Category Archives: Weather/Climate

More Looney-Tunes science

Posted on March 3, 2014 | 3 comments

The American Physical Society (physicists) will talk this month about building 1,000-foot high walls in Texas, North Dakota and Oklahoma to reduce tornadoes.

“Why is it a bad idea if it could save lives and property? Simply, the law of unintended consequences. If walls almost 1000 feet in height are placed in the Central U.S., not only would tornadic activity be disrupted, but precipitation patterns would be, too. Vast areas on the lee side of the walls would see significant decreases in rainfall and areas on the windward side of the walls would see increases…”

Not to mention how dreadful it would be living in the shadow of one of these mothas. So maybe we won’t be seeing them. Or…

Shoot, if the feds can’t build a fence between Mexico and the U.S., how could they build something like this?

3 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Looney-Tunes science

Posted on March 1, 2014 | 5 comments

The climate-change, wind turbine boys will do absolutely anything to promote their ridiculous, inefficient, high-maintenance product. Comes the latest laugher:

“Offshore wind turbines could weaken hurricanes, reduce storm surge.”

Ten thousand of them, to be exact. Not in the Gulf, please. We don’t need thousands of giant turbine blades flying this far inland after a Cat 5 rips into the windmills.

Via Instapundit.

UPDATE:  Now that fracking has slain the peak-oil dragon, windmills are facing decreasing government subsidies across the USA and Europe so the prospect of ten thousand “to weaken hurricanes, reduce storm surge” is nil.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Obsessions, Science/Engineering, Weather/Climate

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The feds: behind the curve as usual

Posted on February 18, 2014 | 7 comments

Seventeen “years with no global warming and recent very cold winters is a troubling trend, which if it continues will result in serious problems for humanity. This will be especially true if the current obsession with global warming continues, leaving the public unprepared for cold weather events.

“Of particular concern are the warnings from solar scientists that over the next three decades, we are headed toward significant global cooling as the sun weakens into a grand minimum.”

So, instead of relying on our hapless bureaucrats and corrupt political leadership—who want to close coal-fired power plants to stop the global warming that’s already stopped on its own—it’s time for “the public” to get its own act together: plan on colder winters and adjust accordingly.

Via PJMedia.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Science/Engineering, The Culture, Weather/Climate

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The cold returns

Posted on February 3, 2014 | 2 comments

Had a nice little warmup at the rancho last week, with highs in the 70s for several days. Almost like a return to a normal winter, i.e. mild. That all changed Sunday morning when a new cold front swept through whose near-freezing temps are expected to last most of this week.

All part of what could become one of the ten coldest U.S. winters on record. (Though it’s wise to remember that the reliable record is rather short.) The warmists contend it’s a result of the polar vortex being moved south due to melting Arctic ice. But the melt is in September, at the end of the Arctic summer, and that hardly seems capable of causing a cold winter 2 to 4 months later.

So, more likely the cold winter is just because it’s happened before in our normally variable climate and, once more, it’s happening again.

UPDATE:  And arctic “icecover bounced back over 50% [in 2013] with one of the coldest arctic summers on record while new records for ice were set in Antarctica, even trapping a research ship this past month, during the Antarctic summer.”

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Posted in Blogosphere, Weather/Climate

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Why are hard facts always cold?

Posted on January 29, 2014 | 2 comments

Ditherton Wiggleroom (as Vodkapundit calls Wormtongue) in his SOTU:

“The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by…”

Recovery? In his dreams. Obamacare has taken care of the recovery by effectively putting a cap on middle class income.

But why, I ask, must the hard facts always be cold? For that matter why must the facts be hard? (Other than that the “genuis” public speaker DW always speaks in cliches and platitudes?) A lot of his “facts” are pretty squishy. Like this one:

“Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar…”

And this beaut: “…the debate is settled.  Climate change is a fact.”

Just once I’d like to hear Wiggleroom speak of the hot, soft facts. It would certainly be more original. And the soft part more honest.

Naw. Never happen.

2 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Obsessions, The Economy, Weather/Climate

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The dumbass generation

Posted on January 19, 2014 | 6 comments

They wear shorts in the winter: knee-length basketball shorts for boys, crotch-hugging short-shorts for girls. Mr. Boy wears his daily, even when the temperature is in the 20s, which is about as cold as it usually gets in the daytime here in CenTexLand.

I think he’s deficient in common sense, but, then, so are the rest of the kids his age at his middle school. As near as I can tell most of them do it, too. Nevermind the Millennials. This is the dumbass generation.

Because, wandering the Google trail, I find it’s common across the country for kids his age to wear shorts in the winter, and it has been for several years now—even in Iowa, in the snow, and in New England when it’s 10 below.

Mr. B. swears he isn’t cold, swears he’s not trying to be a macho man. Has to be a fashion thing. I’m sure of it because when I drive him somewhere the first thing he does is turn up the car heater. So I know he’s really cold. How could he not be?

I turn the heat back down because I’ve already got on three layers and I’m not interested in sweating underneath them. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to call attention to the fact that, underneath the swagger, he’s freezing.

6 Comments

Posted in Evolution, Mr. Boy, Texana, The Culture, Weather/Climate

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Freezing or starving in the dark

Posted on January 13, 2014 | 4 comments

When their climate models predicting the end of snow and rising sea levels proved faulty, the global warmists changed their game to foreseeing a trend to “extreme” weather, even as extreme weather events declined. Where pols adopted their anti-carbon dioxide policies, people in Europe are freezing or starving.

Weather Bell Analytics meteorologist Joe D’Aleo: “In the UK 12 million people are said to be in fuel poverty, having to choose between heating and eating…In Germany 600,000 homes had their electricity turned off during the last brutal winter as electricity prices skyrocketed, and the country is rushing to build 10 coal fired plants to lower costs.”

Meanwhile, the Democrat’s EPA works up regulations to put our coal-fired electric plants out of business and replace them with low- and intermittent-power windmills incapable of meeting even current demand. And the Worm’s speechifying to stir up class envy fits nicely with the warmists’ real goal. They’re not out to save the planet.

D’Aleo: “UN climate official Ottmar Edenhofer in November 2010 admitted ‘one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.’  Instead, climate-change policy is about how ‘we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…’”

UPDATE:  The Weather Channel, a prominent purveyor of warmism’s “extreme weather” meme is dropped by carrier DirecTV. TWC bemoaned the future of public safety “at a time when the volatility and frequency of weather events seems to be increasing.” DirecTV replaced them with a cheaper alternative.

4 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, The Economy, Weather/Climate

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