Rusted Sky

I've always thought it a bit unusual that the data supporting the most famous 'indication' of global warming was never put out into the public domain. After all, if it were clear, clean, and completely conclusive (as it looks in the hockey stick chart) then the proof would be obvious - or at least a lot less murky than it currently is.

But that data was never forthcoming. Which is kind of funny, because the projected trillions of dollars in costs that would be caused both by the COSTS of the supposed remediation of the problem and the effects of the same should have SOME reasonable justification. One scientist, backed by a whole lot of politicians, shouldn't be able to shove a lie through the system tho the point where the entire world is held hostage to it - right?

Yet that seems what was done.

How the global warming industry is based on one MASSIVE lie – Telegraph Blogs

When McIntyre approached the Met Office and the CRU for more information they refused, claiming implausibly that it would damage Britain’s “international relations” with all the countries that supplied it. (Clue #1 - Damage international relations? How? - ed.) Later they went a step further and claimed the data had been mislaid. (Clue #2 - "The Dog Ate My Homework" works in grade school, once. If the kid has a dog. If it's important data, worth billions - you make backups early and often. - ed.)

And there McIntyre’s efforts to uncover the mystery of the Hockey Stick might have ended, had he not had a stroke of luck, as Chris Horner explains at Planet Gore.

“Years go by. McIntyre is still stymied trying to get access to the original source data so that he can replicate the Mann 1998 conclusion. In 2008 Mann publishes another paper in bolstering his tree ring claim due to all of the controversy surrounding it. A Mann co-author and source of tree ring data (Professor Keith Briffa of the Hadley UK Climate Research Unit) used one of the tree ring data series (Yamal in Russia) in a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 2008, which has a strict data archiving policy. Thanks to that policy, Steve McIntyre fought and won access to that data just last week.” (Clue #3 - when you WON'T publish your data - and fight hard to keep it blocked - chances are you're a fraud. - ed)

When finally McIntyre plotted in a much larger and more representative range of samples than used those used by Briffa – though from exactly the same area – the results he got were startlingly different.

Have a look at the graph at Climate Audit (which broke the story and has been so inundated with hits that its server was almost overwhelmed) and see for yourself.

http://www.climateaudit.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/rcs_chronologies_rev2.gif

The scary red line shooting upwards is the one Al Gore, Michael Mann, Keith Briffa and their climate-fear-promotion chums would like you to believe in. The black one, heading downwards, represents scientific reality.

Think about it for a second - what's the one thing that environmentalists want over everyone?

Control. They want to be able to decide how large a house you have, how much electricity you should be able to use, what kind of car you drive - or even if you get to have a car, or appliances, or electricity...

So what better way than to manufacture a 'crisis' - and push hard to implement their solutions now, NOW, NOW - waste not a moment! - all the time telling people "You're gonna fry in your own grease if you don't listen to us!" Everything is spun towards that one goal - to gain control. Skeptics are derided and ridiculed. Cooling trends are dismissed as 'weather', not 'climate' - and then spun as indications that things are actually WARMING. Charts are constructed that make a .5 degree variation over a couple of centuries look like Mt. Everest - ignoring both the excellent possibility that thermometer calibrations weren't exactly 'precise' two centuries ago, and that variations in the solar output might have some small effect - and overlooking the small fact that two centuries in the life of the planet is the equivalent of a mayfly's blink.

In the mean time, the Earth does what it does. It warms, it cools. Now scientists are forecasting a couple of decades of cooler weather... and if the trend holds it could be a century or more.

Now think about it - we're already going into a cooling trend, and it's been going on for a while. The frantic efforts recommended by the environmentalists would have 'worked' - in that the temperature trend would have gone down. That it 'worked' showed they knew what they were doing - and would justify further intervention in the name of 'saving the planet'.

But it looks like the con men aren't making their case fast enough. The marks are wising up - and aren't buying the con like they did at first. Carbon credits have become essentially worthless, and for all Al Gore pontificates, he's getting a lot less traction than he used to.

The next year or two will tell - people are getting fed up with the crisis mongers screetching about the environment. They're looking at a 2 degree projection and going "2 degrees worst case? Humans can adapt - we live from the equator to the polar circle - from deserts to the Himalayas . Maybe there won't be so many polar bears looking at igloos as 'frozen meals' - they're predators, they can find something to eat. Life will go on."

And it will.

J.

