Mars closest in 60000 years

[WolfKC]

Mars will be slightly closer than it has been in 59,619 years. If our Neanderthal precursors had been able to use a telescope in 57,617 BC, they could have seen Mars with an equatorial diameter of 25.13 arcseconds (compared to 25.11 arcseconds this August). Mars won’t appear any larger until August 28, 2287, when earthlings will see the red planet 25.14 arcseconds across.

http://skyandtelescope.com/observing...icle_970_1.asp

This is bound to scare some PXers. It is unusually bright even now, but it's up rather late. By September it will be up early enough to be noticed more.

[ObiWan377]

Unusually bright? Could that mean....PX?!?!

[Vermonter]

I'm sure Nancy will think of something...

[ToSeek]

Some of the folks on Godlike seem to think they're going to need to duck as Mars goes whizzing by.

[dgruss23]

Some of the folks on Godlike seem to think they're going to need to duck as Mars goes whizzing by.

Careful there ... remember what happened the last time someone mentioned "duck"on the PX forum?

[The Supreme Canuck]

Hey... I remember that! I ran away after the first page...

[dgruss23]

Hey... I remember that! I ran away after the first page...

You took flight huh?

Whoops, back to Mars ... 60000 years ... will Nancy latch onto this one?

[The Supreme Canuck]

Without a doubt. It'll be along the lines of "PX is causing Mars to move closer to Earth" or "Look! Mars is really another planet heading towards PX! They'll hit and PX will be destroyed! No harm will come to us! Yay!"

:roll:

[Sammy]

Without a doubt. It'll be along the lines of "PX is causing Mars to move closer to Earth" or "Look! Mars is really another planet heading towards PX! They'll hit and PX will be destroyed! No harm will come to us! Yay!"

:roll:

Nope! No scam value in that....unless she is going to sell authentic fragments of Mars and/or membership in her new group protesting the government's hoax of projecting a hologram into the sky to cover the fact that Mars is no longer there. [-X

[The Supreme Canuck]

Unless... nope. You nailed it. She is possibly the most unscrupulous person I have ever heard of. Absolutely disgraceful.

[dgruss23]

Unless... nope. You nailed it. She is possibly the most unscrupulous person I have ever heard of. Absolutely disgraceful.

At times like this its always helpful to remember WolfKc's picture of Nancy "eggified" .

[The Supreme Canuck]

Boy, that thing never gets old, does i8t?

[dgruss23]

Boy, that thing never gets old, does i8t?

Its forever young! Helps me remain calm. :wink:

[The Supreme Canuck]

WolfKC's Patented Pictoral Prozac! :P

[dgruss23]

WolfKC's Patented Pictoral Prozac! :P

for the Amateur and Professional scientist! Something tells me Nancy might have a bad reaction to it. He'd better make sure to add that to the warning label.

[The Supreme Canuck]

I think she deserves it! It wouldn't hurt her or anything, it would just... annoy her. How fun!

[Gmann]

Henny Penny: "the sky is fallling, the sky is falling"
Chicken Little: "No, the sky is not falling." [-X
Henny Penny: "Are you sure?" ops:
Chicken Little: "I am sure." [-(
Henny Penny: "Oh (expletive-deleted), the Earth is rising the Earth is rising,"

The preceeding was an example of why you cannot win an argument with the Px people. [-X

[dgruss23]

Good one Gmann!

I think many of us at this point visit this forum just for the humor of it all. Come to think of it - that's pretty much the only reason I've ever visited this particular forum on BABB.

[WolfKC]

Henny Penny: "the sky is fallling, the sky is falling"
Chicken Little: "No, the sky is not falling." [-X
Henny Penny: "Are you sure?" ops:
Chicken Little: "I am sure." [-(
Henny Penny: "Oh (expletive-deleted), the Earth is rising the Earth is rising,"

The preceeding was an example of why you cannot win an argument with the Px people. [-X

Chicken Little =D>
Yes, amazing similarity.

[beskeptical]

That's a good site for the Chicken Little story but did you notice they were using it to claim environmentalists were foolish chickens?

I think we need a balance but I don't think global warming is considered a myth except by the Republicans and the oil companies.

[Gmann]

Neat story, I see that my memory does not serve me correctly, I got them backwards ops:

[dgruss23]

beskeptical wrote: I think we need a balance but I don't think global warming is considered a myth except by the Republicans and the oil companies.

