obama at a fundraiser in California. She graciously received him as "a leader that God has blessed us with at this time." Are you kidding me? I didn't know God leaned to the left.

This guy is so pompous and confident he would be the perfect casting for the "cocky one" on MTV's The Real World.

“I will win. Don’t worry about that,” he said to the crowd of about 1,300 over the weekend.

“Now, you want to win. And saying it doesn’t make it so,” he told the crowd. “It would be nice to think that after eight years of economic disaster, after eight years of bungled foreign policy, of being engaged in a war that should never have been authorized and should never have been waged, that cost us a trillion dollars and thousands of lives, that people would say, let’s toss the bums out. Toss the bums out, we’re starting from scratch, we’re starting over. This is not working."

"So I understand why a lot of folks are saying, this should just happen. Why are we having to run all these television commercials? Why do we have to raise all this money?"

Really Mr. B.O.? Do you want to know why you have to spend millions more than McCain (who isn't so hot himself) just to stay even with him in the polls?

Maybe it's because he sponsored S.CON.RES.53: A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of Congress that any effort to impose photo identification requirements for voting should be rejected.

Or wait, maybe it's because in 1999 he voted against filtering pornography on school and library computers. Somebody please tell me why anybody would want porn accessible on a school, let alone, library computer. Oh right, the free speech argument. How is looking at smut on a taxpayer's dime and in a taxpayer run facility an individual's right?

Sticking with the perverted legislation, he was the only Illinois State Senator to vote against a bill barring early release for (criminal) sex offenders and he voted for sex education for kindergarten children through the 5th grade. What world is this guy from? Since when did a kindergartner need sex ed.? Ahh, I get it, since you started letting the sex offenders out early, that's when. By the way, in 2001 he only had the moral aptitude to vote "present" in regards to a bill that would keep pornographic book and video stores and strip clubs from setting up 1,000 ft. from churches and schools.

Maybe Obama has to spend so much money because he's such a big fan of abortion. He has voted twice against bills prohibiting tax funding of abortions. His wife loves those good ol' abortions too. In a fundraising letter from February 2004, his wife, Michelle, stated that "so-called" partial-birth abortion was a legitimate medical procedure that should be protected.

In 2003, as chairman of the next Senate committee to which BAIPA (Born Alive Infants Protection Act) was sent, Obama prevented it from even getting a hearing. BAIPA, by the way, stated that all live-born babies were guaranteed the same constitutional right to equal protection, whether or not they were wanted. In 2001, he voted “present” on a bill to notify parents when their minor children seek an abortion. He voted against a cloning ban in 2000, but voted for it in 2001. In 1997, Obama twice voted “present” on an Illinois partial-birth abortion ban. In addition, if a baby actually survives the abortion (this actually happens) then Obama has voted that no medical attention can be provided and the baby will die eventually.

OK, lets get back to the speech from the "leader that God has blessed us with."

"Just read the papers. These are the knuckleheads who have been in charge. Throw ‘em out. But American politics aren’t that simple. The fact of the matter is, at a certain point, when government has not been serving the people for this long, people get cynical. They tune out. And they start saying to themselves, a plague on both your houses. They are willing to consume negative information more frequently than positive information, for good reason. They’ve seen how promises haven’t been kept.”

“They’ve got a whole machinery that they’re cranking out,” Obama continued. “They’ve got a book about me, that just kind of sprung full bore out of this guy’s head.”

“John McCain, all he wants to do is talk about me. They know they can’t win on the issues. So what they’ll do is they’ll try to scare people."
Um, excuse me. What do you think your doing? Why does he keep saying that the Republicans are the ones who are going to inject race into the campaign when he is the only one who's talking about it? I thought he was supposed be the one who could finally unite us all. There hasn't been so much talk about racial divide as there is now for decades. Why do suppose that is?

Chupacabra found!

I was walking the dog the other day and we came across this strange creature. Does anybody know what this beastly thing is? It's unlike anything I've ever seen. I have a team of scientists working on it as we speak.

We've seen a lot of stories similar to this one in the last year. Just today there was a press conference about the alleged Bigfoot they found in the backwoods of Georgia. Here's the story if you happened to have come straight to my blog and bypassed all other media sources, as I'm sure many of you have. Does anybody really believe these guys? I can't post the actual photo of Mr. Foot stuffed in a freezer, but I did capture this image of his nephew stuffed in a cooler.

Anyway, back to some real news... this is a video of two of these chupacabra things terrorizing my kids. It was all very traumatic and the kids are now in counseling.

Hose 'em down.

Summer is in full swing and moving fast. Can you beleive that the 4th of July is next week? Here are the kids enjoying the warmer weather.

Funny things...

The other night I ran out to the store and while I was there my wife was going to give the kids a bath. Upon coming home, I was setting the groceries on the counter when I could hear our 6 year old yell to his little brother, "Smell my butt! It smells like a strawberry milkshake!!" What's stranger than his butt smelling like a strawberry milkshake is that I wasn't even surprised to hear a statement like that being made.

I was a little surprised tonight, however, when I opened the refrigerator door a while after we had finished dinner. Again, our 6 year old said that he wasn't hungry and that he'd eat his Mac n Cheese for lunch tomorrow. So, I told him, "Lets save it then. Take the spoon out, cover it with some tin foil, and stick it in the fridge." I guess we know he follows directions well.