Wednesday - November 25, 2009

Complete, Total Vindication


Category Image Complete, Total Vindication


The environmental fascists have been caught lying again.  This time someone needs to be put in prison for a very long time.

Anyone who looked at the concept of trying to determine a global temperature with an accuracy within tenths of a degree going back a hundred years has to know that this is lunacy.

Heck, I'm not even going to bother to say why it's lunacy.  I don't have to.  Anytime anyone wants to start up with the global warming crap again, I'll just say "proven lie."

If it were even slightly possible to prove the theory that man has warmed the planet, they would have done so, without the lies, without fabricating data, without intimidating scholarly journals, without forcing people out of the business, without name calling, without hiding their data.

But they didn't.  It's no longer debatable.  

Before, these reprehensible liars and the politicians that kept them on a leash had declared, with nothing to base it on, that the debate on anthroprogenic global warming had ended.  Now they are correct.  It is over, and can never be raised again.

Just think, they still want to commandeer the entire US economy (what's left of it, that is) even though the lie has been exposed.

We can't let them get away with it.  We must vociferously remind them at every opportunity that they are liars and we're just waiting for the legal system to put them in jail where they belong.


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Saturday - July 14, 2007

Land Fills


Category Image Land Fills


Some people lack the ability to look ahead.

I was listening to National Public Radio and some yahoo came on to talk about plastic. It seems it was the one hundredth anniversary of the patent for plastic being filed in this country. They were interviewing a man who specialized in the history of plastic. As newsworthy and interesting stories go, this one wasn't. They describe the story this way: "Michele Norris talks with Dr. Jeffrey Meikle, a historian of American plastic, about who Leo Baekeland was, and how his invention affected the next century's thinking." And don't forget that you don't pronounce Michele like everyone else would, this is NPR so a snobbish pronunciation is required, her name is MEE' shell.

But, NPR being NPR, Mee had to inject political slants somehow or another, and she found a way to put a negative political spin on plastic for crying out loud. After talking about the properties of plastic, she insisted that the plastics historian tell us how horrible plastic is for the environment. Okay, not so bad, until she said that plastic is as bad as nuclear waste.

How do these morons get on the radio?
Her reasoning goes something like this: Plastic doesn't decompose (wrong) therefore it stays in landfills forever. Quod erat demonstrandum, plastic is like nuclear waste.

What, you didn't follow that? Let's try it again, pay attention this time.

Plastic is in landfills, therefore it is as bad as radioactive material.

Yeah, I don't follow it either.

Let's look a bit closer at the problem without the obligatory NRP slant.

Plastic decomposes more slowly when not exposed to sunlight. This much is true. But you know what else doesn't decompose when it's underground in a landfill? Paper. When paper is tightly compacted, such as in a book form, it's virtually impossible for water and air to decompose the paper.

Don't tell Meeshell, she'll start telling us that books are as dangerous as nuclear waste.

Personally, I'm all in favor of landfills, especially with paper and plastic in them. Some day, if resources ever become scarce, someone will make a lot of money mining ancient landfills for the plastic, metals, and paper contained therein. The cellulose of the paper can be dumped directly into a paper mill. The plastics can be chopped up and recooked to make new plastics. Land fills are a future treasure trove of all kinds of good resources.

Nuclear waste isn't. It's just radioactive. But don't let basic concepts get in the way of your publicly financed political agenda, Meeshell.

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Sunday - February 04, 2007

Polar Bears in Iceland


Category Image Polar Bears in Iceland


I used to live in Iceland, from 1975 to 1977. Mostly I remember celebrating the Bicentennial there.

And I remember the snow the first winter and relative lack of snow the second winter. Before we moved there I was nearly paralyzed with fear. Iceland had volcanoes and we would all die in a fiery lava flow, and if it wasn't a volcano killing us, I was sure that an earthquake would.

