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According to NOAA “Global Temps Push Last Month to Hottest March on Record”
Must be global warming! We’re all gonna dieeeeee!!!
Oh wait. Uhm, maybe not. This year has been a strong El Nino year. Which causes the ocean temps to rise, thus causing the global temp anomalies to be high. Remember 1998? More information on the El Nino can be found here.
Now for some fun. The Telegraph came up with this chart that I like. It shows the difference in opinions when it comes to historical temperature trends. The famous Mann Hockey stick vs what some say is reality.
Battle of the Graphs
Now what’s interesting is how different the two charts are. Notice how 2000 is nice and warm. It shows 1998 as the hottest year on record, some say, others say 1934. Depends on how you twist the data. Notice also how Mann’s hockey stick removed the Medieval Warm Period and shows 1934 as barely a warming blip. Read more on the 1934 vs 1988 hottest year debate here.
But wait, you might say. The bottom chart definitely shows 1050 to about 1350 as definitely hotter than the “modern” warming. (We can ignore the Mann Hockey Stick as being nothing more than the fiction it is.) This is the Medieval Warm Period I just mentioned above. Now, here’s where people have fun. And twist the crap out of the data. If you read the full quote, they aren’t lying, per se. The catch is the term “On Record“. What record might that be? Why the record from 1880 onward. Yes, 1880, that nice cool period in our past. In fact, here’s a blow up of that period. From the Red arrow until the present. That”s the “Record”. I think they should have tried to wrangle the temps from about 1680 onward. Now THAT would have shown some serious “We’re all gonna die!!!!” warming. All caused by CO2 of course.
Anyhow. The reason 1880 is used is that it’s the coldest point where the “instrumental temperature began” The record actual begins in about 1850, but that was a warm blip. Charts are more impressive if you start in 1880, the cold blip. So, are they telling the truth? Sure. Are they telling the whole truth? Hell no.
I like this one too, “Each of the last 12 years (1997-2008) was one of the warmest on record”, again, truthful, if you only look at the last 130 years. Also ignoring the 1930′s warming. That darn blip of warming everyone loves to ignore.
Okay. Enough ranting about Lies, Damn Lies, and Global Warming.
Remember all the panic and hoopla about “The world is going to end” because “the Polar Ice Caps are Melting”? All those cuddly polar bears were gonna die off and the oceans were gonna rise, blah blah blah?
I love when mother nature goes and shows us we don’t know what we’re talking about. We’re getting better at predicting some things, but climate has a tendency to thumb it’s nose at all those pretty computer models.
The grey area in the graph below is a 2% standard deviation from the 1979-2000 mean. “1979 on because that’s when satellites began measuring the Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice Extent”. Not sure why they stop in 2000. The thing to notice is that the current Arctic sea ice extent is working itself back into the “normal” range. Normal being a couple of decades worth of data only. A blink in the eye of the history of man really, let alone the earth.
Arctic Sea Ice
Does this mean all those green peace loving freaks are going to shut the hell up about the poor polar bears? Ya, I didn’t think so. I’m sure they’ll come up with a “new” reason why we’re all going to die if we don’t jump on their freak wagon of anti humanity.Oh well. As long as I have a smaller carbon footprint than “The Al Goracle” I’m not going to worry about it. FYI, I can even increase my CO2 (oh that dirty word) footprint by ten fold and still be less than Mr Greenlover himself.
Oh, and before you believe we’re all going to die because the Antarctic is melting. Well, here’s the graph for that. Again, not quite equal to the 1979-2000 mean, but pretty darn close. Oh wait, that’s actually slightly “More” ice than normal. hmmm… My bad. (-:
Antarctic Sea Ice Extent
You can research some of this right from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Our friends Lynn and Chuck now own Sea Harvest restaurant and seafood market down near Cannery Row. Because of this I now know a lot more about seafood than I used to. I’m also spoiled because I get locally caught fresh fish at a good price.
A buddy of mine sent me a link to this video.
Here’s the link. Forking wordpress won’t let me link directly to the video without charging me extra for it. So, you just get the link.
A scary news story about the condition of fish coming from China and the far east. Lot’s of nasty surprises hidden in that fish.
When in doubt, blame global warming.
February 2010: Fog over San Francisco thins by a third due to Climate Change.
You can’t make this silliness up. So, which is it? Foggier or less foggy? Both are caused by ”Gorebull Warming” it seems. Ahh well. I do like how they’ve gone from we’re all gonna DIE from “Global Warming!” to we’re all gonna DIE from Climate Change!!!!! Must have something to do with no significant “Global Warming” in over 10 years. It made em change their slogan of panic and doom.
