Thursday, October 31, 2019

Happy Halloween

At the door, I'm being a trump zombie, without make-up.  BECAUSE TRUMP ZOMBIES DON'T WEAR MAKE-UP!  muhaha


Here is the Pixel 4 nightsight.  Pitch black.


ps.  we had 10 kids because of the rain.  Soooo much candy left over.

Tropical air plume smashes against the frozen Arctic


My most popular recent article showed Europe's one day of summer warmth smashing against Greenland.  Everybody was going on about how all the glaciers would melt.  But the plume smashed against the ice like this picture.  It completely surrounded Greenland and they got their one day of warmth that lasted in the warmie media for weeks.

This plume cannot surround the North Pole.  The plume before that actually cut into the cold like a knife, but that was then.  The Arctic ice volume chart had a very nice wobble with that last plume, but now it 'shrugs off every attempt to intimidate it'  (Austen-izing).


A fine cold morning



Showing min temps today.  Toronto is just on the edge.

In other news, I have found that sea level rise is about 90% correlated with global temperatures.  That's the result of water expansion with temperature. 


The good news is that as we start to freeze to death, the southern beaches become better.  :)


Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Old guy bounces back again

So, today was to be the big exit.  I just got a phone call from him.  "Whaaaat?"  that's what I kept saying.  Apparently, the last three days he's been bouncing around the room, saying "I'm not dead yet!'.  So the knacker didn't take him.

When they wheeled him into palliative care, I said "You'll surprise them all by walking out."  And he's going to.  They think now that a light dose of chemo will work, so he can maintain his quality of life.  I told him now, that they are never letting him come back.  Such an embarrassment. 

The next thing is at the crematorium door.  "Hold it!" he'll say.


What did they find in Ignace?

Reference


This is funny, and typical.  You get a borehole log almost immediately, but it takes years to properly spin the results.  That's what happened with Bruce.

They'll never release these results, until they find at least one zone that looks good.  My hypothesis for the whole bare granitic rock is that glaciation cracked the rock down to about a kilometre in depth.  These are huge sub-horizontal fractures.  They might try to go for a zone between the fractures, but they wander a lot.  That's why they want more drilling, but it won't give them any happiness.

Onward and downward, it's the fun show.

** below 1 klick, the rock is so highly stressed, it explodes if you look at it.

ps.  the only solution is not politically acceptable, which is the stage for all 'Great Stupidities'.  :)

pps.  Storm Area 51, Ignace, Ontario.  Yeah!

How companies die

Reference


I love this article.  It's all about business in Canada, which is mainly protected from competition.  As a company ages, it gets more and more of these people rising up.  They all have fun parties.  Slowly, the few that bring in the money get tired and leave, or if it is an American company in Canada, they get fired.


Lake Erie power cable rises from the dead


Yeah, this is sillier than Bruce wanting to put a nuclear plant on the lake.  Or building the Niagara tunnel.  All of these we looked at in the 80's.  But, if you don't learn from history ... yada yada.


Monday, October 28, 2019

Ocean current report -- Oct 26, 2019


So, for the first time ever, there is no concentrated stream hitting South America.  It's just a diffuse current, mostly going south.  I have no idea what this means, but it isn't good.

All other currents are maintaining their pattern, and are consistent with the ocean temps.  Should be a fun winter.


Series of Pacific Plumes Hitting Arctic Like a Plasma Jet


This is most amazing.  And it is having a bizarre effect on the Arctic ice volume build-up.


The current curve is zooming off into the unknown.  That's because the hot air is cutting into the ice.  The jet is so narrow that it doesn't have much energy, and doesn't save the rest of us from the cold.  But it is interesting.  This pattern could go on for another month.

ps.  you can see how the plume developed in the last 5 days, and why Toronto is warm next 2 days.



Sunday, October 27, 2019

Arctic air comes down to love us to death


I just love this new map site Climate Reanalyzer.  It gives a lot of nice pictures. 

