Sunday, December 4, 2016

climate deniers

Re: "climate deniers"

A climate scientist, a politician, and a 3rd grader are asked to find the temperature of a glass of water.

The politician asks his largest donors what answer will be most profitable to them, and gives that answer.

The climate scientist takes twenty readings from around and above the cup, averages them together, then adds in an adjustment factor.

The 3rd grader sticks a thermometer into the cup and reads out the number.

This is obviously a joke, but as with most humor, there is an element of truth to it.

It also leads to a point rarely brought up, that maybe measuring the air temperature above the ground (cup) really doesn't tell us much of value to begin with. Perhaps a true measure would be to track the ground temperature a few feet down for a more accurate average instead. But lets set that aside for now and get to what most argue about.


1st

There are two causes, and thus explanations, for shrinking ice packs --the most cited proof of warming-- the 1st is warming. 2nd, is reduced snowfall patterns over winter. Since no month during summer has ever had exactly average rainfall, it can be assumed winters also vary wildly in precipitation too. Simply having more rain in August can decrease ice accumulation over winter. As can precipitation rates changing between night (favoring ice) and day (favoring ice-melting rain). So, for me, studies of icepacks are interesting, perhaps even suggestive... but only proof of 'varying winter humidity cycles', not global warming. That's not to say warming is not real, just that leftover winter ice ain't proof of it.

Stated another way, scientists could trigger another iceage today by building massive humidifiers and pump up the moisture over a continent during winter months (mostly at night or when it's freezing outside) thus burying the entire country under hundreds of feet of snow and ice every winter without altering global temperatures at all (100'=12" perDay over 100 days, mechanically possible at every ski resort in the world). This effect is seen with evaporative cooling towers causing snow during winter. Because it would take until November to melt a hundred feet of snow, you would get a snowball effect adding onto every additional winter... All without actually altering global temperatures directly, just altering global humidity/precipitation, and then only during winter.

In addition, record highs and lows are suggestive, but not proof either. I can have an overcast day that stays at 54 degrees for the entire 24hrs, followed by a day that starts at 75 for 5hrs, then has a storm that pummels it down to 45 for the rest of the day, averaging 51.25 degrees. Just looking at highs or lows does not give you averages and can be highly misleading. "...Record number of highs this year..." means nothing in and of itself.

2nd. We just had an election where pollsters asked 500 people and then used that to guess who would win across +3,000 counties. Wrong!!! It turns out your sample size might have needed to be in the millions to get elections right every time.

The same is true of weather, I just don't buy that we have anywhere near enough 'big data' to predict 50yrs from now with an accuracy of less than +-2 degrees. Sorry. With a planet this size and a data set as relatively tiny as the one climate models are based on, we are essentially asking two aborigines in Australia to predict who our president will be 50yrs from now.

Not really possible.

==side note===
A tale of two climate models.

The first costs $100 trillion dollars and predicts the end of the world in 50yrs because of a 2 degree climate change. With that $100 trillion expenditure, not a single person is lifted out of poverty, no poor person ever gets electricity, indoor plumbing, or air conditioning. GE makes a fortune selling windmills and solar panels and an equal number of gas peaking stations to fill in all the green gaps (when before they would have had to settle for 1/3 the profit by selling only one, far more efficient, coal or nuclear plant) Elon Musk makes another billion dollars every year in taxpayer financed subsides (later called the Musk tax on the poor to fund the hobbies of the filthy rich)

The second climate model cares nothing about 50yrs from now. Its task is modest, just a scientific version of the farmers almanac. This model tries to predict every daily high and low and rainfall for every day of next year, all around the world. If this model succeeds, farmers around the world will ship its creators buckets of cash because, by altering their crops and planting seasons to optimize to the predictions, they'll increase yields enough to end hunger worldwide... while drastically reducing irrigation costs and getting in one or two extra harvests every year, and not waste their time planting a crop doomed to fail. Farmers without access to irrigation will plant with confidence and dependably high yields, even in the most remote parts of the world.

Think of it, if you know you won't get enough rain for corn, you shift that field to something less thirsty. If you know you can count on rains late in the season, and that your first frost won't come until November 30th, that's an extra harvest right there. A harvest no farmer would ever risk today, because such a model does not yet exist.

But you see, climate scientists place all their efforts on the one that can't be tested for 50yrs, instead of the one that can lift staving people out of poverty around the world, but will get tested (debunked) every year.

A farmers almanac model, ironically enough, should be 50 times easier, 50 times less complex, and by reducing the need for irrigation and by making marginal lands farmable and by increasing production around the globe, this modest almanac model will double the carbon sequestration (more harvest = more CO2 removed) by simply sending out a calendar to every state with daily highs, lows, and rainfall clearly marked. It can achieve the goal of its over priced cousin... and make everyone rich in the process. It will lift a billion out of poverty by simply posting its predictions on line.

I can not overstate the irony here.

The makers of the "end of the world" computer model can literally end famine around the world while reducing CO2 and the need for irrigation by shifting their efforts to the farmers almanac model, BUT THEY CHOOSE NOT TOO, most likely because the almanac model will get tested every year, but predictions 50yrs out can never really be tested.

This is madness, but it is also where we find ourselves. Any time these EndOfTheWorld climate model scientists want to save the world, all they have to do is make a better farmers almanac. It's just that simple. But to date, nobody has made anything more reliable than that century old paperback.

==end of side note===

I am skeptical of a model that can predict 50yrs from now with an accuracy of +-0.1degree and zero margin of error.... yet can only predict two months from now with a 60% accuracy and even then, it's +-10 degrees every day. If you said 'it predicts a 2.1degree increase over 50yrs with a margin of error of +- 5 degrees,' I'd believe you, but would have zero motivation to do anything about it. So, for obvious --but credibility killing-- reasons, that 'margin of error' disclaimer is left out.

Sorry.

Models are not proof. Leftover winter ice is not proof. They are both suggestive, but not proof. Record highs and lows are not proof. A decade of "farmers almanac" perfect predictions would be credible, but nobody shouting "the sky is falling" has anything close to that.

Sorry.

3rd. If I wanted to scientifically get an accurate temperature of the room you are in to within two decimal points, it would be nearly impossible. A thermometer on the floor would be colder than one near the ceiling. The east window might be 10 degrees warmer than the one on the west, depending on sunshine and time of day. Near your TV and DVR it might be 17 degrees warmer than by the drafty door. Even inside the average 12x12 room, getting an accurate average of every 1.12 million cubic inches to within two decimal points would be nearly impossible... With a planet? Not a chance. 50 miles of atmosphere, churned by a 150mph jetstream, thunderstorms, mountains and trees as heatsinks and radiators, not to mention flocks of butterfly wings flapping every day. Ironically enough, probably the best way to measure the average temp of a room would be to take the temp of the furniture, not the air, something climate scientists ignore.

