Playing catchup, we all went to Houston for the Geologic Society of America meeting. Cathy Connor and Rob Fatland were there as well, and lots of good scientific presentations went on. In the “Global Warming Science: Implications for Geoscientists, Educators and Policy Makers” Matt made an afternoon presentation. James Hansen was the special featured one hour lunch lecturer. One of the biggest impressions I got from his great talk (“Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?”) was that a major challenge in understanding climate change is the difference between knowing and understanding. We can “know” about gigatons of carbon dioxide, but can we understand it? Anyway, enough of the good science, and on to the cute pictures!
Downtown Houston was very nice–the rail, Icon Hotel, and conference center were great. We got into town after a long and crazy flight (with an overnight in Seattle, Carrie and Torsten going through Dallas, while Matt waited in SeaTac for a direct to Houston flight). We caught up at Grandma and Grandpa Talus’ house. We were all time-zoned and jet-lagged. We walked in the sun down to the playground, and checked out the hurricane damage in the neighborhood.
We went downtown, and Torsten was in heaven:
It was a great visit with Mike and Ellen. We went down to NASA, enjoyed the tour of shuttle and ISS training facilities, the Apollo Mission Control, and a Saturn V rocket.
Matt had to give his presentation, then head back to Juneautopia to teach some classes. Carrie and Torsten hung down in the sun for a big dose of Vitamin D. They went to visit Nana and Grandpa Bob, enjoying pool time in the backyard, go cart racing at the awesome pizza place (including a first place ribbon for Torsten in the go cart race!), catching up with the Buckis, and a fantastic trip to the renaissance fair. Here are a few photo highlights:
And, you can enjoy the full gallery of photos:
good job getting photos up!!! Nice slide show.