Open Thread – AGU Week

Safe travels.

Not a regular football fan, but it was fun watching so many football games being played in the snow today. Just like I remembered growing up decades ago. My Philadelphia Eagles didn’t disappoint me either.
Didn’t IPCC tell us we’d never see another football game played in the snow ever again?

Enjoy the AGU mtg in San Fran.
John

Hey, Ric Werme checkout this article from Bishop HIll a day or two ago.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/12/6/windfarm-noise-state-of-play.html

Evening. I am a lay person trying to hold my own in an extremely pro-warmist group.
Someone made the following remark to my attempt to explain why I was intrigued more by the uncertainties of AGW than the peer-reviewed IPCC account: First point is that, like with CFCs, we don’t actually have a way to put the genie back in the bottle. If moving enough carbon out of the mineralized form does push the climate into the same temperature range that it was in in the Pleistocene then we don’t have any way to walk that back, even if it does take 300-400 years to reach that median temperature. A scientific view means recognizing that the climate is the result of a many factors, a few of which have the ability to move the climate baseline up or down and many many of which are responsive to mean conditions. CO2 moves the climate baseline and it does so on a timescale of thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of years, because that is the typical rate that the fractions move between their aqueous, mineralized and atmospheric forms. So no, no sensible person believes that the real dramatic climate impacts with start in the next hundred years, the stuff that we care about, like storms and small changes in sea level is pocket change to the global climate. That we might actually be really screwing with things that took geological time to get where they are? Yeah, that’s a pretty solid concern.” Do you agree?

Snow at football games? Meh. The latest Australian Bushfire report:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zxzcyxkucnqt3o0/cc.bushfire.report.web.pdf
In line with the hundreds of thousands of Bitish homeowners who are having difficulty gaining any access to any home insurance at all, homes in some areas of Australia have also become uninsurable and the increase in insurance rates for homes in Australia far outstrips the rate of inflation.

Ice banks are starting to form south of Milwaukee (near Wind Point) on Lake Michigan. Usually these don’t form for three-four more weeks. No New Years Day polar bear ice plunges this year.

Ric… I just threw up in my mouth when I read your comment.
I learned to ski at tenney mt. It was my favorite place to ski.
Great times with great friends. It really sickens me to hear
what these a..holes are doing . For what? I’ve signed partitions
What else can l do. I live in mass but go up to N.H. for skiing
Snowmobiling and ice fishing on conway lake. This bullshit
Has to stop. How?????
.

.I do think it is extremely disturbing that well meaning people have to go through such contortions to try and sort through the lies and the facts without a solid scientific background. This was his further concern: Our current warm climate seems to be to due shifts in terrestrial baseline climate factors and not extra planetary shifts which should by rights place us somewhere in the persistently cold phase. If the move from global persistent ice age to global tropical experience is due almost entirely to a shift in atmospheric content, then yes, it is very valid to assert that artificially accelerating that process should accelerate the shift to an even warmer climate, essentially taking the slow impact of the higher CO2 levels that shifted us away from 40% icecap and doubling them. When you look at it only from the perspective of human experience it seems impossible for the climate to shift that much with such a seemingly small cause, but if you look at the climate over a wider scale there is this terrifying portent that already the climate might have shifted away from a much colder mean temperature, rapidly, and in response to a relatively smaller change in GHG.
I am thinking there could quite easily be extra planetary shifts though. Especially from the sun:
COSMIC RAYS AND CLIMATE
Jasper Kirkby CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
Abstract
Among the most puzzling questions in climate change is that of solar-climate variability, which has attracted the attention of scientists for more than two centuries. Until recently, even the existence of solar-climate variability has been controversial—perhaps because the observations had largely involved correlations between climate and the sunspot cycle that had persisted for only a few decades. Over the last few years, however, diverse reconstructions of past climate change have revealed clear associations with cosmic ray variations recorded in cosmogenic isotope archives, providing persuasive evidence for solar or cosmic ray forcing of the climate. However, despite the increasing evidence of its importance, solar-climate variability is likely to remain controversial until a physical mechanism is established. Although this remains a mystery, observations suggest that cloud cover may be influenced by cosmic rays, which are modulated by the solar wind and, on longer time scales, by the geomagnetic field and by the galactic environment of Earth. Two different classes of microphysical mechanisms have been proposed to connect cosmic rays with clouds: firstly, an influence of cosmic rays on the production of cloud condensation nuclei and, secondly, an influence of cosmic rays on the global electrical circuit in the atmosphere and, in turn, on ice nucleation and other cloud microphysical processes. Considerable progress on understanding ion-aerosol-cloud processes has been made in recent years, and the results are suggestive of a physically-plausible link between cosmic rays, clouds and climate. However, a concerted effort is now required to carry out definitive laboratory measurements of the fundamental physical and chemical processes involved, and to evaluate their climatic significance with dedicated field observations and modelling studies.
Keywords aerosols, clouds, climate, solar-climate variability, cosmic rays, ions, global electrical cir- cuit, CERN CLOUD facility
Published in Surveys in Geophysics 28, 333–375, doi: 10.1007/s10712-008-9030-6 (2007). The original publication is available at http://www.springerlink.com

climateace says:
December 8, 2013 at 2:45 pm

Snow at football games? Meh. The latest Australian Bushfire report:

