Nearly August 4th: Obama’s (1961). Missed it by || this much. Quelle mirable, Michelle O.’s is Jan. 17, exact the same as ‘my’ lovely Lovey. These years, we feel ‘arrived.’

… the long and winding trail.

Come along boys and listen to my tell
I’ll tell you about my troubles on the old Chisholm Trail
Come a’ ty yi yippy yi yippy yi-yay
come a ty yi yippy yi-yay

Well the days are hot and the nights are cold
This cowboy life is gettin’ mighty old
Come a’ ty yi yippy yi yippy yi-yay
come a ty yi yippy yi-yay

Which (for me) solves a musing mystery that’s been going on since I’ve been coming here.
Namely: Why am I here?

The entire attraction is your way with words the same way I think. That, and you’re a good speller. As much as you execrate Etta, and yet emulate her right down to the full-size hair rollers, still your grammar is good. Too.

I peeked at your astrology chart. Your Moon is in Cancer as you likely knew, (being born 2 days before New Moon), and the combination develops a refined raconteur, let’s say.

Other characteristics are also elegant, fabulous. Your finances are favored especially this year.

This annum completes my (first?) Chinese ‘cycle’ — each of the 12 beasts of each of the 5 elements. This year is (and mine was) earth ox. Your year was wood dragon.

Et cetera

At the worst possible time, a gulf of misunderstanding widens between the nation’s scientists and ordinary Americans

They don’t talk.

We don’t listen.

And that pretty much sums up the relationship between scientists and the rest of us.

A new national survey has found a large and disturbing gap between what scientists think about climate change, evolution and scientific progress, and the views of ordinary Americans. That fissure isn’t new, of course, but at a time when the world is grappling with one of the most complex scientific challenges ever — climate change — it’s never been more important to close that gap.

The survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest scientific organization, discovered that scientists and the public are far apart on key issues. For example:

While almost all the scientists surveyed accept that human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, is causing global warming, only half the public agree that people are behind climate change. Eleven percent do not even agree there is warming.

Ninety-eight percent of the scientists say human beings evolved by natural processes. But fully a third of the public say that human beings have existed in their current form since the beginning of time.

There’s even a strong difference of opinion about the value of scientific research. Only 17 percent of the public agrees that American research leads the world. And the proportion of the public that names scientific advances as among the nation’s top achievements has dropped to 27 percent, from nearly 50 percent a decade ago.

These findings ought to sound alarm bells at research universities all over the country. They suggest a serious disconnect between scientists and the public at a time when it is essential that ….

——-

World Will Warm Faster Than Predicted in Next Five Years, Study Warns, by Duncan Clark, The Guardian/UK, July 27, 2009

New estimate based on the forthcoming upturn in solar activity and El Niño southern oscillation cycles is expected to silence global warming sceptics

The world faces a new period of record-breaking temperatures as the sun’s activity increases, leading the planet to heat up significantly faster than scientists had predicted over the next five years, according to a new study.

The hottest year on record was 1998, and the relatively cool years since have led to some global-warming sceptics claiming that temperatures have levelled off or started to decline. However, the new research firmly rejects that argument.

The work is the first to assess the combined impact on global temperature of four factors: human influences such as CO2 and aerosol emissions; heating from the sun; volcanic activity; and the El Niño southern oscillation, the phenomenon by which the Pacific Ocean flips between warmer and cooler states every few years.

It shows that the relative stability in global temperatures observed in the last seven years is explained primarily by the decline in incoming sunlight associated with the downward phase of the 11-year solar cycle, together with a lack of strong El Niño events. These trends have masked the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

As solar activity picks up again in the coming years, the new research suggests, temperatures will shoot up at 150% of the rate predicted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The research, to be published in a forthcoming edition of Geophysical Research Letters, was carried out by Judith Lean of the US Naval Research Laboratory and David Rind of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Lean said: “Our paper shows that the absence of warming observed in the last decade is no evidence that the climate isn’t responding to man-made greenhouse gases. On the contrary, the study again confirms that we’re seeing a long-term warming trend driven by human activity, with natural factors affecting the precise shape of that temperature rise.”

Lean and Rind’s research also sheds light on the extreme average temperature observed in 1998. The new paper confirms that the temperature spike of that year was caused primarily by a very strong El Niño episode. A similar episode occurring in the future could be expected to create a spike of equivalent magnitude on top of an even higher baseline, thus shattering the 1998 record.

Furthermore, …

Who you gonna believe — your sweaty carcass, or desperate politician LIARS4VOTES?

Yep, even with the fan running at full tilt and all windows open. Tomatoes are happy, but only a few cherry tomatoes are ready for harvest.