That would be the standard assessment from the Democratic Party: Republicans are in league with the evil corporations that will do anything to make a profit. So what if water is polluted? So what if the air is polluted? Yes Republicans will poison the world if it gets them big donations from corporations. Republicans don't care about the children and their future. Republicans don’t care about nature – which is merely something to be used in conquest of the world.

And Republicans will tell you something like this about Democrats: Democrats are a bunch tree hugging, Earth worshipers that could care less about jobs and the economy. So what if jobs are lost in the name of protecting the environment. Don't tell us about the science, the risks are too great if we're right. Yes, Democrats want us to go back to the spear chucking age in the name of preventing global environmental disaster. And if a few loggers are injured from things like putting spikes in a tree, it serves them right because the life of a tree is worth more than the life of a human.

Ok now that we've expressed the full intellectual merit of the political parties mischaracterizations of each other perhaps we can consider the science of global warming.

My school has a 2000 edition of an environmental science textbook which is used for teaching the environmental science course. If you read the chapter on global warming you find that there is an extensive discussion about the theory of global warming and the science of the greenhouse against. Then there are predictions and finally what should be done about it. Do you see what is missing here? Where is the evidence that it is actually happening?

This is the part that is scientifically pathetic. The evidence for global warming discussed in the textbook is the increase in CO2 levels and computer modeling results. Neither of these is in fact evidence that GW is happening. The increase in CO2 levels may cause corresponding feedback loops with clouds or producers that acts to minimize warming. We just don’t know yet because there is no convincing evidence that significant warming is happening.

But you also have to look at the climate record of this past century. Between 1940 and 1970 the planet was cooling and in the mid 1970’s there were predictions for a new ice age. Not surprisingly, this ice age was being spurred on by pollution and would lead to all kinds of misery for humanity. Only 10 years later the new talk was not about catastrophic cooling, but catastrophic warming. But think about it – if greenhouse gas emissions are supposed to cause warming, then why was the planet cooling between 1940 and the mid-70’s?

You can see the cooling trend on this link at the EPA global warming website. Nor does a comparison of trends create a sensible pattern. The EPA section on sea level changes indicates that sea level is rising due to rising ocean temperatures causing expansion of water and from melting of glaciers adding water. But the trend from 1880 to present is a steady increase in sea level. Where is a decrease during the 1940-1970 cooling – you know the cooling that led to all the hysteria that we were headed for a catastrophic ice age?

On this thread, I have linked to a number of articles which indicate the Sun has a significant role in climate changes on the Earth. These can be traced to the 11 year sunspot cycle. At sunspot maximum the Sun puts out more energy than at sunspot minimum. There is also evidence for larger connections on larger scales which may indicate that even the ice ages themselves are tied to solar irradiance variations.

So here is the important scientific point that global warming advocates are missing. They claim greenhouse gases will cause global warming. If the Earth is shown to warm 1 deg. C in the next 20 years, they will claim that at last we have the evidence that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming. And they will be making a scientifically invalid statement!!!

This is critical: You cannot claim that greenhouse gas emissions have caused global warming without having accounted for the role of the Sun. Is it possible that greenhouse gases will cause a warming? Of course. But if warming occurs it could also be due to an overall increase in solar irradiance. You must account for that before you conclude that greenhouse gases are the cause. But global warming advocates to this point are not even considering the evidence for the Sun’s role. That is irresponsible both scientifically and politically (since GW is such a political issue). In fact we cannot be sure that any small warmings that to this point have been claimed (the EPA claims 1 deg F since the 1880’s) are not due to the Sun’s overall increase in output since the Maunder minimum (1640-1710).

The Earth’s climate is a complex system that reacts on both short and very long time scales. Unfortunately, the environmental movement does not have a record of showing the patience needed to rationally assess the climate issue. Instead we see that they predicted catastrophic cooling in the 1970’s and then in less time than it takes the Sun to complete a sunspot cycle had done a 180 by the mid 1980's to predicting catastrophic warming.

If anybody wants to respond to this the warming thread I linked to above would probably be the best place since WolfKc had started this thread to be about Mars.

[WolfKC]

That's a good site for the Chicken Little story but did you notice they were using it to claim environmentalists were foolish chickens?
I think we need a balance but I don't think global warming is considered a myth except by the Republicans and the oil companies.

Ahh, I didn't even look ops: