After the WARS mask comes bottle-heads

Since the most likely way to get flu, colds, etc, is to touch your eyes, this makes perfect sense.

ps.  a downtown store is securing trainloads of masks, and they sell out in an instant.

Caribbean earthquake produces low strong ground motion

So, an M7.7 earthquake produces ground motions you would expect for an M6.  As Jane would say "I am all astonishment."

Goodbye for this quake, back to WARS panic.  :)

Aftershocks start to define the Jamaica earthquake

Jamaica-mann, looks to be saved as the fault rupture went west to the Cayman islands.  We expect the aftershocks to fill in between the two that just happened.

The big one is always located at the initiation of the rupture.  In terms of peak ground velocity, we expect 10 times the average at the mouth of the shotgun.  Cayman Islands is totally modern, but built on sand.  This is the hypothesis - Cayman Islands are shattered because of the lack of physics in earthquake engineering.  Pass = destruction.  Fail = the buildings are all okay.  Estimated PGV at 50 cm/s.  Anything resembling Toronto condos will be tilted.

Jamaica and Cuba get less than 20 cm/s.  Really old stuff will fall.

ps.  now there is an M6 at the stop point.

If the Cayman is on the soft side of the fault, then we have 80 cm/s pgv.  It could be lucky and only get 20 if it is on the hard side.  There are no accelerometers there.

ps NOTHING HAS HAPPENED.  It appears that this was a very 'soft' earthquake with very low pgv.  That basically means that both sides of the fault did not have a high velocity, and the earthquake just put out very low frequencies.  Felt in highrises in Miami.

Huge Strike-Slip Earthquake Between Cuba and Jamaica

Well, we'll hear about this in five minutes on the news.  M7.7 so it is about 200 km long and will daylight on Cuba.  This is the more active fault and we all expected this type of earthquake after Haiti.

It is such a big clean fault that we can moderately expect this to be foreshock for an M9.  But who knows?  I give it 1 in 10.

ps.   and there's the sucker as it hits the Southern Ontario seismometers.

I wish I had my accelerometers set up.  I'll hurry up for the M9, which we will feel here.  I said I gave it a 1 in 10, and the normal odds are 1 in 100.

pps.  in order for it to be a 'learning earthquake' we need modern structures nearby and accelerometers.  I doubt we have those.

pps.  this was a 'soft' or low-frequency earthquake.  A peak ground velocity of only a few cm/s.  No hypothesis is tested.

Current plans to store nuclear waste are poop

Reference

I did not make this up.  Current plans call for glass, bentonite and copper to make up for a lack of good geology.  They all bake together with radioactivity and water.

It's a fun thing that you cannot have a good plan with strict physics.  Interest groups have demands that conflict with each other.  As with global warming, there's no physics here.

The only plan that works is my plan, but that is a big pipe dream.  So, they will attempt to jiggle a plan through all the defenders.  Neat.  I won't lose any sleep over it.

**my plan -- you throw all this stuff into big holes 5000 ft below Wesleyville.  Dry as a bone, and the heat makes it dryer.  All leakage is dry diffusion through solid rock.  In a million years, that travels 2 inches.  Happy-happy.  :)

Wine, Water and Song

Wow, could be I'll be working at our local wine and water store.  We just loaded up a ton of stuff, and a job gets thrown in for free.

Anyway, stay tuned, and now I'll have to be always friendly and smile at everybody.  Making wine locally is very de-carbonizing. 

Used nuclear fuel bundles slated for Teeswater.

Yeah, Teeswater, a stones-throw from the Bruce plant and still on the hanging wall of the Grenville Front. 

Lots of news on this today.

The only way to check for long-term rock stability is to do a seismic reflection survey.  I've done (had done) lots of them.  There are 3 major fault zones crossing Ontario.  In a reflection survey, each one looks exactly the same.  There is the hanging wall, and massive rock damage above it.  But they didn't do a survey for the low level Bruce Black Hole, and they won't do one for this, because it would impact the Bruce site.

They will just drill, and they will find horrible rock.  Then they will find one little piece that looks good and narrow all the scopes on it.  Narrow scopes are fine way to do New Science, like carbon warming.  You can win any debate with that.  :)

So, now there are two:  Bruce Low Black Hole, and Bruce High Black Hole.