Ah yes! A report from “Big Insurance”. Munich Re reduxulous.

reduxulous reduxilous.

I’m glad I don’t have to commute between Barrie, Ontario and Toronto airport like my friend has to.
“Flurries or snow squalls” are often the same thing in that neck-of-the-woods.

* Denotes an abnormal temperature trend
Issued: 3:30 PM EST Sunday 8 December 2013
Tonight, 8 December
Cloudy. Periods of snow beginning this evening. Risk of freezing drizzle before morning. Amount 5 cm. Wind becoming southeast 20 km/h late this evening. Temperature rising to zero by morning.
Monday, 9 December
Periods of snow ending in the morning then cloudy with 60 percent chance of flurries. Risk of freezing drizzle early in the morning. Wind becoming southwest 20 km/h in the morning. High plus 1 with temperature falling to minus 2 in the afternoon.
Monday night, 9 December
Cloudy. 60 percent chance of flurries in the evening. Wind southwest 20 km/h becoming west 40 gusting to 60 in the evening. Low minus 7.
Tuesday, 10 December
Flurries or snow squalls. High minus 4.
Wednesday, 11 December
Flurries or snow squalls. Windy. Low minus 8. High minus 4.
Thursday, 12 December
Flurries or snow squalls. Low minus 13. High minus 7.
Friday, 13 December
Cloudy with 60 percent chance of flurries. Low minus 12. High minus 8.
Saturday, 14 December
Cloudy with 40 percent chance of flurries. Low minus 12. High minus 7.

clipe
[climateace says:
December 8, 2013 at 2:45 pm
Snow at football games? Meh. The latest Australian Bushfire report:
Ah yes! A report from “Big Insurance”. Munich Re reduxulous.]
When insurers stop wanting to do business with homeowners it is not big business, it is no business.

Canman, quite an interesting informative link.

ed
[“Hottest spring on record for Australia:”
And how many Millennium do those ‘records’ cover?
Yawn…………………]
You are quite right to yawn at your own comment.

Obamacare is to the Medical Industry as NAFTA was to the Manufacturing Industry.
Just a heads up.

Melbourne is to Australia as Australia is to Earth.
Why are you cherry picking and then criticizing someone for following up the path you left?

[thisisnotgoodtogo
Melbourne is to Australia as Australia is to Earth.
Why are you cherry picking and then criticizing someone for following up the path you left?’
Incorrect. Australia is larger proportionally to Earth than Melbourne is to Australia.
It is an open string. Anyone can choose any topic. I chose to introduce two topics. In that context several respondents have cherry-picked isolated events as if they had any sort of logical weight.
One cherrypicked bushfire adds nothing to the Bushfire Report I cited. (I take this opportunity to suggest that people who, like me, are seriously concerned about the ongoing growth in their insurance premiums read the Report).
Neither does a cherry-picked cold spell in Melbourne add anything to the topic of Australia having its hottest spring on record.

Climateace… of course you would own the effects of decarbonisation too won’t you. Please tell us which statements about climate action you are confortable owning.
You are ok about 30,000 extra deaths last winter in the UK alone from carbon taxes
You are ok at the poor being deprived of corn, or sugar or other rich simple carb source so that you can burn ethanol in your car
You are happy to carpet 15 square kilometers of the earth with solar panels ( no gaps) for every gigawatt of power capacity mankind needs.
You are ok with birds being torn up, deafened, blinded, or burnt by the effects of windmills and concentrating solar collectors,
You are ok with indigenous peoples in Africa being forceably removed from their lands and killed to make way for carbon credit earning plantations.
You are OK with burying planetary oxygen for millenia underground
You really think after cyclone Haiyan we should respond by constructing more windmills and solar farms instead of building storm shelters
You are comfortable spending a few trillion dollars on reducing warming by 0.001 degrees instead of immunising the worlds children, and ending wotld hunger
You are comfortable, shoving a world only 0.8 degrees away from the famine and pestilence of the little ice age where 1/2 of Europe died, back toward an ice age.
You are certain that research into climate change of +0.8 degrees in 150 years is more important than research into cures for cancer, SIDS, and malaria
Do you understand the meaning of misanthropist ? If not then go look it up. Then my friend, for a picture of one, look in the nearest mirror and think about the millions that died in the little ice age or are condemned to death, disease or perpetual poverty by your ideology.
PS, I might add mr/ms climateace that the Australian BOM last year changed the way it calculated records for continental Australia and so this spring was in fact the hottest on record, since ….. wait for it… last spring, using this metric. I might add that as much as I aspire to supporting this nation (Australia) I still understand the global in Global warming to mean more than just Australiia. Now, what was that about cherry picking Climateace?

