Jump to content

etudiant

Members
  • Posts

    804
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by etudiant

  1. Forest fires are an issue. In general, all the reforestation schemes that I've seen have been execrable, spindling pulpwood conifers planted way too close together, obviously worthless as ecosystems or even habitats. Here as everywhere else, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Ensuring a proper execution of the 'green' design requires hard headed management, something in very short supply.
  2. Quite true and the desire appears to be there to get rid of DST, but it seems to take forever to get any actual progress.
  3. Thank you, that helps some. Guess these things are a lot more complicated than they look at first glance. Time to hit the books again. Suggestions would be very welcome.
  4. Bourbon St in the French Quarter is pretty much the highest ground in NOLA afaik. Guess they just got lucky. In any case, the cameras are back on and the winds appear to have died down, presumably the eye passing.
  5. You're surely right, but the images until they went dead were of a garden variety thunderstorm, nothing massive or damaging. The potted plants along the balconies were doing fine and the barricades in front of construction were not moving.
  6. NOLA cameras seem to have cut out. Is there a blackout or some other cause?
  7. Can someone please explain the 'bands'? It seems that these storms have a structure, but why does it develop in bands?
  8. Thank you, that makes sense. From a climate monitoring perspective, that suggests area is the one to focus on. In that context, I note that area is the lowest ever for the date, https://cryospherecomputing.tk/ Hard for me to understand why this is a disputed fact.
  9. Which is the better metric, area or extent? I've been focused on area, thinking that extent just adds another variable, yet most contributors prefer to use extent. What are the pros and cons driving the choice?
  10. Seems a sensible piece of work. Unfortunately, more people will read about President Obama's purchase of an ocean front home in Martha's Vineyard than NBER research.
  11. Windmills are selective killers, they preferentially kill large soaring birds, eagles, hawks and other large avifauna. The victims, who seek out the same windy spots to stay in the air without much effort, cannot see the blade coming down of them from above. Removing the slow breeding large birds this way is not a sensible policy imho. They also are efficient bat killers, as the vacuum left by the blade speeding by (tip speed is close to sonic velocity) ruptures the bats lungs, but bats get less attention.from the media. That said, no argument about the damages inflicted by the fossil fuel industry. But that is no reason to give the other 'green' power initiatives a license to destroy either.
  12. When considering the validity of conspiracy theories, Bismarck's axiom, 'Never believe anything until it has been officially denied', would be worth keeping in mind.
  13. At least in Europe, the deforestation is not because people cannot afford to heat their homes, it is because the 'green' incentives for 'renewable' energy have made it attractive to use pelletized wood chips instead of coal to fuel the power stations. So vast stretches of old forest have been razed to provide these pellets, which incidentally are a much dirtier fuel. This kind of senseless policy has been vigorously condemned by conservationists, but is hugely profitable for the recipients of the incentives, so ihe damage continues.
  14. Surely that is a divergence worth investigating. We all know that water vapor is the preeminent greenhouse 'gas', so a parched atmosphere just seems curious given the well above average temperatures we've seen. Does it mean the winds off Africa are unusually dry?
  15. I would be happy to see a decent analysis of the 'divergence', which should be a piece of cake now that we have another 20+ years worth of tree rings to evaluate. I have no beef with current climate measures, the sea ice measures alone are pretty strong evidence. What is less convincing to me is the earlier stability claimed, it seems inconsistent with the historical record.
  16. With no reflections on this paper, the credibility of all 'climate change' related documents is imho tainted at the source. The initial Mann 'hockeystick' paper in Nature glossed over that the same dendro evidence used to form the stick showed declining ring formation in the most recent era, which had been interpreted as periods of cooler weather. So that information was frog marched out of the paper, with a chart grafting modern temperature measures on the earlier tree ring data to create the 'hockeystick'. An honest presentation should have highlighted the divergence, which really produces a downward signal rather that the increase shown by the thermometer measures. Perhaps it just means tree ring data is not fit for the purpose of measuring temperatures. That in itself would be a useful, but afaik that analysis has not been done, nor have there been follow on studies to examine whether the 'divergence' has worsened or improved since the Mann Nature paper. As a former Wall Streeter, I'm pretty attuned to hard marketing. Prof Mann marketed too hard for me.
  17. I'll know that the Federal Government accepts the reality of global warming when they refuse flood insurance for anyone not at least 10 feet above sea level. Looking at the beach front mega mansions on Long Island, that day has not yet come.
  18. Note that as of July 27. 2020, area is only 3.959MM km **2, the lowest on record for the date and the earliest date ever for sub 4MM km**2..
  19. Arctic ice area is lowest ever for the date, 4.082MM km**2. Area is probably a somewhat better measure of the ice level than extent..
  20. Spot on! The Federal blank check for 'disaster relief' allows people to just ignore basic science and risk, building on unstable barrier islands as well as shore areas which should be kept free from development. Any sea level increase compounds the risk.
  21. Does any long, long, long range model have any better skill? I'd be tempted to believe the CFS outlook simply because it is the only low ball forecast I've seen, everyone appears confident we'll have a well above average hurricane season.
  22. No idea how farmers do it either, maybe just they grow so much the critters can't eat it all. But I will add that an 8' high and 2' underground fence is no obstacle to raccoons unless it is also electrified. Or unless the garden is both fenced as well as wired over the top.
  23. Sounds like raccoons at work. They did a number on my garden as well, before we returned to Manhattan. I'd be ok if they just ate their share, but they sampled all the corn. :((
  24. The trend is not showing any indication of deceleration, rather the opposite. That suggests 2+ *C is already baked in. Indicates the 2060 global temperature will be 3-4*C above that of the 1970s.
  25. Thank you, that is very informative. One forgets how big Africa is, lots of room for both wet and dry regions.
×
×
  • Create New...