Linux - upgrading a server

I have a lot of perfectly legal videos.  However, they are best when compressed to h265 for the wifi and the cheap android boxes I have everywhere.  My monstrous old plasma is up in the bedroom and the kids brought home a tv for the exercise room.

My extra Linux server just holds disks, but now I want to process faster with Handbrake.  I chose an amd 3600x without graphics for speed and processors.  Handbrake can use everything.

I use the old case and power supply and I don't disturb the hard disks.  I test if it posts before I screw in the new motherboard.  Guess what?  It won't post if I don't have a graphics card.  So, back to ammie for a modest graphics card.

Then I hooked up the monitor and everything worked.  The existing linux just booted and it looked wonderful, until I put in the ethernet cable.  Dang!  I tried everything, but it wouldn't light up.  Even flashed a new bios.  But the option for the network card did not show up on the bios screen.  It was totally borked.  Returned it to ammie and waiting for a new board.  blah.

ps. I've now installed the new motherboard.  Everything works, and it is processing at full speed.

I got the MSI version of the same board, and same price.

ps.  it's 4 times faster on handbrake as my newer machine, and so 5-6 times faster than the old one.
Also handbrake may use the gpu's.

WARS Full-Blown Panic

I have dubbed the virus WARS, standing for Wuchan ain't really SARS.

Canada has now implemented the WARS Measures Act, which is the dredged up SARS procedures.

A mask is totally useless, but we have a mask panic.  Soon, nobody will go to the Mandarin.

Reference

These DON'T PANIC! articles are written by those involved with SARS.  They are all good people.  Soon we will have gov't PR people writing the same thing.  They think they have credibility.

A while ago, every single organization in the world (universities, gov't, whatever) gave up credibility to go through PR departments.  These are the people who are trained to stone-wall media reporters.  At the same time, the media gave up all street-cred by just publishing PR stories, since they all went near-bankrupt due to the internet.  Now, there is nobody who can stop a panic.

My formerly favourite investigative newspaper - the Manchester Guard was starving so they went all out on climate anxiety.  Can anxiety-gouls stop a panic?  Nope.

I was hot on this when the old company went to total PR after technical managers screwed up media interviews.  The media just cut things out of context.  I said we could never stop a nuclear panic now.  That's life.

ps.  adding some physics, the worst thing you can do is to nervously rub your eyes.  Then the virus goes right down the tubes into the sinus.  You couldn't think of a better to administer the virus, if you wanted to.  So, the best thing to wear on the subway is a pair of swim goggles.  :)

WARS Measures Act

I have been informed that there is total panic in the downtown streets of Toronto.  Everybody read my blog on this.  I am sorry I'm so popular.  :)

There is no need to panic.  Total disasters like SARS happened because the leaders are always idiots and fighting the last war.  I have come up with an infinite series of likely disasters, and if they haven't happened in living memory, they don't do anything.  We have that built into society.

There is no rational assessment of the odds, no preparations, etc.  But, right now, this is the last war, fresh in living memory.  We must trust the idiots to act like trained monkeys and do the right thing.

The last time everything was done wrong.  We allowed super-spreaders to wander in movie theatres and mass meetings like zombies eating brains.  The first responders met them in t-shirts.  Lots of people died.  But now we are treating this like Ebola in the world.  Nobody is coming to Toronto and spreading Ebola all over the place.

China has quarantined the source city, or the world would soon have closed off all of China.  This is standard Ebola procedure.  Sooner or later someone will come to Toronto with WARS but we hope they are met properly.  As of now, not one single virus has hit the city.

Do not loot stores and smash windows to get a mask.  This is apparently already happening.  Mask rationing has been implemented (a fact).  I'm expecting to see $1000 a mask on ebay soon (not a fact).  Take a deep breath and go on the subway without a mask.  Follow standard flu procedures of cleaning your hands often, and never touch your face, pick your nose or bite your finger nails.  These ways are 90% more likely than just breathing because your nose is pretty good at filtering.

Last time, a super-spreader touched an elevator button and somebody else died.  This can only happen if you eat or touch your face with contaminated hands.  A mask does not stop this.

ps.  has now hit the main news.

Reference

pps.  DON'T PANIC!

Bruce Nuclear starts on the steam generators

Yeah, they are taking out the steam generators.  Bruce B had the same vibration problem as Darlington, but not as bad.  Darlington went exponential when they increased the fluid velocity.