Of course, no such thing happened, Iceland is a beautiful land of fire and ice; of natural, mostly untouched stark beauty. I had a lot of fun while living there, building forts out of lava boulders in the fields behind our house.

The other thing I remember is that there are no polar bears in Iceland.

But despite the demogoguery of Al Gore, polar bears aren't dying off from lack of ice. In fact the opposite is true, and Icelanders are now concerned that because of the great increase in arctic ice, that there will be a greater threat of polar bears moving into Iceland.
Now, Icelanders tend to be extremely socialist, as least in their rhetoric, and love to jump in to save rain forests and endangered animals throughout the world. I suppose that's because Icelanders have killed off all the trees on their own island and don't really know what trees are supposed to look like. Not having any trees, they think that they are equally rare across the world, I suppose.

Likewise with animals. They like to hunt whales. I'm not sure if they're still doing it, but I recall seeing whales being sliced up for meat and other food delicacies in what we used to call "Whale Bay." As Americans we were strictly forbidden to own any ivory, but not so the Icelanders. I don't remember eating any whale meat, but I may have at one time or another, probably during our school band's tour about the island.

Icelanders have an equal lack of sentimentality when it comes to polar bears. It seems that on the rare occasions when they do get near the island, they are killed quicker than you can say, "whale steak." On the even rarer occasions that a polar bear has landed on the island, they were dispatched with no tears shed.

To this day, the only mammalian predator on the island is the arctic fox. If the fox weren't so sly, I've no doubt that the Icelanders would eradicate them too. They can always claim that it isn't indigenous to the island, it's ony been there for the past 1100 years.

But I don't think Al Gore will be reporting the increase in either the arctic ice or the threat from increases in polar bears.

Iceland has the longest continuously governing body in the world, the AlÞing (pronounced All Thing), and they aren't much afraid to kill off any plant or animal they come across. Their politics don't get in the way of their common sense when it comes to not allowing the most aggressive and violent animal in the world to inhabit their home. Especially now that polar bears and polar ice are increasing so radically.

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Thursday - September 21, 2006

Global Warming. How do We Know?


Category Image Global Warming. How do We Know?


There's one thing that always perplexes me about the people claiming there is global warming. No, it's not that the same movement used to claim global cooling. I understand that political agendas make little accommodation for consistency or fact. What I'm flummoxed by is, how do they measure global warming?

I read that the global temperature rises or lowers from time to time. How do you measure this, and how do you compare it to past measurements?

Let's start with the basics. What is the global temperature today? Oh, wait, that's too broad. Let's start with what is the average temperature in Austin, Texas today? How is that measured? Even that is too hard.

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So, let's say that we can accurately measure the temperature of a specific point at a specific time. I think we have the technology to do this very reliably, so this is where I'll start.

In Austin, usually we hear of temperatures measured at the airport, at the national guard base in town, and at various other points of the city. I have no doubt that these measurements are correct when they are taken.

But Austin is a pretty big place compared to the number of measurements being taken. Often I will record a temperature several degrees different from what I hear on the radio, because I'm in a higher elevation, I'm on asphalt, or any other number of different reasons. There might be errrors in measurement, but I think it's clear that there are also variations across even one city.

I can't imagine that the people making up the global average temperature for a year take into account the variation across every few hundred meters.

But let's say that they do. In Austin and other large cities, we conceivably can take reliable measurements every few hundred meters in every direction. How do you compile all these measurements into usable data, or an average for the day? How much weight do you give to each reading? What if the peak of a hill is measured and the slopes are not?

Okay, my example is a bit harsh. I suspect that there are reasonable algorithms to get a fairly accurate measurement of areas of cities. But this must be done over a fairly continuous time, to take into account not only highs and lows, but the duration of the highs and lows.

I'm no meteorologist, but I question whether this is done consistently in most cities in the United States, but I've been to too many third world nations to even tolerate the notion that reliable and meaningful data is universally available even in just inhabited places.

