The Weather's Grim / Ice On The Cages

Goodness! Here in the San Fernando Valley it's 90 degrees and cloudy! I even got a little rain on my windshield! Of course, I hear it's a little worse on the east coast.

I'm gratified that Eric Cantor's policy is to not send Federal money to the disaster areas until congress can agree on offsetting budget cuts. Hahaha! It'll play out this way: the Right will insist that the money comes out of social security. The Left will fight them for about, oh, six months. Then they'll cave and the Right will say, no, we need to get the money out of social security and also impeach Obama! That'll delay the aid for another six months or so. Everyone's poll numbers will plummet, and they'll finally just approve the money but by then the east coast will be a post-apocalyptic wasteland because all the industry has moved to China, where there are roads and electricity.

And in the meantime, NO BUDGET CUTS! Whoo hoo! California wins for a change.

Attention Climate Change Deniers

I personally don't believe this proves anything, but I'm bringing it up because any time it's chilly people on Fox News laugh derisively and claim that there is no global warming. So go ahead, and tell me why you don't think this is proof that you're wrong:


At 113 degrees, downtown L.A. hits all-time record high [Updated]

NOW You're Talkin'

PALO ALTO (CALIFORNIA), Aug 3 (Bernama) -- Stanford engineers have figured out how to simultaneously use the light and heat of the sun to generate electricity in a way, that could make solar power production more than twice as efficient as existing methods and potentially cheap enough to compete with oil.

Stanford University news said that unlike photovoltaic technology currently used in solar panels - which becomes less efficient as the temperature rises - the new process excels at higher temperatures, Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported Tuesday.

Now obviously this isn't a solution for all locations - Seattle wouldn't be contributing too much power to the grid for example, and until we come up with better wind farms, we'd be burning a lot of fossils during winter. But imagine the boon this would be to cheap energy on the whole! Getting just a fraction of your power load from the sun would result in lower costs, less environmental damage and less financing of terrorist states. Downside anyone? Anyone?

Climategate Followup

This isn't news to most people but if you only follow Fox (or World Net Daily, if you think Fox is staffed by RINOs) I'm betting it isn't getting much play:

The Independent Climate Change Email Review is finished and, within its constrained mandate, has cleared climate scientists and administrators at the University of East Anglia of claims of malfeasance rising out of the contents of folders of e-mail messages and files extracted from computers there and posted around the Web last November. Two other inquiries with slightly different focal points also cleared the scientists and school. (As I wrote last night, there is still a glaring unanswered question: Was a crime committed in releasing or extracting the files?)

The one significant issue found in the latest review, led by a longtime British civil servant, Sir Muir Russell, concerned insufficient openness. But the committee made it clear that nearly all of the attacks on the scientists and the university were unsubstantiated.

I'm going out on a limb here, but I bet "climategate" is still considered a terrible scandal amongst the people who thought it was an issue. Just like evolution is still not proven to them.

If It's Cold, There's No Such Thing As Global Warming

But what about if it's warm? What if you had to ship snow to Vancouver just so the Olympics could go on as planned? Why doesn't this prove that Global Climate change is a reality?

By the way, all the money you're saving by not retrofitting to cut down carbon emissions? You're going to wind up spending it on coffee.

The Snow! It Proves Everything!

So briefly before I drive to work in the rain, let me ask the conservatives something that they won't answer. It's really really cold this week. It's snowing so bad in Washington that they closed the government buildings. Most commentators are taking the opportunity to claim that this proves that there's no such thing as global warming.

However, isn't it possible that the steps people have taken for the last 50 years has had an effect? That banning CFCs (for example) has allowed the greenhouse heat to escape, and make it really really cold all the time? And that this is therefore a reason to stop all attempts to curb all Gorean policies before we're plunged into a permanent ice age?

We Report You Fail to Do Simple Addition, Part... Uh, 30?