bobl
You are making things seem much more complicated than they really are.
The only thing I ‘own’ is my home insurance rate increasing much faster than the rate of inflation. Still, I am lucky. Other British and Australian homeowners can no longer get insurance at all. The insurers might be greedy, true, but here in Australia we live in a capitalist society and, IMHO, the investors are enttiled to their profits for the risks they take. But floods and fires in certain areas keep chewing up the profits.
And once the insurers start giving up insuring we really do know that the ‘doubt’ game is over, don’t we?.

Patrick
[Talking of Australia, the carbon tax apparently has worked in reducing emissions of CO2. The figures are in, the science is settled, Australia’s emissions dropped ~0.1% (Apparently) in the first year. That’s ~0.1% of ~1.5% of ~3% of ~400ppm/v CO2. No-one here is attributing the reduction to the economic downturn.]
Just as well the Abbott Government is going to get rid of the carbon tax spend $3 billion pf taxpayers’ funds on direct action. That should fix the problem, eh?
I leave it to a financial genius to tell the difference between a tax and a tax.

Just in case people were discombobulated by bobl’s herd of unicorns here is a direct quote from the BOM site:
‘Spring 2013 was the warmest on record for Australia in terms of both mean temperatures (anomaly of +1.57 °C) and maximum temperatures (anomaly of +2.07 °C).’
And, for those interested in cherrypicked responses, yes, we do have our bushfire plan up to date and our valuables and our treasured photos where we can grab them quickly. Luckily there are still insurers who want to take us on and we can still afford to pay the ever-increasing premiums.
We had 600 houses burn in our city not so long ago, so it pays to be prepared.

‘Patrick
Yes indeed the BoM did excatly that, CHANGE the way they calculate temperatures for Australia. Still there are those who forget that little inconvienient fact.’
I am happy for you to demonstrate that BOM is, in fact, incorrect and that Australia has just NOT had its hottest spring on record. Over to you on that one. A passing sneer by yourself and bobl at BOM does not carry any scientific weight, BTW.
‘I do recall Climateace has a vested interest in the “carbon economy”, he has a farm somewhere that he wants to use as a “carbon farm”, or something like that if I recall correctly from another thread. Abbotts direct action plan will prevent Climateace from “farming” carbon under the previous Govn’t carbon tax.’
Yes, to the farm. You will be happy to know that we have had very good rains in our area and that we have, as a result, our full irrigantion entitlements: money in the bank.
But wrong to the rest of it. 100% wrong. Paying farmers to carry out soil carbon sequestration, has been for six years, one of the three main pillars of direct action. Mr Hunt, the Minister for the Environment, is just now conducting a six month consultation period on the DAP, after which I fully expect to be able to bid (Dutch auction style) to get paid for sequestering soil carbon. That is if the pesky soil scientists and economists don’t talk the Minister and the Government out of their policy. They mostly reckon it is bullsh*t.
BTW, does it bother you that you have made stuff up about me?

Did anyone else notice the hurricane season end with not so much as a minor passing of gas?
It just vanished very quietly…

Bill H
tsk, tsk. I have amended your post to demonstrate how silly it really is:
‘Did anyone else notice the typhoon season end with not so much as a minor passing of gas?
It just vanished very quietly…’

DHill
‘Wow… Differentiation between ocean regions is not your specialty. How silly is that?’
Oh, I know where hurricanes happen and where typhoons happen.
I was subtly, perhaps too much so, referring to the silliness of your cherrypicking.
Just ask the Taclobanites what they think of your silly sally. To them, after all, it was not ‘a gas’.

I’m curious… How did Ross McKitrick know – in 2005, four years prior to the infamous Jones line in the most famous of the Climategate emails – how did McKitrick know to refer to Mann’s deception as a “trick”? (If RM hadn’t used quotes, I would not have noticed his choice of word.) (For reference, see p. 36 of RM’s chapter in P. Michaels’ Shattered Consensus)

whoops:
‘Finally, I would doubt that none of the area burned had not been control burned for 20 years.’