All of the Bruce documentation expresses 'transparency'.  Ha.  But they truly believe in what they do, and I won't go against it.  It's my new thing to not disagree with anything of religious-level belief.

There used to be something call physics to go against religion, but that's all gone now.  Go Bruce!

Another Tessie Sudden Death Syndrome

The same friend of a friend had another tessie total failure on the highway.  He probably pushes the tank and believes the gauges when it is 20 below.

His Muskness should implement the reserve system on our first VW bug in the fifties.  That was a wonderful thing that had the gas cap under the hood, so if you spilled gas you reeked of gas for the next 100 miles.  No gas gauge but if the car suddenly stopped, you had to open the hood and pull a lever to activate the reserve tank that got you to the next gas station.

Now that was a great example of human engineering.  I know lots of people who push the gauge to fumes, and go right to the end of the gas.  Car makers know this and still have some gas left when the car is screaming 'empty'.

Obviously, tessie thought its drivers are smarter than the average bear, and left this out.  It will die on you in cold weather.  I'm hoping they will be the first to put in a methanol fuel cell and tiny tank, just like the old vw reserve.

ps. I've decided to be more positive now, and not make fun of people with a religious point of view of everything.  So, nothing more on solar panels covered with snow, electric cars frozen up, temperatures rising when they are falling.  These are all sincere people.

Trudi: Time to Implement the SARS Measures Act

Reference

Yeah, nobody in China seems to be concerned.  Does this seem familiar?  Soon we'll have super-spreaders flying to Toronto to take part in giant conferences.

Where's Rex when you need him?  Can Trudy2 do what Trudy1 did?

ps.  since this is the Wuhan virus, we can call it WARS.

pps.  Looks like they've started the WARs Measures Act, and hopefully we won't be caught flat-footed.

The Carbon Wisdom of Rex Murphy

Reference

I put in my comment, and I'm sure to get the usual death threats.

I love this article. If you look at the recent global temperatures from satellites, you will see that the carbon tax is working almost instantaneously. Just like carbon warming started with the first puff of a steam engine. Science by Twitter is amazing.

This is a nice graph showing the first puff of a steam engine, when carbon warming took a strong curve up.

And now, the Canadian carbon tax is having an instant effect on world temperatures.

In fact the impact of the tax took place before it was even implemented.  As Rex would say, who would expect something from the government to work so well?

Rex is my hero.

ps.  there was a guy insulting me, but after reading all his comments I've decided he is an AI Insultbot.  I would love to program one of those.

Toronto Snow

This is nothing compared to St. John's, but for Toronto, it's a big deal.  I think it's 8 inches of snow and still falling.  Also, it is very heavy packing snow.  If it were light and fluffy it would be twice as deep.

My 20-something kids had a big snow fight, and they are threatening to put up another porno snow-lady.  We had everybody comment the last time!

ps.  going for a dog walk on Monday morning at -15C.  Wow.

The Politics of Cold

I just liked that title, this is more about cold, cold, cold.

We are now entering our cold phase.  December had tremendous tropical plume activity.  They started from the 'cradle of heat', crossed North America while sucking up Gulf of Mexico heat, and went on to prevent 'GIANT SNOWSTORMS' for the British tabloids.  Now that's all over.

This is our 'default' or stagnant air weather.  A big cold air mass.  Normally, the Arctic ice volume would show a high rate of increase, but it is being attacked by a huge Pacific current.

The currents are complex, and they are important for ice volume.

That Pacific current carves a huge trench down the middle of the Arctic ice, and forms a long ice ridge down the side of Greenland.  That current then demolishes the Gulf Stream.  You can tell by the slight wobbles in the ice accumulation rate whether it is strong or not.

The Jet Stream is just the boundary between hot and cold, and does nothing by itself.  Hopefully, this year we don't hear about the Jet Stream or the phoney Polar Vortex.

The ski lifts in Scotland are closed today because of a horrendous snow storm.

Tor Project

Link

I use it all the time even though I am as pure as the driven snow.  The more people use it, the more it hides vulnerable people.  I also donate regularly and I just won a prize!

Think of Iran and how they are arresting everybody and their dog who mentioned the plane crash on the internet.  They want to line up a whole bunch of scapegoats and shoot them.  And would anybody say that putinizer wants to rule forever?  No. 