How many BTUs does asphalt radiate more than grass? We have asphalted the area of Texas, all solar-panel black... are you sure the warming is all coming from CO2? A tiny change in color of the oceans' (plants, plankton, oil, food coloring, iron, salt, ice, foam) can add up to ten degrees air temp change, are you sure the oceans are exactly the same color they always were? Have you bothered to add up the BTUs of all the powerplants in the world? It's not tiny. Still 100% sure the warming is entirely CO2? Burning 20 million barrels of oil a day is roughly 110 trillion BTUs by itself, if that helps.The ocean has millions of known volcanoes and thermal vents. Are you 100% sure none of the warming is from them? The variables are too many, the available data is infinitesimally small and based largely on human assumptions, the margins of error in the calculations are too high to make the output reliable, and the pricetag is too big for such a wild gamble. And lastly, it's not our money/future we're gambling with, it's the 1.2 billion poor who will shoulder 100% of the burden of the gamble (see attached link)

Maybe it is all CO2, and I'm ok with reducing our CO2 output when and if something cheaper comes along. And it will come along... But until then...

The cure may be far worse than the disease.

-------- pardon the extensive quoting but I'm away from a "real keyboard" right now and I wouldn't have said it any better anyway-------

http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/25/energy-poverty-is-much-worse-for-the-poo

Some 1.2 billion people do not have access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2016 report. About 2.7 billion still cook and heat their dwellings with wood, crop residues, and dung. In its main scenario for the trajectory of global energy consumption, the IEA projects that in 2040, half a billion people will still lack access to electricity and 1.8 billion will still be cooking and heating by burning biomass.

But what about climate change? Current renewable sources of energy are not technologically capable of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of energy poverty. Consequently, the Breakthrough writers see "no practical path to universal access to modern levels of energy consumption" that keeps the projected increase in global average temperature below the Paris Agreement on climate change goal of 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. This implies that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide will exceed 450 parts per million. They correctly point out that forcing poor people to forego economic development in order to prevent climate change is a "morally dubious proposition." They additionally observe that the wealth and technology produced by economic growth increases resilience to climatic extremes and other natural disasters. When bad weather encounters poverty , disaster ensues.

It is worth noting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's shared socioeconomic pathway narratives for the rest of the century include one, dubbed "SSP5," in which fossil fuels remain cheap, greenhouse gas concentrations more than triple, the average global temperature increases by nearly 4 degrees Celsius, and the rate of economic growth is high. Is that future a hell on earth? Not at all.

The "development first" SSP5 agenda results in the eradication of extreme poverty, greater gender equality, and universal access to education, safe drinking water, and modern energy before mid century, along with a strong build-up of developing countries' human and social capacity. "Lower socio-environmental challenges to adaptation result from attainment of human development goals, robust economic growth, highly engineered infrastructure with redundancy to minimize disruptions from extreme events, and highly managed ecosystems," notes the SSP report. In other words, people living in this economically robust scenario have greater incomes (up from the current average of around $10,000 to about $140,000 per capita in current dollars by 2100) and have access to much more advanced technologies with which to address whatever problems man-made climate change may throw at them.

"Lifting all of humanity out of energy poverty does increase the risk of catastrophic climate change impacts to some unknowable degree," concludes the Breakthrough Institute report. "But it is untenable morally and practically to insist that global climate change targets be balanced upon the backs of the poorest people on earth."

End of quoting

-----lastly-------

Trump saying "China plot" is like "Mexico is paying for the wall" nobody voting for him takes anything he says literally. Mexico may "pay for it" with a tax on remittances, tariffs, NAFTA2.0... But nobody is expecting Mexico to literally write a check or airdrop bundles of cash. His China comment is linguistic shorthand for who is profiting at our dubious benefit. Almost nothing he says can be taken literally, it's almost entirely figurative. Besides, everyone knows global warming is a scam invented by GE to sell windmills and natural gas peaking stations :)

Actually, now that I think about it, decades ago GE was struggling to con people into windmills, since for every megawatt of overpriced wind produced you have to, on average, 'back it up' by selling 3 megawatts of highly profitable natural gas. Wind, in a real world, is best considered 'supplemental' to gas until storage becomes affordable, both of which GE was struggling to sell before buying 1/3 of the US TV networks (NBC) and dedicating it to selling "global warming" for them. After buying NBC as their propaganda arm, GE now enjoys billions in federal subsidies to trick America into a dependency on gas.

To me, windmills are the "free iPhone" scam that locks you into a 5yr plan that costs $3000 more than the same plan if you had your own phone. Free energy windmills are the free iPhone of the energy sector that tricks you into lifetime dependency on their highly profitable gas turbine peaking stations. Plus, to get a megawatt of reliable power out of a gas plant, all you have to do is buy a gas plant. To get the same out of a windmill you have to buy a megawatt of windmill AND a megawatt of gas for backup, that's twice the profit to GE per megawatt of reliable 'capacity'. Win win $$.


I'm also 'confused' on the mechanics of a gas having a 'greenhouse' effect.

The greenhouse effect was best described to me with the following:

Fill a tub with cold water, make a pot of coffee, then pour half into the tub and the other half into a Ziploc bag and put the bag into the tub.

The coffee poured directly in cooled almost immediately because of its massive surface area rubbing against the cold water.

The Ziploc will stay warmer longer because of the greenhouse effect. By limiting the surface area of the two thermal bodies to the area of the bag, instead of the area of a puddle the half a pot of coffee might make if dumped on the ground, it dramatically changes the time it takes to bring both bodies to equilibrium.

This is the same "greenhouse effect" that lets a pound of snow melt in a tub faster than a one-pound block of ice. Each snowflake melts on contact because of its massive surface area, where the block is locked into 6 sides with a billionth the surface area.

Clouds have a clingy structure that can create a layer or barrier and thus do have a physical structure that complies to the greenhouse effect, where humid air does not and has no heat trapping effect. CO2 does not seem to form a layer or pockets that restrict thermal exchanges between air molecules so... It should not have any "blanketing" or trapping effect.

Industrially, CO2 is used as a thermal exchange "fluid", this means it is fantastic at moving heat from one surface to another, the opposite of a greenhouse.

CO2 is never used in Thermoses or between panes of glass in greenhouses to "trap in the heat". In fact, none of the "greenhouse gasses" are used to trap heat in anything that, well, needs heat trapped.

Fiberglass insulation works by slowing the movement of air, but it actually Loses efficiency when that air is replaced with CO2.

If I'm missing something on the mechanics... If CO2 does clump together and mechanically forms cloud-like layers let me know. If there are thermoses out there using CO2 to keep coffee warmer longer, I'll happily eat crow, but it hasn't happened yet.