Hat tip Think Progress

Climategate

Who knew - the entire science community takes its marching orders from UCAR. They'd have to, otherwise the talking point I'm about to document doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I've been getting a lot of flack from WAMK about failing to address a recent incident in which The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research's emails were hacked, and were full of damming evidence PROVING that GLOBAL WARMING is a HOAX! My first response was to ignore the whole thing, because they used to have PROOF that there IS NO GLOBAL WARMING! Then there was some, but it OBVIOUSLY WASN'T MAN MADE! Then even IF IT WAS, the EARTH would REGULATE ITSELF! So you know, why bother? Then I found that the proof linked too was from a British newspaper columnist at the Telegraph, under the following weasel word intro (WWs in boldface):

These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest: Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

So you can see why I was a little skeptical. However, I clicked around a little and Phil Jones, the head of the CRU division that was hacked, confirms the emails are probably authentic. This is more than my skeptic friend WAMK seems to have done. Apparently if the columnist says the blogger says the hacker says they're authentic, well, that's all the proof he needs! By the way, the link to the emails? From a UCAR press release.

The most damming phrase to be plucked out of context from the emails is "hide the decline". Why would scientists want to hide the decline? To protect their jobs? To advance the liberal agenda? Nope. I seriously believe there is an anomaly in the data that looks like a decline and they were afraid morons would get on YouTube and ridicule the science like... oh, look!

Anyway the point I'm making here is no matter what the emails say, the majority of climatologists who believe in Anthropogenic Global Climate Change do not work for UCAR and rely on their own conclusions and raw data. This email dump simply doesn't prove anything. It doesn't even prove that UCAR's conclusions and data are wrong. It does cast a tiny shred of doubt, but it's really, REALLY tiny. And the globe? Pretty big.

By the way, I won't accept any counter-arguments about the first ice age having no man-made components - most climate change deniers think the world is only 4000 years old and the devil put dinosaur bones in the ground to fool us. To them there WAS no ice age!

Our Discontent

Six more weeks, says Phil.

It's Too Cold For Politics

For God's sake, it snowed in LAS VEGAS last night!

Here on the left coast, it's a balmy 40 degrees today. We're not prepared for it. I have a friend who hasn't had to use her furnace in three years and didn't know it wasn't even lit. Nobody has the clothes for this kind of weather in this town. We'll all be dead by the end of the week.

To my right-leaning friends, I'll admit that this proves there's no such thing as global warming when you guys admit that gay marriage doesn't destroy marriage itself. Fair exchange! And send sterno.

One Less Thing To Worry About

According to Damn Interesting, a human being exposed to the vaccum of space without protection will not instantly swell up and explode. I know, you saw OUTLANDER and TOTAL RECALL and that's always the way it goes down, but in fact, it'd be more like this:

For about ten full seconds– a long time to be loitering in space without protection– an average human would be rather uncomfortable, but they would still have their wits about them. Depending on the nature of the decompression, this may give a victim sufficient time to take measures to save their own life. But this period of "useful consciousness" would wane as the effects of brain asphyxiation begin to set in. In the absence of air pressure the gas exchange of the lungs works in reverse, dumping oxygen out of the blood and accelerating the oxygen-starved state known as hypoxia. After about ten seconds a victim will experience loss of vision and impaired judgement, and the cooling effect of evaporation will lower the temperature in the victim's mouth and nose to near-freezing. Unconsciousness and convulsions would follow several seconds later, and a blue discoloration of the skin called cyanosis would become evident.

So you gotta admit, that's good news. Kubrick got it right again. The article goes on to point out that after you lose conciousness and turn blue, you'd still be good for about a minute and a half before they had to get you into the airlock and administer oxygen, and then you'd probably suffer no permanent damage. Of course, past that your blood would boil and that's a hard condition to treat. But hell, you at least have time to wave frantically to the folks inside, maybe tap your keys on the window and mouth the words "let me back in" which is more than we've been told to expect. Small favors!

(hat tip to Mental Floss)

Globalonybaloney

I'm increasingly amazed by the ability of people to deny that mankind can effect the environment, especially when politics is involved. Poor science is made to jump through all kinds of hoops by the right. If Stephen Hawking were explicitly liberal, Rush Limbaugh would be mocking him for suggesting there is such a thing as "time."

