(Image source: The Atlantic)
Image source: The Atlantic
Read more here:
Navy’s Plan to Keep Strait of Hormuz Open? Dolphins
Retired world champion surfer Shane Dorian can now claim the totally righteous title of inventor. He with the help of a designer and survival wear manufacturer created the world’s first inflatable wetsuit. Sounds superfluous? Not when you’re catching 20-foot plus waves like Dorian . In fact, it was a near death experience from such a wave that gave Dorian the inspiration for this wetsuit. Watch the wetsuit in action: Gizmodo has the story: In 2010, while attacking monstrous waves at Mavericks—a notoriously dangerous surf spot in California—Dorian suffered the worst wipeout of his life. He was pushed down to the ocean floor (25 feet below the surface) and held there as two more waves steamrolled him. He nearly drowned. Dorian, wetsuit designer Hub Hubbard and survival wear manufacturer Mustang Survival brought the Billabong VI wetsuit to fruition. Though not available commercially yet, Dorian has tested the wetsuit and said he hasn’t been held under for more than 10 seconds. The wetsuit which propels a person toward the surface of the water by inflating immediately like an airplane life vest would. As reported by Gizmodo, after pulling a cord, a carbon dioxide cartridge inflates an air bladder than shoots the person to the surface. And that’s a good thing with Dorian’s biography on the Surfline website quoting him as saying he couldn’t wait to surf 100-foot wave someday.
See the original post:
First Inflatable Wetsuit Improves Safety for Surfers Hangin’ 10
Hey, great local news. At LAT , ” Huntington Beach’s Ocean View team wins Little League World Series ,” and ” Ocean View Little League players maintain perspective .”
Original post:
O.C.’s Ocean View Team Wins Little League World Series
**Written by Doug Powers According to Fox News, so far 13 deaths have been blamed on the storm. Flooding is a big problem, and it’s reported that four million are without power and billions of dollars in damage has been done, but fortunately the storm never exceeded category one winds, even though to watch some of the news reports you’d have thought the entire east coast was about to be wiped off the map. Here are a few storm-related items I ran across this morning. Feel free to pass along any links of interest that you run across as the day goes on: –So far there is no time table for re-starting New York City’s transit system, probably meaning no subway or bus service on Monday. –Doug Ross has 15 Irene photos spotted on Twitter . –An article in the New York Times wonders if Irene is the result of man-caused climate change. –Streakers caught the Weather Channel with their pants down — or was that the other way around? –Joe Biden played golf in Delaware in the hours preceding the hurricane, but only after Carl Spackler assured him, “I don’t think the heavy stuff’s gonna come down for quite a while.” –Irene’s predecessor: The Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 (there was global warming in 1944?) – George Will : Journalism “shouldn’t contribute to the manufacture of synthetic hysteria.” –The full size version of the above photo of Irene approaching the North Carolina coast is here . –Here’s video of a reporter getting covered in what he called “sea foam.” After the video I’ll tell you what it probably is — make sure you’re not eating lunch: Reporter Gives Update Covered In Sea Foam: MyFoxNY.com More on that “sea foam” : MYFOXNY.COM – A local news reporter from Washington, D.C. ended up getting covered in what is probably the remnants of raw sewage as he delivered live hurricane reports from Ocean City, Md. When he got back to the TV station it went something like this: **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
See more here:
Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene Open Thread
A magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck the island of Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean early Sunday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey is reporting . The quake hit a few minutes before 4 a.m. local time. It was centered 38 miles southwest of the town of Port-Vila and had a relatively shallow depth of 25.2 miles, according to the USGS. Reuters : The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the major quake had not triggered a Pacific-wide tsunami but said: “Earthquakes of this size sometimes generate local tsunamis that can be destructive along coasts located within a hundred kilometers (80 miles) of the earthquake epicenter.” There was no immediate information of any damage or casualties, but when on land quakes of this magnitude can cause widespread and heavy damage. The quake was followed by a weaker aftershock of magnitude 5.9 some 20 minutes later. The Vanuatu archipelago is located on the so-called “Ring of Fire,” one of the most seismically active regions in the world. Port-Vila is the capital of Vanuatu and has an estimated population of 40,000 people. No other details were immediately available. Editor’s note: This story has been updated since it was first published.