In Iran and Russia they need this, as well as Turkey, and a lot of other countries.  No matter how much censorship there is, we find a way around it.  Can't wait until muskie-net is up and running.  Cut that off, pootine!

Data Shaving

For global temperatures, the satellite results treat a pixel of ocean the same as a pixel of land.  Then it is all averaged.  But that shows that global temps have been flat for years.  Not good for the warmies.

So they invented a totally bizarre data set.  This one must cut out all the land.  The amount of effort is incredible, but anything goes for the carbonistas.  The ocean temps lag the global temps because it takes a while longer to warm up (or cool down), and they can party like it's 2015!

I have no doubt they are correct in everything they say.  But, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?  No way.

ps.  This is what I predicted, but I am amazed at the degree of effort to cover up the flat-lining of carbon warming, just like the death of General Franco.  They can't even shave to the southern hemisphere in summer, because that isn't doing much.  Can't wait for the next thing.  Every day they delay, is another penny in the pot (for them).

The Technical Corruption of a Vicious Hierarchy

The Pickering nuclear incident has been blown over by the north wind and we'll never know what happened.  It got me to thinking if we are in a new era of big technical errors, caused by a vicious hierarchy.

All organizations and companies start small with a technically competent leader.  These guys are useless with people and soon get into legal or financial trouble and get kicked out.  If the company is small, they can get over troubles like the Big Cheese insisting on a space rocket that looks like his comic books.  It was the same in the nuclear biz.  The designers can gang up on the guy and say "Do you want something that works, or not."  They get over their big stupidities.

Because the org starts as a hierarchy (one person), it stays that way as it grows.  At some magic point, their are no physics people at the top.  The only feedback is through disasters.

Not just any disaster, it has to be one that gets to the public.  All other small disasters can be papered over.  We must expect an exponential rise in technical disasters going into the future.  The top people at any place always believe the stuff that the PR department puts out.

ps.  the pickle alert was sent 'in error' which meant it was a real emergency but nothing crossed the fence line, and there was no smoke to be seen.  A good Japanese approach to life.  :)

Pickering Nuclear Incident - North Wind

Just now, on the phone, we have a Pickering Nuclear alert.  Do not get out of bed, don't worry because we have a North Wind.  

Pickering is always on the edge of disaster.  But we'll soon have bland, talking heads to calm everyone down.

Anyway, I've already written about the one in 10,000 chance of a big earthquake, and total meltdown of Pickering.  This isn't it.  The worst would be a steam leak of radioactive elements and the north wind takes care of that.  No radiation will touch any people

If you are out in the water during a winter storm, you have other problems.

ps. whoops, do people actually live on the other side of Lake Ontario?  :)

pps.  All of this is the fine technical corruption of a vicious hierarchy.

Pearl Harbour -  it's just a supply flight
Bowling - make that plane fly or we kill you
Diesel - make it pass or we'll kill you
Missile - put it on 'Soviet Auto'
Climate - keep those temperatures going up

Technical people scream but nobody hears them.

final - all is calm, we'll never know the gory details

Ha, 'sent in error'!  I'll bet it was sent for real, but since radioactivity didn't cross the fence line, they can bury it.

pps.  look up 'toronto earthquake' on my search.  I've given up flogging that dead horse.

endlessness - hot on the heels of this 'thing', they want to extend another year.  Yeah!  Balls.

Is the Gulf Stream Still Alive?

Nothing is more important to the UK than the Gulf Stream.  Without it, they have 'latitude weather' and that's cold like heck.  My contention is that it is functionally dead, or a stuffed parrot.

The GS still has a signature on detailed ocean thermal plots.

So, it is technically alive.  But is it doing anything?  Since I've been around, the GS has kept the UK mild.  If the UK isn't mild, the Thames freezes over.

This is the world plot.  The GS is visible, but it is all the exact temperature of Alaska.  There is no great warmth here.

Over the years, I've always followed this chart which shows it is gone.  It used to have a very strong signal almost all the way to the UK.  It could channel atmospheric plumes which hit the UK at full warmth.  Now we have weak plumes that go up the middle of the Atlantic ocean

The British tabloids have had this headline for months now.  Surely they must right one day.  Anyway it's good for all royals to leave the cold UK and come to warm Canada.  Bring money!