RE: climateace on December 8, 2013 at 9:58 pm
whoops:
‘Finally, I would doubt that none of the area burned had not been control burned for 20 years.’
Freudian slip, eh climateace?
The tangled cherry-picking troll web you weave.

dborth
Sorry, I am not a follower of Freud: his thinking was far too circumscribed by his milieu and, in scientific terms, more or less totally unreliable. But, if Freud is your bag, go for it.
Happy to discuss cherrypicking in this string if you want to get to specifics.

This will make you all feel warm and fuzzy all over. Up here in northern British Columbia we have Bear Muontain Wind Park. Now that is a feel good name if there ever was one. http://www.altagas.ca/power/renewable/wind/bear_mountain_wind_park
Now it has only been in operation for about three years and they are already replacing the blades. For better effenciency so they say. With them being a private generator I cannot seem to find output information.

Mountain, one fingered typing on a “smart phone” challenges my typing and english skills.

So Climateace,
You want to impose your climate taxes and ETSes but won’t own the damage your ideology causes. Does that make you a hypocrite as well as a misanthropist?.
You also completely failed to realise that your inordinately expensive insurance is entirely due to the actions of irresponsible green councils who refuse to do adequate hazard reduction and have used legal manouvers to unconstitutionally prevent landowners from clearing adequate fire breaks around their property in the name of “environmentalism”. So premiums are being set in an environment where your own local government is contibuting to burning down houses, killing people and animals and of course therefore driving up the cost of premiums. What you should be doing, “ace”, is demanding that your local member enacts legislation that prevents government interference in the cutting of firebreaks on private land. A 200m firebreak , that’s what will lower premiums and make you insurable
You are right about is the direct action scheme however , it will be almost exactly as effective as Gillards 40 Billion dollar scheme that is, not effective at all in lowering the temperature, except that instead of being a total waste of 44 Billion dollars over 4 years, it will be a not quite so total waste of 3 Billion dollars instead. I say not so total waste, because it will address some land degradation, salination and water problems too. I am increasingly hopefull that it might even get used to build some cyclone shelters, which of course wont do a jot about CO2 but just might save a few lives from the weather. You’re right, the Oz government should scrap, direct action, the Renewable Energy Target, and all the other dodgy schemes as well. Weather that you want to be worse is weather in a world that for the last 7-22 years can’t be proved to have warmed at all, something wrong with the Cause and effect there “ace”, bushfires are so much worse from climate ” staying much the same” for 17-22 years…. Hmm now there’s food for thought?
But who am I to talk, you’re the climate ace, and you’re perfectly entitled to be a deluded misanthropic hypocrite if you want to.

By the way, climate ace, I never said the BOM was wrong just that the claim is based on an unpublished formula, commenced just last year, the same formula that claimed an angry summer “record” which according to the satellite data wasn’t a record at all.
I don’t claim the BOM is wrong, I never did, but until that methodology is published it’s just another case of an appeal to authority…. Trust us, we’re climate scientists? Rubbish, show me the data, and your methods, and after comparison with the satellite record, I’ll determine for myself if you have a leg to stand on. Meanwhile, I stand by my assertion, since this method has only been in use for 2 years then this spring is the hottest since records ( calculated by this method) began… Ie since last year.

bobl
You are throwing up great clouds of words about all sorts of irrelevant stuff, but you are not helping me with my house insurance premium one little bit.
I would be happy with premiums that more or less kept pace with inflation. But they have been exceeding that for some time now.
I take it you don’t own a house in Australia or you would know exactly what I am talking about.

climateace says:
December 8, 2013 at 7:58 pm
Patrick
[Talking of Australia, the carbon tax apparently has worked in reducing emissions of CO2. The figures are in, the science is settled, Australia’s emissions dropped ~0.1% (Apparently) in the first year. That’s ~0.1% of ~1.5% of ~3% of ~400ppm/v CO2. No-one here is attributing the reduction to the economic downturn.]
Just as well the Abbott Government is going to get rid of the carbon tax spend $3 billion pf taxpayers’ funds on direct action. That should fix the problem, eh?
I leave it to a financial genius to tell the difference between a tax and a tax.”
________________________________________________________________
Tony Abbott won’t do anything. He just added Direct Action to make it sound good. You really are a sandwich short of a picnic aren’t you Climateace. It is probably Nick Stoke in disguise. LOL

Steve B
‘Tony Abbott won’t do anything. He just added Direct Action to make it sound good. You really are a sandwich short of a picnic aren’t you Climateace. It is probably Nick Stoke in disguise. LOL’
I don’t know who Nick Stokes is, or why you are sending him lots of love, but I don’t interfere in people’s personal lives.
You say Abbott has been lying about Direct Action for six years and that he will not implement it.
I say that he was lying about Direct Action for six years and the he will implement it.
Abbott is going to demonstrate that one of us has been a sandwhich short of a picnic – that’s for sure.