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Become a Geophysicist - Part 4

Heat Flow - The heat energy coming from the earth is about the same order of magnitude of the heat energy of the Sun hitting the surface.  The uncertainties are so huge that you might as well consider them to be about the same.

I just put up that interesting tidbit.  If you want to be a geophys, you must think in huge amounts of energy.  The geothermal heat energy blows up volcanoes, and moves continental plates around like a toy train set.  The Sun also puts in a huge amount of energy.  But the uncertainties in the day to day flux makes humanity look like a bump on a frog, on a log in the middle of the swamp.

The Earth has to get rid of this heat, or else it will be a boiled frog.  The amazing thing is that for the 2 billion years or so of life, the Earth has been shirt-sleeve temperature somewhere.  We know that because we are here to ask the question.

In all that time with the tectonic plates bouncing off each other, huge continental volcanism, giant meteorite impacts, there has been no runaway thermal reaction that kills everything,  like on Venus.  A geophys must be in awe that for billions of years, the Earth has been dancing on the point of a pin.  Solar power may go up and down, with the Earth's heat blanketed by super-continents, and the temperatures laugh at all that.

So, if you want to ask the question "Why are we here?", you are going to have to go seriously at the Earth's heat balance with all the physics experiments you can rustle up. (Hint -- not done)

-- to be continued (now up to 2 fans, plus the old guy)

ps.  I absolutely have run out of ideas for this.  End of series.


It isn't easy trying to die

So, we can write a show as the blackest of black comedies.  None of this is real.  

My old guy is now in P. Marg.  He is an unusual case because we found out that his amazing remission from prostate bone cancer was with the old castrating drug they have been using for years.  Then it all went bad.  So, they tried $10,000 worth of the new miracle drug.  It went worse, with bone tumours popping out like mushrooms.

Naturally, he wanted to book the bus out of town (physician-assisted death).  Then began the comedy, when a flood of doctors came in for an assessment.  He had doctors coming in two times saying they were the 'second assessment'.  And then he found out you have to wait 10 days, while they torture you with 'Are you really, really sure?'.  And you need the paper signed with two witnesses who aren't your family, aren't in the will, and are not being paid to sign.

So, in the end, we still don't know when the train leaves the station.  I think they want to study him.

ps.  they must have read my article and it's moved up to the next few days. 

Pixel 4 Telephoto Effect is quite amazing


A standard photo of Queens Park.  Then the zoom.


Also, a video with zooming.


And the big buildings

With a zoom on the middle


This is better than any big-lens SLR I've seen. 


Become a Geophysicist - Part 3

Okay, with a thundering ovation of one, I continue. 

A budding geophys must recognize that there are two types of science in this world.  The main one is 'Story Telling', or Philisophical Science (PS).  It is mainly making observations, and then extrapolating, based on your limited knowledge.  We all love ps because it is non-threatening, and makes good television.  Artistotle was the king of this, he would say "Look, a feather drops slower than a rock, therefore all lighter objects fall slower than heavy ones."

The thing about PS is that 'conflict of interest' is built-in and not obvious.  If you can make up stories, then you are going to do whatever the audience wants, so you can make money.  And you must always make it sound plausible, like selling vag eggs.  "Chickens are healthy!"

Our great leap forward in society was when we threw all this out.  But now, it's just a Western Imperalism thing.  Let's all go back to PS, and a gentler time.  The problem is that PS always led to disaster, and it's no different now.

A geophys throws all this out, and goes with Scientific Method, or SM.  The physics of SM is that it belongs in the future, rather than the hindsight of PS.  SM casts a hypothesis that must be proven in the future with new observations or experiments.  The hypothesis lives or dies (very cruel).  PS always adjusts the story when new observations come in.  For example I was reading that the flat zone in global temps before 2016 was being explained away.


They use the 2016 El Nino to show that all the heat came back, and ignored the drop afterwards.  Wasn't that a good story?  Let's give them more grants.

