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Coconut update
On 17th, I put up a post headed: "Now it's coconut trees that are bad". One of the claims made by the Greenie nut was that there is connection to dengue fever from coconuts. Dengue fever is a very nasty tropical flu-like illness. Since Dengue is a mosquito-borne virus, any connection would be obscure, to say the least. Coconuts are waterproof nuts shaped rather like a football so the claim that they "collect water" (for mosquitoes to breed in) is quite weird. But it turns out that there is a connection after all. But it's not what the Greenie claims.
A reader notes the advice here, under "how to manage dengue fever". We read... "Drink plenty of fluids, e.g., juice, water AND COCONUT WATER." [my emphasis] Apparently, in addition to being a liquid, it's also loaded with vitamins and minerals which other fluids don't replenish, but whose replacement aids the body to fight the disease.
MA: Recycling efforts are futile
Residential recycling rates in Massachusetts have not budged in the past decade, even as environmental concerns have sparked “sustainability’’ movements and fueled markets for hybrid cars and green products.
For years, environmentalists have preached the importance of recycling to relieve pressure on burgeoning landfills and reduce greenhouse gases released from decomposing trash. But to a startling degree, the refrain seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
In 2008, according to preliminary statewide statistics, just over one-quarter of all residential trash was recycled, roughly the same percentage as 1997, according to a Globe review of figures kept by the state Department of Environmental Protection. “It has plateaued for some years,’’ said Laurie Burt, the department’s commissioner. “Clearly we have to get at that untapped capacity.’’
Burt said Massachusetts recycling efforts still compare favorably with other states, and state environmental officials are crafting a 10-year plan designed to reduce the amount of refuse that ends up in landfills.
But to date, personal recycling in many communities has shown little progress. Some cities including Boston, Everett, and Fall River recycle less than 15 percent of their rubbish. And in a number of communities, including many with eco-friendly reputations, recycling rates have stalled or fallen off.
Newton, for instance, recycled at a robust 46 percent in 2001. By 2008, despite a range of initiatives designed to prod residents to separate their papers and plastics, it recycled just 29 percent of all rubbish. Lincoln, at 53 percent in 2002, dropped to 34 percent. Danvers, at 29 percent a decade ago, plunged to 15 percent, according to Department of Environmental Protection figures.
Recycling advocates say they are frustrated by the lack of progress and perplexed that decades of public awareness campaigns and heightened consciousness around conservation haven’t made more of a dent. Most have come to the sobering conclusion that people have simply decided it’s not worth the hassle, however minimal.
“Knowledge doesn’t equal behavior,’’ said Claire Sullivan, who directs the South Shore Recycling Cooperative, which works to boost recycling in 13 towns south of Boston. “A lot of people just can’t be bothered, which is extremely disheartening. They take the path of least resistance. So if it’s easier to throw it away, they’ll throw it away.’’
Residential recycling rates are reported by cities and towns and compiled by the state. A number of communities, mainly those that do not provide public trash collection, do not report totals.
More here
Global warmers may develop shellfish allergies
Renamed by one witty website as "Paleo-clamatology," it appears that clams can tell us very accurate stuff about historical climate change.
William Patterson's specialty isn't clambakes but isotope chemistry, and he's using it to analyze clamshells buried for centuries off Iceland's coastline. That and radiocarbon dating of the shells confirms what anyone who knows anything about climate change already knows: the Medieval Warm Period (AD 800 to 1300) and the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850) were real.
But the shellfish shell out more stories. Since changes in the chemistry of the shells reveal day-to-day changes in weather, Patterson was able to confirm the lesser known and little discussed Roman Warm Period (200 BC to AD 600) and the Dark Ages Cold Period (AD 600 to 800).
The clamshells also give credibility to the Norse Sagas that detailed year-to-year ups and downs in the weather during the Icelandic and Greenland Viking era that created social havoc among the inhabitants. Patterson illustrated the problems this way: “A one-degree decrease in summer temperatures in Iceland results in a 15% decrease in agricultural yield. If that happens two years in a row, your family’s wiped out.” This would indicate that cold periods are more to be feared (shorter growing seasons mean less food) than warm periods (longer growing seasons mean more food).
Today, as throughout history, the watchword is "adapt or die."
Citing a temperature chart (pdf) in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences report showing the history of climate change, the Paleo-clamatology article notes that the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods will, "surely stick in the craw of many who think we are living in unprecedented times of warmth."
