Yesterday marked the second day of the NBA playoffs. Considering that 3 out of a possible 4 upsets happened the previous day, I was expecting more of the same action. At the end of the night I found myself pretty dissapointed. There is still a lot of basketball to be played, and there is guarenteed that something memorable about this postseason that will rise to the front.
The first game of the day was the only one I was not able to watch. It was the LA Lakers and the Utah Jazz. From the highlights, I would have to put this down as the decent game. The final margin was 13, and it seemed that tha Lakers were in control of the game almost the entire second half. The main highlight from this game would have to be the play of the young Trevor Ariza. His 21 points on 8-10 shooting (3-4 from deep) is his career playoff high. His previous high, set last year was only 6 points.
The second game was without a doubt the best game of the day. I've chosen the 76'ers to upset the Magic in the first round of the playoffs this year. It seems to me that in the Eastern Conference, it is the only one that truly has a chance to happen. (No offense to what D. Rose and the Bulls did on Sat, but they really cannot play any better, and you can't count of Ray Allen and Pierce to play that badly all series.) Looked like I would have to eat my words late in the third quarter when the Magic built an 18 point margin. A 6-0 run to end the quarter along with a hot start to the 4th made it a game again. After a 3 point basket from bench player Donyell Marshall tied it with just over a minute left, we were primed for a great ending. Andre Igudola, an emerging superstar got the ball with 12.5 seconds left. Despite great defense, he pulled up and made a killer 18 foot jumper for the win.
The last two games were highly dissapointing, even though I won money on both of them. My roommate wanted to bet me that the Heat would beat the Hawks, I was wary of the bet, until they showed a shot of Phillips Arena in Atlanta minutes before tip-off. When I saw the excitement of the players and fans, I took the sucker's bet. Boy did that pay off, the Hawks cruised to a 30 point win and made Dwayne Wade have a season-high in turnovers. The game was kept somewhat interesting with Josh Smith's acrobatic dunks throughout the game. The second game was more of the same with the Nuggets going on a 21-0 run in the third quarter to cruise to an easy 30 point win over CP3 and the Hornets. The game was highlighted by the unbelievable play of Chauncey "Mr. Big Shot" Billups. He finished with 36 points, and went 8-9 from beyond the arc.
My predictions for the first round.
Cavs over Pistons in 5
Lakers over Jazz in 4
Mavs over Spurs in 6
Boston over Bulls in 6
Denver over N.O. in 6 (going to be a brutal series, but the experience of Billups will be the deciding factor.)
76'ers over Magic in 6
Portland over Houston in 7
Hawks over Heat in 7
Monday, April 20, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
CO2 is not the big bad wolf
Recently I had the great honor and privilege to meet and discuss the global climate conditions with renowned astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon, a scientist from Harvard University who is on many committees, organizations, and is also a member of the Smithsonian Institute. He has a theory on the global climate change being caused by solar irradiation, but his presentation and argument is more based on disproving the myth on human CO2 emissions being the primary cause of the global warming.
Dr. Soon presented many viable and scientific related materials to disprove that CO2 is the biggest culprit of the warming. Firstly and to me most importantly, he showed that over the past thousands and thousands of years, temperature has preceded the CO2 rises; often by up to 600 years. The exact reasoning for this is not determined, but the warming and cooling of surface waters in oceans would result in larger amounts of CO2 emissions. Also the world has seen tremendous rises and drops in the temperature and CO2 levels throughout our existence, and there is very little evidence that this is due to human emissions and burnings of fossil fuels.
In fact why don’t we discuss how much carbon dioxide is actually released into the atmosphere by anthropogenic causes. Last year humans were responsible for releasing 5.3 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. This number seems high and has been bantered around by the people who are for limiting carbon emissions, etc. Compared to the amount released by cows and other animals (50 billion tons) it doesn’t seem that high. That is not the end of CO2 emissions though, turnover in the ocean; surface waters evaporating to the atmosphere and surface waters cooling and going to the bottom results in 90 billion tons and 95 billion tons of CO2 released respectively. Marine biotics also release 45 billion tons per year. Out of the 285.3 billion tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere, human are responsible for only 1.8%.
People who believe in the myth of CO2 global warming believe that the rise in CO2 is the cause because of the correlation of CO2 rising relatively equal with rising in temperatures from 1960 to 2000. Only problem is that this data is magnified to try and push the agenda of CO2 being the culprit. If you extend the graph back to 1850 there is very little data to show that CO2 could be the reason. Also since 2000, CO2 levels have been rising while temperatures have been dropping. Also if the people truly believe that CO2 as a greenhouse gas is such a player in the global climate changes, how come none of them try to attack water vapor, as it is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
There are also many arguments that the people who believe global warming is anthropogenic that are not true. Al Gore, famous for his “Inconvenient Truth” claims that droughts are increasing and lasting longer, floods are increasing and lasting longer, and also hurricanes are becoming more violent. These seem like terrible situations and would make people, who have no background in science, call for action. Simple looks at NOAA data on droughts and floods show that there is extreme variability in both and no trends at all, much less trends that would lead to any connection between burning fossil fuels and the amount/severity of the natural disasters. As for hurricanes, the information is unfounded on science; if the temperatures were warming globally and the Arctic would be experiencing the worst of it, the combination of the warm and cool air mixing would be less drastic as the differences in the two temperatures would be lower, thus limiting the strength of tropical storms. After Katrina, NOAA came out with a report that said conclusively, greenhouse gases played no role in the increase of tropical storms and no anthropogenic reasons attributed to the severity of the storms. Hurricanes go in and out of season and also go into active and inactive phases, it just happened to be an active phase in 2005.
