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POPS Oil Outlook Clouds Russia’s Economic Future That could trigger a vicious circle of falling income and investment, as production gets more expensive in Russia's aging fields. The era of record profits from oil and gas is over - that's according to Russia's Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin. 2008 is likely to be the year of peak oil and gas production in the country. The big oil companies are cutting investment in new projects. Russia has received up to $1 Billion a day in oil revenues in recent years, and the country's budget and economy remain highly dependent on hydrocarbon earnings. The world financial crisis and recession has triggered big falls in the world's oil price. That will significantly affect the Russian budget, according to Mikhail Kroutikhin, partner at Rusenergy.
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POPSUFO over the Rockies? Taken from my back deck with crappy digital camera. Was taking pictires of the red sky and didn't even think about the UFO until i looked at the 3 pictures I snapped. It was only in the first picture, the other 2 it was gone. Evidentally, it moved from left to right and out of my field of view very fast!
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POPSRandom Crap McCain continues to reinforce the image of the old man yelling at the kids to get off his lawn. Or as Jon Stewart phrases it, "Old man yells at clouds".
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POPSHow Fannie and Freddie Lost Their Groove If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it. Republicans, tied by Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter. That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then. Wallison wrote at the time: ``It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.' Congressman Richard Baker (R-La.) has been concerned about the risks created by Fannie and Freddie since 2000, when he first introduced legislation to augment the powers of their regulator...
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POPSThis is no fantasy or trick of the light - Upside down rainbow Upside down rainbow - The circumzenithal arc or cicumzenith arc (CZA), also called the Bravais' arc, is an optical phenomenon similar in appearance to a rainbow and arising from refraction of sunlight through non-terminated, horizontally-oriented ice crystals in certain clouds. It takes the shape of one-quarter of a circle centered at the zenith and parallel to the horizon, on the same side as the sun. Its colors run from blue near the zenith to red towards the horizon; it is one of the brightest and most colorful halos" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumzenithal_arc
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POPSOld Man Yells at Clouds - Again In a performance reminiscent of Ronald Reagan in his later years as Alzheimer's was taking hold, McCain appears to confuse Spain and Mexico. Or maybe it's just the case of his talking points getting garbled.
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POPSCloud-seeding ships could combat climate change The 300-tonne unmanned ships used to seed the clouds would be powered by the wind, but would not use conventional sails. Instead they would be fitted with a number of 20 m-high, 2.5 m-diameter cylinders known as “Flettner rotors” that would be made to spin continuously. This spinning would generate a force perpendicular to the wind direction, propelling the ship forward if it is oriented at right angles to the wind. around 1500 ships would be needed altogether to counteract a carbon doubling, at a cost of some £1m to £2m each. This would involve an initial fleet expanding by some 50 ships a year if the scheme is to keep in step with the current rate of increase in atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels.
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POPSA satellite eye on the Earth last 2 pictures: a) Kasatochi volcano, Aleutian Islands, August 8: Dormant for 200 years this small volcano in the Pacific erupted without warning on August 7. The volcano’s plume is seen here as a brown streak in the cloud b) Phytoplankton bloom in the Barents Sea, Norway, August 12 2008. Phytoplankton are tiny plant-like organisms that are the foundation of the ocean food web. Like plants, they contain chlorophyll that they use to harvest sunlight for photosynthesis. In northern waters, these organisms are starved for sunlight much of the year, but during the summer months, they explode in colourful blooms such as this one
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POPSVery Short Movie: The Clouds of Mars There's a new Martian movie, though it's not quite feature-length. A series of still images taken by the Phoenix Mars Lander of water-ice clouds sailing overhead on the red planet has been turned into a short animation by NASA mission scientists. "The images were taken as part of a campaign to see clouds and track wind. These are clearly ice clouds," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University and the lead scientist for the lander's surface stereo imager, which snapped the pictures of the clouds during a 10-minute period on Aug. 29.
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POPSIt Beats Jesus on Toast! I'm astounded too. Not by the "Allah meat" but by the gullibility of people. And they even found a vet who gave credence by claiming it "defied scientific explanation". As far as no explanation this shows an astounding lack of imagination. I'm no vet but can readily come with an explanation as could any rational person. But then, who ever claimed that the Allah beef followers were rational? There is a name for this phenomenon: pareidolia: "The tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the viewer; such as interpreting marks on Mars as canals or seeing shapes in clouds." I'm off to McD now and fully expect to find a holy patty. Ha!
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POPSCan we harness energy from outer space? While nuclear fusion has already been tested with the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, those reactions give off the majority of their energy as radioactive neutrons, raising both safety and production concerns. Helium-3, on the other hand, is perfectly safe. It doesn't give off any pollution or radioactive waste and poses no danger to surrounding areas. helium-3 has two protons but only one neutron. When it's heated to very high temperatures and combined with deuterium, the reaction releases incredible amounts of energy. Just 2.2 pounds (one kilogram) of helium-3 combined with 1.5 pounds (0.67 kilograms) of deuterium produces 19 megawatt-years of energy Roughly 25 tons of the stuff could power the United States for an entire year.
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