-- to be continued.


Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Become a Geophysicist - Part 2

When I was a kid, we had on tv Mr. Physics, or Mr. Wizard, or whatever.  The point is that it was all hard science that could hurt you.  They had lots of kids on the show who lapped up dangerous stuff.  Not like now, with nighscience that's so wishy-washy that nobody gets offended.

Now we are talking heat flow which starts with the obnoxious kid putting the flame to Mr. Wizards lab coat.  "Why does it burn you when you touch something hot?"  the smart-ass kid says.  "I'll show you some physics!" Mr. Wiz says bunching up his fists.  CUT!  The kid was later found dangling upside down from a window.  You just don't get that now, kids are so important, yada yada.

So, on your way to be Geophysicist #1, you've got to wrap your mind around heat energy.  When your rotten kid leaves the door wide open in the winter, you don't yell "Close the door, you're letting the cold in."  You say "Close the damn door, you're letting all the heat energy out."  Big diff.

If you leave the door open, you are losing heat energy by convection.  The warm air molecules are bunched less densely, and they float out the door.  Cold air comes in to take it's place.

Your house also loses heat through radiation, or the generation of infra-red light.  Also there is conduction, which is your basement wall warming the earth around it.  Most heat in a house is lost by air leaks, so get new windows.  The important thing is to not sweat the small stuff, and go for main thing (10 times more than the others).

For heat energy, you have lots of energetic molecules vibrating in a solid, liquid, or gas, and it wants to get out and burn someone.

The Earth is just like that, but someone has left the door wide open at the boundary of air and outer space.  Since the air can't move any farther out, all that heat is lost with radiation.  We would be a cooked goose if we weren't polluting outer space with lots of infra-red, and microwave energy.

--to be continued.

--actually, this isn't gaining any traction, and it's all about influencing an audience, and getting money.  End of series.  blah.

Become a Geophysicist - Part 1

The warmie curtain is slowly opening because of the cold, and behind, we find an old man desperately churning out stories whenever anything new is discovered.  This is 'Adhoc Philosophy' and was one of the greatest sins of the Church during the Reformation.  That we are back into it, shows that what goes around, comes around.

The amazing thing is that this a fault of the Internet, yet the Internet has all the right information.  We are pushed by 'influencers' because we aren't all geophysics people.  Now, that can change!

We can start from basic physics, and the excellent physics engines of computer games.  They have to put in all the laws of physics or things don't seem right.  You drop a hammer and it lands on your toe, you can't push on a rope, and touching something hot burns you.

These are the basic laws and more of the advanced cases can be broken down to the basics.  For example, forces move things.  I use this for economics, which consists of the basic laws of forces that move greedy people. 

The laws of heat flow determine our monthly heating bills, so it is good to know some of these.  I find that 97% of the people shudder at the mention of physics, but it is every day life.  Get to love it!

- to be continued.


Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Good-bye to the old guy

For years, I've had my old guy around.  I met him in our local valley, when I was walking the dog.  He was a retired engineer, and in his late 80's

He told me all the horror stories about the start of SNC-lavvy, when he was an engineer in Montreal.  I exchanged my horror stories about the old company.

18 months ago, he was dying.  Somehow, totally missed prostate cancer got into his bones.  But he was going downtown and was one of the first to try the new miracle drug.  It was total remission, and he struggled to get back walking.  This summer he was zooming around on his bike.

Well, the little cancer critters fought off their need for testosterone, and came back with a vengeance.  He is now in palliative care at Princess Margaret, and has scheduled a date to 'leave town' on Monday.  But all this week, we are having a big party, a celebration of life.  I have to squeeze in on Thursday. 


Ocean currents -- October 21, 2019

Some significant trends are still evident.


This shows the main impact zone of the Atlantic belt has moved down to the most southerly point that I've seen yet.


Once again, this winter, we will have lots of heat energy going south.

The Pacific currents are a mess.