Global temperatures remain flat

I always wait for this.  The carbonista line is always drawn from the bottom of 1995 to the top of 2016.  Current global temps are flatlining, just like Toronto's housing prices.

The continental US is also flat because we had a warm December with a lot of plumes coming up from the Gulf.  Oh well, nothing dramatic.

ps.  I should always include the plot of 'projection drift'

Meghan and Harry emigrate to Canada

And baby Achie too!

But they need a job.  Harry would be the best replacement for Don Cherry.  He could constantly compare hockey and polo.  "Now, in polo, we don't need a goalie."  It would be great.

Meghan could replace any of those ladies on The Social. 

Or, they could be our Goodwill Ambassadors to China.  The possibilities are endless.  :)

Or to further their independence, we could cut off from that 'other' royal family and have our own King and Queen. 

Ice ages going back to 2 billion years

We have a chart showing the temperature of the Earth for about 1 billion years.  Every 300 million years we get a big temperature change, and this corresponds to the continents getting together and separating, the Wilson Cycles.

Reference

Now it's cute that the cycle is mapped to about 2 billion years ago.  For our last cycle, we had the dinosaurs and super-hot, starting at about 150 million years ago.  Now we are in a big ice age with major northern ice advances every 10,000 years.  The carbon hypothesis ignores all this, and good for them.  They are philosophers, after all.

Life was only advanced for the last 600 million years or so.  When it was warm we had huge reptiles, and when it was cold we had huge mammals.  Just like clockwork.

ps.  this is so cute.  Finally the guard is getting ready for 'Carbon Warming Brings on an Ice Age'.  Now I am happy that I have no conflict with these guys.  :)

In some circles, this might give somebody a headache, but not here.  :)

Iranians shoot themselves in the foot

Increasingly looks like a self-inflicted injury.  My son and I have been imagining the scene where they are all drunk celebrating the missile attack on Satantrumpy and lean on the red button.

In reality, they were great on the missile attack, only hitting the garbage dump, but they were expecting an immediate US attack and put the air defence on auto, running quality Soviet software.  And they didn't stop commercial flights, which would have been obvious choice, especially after Putinizer shot down an airliner on Soviet Auto.  (I'm remembering an earlier airliner, victim of Soviet Auto)

Note to self:  in a war zone, stop the dang flights!


Now comes the big fun:  Is anybody going to admit it?  Are Iranians going to riot?  Is the Regime going to find a way out of Stooge-town?  We all wait.

ps:  New wikipedes entry.   Russian Software - known mainly for bringing down airliners.

Toronto Housing Prices Stagnant on Zero Sales

You can't get listings and sales any lower.  Condos go up, but on no listings.  That's probably because of all the new luxury condos being completed.  You are stuck with it if you put down the deposit.

Tons of new housing and no sales.  Something is wrong with the physics here.  As with the people up the road, everybody is holding onto two houses, and one is empty.  And they can't rent it out as an airbud.  Can we go another year with this?

Muliplying average price with listings and sales, we get almost zero money floating in the market right now.  The 'average' price is meaningless.

Double-Whammy Storm for Toronto

Was planning to go to Huntsville for the weekend.  Not now.

These are the tropical plumes for the past 5 days.  A cold blast pushed away the warm air, and then another plume sucked up Gulf warmth, while still having a northern storm.  These two things are going to meet and explode over Toronto.

Weather people have finally stopped saying 'Polar Vortex' every time it gets cold.  That's because a big scientific paper, with physics, said it was all tropical plumes.  Now we wait for them to extend this to the Jet Stream.  It was weather people talking dramatic nonsense tha allowed the dramatic carbonistas.

Today we may get the global temps.  I can get a feeling for the results by looking at the slope of the ice volume curve.  We should see things colder in the North.

Physics -- Aircraft most likely brought down

An aircraft can survive a mere engine flameout.  The other engine is sufficient to bring the aircraft around to land.  Here was a fire and loss of control.  I would immediately suspect a bomb or missile, simply by the odds.

But nobody reads me, and let's go with the mechanical explanation.

**as a conspiracy theory, let's say trumpy did it, such a great reversal.  :)

**Iranian footage shows one giant ball of fire hitting the ground.  It's a big bomb or a missile that trumpypants launched.

pps.  looks like we can still blame trumpet because of ratcheting up the tension.  When they launched the ballistic missiles, they put anti-aircraft missiles on a higher alert (reduced the number of buttons to hit).  Ooops!

