First out of the chute -- Belaboring the Blindingly Obvious:
That ranks right up there with "Warning: Do Not Climb Into Bed If Mattress Is On Fire."
Next entry -- Global Warming Is So Severe We Need To Cool The Earth With Pollution, and the evidence for the severity of the warming is that the Arctic Ice Cap Is Expanding:
Umm-kaaaay. So, in the '90s, we needed to get rid of pollution in the upper atmosphere because it was eating the ozone layer and we would all go blind and die from skin cancer, but *now* we need to pollute the upper atmosphere because John Holdren is oblivious to the fact that Mama Gaia's tempatchur has been *dropping* for almost ten years. Geez, doesn't *any*body read the memos anymore?
Psssst. In 2003, the memo said we had *passed* the tipping point and we would all be drowning by now.
Ummmmmm -- yeah. Wasn't the summer of 2008 the year that the North Pole was supposed to be ice-free? Or at least, the Northwest Passage?
No, a re-examination of the Bailout showed that *nothing* on the Dem agenda is considered prohibitively expensive.
Except, of course, the Defense Budget.
BTW, think anybody should clue the president's new science adviser that trees inhale CO2 during daylight hours and then *exhale* it at night? And he plans to *reduce* the amount of daylight available for CO2-sucking?
Some people need to be dropped off on the polar cap to do some empirical observation.
Wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts...
Cadbury said the famous Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate Bar -- which lists milk first on the ingredients list and explains that the bars contain "the equivalent of three quarters of a pint of fresh liquid milk in every half pound of milk chocolate" -- will soon bear an additional message reading "CONTAINS: MILK," Sky News reported Monday.
That ranks right up there with "Warning: Do Not Climb Into Bed If Mattress Is On Fire."
Next entry -- Global Warming Is So Severe We Need To Cool The Earth With Pollution, and the evidence for the severity of the warming is that the Arctic Ice Cap Is Expanding:
WASHINGTON — The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.
John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed.
One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.
Umm-kaaaay. So, in the '90s, we needed to get rid of pollution in the upper atmosphere because it was eating the ozone layer and we would all go blind and die from skin cancer, but *now* we need to pollute the upper atmosphere because John Holdren is oblivious to the fact that Mama Gaia's tempatchur has been *dropping* for almost ten years. Geez, doesn't *any*body read the memos anymore?
Holdren outlined several "tipping points" involving global warming that could be fast approaching.
Psssst. In 2003, the memo said we had *passed* the tipping point and we would all be drowning by now.
Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of "really intolerable consequences," he said.
Ummmmmm -- yeah. Wasn't the summer of 2008 the year that the North Pole was supposed to be ice-free? Or at least, the Northwest Passage?
Another geoengineering option he mentioned was the use of so-called artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide — the chief human-caused greenhouse gas — out of the air and store it.
At first that seemed prohibitively expensive, but a re-examination of the approach shows it might be less costly, he said.
No, a re-examination of the Bailout showed that *nothing* on the Dem agenda is considered prohibitively expensive.
Except, of course, the Defense Budget.
BTW, think anybody should clue the president's new science adviser that trees inhale CO2 during daylight hours and then *exhale* it at night? And he plans to *reduce* the amount of daylight available for CO2-sucking?
Some people need to be dropped off on the polar cap to do some empirical observation.
Wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts...
97% of CO2 is produced from rotting foliage. How do you un-rot foliage?
A few years ago there were 5000 Polar Bears, now there are 20,000.
Only a small part of southern Antarctica Ice Cap is shrinking, the rest is growing.
There are many other facts but Hey...the truth never catches up to a good lie.
Geez, Bill, yer, belaboring the blindingly obvious. Of course you'd drop them off in a t-shirt and shorts. They'll be swimming at the North pole and hitting the beaches at the South.
Haven't you heard about
Global Warming®, er, I mean,Climate Change®, wait, no, Breathtakingly Sweeping Oligarchic Power Grab by Academe®?Including Maggie's Bad Boy Friend, it's some of our friends that have their head up their...ah...wazoo.
Biggest chuckle was the photos of the three intrepid souls dragging their week's worth of provisions over the ice in three kayaks. They took the kayaks so they wouldn't have to swim once they reached that ice-free North Pole, yanno.