There are upper reversals, but it is all turbulence, no net flow.  This has resulted in the quickest draw-down of warm water that I've seen in the eastern Pacific.  Once again this winter, our only warmth will come from the Gulf of Mexico, and that's only for Southern Ontario, once in a while.

I still don't have confidence in a mechanism for the temperature cycles.  Is it diversion to the south, or a heat energy storage thing?  It needs some measurements.


Unboxing the Pixel 4

Aren't those the stupidest articles ever?  Anyway, I got a pixel 4 to replace my Nexus 5x.  Yeah!  Can't wait to start taking pictures.


This should last another 10 years.

1 - not easy trying to get an esim.  I will have to go to a place.


Monday, October 21, 2019

Another warmie false assumption

Reference


All their assumptions are false, but I like to record when physics people have the nerve to publish.  However, they left out the fact that ice over water does not raise sea levels.  It's like having ice in your drink -- buoyancy rules.

I like the ice modelling.  I used to do that, the question being what is the maximum shear stress that ice can exert on rock, and it depends on steepness and total height.  I concluded that it didn't matter because it was the water pressure that cracked rock.




Bruce nuclear waste deep black hole

Latest news.

There is nothing more dead than the search for a nuclear waste repository in Canada.  I think it's generally dead all over the world.  There were the glory days, before Germany stopped all nuclear power and became slaves to Russia.  I remember them well.

All rationality is lost here, since the most important thing is to find a community that wants this crap.  And 'low level' is exactly the same as 'high level' because the low level radioactivity is more mobile than uranium or plutonium.

The current state (in stasis) is that gung-ho young warriors want the Bruce site which is the worst rock in the world.  And since both organizations are exactly the same, the high-level people want in, as well.

The true meaning of 'worst rock' means that it cannot be built.  All of this is wonderful posturing, giving bureaucrats lots of work.  I'll probably be dead before we even go to the next step.

ps.  once the concept of carbon warming is buried under the advancing walls of ice, we will find we don't need nuclear, and that our natural gas is sufficient.


Sunday, October 20, 2019

Extreme Cold Hits the Arctic

Yeah, the silly season for globby warming is over!  Everybody is freezing to death.


Bookies have slashed the odds!  Might still be a good bet.  :)


All around it's -18c, which is the magic point for freezing saltwater.


Look at that ski-jump forming on the current curve!  The second-derivative on the curve is unprecedented.  Yeah!

The warmies are quiet.  Normally, I would expect more stories on how the jet stream is attacking us again.  Maybe they'll just huddle under their blankets until next July.

ps.  Future Headline:  Today, It Was Too Cold for Weekly Extinction Rebellion March.  Many still recovering from last week's frostbite.

Friday, October 18, 2019

This Year's Cannabis Haul


I had two plants this year.  One was in a pot and one was in the garden.  The garden one did much better because it benefited from the trickle watering.  The pot dried out several times in the sunny summer.


This is my classic video from last year.  It has 12,000 views.  Nothing has changed.  I'm still using the powerful Hash Plant, with high thc and cbd.  This has proven to be tremendously healthy.  My brother-in-law, who is totally wrecked from moving stones in his garden, was so cured of pain that he moved more stones!

My old guy has the cancer coming back.  If that happened to me, I'd rather be full of this stuff, than morphine.

ps. wow, it's taking forever to cook this year.  Very juicy.

pps.  got about 6 l of oil.  No idea yet on the strength.

more: it's as strong as previous batches.  I wonder if there is a concentration limit.  Do not buy ultra-processed, pure cbd oil.  It is useless, like pure fish oil.

No atmospheric plume is going above the 49th parallel


If you ever wanted confirmation that gretagirl is going to freeze her buns up north, then this is it.  All the the plumes are cutting off halfway to the North Pole.  The cause is a lack of heat energy on the north side of the world.

If the Pacific is hot, then we normally get plumes up to the Yukon.  This gives us fine snow coming from the North West.  Not happening right now.  Of course, this pattern could change tomorrow, but most likely will not, because of no heat.