Industrially, if you want two surfaces to exchange heat rapidly, you put CO2 between them (methane works fantastically too). If you want them to exchange heat slowly, you use nitrogen or krypton. Why would that change in the atmosphere? I could go on with more examples of where CO2 is used for its properties that are exactly opposite to 'trapping heat' but I think I made the point.

I'm skeptical, to put it mildly.

But, all this said, I have yet to meet any fellow skeptic that suggests burning tires are good for you, or pumping mercury into the air is good for your skin. I have never met a skeptic that thinks burning fuels is as good for the air as taking vitamins is for your health. To the contrary, all the skeptics I meet think burning fuels is like smoking, not a healthy choice, but far from the end of the world even if almost everyone did it.

Environmentalist are shocked by hearing this, they actually believe people and businesses are actively trying to destroy the planet and their customers, intentionally. I have met environmentalists that believe forced sterilization and mandatory abortions are legitimate tools for combating climate change, one even considers genocide acceptable in the name of the climate. Every year, an environmentalist group sets fire to a SUV dealership. They do these thing and believe these things because they have lost the ability to be skeptical.

Science used to be the home of the skeptic. Being skeptical of everything used to be the scientific approach. There was a time the outcome of playing a video game wasn't considered 'proof' of anything... and computer climate models are, like it or not, just another computer game we're all supposed to take seriously.

Monday, November 14, 2016

nukes nukes nukes and other myths

I love science fiction... but unfortunately far too many scientists have based their theories on fiction instead of facts.

Since the 80s, the world has been bombarded by idiots that spout such nonsense as 'we have enough nukes to destroy the world 1,000 times over'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3917480/Could-survive-nuclear-winter-Shocking-video-reveals-black-skies-global-famine-killing-frosts-wipe-millions.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

The latest suggest that, with 'computer models' they have proven that the world would end if just 100 Hiroshima size bombs went off.

Those are around 15 kilotons. 15x100 is 1,500 kilotons. Since a megaton is 1,000 kilotons (in the metric system too) 1,500 kilo anything is 1.5 mega everything.

1.5 megatons is on the low end of a hydrogen bomb. One hydrogen bomb. The largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated in the air was by Russia called the 'Tsar bomb'. How big? It was roughly 30 megatons, or roughly 2,000 Hiroshima bombs, twenty times as big as what the computer model experts demands would end life as we know it.

So, a single bomb detonated over fifty years ago has already proven that their model is obviously, irrefutably wrong.

But...it...doesn't...stop...there...

Los Vegas is within sight of where they tested (by exploding them above ground) roughly 300 nukes of all kinds, all of them MUCH bigger than the two dropped on Japan. Since the 40s, well over 1,000 nukes have been detonated, most above ground, almost all of them orders of magnitude more powerful than... You get the point, right?

But the stupidity persists. The fear mongering and hysteria over nukes persists.

And, like clockwork, we get models and reports that 'prove' that the sky is falling. Well, don't fall for it.

Entirely too many scientist make models based on fiction, not well-known fact. Willful ignorance, because they had to have looked at these above ground detonations in order to develop these models.

We have, already, detonated more than enough warheads to end life everywhere... and nothing happened at all. This is not to suggest that nukes are some sort of health food, just it is not and never has been the end of the world. Hiroshima is a highly populated state, today, with a barely detectable increase in cancer.

Nukes are not bullets. They may be weapons of mass destruction, but they are really not mass produced. They're not Fords rolling off an assembly line, they're more like science projects or custom built homes. They're all a little different, a little unique. That's why approximately 5-10 percent of them were 'test fired' outside of Vegas or other places to ensure quality controls were always maintained.

We did it.
Russia did it.
China did it.

All the nuclear powers live-test their new designs, and they test lots of them. They test and detonate and adjust and test and detonate until they feel confident that they can rely on them going off and not drop a dud.

Space X had to test lots of engines, costing millions, before anyone trusted them enough to put/bet a payload on it.

Common sense has been driven out of science. Reports like that should be a SNL skit not "news".

It plays well in fiction, and yelling the sky is falling or the world is coming to an end will bring in the federal funds... but that doesn't make it science.

It makes it fiction.

It also makes me doubt climate science models too, but that's a separate issue.

Friday, November 11, 2016

My notes on the Trump victory

Love him or hate him, what Trump did on the 8th was historic. He arguably broke a bigger glass ceiling than Hillary ever could... one most of us didn't even know was there.

First, he defeated two dynasties in a single election cycle. He destroyed Jeb Bush - probably forever - on the national stage. And that ain't small potatoes, that's Huuuge. Even more impressively, he destroyed Jeb even though Jeb out spent him 100 to 1. On top of that, Jeb was the party's 'chosen one' (much as Hillary was) and Jeb was destroyed.

Destroyed.

Jeb never got over 5%.

Destroyed. As in humiliated beyond recovery.

Trump then walked through a river of fire without getting burned alive.

The DNC literally wrote questions for reporters to ask during debates. Reporters literally printed articles written by Hillary staff on command, word for word. 95% of all reporters/editors that donated money, gave it to Hillary, and not one of them revealed it to their audience. 95%, and several were moderators. ALL of the mainstream media parent companies gave to Hillary. All of them. CNN, ABC, NBC, Google, FaceBook, Twitter, GE, FOX... all of them. Hillary broke a record for receiving money from hedgefunds and banks and corporations. Her super PACs out spent Trump 10 to 1. Hillary out spent Trump 2 to 1.

Out spent, entire networks aligned against him, with absolutely NO GROUND GAME at all, he still beat the Clinton dynasty.

He beat a Bush and a Clinton in the same election cycle and they BOTH out spent him. And by "out spent," I mean by a lot. Hillary by 2 to 1 and Bush 100 to 1. This could easily be the formula that removes money from politics forever.

This simply has never happened before. Ever. That means there IS a way to get elected to the highest office in the land without 'selling out'. It has just been done.

It just happened, and half of America missed it.

Add to that, that a very significant portion of the Republican elite were actively working against Trump, all very publicly, something that has never happened before on such a huge scale. Unprecedented.

Never in the history of the party of Lincoln has this many... Two Republican presidents and two failed candidates... All four voted against their party. That has never happened, ever... Not even Nixon had to overcome such a thing. Trump was literally betrayed by his own party... And he still won.

That is a glass ceiling that has never been broken ever before. And, like him or hate him, he just showed the world how it is done. And he did it without 'big money', massive super PACs, or a sea of dark money. In fact, he ran 1/4 the TV ads Hillary did.

It was not pretty, the first one to run through a glass ceiling is going to get cut up, badly, but he proved it can be done. And how to do it.

I'm talking to you, Gary Johnson, were you taking notes?

Prior to Trump, you could be the president only if the elites of a party 'allowed' it to happen. Today, that rule no longer applies.