Aussie Politics
If the Repeal Bills are rejected twice its quite conceivable that Abbott could go to a Double Dissolution Election before July 1, or at least threaten to do so if the Senate remains obstructionists.
A risky strategy, requiring careful consideration, but if it came about then the election would be primarily on that useless tax aimed at reducing global warming…. as we slide into a LIA.
Not sure the electorate is ready for the truth.

RokShox, in the past, when climate has changed, humans have perished rather than adapt. They didn’t have the ability to move great distances, on mass and usually in a weakened state. They re-colonise the areas when the climate changes back again. If we were to encounter climate change now, many more people will be affected as there are more people. They also have the ability to move….. jump on a boat and within a week or two they are somewhere else where they can survive. This may not be looked on to lightly by the people that are already there as they may not have the capacity or heart to allow the new arrivals in.

“climateace” – my questions that you keep avoiding like the plague, reframed:
1) What regions of Australia were pulling above their weight to give a spring temperature record for the sum?
2) What is the name of the city you live in – that one you anecdotally alleged had recently lost 600 homes to fire; the one where your insurance premiums are skyrocketing and you need lots of disaster plans: what city is it?
3) Did climate priests (like Flannery) contribute to the perception that rain in Australia was now a thing of the past, like snow in the U.K. once was, or did they predict the floods that damaged/destroyed 20,000 homes in Brisbane alone?
“The urban water industry has decided the inflows of the past will never return,” Water Services Association of Australia executive director Ross Young said. (The Age, 2007)
“Drought is too comfortable a word,” said John Williams, the New South Wales state Commissioner for Natural Resources. “Drought connotes a return to normal. We need to be adjusting.” (Cosmos, 2007)
“When their houses do get burnt or destroyed in floods, do they blame themselves for their folly? Oh no. They scream blue murder at the government/council/authorities for not protecting them from their own stupidity.,” explained the shameless troll calling itself “climateace.”

Khwarizmi says:
December 9, 2013 at 3:45 am
““Drought is too comfortable a word,” said John Williams, the New South Wales state Commissioner for Natural Resources. “Drought connotes a return to normal. We need to be adjusting.” (Cosmos, 2007)”
Australia post 2007:
http://www.google.com/mars/

***
Ric Werme says:
December 8, 2013 at 1:47 pm
A revised plan drops that ridge, but puts larger turbines (500 feet tall) on the other ridges they’re eying.
***
500 ft? Jeesh. Pinwheel-makers are now at the point of “mine’s bigger than yours”.