I've read that Montreal has created our first lowland glacier by dumping all its snow into an old quarry.  The snow did not all melt this year.  Next year it will be bigger and start to flow.

ps.  the Arctic ice volume curve is pointing almost straight up.  If the media loved physics, then we would have the headline "Arctic Ice Volume Increases at Fastest Rate in 50 Years!".  I made that up about 50 years, the records only go back a short time.

pps.  Oct 21.  An Atlantic plume has broken through, up north.

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Vancouver earthquake map


Yeah, something to do with earthquakes.  I love earthquakes much more than the whole globby warming thing, but almost no earthquakes in the past year or two.

I think this map is based on the building stock, rather than soil conditions.  It just says that the crummy old brick buildings are going to fall.  In reality, it's the cheap condos on deep soil that will tilt.  Anything on that hardpan will do well, including brick buildings.




Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Ocean current report - Oct 16, 2019

I thought I might as well do these again.  Not much has been happening.  Remember, a single one of these reports doesn't do much.  What you want is to see the patterns shifting.  The past exciting stuff was the big reversal of the 2016 El Nino, and the cessation of both the Gulf Stream and Northern Pacific current.  Now, that was something.


This is the Atlantic, and it shows, once again, that there is a big hunk of heat going south this year.


The Arctic current is really picking up, and it's from the freezing of the ice cap, and not the melting of Greenland.

Finally, the reversal in the Pacific, which seems to have given us a post- El Nino rise in temps, looks like it is getting beaten back.


All is right again with the Arctic ice, as the weird distortion is curving back to join its buddy-lines.


I am expecting that the global temps curve will go back to sinking again, after these little blurps.  Physics always wins in the end.  :)

ps. and the UK is leading the fun.


pps.


What will the University of Leeds have to say about this?

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Fish videos

One thing with the full face mask is that you physically cannot dive.  Firstly, the mask holds so much air that you are holding onto a balloon.  Second, if you really force yourself down, your ears hurt a lot because there is no equalization.  I tried to dive on a few of these, maybe two feet is good, five feet is painful.


Also, I ran a stablizing program on Linux.  The super-expensive go-pro has built-in stabilization.



ps.  on the day before we left a lady drowned snorkelling.  She was on one of those jammed tourist boats, and nobody saw her.  I suspect she may have had one of those 'deadly' full face masks.

Seychelles in sequence - Part 2

In our wonderful catamaran, we went island hopping.  Our meals were always magnificent from our cook, Marise.

I loved snorkelling with my 'slow-pro' cheap Chinese action camera.  Here is a turtle.


Like I said, not a speck of live coral, but the fishies were colourful, trying to eke out a living.  If they want to get the coral back, they will have to do some massive engineering to get nitrogen to zero.

It was all a blur.  Here's my daughter, killed on the Iron Throne.


Such was the life of the islands.


Cheers, everyone!

ps.  more fishies


also, my 'antman' full-face' snorkel was great.

Weird Arctic warming continues

Although the world is getting colder, we are having a weird blip of warmth.

In the Pacific, the main cause of this blip is probably a short-term northern reversal.  This is like an El Nino, and might be a rebound, or the famous El Nina.  There are no signs of an El Nino, which is the only cause I have found so far for a major global temp rise.


The Arctic ice freeze is taken a weird curve away from the main curves.  We don't have much history on this, so who knows if it has happened before?  Unprecedented!  :)


You would expect that to go back to the fold sooner or later.

The Arctic warmth is being driven by a weird plume pattern that bypasses UK and goes straight up Russia.  These patterns can hold for a month or two.


Finally, the UK weather.


That describes their summer, as well.

ps.  the Arctic ice volume is finally showing the expected turn up.

Seychelles in sequence - Part 1



We landed at Seychelles airport.  These guys only want rich tourists, so have your residence plans all handy.  Our airbnb for everybody was up the mountain, and that's quite a ride.