Are you taking notes, Rand Paul?

Two dynasties, a fraction of the money, a tiny fraction of the TV ads, a tiny super PAC, almost all the media, banks, hedgefunds, and corporations aligned against him, with the elites of BOTH parties against him, with virtually no ground game at all, zero political experience, and to win and win this big is... it's paradigm shattering.

Unprecedented.

Huuuge.


Were you taking notes Burnie Sanders? Because this is how it's done. This is what it looks like.

It ain't pretty. It's dog-fight ugly. It's like watching a honeybadger fight a pit of rattle snakes. It ain't for the faint hearted, and it was damned sure going to get real ugly real fast. But if you dropped a kitten in a pit of snakes, it would have had no chance at all. With a honeybadger... well, it can win, but it won't be pretty and you damn sure won't want to keep it inside like a pet when it's over.

But if you have a pit of rattle snakes that you need cleaned out, don't bet on a basket of kittens or another rattler, put your money on a honeybadger, it might just be able to pull it off.

I don't think there's many Trump supporters that thought they were voting to send a cute little kitten to Washington, a town infested with rattle snakes like no other. That's why all his hissing and snarling and random violent attacks didn't put them off of Trump. They saw him for the honeybadger he always was. They saw him as the honeybadger they wanted him to be.

Now, I don't know if Trump will 'drain the swamp' any, and frankly, nobody does. I don't know if Trump is a racist, a bigot, or a xenophobe, and EVERYONE that tells you that they know he is, is lying. Because without a lie detector or psychic abilities, it isn't possible to truly know what is in the heart of someone else. Everything we THINK we know is entirely speculation at best... Rumor at worst.


Let me deviate for a second:

I knew someone that told the filthiest racist jokes I've ever heard... and he was the ONLY ONE who stopped on the side of the road, in the rain, to help a black family whose car had broken down.

If you went only by what he said or what you heard him say, he was more racist than the Klan. But on that rainy day, he stood in the rain and tried to help a black family out, then gave them a ride to where they were going, about 5 miles out of his way.

He told another racist joke after he dropped them off. But does that make him a racist? I don't know his heart any better than I know Trump's, but I can tell you that the last man on earth I would have guessed would help a black family out was the man that told the most racist jokes I've ever heard. And to them, to that family, on that rainy day, that racist white man wasn't racist at all.

Should they have refused the help and refused the ride, if they had known? Would their life have been better if they had?

Do actions speak louder than words?

Assuming that Trump is as deplorable as people believe, does that mean he is irredeemably so?

I don't know for sure, I'm not psychic, but I'd be willing to bet that the same man that opened his first golf course to Jews (unspeakable at the time) is someone who is redeemable, whatever his sins.

There are entire black communities with their collective hoods up, in the rain, waiting for some good liberal to stop and give them a hand. They've been waiting for someone to stop or for the rain to let up... for decades.

They've been waiting for a very long time.

Trump is that coming car, his signal light is on, and it looks like he's slowing down.

He may even be able to help... If someone doesn't demand he show them an ACLU card first.

Trump got more of the Latino and black vote than Romney did. It sounds like he might be getting that chance to help.


####

I'm deeply bothered by the riots from the 'loveTrumpsHate' group. There has been millions of dollars in property damage already, and several fatalities. This is unacceptable.

It is unacceptable as a society and it is making Hillary supporters look... like spoiled bigots. Bigots against conservatives.

Republicans are supposed to be 'the home of racists', yet there were NO riots when Obama won. None either time.

It pains me to point this out.

It pains me, because the Democrat party IS better than this. They are not spoiled children, they know better than this.

In the movie Forest Gump, Forest is named after a founder of the KKK, a well known Democrat. 99.9% of all Klansmen ever to run or win office have run as Democrats. They didn't just call themselves democrats like David Duke does, the klansmen won in democrat primaries in landslides, often unopposed.

And the south, where I live, became much less racist as it became much less Democrat and more Republican. As republicans took over counties, fire hoses were reserved for fires, not flesh.

I like to reject that kind of insinuation, coincidences happen all the time.

The Democrats stopped running Klansmen for office within two years of the first legal abortion clinic opening in Harlem. Coincidence. Today, Half of all black babies are aborted in NY - for a profit - by one of the Democrat party's biggest donors.

Hillary's mentor was Grand cyclops Senator Byrd, the last openly Klan senator in congress. And Bill Clinton's mentor was Fulbright, another Klansman. Obama's reverend Wright was as anti-jew as they come. That makes all three as equally racist as Trump, and it makes Trump as equally redeemable as all three of them. And if it doesn't, it means you might be a bigger bigot than all of them.

I take Trump at his word that he is pro-life because 'black lives matter too'. I think this country would be better off if he gets his chance to prove it, not by his words, but through his actions.

I doubt it will be pretty, in fact, I can promise it will get messy, and you will get embarrassed at times. Trump is like a 3yr old that says whatever comes to mind. It's mostly honest, sometimes funny or embarrassing, and every now and then, it's humbling and profound.

Politicians like to be judged exclusively by their words, not their deeds. Trump is obviously not a politician, and even as president, nobody really expects him to be 'a politician'.

He's asking to be judged only by his deeds, he's asking us to... mostly... ignore his words. His voters have already agreed to that.

He is the first honeybadger to offer to go to Washington, and most of us know it promises not to be pretty to watch.

But maybe, just maybe, he can get the job done where no one else could. A $100 million contribution could make a normal politician sell their soul, the most it will get from Trump will be a thank you form letter.

Campaign contributions are the poison that turns politicians into snakes, and we're about to find out if they mean the same thing to Trump... A man that took a billion dollar loss and just 'walked it off' and made a few more.


I said it months ago, but it needs repeating.

The most qualified person running, by far, was Gary Johnson. He was easily the safest bet in the last 8 years. As a two term governor he had the same qualifications as Bill Clinton, Bush 43, and Ronald Reagan, the three strongest economies in recent time. That's about as good as it gets, if 'qualifications' are predictive of anything.

Hillary, as a reelected senator, "co-president", and secretary of state; her qualifications most closely matched Bush 41 (CIA head, VP, Senate, WWII), Ford, and Nixon, none of which make for something to brag about.

Trump was the biggest gamble.

But the electorate knew Johnson had no chance, Hillary at best would be another Nixon/Ford/WorstBush, so, they made the most rational choice on hand.

That left exactly what happened.

If you couldn't tell, I was in the Johnson camp, for the record. I also voted for Perot twice and would do so again, zero regrets.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Anthony Weiner top 10 list

Top ten reasons Anthony Weiner checked into a sex-addiction clinic:

10: He found out that's where all the nymphomaniacs are.

9: They have free wifi and unlimited porn.

8: Their message therapy comes with complimentary happy endings.