UT’s Kraken Supercomputer First Academic Computer to Break Petascale | Tennessee Today

KNOXVILLE — The University of Tennessee’s supercomputer, Kraken, has broken a major barrier to become the world’s first academic supercomputer to enter the petascale, performing more than 1 thousand trillion operations per second, a landmark achievement.

J.

I really, really miss being a kid at times. I miss not having to worry about a lot of things that I'm concerned with now... and I can (in retrospect) look back at my ignorance of certain matters and only sigh wistfully.

What do you do when your parents ask you to take care of arranging for their cremation? What do you do when your father asks you to fill out the hospice paperwork for your mother?

I can't say that such hasn't been coming for quite a while now. You just keep going on day by day - helping them out as you can, until there's one too many trips to the ER and the doctor suggests it may be time for hospice care. Then, you go nuts trying to get everything ready - moving furniture to make room for the last bed that Mother will be needing, getting rid of their queen bed (which Father hated) and getting a new single bed from IKEA... and you both know it won't be long until he's the only one in that room. After almost 66 years, he's going to be alone.

It almost feels like I'm the adult, and they're the children now - having to be taken care of and helped. But I guess that's all part of it, isn't it? They took care of me, and I'll do what I can to take care of them. That's what love's about, isn't it?

Well, this too will pass. I'm thankful for my lovely bride and my wonderful son - they make it all a lot easier...

And so do you. Thank you.

J.

I'm trying to get wifi working well for my father - he's really marginal on signal, enough so that half the time he's gettin' nuttin' from where he is and where the router is. The router's not moveable - anyone got an opinion on high-gain antennas and their utility?

Thanks!

J.

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize to mixed reviews | Reuters

OSLO (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for giving the world "hope for a better future" and striving for nuclear disarmament, in a surprise award that drew both warm praise and sharp criticism.
The decision to bestow one of the world's top accolades on a president less than nine months into his first term, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, was greeted with gasps of astonishment from journalists at the announcement in Oslo.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." But critics -- especially in parts of the Arab and Muslim world -- called its decision premature.

(Shrug.)

Well, if he can win a Nobel Prize less than two weeks after being inaugurated (the cutoff was 1 Feb - so he'd been in office less than two weeks) then the rest of his Presidency should be a cinch, yes?

Why do I keep feeling we're in a really bad novel, being set up for some sort of 'catastrophe' that only Obama can 'solve'?
And afterwards, we're supposed to elect him, oh, World Leader or something to show him how 'grateful' we are?

J.

If we did, don't you think the government would actually ACT like there was a problem, and start drilling?

U.S. Blocks Oil Drilling at 60 Sites in Utah - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — The Department of the Interior has frozen oil and gas development on 60 of 77 contested drilling sites in Utah, saying the process of leasing the land was rushed and badly flawed.

The 77 government-owned parcels, covering some 100,000 acres in eastern and southern Utah, were leased in the last weeks of the Bush administration. But the leases were immediately challenged by conservation groups, and in January a federal judge blocked drilling on the ground that the Interior Department had failed to follow its own procedures for reviewing the appropriateness of lands designated for oil and gas extraction.

Yeah. Sure they did...

J.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | What happened to global warming?

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

But that was a perceived feature, not a bug, because it gave the Eco-nuts the ability to go "See! If we don'tdosomethingrealquicknow we're going to broil in 5 years!" without anyone actually doing anything so mundane as actually seeing whether the forecasts actually matched reality.

Western MT cold breaks records - Montana's News Station - Fair. Accurate. To the Point. -

The National Weather Service predicted freezing temperatures and snow flurries both Saturday and Sunday for most of Eastern Montana.
Meanwhile, temperatures in parts of western Montana were near zero overnight and record lows were set in Missoula, Kalispell and Butte on Sunday.
With chilly temperatures expected to sweep across the state over the weekend, school marching bands were pulled from the University of Montana's homecoming parade Saturday under threat of frigid weather.

Cold temperatures threaten Idaho seed potato crop

Temperatures on Saturday evening dipped to 17 degrees; the last time it was this cold, this early, in southwestern Idaho was more than two decades ago, in 1985.

Phillies and Rockies are snowed out in Denver

Heavy snow has cancelled Saturday's Game 3 in the Philadelphia-Colorado baseball playoff at Denver.

Global warming comes to the Midwest

Record breaking cold and snow came to the Midwest this weekend. Here in the Des Moines area, we received the earliest snow and the coldest October 11th in recorded history. This follows the coldest July in Iowa history.

