I have some other things to attend to this weekend, posting will be light from me. But I’ve arranged for some entertainment.
Willis will be posting some of his tales of the sea, which will appear below this posting.
Other WUWT authors are welcome to make submissions also.
Open Thread, misc. info:
Dilbert must work at GISS
Don’t fool with Mother Nature
She’s got a cute young ass
Pick two
How cold is it?
On the bright side, not as permanent as a tattoo
You think you’re talented?
GW skepticism chart
Climategate, Harry_read_me file
Models, climatologist’s vs engineer’s
RyanAir CEO quote
Environmentalists’ vision of the future
California’s Senator vs a 6-year old
So that’s how it works
Jeff Wood says:
February 15, 2013 at 2:03 pm
There is a fair range of people who hang out here, and I wonder if one will put down his or her glass for a moment to explain something that has puzzled me a long time.
Taken to extremes, but look at the visual effect of the exhaust gases on the red an white stripes of the berm. You’re seeing heat rising.
https://picasaweb.google.com/FZ750Horse/ThunderbikeUKBrandsGP15th16thMay2010#5480109306993586018
Here is a proposal to discuss: Mandate that all climate models run on computer centers powered by the Wind.. hehe
@ur momisugly Pat 2:245
‘To be sure, people want a source for green products and services’
I first read ‘To be sure, people want a source for green prophets and services’
http://i.imgur.com/KkscfO9.jpg
@ur momisugly Jeff Woods;
The answers about variations in refractive index are correct, scintillation, or “seeing conditions” are the terms used. And some large telescopes do correct for this with adaptive optics.
Without going into too much detail, Earth imaging satellites do not suffer (as much) from this effect. That’s why satellite images you see are generally “crisp”. And yes one of the main reasons the Hubble is in space is to avoid these effect, at the time it was developed the adaptive optics technology was not as robust as it is now.
It is not exactly a Doppler effect (a moving object pushes waves (light or sound) ahead of it thereby compressing them), rather the changes in refractive index change the speed at which the light travels. These changes are on the order of a few hundred Hertz. The light frequency is in the Terahertz range and your eye cannot respond quickly enough to detect that.
Differences in the refractive index (warm air and cold air boundaries) “steer” (Snell’s Law) some of the light away from the straight line it would otherwise take. Thus more/less light arrives at your destination and you perceive this as “twinkling”. If the refractive index changed uniformly you would only see the light arrive slightly delayed (or sped up) and you would have no way to discern that.
And yes, when conditions are just right you can see farther distances (the other mountain) than normally. I live on the southern shore of Lake Ontario (We call it the North Coast of the USA) and a few times a year when the water and air temperature conditions are just right we can see lights from the town on the other side of the lake (36 miles away). Sometimes it’s clear enough to make out flashing red warning lights on the top of radio antennas and car headlights approaching the lake shore, turning and then driving along the road paralleling the shoreline.
With interferometry techniques it is possible to measure the “Optical Path Difference” between an optical path in air and another parallel path in a vacuum. Thus it is possible to measure changes in the refractive index of air. I varies with temperature, pressure and humidity.
Dust will also disperse varying amounts of the light and cause the received intensity to “twinkle”, but it’s generally a much slower effect, unless there is a dust storm.
Both of these effects get larger with increased distance.
Cheers, Kevin.
I would sure appreciate someone to bringing us up to date on Jaxa’s Ibuki gosat observtions http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gosat/index_e.html
I posted a couple dozen articles/studies in the comments to that Guardian piece. They were shocked to find out their own side is spending orders of magnitude more to promote AGW than the “dark money” the article cites. It’s also fun to ask them why the temperature for 1936 keeps changing, or why IPCC models can’t do better than a random walk.
The answer seems to be “but… but… consensus!” You can’t explain the difference between “science” and “the opinions of scientists about a certain set of predictions” to these people.