7: It's the only place where he can talk dirty to everyone without getting in trouble.

6: It's around the corner from a whore house.

5: It's where all the fashionable politicians go just before their wife's best friend's election.

4: Someone texted him a picture of Vince Foster... By mistake.

3: He was told it was clothing optional and he was free to take as many selfies as he wanted... As long as he didn't post any of them.

2: John Podesta wrote him a blank check.

1: He always wanted to spend a week with Charlie Sheen :)

Friday, October 7, 2016

What does 'more qualified' really mean anyway? #Trump #Hillary

"Nobody is more qualified" than Hillary.

Nobody.

Obama had only been a senator for a few weeks, so clearly he was unqualified.

Bush43 had never been out of his state, so clearly less qualified.

Bill Clinton was just as unqualified as Bush 43.

But Bush 41 was far MORE qualified. CIA, VP for 8yrs, tons of public service. Decades worth.

Nixon too was far more qualified than Hillary, tons more public service and government experience.

Ford was also more qualified than Hillary.

Reagan was far less qualified as a mere actor and governor. Same with Carter.

So, Nixon, Ford, and Bush 41 are more qualified than Hillary, and can anyone say they were the best presidents? Thought not.

And the least qualified were a mixed bag, having both the best and worst presidents of all time.

So, is Hillary more Qualified than Trump?

Does it prove anything? Does being 'the most qualified" mean anything?

We are 20 trillion dollars in debt. Trump was once so poor, that EVERY bum on the street was one billion dollars richer than he was... and he turned that around with a vengeance and without a bailout!

Qualified?

Which qualification means the most to you?

Sunday, October 2, 2016

How solar will crash the grid.

I love solar... for calculators, radios, and lots of other gadgets, it's perfect. But for the grid, it's suicidal.

http://www.breitbart.com/california/2016/10/01/californias-renewable-energy-grid-on-verge-of-crisis

There's a reason that articles like this peg the 'tipping point' of solar and wind at around 15%, and that's because 15% is almost exactly the 'rounding error' that grid managers use to keep the lights on.

The average device (TV, refrigerator, etc) is 110-120 volts, but it will tolerate and still function on as much as 130volts and as little as 105. That's where this 15% tipping point lies.

It idea that the 'grid' can 'buy' power from rooftop solar is a horrific myth. While technically true, due entirely to laws of man, it violates just about every law of physics known. A rooftop solar system simply does not produce enough power to go more than a block or two down the grid... and it is dangerously stupid of Grid managers to even let it.

What is actually happening is, like Trump, grid managers simply write off the panels as a loss and ignore it because it's nearly impossible (laws of physics) to make it useful.

However, when it gets over 15%, it becomes 'weaponized' green power, capable of destroying the grid and your neighbors' electronics.

Net metering was a horrible scam by politicians ignoring the laws of physics in order to pander to campaign contributors... par for the course with politics.  

Sunday, September 11, 2016

held hostage...

Two hours ago, I was held hostage in my bathroom. For a while, I was sure I was never going to get out of it alive.

It still makes me shiver, just thinking about it.

It all started when... when...

When a big spider crawled into the doorway, blocking any hope of escape. I sprayed it with the nearest bottle of cleaner, and instead of retreating, it charged!

I quickly found myself standing on the toilet with an empty bottle of TileX, looking for anything else.

It  charge through a wall of shaving cream, forcing me to retreat to the tub, where I grabbed the extra-tears shampoo and let him have it.

It hid behind the toilet, where I knew it could only be setting up for an ambush.

And so the standoff remained for the next twenty minutes.

In my twenties, I killed bigger spiders with a napkin. Now, two decades and some change later, I find myself hiding in a bathtub... from a spider that died at least ten minutes ago.

...

Speaking of being held hostage by bugs, BrainDead has been holding me captive this season too :)


http://m.imdb.com/title/tt4877736/

Saturday, September 3, 2016

holy exploding batteries Batman!

Holy exploding batteries Batman!

My laptop had one of those Sony recalled exploding lithium ion batteries back around 2002. Fortunately, it works fine without a battery (just works like a very light weight desktop and always has to be plugged in to work)

Unfortunately, Samsung smartphones and hoverboards don't work at all if you remove their batteries, and in the case of phones, most are hard wired in such a way that you can't remove the batteries at all.

Now comes a short physics lesson.

The faster you charge or discharge a battery, the hotter it gets... And the hotter it gets, the quicker it dies  and the shorter its overall life. This is nearly a universal law of physics and thus far has never been violated.

I'll give you an example. Take a car battery. We call it dead when it can't start a car anymore. But more often than not, even if the battery is too dead to start the car, you can still listen to the radio while waiting for the tow truck to pick you up. In general, a 'dead' car battery will continue to start a riding mower for years after it's worthless for a car.

If you try to recharge an old battery too fast, you'll kill it for sure. But, if you trickle charge it, generally it'll live a few extra years.

If your car is 'out of tune' or hard to start, that'll probably take a year or two off of a typical battery's life. If it starts almost instantly, it'll add a few years to the battery's life. This is because of the near universal law of resistance. Ohm's law. Basically, the harder you work something, the hotter it gets, and the shorter it's life.

Back to the exploding phones.

All phone companies are racing to get the 'fastest' recharge and the longest battery, both for good reason. But the faster you charge (or discharge) a battery, the more 'explosive' it gets, as per the laws of physics.

Cordless drill motors and other power tools solved this by upping the voltage. This sounds counter intuitive so let me explain.

All rechargeable batteries are made up of smaller batteries, in this case 1.2volt batteries, generally 'C' sized. By going from 5 (1.2x5=6 volts) to 15 (1.2x15=18volt) you triple the overall power, but keep the same charging time, thus, you never burn-up the batteries.

You can even cut the recharge time by 2/3rds by keeping the original wattage, essentially switching from 'C' to 'AAA' ..IE, a 6volt drill (5x C sized) that takes an hour to recharge will work as hard as an 18volt (15x 'AAA') drill that charges in 20 minutes, or, the 18volt (15xC) drill that takes an hour to charge will work 3 times harder than a 6volt(5xC) drill that charges in an hour) but in neither case do they try to charge a cell made up of the larger C sized batteries in the quicker time it takes to charge the wimpy AAAs.

This is the same cell-sizing trick they use in the Tesla and the Volt and why they have insanely dangerous 400-600 volt battery packs, it's in an effort to reduce recharge time without melting the batteries.

Unfortunately, this trick does not work with phones... yet.

So, with phones, they are adding bigger batteries (at the same voltage) and trying to cook them faster in an effort to bend the laws of physics... long enough to get the phone out of warrantee. In essence they are going from AAs to Ds and trying to charge them faster than AAAs. There are ways around this, but they are very inefficient or dangerous.