Meanwhile, the Democrats keep telling us the earth is getting warmer and only they can save us from impending doom. Al Gore is in the Midwest this weekend promoting his global warming scam. Obama and the Democrats in Congress are trying to take over the energy sector with a cap and trade bill to to combat something that does not exist. The effects of this bill would cripple our already faltering economy. Gore and the White House green czar are even threatening lawsuits against companies that emit greenhouse gases.

Here are the facts: the earth is not getting warmer. There has been zero increase in global temperatures this decade. This alone refutes all other points made by global warming activists. There are plenty of other scientific facts that destroy their arguments, as well.

I fear we're in for colder times, with the givernment hamstringing our efforts to get warm. Again - it makes no sense... but that's pretty much a constant any more when it comes to stuff from Washington.

J.

Feds to 60 Million American Anglers: We don't need you

IRVINE, Calif. USA – October 5, 2009 – A recently published administration document outlines a structure that could result in closures of sport fishing in salt and freshwater areas across America. The White House created an Interagency Oceans Policy Task Force in June and gave them only 90 days to develop a comprehensive federal policy for all U.S. coastal, ocean and Great Lakes waters. Under the guise of ‘protecting’ these areas, the current second phase of the Task Force direction is to develop zoning which may permanently close vast areas of fishing waters nationwide. This is to be completed by December 9, 2009.

Dave Pfeiffer, President of Shimano American Corporation explained, “In spite of extensive submissions from the recreational fishing community to the Task Force in person and in writing, they failed to include any mention of the over one million jobs or the 6o million anglers which may be affected by the new policies coast to coast. Input from the environmental groups who want to put us off the water was adopted into the report verbatim – the key points we submitted as an industry were ignored.”

Oh, who am I fooling? The agenda's what's important - and what 60 million anglers represent isn't anything so important as a handful of his constituency that equates meat with murder - whether it be on hooves or in the sea.

Talk about a tone-deaf administration... There's a LOT of fishermen out there, and this isn't going to make 'em at all happy.

Another thing - when you consider all the little things Obama's not listening to input on, how can this administration be trusted with the big stuff?

J.

'Conceptual language' hides health care's cost | Washington Examiner

Some of the headlines in recent days are not worthy of belief. No, I'm not referring to the headlines that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, however odd that many seem to many (including, it seems, Obama himself). I'm referring to the headlines earlier in the week to the effect that the health care bill sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus will cut the federal deficit by $81 billion over the next ten years.

Yes, that is what the Congressional Budget Office estimated. But, as the CBO noted, there's no actual Baucus bill, just some "conceptual language." Actual language, the CBO noted, might result in "significant changes" in its estimates. No wonder Democratic congressional leaders killed requirements that the actual language be posted on the Internet for 72 hours before Congress votes.

More significant is the number most publications did not put in their headlines and lead paragraphs: the CBO's estimate that the Baucus "conceptual language" would increase federal spending by $829 billion over ten years. So how do you increase federal spending and cut the deficit at the same time?

Sigh. When you're a lawyer, all that matters is how you can twist the verbiage to get the result you desire. Side effects and consequences be damned, the win is all-important and takes precedence.

J.

Confirmation of Ultra YCBO Superconductor and Detection of Superconduction at 254K (Household Freezer Temperature)

J.

At various conventions - I recall fondly the Star Trek blooper reel at Iguanacon in '78.

It's good to see the tradition's continued.

Blinded By Lens Flare: The Star Trek Gag Reel - Star Trek - io9

J.

It's a Fork, It's a Spoon, It's a ... Weapon? - NYTimes.com

NEWARK, Del. - Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother's fiancé by his side to vouch for him.

Zachary's offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district's reform school.

“There is no parent who wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife,” said George Evans, the president of the Christina district’s school board. He defended the decision, but added that the board might adjust the rules when it comes to younger children like Zachary.

The idea that a 6-year old will have such malign intent that he'll use a knife to poke out other kids' eyes is almost beyond comprehension. But stuff like this makes me rather glad that the littly guy's not in public school.

J.

Kellogg's plan to use laser to burn logo onto individual corn flakes to stamp out fakes | Mail Online

Using a laser to do something so trivial as to mark cornflakes? CORNFLAKES?

It's an amazing time, isn't it?

J.

Down in Quick question... , I asked opinions about how to stretch my father's WiFi signal. Basically, the facility kitchen is between his place and the router's location, and the blasted thing is darn near a Faraday cage. (Stainless steel all over the place, well grounded, right in line - a straight line would likely show two industrial refrigerators, pot and pan storage, stainless backsplashes, and probably 8 or 9 walls.) All in all, it's a signal black hole. The signal goes in, and never comes out. At least, with normal antennas.