And global atmospheric CO2 levels were lower during those periods than now.
A comment posted on the NatureNews website puts Patterson's work in perspective:
"Very unlikely he'll get funding for those additional studies. He's already put the lie to many of the dominant funders' approved assumptions and conclusions, and will not be given any help in doing further damage to the orthodoxy. Sorry, Patterson. Time to clam up!" ;)
If nothing else, when planet-savers whine about the shrinking polar icecap killing the polar bears libertarians can answer with, "Hey, they obviously survived the other big warm periods or there wouldn't be any polar bears today, so don't sweat it."
Pun intended
SOURCE
Environmental agency has some explaining to do
Our nation's capital has always been a place of paradoxical twists. From canings on the Senate floor in the 1800s to President Reagan and Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill sharing drinks at the end of the day, it takes a lot for Washington to be surprised. Even so, we find ourselves surprised at events on Capitol Hill likely to take place over the coming weeks.
We start at the Supreme Court, where on March 1, Jeffrey Skilling's attorneys presented their oral arguments appealing his conviction for the Enron debacle. Relatively soon - no later than May 21 - and a stone's throw away, the Senate will vote to prevent a fraud that makes Skilling look like an altar boy.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska Republican, has introduced a bipartisan bill, and is guaranteed a vote, that would stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from moving forward on new rules aimed at regulating greenhouse-gas emissions by overturning its finding that global warming poses a clear and present danger to public health and welfare. On Wednesday, the governors of 18 states and two territories joined 98 industry groups in sending letters in support of the senator's resolution.
While Skilling's fraud has been proved in court, the EPA's fraud is only now being exposed to the light of day - and based on opinion polls, it is being found guilty in the court of public opinion.
The fraud behind the EPA's regulations is threefold: the science, the economics and the results.
Concerning the science, with the hacked/leaked e-mails of Climategate becoming public, we know that key scientists behind the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - the bible of the climate-industrial complex - used tricks to cover up data that showed an unexpected decline in temperature and tried to suppress research that cast doubt on the notion that humans are responsible for catastrophic warming. And once the press in the United Kingdom started investigating the IPCC's predictions in detail, it found that one claim after another was based on faulty, non-peer-reviewed literature.
For instance, the IPCC reported that Himalayan glaciers would melt in a few decades because of global climate change, but the best research indicated that was incorrect. Other alarmist claims made by IPCC that have been shown either to lack supporting evidence or simply to be wrong include the pace and impact of the loss of the Amazonian rain forests, the effects of climate upon rainfall and food production in Africa, and even something so straightforward as the proportion of Holland that sits below sea level. Despite all these flaws and others, the EPA relied on the IPCC to find that CO2 emissions pose a threat sufficient to take command of the U.S. economy.
The EPA claims that its regulations won't increase costs or otherwise harm the economy. This is laughable. The regulations can't work if the costs of fossil fuels don't increase and force the public to shift to less reliable, more expensive alternative fuels. An independent analysis from Harvard University found that to reach President Obama's CO2 target, gas prices would have to more than double - to $7 a gallon. When the Treasury Department looked at Congress' preferred alternative to EPA regulations, "cap-and-trade," it found that the average household would spend an extra $1,761 per year. And that is the less-expensive alternative to the EPA's top-down regulations.
Worst of all, the economic downturn brought on by the EPA's regulations will do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions because fast-growing economic competitors such as China and India, not hampered by U.S. energy restrictions, will continue to generate huge growth in their emissions. Indeed, China alone already emits more CO2 than the U.S. and Canada combined. And research by physicist Richard A. Muller at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory shows that every 10 percent reduction in emissions in the United States is negated by one year's growth in China's emissions.
Another ironic link between Skilling and the EPA's greenhouse gas regulations: The Obama administration is using the threat of EPA regulations to play hardball with Congress. The administration's threat is, "Pass cap-and-trade, or we'll do even worse things to the economy through EPA regulations." The funny thing is, Skilling and his former cronies at Enron Corp. were early promoters of the cap-and-trade scheme to fight warming. If this extortion works, Congress essentially will be adopting an idea that the disgraced and dismantled Enron developed. As with so many companies now supporting cap-and-trade, Enron saw the scheme as a way to get a government-backed leg up on its competition.
Convicted book-cooker Skilling is serving jail time for his misdeeds. What should the punishment be for those trying to bilk Americans based on science that we know to be flawed and an economic scheme that we know to be fraudulent in operation and results?