Theo Goodwin says:
February 15, 2013 at 4:52 pm
pat says:
February 15, 2013 at 2:44 pm
“15 Feb: BBC: Italy makes ‘Mafia’ arrests over Sicily wind farms
Police have arrested five people in eastern Sicily suspected of involvement in Mafia corruption over contracts to build wind farms, Italian media report.
The mayor and a councillor in the small town of Fondachelli Fantina, in Messina province, were among those detained.”
This should be a new golden age for mafias wherever they are located. When government bucks are flowing like rivers with no accountability, mafia with buckets line the rivers.
——
I believe the US mob leaders all hail from Chicago.
Go figure.
cn
Stuff from Google News
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Asteroid+blocking+satellites+might+Earth+only+hope+against+meteors+Sherbrooke+engineer/7973509/story.html
@S Mosher please include the electricity in the buildings they work in, especially elevators, climbing a few stairs to get to work every morning might clear their minds a bit,.
And BTW my wife and I have done observations for our gov on a Stephenson screen for decades the info is now computerized and available to anyone on “Cooltap” from the Canadian gov. It covers most of Canada although it is a fairly new and has not got a lot of historical data.
I have to add our yard has not changed other than removing all the black top to get a more “natural” reading 🙂 🙂 ( our house is in the middle of an orchard and has been the location for the screen for 50 years!!!
I have an observation and a few questions.
I have seen quite a few electrical furnaces that were used for annealing steel coils. The steel would be heated to red hot, then allowed to cool. Looked into such furnaces at the steel makers where my father worked many times.
I have never seen red hot air. Why isn’t the air in the furnace heated by bouncing of the walls of the steel to red hot?
How can I see red hot air?
Lets say I take 20 meter pipe, half a meter in diameter and with a 1o centimeter diameter hole all through. I surround in heating coils and heat the whole length to red hot. Looking down the length, will I see red hot air? If not, why not?
Now don’t do the flame thing, most of the red/orange of flames comes from heating carbon particles.
@clipe Just read the article. My question to the researcher would be where does your satellite get the delta V (if that is the correct term) force from to change it’s own orbit to mach the velocity of the asteroid in the first place? And how many “twin” satellites do you have to launch to put up any kind of “umbrella” to protect the planet? As today’s totally unexpected event shows we are at least decades away from satellites to protect us, I feel some kind of beam weapon would be more practical ( maybe Reagan’s “Star Wars” was not far of in it’s concept).
Many of you may be familiar with the works of George Orwell. You might know of 1984 and Animal Farm or seen a movie of one of the works. But if it has been a long time since you actually read both works, particularly if you were relatively young and in college and are now in your 40’s or older, I would suggest you re-read both works, particularly 1984. Reading them from the perspective of age and experience reveals things in a completely different context, particularly in this day and age.
Well, I tried to open up an OIMAB (Off Impact Area Betting) website on several domains and was promptly shut down, placed in moderation, banned and turned in to various government agencies, so that idea ain’t going nowhere. So I’ll simply ask the questions here:
What is coming out of the Russian meteorite craters (or lake bed) and how soon?
Section I
1. Green Climate Change Fanatics.
2. Alien Green Climate Change Fanatics.
3. Green Lefist Alien Climate Change Fanatics.
4, High Fiving White Guys including Bill Nye.
5. Zombie earthworms.
6. Zombie escargot.
7. Body snatching Environmentalists.
8. Triffids with attitudes.
9. Martian Department of Vehicle Registration with citations for unlicensed rovers.
10. Other.
Section II
1. Today.
2. Tomorrow.
3. The Day After Tomorrow.
4. Soon.
5. Not soon enough.
6. Before you read this.
7. Right after you read this.
8. They are already here…..aaargh…ackkk!
OK, I’ll bite – Since I’ve never done orbital change calculations.
1) Assume a empty but fully tested and ready-to-fill Saturn 5 on the launch pad. A 5, 50 or 500 ton asteroid is discovered coming in at nominal velocity, and will impact earth in 60 days.
