Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

I don’t hate a lot of people. Still, there are a few vocal, dishonest people who are highly repulsive. Two such people are Hillary Clinton and Rocky Anderson. I think Rocky Anderson is a wild moron, and find him extremely irritating. Tonight he argued with Sean Hannity at the University of Utah’s Kingsbury Hall.

• 1- He is a city mayor. By definition, his jurisdiction ends at city limits. It is neither his job nor his mandate to tour the country (on our dime) and demand the president’s impeachment or babble about global warming. Rocky– return to Salt Lake and do your job. Like Hannity said, Rocky is a “part-time mayor and full-time protester.”
• 2- He is far more concerned with the rights of enemy combatants than the security of citizens of the US.
• 3- It was Abraham Lincoln who suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus. I suppose Rocky would have impeached ‘ol Abe as well.
• 4- He drones on spewing complaints without offering any productive solutions.
• 5- He forgets that the United States was attacked first, and so he calls the Iraq War “a war of aggression.”
• 6- He forgets that Saddam Hussein (a tyrant and oppressive, murderous dictator) tortured and killed tens of thousands of his citizens (using chemical weapons.) Should the US have done nothing?!?
• 7- He forgets that the US was not alone in the belief that Iraq possessed WMD.
• 8- He argues with retrospective information as if that knowledge were available at the time.
• 9- He conveniently forgets that the American Congress (republicans AND democrats) approved the “illegal” war.
• 10- He supports abortion and advocates marrying homosexuals. He marches and colludes with illegal aliens who blatantly flaunt our immigration laws. On which basis does Rocky have to declare anything the president does immoral or illegal?

It’s getting warmer and you know what that means: it’s the annual Spring Fund Drive over at my local public radio station and that involves lots talking and begging with the promise of really cheap “thank you” gifts.

If you call now and donate just $250 with a credit card, we’ll send you this amazing multi-use potholder– guaranteed to beautify any kitchen or RV.

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to enable Ryan Byrd dot Net to be self-funding. It costs a bit of money to bring you the very best, but we’re happy to do it. Here at RBDN, we aim to be an entertainment and education portal for the discriminating visitor. We understand that there are a lot of sites out there vying for your attention, and we appreciate you spending a few minutes each day with us. That’s why the site isn’t overrun with irritating advertisements. Sure, there is the donate link, but that seems to be so inconspicuous that nary a one of you has seen it.

And so it was in brainstorming funding ideas when I thought of greeting cards. Greeting cards have forever mystified me. Are the masses of people simply unable to conjure up their our own thoughts? Do they lack the motivation to write them down? (Clearly, I, for one, am never at a loss for words…)

But, the greeting card business is a bustling one, and if dollars are going to be spent, there’s no reason why I can redirect a few my way. So, over the next few weeks, I’ll create a few dozen classy greeting cards sets as “thank you” gifts for those who can contribute a buck or two to the future success of RBDN. Stay tuned for details!

We’ve all suffered through Al Gore’s mind-numbing monotone rambling as he warns us of the impending horror that awaits the CO₂ polluters in his “Inconvenient Truth.” Al’s Hollywood groupies even gave him an Oscar for his stellar performance. Who didn’t enjoy the evocative, emotional montages of stiff Al, brow furrowed, feverishly typing on his Mac laptop? Who doesn’t appreciate wild, pop science without scientific rigor?

I’ve watched the moving documentary. Al claims to have 150 years of temperature data to back his assertions. Really? 150 years? How accurate/precise were the mercury thermometers back then? Science was pretty primitive 150 years ago. That was before radio, before antibiotics, before calculators, before Einstein, before cars, before scientists declared tobacco hazardous, and WAY before the digital computer. People still believed in blood-letting, Coke had cocaine in it and the national science periodicals had an exposes on finding water with dowsing/divining rods. I contend that we have maybe 50 years of reliable (+/- 1 degree) temperature data.I know, I know, Al talks about highly reliable ice core samples with dissolved CO₂ that allow us to go back 720,000 years. Maybe. But let’s take a closer look at some of that data: noaa.gov From the abstract: “High-resolution records from Antarctic ice cores show that carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 80 to 100 parts per million by volume 600 +/- 400 years after the warming of the last three deglaciations.” Let me emphasize: CO₂ increased 400-600 years AFTER the glaciers receded. I’m not saying that the absorption spectra of CO₂ doesn’t trap infrared radiation, I’m only saying that his global warming trend data might not be as straight forward and conclusive as he claims.

Has the Earth has also been getting warmer in recent years? Sure. It is part of a natural cycle? Maybe. Are humans the primary cause of the increase in temperature? Maybe not. Check this out:

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet’s recent climate changes might have a natural — and not a human-induced — cause. Mars, it appears, has also been experiencing milder temperatures in recent years. In 2005 data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide ‘ice caps’ near Mars’s south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

Let me summarize: climatology is clearly a VERY difficult science. The national weather bureau, with their hoards of supercomputers, still cant tell me this weekend’s weather with great certainty^*. (Those pesky butterflies flapping their wings in China keep causing storms over here.) To think that Al Gore can reliably forecast the weather in TEN or TWENTY years is close to absurd. You decide. Let’s discuss.

In only slightly related news

“NASA has created two virtual flyovers of the Mars rover landing sites using 3D imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (New Scientist story here). The images were made using the most powerful camera ever sent to another planet, MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). The three-dimensional information is obtained by taking pairs of images from slightly different vantage points as the spacecraft orbits the Red Planet.

Oh and happy Ides of March

Yes, Dan, the reluctant engineer and I have spoken about global warming recently.

* I know that Climatology and meteorology aren’t the same thing. They are, however, closely related.

Everyone knows that I’m ill. I have the Byrd Flu. Ha! Seriously now, I can remember when I was younger and I’d be over at a friend’s house and that friend’s mother might say, “Don’t forget to wear a sweater when you go outside, you don’t want to catch a cold!” And I’d be like, “who wears sweaters?” and then “thanks for the advice, crazy lady; Billy, is your mother insane? Yikes! Does she believe in blood-letting too?”

Instead of spouting out spurious advice, like-minded mothers everywhere should read books on the germ theory (tip: it’s more than just a theory.) In those books, they’ll find that colds are, IN FACT, NOT CAUSED by it being COLD outside.

I know, it’s a hard concept to grasp; colds are caused by viruses. When it’s cold outside, more people go inside and the chances of contact with someone who has a cold virus (rhinovirus, etc.) increase. The other way to better your chances of getting a cold is to weaken your immune system, maybe through stress or something. Going outside naked might be enough stress, but forgetting your girlie sweater is not. (Links: Cold causes, It’s not the weather, Seriously, it’s not, do you believe me now?