Ignore the cold, somewhere it's warm

Reference

As long as it is warm somewhere, climate is weather is climate.  I was saying in the cbc and guard forums that the global temps are getting colder.  I was assaulted with 'climate is 30 years' and we ignore the current cold.  But everybody has been carrying this story, and climate is weather, blah blah.  No more 30 years!

So now there is no need for charts and things like direct measurements.  The Arctic hits -65?  It's hot in Australia  -- climate change can never be challenged!

I won't even publish the monthly world temps -- what's the use?  Somewhere in the world it's happy hour!

ps.  from my favourite poem:

Somewhere it is boiling,
Somewhere corals survive,
But there is no joy in Canada,
For it's minus sixty-five!

Red Light for the Face - Physics

So everybody, buy this.  Hot after my success promoting the jiggle board, I promote this.  These health blogs are my most popular -- nobody cares about physics, but here I can inject some.

The 'other side' went to an expensive face place.  I blanched at the creams she bought, but they included a free facial.  This was more like a 'time sharing' hard sell for a face light machine.  They wanted thousands of dollars for a tiny one.

The above machine covers the whole face in one shot.  The family girls are lining up for treatment, and they are 20-something.  Ha!  We old people need a drastic boost to remove heavy creases.  I would look 20 without all those craggy valleys. 

They have a story for every colour, but, basically, the red light goes deep and blue light is shallow.  My friend in retail says there is something negative coming out about blue light, so they took all those things off the shelves.  So, red light it is.

Red light can go right through skin and muscle.  You can see the bones in your hand against a bright light, and it comes through red.  The physics of this is in the details of energy and effect.  You want the red light to penetrate under the crease, and you want stem cells to be irritated enough to pump out collagen to pump things up. 

Creams claim to do this, but almost nothing penetrates out dead skin cells.  If anything did, we'd be dead.  The only thing of great doubt, is if the red light energy levels are sufficient to start cells up, without actually killing them.  You want a tiny bit of injury, like doing weights, and then the cells go into a building mode.

But, it's fun and you actually feel something, and everybody thinks it is doing something.  That should be good for a month of fun.

**after a treatment, rub in some of my 'miracle cannabis cream', penetrates and takes care of irritation, maybe.

Toronto Condos Burning

The charts show that Toronto condo prices are still creeping up.  But I think that's because new luxury condos are being completed, and people are taking possession, which is registered as buying.  You are only getting some indication that it is becoming difficult to dump a condo.  They are building condos out in the boonies, and they should join the houses there with a 50% drop.  But, we'll never get these figures printed out in the media.

I'm always on a jag about condos because they are built so cheaply.  I always wonder how they can push the building codes so much.  Put a condo beside a bank tower and see the difference.  I suspect technical corruption of the Boeing and VW type ("Design a cheap building or we'll kill you!).

The cheap chickens come home to roost with insurance costs.  You can't always have the 'Clueless Swiss' coming in and insuring fire traps for song.  After a lot of losses, they wake up.

A condo building has to be insured for total replacement.  Condo boards can't find this insurance any more.  Right now it is affecting fire and flood zones, but earthquakes and wind damage are going to come into play.  A condo is so cheap that the seismic capacity is next to nothing in terms of occupancy.  Sure, the whole thing won't pancake, but ground motion of only 10 cm/s will knock things out of kilter so much that the building has to be torn down.

This all comes from building like a house of cards.  A strong wind will knock out the glass.  A single fire knocks out the building for a year.  As the price crashes, people will rent out more to sad people. Sad.

This is just a trend I'm seeing.  Don't worry about it if you own a condo.  Be happy!  Don't do a 'Buffalo' and burn your condo.  :)  When everybody starts doing that, condos will be a thing left in the smoky dust.

ps - the other side of the insurance issue is ridiculous alarms.  I attended a party in a monster complex, all sharing rec facilities.  The alarm went off during the party and all the elevators shut down for an hour past the alarm, which took an hour to stop.  This happens all the time.  If I were insuring the building, I'd insist that all the alarms are on a hair trigger.  :)

Toronto housing in major decay

I'm not going to wait for this month's GTA results.  It will just show stagnant prices and no sales.  Thus, 'the money in play' has gone down to near zero.