I was in Colorado last weekend, I just wore long sleeve shirts. But that wind became scary at 10,000 ft on my way to Porterville, CA.
Guess there’s no TWTW on AGU week. I put together my weekly rant. Here goes
Oil rose higher on a 5.6 million barrel drop in US stockpiles after ten weeks of builds. Wheat dropped on bigger than expected official estimate of the Canadian harvest. Corn bounced a bit on short covering.
The latest economic numbers suggest that we are finally into an actual self-sustaining economic recovery. Last week saw only 298,000 new unemployment claims, down 23,000 from the previous week and this is THE LOWEST in six years.
On Thursday GDP bolted higher to +3.6% which is shockingly above the +3.1% expected. But to be fair, this GDP report is not as robust as the headline reading would imply. That’s because most of the increase came from the growth in inventory I told you about. That usually leads to less production in the future as they sell off what was already made. Or simply, growth over the next couple quarters will be lower as it was already booked in Q3.
So do not be too enamored with the +3.6% effort. The estimates for Q4 are now coming in closer to 1.4% because of what just happened. When smoothed out over the coming year we will likely still find ourselves slogging thru growth territory of +2%…maybe up to 2.5%. That is plenty of growth to keep earnings on the rise. Weather permitting, if the inventory moves briskly, then all the better.
November had 203,000 new jobs created according to the survey of employer establishments. While this is not a fantastic amount, it probably doesn’t reflect the actual number of people currently working, (re: what I said before about survey accuracy). The Household Survey on the other hand shows unemployment dropping to 7% which is the lowest it’s been in more than five years.
The conventional (Conservative) wisdom is that this drop in the unemployment rate means people have given up looking for work since it’s not reflected in the number of new jobs, but this isn’t what they’re saying this time. (I will come back to this). Simply put, the employer survey isn’t all that accurate. During the Holiday Seasons you are seeing a surge of hiring in areas that aren’t being properly sampled, but it does show up when people are asked directly by phone if they are working. This includes small businesses and so-called ‘not-on-the-books’ jobs that don’t get counted, but do help out the economy.
Further evidence that things are really picking up is the new University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey, which was predicted to increase only one point, that surged to 82.5 for December and was up from 75 last month.
The Conservative hacks aren’t trying to downplay the jobs gains as you might expect. Instead they’re actually trying to make it sound way better than it really is, because that gins up their popular ‘FEAR MONGERING’  that the Federal Reserve is going to taper its QE3 bond buying program and thus the economy will most certainly tank. Janet Yellen, the incoming Fed Chair has made it perfectly clear that she’s not impressed with such talk.
The ‘gold is the only real currency’ crowd (gold is down BTW) are still certain that there will be runaway inflation ANY DAY NOW! In fact the whole point is to create some inflation so business will stop just sitting on their cash.  Even if too much inflation due to excess money being in circulation were to occur the Fed could start selling its bond holdings to take money out of circulation again. Even if the Fed took a loss on the sold bonds, it wouldn’t really matter because they just printed the money they used to buy them anyway. No tax revenue was involved.
To be clear, I’m not in favor of this way of regulating the economy. But because our embarrassing government is so dysfunctional there are no effective policies on trade, finance, energy and so on. So what the Fed is doing is managing to hold things together for now. There is still the ‘too big to fail’ Wall Street bankers ‘Retake the White House’ crash coming in a couple of years if we don’t get some real action from the 2015 Congress. Elections do matter and most of the dysfunction is the result of the Grand Obstruction Party.
Unfortunately Elizabeth Warren says she won’t leave the Senate early to run for President, but she didn’t say she wouldn’t take the VP slot… at least I preferred to hear it that way. Hillary is wrong for Dems and wrong for US, caters to the 1% plutocracy (she was Sam Walton’s show pony), arrogant, duplicitous, complacent warmonger.
Guns continue to belch smoke since the Dems decided to use a simple-majority vote to change Senate rules and eliminate the filibuster for executive office-holders and federal judges (apart from the Supreme Court) and NOT for legislation. (If they seriously wanted your guns they would have gone for legislation and Obama never would have expanded concealed carry)  Smith & Wesson earnings are expected to be down a wee bit, revenue still in line. When Mr. Market starts doing the ‘hey look at me, it’s now all safe to get back in’, I am not interested in working folks’ money. Except for these and a biotech with a 3 bagger, I took profits. Billionaires’ are another thing entirely. Heaven knows they’ve tried to shake me out. No, didn’t Twitter (yet), all I could get were twitter droppings.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?t=my&l=on&z=l&q=l&p=&a=&c=&s=RGR%2C+&ql=1
_______________________
This news below is counter to claims that Obama is arming Al Qaeda and McCain is supporting ( example as said by Louie Gohmert), looks like they wish to avoid the mistakes made in Iraq and Libya, where the army and police were disbanded with the fall of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, allowing terrorist groups to rise in a security vacuum. It’s kind of nice to have a President not involved in war as a family business.
Syrian rebels consider joining forces with regime troops to fight al-Qa’ida | Syria Solidarity Movement
http://www.syriasolidaritymovement.org/2013/12/04/syrian-rebels-consider-joining-forces-with-regime-troops-to-fight-al-qaida/
_________________
Ted Cruz tells GOP legislators that electing US Senators instead of appointing them is a mistake. (The real reason, you can’t Gerrymander a whole state)
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2013/12/ted-cruz-at-alec-summit-end-direct-vote-for-senators.html/
WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Cruz, elected 13 months ago by actual voters, said Thursday he’d prefer to see state legislators pick U.S. senators – as they were until a century ago, when the 17th Amendment came along.
Direct election of senators has eroded states’ rights, Cruz argued, speaking to a ballroom filled with conservative state lawmakers from around the country.
“If you have the ability to hire and fire me,” he said, “I’m a lot less likely to break into your house and steal your television. So there’s no doubt that was a major step toward the explosion of federal power and the undermining of the authority of the states at the local level.”
The 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913 amid dismay that powerful federal lawmakers were sometimes picked through corruption and backroom deals. It was also partly a response to growing public irritation that even as more and more Americans had the right to vote, they got no say in who represented them in the Senate.
Cruz spoke over lunch to a policy summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a controversial group that for years has quietly circulated “model” legislation on anything from voter ID rules to tax policy. He got standing ovations.
________________________
I couldn’t bring myself to listening to the noise machine comment on the death of Nelson Mandela. Dick Cheney has SUCH a big heart, bet you won’t see him at any memorials.
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/06/honoring-mandela-not-reagan/
As Americans honor the memory of Nelson Mandela, they must grapple with the inconvenient truth that one of their most honored recent presidents, Ronald Reagan, fiercely opposed punishing white-ruled South Africa for keeping Mandela locked up and for continuing the racist apartheid system that he challenged.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/12/06/when-conservatives-branded-nelson-mandela-a-terrorist
__________________________
Ronnie Reagan slashed taxes for his pals by 2/3, it was supposed to make us all wealthy too. Funny how Conservatives’ math only benefits the billionaires.
50 million now in poverty, Use the GOP civil war to cancel the sequester. Get $5T at 0% 100 years from Fed for infrastructure projects needed because of Conservative neglect.
http://news.yahoo.com/u-poverty-rate-remains-high-even-counting-government-200633327–business.html
Over 26,000 annual deaths for uninsured working class adults, 72 deaths per day, or three per hour.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE85J15720120620
And Ted Cruz & company with the Gold Rolls Royce Health Plan doesn’t care.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4152095
Comments by Mitch Zacks,
” I believe 2014 will be a year of accelerating growth in the economy and another up year for stocks. Since WWII, the S&P 500 has had 18 annual gains of 20% or more and 78% of the years immediately following those great years have been positive. Household net worth is a key contributor to GDP and it is rising. Housing has been on the upswing and new home construction is expected to increase in 2014. This will have a broader effect than just helping the housing sector. All the materials and labor needed to build houses will benefit several sectors.
With a pick-up in GDP growth expected and with employment gains already firming, I expect 2014 to be a pretty good year in the labor market. Monthly employment gains are expected to average around 230,000 up from 180,000 expected for 2013. While data from one month does not mean much, it was reported this past week that the private sector added 215,000 in the month of November, the strongest level of hiring in a year. The consensus estimate for jobs created in November was 173,000. Additionally, inflation remains contained and we will not have tax hikes to deal with like we did in the beginning of 2013, which were a drag on GDP growth.”
[Long message. But not related to the topics at hand. Mod]