Free air temp was a balmy forty below.
And they brought a week's provisions for a trip to the Pole and return.
My guess is that they've already been rescued...
Turns out I should probably be given carbon credits to sell... for burning off my pasture.
There's a purpose behind all of this "green movement" and AGW crap:
http://www.green-agenda.com/
http://www.green-agenda.com/globalrevolution.html
This is my favorite story of "Oh Noes! The polar ice cap is melting!"
The 'Global Warming Three' are on thin ice
The only problem with a project to prove that Arctic ice is disappearing is the fact that it is actually getting thicker, says Christopher Booker.
The idea is that the expedition should take regular radar fixes on the ice thickness, to be fed into a computer model in California run by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski, whose team, according to the BBC, “is well known for producing results that show much faster ice-loss than other modelling teams”. The professor predicts that summer ice could be completely gone as early as next year. It took the Watts Up With That? science blog to point out that there is little point in measuring ice thickness unless you do it several years running, and that, anyway, Arctic ice is being constantly monitored by US Army buoys. The latest reading given by a typical sensor shows that since last March the ice has thickened by “at least half a metre”.
“In most fields of science,” comments WUWT drily, “that is considered an 'increase’ rather than a 'decline’.”
I knew a retired E-8 who owned a trailer park. In 1975, when Energy Conservation first became a Federal Fad (and I'll explain why I call it that in a bit), he installed timers on all his security lighting and sent memos to all his tenants about the bountiful effects all would reap by just refraining from turning on *one* unnecessary light per trailer.
The first month after he initiated the energy-saving measures, his electric bill doubled. His trailer park no longer used enough electricity to qualify for the business rate he'd been getting.
He yanked all the timers and kept his security lights on 24-hours per day. He told his tenants to forget he'd ever written the memo. His subsequent electric bill was two hundred dollars *less* than the bill he'd received when he was getting the business rate, because his usage now qualified him for an *industrial* rate.
Until she found out my overall ulterior motive was: To Save money.
Which brings me to the Federal Fad. In '74-'74 I was a retail sales manager for a Brand Name Tire Company and usually put 100 highway miles per day on my car -- I got 28mpg out of it at 65 miles per. When the Carter "gasoline shortage" and the mandatory Magical Energy-Saving 55 hit nationwide, my mileage per gallon *dropped* to 23 mpg, partly because American cars were more fuel-efficient at speeds over 60 mph, partly because of all the rigidly-enforced "don't leave your car idling in the gas lines -- turn it off, then re-start when it's time to move up" tips emanating from Washington.
Chuckle was, there was more gasoline in CONUS than there was *before* the illusory gas shortage -- the Fed clamped down on *distributing* it in order to *conserve* it. Eagle Point refinery in NJ had to close its gates for a week because all its tanks were filled to capacity.
*grinnnn*
We used to overfly most of the refineries in Jersey -- someone took a pic of all the *full* storage tanks at Eagle Point, and the day after the pic hit the front page of the NY Daily News, all the tanks had tarps covering them.
This has to be a task for (Queue in Fanfare): C-A-P-T-A-I-N O-B-V-I-O-U-S!!!
Because it's not about KNOWING. It's about FAITH. "Global Warming" is a cult, nothing more than a stupider, more radical equivalent of Islam or Catholicism. You can't discuss the possibility that it's false, because then you'll go to hell...err...Globally-Warm-Future-Earth.
People think I'm kidding, but I'm dead serious.
From Prometheus about the role of science in politics:
Holdren also insists that AGW skeptics are "dangerous"...
You know Chief, I like a pantsing of the Eco-Priests as much as others do, but don't play loose and fast with the facts.
Not all pollution is the same. Particulates that would reflect light back into space is *not* the same thing as CFCs which, according to some, depletes the ozone layer. Holder, be careful to genuflect lest they send the eco-Inquisition after you(so you can be executed in some eco-friendly way that's *not* burning at the stake), isn't talking about using the same stuff.
Like I said, funny, but don't ruin a good bit by getting lazy, Unk.