I did find out that houses in the middle of northern nowhere have gone down 50%.  In all housing crashes, these are the houses that go down the most.  For the last 30 years or so, people have made tons of money by buying houses in a field, full of mud, and waiting for it to settle.  They make 20% a year on a leveraged investment and buy the next house in the mud.

Thus, I have no pity for these people.  I'm sure thestar will find a few people who have never speculated and are in real trouble.  Gush, gush, tears.

This decay starts from the siberias and works its way in to the main market.  As I've been saying, the market is distorted by the banks and the super-rich money laundry.  Something is holding the prices up, just like the Japan 'bad loans' scandal, and it will come crashing down.  (Basically, the banks like to hide bad loans).

My 'prediction' is that the forces holding things up will collapse this year.  I've been wrong the last two years, and could be wrong for another two or three.  Whatever.

Sea Level is Going Down - We are saved!

This is a very difficult task for those that can't do math -- Use your geophysical knowledge of the most stable places on earth - neither up nor down, and look at the tide gauge charts.

I picked Oregon.  Too far north, and you have glacial isostatic rebound.  Too near to plate tectonics and you have some wild swings.  All the Pacific coral reef islands are sinking, that's what makes coral reefs.  Just below the Laurentide ice sheet, you have the sinking of the forebulge.

You can take any tide gauge and you will find that the run-up to 2016 had a sea level rise.  The oceans act as a big liquid thermometer, temps go up, liquid expands.  After 2016, we are going down like a rock.  It is all absolutely in sync with the global temps by satellite.

This new year it is fun reading all the 'comprehensive' reviews of trying to find a 'signal' in weather, without even mentioning the sat temps.  The new 'thing' is that there is no difference between 'climate' and weather.

Once a year, I trot out the only legitmate, physics-based, review of globtemps.  

It is always kept up to date as a 'running paper'.

The media always uses the upper projection, the lower one is flat.  They conclude.

Why does this discrepancy exist and what does it mean?  One possible explanation is an error in the fundamental physics used by the climate models. 

They say what I say.  Anyway, the Toronto warmth is almost over, since the Gulf of Mexico is running out of heat energy.  I'm off for a dog walk.

ps.  I've linked this with my biggest article, about jiggling to happiness.  Now you can jiggle and not worry about water lapping up to your knees.  Be happy in the New Year!

Bring in 2020!

It's been 20 years of blogging, more or less, I can't remember.  I started out in the 80's making earthquake comments on Usenet, then my big splash was pointing out a huge security hole with the new BMX online banking.  They retired that name and they wanted to kill me.  But I got a huge job for the guy who disected it.

Then I started blogging anonymously on 'Bad Siting', which was all about horrible sites for nuclear plants, nuclear waste, etc.  I retired that when I 'came out' in 2007, which was when I retired.  I have a whole list of my 'predictions' based on physics, some of which worked and some didn't.  I really formed them in terms of hypotheses, which could be proven false by later information.

My first prediction was that the Niagara Tunnel would be a multi-billion dollar waste of money, which is was.  All that is water is hidden under the bridge.  Even Doug didn't want to dredge that up.

My next prediction was that the Oklahoma earthquakes would work their way up to an M7 earthquake.  Natural gas and fracked oil went to zero, and all earthquakes stopped.  We can say that the hypothesis remains untested.

My final thing was that 'Carbon Warming' lacked physics and was a spurious correlation, like basketball games and the stock market.  With a spurious correlation, we soon have drift and the global temps after 2016 have shown that.  Luckily, the gretas have remained in a time warp, as evidenced by all the articles we have now.

Many things remain untested, such as the Bruce Black Hole.  I was waiting for them to drive a shaft and kill people, but the feds have that tied up forever.

The Arctic ice volume hasn't made up for the huge inflow from the Pacific.  The volume is increasing at a normal rate, but the lag is huge.  I'm hoping for a cross-over soon, but my 'end of year' hypothesis has failed (cross-over).

We had a warmer December than I thought because of huge tropical plume activity, which exists without an El Nino.  Very weird, but chaotic.  The UK hasn't had its big snow yet.

All in all, a mediocre performance.  I have no desire to write about all the weird California tech toys we got from California Son.  I'll keep quiet for a while, and wait for the global temps.  I expect a continuing flat-liner temps, working from the Arctic ice volume rates.