SOURCE
Be careful what you wish for …
For many years, the climate alarmist movement pushed the development of corn ethanol as the “fuel of the future” on the grounds that it would decrease fossil fuel emissions. As I detail in my book, The Really Inconvenient Truths, massive efforts were devoted to promoting this technology, with a textbook baptist-bootlegger alliance between green groups and Big Corn (most notably Archer Daniels Midland). Politicians joined in happily, with Al Gore stumping for Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar because of her support for ethanol and countless Presidential candidates in Iowa talking up the fuel.
The result of that push has, it seems, been an increase in fossil fuels. For the latest on this, see Corned grief: biofuels may increase CO2 at Watts Up With That?
The indirect effects of increasing production of maize ethanol were first addressed in 2008 by Timothy Searchinger and his coauthors, who presented a simpler calculation in Science. Searchinger concluded that burning maize ethanol led to greenhouse gas emissions twice as large as if gasoline had been burned instead. The question assumed global importance because the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act mandates a steep increase in US production of biofuels over the next dozen years, and certifications about life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions are needed for some of this increase. In addition, the California Air Resources Board’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard requires including estimates of the effects of indirect land-use change on greenhouse gas emissions. The board’s approach is based on the work reported in BioScience.
Hertel and colleagues’ analysis incorporates some effects that could lessen the impact of land-use conversion, but their bottom line, though only one-quarter as large as the earlier estimate of Searchinger and his coauthors, still indicates that the maize ethanol now being produced in the United States will not significantly reduce total greenhouse gas emissions, compared with burning gasoline. The authors acknowledge that some game-changing technical or economic development could render their estimates moot, but sensitivity analyses undertaken in their study suggest that the findings are quite robust.
Promotion of technologies based on theory rather than practice has been a hallmark of the green movement. Every indication seems to be that their foolish promotion of ethanol has been written out of their history, rather than being treated as a cautionary tale to learn from.
SOURCE
Lunar and planetary influences on terrestrial weather cycles
The Metonic cycle is a 19-year period when the lunar declination is at the culmination of movement on the same date as it was 19 years ago, as well as the same light phase. The Saros cycle is ~17 days longer than 18 years, and it is a repeating pattern of the position of the Earth / Moon and inner planets due to harmonic interactions, that cause the Solar / lunar eclipses to repeat predictably at this period. The 18.6 year Mn cyclic patterns of the variation of the moon’s declinational movement, results from the progression of the nodes that varies the declinational angle from the ~18.5 degrees minimum to ~28.5 maximum.
If we start with the studies of what works in climate forecasting, the Milankovitch cycles, and expand on what has turned out to be true about solar cycles according to Theodor Landscheidt, ( the only one to correctly forecast the long solar minimum we are passing through).
The evidence points to the long term natural variability factors, as being the effects of the rotation or the galaxy, and the swirl imparted to the local area of the spiral arm we seem to reside in (Milankovitch), and further modulation of this movement, by the outer planets effects on the barycenter of the solar system, that the sun’s center of mass moves around, as it tries to stay magnetically and gravitationally centered.
Landscheidt found the driving forces of this planetary inertial dampening of the system, and defined it to the point of predictability, the next step would be to analyze the additional effects of the interactions of the moon and inner planets, which have this rhythmic pattern to their orbital relationships, and their relations to the weather patterns they share.
The 18.6 year Mn pattern of Minimum to Maximum extremes, drive the decade long oscillations of the ocean basins, in combination with the timing of the Synod conjunctions of the outer planets, as a compounding signal, varying the resultant strengths and weakness of the combined cycles. More in tune to the Saros cycle than just the 18.6-year periodicity. The Lunar declinational tides in the atmosphere are the major mixing mechanism for the transportation, of tropical ocean warmth, and moisture over the landmasses, into the mid-latitudes and Polar Regions, where it can radiate away into space, regulating the earth’s thermal budget.
Because of the semi boundary conditions caused by mountain ranges, the Rockies, Andes, Urals, Alps, Himalayas, which results in topographical forcing of the turbulence of these tides, into a four fold pattern of types of Rossby wave, and resultant Jet stream patterns. There develops separate regimes of regional circulation in the lee sides of these obstructions.