Therefore we have to suffer through a lot of crazy debate about Global Warming, because it's a pet cause of Al Gore. Instead of listening to the majority of legitimate scientists, conservatives are forced to believe a handful of oil-company researchers. I have been batting this issue around lately with Warner Todd Huston (who believes that the new Eagles album aids the terrorists, even though it's perfectly acceptable to hate it because the album is just lame) and he's been riding the bullet train to Crazytown trying to convince me that there is no such thing as Global Warming. Or there is, but we aren't causing it and there is nothing we can do to stop it, and we shouldn't even try because there isn't any.

Warner says:

This isn't about "saving the Earth." It's about so-called scientists getting money for more research to assure globaloney exists.

Yes, that's right - the majority of the world's scientists have gotten together in secret, maybe at one of those conferences in Helsinki, and agreed to gin up the results of their research to squeeze a little grant money out of the rest of us! All this time I thought it was energy companies trying to protect their profits; but it turns out they're the altruistic ones! Those scientists are the greedy, rapacious bastards!

Warner says:

...People imagine that plastic won't break down and disintegrate. But this isn't true at all. It's just that plastic is such a new substance that microbes haven't figured out how to break it down. Eventually, they will.

Same thing happened to trees millions of years ago. Now trees break down and disappear because microbes, etc. break down the wood. But millions of years ago, they hadn't quite figured that out yet. That is why we can find bark and nearly whole fallen tree trunks deep under the earth in coal mines (for instance).

These two paragraphs have created a whole new energy source, because they make my head spin so much I have hooked a belt to it to power my reading lamp. First of all, microbes will eventually figure out how to break down plastic? How is that possible, knowing that there is no such thing as evolution?

Second, as proof that microbes learned to break down wood, Warner offers the example of million year old undecomposed wood. These microbes had millions of years - wouldn't a few of them have gone back to the older stuff and learned to eat that? If anything, this example proves that when Charlton Heston digs his fist through the sand screaming "you maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you all to hell," he will get his wrist tangled in one of those six-pack holder things, 'cause they're going to be around forever.

Finally, Warner says:

But a local "mess" does not automatically translate to a mess that encompasses the whole world!!!

I suppose the multiple exclamation points means I'm winning. But you know what? These guys always cite examples from nature ("The earth warmed during the renaissance! We didn't cause that!") so I'll refute that argument with a natural example. My "local mess" - the eruption of Krakatoa. From Wikipedia :

In the year following the eruption, average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 degrees Celsius. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888. The eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) gas high into the stratosphere which was subsequently transported by high-level winds all over the planet. This led to a global increase in sulfurous acid (H₂SO₃) concentration in high-level cirrus clouds. The resulting increase in cloud reflectivity (or albedo) would reflect more incoming light from the sun than usual, and cool the entire planet until the suspended sulfur fell to the ground as acid precipitation.

I'd have quoted Conservapedia instead, but they don't have an entry for Krakatoa. Those guys only have so much server space and bandwidth, and explaining how dinosaurs survived on Noah's Ark takes up most of it. But you could call the eruption a local event, and it effected the entire world. It is said that Munck's THE SCREAM depicted the post-Krakatoa sky. In Norway. Just sayin'.

And yes, eventually the sky healed and things got back to normal. But it was just one source of pollutants, and it stopped after a month and a half. We have been pouring junk into the air since the industrial revolution from points all over the globe. How brainwashed by Bill O'Reilly do you have to be before you think that might create a problem?

Well, never mind. If Al Gore believes it, it MUST be wrong. Next thing, you'll be telling me that there is a company called APPLE that makes computers and phones!

Weather Report

I work right now 3 miles from where I live. Normally this is great; but today the area will boast a local Los Angeles high of 110 degrees. So I can't escape it until after 5:00pm. If I survive, perhaps I'll write to tell you how I did.

The Bright Side of Global Warming

I was just watching the BBC News and they quoted an interesting statistic. Even though the frequency of "weather events" is measurably rising, the death toll from them is falling. Weather events, obviously, include flooding, hurricanes and such like. The BBC rep said that it's believed that the casualty rate is down because it is now easier to predict these things and the sheer frequency has put rescue crews at the top of their game.

So, there's your bright side - practice makes perfect! Let's pump a little more carbon into the atmosphere, to speed up the training!

