The Environment

[jamiebk]

Unfortunately, most science seems to be aimed at proving what we already believe instead of purely exploring.

[Shapley]

American Crocodiles Make Comeback Thanks To Nuclear Power Plant

[Haggis@wk]

American Crocodiles Make Comeback Thanks To Nuclear Power Plant

As a USAF survival instructor in the 70's at a base in southern Georgia we frequently encountered 'gators and there was always a Federal Parks Ranger letting us know they were a protected species. Today they're all over the damn place!!!!

Alligator hunters wanted in Florida

Tastes like chicken!!!!

[Giant Communist Robot]

I see Canada's decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol is being criticized on the alleged motive of the tar sands. That may be true. I looked at the NOAA data for historic CO2 and going back 800,000 years we are at a high. I still don't feel it's clear what this means.

[Haggis@wk]

Tainted EPA Report on Fracking Blasted by Gas Co.

“Here’s the story: the EPA says tests it conducted in Pavillion, Wyoming “indicate that ground water in the aquifer contains compounds likely associated with gas production practices, including hydraulic fracturing.” However, it turns out that the EPA drilled two monitoring wells to some 900 feet – much deeper than water wells which are usually at about 300 feet – and indeed found hydrocarbons. In short, they drilled into the natural gas reservoir that has long attracted industry producers.”

My favorite line

”It may the single most productive moment in EPA history.”

[Haggis@wk]

I looked at the NOAA data for historic CO2 and going back 800,000 years we are at a high. I still don't feel it's clear what this means.

...nothing much meteorologically?

[Giant Communist Robot]

...nothing much meteorologically?

Since carbon was the issue with Canada, that's where I looked. The implication is that increased carbon leads to warmer temperatures; but looking at their data I'm a bit skeptical. The CO2 is way off the charts yet the temperature is about one or two degrees warmer over the last century. Looks like a suspicious correlation to me.

And what about those warmer temps anyway? We'll lose some polar ice caps, some bears, some atolls, some coastal lowlands, etc. On the other hand, if earth turns into a greenhouse could Canada, Alaska and Siberia become vast tracts of productive farmland? Just a thought.

[Giant Communist Robot]

Finally, the truth about global warming. I knew it all along.

[Haggis@wk]

FRANK J. FLEMING ON THE NTSB: Hey, They Still Let Us Drive.

The National Transportation Safety Board wants a complete ban on cellphone use while driving, even on hands-free calls. Some will protest this as yet another government encroachment on freedom, but we should think twice before rocking the boat here.

After all, have you considered how lucky we are that the government lets us drive cars at all?

Imagine if cars hadn’t been around for a century, but instead were just invented today. Is there any way they’d be approved for individual use? It’s an era of bans on incandescent bulbs; if you suggested putting millions of internal-combustion engines out there, you’d get looks like you were Hitler proposing the Final Solution.

Even aside from pollution, the government wouldn’t allow the risks to safety. . . . Driving is basically a grandfathered freedom from back when people cared less about pollution and danger and valued progress and liberty over safety. They had different equations related to human life then: We could lose 10,000 men in a single battle in a war and call it a victory.

We’re talking foolhardy people who eventually sent men to the moon strapped to a giant rocket that had less computational power than it takes to calculate the trajectory of an Angry Bird. Their kids dangled from jungle gyms over pavement.

Face it: We’re just not those people anymore. We don’t do dangerous things where lots of people could be hurt . . . even if they’re really cool and fun ideas. You can say we value human life more now, but it’s probably more apt to say we’re much sissier.

Read the whole thing.

[Shapley]

Carbon Emissions Will Defer Next Ice Age

I would count this as a good thing. But, I'm sure someone wll express concern for the harm due to the next generation of wooly mammoths.

Can they use the Endangered Species Act to protect non-extant species whose rebirth may be delayed or denied by climate policy to block such policy? Will they try it?

[Haggis@wk]

Glacier thief arrested in Chile

Admit it, these are five words you never expected to see in a headline.

And all along I was blaming global warming!!!

In DC in the 70s some clubs were selling ice cubes from ice bergs as a designer drink enhancement. The cubes were blue and kind of cool. The only problem was they cracked with extreme violence, frequently enough to actually break glasses!!!

[Haggis@wk]

For the AGW skeptics (like me), a Schadenfreude moment. The left-wing Guardian newspaper in Britain reports:

The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.
The study is the first to survey all the world’s icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less than previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.

Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, said: “The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero.”

But…but….they SAID!!…….It’s fun watching these guys fall on their face in real time. The whole circus is falling apart much faster than I expected. I think I'll smoke a cigar to add to my carbon footprint, maybe start a bonfire, com'on Dai, do your bit down under and fire up the barbie!!.....

[dai bread]

My daughter's Significant Other does enough of those for both of us...

And school sausage sizzles start next week. The BBQ is gas-fired. Carbon dioxide AND water vapour.

[Haggis@wk]

...And school sausage sizzles start next week.

and that means??? looking for cultural enlightenment....

[Giant Communist Robot]

Here's a paper from a Canadian org that says big cooling to occur ~2014. I see it's peer reviewed; I wonder what they'll say. This paper is way too technical to read. It's from Russia and predicts an ice age.

[dai bread]

...And school sausage sizzles start next week.

and that means??? looking for cultural enlightenment....

O.K. It seems that sometimes we are divided by a common language after all.

My grandson's primary school has a parent-teacher association, as do most NZ primary schools. I'm not sure if there is a direct comparison with the American PTA. I can't imagine any of ours sending a note home complaining about the length of a parent's skirt.

One of their functions is to raise funds for the school to supplement the money the Govt. pays. All institutions always need more money, everywhere.

To this end, the PTA has a sausage sizzle. Sausages are cooked on a barbecue, wrapped in a slice of bread (wholemeal, at least in part) and sold to the children for $2 per sausage. The children can also buy a chocolate chip cookie if they want one, and there is tomato sauce (ketchup) available. The number of sausages and cookies per child is largely over to the child. Some of the older children go through 4 sausages, and a couple of cookies.

It's a good little earner. BTW, ketchup is not quite the same as tomato sauce, but it's close.

[Haggis@wk]

BTW, ketchup is not quite the same as tomato sauce, but it's close.

I'm still addicted to HP sauce!!!!

[Giant Communist Robot]

ketchup is not quite the same as tomato sauce

The problem with ketchup is that it contains corn sweetener or sugar, which will mask or overpower the flavor of whatever you are eating.

[dai bread]

So does tomato sauce (31% according to the label). I'm sparing with its use, and generally don't use it unless the recipe calls for it.

[Haggis@wk]

THIS DOESN’T SOUND SO GOOD: 1 in 8 Chance of Catastrophic Solar Megastorm by 2020.

At the time of the Carrington Event, telegraph stations caught on fire, their networks experienced major outages and magnetic observatories recorded disturbances in the Earth’s field that were literally off the scale.

In today’s electrically dependent modern world, a similar scale solar storm could have catastrophic consequences. Auroras damage electrical power grids and may contribute to the erosion of oil and gas pipelines. They can disrupt GPS satellites and disturb or even completely black out radio communication on Earth.

During a geomagnetic storm in 1989, for instance, Canada’s Hydro-Quebec power grid collapsed within 90 seconds, leaving millions without power for up to nine hours.

The potential collateral damage in the U.S. of a Carrington-type solar storm might be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion in the first year alone, with full recovery taking an estimated four to 10 years, according to a 2008 report from the National Research Council.