Now what about outside the cities? I could be willing to believe that urban areas are saturated with temperature guages all tied into some big megalithic network. But I've been out in the woods often enough to know that there aren't many meteorlogical stations in many parts just outside of most cities. Terrain can vary dramatically, yet there is no systematic collection of temperatures. How can I reasonably believe that we know the variations of temperature?

Sure, we can assume some continuity of temperature between weather fronts (a front being essentially defined as a discontinuity in temperature and pressure, or so I would posit). But within those areas between fronts, the temperature tends to vary as well. We can make assumptions, but remember that they make claims that the global temperature has risen by fractions of a degree from year to year or over decades. The input comes from these measurements in cities and towns which can vary by several degrees easily. There is a statistical fallacy to claiming such trivial global changes based on data that cannot be measured locally to that degree of accuracy.

Now let's look at history. Massive data collection to the scale we see now was available only within the past hundred years, to be very generous. Before then, collection of temperature data was confined to populated areas (even more so than today) and was haphazard in reliability and consistency. How can we extrapolate changes in global temperature based on data from past centuries that is of marginal reliablity at times, and inconsistent coverage?

And before thermometers were invented our only evidence comes from archaeology or from plants and tree growth. This is good for what it can tell us, but I can't believe for a minute that the accuracy needed to define temperature to a degree, let alone tenths of a degree is even remotely possible, and again we have a pretty serious problem with coverage of the entire globe.

And with all these pretty fatal and obvious flaws, I still haven't even addressed how different areas should be weighted. Is the temperature over the ocean more significant than the temperature over a desert, for instance?

Really, what does it even mean to have an average global temperature? It's a nice number for some very coarse uses, but it can't possibly be of real value when splitting the hairs needed to make the wild claims made by people driven by political agendas.

Yes, I'm sure a climatologist can come and explain his algorithms and how his science has come to a complex understanding of weather, but part of good science is to understand the limits of your measurements. Every young student of science learns how important it is to understand the accuracy of your measuring device, be it a beaker or pipette or a yard stick. I am skeptical that anyone making these wild claims about average global temperature changes has taken this basic care, and are either charlatans or have been blinded by their own hubris and believe that their models can be valid.

Next time someone talks about global warming, remember that some of the theories may be plausible, but the state of our science and the need to take accurate measurements over vast areas of the world across vast spans of time, including pre-industrial history and indeed prehistory, are not capable of confirming the theories because they are not capable of measuring the required data.

Global warming may be true, it may be bunk. Since it is driven by politics and since people are making implausible claims about global temperatures, I tend to believe it is bunk.

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Tuesday - December 21, 2004

The Humane Society: Burning the Village in Order to Save it


Category Image The Humane Society: Burning the Village in Order to Save it


I'm watching Animal Planet on television. This episode is in Michigan or some other northern clime and some intellectually challenged animal control workers are busy collecting dogs from homes that they claim are not caring for their dogs properly. On one, the dog has a house with clean blankets and fresh food and the animal cops are disappointed that they can't find justification to steal the dog from its owner. They claim that dogs can't live in the weather, but they don't explain how wolves and coyotes can thrive in the same weather without food being provided for them. Later, despite the dog being perfectly healthy and food is provided, they go back and steal the dog under color of law on the simple basis that a seal on the front door of the house isn't broken after a day. I don't know about others, but I rarely use my front door, I've gone months at a time without opening it. But this seems good enough for them to take the dog.

So, there's a bit of the obligatory thuggishness in anyone wearing a badge, even animal cops. But what really amazes me is that they confiscate some animals supposedly to save them. The vet gives it a good bill of health, it has a gentle temperament, and isn't distressed. Yet this healthy dog, from a home that kept fresh food out for it, will likely be euthanized. It's like burning the village in order to save it.

I don't respect this type of work, and I don't like charades. If you want to save a village, save it. If you want to destroy it, destroy it.
I don't have a point to share. I'm just sharing my observations.

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