Topics Of Discussion

We are deployed in Iraq right now to protect Iraqis. Most Iraqis are Muslims. Muslims are Islamists, who want all Christians dead. So why are we in there again?

I cn has wrt bowt LOLcats, but do not want! 2 late! I is bhind yr curve, exploitn yr memes.

Bush tackled immigration and now EVERYBODY hates him. He could have stuck with gays and done pretty well. What was he thinking?

My wife was working in San Diego last month - there is a weather phenomenon there called "May Grey" in which every day in May is overcast. Here in L.A. we call it "June Gloom" because I guess summer starts a month later the farther up North you are. So Skot - is there a word for it in San Francisco, like "Aug-ust Fog?" Or do you bother, because it's all year round?

Is it just me, or is Warner Todd Huston overreacting?

Statistics Ruin My Life Again

According to a formula devised by Dr. Cliff Arnall in Cardiff, today is statistically the most depressing day of the year.

Arnall’s so-called formula looks like this: [W + (D-d)] x TQM x NA. All of the letters and symbols apparently represent a sort of mathematical code to track the following:
W: How bad the weather is at this time of year.
D: Amount of debt accumulated over the holidays minus how much is paid off.
T: The time since the holidays.
Q: Amount of time passed since New Year’s resolutions have gone south.
M: Our general motivation levels.
NA: The need to take action.

And of course, it's a Monday. I Don't Like Mondays.

The formula is, of course, ridiculous. For one thing it assumes bad weather. Where I am it's chilly but sunny, and therefore pretty good. On the other hand, I'm coming down with a cold, so that will push it in the other direction, but what if I hadn't noticed symptoms until Wednesday? I guess what I'm saying is formula or not, I was more depressed last month.

However, there is something to be said for January as the most miserable month. It is the dead of winter, and I personally know two people who lost parents in the last weeks. My sypathy goes out to them. And you got that post-holiday depression thing, coupled with the sudden lack of cool parties.

So if you're noticing that you're more depressed today than usual, blame the messenger Dr. Arnall. By the way, Dr. Who fans know that Torchwood has a base in Cardiff so maybe all the nearby alien tech is affecting people there. My advice to Arnall is to move out before he is swallowed by another temporal rift. I hate those.

Complaining About The Weather, Doing Nothing To Fix It

About winter in Minnesota, Garrison Keillor once said "it's the time of year when nature makes a serious effort to kill you."

I live in California, where nature has no such sinister intention. Perhaps it is more laid back here. Still, it's relentlessly grim out there. It's overcast, it's bone-chilling cold. We've lost a year of one of our greatest exports, oranges, to frost. Fortunately, we are able to pump out bad TV in any weather. Still, if I could tolerate a climate like this, I'd move to someplace like Minnesota, where it's much much cheaper to live.

And this is southern California. I can only imagine how things are in my birth place of Santa Cruz, nestled on the sea between San Jose and Monterey. Those ocean breezes can be cruel and if the city wasn't at sea level it would probably snow often. They drink a LOT of coffee in Santa Cruz. Unlike Seattle, some people are probably drinking coffee and surfing at the same time.

Worst part of it is, it keeps threatening to rain but never quite does. And the static electricity is therefore building to Van De Graaf generator levels. Soon I expect to see a group of people warming their hands around the corpse of a goth who shuffled too far before trying to open the door.

If this is what the weather is like in the blue states, no wonder they laugh off global warming!

An Inconvenient Theory

I was driving home today, thing to think of some way to explain to my conservative friends how global warming could result in the next ice age, and I had an epiphany. Not about global warming per se, that's for scientists. REAL scientists, not the guys who work for Exxon. no my theory will explain why Exxon hires those scientists.

Like me, you've assumed that the big energy companies are fighting the global warming concept because they want to protect their investment. You are thinking, "on some level they know it's happening but they want to pump the oil for a few more years while they still can, and hope the serious damage will wait until after they're dead."

My theory is this - whether it's uncomfortably hot or uncomfortably cold, PEOPLE WILL SPEND MORE ON ENERGY. Especially cold. An ice age would have the added advantage for usually clouded skies - no pesky solar energy to cut into profits! Nobody lives off the grid!

Remember they're not protecting their profits at all... they're pushing to expand the market.