The greater height of the Himalayas causes a large area extending across the Pacific Ocean to be sheltered from strong westerlies, except at high latitudes. The trade winds flow into these sheltered areas, due to forcing by the lunar declinational tides, the periods of oscillation are the products of the Saros Cycle driving periods, with the impulses from the outer planets effects coming in and out of phase as they move through the 172 year period discovered by Landscheidt.
To derive a signal for producing a forecast out of all these compounded signals, It is important to synchronize by the relative strengths for determining the combined output. The annual signal is the strongest, then the 240-cycle pattern of lunar declinational movement next, on top of this the solar activity levels of addition or subtraction from the ambient ion drives, along with the following outer planet periodic impulses.
The homopolar generated fields of the Earth, which have an average strength of ~90 volts DC per meter as you go from the Equator toward the poles or up from the surface. These fields and voltages are influenced by changes in the interplanetary magnetic field strength. When the Earth feels stronger shifts in the magnetic field strength, small changes are made in the rotational speed of the earth, as length of day [LOD] changes, due to the additional magnetic driving, or slowing of the angular momentum.
At the same time there is a shift in the standing charge gradient, from the poles [negative] to [positive] at the equator, in phase and proportion to the driving magnetic field strength changes. The magnetic impulses in the solar wind, from the rotation of the ~12 degree tilt of the magnetic pole of the sun off from the vertical axis of rotation, alternates the polarity of the magnetic fields introduced into the solar wind. Which have driven the moon / earth into the declinational dance that creates the lunar declinational atmospheric tides in phase in the atmosphere.
The center of mass (COM) of the earth is leveraged by the barycenter of the earth / moon system, acting as the fulcrum, suggested by Archimedes, from which the moon poises a counter balancing movement for the COM of the Earth, moving it some 800 to 1200 kilometers, above and below the average ecliptic plane value. The actual value is determined by the included angle of the moon determined by the 18.6 year Mn cycle of variation. At the same time by a slightly different period by the retrograde motion of the moon, that cause the more easily seen light phases, also moves the COM of the Earth in and out from the sun, the distance the barycenter is out from the COM of the Earth.
At the culminations of Lunar declinational movement, the polarity of the solar wind peaks and reverses, in phase with and/or because of, the relative motion of the Earth’s COM to the average location of the ecliptic plane, causing a surge in the pole to pole differential in charge potential, of the ion flux generated in the Earth’s homo polar generated fields.
Because the combination of the peak of Meridional flow surge in the atmosphere, and reversal of ion charge gradient globally occurs synchronously, most severe weather occurs at these times. The mechanism is due to changes in the ion gradient across frontal boundaries, impeding precipitation rates as the homopolar generator effects are in charge mode, and increasing the precipitation rates as it goes into the discharge phase.
The interaction of the inner planets, (of which the Earth is the only one with a large moon and strong active magnetic fields), and the moon in the pattern found in the Saros cycle timing drives a resultant background pattern in the weather that is further compounded by the interactions of the Earth passing the four greatest outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) which also have strong magnetic fields and large amounts of magnetically permeable materials in their make up.
By the basic electromagnetic rules of the relationships between magnetic fields, permeable materials and, shifts in induction due to changes in field strength. The magnetic fields present in the solar wind as it streams out toward any/all of the planets should have a concentration of magnetic field lines, in strength relative to the magnetic conductance, of the sum of magnetically permeable materials invested in that planetary body, irrespective of the strength of existing planetary permanent magnet fields.
Periods of increased magnetic conduction through the solar wind will appear to slow down particles and smooth up the flow, along the ecliptic plane, as most of the increase in magnetic flux will be in the greater density of the extended loops coming off the poles of the sun, and coupling back down through the poles of the affected planets.
In the early stages of the deployment of the Ulysses satellite I was able to find these patterns in the snatches of data via news service press releases, about the surges in magnetic fields seen in the Earth’s vicinity, were also seen elsewhere as well. The periods were also reveled, as Ulysses went over the poles of the sun, and special mention was made that the polar flux surges, were much more intense (than expected) but still in phase with “the normal” cyclic patterns as seen from the Earth.
I did not get to influence the selection of “data stream sections of interest” studied and written about during the life span of the Ulysses project, and the data base was never available to the general public, and is now archived away off line, hopefully still awaiting further study to prove/disprove the existence of concentrations of magnetic flux coupling through the planets as a source of inductive drivers of the weather, that could be further studied, and algorithms derived to adjust new improved forecast methods.