Here’s a pic from my friend John down in Dallas Texas.
Dallas Snow
(And yes, this is a weather event, not global climate. I know, I know)
As most know, I’m not a member of the “Church of Global Warming”. I am however a fan of things that help our environment and ourselves. As long as it makes sense.
Forcing people to get away from those horribly cheap and useful incandescent lights and make them use those expensive, mercury laden CFL’s CFD‘s. Oh ya, that makes sense, Not! But gee you “save so much in energy” which Has to be good for the environment, I mean Global Warming. Oh wait, please ignore the whole Mercury issue, you know. how according to the EPA if you drop one of those CFL’s CFD‘s you have to clear out the house and it’s now legally a hazardous waste area? Minor details, it’ll just be our dirty little secret? Okay? He’s a few bucks for your next campaign.
So, why am I ranting on this. Well, one of the blogs I like to read has a big deal on replacing 5 light bulbs with these new wonderful LED lights that just Must be better for the environment. Each light is 12 watts and is replacing 75 watt lights (why they aren’t already 60 watt bulbs is a good question).
Anyhow if you figure 5 75 watt bulbs (which is what he’s replacing) running 8 hours a day 7 days a week 30 days a month with a cost of $.11 a kilowatt hour (that’s the hosed up price I pay to Enron, I mean PG&E). So, doing the math it turns out that it costs $9.90 a month for those 5 lights. Doing the same math with 60 watt bulbs turns out to be $7.92 a month. For the new nifty LED’s it would cost $1.58 a month. Better right?
So, we have $9.90 a month vs $1.58 a month at the two extremes. Now the cost of the LED’s. $98 a pop, for a total of $490 plush shipping and tax. We’ll just call it $100 a light for ease. So, to make up the cost of the LED’s at the extremes would take a total of (Incandecent cost per month – LED cost per month) * X months >= $500. X months turns out to be 60 plus change. So, to get break even on buying these would be 5 years. Taking into account the savings in electricity.
Now for maintenance costs over those 5 years.
A regular incandescent bulbs lasts about 7500 hours or roughly 2.5 years per bulb at 8 hours per day. But to buy a pack of 4 is a $1 or so. In 5 years you’d need to replace on average 10 bulbs total. So, total maintenance cost for bulbs, less than $10.
LED bulbs. $100 a pop. Life span 50000 hours, or just over 17 years. So they would need to be replaced an average of one every 3 years and change. So, over 5 years you’d average replacing 1.5 bulbs, or $150.
So, if you buy these nifty LED’s and replace your existing 75 watt bulbs you would save about over the course of 5 years (break even time for initial cost). $10 in incandescent replacements – $150 in LED replacements, or -$140 total.
Your total savings over 5 years is -$140. Yes, replacing your existing horribly wasteful incandescent bulbs with those wonderful “Green” bulbs will Cost you an average of $30 a year.
If you replace the 75 watt bulbs with 60 watt bulbs the total savings over 5 years would be roughly $118.80 in energy savings. Yes, you SAVE $24 a year by using 60 watt bulbs rather than 75 watt bulbs.
Using 60 watt bulbs instead of LED’s would save you an average of $54 a year.
So why switch to CFL’s CFD‘s and LEDs? Besides to make all those lobbyists happy? Well to “SAVE THE WORLD FROM GLOBAL WARMING! Oh wait, it doesn’t? It makes it worse? Um, my bad, never mind. 
Don’t read the fine details. Just shut up and go with the crowd. You need to save the world right? Sheeple. Nothing but a bunch of sheeple.
Just my 2 cents on the subject. Sometimes using old technology makes more sense than trying to use nifty new tech. Incandescent bulbs are made of a bit of glass, a tungsten filament , metal base, a bit of glue, and some vacuum. Done. CFL’s CFD‘s? All the same except replace tungsten with Mercury vapor and add all the crud that goes into the ballast. LED’s? Who knows what chemicals are used to make all the parts for those lights. I guess I could do the research, but I’m figuring it’s not going to be good for the environment. Not from what I know of chip making.
Update: CFL is Compact Flourescent Lights. CFD is Computational Fluid Dynamics. You can see my confusion.
As most who know me know, I’m working with the Navy on a project called NPOESS, or the National Polar orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System. This was supposed to be a fairly long term stable position, which is why I moved over from eHPC to the NPP/NPOESS team. NPP stands for the NPOESS Preliminary Project.
