Holiday Open Thread

Robert of Ottawa says:
December 25, 2010 at 6:31 am
Hey, anyone know how to cook a turkey?
Some contrarian advice: I ate a delicious juicy turkey that was cooked upside down with the breast on the bottom. It didn’t look as beautiful as in christmas pictures but the breast meat wasn’t dried out as with traditionally cooked turkeys. Also had an old aunt who used to smear mayonnais all over the turkey and sprinkle it with flour – wow it made a nice crispy skin (mayo is, afterall just mainly egg yolks vinegar and oil.) It was cooked right side up though – suggest trying both ways some time.

Thanks for all the helpful advice.
My home’s elevation is too far below the base flood elevation to pile dirt against the foundation as some neighbors have. Engineers come out and shoot the corners of your house and if you pile enough dirt there, then you can go through the map ammendment process and get out of the flood plain.
The grandfather clause has 2 parts, paying your old non-100-year zone rate only applies if you were paying flood insurance before you were placed in the flood zone. The other part allows a discount from the $300 per month, but I saw a house bill that is being discussed that will gradually phase out the discount and there is $0 discount for a new owner if you try to sell your home. My home is worth less today than when I bought it new in 1998.
There are a couple dozen homes in this predicament so maybe we can look for a geologist as described above.
Flood maps are being modernized around the country with satellite measurements. The DNR is in charge of mapping here. I would suggest that anybody who lives near a flood source, even a small creek that is dry most of the year, check to see if your area is scheduled for a map update. If you are in a suburb with upstream growth, and your city/county allowed the new upstream developments to dump runoff into the flood source, then you make sure your property is on high ground. Once you are placed in the flood plain, you can’t bring in fill or do any contruction.

Well, we got enough snow to call it a white Christmas in the Ozark Mtns. I told Anna when we went to bed that I thought we’d get it. She said no, the forecasts weren’t predicting it.
I’ve been trying to figure out this droidx. Been trying to paste this…
University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland AB: The Eyjafjallajökull volcano, one of the oldest active volcanoes in Iceland, is located in the volcanic flank zone of South Iceland, a few tens of kilometers off the nearest branch of the mid-Atlantic plate boundary. The volcanic edifice is an elongated, flat cone of about 1650 m height. A 100-200 m thick glacier covers the upper part of the volcano and its elliptical 2.5-km-wide summit crater or caldera. Eyjafjallajökull products have an alkaline composition, similar to other off-rift volcanoes in Iceland. An E-W trending rift zone transects the volcano, most eruptive fissures and crater rows trend E-W, but occasional radial fissures are observed around the summit area. Eruptive fissures on the west flank are curved and tend to follow the topographic gradient. The E-W orientation of the rift zone suggests a tectonic control of a regional stress field with the least compressive stress oriented N-S. The strong influence of the topography suggests, however, that this intraplate stress field is weak. Dikes in the older parts of the volcano strike north-easterly and indicate a change in the stress orientation during the last 0.78 My. This change may be related to a southward propagation of the Eastern Rift Zone of Iceland and the transfer of spreading from the Western Rift Zone. The rather mild activity of Eyjafjallajökull (3 eruptions in 1100 years) stands in strong contrast to that of the neighbouring volcano Katla, which is one of Iceland‘s most active volcanoes. The eastern rift of Eyjafjallajökull extends into the western flank of Katla and the distance between the two volcanic centers is only 25 km. Their magmatic sources, however, appear to be chemically separated in spite of apparent sympathetic behaviour of the two volcanoes. The only well documented historical eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, 1821-1823, was followed by a moderately small eruption of Katla in 1823. There is evidence for similar behaviour in the two other known eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull in Historic time, those of 1612 and 920. Sill intrusion beneath Eyjafjallajökull in 1999 was followed by a magmatic event at Katla, most likely a small subglacial eruption and a period of slow inflation 1999-2004. The coupling mechanism between the volcanoes remains enigmatic. One volcano may be triggered by the other by direct dike or sill injection. Furthermore, stress induced in the crust by the activity of one volcano may affect the magmatic system of the other. Pressure perturbation in the mantle may also affect the magma sources of both volcanoes. At the time of writing (September 2010), there is no indication of unusual activity at Katla following the intrusive and extrusive activity of Eyjafjallajökull in 2009-2010.
http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/SFgate/SFgate?&listenv=table&multiple=1&range=1&directget=1&application=fm10&database=%2Fdata%2Fepubs%2Fwais%2Findexes%2Ffm10%2Ffm10&maxhits=200&=%22V21F-01%22
Eddie

Years ago, prior to global warming, a white Christmas was somewhat rare. Now with this warming blanket of evil CO2 It’s a cold white Christmas here in Pittsburgh PA. Thank you all who emitted CO2 this past year!