How far out must the Saturn 5 hit the asteroid to give it enough delta v to miss the earth?
If that doesn’t work – which is likely seeing that the moon-trajectory mass of Apollo 11 was much smaller than the earth-launched mass – assume a fully loaded and prepped Saturn 5 in earth orbit. Could IT be sent to impact a 5, 50 or 500 ton asteroid far enough out to force a miss?
Why do the “scientists” studying asteroid impact missions ALWAYS reject nuclear blasts that would break up the asteroid/comet – so at least SOME of the asteroid/comet would miss earth, and do they think they can invent some drive or “anchor” on a spinning irregular mass of rock that would let them “propel” it to a different orbit?
Considering an open thread ~ Meteors matter eh?
Kinda put me back in place for a minute!
crosspatch,
That reminded me of this interesting picture. ☺
@DocMartyn;
Well, the steel is by its nature comprised of a lot of molecules with different sizes (iron in different forms, carbon, etc.). So when it vibrates it can give off light at many wavelengths. The peak wavelength is the “red hot” temperature (1000 degrees F or thereabouts). The air is comprised of only a few different molecules (Nitrogen and Oxygen mostly) and the spacing between these is much smaller and more uniform. The gases are also radiating but in a much more narrow band at a longer wavelength, beyond the visible spectrum. So they are also “hot” and radiating, but at a non-visible wavelength, like an invisible (to the human eye) “red hot”. IR viewing cameras can see it.
This is a bit simplistic, and I’m sure some folks may disagree, but everything is radiating all of the time and the wavelengths are determined by the molecule size(s). We have just evolved to see the most useful temperatures to survive.
Did you know that some small mammals (voles, etc.) have evolved so that their urine does not reflect in the visible spectrum? It’s only visible in the Ultraviolet spectrum. And some small hawks (Kestrels) have evolved to be capable of seeing UV light. That way they can track the trails that their prey are using and find a meal quicker.
Cheers, Kevin.
@DocMartyn;
Also the thermal capacity of the air is much lower than the steel, so there is much less energy in the air. So the intensity of the radiated energy is much less, but it is radiating just the same.
Kevin.
The Man-Made Global Warmists never thought they would have to deal with None of their alarmists predictions coming true. Thank you Solar Cycle 24.
That assumes it is one solid object. I believe that most are not. The one that hit Brazil in the 1930’s appears to have been at least three major pieces and probably several smaller ones. If you look carefully at impact craters on places like the moon, Mercury, and Mars you will notice that there actually seem to be in many cases two and once in a while three impact craters in a line. Once the object gets close enough, gravitational forces cause the objects to disassociate and it comes apart. Also, the object is likely spinning, so getting a grip on it is probably impossible until it is de-spun. I often hear farfetched ideas such as painting one side black or white … which does no good for an object that is rotating.
Also, if you look at places with a lot of craters, you will see a large number of craters at the poles, too. Not all of the impacts come from the ecliptic but that is about the only area where we look. We could have had several unnoticed close misses that we haven’t noticed from objects coming in perpendicular to the ecliptic plane. Chances are that is going to be the direction from which we are hit that causes the most damage. We are going to find something approaching Earth from due North or due South and we won’t even notice it until it is too late.
Oh, and I always have fantasized about doing a novel where a Jupiter sized object that has been cast out of another solar system flies through ours but comes from a direction perpendicular to the ecliptic. We think it is a comet at first … until we realize just how absolutely huge the thing is.
We have a local company that builds a different low elevation design; however, any design that is situated near ground has the disadvantage that airflow near ground is substantially slower than higher up. Power available is proportional to velocity cubed–the problem ought to be apparent.
S. Meyer. and S.
Mosher.
Meyer’s wind turbine ought to the mandated design to run the climate models.
How about this development?
http://www.pacificwind.co/index.php/how-it-work