etudiant

Thank you, that is very informative. One forgets how big Africa is, lots of room for both wet and dry regions.

I'm puzzled, the prior posting by Windspeed shows much above average rainfall in the same area that this unusual amount of dust is coming from. Can someone please help explain?

Think it was 'red on yellow, friendly fellow. Red on black, stand back'. That said, probably best to just get out of their way.

Interesting difference, I freak out about ticks, but snakes and spiders are just fine. Garter Snakes are actually quite silky, if you touch them. Don't know about the others, never touched a rattler.

Put on a solar cover, it makes a big difference in the water temperature. Plus it really helps keep the crud out of the water.

Disappointing for a high school class, I'd have thought that at least one of her classmates would have know how to open a locked car. That said, I can easily see the wiper blades melting with that stress, lucky the metal wiper frames did not scratch the windshield.

Have to disagree on his management of the virus issue. He has killed the arts, education and entertainment activities in NYC with his egregious lockdown policies. Those are the economic engines of the state.. So having induced cardiac arrest, he is surprised the patient is not generating the expected income? PS Not a fan, obviously, of the shutdown, whether by Trump or Cuomo. Dreadfully bad policy which will hurt us for years to come.

There are solar farms that are close to that size, so it is possible to test this with real world examples. Afaik, there has not been any such induced precipitation reported.

Arctic ice area seems to be following about the same trend as 2016. That suggests a minimum extent around 12 MM square km , somewhere close to a record low.

The Sweden death rate is more than 3x that of its Nordic neighbors, just about that of Switzerland, but they avoided trashing their economy. Considering the misery the lockdowns have inflicted and the massive debts that we're building up because of it, the Swedish choice seems a lot more humane, despite the pain.

No obvious impact thus far. The CO2 data shows no diminution at all thus far from the current record levels See .https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

The dogs need remedial training, they got the wrong guys. Moles are your friends, they don't do vegetables, only bugs and worms. That said, lawn maintenance and moles are not very compatible, even if veggie gardens and moles are just fine.

Food for whom? My garden in Connecticut was harvested messily by the local raccoons, just before the corn was ripe. They laugh at fences, so hope you have a serious dog.

No expert, but am struck how closely the recent Arctic ice area is tracking the 2012 values. See: https://cryospherecomputing.tk May just be coincidence, but perhaps an early indication of history repeating.

Actually, there has been good progress, with the performance of the devices improving by about a factor of 10 every decade since the 1950s. Based on that trend, we should have working prototypes in another decade or so, but the effort is desultory at best. The international centerpiece of fusion is the ITER reactor in France. It was supposed to be ready by 2010, now expected to be finished by 2025, with the first real fusion experiments around 2035 - 2040. Basically a UN managed research effort, makes herding cats look easy. The problem is that cheap gas and subsidized wind/solar drained any urgency from the search for more energy, so this is run as a hobby effort, no urgency at all. I've visited the ITER site, no weekend work, single shifts, a handful of workers, lots of visiting dignitaries and probably masses of administrators behind the scenes in Geneva and elsewhere.

Not a stance that I agree with. Pension money is inherently long term oriented, they are seriously interested in this issue. I think that a frank discussion in front of a bunch of no BS money managers would be enlightening and I'm sorry the field was left to the skeptics.

Nothing at all wrong with KIlbeggan Irish Oats, they are actually delicious. While they are not instant, they are organic. Can be had as Irish Oatmeal Cookies if instant convenience is essential. Guiness or Harp both go well with them.

Absolutely correct on the human impact, 74/75 was modest, the worst was in 2009, when 171 people died in Victoria.

A quick look at the record indicates that the 1974-75 fire season in Australia was by far the worst in terms of acreage, with over 100 million acres burned. No other year comes close. The burn to date for this season is about 15 million acres, still a huge area, but again not in the same league.

Thought the ice melt was accelerated that year by a significant storm, so it is actually somewhat a cautionary input. Combine such a storm with a really warm ocean influx, it would set dramatic new lows.

Suspect that here in the US, it won't be till Mar-a- Lago is flooded, not sure what a comparable event would be in China, but perhaps Hong Kong might serve,,,

Arson seems very far fetched, who by and for what purpose are obvious questions, plus this is a nation wide problem, too big for a bunch of fire bugs imho. What does however seem plausible is that poor range management is a major factor. Afaik, the aborigines used fire as a control tool, preventing the kind of fuel load buildup thatsupports massive fires. More recent policy has been to prevent fires more aggressively, so the vegetation has not been thinned as before. This seems quite similar to the recent California fires, likewise made more intense by the abundance of fuel resulting from an extended period without fires. That unchecked growth combined with a super hot summer is a recipe for disaster, as is now apparent.

Careful about that, that was in 2015. The Arctic ice is in continuous flux, rotating around the pole with the older ice getting dumped down the Fram Strait between Greenland and Iceland. Very little Arctic ice is permanently fixed to the shores, mainly it gradually circulates around the pole. That is why the north coast of Iceland is littered with driftwood originating in Siberia. Afaik, there is nothing like the really old (100,000 to 2,000,000 years old) ice found in Antarctica in the north polar ice. That ice is all sea ice, totally vulnerable to a warm summer melt and it is not very useful to focus on the bits that are 3-5 years old, they just reflect whether the last few summers have been warmer or colder than usual.

While that is a forecast for Jan 1-6 of 2020, not of the temperatures now, it is pretty chilly already, with Fairbanks around 25 below zero F. Quite a swing from earlier.

I think we're basically in violent agreement, but really all you need to do is to fly over the western US. The landscape is blighted as far as the eye can see from 35000 feet by 1000 foot diameter irrigated fields, cooling the atmosphere and draining the aquifers to produce crops no one wants. I cannot see that as a natural process, no matter how hard I try.