It was total jungle in the back yard, but if you walked too far, it was all garbage in the river.  Lots of big fruit bats.


Wifi and internet is nearly impossible.  The boat wanted $500 US for the week, so we said forget it.  This place had wifi, so we waited there for the boat.


We got 3 nice fish over the course of the trip and we always had them wonderfully prepared.  Our cook and captain were amazing.


The sunsets were wonderful.


The locals were friendly.

-to be continued.

Visiting the Seychelles


After the hectic pace of Ethiopia, this trip is for relaxing.  Every two years we try to get the kids together.  They are all 30 something, and scattered -- super busy.  The last time we went to the British Virgin Islands on a catamaran, and we wanted to do the same.  Only, we had a window of late Sept to early October.

That's hurricane season for most of the world, and too cold for anything north.  So, we settled on the Seychelles.  We chose a magnificent 62 foot cat from Dream Yachts and it was wonderful.  For bookings, they should be contacted directly at Dream Yacht Charters.

Above are seasickness goggles.  The Seasick Girls refused to wear them at first, but were soon wearing them all the times, especially when playing cards.  The hardier people enjoyed the smooth ride of the big cat.  Once you sail on the open ocean, you'll never go back to smaller boats.

However, for this boat, we needed to organize 12 people.  And we went in the shoulder season when you get off and on rain.  A week later and price nearly doubles.  The Seychelles is Europe's Caribbean.


This is the drone shot of the boat.  You can see how I always landed on the boat.  Luckily the Yuneec Breeze is a Crash Master.  Falls apart and snaps together.  Once you get near the boat, all the automatics go crazy.  ** the video is now fixed to remove empty zones and cut out the crash**




This is a testimonial we promised the charter because they were so nice to us.  Nobody got paid.

Next is the standard travelogue.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Closing the Cottage - Oct 10, 2019



Most maples have dropped. and the oaks are turning.  Very nice weather due to that mysterious blip that warmed the Arctic.  Vancouver is now getting what we should be getting, record cold.  The Arctic is now turning cold again.

For closing, we are burning a lot of scrap branches.  I'm fixing a lot of things.  It's best to do it now, rather than buggy Spring.


Tuesday, October 8, 2019

The Decline of the Seychelles

In a while I'll tell the story of our fun trip, but right now I'm in an Economist gloomy mood.

First of all, I think tourism is sustainable here, in that one more tourist doesn't make any bad things happen.  As opposed to Venice where one more tourist stomps it one more inch into the sea.  So, you can visit without guilt.

However, they are living in their past, like the UK.  There is not a speck of living coral left.  And the beaches are too thin to have beach volleyball.  All of this has nothing to do with tourists.  The coral is all dead from nitrogen poisoning caused by a dense population.  We caught some good fish, but the whole Indian Ocean is uncontrolled and over-fished.

But the people are great and it could be something, except for being stuck in the mud.  Next article will be the fantasy of being on a boat for a week.  We didn't do any harm and we injected money into the economy.


Monday, October 7, 2019

World temperatures take a big leap up

Wow, while I'm away in the Seychelles we got a big boost up without an El Nino.

This is the perfect trap to suck in the warmies to using real charts instead of their made-up stuff.  All their charts stop at the top of the 2016 peak.

I was alerted to this by a big diversion from the normal ice build-up.


That's quite a jag off the track.  I have the benefit of closing the cottage in relative warmth.  I'd like to see the forcing function for this, but there might have been a big surge of warm water.

ps.  I'm back home and looking, but there is no obvious cause for this.  I'll just enjoy it while I can.

Seychelles Black Hole



Seychelles has no reasonable internet, so it is a Hawking Black Hole.  So you can go in
and see the most fantastic sights, but then you get pooped out the white hole and you don’t
want to tell anybody about it because it’s old news.  I’m not telling anybody anything. Sorry.

ps.  back home, safe and sound.  But I'm as sick as my dog is happy.