Once, I left jumper cables on a car too long, I got lazy and ran inside for a cup of coffee and to warm up. Both batteries in both cars exploded. This is the inherent danger in one of the 'solutions' phone companies might choose.

Tip

If you have a 2 amp fast charger and a 1 amp slow charger, your phone battery will last longer (the number of years you can keep your phone, not actual talk hours per charge) using the slower one. But, if you just can't wait and buy a new phone every year anyway, go ahead and use the 'lightning' cable.

Friday, August 19, 2016

Milwaukee

...The laws you have to obey and those you don't....

Milwaukee reminds me of my first driving lesson with my dad.

When I was just learning to drive, we pulled up to an intersection while a dump truck was coming the other way. My father asked me, "Who has the right of way here, son?"

I quickly quoted what I had learned from drivers ED about the person to the right of blah blah blah when my father stopped me, pointed at the truck, and said, "He always has the right of way... by at least twenty tons. You may have the right of way according to some book... but that only matters if you survive the wreck, and against a dump truck you have no chance... the laws of physics trump the laws of man every single time."

There are two kinds of laws in this world. The laws of man and the laws of physics. You can break the laws of man any time you want, and you'll often get away with it. But you can't break the laws of physics... not even once.

Everywhere around the world there are laws giving pedestrians the right of way at certain times and places... and tens of thousands of pedestrians get maimed and killed by cars that did NOT have the right of way... cars that were clearly in the wrong.

Every single time a car meets a pedestrian, whether the pedestrian has the right of way or not, the pedestrian loses. The laws of man give pedestrians (an illusion of) the right of way that the laws of physics never do.

It's simple math. When one ton of steel moving twenty mile an hour hits a person, the person always loses. Period.

Ferguson.

Milwaukee.

Running from cops is like crossing a street without looking both ways first. You might get away with it dozens of times, but the first time you don't may end your life, and it won't matter at all if you were right or wrong when you're dead.

When you run from the police, black-white-young-old-man-woman-dog-bear, you are forfeiting a trial by a judge and a jury of your peers, and are instead insisting on a split-second final ruling by a man with a gun and the authority to use it at his discretion. It does not matter who you are, from the minute he stops you until the minute he lets you go, your life is in his hands just as assuredly as it is in the hands of a dump truck driver coming up at an intersection. The truck driver can choose to run the light, or his brakes can fail, and everyone except him loses.

Running from the police is no different than running a red light, j-walking on a blind curve, or trying to beat the train across the tracks... it's a stupid risk nobody should ever be encouraged to take.

It's about as useful to argue with a dump truck as it is to argue with a cop. The place to argue, the only place arguing is even remotely useful (white, black, rich, poor... this rule is universal) is in front of a judge and a jury.

OJ did not win in a Bronco, he won in a courtroom... and that was the only place he could win. The audacity of the idea that you can ever 'win' against a cop on the street is like believing a pedestrian can win against a car... but winning in court happens every day.

No pedestrian likes yielding to all cars all the time, or yielding to every truck, tractor trailer, or train simply because it's  bigger. But it's what you do if you want to live, because even if the dump truck is entirely in the wrong, you still lose. It simply isn't a battle that can be won. The laws of physics always win against the laws of man. And guns are ruled by physics, exclusively, with no appeals available to a higher court.

Calling the train racist won't keep it from running over you.

It isn't racism, it's physics trumping the laws of man. The vast majority of these blacklivesmatter events could have been won in court, had they not forfeited that right in favor of forcing a split-second sudden-death ruling by a man with a gun.

Every pedestrian that wants to live yields the right of way, all the time, even when they are right and the car is wrong. Because in the middle of the street the car always wins... the cop always wins. Don't like that? Nobody does, but it has nothing to do with racism, it's the laws of physics. Simple as that. And no laws of man will ever change it.

Sadly, what my father taught me about driving and about life will never be on any DMV test. Stop signs and lights have never stopped a single car anywhere in the world, ever. Brakes do. Being right or running fast has never made anyone bullet proof.

Being right does not mean you get to live, being safe does. And your safety is in your hands... until you stupidly surrender it to a dump truck driver or a police officer.

We fool ourselves into thinking that a law of physics can be bent to the will of the laws of man, but the simple truth is that no amount of laws will ever really give a pedestrian the right of way over a car, a car the right of way over a truck or a train, or a citizen the right of way over a cop.

Like it or not, laws of physics do not bend to the laws of man.

Ever.

Period.

There is no protest, or march, or supreme court ruling that will change it. That simply is not how the laws of physics work. Shooting at cops makes as much sense as cars cutting off dump trucks in some twisted desire to make the dump trucks more sensitive to the cars' insecurities.

But lives can be saved.

Attitudes can be changed.

And I'm not talking about the attitudes of dump trucks, I'm talking about the attitudes of pedestrians. I'm talking about the attitudes of those who have everything to lose... and so much to gain by simply respecting the laws of physics as much as the laws of man.

We teach children to look both ways before crossing the street, not because cars are racist and hunting down children for sport, but because cars can easily kill pedestrians in the blink of an eye or a misinterpreted second.

My father had 'the talk' with me too. Cops are the dump trucks or the trains of the road. Stay off the tracks, look both ways, never assume their brakes work, wait until they come to a stop first. Always yield. Always. It's not optional.

The laws of physics are not optional.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

veggie factory

Ok, I've said this before... back when I wrote Patent Mine to be exact, but it's worth saying it again.

While I'm a fan of these 'indoor greenhouses' they almost always are used wrong.

As in the article
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jboyd/2016/07/28/can-next-generation-veggie-factories-finally-grow-a-profit/2/#598e21222896
an enormous amount of energy is wasted running the air conditioning to keep these indoor greenhouses running efficiently... ie, lights make heat, even LED lights.

But heat is only a bad thing during summer (a time when you can grow plants outside making indoors redundant!!!)

Back then, I said (Worth repeating) that the ideal indoor greenhouse would run during end of fall trough the beginning of spring... as the house heating system.

See, plants are very shade tolerant, they can go without light for a few days if needed. So if they come on when you need to add heat to a house or building, then turn off an hour latter, plants think of it like clouds. No big deal.

But growing fresh vegetables during the winter is a huge bonus, and when you consider that you can grow a few thousand heads of lettuce AND heat your home/building on roughly the same amount of electricity you would have spent JUST heating your home anyway... it's really a no brainer.

Most homes have space in basements or crawl spaces if you wanted to do a 'retrofit' or, think of a 'space-heater' model that looks like a book shelf with blackout curtains so it won't keep you up at night if it has to come on.

The problem is people want to get rich selling the lettuce at 2 or 3 times what it costs to import from 3,000 miles away and that's the only economic model they can see. When instead, the 'money' is in selling winter heaters that grow food and clean the air for free.