“Robert of Ottawa says:
December 25, 2010 at 6:31 am
Hey, anyone know how to cook a turkey?”
Yes, put it in the oven and burn some fuel to cook it (generate CO2 in so doing). Whatever you do, don’t try and cook it with “back radiation” from IR. That won’t do anything!

Smokey says:
December 25, 2010 at 9:10 am
Finally: is “onion” a bot? Or just a beginner?
I think it’s Gavin having some fun on his own dime.
Funny how he/she/it appeared when Anthony took a vacation.

Peter Miller – thanks for the report on the problems being experinced by so called clean energy funds. I would like to make several remarks, as it’s now Boxing Day down here in Australia, my wife is enjoying a well earned rest and the family have all left the city for a brief holiday with their children, even further south into the country.
1. As an aside, my electricity comes exclusively from coal fired power generation and I have never noticed any dirt seeping out of the unused power sockets, so I can only assume that it is most carefully washed at the power stations before it is stuffed into the electricity wires. (How they do that, I do not know).
2. This next is for Onion’s benefit and for others who may be tempted to put their beliefs into practical form and to place their hard earned savings into renewable energy based funds. History is against you and the odds are high that all your savings will be destroyed.
I say this, not because I doubt the accuracy of the AGW conjecture (which I do), but from a study of the long history of new technology and of the risks of investing in the same. Almost all the startup companies that invested in new technologies, such as motor car manufacture, radio, TV and so forth, all crashed and went bankrupt, with the complete loss of all investors’ funds. At the turn of the twentieth century there were hundreds of companies set up to manufacture motor cars. Very few exist today and all these, bar one, survive only through the grace of the USA government, which recently poured billions of (borrowed) dollars to rescure them.
So I conclude that it is all right to encourage the government to attempt to strangle the US economy out of existence, in order to pursue a willow the whisp, post rational goal. That is your right.
But please, in your own very personal interests, make sure that none of your superannuation and other retirement savings are invested in new technologies.
Your well being in old age is too precious to take such a high risk option.
Even if your scientific analysis is correct (which I doubt), your choice of the technological fix to invest in, will be almost certainly, definitely, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Just stumbled on a sweet example of ‘weather porn’ propaganda. On today’s BBC America news, repeated every hour, they chose to use some of their limited ‘world news’ time to cover a tropical cyclone from N Australia, complete with (selective) video of this great flood.
More suggestion of ‘global climate disruption’ from the BBC, now delivered daily from them, drop by cherry-picked drop. (No mention of the cool weather in Australia.)
But the Australian media does not seem to see it as world news. In this Melbourne paper it is buried in their National news section, and here is their entire story:
“Tasha hits Queensland (December 26, 2010)
TORRENTIAL rain lashed Queensland’s far north coast after tropical cyclone Tasha ran out of puff between Cairns and Innisfail yesterday.
The roof was blown off a house at Mission Beach and some 7000 households lost power.
At Ravenshoe two people, a cat and a dog were rescued from a roof after floodwaters inundated their house.
Heavy rain is expected to continue for several days.”

Following on my last post, I just found more coverage of the BBC’s world class weather event in the same paper’s ‘Environment’ section. More details but the same basic non-world class story:
Tasha’s bark worse than its bite Lisa Martin
December 26, 2010
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/tashas-bark-worse-than-its-bite-20101225-197m3.html
Cyclone Tasha crosses Queensland coast
December 25, 2010
““But I’ve been through a few cyclones and it was very mild for a cyclone.”
Rob Weeden, from the Shangri-La Hotel in Cairns, said locals were getting on with their Christmas celebrations after people in the city barely noticed the cyclone.”
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/cyclone-tasha-crosses-queensland-coast-20101225-19792.html
And, as a surprising bonus, I also found this article reprinted there:
There’s a mini ice age coming, says man who beats weather experts
December 21, 2010
“Piers Corbyn not only predicted the current weather, but he believes things are going to get much worse, says Boris Johnson, London’s mayor. ”
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/theres-a-mini-ice-age-coming-says-man-who-beats-weather-experts-20101221-1945a.html

“Mount Washington has been pummelled with three metres of fresh snow in the past three days, burying lodges, cars and even ski lifts.”
“[…] in the past month and a half the resort has already gone halfway toward breaking its all-time record of 18.5 metres of snow — which took five months to build up in the winter of 1998-1999.” [Multiply by 3.3 to get from metres to feet.]
“La Nina is considered a factor in massive snowfall.”
Full story from CTV:
“Vancouver Island resort gets record snowfall”
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20101225/record-snow-at-vancouver-island-hill-101225/
Season’s Best.