The theory of solar irradiation being the driving force behind global climate change is still theoretical as of right now, and Dr. Soon acknowledges that much more work needs to be done to make it more plausible. But he argues that people who believe global warming is caused by CO2 have no scientific reasoning and credible causality to their reasoning. All they are looking at is graphs, statistical data, and computer models. As they are looking at statistics alone, which do not prove anything in the scientific world, he argues that the correlation between solar irradiation and temperature is more more believable than CO2 and temperature.
I spoke with Dr. Soon and his companion (Dr. David Legates, the climatologist for the state of Delaware), for nearly 2 hours plus listening to his presentation for another hour and half. The information he provided me with is extraordinary and could fill many more pages. I am currently corresponding with him and am in the process of trying to ascertain some of his slides and graphs to show you his scientific work. I am hoping I will be able to get him to come speak in Mequon sometime within the next year.
Dr. Soon presented many viable and scientific related materials to disprove that CO2 is the biggest culprit of the warming. Firstly and to me most importantly, he showed that over the past thousands and thousands of years, temperature has preceded the CO2 rises; often by up to 600 years. The exact reasoning for this is not determined, but the warming and cooling of surface waters in oceans would result in larger amounts of CO2 emissions. Also the world has seen tremendous rises and drops in the temperature and CO2 levels throughout our existence, and there is very little evidence that this is due to human emissions and burnings of fossil fuels.
In fact why don’t we discuss how much carbon dioxide is actually released into the atmosphere by anthropogenic causes. Last year humans were responsible for releasing 5.3 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. This number seems high and has been bantered around by the people who are for limiting carbon emissions, etc. Compared to the amount released by cows and other animals (50 billion tons) it doesn’t seem that high. That is not the end of CO2 emissions though, turnover in the ocean; surface waters evaporating to the atmosphere and surface waters cooling and going to the bottom results in 90 billion tons and 95 billion tons of CO2 released respectively. Marine biotics also release 45 billion tons per year. Out of the 285.3 billion tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere, human are responsible for only 1.8%.
People who believe in the myth of CO2 global warming believe that the rise in CO2 is the cause because of the correlation of CO2 rising relatively equal with rising in temperatures from 1960 to 2000. Only problem is that this data is magnified to try and push the agenda of CO2 being the culprit. If you extend the graph back to 1850 there is very little data to show that CO2 could be the reason. Also since 2000, CO2 levels have been rising while temperatures have been dropping. Also if the people truly believe that CO2 as a greenhouse gas is such a player in the global climate changes, how come none of them try to attack water vapor, as it is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
There are also many arguments that the people who believe global warming is anthropogenic that are not true. Al Gore, famous for his “Inconvenient Truth” claims that droughts are increasing and lasting longer, floods are increasing and lasting longer, and also hurricanes are becoming more violent. These seem like terrible situations and would make people, who have no background in science, call for action. Simple looks at NOAA data on droughts and floods show that there is extreme variability in both and no trends at all, much less trends that would lead to any connection between burning fossil fuels and the amount/severity of the natural disasters. As for hurricanes, the information is unfounded on science; if the temperatures were warming globally and the Arctic would be experiencing the worst of it, the combination of the warm and cool air mixing would be less drastic as the differences in the two temperatures would be lower, thus limiting the strength of tropical storms. After Katrina, NOAA came out with a report that said conclusively, greenhouse gases played no role in the increase of tropical storms and no anthropogenic reasons attributed to the severity of the storms. Hurricanes go in and out of season and also go into active and inactive phases, it just happened to be an active phase in 2005.
The theory of solar irradiation being the driving force behind global climate change is still theoretical as of right now, and Dr. Soon acknowledges that much more work needs to be done to make it more plausible. But he argues that people who believe global warming is caused by CO2 have no scientific reasoning and credible causality to their reasoning. All they are looking at is graphs, statistical data, and computer models. As they are looking at statistics alone, which do not prove anything in the scientific world, he argues that the correlation between solar irradiation and temperature is more more believable than CO2 and temperature.
I spoke with Dr. Soon and his companion (Dr. David Legates, the climatologist for the state of Delaware), for nearly 2 hours plus listening to his presentation for another hour and half. The information he provided me with is extraordinary and could fill many more pages. I am currently corresponding with him and am in the process of trying to ascertain some of his slides and graphs to show you his scientific work. I am hoping I will be able to get him to come speak in Mequon sometime within the next year.
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