But then, I'm just a SciFi author, no need to listen to me :)  

Sunday, July 3, 2016

freedom pop review

In keeping with the Stephen King rule ('You can only call yourself a writer if you can pay at least one bill with your royalties') I have had to adjust my budget.

Gone is my expensive $25/month cellphone plan that worked beautifully, and in is my new plan $2.49/month.

This new plan is from FreedomPop and, as the price would suggest, it has a lot of wonk and glitchy built into the plan. The voice calls are over the internet which means they can be glitchy, have gaps, have lost parts, and 'static' when they don't work (think first gen Skype on dialup), but when they do work it's as good as the old plan.

The phone itself has locked up and rebooted twice in the last few months, a little unnerving but acceptable. This is kind of typical of Android phones, so, I'm not exactly worried yet.

And, though it says it offers texting, the texting is also not real texting but Internet texting, and not really dependable. This is not a big deal as I have switched back to emails instead.

The cons:
Texting and voice exists, but are not ready for prime time. The app that lets you use them has to be 'disabled' or blocked to keep the app from burning through a month's worth of data in the first 2 weeks. This means that you can send texts and make voice calls, but not receive them in practice.

Pro:
The price is fantastic.

You get 500 megs of data per month, and if you do NOT use the phone to make phone calls or text then 500 megs a month of surfing for $2.49 is an unbelievably good deal.

The $2.49 is technically for a voice mail box that lets people leave a message so that, even though nobody can 'call me' on my phone (because I block the app), they can leave me a message and I can call them back with the phone later. You can go absolutely free if you want to.

They do offer a plan for $9/month that does 200min of voice the old fashion way, but that's $70 a year and, when you are an indie author you are in extreme save mode all the time.

For me, the 500megs of data is golden. I had been making due with 250 megs for the last 5 years, so this is a doubling for me.

freedom pop review

In keeping with the Stephen King rule ('You can only call yourself a writer if you can pay at least one bill with your royalties') I have had to adjust my budget.

Gone is my expensive $25/month cellphone plan that worked beautifully, and in is my new plan $2.49/month.

This new plan is from FreedomPop and, as the price would suggest, it has a lot of wonk and glitchy built into the plan. The voice calls are over the internet which means they can be glitchy, have gaps, have lost parts, and 'static' when they don't work (think first gen Skype on dialup), but when they do work it's as good as the old plan.

The phone itself has locked up and rebooted twice in the last few months, a little unnerving but acceptable. This is kind of typical of Android phones, so, I'm not exactly worried yet.

And, though it says it offers texting, the texting is also not real texting but Internet texting, and not really dependable. This is not a big deal as I have switched back to emails instead.

The cons:
Texting and voice exists, but are not ready for prime time. The app that lets you use them has to be 'disabled' or blocked to keep the app from burning through a month's worth of data in the first 2 weeks. This means that you can send texts and make voice calls, but not receive them in practice.

Monday, May 30, 2016

irony

Irony:

A few weeks ago, my mother discovered I had downed several trees and demanded that I promptly cut them up to fit her fireplace... a reasonable request unless you are a woman just 2 years recovered from a $200,000 back surgery.

Me 'I'm not cutting up heavy logs fro you to chance ruining your back again.'

Irony... Today, I decide to wrestle the big logs into the woods as a kind of Summer cleanup... and threw out my back.

Last 3 hours, flat on my back on a heating pad because 'I didn't want to cut them into smaller pieces'

ReLearning lessons you already know is painful. :)

Monday, April 25, 2016

Where's book 8 ??!

Question: "Yeah yeah, the links are 'cute' and stuff, but, really, where's book 8 (Quantum of Souls) already!!"
Long story short, 3 pairs of prescription reading glasses...
Long story longer...
Almost 20 years ago (late 90's), I was considering trying my hand at programming again. I had lots of success with it as a child, but things in the computer world had changed since the 80's when I last sat behind a keyboard, so I decided to take a few classes and find out just where I stood.
If it was going to take thousands and thousands of dollars to get caught up, I'd probably take a pass. But I'd only know if I sank a toe in the water.
Late 90's that's exactly what I did. The programming wasn't too hard, and I was very enthusiastic... at first. But by the end of the year, I was hating it and I couldn't figure out why.
In retrospect, I found out that I was printing a ton of things out, and that should have been a clue. But at the time, it wasn't.
I was blind to it.
In the early days of classes, it was nothing to spend 8-12 hours a day pounding away at the keyboard. By the end of the year, it made me depressed to even turn the damn computer on.
I figured it was just that my heart wasn't in it. Coding, itself, was really not that hard, I kept telling myself, but I just couldn't get 'into it'.
So I took a chance and decided to try writing again. I had written a 'version' of Houdini scientist in the 11th grade and so I decided to, obviously, skip over 3 books and start my new writing adventures with "The Heredity of Hummingbirds" (book 4) on my brand new Compaq laptop.
About halfway through it, I was dealing with crippling depression and headaches, but I powered through, then started on "Mourning after Dawn" (Book 5).
Time to backtrack just a little.
Color blind people don't know on their own that they are color blind.
Nearsighted people don't know that the world looks different to everyone else.
And I didn't know that I was color blind until a state fair around the age of ten, or that I was dyslexic until my last year of high school, or that I was hypersensitive to back lit screens common to all phones, tvs, and laptops. It took me three years to figure out my hypersensitivity to screens.
On 5-23-2003 NEC decided to dump their 'golf pro' laptops called the Versa Daylite. It was $1,000 more expensive than all other laptops in its class, and came with a dull, tiny 10.1" screen that the market hated... but that I needed because it had a back light that you could turn off.
This is the difference between an iPad and a Kindle with the e-ink 'paper' screen. If you want to read for an hour, an iPad will do, but if you want to read for 12 hours a day, every day of the week, 9 out of 10 eyes will thank you for using the Kindle with the e-ink and no back light.
It didn't dawn on me until a power failure when I used the laptop screen (a regular one, not the NEC) as a flashlight. It lit the room bright enough to read a newspaper at 20 feet. Most phones come with a flashlight app that turns to screen bright white.
I have a box of florescent and LED lights that I never use because the flicker or spectrum of the light from them gives me headaches. Most people don't have this problem, but I do.
Most people are not color blind, but I am.
And most people are not dyslexic, but I am (mildly).
Now, 2014, quantum of souls started out fast, I was on schedule to have it done in a year, then I hit a wall.
My NEC crashed, the screen has a bunch of scratches, and the power supply died.
But those are just annoying excuses.
My real problem, the one my color blind eyes couldn't see, was that my eyes were going on me.
Which, sad as it seems, was far from obvious.
I can see the screen just fine.
I can see the screen on my phone just fine (I just can't stand looking at it for more than an hour a day).
In fact, last month when I got my first eye test in 20 years, my eyesight had actually improved, according to the numbers. So I was entirely befuddled as to why I couldn't seem to concentrate or focus when writing.
But it turned out that my left eye was the only one that could see the screen, when before 2014, both eyes could see the screen. Dollar store reading glasses had helped (in 2014) but just barely.
Right in the middle of the book, my ability to see the screen (what mattered most) had all but vanished.
I needed 3 pairs of reading glasses, with 3 unique prescriptions.
1 for reading the phone or books.
1 for reading a laptop, and a third for reading desktop screens.
(And a fourth for driving, watching movies, or tv, but I'm really nearly 20/20 with that, so I just couldn't believe I had eye problems)
I can see some colors, but not most colors, so I had no clue I was colorblind (technically, colorblind is black and white where color deficient, me, is some colors).
I could easily use a regular tablet, laptop, or desktop screen for up to an hour without feeling ill, so because it wasn't immediate, it took me an incredibly long time to put two and two together.
And my dyslexia is very mild, just bad enough to make editing books more difficult than it ordinarily would be.
Bottom line, with a little luck, hopefully I'll finish it this year.
$6.95 for a pair of prescription reading glasses makes all the difference in the world.
For those really curious.
OD    OS
1      0.75 SP
-.5    -.75 Cyc
62    110  Axis