Mr Ed Mertin post from December 9, 2013 at 8:23 am presented a lot of information.
I am examining the internet currency ecology that has over 80 currencies, banks and exchanges. What does the community think about internet currencies for protection of assets? I don’t have enough assets to trust traditional economic systems.

Australians had the opportunity to purchase these beauts: http://www.bombardier.com/en/aerospace/amphibious-aircraft.html
Can use salt water or fresh from fairly small bodies of water as well; scoops in 10-12 seconds 6.5 tones of water without having to land on the ground and can make as many trips as the gas tanks allow in ratio to how close the body of water is to the fire. However the gov of the day said nope nope nope, so now you pay more, and burn more. This is how many European countries keep their wild fires under control with great success. Canada as well of course and we do get drought conditions in certain regions. California could use them, but doesn’t and they burn.
Caveat: You must hit the fire in it’s beginning (initial attack) as once its too big, nothing helps but the luck of changing winds and a set fire line.

Ric Werme December 9, 2013 at 10:36 am
It is not one molecule of CO2 but one molecule of human caused CO2

There are certain benefits to the distinct possibility of a non compliant senate, but sometimes it doesnt work out quite the way you’d like. A directly elected senate gives your parliament a cross check on legislative power, and your overly powerfull presidential position. The problem in the American system is not that the make up of the senate is independent, but that your president is not, and has the power to both launch and veto legislation. The USA public could opt for a President independent of a political affiliation, but the problem remains Too much power portends in a single person. Put a corrupt person into that role and it’s goodbye USA, hello banana republic.
Even impeachment doesn’t help because it happens “by the numbers”. If the president has committed a crime, then it should be investigated by the police, come before a court, and the president locked away.

DirkH,
You recently named “origin of life” as an area of science that hadn’t progressed for 30 years (like climatology), and I didn’t have any time to argue the point. It’s a complicated point to argue, but it seems that a quiet revolution has been going on in the background, built on threads of evidence from the real world rather than those just-so stories about “primordial soup.”
Anyway, a couple of links for your consideration:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2520656/Did-life-begin-underground-Microbes-MILES-surface-similar-lived-3-5-billion-years-ago.html
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/368/1622/20120258.abstract

Idd
Interesting.
As you say, they are useful for hitting point sources in remote areas very soon after ignition.
They are also useful when particular assets are being defended.
Other than that, when there is a 300km firefront, the fuel is tinder dry, the winds are gusting to 50kph plus, and humidity is very low, forgetaboutit.