But a solution's been found, kind of. I put a Linksys signal booster on the router. With a high-gain antenna, I could just barely link up... kind of. Intermittently, When the planets aligned properly.

John B. (OTPU) gave some links, which led to other links, which ended up with a solution.

A parabolic antenna - (the EZ-12 Parabolic Template Reflector) made out of cardstock and aluminum foil. The template is available at FreeAntennas.Com, and scaled up to 8.5x11 gives you a good-sized parabolic surface that slips down over your existing antenna, and gives you up to 12db gain.

This was sufficient to get the signal strength from 'no signal' (yet occasionally getting a DHCP linkup and address) to 'low signal' - or from no bars to 1 bar. The link is stable - nothing's dropping, though it's still not terribly fast. (About 500kb/s according to Speakeasy.net/Speedtest - my Comcast link here is 13300kb/s). I haven't checked the router to see how it's configured - but Father's just glad to get something stable.

Card stock paper, and aluminum foil. (And a bit of glue, and tape...) And now Father's on the internet...

(All that's missing is bubble gum and bailing wire...)

J.

I thought the whole point behind our decision to remove the missile shield from Western Europe was to get the Russians signed on to get tough with Iran. Guess that was a bad trade, eh?

Russia's Putin warns against intimidating Iran | World | Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday warned major powers against intimidating Iran and said talk of sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear programme was "premature".

Putin, who many diplomats, analysts, and Russian citizens believe is still Russia's paramount leader despite stepping down as president last year, was speaking after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Moscow for two days of talks.

"There is no need to frighten the Iranians," Putin told reporters in Beijing after a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
"We need to look for a compromise. If a compromise is not found, and the discussions end in a fiasco, then we will see."

Yo, Obama - sold out pretty cheap, didn't ya?

J.

Power Line - Dems Flee Countrywide Vote

So transparent, they aren't even there.

J.

Keep track of your credit report - that is.

There's a number of services out there (like the one with the ever-so-amusing singer with the lousy credit score) that will 'track' your creidt - but what if you simply want to check your credit report and not pay anything for it?

AnnualCreditReport is the one to go to. They'll provide reports from the Big Three credit tracking companies. You WON'T get your credit score from them, but you'll be able to see any problems you've got. (For example if you're consistently 120 days late on your credit cards, you can be pretty sure you've got a low score...)

But - if you really, absolutely, positively want to watch some guy singing a catchy jingle, go here and click on the video.

AnnualCreditReport.com is the ONLY authorized source to get your free annual credit report under federal law. The Fair Credit Reporting Act guarantees you access to a free credit report from each of the three nationwide reporting agencies — Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion — every twelve months. The Federal Trade Commission has received complaints from consumers who thought they were ordering their free annual credit report, but instead paid hidden fees or agreed to unwanted services. Don’t be fooled by TV ads, email offers, or online search results. Go to the authorized source when you request your free report.

J.

Two weekends ago, we went up to Lake Allatoona for a bit of camping. The lake's at full pool now (in fact, a bit over...) so we're not terribly worried about water restrictions. But after a nice, peaceful weekend up there - we came back to a pretty chilly house.

The upstairs heat wouldn't come on.

The lower would, so we cranked it on and warmed the place that way. The temperatures were pretty moderate this last week, so things weren't too bad. But, unfortunately, it's just the start of the winter heating season.

I called Cool Masters, the folks who keep our 30-year old HVAC system going. The tech poked around a bit, and told me the system's working okay, except for the gas valve. Apparently the solenoid in it has failed, and it's passed it's last gas. Replacement cost? $600 or so, with labor.

I checked around - it'd cost close to $400 to buy one of the same vintage. (It's a 1979 original.) So we started thinking about it all...

The system's 30 years old. The exterior unit's a mass of rusting metal - the interior system is NOT an efficient thing at all. Our utility bills are, to put it mildly, jaw-dropping in the summer and cringe-inducing in the winter. So, as attached as we are to the old dinosaur, it's time to find a tar pit to submerge it into and get a new system.

We've been getting quotes - and I can't say any of the prices make me happy. They're all within $300 or so for roughly the same equipment, so the issue comes down to financing and trust.

