I've not blogged about this yet, but it's no secret that we're expecting number three. McKenna and Jeremiah are very excited about it! We're at about 16 weeks, and we decided to try a 3D ultrasound. We found out tonight that we will be having a girl!


Our newest family member was camera shy, and didn't want to turn around and smile for the camera. Only towards the very end of our session did she turn around a little bit, but even then she kept her hands up over her head.

The session was nice. Not "free" like you get with the doctor, but they printed a lot of pictures, put them all onto disk for us, and burned a DVD of the entire session. Worth the money to me, really. And they recommend coming back at 27-33 weeks to really get the best pictures. We'll definitely do this again, and hopefully next time our little girl won't be as shy.

We're all looking forward to having her join us in September!

Labels: life

From National Geographic News:

Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.

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.

"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.

Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.

Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories.

"Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.

By studying fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we see on Earth and Mars.

CO₂ constitutes a small percentage of atmospheric air - less than half of a percent. Which do you think is more probable - that a minor increase of a minor atmospheric gas would cause global warming, or that increased solar activity would cause global warming? Given that climate change is a reality, and has been a reality for all of earth's history, which do you think is more likely to have been a factor in climate change in the past, and is more likely to be a factor in climate change right now?

And if it's probable that solar activity is the primary cause of global warming, why would we not want to comprehensively study that before making sweeping government-mandated changes that would adversely affect billions of people?

Labels: politics

There's a documentary set to air in the UK on Thursday called The Great Global Warming Swindle, which promises to show that "climate change is natural, has been occurring for years, and ice falling from glaciers is just the spring break-up and as normal as leaves falling in autumn." The article has a lot of interesting information, and is worth a read. But perhaps the most interesting piece is that instead of rising levels of C0₂ being the cause of global warming, it just might be the other way around:

"Al Gore might have won an Oscar for ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, but the film is very misleading and he has got the relationship between CO2 and climate change the wrong way round."

One major piece of evidence of CO2 causing global warming are ice core samples from Antarctica, which show that for hundreds of years, global warming has been accompanied by higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

In ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ Al Gore is shown claiming this proves the theory, but palaeontologist Professor Ian Clark claims in the documentary that it actually shows the opposite.

He has evidence showing that warmer spells in the Earth’s history actually came an average of 800 years before the rise in CO2 levels.

Prof Clark believes increased levels of CO2 are because the Earth is heating up and not the cause. He says most CO2 in the atmosphere comes from the oceans, which dissolve the gas.

When the temperature increases, more gas is released into the atmosphere and when global temperatures cool, more CO2 is taken in. Because of the immense size of the oceans, he said they take time to catch up with climate trends, and this ‘memory effect’ is responsible for the lag.

The article also refers to the vast sums of money politicians throw at research to prove man-caused global warming, political bodies claiming scientific consensus, information about changes in solar activity being related to changes in climate, and of the fact that "the greenhouse effect is seen as a religion and if you don’t agree, you are a heretic."

Will it air in the US? I can only hope so. The only way global warming alarmists will be countered is with science. The alarmists won't listen, of course, but at least those of us who remain skeptical won't be seen as lone voices in the wilderness.

Labels: politics

There's just too much good stuff going around this week around global warming and Al Gore, but perhaps the best quote of the week is from James Taranto from Thursday's Best of the Web, in the piece titled "The Color of Money:"

So, let's sum this up: Here we have a major American politician who is calling for policies that would impose huge costs on society but appears to be profiting handsomely himself; who is leading an extravagant lifestyle while demanding sacrifices from ordinary people; and who is calling on the media to suppress the views of those with whom he disagrees, while at the same time urging more government regulation in the name of "fairness" to his partisan and ideological allies.

Make no mistake - there is a segment of our society who greatly desire to silence all skepticism about global warming, and who would also love to see conservative talk radio silenced. While I think Taranto is right that this is inconsistent in terminology, it is quite consistent in that they simply want to silence their critics.

Labels: politics

Ann Coulter takes on global warming in Let Them Eat Tofu!:

Our lives depend on fossil fuel. Steel plants, chemical plants, rubber plants, pharmaceutical plants, glass plants, paper plants -- those run on energy. There are no Mother Earth nursery designs in stylish organic cotton without gas-belching factories, ships and trucks, and temperature-controlled, well-lighted stores. Windmills can't even produce enough energy to manufacture a windmill...

"Global warming" is the left's pagan rage against mankind. If we can't produce industrial waste, then we can't produce. Some of us -- not the ones with mansions in Malibu and Nashville is my guess -- are going to have to die. To say we need to reduce our energy consumption is like saying we need to reduce our oxygen consumption.

Liberals have always had a thing about eliminating humans. Stalin wanted to eliminate the kulaks and Ukranians, vegetarian atheist Adolf Hitler wanted to eliminate the Jews, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wanted to eliminate poor blacks, DDT opponent Rachel Carson wanted to eliminate Africans (introduction to her book "Silent Spring" written by ... Al Gore!), and population-control guru Paul Ehrlich wants to eliminate all humans.

But global warming is the most insane, psychotic idea liberals have ever concocted to kill off "useless eaters." If we have to live in a pure "natural" environment like the Indians, then our entire transcontinental nation can only support about 1 million human beings. Sorry, fellas -- 299 million of you are going to have to go.

Proving that the "global warming" campaign is nothing but hatred of humanity, these are the exact same people who destroyed the nuclear power industry in this country 30 years ago.

If we accept for purposes of argument their claim that the only way the human race can survive is with clean energy that doesn't emit carbon dioxide, environmentalists waited until they had safely destroyed the nuclear power industry to tell us that. This proves they never intended for us to survive.

Labels: politics