What I have come to surmise is that as the earth has Synod (heliocentric) conjunctions, with the outer planets, the earth passes into a concentrated magnetic flux stream, (about 30 degrees wide) that is felt as increases in homopolar driving forcing, increases in global charge gradient, and the LOD of the Earth to decrease to the point of most intense coupling, then increase back to the ambient levels for the normal annual pattern. The amount of this effect is proportional to the strength of the total magnetic flux coupled through the Earth, then on through the outer planet(s) in question.
Magnet field strength of coupling is relative to the volume of total magnetically permeable material involved. The addition of another planetary body in the conduction pathway causes an increase above what the two bodies would conduct separately. When more than two planets are involved, the coupling becomes greater as a result of the composite of the total conductance increases, each body tends to try to focus the ion stream following the magnetic flux concentration to center on itself. Sometimes producing convoluted shifts in field strength that are responsible for power outages, when induction frequencies reach the band pass of power transformers, and are out of phase with the 50/60 Hz.
As the earth passes any of the outer planets heliocentrically, the increase in magnetic flux felt by the earth due to the outer planet(s) increases the charge gradient from poles to equator, and adds to the displacement volume of air mass from equator to mid-latitudes and the total ion charge gradient across frontal boundaries, and the moisture content in the air masses to carry positive ions, which requires molecules missing valance electrons.
These additional surges of moisture laden positively ionized air combine with the normal patterns of declinational atmospheric tidal movement, to add strength to them when in phase, and decrease it some when out of phase. This shift in balance can be the determining factor, when watching hurricanes fizzle, or rapidly gain strength as they develop, consideration of these forces will add much to the knowledge of their behavior, and hence the predictability of tropical storms in both hemispheres.
What I have found in tornado production times, rates, and patterns in the coming and going of the 18.6 year Mn pattern of lunar declinational tidal interactions, carries over into driving the patterns of Global decade long oscillations across ocean basin patterns of production, as a composite of the combined effects of the Saros cycle period of inner planet effects and the combining of the ~172 year repeating patterns of outer planet influences on the sun and inner solar system. This greater compounded signal is what makes weather and climate appear chaotic.
The further investigation of the compounding cycles of the electromagnetic entanglements, between the planets playing in the solar wind, show up in the ionosphere, and resultantly being felt at the surface, are the drivers of “Natural Patterns of Variability” in the long term global circulation patterns, that are responsible for driving the climate.
The Saros cycle is better at predicting tornado production patterns, as the inner planets are considered in as well, where the 18.6 year Mn period just shows clumps and more of a homogeneous blending of sizes of outbreaks around the same time periods of the 27 day declination cycle, the 6558 days sorting periods (by synchronizing the 109.3 day period of four fold Rossby wave repeating pattern), yield a better defined systemic clumping of surges of production.
My Research and Process Refinement
By 1990, I was plotting local weather data for the surrounding counties in North Central Kansas, and it seemed to work better than the NWS forecasts, just by sorting weather data by going back 2 Metonic cycles 38 years to the same date, then pulling data from either side by the Saros cycle periodicities. By the time I started to acclimate a couple years of forecast results, I saw that it was doing a better job forecasting for the previous year than the supposed current.
I had the chance to go to Boston for a week, I tried to talk to some people at M.I.T., they just referred me to the reference library, where they had synoptic maps back to 1800’s, and file drawers full of high resolution satellite photos. I got busy pulling out daily prints of the 1800 IR photos, laid them out side by side, to see what the 27.32 day pattern repeated like, looking at it from space.
I laid out three cycles of about 27 days long. The second set of 27 did not look much like the 1st and 3rd set, so I got out some more, ended up with four sets of 27, 27, 28, 27 days, still the 1st and 3rd looked similar, but so did the 2nd and 4th to each other, but not so much to the 1st and 3rd. Pulled out four more sets of 27, laid them in a second row beneath the first. I was able to see a four-fold pattern of Rossby wave patterns that repeated as sets of fours.
By this time Peter Stone had gotten a free moment, that I could talk to him about why I was there, and I took a set of four photos (all from the days of Maximum North Lunar declination culmination) to his office and laid them out so he could see them, but not the date stamps at the tops, asked him how long apart they were taken, and he guessed that they had to be only hours apart because they were so similar. When shown the dates, and that they were almost a month apart, he got interested enough that my 10 minute visit stretched into 35 minutes, before he had to catch his flight, to be the Keynote speaker at the Madrid International Conference.
More HERE
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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here
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