And, uh, gee Josh, dude, as the song says, check yourself before you wreck yourself? You know Unka Bill, SWWBO, and I are Catholic, right? That the Jesuits have forgotten more about logic and science, considering that they're the ones who started major record keeping on things like temperature, than you will likely ever know? THat I attack this kind of BS, GW, from the science perspective using my chemistry and my wife's biology backgrounds? Don't know what religion has to do with this, but, dude, your analogy is really bad. You could have said Orthodox Jew and it'd have been as equally true, and wrong, and stupid. Religeous fanaticism has nothing to do with creed. I mean, really, Catholicism hasn't done anything like the creationist museums I saw littered thru TN a couple weeks ago. Are you gonna slag Protestants for *that* major bit of ultra-nuttiness steming out of over-zealousness next?
Bad analogy. Really bad.
And on Easter Weekend? Dude, have you *no* sense of ecumencism? ;)
There are particulates and there are particulates. Solid particulates won't reflect the warming portion of the solar spectrum, they'll absorb it -- *liquid* particulates, aka unburned jet fuel, reflect sunlight. Holder specifically said "...to reflect the sun's rays ..." so unless he's totally clueless outside his own field of plasma physics, he meant *liquid* particulates.
I don't really keep track, but I operate under the assumption that SOMEBODY here must be Catholic. Law of averages and all.
That the Jesuits have forgotten more about logic and science, considering that they're the ones who started major record keeping on things like temperature, than you will likely ever know? THat I attack this kind of BS, GW, from the science perspective using my chemistry and my wife's biology backgrounds? Don't know what religion has to do with this, but, dude, your analogy is really bad.
I never said that Catholics (or any other religion) can't be logical, knowledgeable people. I'm just saying that Catholicism itself is about faith, rather than proof. Wouldn't you agree with that statement? It's what I've been told, and my observations have borne that out. There is no "God experiment" or "salvation analysis".
Just like Al Gore doesn't want us analyzing "Global Warming", he just wants us to have faith that it's reality.
You could have said Orthodox Jew
I could have listed all religions. Or I could have just said "insert generic religion here", but I thought that would have made the point less clear. Sadly it seems that it still confused at least ONE person.
Religeous fanaticism has nothing to do with creed.
I'm not talking about fanaticism, I'm talking about faith and blind acceptance.
I mean, really, Catholicism hasn't done anything like the creationist museums I saw littered thru TN a couple weeks ago. Are you gonna slag Protestants for *that* major bit of ultra-nuttiness steming out of over-zealousness next?
Creationism is just the right-wing counterpart of man-made global warming...it's just not ubiquitous right now.
And on Easter Weekend? Dude, have you *no* sense of ecumencism? ;)
Uh. I guess not?
CFCs which, according to some, depletes the ozone layer
Maybe somebody can explain this to me...but there was one thing about CFCs that I never understood: If the ozone layer is high in the upper atmosphere, how can CFCs, which are heavier than air, and therefore sink to the ground when released, get to high enough altitudes to "create an ozone hole"?
Magic.
Which also remnded me of something I meant to add to my previous comment: any particulates released in the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's heat away from the earth will also prevent the earth's heat from radiating into space at night -- it will be trapped in the lower atmosphere and the trapped heat, combined with the heat from the sun that *does* make it through the particulate screen will inevitably result in a net heat increase.
In other words, Holder's suggestion will *cause* -- *heh* -- Anthropogenic Global Warming.
So it looks like he really *is* clueless.
Even more facts...CO2 levels were higher in 1820 (4.40ppm) then today (3.58ppm)
The Medieval Optimum was 3.5 degrees warmer then today with a longer growing period and more rain.
In bars among friends...never discuss religion or the Boston Red Sox.
FM - wise words for Josh, hope he listens. I'm already ruffled to read his posts on Easter Saturday since I am a practicing Catholic.
Josh - We've been through this before at the Castle. Smart people can make their points without offending other smart people.
Well...everyone...have a good and safe Easter and watchout for the weather. I'm going to finish making baskets for my grandkids and get to eat the extra peeps.
Josh - I'm not Catholic, having been raised Methodist-Episcopal, sorta, and really, because I was an Army brat, I was raised "generic Protestant" - but I cringed at your example, simply because it's needlessly "in-your-face" provocative, and that sort of rhetorical flourish does not advance the discussion, it shifts the focus, as it did here.
