I have travel plans this weekend, so positing will be lighter than usual.
Please feel free to discuss topics withing the normal range here.
I have travel plans this weekend, so positing will be lighter than usual.
Please feel free to discuss topics withing the normal range here.
Humor:
A young woman (Let’s say it was Monkton’s “bossy young woman with messy blond hair” from a year or so ago.) was asked in her science class, “If you were in a vacuum and someone called your name, would you be able to hear them?”
She thought about it a minute.
Then she asked, “Was the vacuum switched on or off?”
Good one. 🙂
(Apologies for misspelling “Monckton”. I’m sure I’m not the first to do so.)
I think we should have a Weekend Open Thread every weekend and not just when our host is otherwise tied up. Anyone else think so?
If the Mods wouldn’t mind dealing the “shotgun blast” of comments and topics, sure. A more regular “Open Thread” might be welcome.
We do get some interesting interchanges of ideas in the “Open Threads”.
As has been said, one can learn a lot by listening/reading, and I have during these conversations.
I’d be OK with it, Mark, so it has been moved and seconded.
I always like it when I read WUWT comments from around the world about local weather. This has been brought to mind as I sit in my living room here in Toronto on the 28th of June wearing three layers, including a thick sweater, as well as warm socks and pants, with the windows shut and the electric fire blasting away… because the house is frigid and I refuse to turn on the central heating at this time of the year.
My British father used to say of gloomy, cool rainy days (such as today) that they were like “a fine English summer’s day”.
Where has our summer weather gone? (Wimbledon?)
And I’m thinking “wouldn’t it be nicer to live somewhere cooler”. We spent the last couple of weeks at 105F heat index and have cooled down this week to a 95F heat index here in northern Florida. It was in the 90s way past sunset during our opening heat wave; lovely if you like sweat pouring out relentlessly…..
Oh, your poor thing in cold Toronto.
Here in southern England, summer is about to burst forth. The Met Office has already issued a “Level 2 heat alert” for the 42 hours between Tuesday night and Thursday lunchtime, complete with warnings on how to survive the fierce heat (stay indoors, drink plenty, wear loose clothing, etc), as Wednesday’s temperatures are expected to exceed 30 deg C (86 F), and may even hit 34 C (93 F) in the London area.
While hoping for a dry spell to cut my pastures between the frequent rains in west central Illinois, I see that Joe Bastardi has been spot on with his predictions of a garden of eden summer. Perhaps the local media weathercasters should consider subscribing. If carbon dioxide gives us cool, moist growing seasons with corn thats 8 feet tall before the 1st of July, bring it on!
(By the way, spring was late here again this year and my corn went in the last week of April.)
I grew up in the Midwest. The phrase for corn was, “Knee high by the 4th of July.”
8 feet tall by July 1st? That could only be bad if they make us stuff the corn into our gas tanks.
Funny you should say that; the university which I retired from, has a corn to ethanol plant that has been trying to improve the tech. Here’s their spiel, the author is an acquaintance of mine.
http://www.bioeconomyconference.org/images/Keck,%20Pam.pdf
I think she’s lost in the meme, but only for fiscal reasons.
To be fair, some of the corn crop is affected by aflatoxin and is best used by biomass conversion to alcohol. The deduction that we are charged for infected grain should make the price attractive.
I used biomass conversion incorrectly there, as it means converting the entire plant as opposed to just the grain. Probably would make sense for aflatoxins to be detected prior to harvest and take the entire plant. This would be the most economical use of the crop and also leave the least amount of aspergillus spores in the fields.
That old saying seems obsolete in today’s CO2-rich era. I’m in a frost hollow & the nearby farm has to plant late (mid-May), but still the corn is usually waist-high or better by July 4th.
In todays health science news….
Vegetarians live, on average, 9 years longer than meat-eaters.
9 horrible, wasted baconless years.
In other news, an anti-gun activist claims when we finally have the guts to make guns illegal, people will stop being shot. After all, that’s how we stopped everybody from doing drugs. Oh, wait……
Juststeve
I have been a vegetarian since I was 13 . I don’t miss meat in the slightest. However I am glad I’m not a vegan as their diet is very limited and must be boring
Tonyb
To each his own on diet, but this sums up my view…
Vegetables….what food eats.
Just Steve
June 28, 2015 at 2:12 pm
“In todays health science news…. Vegetarians live, on average, 9 years longer than meat-eaters.”
The questions is: Why would you want to?
eat more chikun
I can’t help but think there is a certain amount of self-selection going on here. People who are likely to maintain a vegetarian diet are also likely to be making other life style choices that promote longer lives.
Would be interesting to see what the life span of people who have no choice in the matter is in comparison.
I was a veggie for several years, suffered no ill health or lack of stamina as a result. Main thing made me start gnawing on carcases again is that it’s hard to get any decent veggie meals in restaurants. I found that a pot of vegetables boiled-up was a perfectly good and tasty meal, but most chefs don’t seem to have any idea how to prepare food without meat.
A friend is vegan and she is thin as a rake and looks extremely fragile. Her health seems OK though. It’s an extremely hard regime to follow as your choices are limited, and eating-out is virtually a no-no.
vegetarians live longer not simply because of their diet, because being a vegetarian means the average vegetarian is generally more concerned about their health in general, will also take other heathy lifestyle measures (exercise, nonsmoking, limited alcohol) than the average omnivore.
Why do climate scientists feel justified in extrapolating temperatures 1200 km into parts or the Earth where there is no actual coverage? Why not use the REAL data for just the areas they have, and make properly-qualified data sets that recognize the lack of data from those areas? To make up numbers from areas where no coverage exists, and them use them as real data, cannot be real science.