We simply don't have a large chunk to throw at the thing. Cool Masters has a 1-year same as cash financing option, and the others don't. So that's a big plus right there. Also, I've had them servicing our air conditioner since that blasted American Home Shield sent out a couple of contractors that told us one thing and told AHS something else. Frankly, AHS was a waste of money, but that's a rant for another time. Cool Masters got the thing running, while telling us that the system was about at the end of its useful life. (Which was readily apparent, even to an untrained eye like mine.) So they win points for honesty and competence.

Well, at least we can look forward to lower utility bills, no matter which way we go. A 30 year old system wasn't designed with efficiency in mind like current systems are - something we've been sadly aware of since we moved into this house.

Hate taking on the debt... but that's as may be. Sometimes you don't really have much of a choice. (Which was why, in case you were wondering, I was checking my credit record... it's always nice to know about problems going in!)

J.

Sigh. You know that little cardboard parabolic antenna fix I came up with for my father's internet connection problem?

It didn't work for long - about a half-hour. And then it was back to intermittent as anything...

So, I've decided to go a bit... larger, and a trifle more precise. Found a parabola calculator on line - (put in the width and depth of your material, and it gives you the curve and the focal point) and picked up some balsa - and made this.

Clamped three 11"x4" pieces of 1/8th balsa together, traced the calculated 10" parabolic curve on it, drilled holes for the dowels

With the paint and foil on (Foil? Aluminum foil, of course... I'd like to use something else, but since I'm doing this on the cheap-cheap about the only thing I've bought was the balsa, though I suppose 6" aluminum flashing would do also and not cost all that much...) it looks something like this... (minus the foil...)

I didn't take a picture of it after the foil was put on.

I'm actually rather pleased with how it came out. My biggest problem was trusting the lines I drew and the tools I was using - my astigmatism made it rather difficult to get it set up and properly vertical.

I'm thinking about making a couple more for the practice - I've got a couple of WRT54G routers set up, I wonder whether I can use them to survey the local area to see who's broadcasting?

J.

And the picture accompanying this article is one of them. Care to guess why?

Obama Honors Returning War Dead - WSJ.com

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Delaware -- President Barack Obama made an overnight dash to Dover Air Force Base on Wednesday to honor the return of fallen soldiers, absorbing the ultimate cost of war as the United States endures its deadliest month of the Afghanistan campaign.

But then, it wouldn't have been quite the photo op, would it? And he knows how to play to the camera when he's in campaign mode, I'll give him that much.

But don't salute as a sign of respect, sir. You haven't earned the right - and even though you're 'Commander in Chief', you're still (and always will be) a civilian.

And civilians don't salute.

(Yeah, it's a petty annoyance. But that's Obama for ya... one petty annoyance piled on top of another.)

J.

Campaign Spot - NRO

Democrats Ask New Jersey Secretary of State to Ignore Mismatched Signatures on Absentee Ballot Requests

This year, New Jersey’s registered voters can request a mail-in ballot for any reason. Before 2005, voters needed to provide a reason for why they needed an absentee ballot. The state received about 150,000 absentee ballot applications this year.

On about 2,300 of those applications so far, the signature on the request form did not match the signature on the voter’s registration forms with the state.

In a development that is depressingly predictable, the New Jersey Democratic Party is asking the state to provide provisional ballots for all these voters. Those ballots, could, presumably, be used to overcome any narrow lead by Republican Chris Christie over Democrat Jon Corzine on Election Day.

J.

Per John B's request, here's a shot of the completed antenna with the high-gain antenna inserted into the focal point.

We did a laser test (little laser pointers are SUCH a useful tool...) and the focus was approximately where I thought it would be. It varied about a half-inch, depending on where you were scanning - but it's all intercepted by the shell of the antenna. It's probably because of my sanding - even a small variation in the curve can cause a significant change in focal point. But that's as may be, it works and it's good enough.

One thing I didn't anticipate was the difficulty in getting the aluminum to attach to the balsa. I used Gorilla Glue (made only from the BEST gorillas...) and it held well enough but it needed some significant pressure for a period of time to get it to stick. Next one I might use some rubber cement in spots along with the gorilla glue, or some thin contact adhesive. Suggestions would be welcome.

Oh, and that waviness you see wasn't there before I dropped it. (Whoops.) On the good side, it's balsa and aluminum foil, so it didn't drop hard. On the bad side... well, it doesn't look as nice as it did to start with. The frequencies being used are such that the slight crumple doesn't matter much, but esthetically it's not quite as pleasing as it was...

J.