Follow this link:
Magnitude 7.5 Earthquake Reported in Vanuatu
Are you ready for the Spire Boat? The new, superhero-like racing vessel travels at speeds as high as 103.7 mph (also known as 90 knots for those of you who are boating aficionados). If you have a sense of adventure and an estimated $570,000, this powerful oceanic toy could be yours. The undeniably attractive, super-slick speedboat was created by Thierry Mugler Studio and will be presented at the Monaco Yacht Show this September. Already, the Spire Boat’s makers have 26 orders in for a boat that looks more suited for Batman than it does the common water-bug. Below, see the Spire from another, super-cool angle: CharterWorld.com gives this excellent description of the soon-to-be-unveiled super-boat: The result…is a glistening retro-futuristic Spire Boat, inspired by the muscle cars of the 1950’s and entirely representative of the aesthetic canons of its brand and its iconic designer. Board by board and curve by curve, this extraordinary boat morphed into shape. The finished product looks as if part of a movie set or just something that emerged from the depths of the ocean. It conveys its obvious speed and power while maintaining its hydrodynamic, ergonomic, and aerodynamic aspects. So, if you can’t actually be a superhero (after all, who really can be these days?), at least the Spire Boat can make you feel like one. We look forward to seeing how the unit rides on the waters. (h/t Gizmodo )
Go here to see the original:
This is the Luxury Boating Industry’s New Superhero-esque Speed Racer
Speed, agility, and a weapons system designed to destroy much larger ships define the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) triple-hull Type 022 missile boat. Wired is reporting that China has already built a fleet of these missile ships, which are designed to dominate shallow water, shore-hugging maritime missions, and function as an inexpensive anti-ship platform compared to traditional frigates and destroyers. But what is perhaps most distressing is the creation and deployment of this major Chinese weapons systems over the past few years has blown away U.S. efforts to build a similar vessel. China plans to crank out a reported 83 of the new missile boats, but the U.S. equivalent of the Type 022- the Littoral Combat Ship- has seen many budget and technical problems over the years, and so far only two have been built. One vessel, the Freedom , has been relegated to drug interdiction missions in the Caribbean. As Wired recently wrote to compare the programs in cost and capability: “In just seven years, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy has built 83 of the 400-ton Type 022s at an estimated cost of $40 million per ship. And production continues at a high rate in several shipyards. The U.S. Navy, by comparison, has finished just two LCS in the same span of time, each at a cost of more than $600 million. The Chinese ships sport eight anti-ship missiles apiece plus defensive guns and surface-to-air missiles. The American vessels, lightly armed in their own right, are designed to accommodate “plug-and-play” weapons kits, none of which are complete.”
U.S. Littoral Combat Ship
Read more from the original source:
China’s Deadly Missile Boats Outpacing Similar U.S. Craft
**Written by Doug Powers Stand down, Green Helmets ! From Forbes by way of Yahoo News : NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed. Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models. “The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.” In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted. So maybe we won’t have to spend $76 trillion to “green” the world? From the report ( PDF ): Yet, as seen in Figure 2, we are still faced with a rather large discrepancy in the time-lagged regression coefficients between the radiative signatures displayed by the real climate system in satellite data versus the climate models. In all fairness, I wouldn’t expect computer models to be spot-on simulations of the real climate system, but in honest research I would expect computer models to, at least once in a while, not always coincidentally err on the side of the equation that just happens to make Al Gore richer and serve as “evidence” that the UN should be further funded to police the impending catastrophe. Computer models of possible hurricane trajectories usually contain an array of possibilities based on a number of variables, but if the UN’s climates models were used, Hurricane Global Warming would always be poised for a direct hit on wherever the most wealth can be transferred. And in related “Al Gore hardest hit” news … JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article. Charles Monnett, an Anchorage-based scientist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, or BOEMRE, was told July 18 that he was being put on leave, pending results of an investigation into “integrity issues.” But he has not yet been informed by the inspector general’s office of specific charges or questions related to the scientific integrity of his work, said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. On Thursday, Ruch’s watchdog group plans to file a complaint with the agency on Monnett’s behalf, asserting that Obama administration officials have “actively persecuted” him in violation of policy intended to protect scientists from political interference. The article and presentations drew national attention and helped make the polar bear something of a poster child for the global warming movement. Al Gore’s mention of the polar bear in his documentary on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” came up during investigators’ questioning of Gleason in January. On September 14th, Al Gore wants us to connect the dots , but we don’t really need to wait until then. **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
Read this article:
Analysis of NASA Satellite Data Suggests UN Climate Models are Full of Hot Air
HONOLULU (AP) — The longtime girlfriend of the Northern California man who was sucked into a Maui blow hole said he wasn’t behaving foolishly and that there should have been warning signs.
Rocco Piganelli says this photo was taken moments before a man, in the spray at right, fell to his apparent death in a blow hole at Nakalele Point in Maui, Hawaii. The 44-year-old man, identified as David Potts of San Anselmo, Calif., has not been found since Saturday afternoon. (Rocco Piganelli / AP Photo)
Originally posted here:
Girlfriend of Man Who Fell Into Maui Blow Hole Says Warning Signs Should Have Been Posted