Since its open thread I just read that Brazil, South Africa, India, and China at a meeting in New York are starting to make noise about how there’s no mechanism or procedure yet to get that 100 billion yearly cash flow going to assist them in “going green”. Sort of a “where’s the beef” moment for the IPCC! I think it’s important to point out that an awful lot of the “support” for the UN from developing countries stems from these sort of payola schemes. How did that old song go “come a little bit closer you’re my kind of man” It should be broadcast in the elevators at all the diplomatic work up to the December conference in Paris just to remind those involved that we don’t know for sure that the selling of sexual favors is truly the oldest profession.
Having heard so much about end-of-world scenarios since I began my journey in the 1930s, starting with the ‘dirty thirties’ being the end of times, and, of course there were wars, threats of nuclear holocausts (its sister nuclear winter), etc. etc. to go through. More recently Club of Rome/Ehrlich, mass starvation, peak resources, man-made ice age, man-made burning up the planet. In the 18th and 19th centuries Malthusian population explosion (copied again by Ehrlich in the 70s), Jevons’s running out of coal ending the industrial revolution and the like.
When the iron curtain came down, I thought we finally would enjoy some tranquility. But, no! I came to realize there is a certain percentage of the population in positions of moral and academic authority wired with anguish, self hatred and misanthropy that seem to be able to enlist masses of support. It’s disheartening that so many (a majority) want to believe this fairy tale noire without a moments thought.
My life and the history I’ve lived have brought me to a mighty conclusion, an axiom, although it is so self evident that I’m startled that I and others didn’t reach it sooner than now. When I share this with thoughtful people here on WUWT, it will likely seem ho-hum because in back of our minds we already know it:
‘THERE IS NO SUCH THING as man-made, long term ecological disaster. All real disasters by their nature are rare, very short term, mean and quick, and recovery is likewise quick and vigorous.’
So far, nothing has falsified this axiom in 4B yrs. Of course, I’m not talking about the horrors wrought by despots or the famines of the past or natural ‘disasters’. Such events are localized, brief in earth time and also will pass. The planet will not be destroyed by man. I was not even surprised that the 1.3million acre human exclusion area around Chernobyl has spawned a virtual European serengeti wild life park.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/nuclear_power/2013/01/chernobyl_wildlife_the_radioactive_fallout_zone_is_a_wildlife_refuge_photos.html
Unmistakeably the the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, the death toll and agony of many over decades was a horrible event, but, remarkably the radioactivity fell back within a year to normal background levels, probably coming from the geology below.
A grand future is in the offing. Population will level by mid century and we will be entering a perennial state of abundance and prosperity for all, including for flora and fauna as we continue our journey of progress in agriculture which retires land from tilling, mining, which will become a mere topping up of minerals and metals obtained from recycling, clean streams, lakes rivers, air, land and oceans. The only threat that can postpone this is the seeming intractable pathology of misanthropes and their pied piper appeal to the frightened and unthinking. A lot of work has to be done in salvaging education and institutions, recovering history, repairing science and social sciences and gaining for people a new trust in human ingenuity and enterprise. That could take a few weeks.
history argues otherwise.
Basic question about climate models–I’ve been reading chapter 9 of AR5 and can’t decipher what date in the past they let the model start running on its own. Given the inability of the models to simulate the past 20 years correctly, it also doesn’t seem like they would be able to simulate the bulk of the 20th century correctly, either, but all the graphs show the model temps fairly closely tracking the observed temps. I have personally always thought they hard-coded the temps from the beginning to about 1970 and then let it go, but I can’t find an exact answer. Thanks in advance for any feedback.
BREAKING NEWS: SCOTUS rules against EPA on coal plant emission regulations:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/supreme-court-rules-against-epa-on-pollution-rules/article/2567221
sanity reigns
“These questions have been settled by science.” Surgeon General
IPCC AR5 TS.6 Key Uncertainties. IPCC doesn’t think the science is settled. There is a huge amount of known and unknown unknowns.
According to IPCC AR5 industrialized mankind’s share of the increase in atmospheric CO2 between 1750 and 2011 is somewhere between 4% and 196%, i.e. IPCC hasn’t got a clue. IPCC “adjusted” the assumptions, estimates and wags until they got the desired mean.
At 2 W/m^2 CO2’s contribution to the global heat balance is insignificant compared to the heat handling power of the oceans and clouds. CO2’s nothing but a bee fart in a hurricane.
The hiatus/pause/lull/stasis (IPPC acknowledges as fact) makes it pretty clear that IPCC’s GCM’s are not credible.
The APS workshop of Jan 2014 concluded the science is far from settled. (Yes, I read it all.)
Getting through the 1/2014 APS workshop minutes is a 570 page tough slog. During this workshop some of the top climate change experts candidly spoke about IPCC AR5. Basically they expressed some rather serious doubts about the quality of the models, observational data, the hiatus/pause/lull/stasis, the breadth and depth of uncertainties, and the waning scientific credibility of the entire political and social CAGW hysteria. Both IPCC AR5 & the APS minutes are easy to find and download.
Bob Diaz
June 27, 2015 at 3:22 pm
Humor:
Have you ever noticed the correlation between increasing CO2 and the increasing shrillness from AGW Alarmists? Maybe I should put together a computer model with made up data to prove this….
_____
Bob Diaz,
first view strong correlation / causation binding.
Maybe topic for an experts statistic peer reviewed pay walled paper.
Thanks for ‘Humor’ – Hans
Gregory Patomkin was a master of
Zugzwang’s First Move is a Tactical type weapon. It is an upgraded version of Zugzwang’s Last Move.
Al Gore is the Master of ‘get lost’.
____
Al Gore’s new strategy – we wait and see.*
Hans
____
*bored and tired past 18 ys.