KV
‘If I built a tent out of highly polished aluminium would it overheat from my body heat?’
Why not give it a go and, if you survive your experiment, do a post on WUWT?

Patrick
‘Abbotts direct action plan (NOT a tax) is estimated to cost taxpayers, IF implemented, ~AU$3billion.’
Who said it was a tax? You might explain to non-Australian readers just where Abbott is going to get the $3,000,000,000 of other peoples’ money.
Of course he is going to implement the DAP. He promised a Government of NO LIES and he has promised to implement the DAP for the four years he was LOTO.

el gordo
‘Aussie Politics
If the Repeal Bills are rejected twice its quite conceivable that Abbott could go to a Double Dissolution Election before July 1, or at least threaten to do so if the Senate remains obstructionists.’
There is no way the Abbott Government will go to a DD. On current polling it would almost certainly lose government.
No, it will go right ahead with implementing the $3 billion Direct Action Plan to protect the world from AGW.

haha….had ya 2010

still defying at my house:
inside 68°F
outside 21°F
Thanks for all the interesting comments and articles

Khwarizme
I suspect it does not matter where you live in Australia. If you are a home owner or a farmer your premiums are going up. They are going up across the board to defray the costs of hundred million dollar floods and billion dollar fires. They are going up to defray the costs of people who build on flood plains. They are going up to defray the costs of people who build amongst fire bombs. And that is before all the extra taxes, levies and the rest of it that we have to pay for fire prevention, flood prevention and then fixing up various fire and flood messes.
If you can find me an insurer whose premiums are trending with inflation, say over the past ten years of AGW action in Oz, pls let us all know.

Jim
Indeed. But there is a more fundamental question: Can a tent be build of metal?

GD
Ripper!

Khwarizme,
Based on climate aces fire descriptions and the likelihood of increased premiums due to undoubtedly being in green idealogical territory, I’d place him/her in the Australian Capital Territory. Fortunately half a continent away from my place.
Ps Climateace, have you got the point yet that carbon taxes, the RET , and global warming hysteria serve only to drive up your costs, and premiums, and the sooner the whole green mess is brought back to reason, the sooner your risk premiums can be made to fall. Or thought of another way, a carbon tax and more excuses talking up higher risk premium by climate councils saying bigger fires are the new norm are not likely to reduce your insurance risk premium or make you more insurable.

‘patrick
“climateace says:
December 9, 2013 at 7:43 pm
Just had a quick squizz at some industry figures: building premiums have tripled in just over a decade. Phew.”
Inflation!’
No, even adjusted for inflation, and adjusted for the increase of property values, premiums far outstrip inflation. If you owned a home in Australia you would know exactly what I am talking about, BTW.

bobl
‘Based on climate aces fire descriptions and the likelihood of increased premiums due to undoubtedly being in green idealogical territory, I’d place him/her in the Australian Capital Territory. Fortunately half a continent away from my place.’
I don’t know what ‘green ideological territory’ is but I assume that you believe that it must mean something bad.
The general pattern in the region where I live is that most of the area that gets burnt is cattle and sheep grazing country, forestry plantations, and conservation areas, occasionally with lots of houses, infrastructure and stock going up in smoke as well. Again, and again and again.
‘Ps Climateace, have you got the point yet that carbon taxes, the RET , and global warming hysteria serve only to drive up your costs, and premiums, and the sooner the whole green mess is brought back to reason, the sooner your risk premiums can be made to fall. Or thought of another way, a carbon tax and more excuses talking up higher risk premium by climate councils saying bigger fires are the new norm are not likely to reduce your insurance risk premium or make you more insurable.’
I bet you can’t demonstrate to anyone that carbon taxes, the DAP, the RET, or global warming hysteria, and/or climate science tomfoolery, are driving up my premiums. What actually drives up premiums are: inflation, vast tables of probabilities, the cost of capital, the costs of payouts, the proportion of people in a risk category willing to pay premiums, a time frame, competitive profits and in the case of AGW, increased risks.
The big factor in driving up premiums is tens of thousands of houses being flooded or burned and these are climate-related phenomena.
You seem to be unders some sort of delusion that the insurance industry is not competitive. It is very competitive. Insurers are not charities, and they are not there to subisidise climate change denialists who ignore the increased fire risk in the Australian bush consequent to AGW.
If you want the industry viewpoint, just have a look at the Deoloitte report I linked upstring. If you want bushfire trends, read the Bushfire Report, also linked above.
And never forget, our whole society is based on the logic of money.