Well, like any good government project it’s been fraught with politics, budget overruns, inefficiencies, etc. In fact the launch of the NPP satellite has been delayed again from January 2011 to November 2011 because the primary sensor released the magical blue smoke during a power up test. The original launch date was 2006, so you can see there’s been some serious delays.
Anyhow. Spaceflight Now has an article discussing NPOESS.
Today the White House is announcing that NOAA and the Air Force would no longer continue to jointly procure the polar-orbiting satellite system called NPOESS,” the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s budget summary stated.
I’m not sure how this is going to effect my contract, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to do something. I suppose the title of the article says it all.
Budget slashes NPOESS weather satellite program
Anyhow, we’ll see how it plays out.I’m betting we’ll continue with the NPP portion of the program at least. Which is what I”m actually working on currently, getting ready for the full project later.
So, for now it’s continue working as normal. No worries, no panic, no resume.com. So why the post? In case anyone runs across the article and knows what I’ve been working on, they won’t think “Oh Crap!”. Nah, things are what they are. Having this happen wasn’t a big surprise.
Here’s a pic of the NPP satellite. Not sure if it’s before or after that magical blue smoke appeared.
The NPP spacecraft under construction. Credit: Ball Aerospace
Once you’ve lived in Alaska it’s hard not to think like an Alaskan.
It seems that the Eco-Freaks in the country are freaking out (Pun intended). Senator Murkowski has thrown a big ole monkey wrench into the EPA’s power grab of CO2 regulation. And this has the Eco nuts in a frenzy! I love it!
A big surprise (not!) is that good old Republic of Californian Barbara Boxer is the biggest opponent of Senator Murkowski’s move. She cares for nothing but her own megalomania and screw the normal people in this country. I cannot stand Boxer! Talk about an Eco freak on a power trip. Uf Da!
Linked to the Alaska Daily News article.
In Fairbanks Alaska there is now an Ice Sculpture of prior vice-president Al Gore. In a tongue and cheek dig at his almost religious like preachings of Global Warming there is now a 2 ton ice sculpture including hot air coming from his mouth. (Compliments of a Ford F-350 truck).
Here is a link to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner article. Also check out the contest at the sculpture owners website. Go and make your guess in the Frozen Gore contest.
Frozen Gore “Local Warming Contest”
Guess the number of days that our ’96 Ford F-350 (460ci) would have to run (at idle) to equal the carbon output of a round-trip flight from Tennessee to Copenhagen on a Lear jet.
The winner will receive a warm Ski-doo jacket, long underwear, thermal socks and an Al Gore bobblehead doll.
(PS> For the Frozen Gore “hot air” sculpture this year, we don’t run the Ford F-350 all the time! Every once in a while we will start the truck up and let it run for a bit and then Frozen Gore comes to life, “breathing” hot air!)
A nice excerpt from the article I found particularly interesting. Bolding was done by me to point out reality vs alarmism.
Climate change scientists say Alaska has warmed by 3 degrees Fahrenheit during the past 50 years.
The average temperature for 2009 was 27.8 degrees in Fairbanks, about one degree warmer than normal, said Rick Thoman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Last winter, however, was unusually cold in Fairbanks. Temperatures in the winter months of 2008-09 were about 4 degrees below normal, according to National Weather Service figures.
As the Moderator Henry Jacoby mentions, the name for the lecture isn’t that good. This video is of a lecture/debate given at MIT in regards to the email leaks from CRU, now popularly called Climategate. It’s a long talk by various panel members, about two hours. The first speaker is Dr. Kerry Emanual and is an AGW believer, while the second is Dr. Richard Lindzen who is a skeptic. Even if you don’t have time to watch the whole lecture try to watch the first two speakers and see how different the opinions of two highly respected MIT professors can be on this subject.
Click on the picture below to go to the lecture. WordPress won’t let me link directly without buying “added” features. IE, they run a checker script on the post and remove video links before making the post visible to make sure I don’t link unless I pay them extra.
MIT Lecture on Climategate
Here is the blurb about the lecture from the website.
About the Lecture
In mid-November, thousands of emails were hacked from servers at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. A small fraction of them address controversial issues; how to present climate data in the most favorable light and how to combat climate skeptics, among others. The responses reported in the press have ranged from these emails being a confirmation of climate change deniers’ assertions that global warming is a conspiracy and a hoax, to the whole affair being a tempest in a teapot with no relevance to the reality of global warming and the need to combat it.
This panel of experts gives its views on what ‘Climategate’ really means for climate science, the integrity of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, public perception of climate, and the ongoing policy negotiations in the Congress and at Copenhagen.
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