Monday, February 15, 2016

Climate change is not a joke!!

A climate scientist, a politician, and a fifth grader are asked to get the temperature of a glass of water.

The politician consults his richest campaign donors and reports their preferred (most profitable) choice. In a pinch, he'll even poll the audience for the answer.

The climate scientist takes a hundred readings of the air above and around the cup, enters them into a dozen computer models, then reports the average of those results.

The fifth grader sticks the thermometer into the water, gives it a stir, and reads off the number.


Sadly, this joke is not as far from the truth as it should be.

Hundreds of years of weather data has given us unprecedented accuracy at predicting storms and deciding between shorts and jackets, but the idea that it is even remotely useful at determining if or how much heat is being trapped (by greenhouse gasses) has as much value as measuring the air above and around a cup.

If there was evidence of heat being trapped by the atmosphere, it won't be found in the 14 pounds per square inch of rapidly churning air above the ground, but in the first 14-100 pounds per square inch of the ground beneath it (where nobody is looking for it).

When you want to know if the water in the cup is getting hotter or cooling off, you don't ask a politician or measure the air above the cup...

This is not to say that climate science is not a legitimate science, it just that its predictive value doesn't extend much beyond a choice between shorts and jackets.

Take a breath, calm your fears, the world will not be ending tomorrow, even though All Gore won a Nobel Prize for predicting it would nearly a decade ago.


Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Trump is a live grenade in the hands of a battered wife.

Trump is a live grenade in the hands of a battered wife. Nobody believes it's the right tool for the job, but the police (tea party, occupy wall street) did nothing to stop the abuse that escalates every year, and she and the country are desperate for any kind of relief.

The left tried reasoning with their political class through occupy and black lives, the right with the tea party, only to see the political class of both parties double down on their abuse and misuse of the country.

Ted Cruise, Rand Paul, and Sanders are like good divorce lawyers and marriage counselors that we all know the abusive husband won't listen to or pay for. (Ask Cuccinelli about how the party can tank a Cruise or a Paul or a Sanders, something that can't be done with a Trump grenade)

Reasoning is out.

All that's left is the grenade.

It's not the right tool for the job, we all know the mess will be horrendous, but for the sake of the kids playing outside, it might be time to pull the pin and have an end to the endless abuse.

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Headline "GLOBAL WARMING LA Methane Leak Spews 1,200 Tons of Gas Daily"

Ironically, PATRICK J. KIGER, who wrote the story for Discovery, may have just scientifically proven that their is no such thing as a greenhouse gas and not even know it.

Taking a step back, according to greenhouse gas theory, methane is 1,000 times more powerful than CO2. This has complete scientific consensus and is the basis for 100% of all computer models.

And until last month, there had been no way to prove it one way or the other. The only proof that greenhouse gasses even existed at all has always resided inside computer models.

Question: what is the difference between a science fiction author and a theoretical physicist? They both write fiction, but only the author knows it is fiction (they both have about an equal chance of being disproven).

Scientifically speaking, you can NOT prove a theory, but you can disprove one through experimentation, and every time you disprove a theory, science moves one step forward.

Now, nobody in their right mind would pump 1,200 tons of methane (1,000 times more greenhousy than CO2) into the air as an experiment. But that's exactly what happened by accident. And the thousands of people evacuated are proof of the gas clinging to and saturating the ground. This is the greenhouse gas equivalent of an urban island effect... but instead of increasing temperatures by double digits as every computer model mandates, we have zero.

A town has been saturated with methane that is "1,000 times" worse than CO2, the escaping gas is even at a temperature well over 100 degrees F, and even STILL, ZERO measurable greenhouse effect due to the 'heat trapping' effect of 1,200 daily tons of a gas "1,000 times" more powerful than CO2 being pumped into the air.

Case closed.

Methane has just been proven, scientifically, to NOT be a greenhouse gas, and by extension, CO2 is now on life support too. 


Let me state this another way, if a scientist wanted to prove that methane was a greenhouse gas, they would release 1,200 tons of it (cooled to room temperature, unlike the heated accident) a day into an area, closely monitor the concentrations and watch the temperature "runaway" with the greenhouse effect. The absence of this, is proof that methane is NOT a greenhouse gas and that the theory is wrong.


Wednesday, January 6, 2016

No, I'm not a vegan

Militant vegans, we've all met one, demand meat eaters stop eating meat, but all their alternatives are... expensive and yuck.

I've always heard the argument that it takes 30 pounds of corn to make 5 pounds of chicken, meant to mean that fake chicken should be 1/6th the price of meat, but I've never seen that theory proven out in any store I've ever gone to. Everywhere I look, vegan meat has always been more expensive.

My point in saying this is that militant vegans (those that demand others convert) would be better served working on a vegan meat that tastes good and is cheaper. In a recession like this, they've squandered 7 years where they could have converted millions on the basis of price alone.

1/6th the price would be nice, but even 10% less would convert millions.

Now that I've cast some stones, let me say I think I found it from a farm that specializes in survival food.

Basically, my understanding is it's a farm that cooks big batches of their own food in their own kitchen and then freezedries it and cans it, all under their roof.

They sell through Walmart.com a 25yr can of fake beef and chicken that is one year shelf stable after opening and works out to a dollar a pound and tastes reasonably well.

If they skipped the freezing, drying and canning, and just put it in a 5 pound tubes for local supermarkets, my math suggests they could turn a profit as low as 50 cents a pound.

Augason Farms Emergency Food Beef Vegetarian Meat Substitute, 37 oz