Random Note: HRC To Report Huge Well In Marmon Oil Field

26210, drl, HRC, State 157-100-29A-32-3H, Marmon oil field,

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	3-2014	24	11450	12019	30784	15942	9297	6477
BAKKEN	2-2014	18	12195	11448	29916	10946	4343	6477

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A Note to the Granddaughters

If one wants to learn about Stonehenge, the book NOT to read is Stonehenge: A New Interpretation of Prehistoric Man and the Cosmos, John North, c. 1996.

This is an incredible piece of work. If no new book on Stonehenge appears in the next 50 years, this book may be the reason. This is an encyclopedia of a book on the subject. It is incredible; it is amazing what one author can write in a lifetime. If one wants to know everything one could possibly know about Stonehenge this book probably has it. I say "probably" because one could spend hours on it and barely scratch the surface. It will be very difficult for another author to out-do this book.

The book's thesis is that Stonehenge, as well as similar structures and barrows in England, were built "based" on observations of the stars and perhaps less so than on the Sun and Moon or the planets). Stonehenge was probably under construction and modification for two thousand years. The author says that at every phase in the monument's long history aspects of its design were aligned on one or another solar or lunar extreme of rising or setting, although in the earliest phases attention was very probably given to certain stars.

This is the kind of book, perhaps, that is best to skim through first, sort of like a buffet. Check out the offerings before indulging. Go through the buffet line first without a plate, then return with a small plate, with plans to return later for the full deal.

Doing so, I stumbled across three pages of delightful reading on the rising, setting, and nightly path of Venus, the planet. Our older granddaughter and I have a "habit," I guess one would call it, of spotting Venus each night (see below) and commenting on it. Even the younger granddaughter now gets into the act, noting that when "our" Venus is red, it's probably not Venus at all, but Mars.

Some data points from the three pages on Venus in the book on Stonehenge:

• the planet is much brighter than any "fixed" star, even Sirius
• Venus can even cast a shadow, under the right circumstances
• like the Moon, and unlike the fixed stars, it rises and sets on successive occasions at different positions of the local horizon
• Venus seems to us to stick more or less to the ecliptic, the Sun's apparent path through the stars
• Venus wanders away from the ecliptic periodically -- in a highly systematic but complex way
• the general description of the pattern of Venus' behaviour is somewhat like the Moon's
• the crescent form of Venus will not be appreciated by the untrained naked eye 
• when too close to the Sun, the planet will not be visible at all, lost in the Sun's rays
• Venus is visible either before sunrise in the morning or after sunset in the evening, but not both (it is not both an evening star and a morning star in the same 24-hour period)
• Venus is never far from the Sun
• if a morning star, the Sun will be up by the time Venus sets; if seen as an evening star, the Sun will rise before it
• observing the changing patter of a planet's risings and settings is a much more complex activity than observing a star's relatively fixed behaviour

That must have driven early humans nuts, seeing these unpredictable "stars" flit across the evening sky, and some nights not showing up at all.

Venus, Shocking Blue

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 Global Warming: Der Spiegel

Apparently the "science is settled" 

Now shut up and start coloring

Some scientists complain pressure to conform to consensus opinion has become a serious hindrance in the field.

News that Lennart Bengtsson, the respected former director of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, had joined the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), sent shockwaves through the climate research community. GWPF is most notable for its skepticism about climate change and its efforts to undermine the position of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The tremors his decision sent through the scientific community shocked Bengtsson. 

The scientist said colleagues placed so much pressure on him after joining GWPF that he withdrew from the group out of fear for his own health. Bengtsson added that his treatment had been reminiscent of the persecution of suspected Communists in the United States during the era of McCarthyism in the 1950s.

Fortunately I didn't get the original memo.

[Later, 6:15 p.m. central time: I am in good company. This is purely coincidental. I wrote the above/posted the above earlier today. Many hours later, I was checking for typographical errors in the blog, and happened to check a few links on the sidebar. One of them was the "Coyote Blog."

You know that relative of yours, who last Thanksgiving called you anti-science because you had not fully bought into global warming alarm?

Well, it appears that the reason we keep getting called "anti-science" is because climate scientists have a really funny idea of what exactly "science" is.

Apparently, a number of folks have been trying for years to get articles published in peer reviewed journals comparing the IPCC temperature models to actual measurements, and in the process highlighting the divergence of the two. And they keep getting rejected.
Now, the publisher of Environmental Research Letters has explained why.  

Apparently, in climate science it is "an error" to attempt to compare computer temperature forecasts with the temperatures that actually occurred.  In fact, he says that trying to do so "is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of 'errors' and worse from the climate sceptics media side." Apparently, the purpose of scientific inquiry is to win media wars, and not necessarily to discover truth.

As noted, apparently with regard to "global warming," the science is settled.]