At a cost of only $350 *trillion* dollars, too!
And it'll take only a little over 1,100 years to complete the job -- yeah, that's the ticket.
Don't laugh too hard, gang -- the
con artistscientific genius has already received funding for the pilot project...*koff*
Fishmugger also refers to Delaware Bay as "the puddle"...
My Precious has had the fuel tweaked a bit here and there and we are close to getting nearly 700 miles to the tank. For a muscle SUV, that's not bad. Now...to take the governor off...Oh, how old is the Precious? Nine years young, people.
You have never read the gospel according to Harry Potter. Or AlGore. Therefore you are to be mocked as one who does not understand the delicacy of understatement when it comes to playing fast and loose with the facts.
I am in the process of diagramming Truth Statements in my math text. No joke. My head hurts and I came here for a great laugh. Thanks, Bill.
But hey...any body of water I can drive a golf ball over ain't that much...of course...it was in the trunk of my car as I took the Memorial Bridge...
Only people worse than Red Sox are Yankees...
Barfight, anyone?
get to eat the extra peeps.
I LOVE marshmallow peeps. LOVE.
I kind of have a problem with sugar.
but I cringed at your example, simply because it's needlessly "in-your-face" provocative
I'm sorry, I did NOT mean it that way.
My Precious has had the fuel tweaked a bit here and there and we are close to getting nearly 700 miles to the tank. For a muscle SUV, that's not bad. Now...to take the governor off...Oh, how old is the Precious? Nine years young, people.
700 miles is quite impressive...how large is the fuel tank?
My "Nighthawk" is theoretically capable of somewhere around 450 miles per tank (14 gallon tank, 32+ miles per gallon under ideal conditions), but in reality I'm getting something like 150-180 miles per tank.
Tweaking the fuel means using a higher octane and some additives. Since the Precious is paid for, out of warranty and not subject to emissions testing, I sort of like tinkering with it to see if I can optimize fuel economy and performance.
One of the reasons I dislike the fuel ratings is because they are just that; overrated. If people drove optimally, all roads would be dry, flat and smooth. Speed would be 60 mph, and the ability to use the transmission to slow down and braking for stops.
Unless of course you're buying gasoline from stations where the lower-octane gasoline has less detergents/cleaners added to it? That would, of course, only be an effect you could see by using one grade or the other consistently for a long period of time, rather than switching back and forth from one fill up to the next.
The EPA fuel economy ratings are really just meant to be estimates, not exact predictions of what you will get. The way you drive affects your mileage more than anything else anyway.
And these days more and more automatic transmissions allow manual control (both "Tiptronic" torque converter automatics, and twin-clutch automatics). Last year I saw a Chrysler minivan with a six-speed tiptronic, as a rental car (which suggests to me that it was probably a standard feature, as rental agencies are not known to spring for "sporty" options). I suspect that some form of manual control might simply become a standard feature on all cars, within the next decade or so.
The Captian's yacht (aka the Jeep) is a standard shift transmission and the most basic model of Cherokee on the market. We have owned it for 16 years; bought it new from the dealer. It is a four cylinder, but the fuel economy on it was 17mpg in the city and 20 on the highway. We have documented that as well...and started tweaking the fuel to see what happened. We get 20 mpg in the city and about 23 on the highway, which is higher than what the sticker showed at the time of purchase.
One of the additives we used is the nitrous stuff found in formula racing cars. It works great, but is very pricey. Acetone and mineral spirits also help to vaporize fuel
I got interested in this because of an engineer friend of mine who worked at Ames. His dream was to design formula racing cars; which he sort of did as a hobby. One of the areas he worked in was the fuel used to propel the space shuttle, since highly volatile fuels can't help control the rocket. Solid fuel was the answer as the burn rate was slower and allowed more control of the rocket.
What works for a shuttle might work for a car...and there you are.
His majesty, the High Profit of the Cult of the Doominators!
There's the watermelons (rind of green on the outside, marxist red to the core) and then there's martians. Green skinned outside, gooey red inside, and minds so alien they can't possibly be from this earth.
Hahahahaha I LIKE that one! Very sharp!