Lithium price at insane levels

 Reference

Lithium now joins natgas as the insanity continues.  All of this was predictable.  

The surging prices are unnerving battery makers and EV firms. Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said this month that lithium had gone to “insane levels” and is the “fundamental limiting factor” for EV adoption, adding the car giant might consider mining or refining it directly. 

And now, the musker is going into lithium mining.  That won't help.  He would make more money just selling it to the other fools.  Of course, China is making out like a bandit on lithium.  We know what happens when tyrants are full of cash.

North America a hot mess

 

Another cold surge is starting, but there are a lot of plumes.  You can't declare permanent warmth until those plumes cross the continent.  So, we are in chaotic uncertainty right now.

Warmth attacks cold

 A true lesson in uncertainties.

A Gulf plume is hitting the cold blob.  This means the cold may not penetrate deeply, but a heck of a lot of rain for the boundaries.  Toronto is going to be wet.

ps  we get another 'false spring' because a slashing plume 'kissed' the Gulf.  This always brings up a spear of warmth, but there's not much heat energy.  So far, this is quickly beaten down by cold, and I don't see any change in the miserable pattern.

ps.  as soon as I said it was a washout, natgas dropped.  

Ocean currents - April 27, 2022

 The ocean currents are dated Apr 26.  Today, the video focuses on the very cold Antarctic water, turning off the Pacific heat engine.

This results in the unbelievable cold of the Pacific.  I've never seen this, and I don't think anyone else has, either.

The 'two n's' can believe that La Nina is a short cycle, and that carbon warming will come back.  Good for them.  Group-think can only end in total disaster, and I hate to think what that is.  I think they can bluff their way for a long time.  

Natgas starts another zoom

 These guys have no concept of what is coming -- mainly the cold.

I always watch for the first little tick, so that I know I'm redundant.  Anybody can do momentum investing.  I think it will hit 2008 prices this time.

Air glacier back to being a monster

 

It's funny that for a while yesterday, this looked like it could be pinched off by some Pacific air.  Not any more, it's a direct train to the North Pole.  This usually means it becomes severely underestimated by the polar-vortex-pushing weather people.  Expect it to be colder, deeper, and longer.

That means it will empty the natgas tank again.  The real hazards coming up are food and fuel.  I hope the twits now promote physics and the Scientific Method.  However, the reality is just more yelling.  :(

ps.  I've noticed they stopped using 'polar vortex fairies' to explain all this.  Now, it's just 'Arctic air'.  This is progress!

Tide signal bounces back up

 

It's still low, but I suspect there is a bit of an automatic bounce working here.  The hypothesis wold be that a Pacific temperature shrinkage would soon be compensated by water flowing in.  This could be tested, if anybody did physics any more.

UV glue for every Mrfixit

 

 

You need this glue.  It's a gel and it hardens instantly with this light.

If it's outside you only need 30 seconds to harden it enough, but inside it's a full minute.  This glue is only for surface gluing, since it can only harden with the light to 2 mm.  Outside in the sun, you can probably go thicker.

La Nina forever

 

Hey people, we can drop the 'La Nina' name now, this is a permanent feature of the new cold cycle, or ice age.  I find people accept 'cold cycle' more.  And Australia is hoping for the end of endless rain.  I feel sorry for them.  

For all of recorded history, we had a regular cycle of 7 years of warm weather, then a big El Nino, and finished by a short La Nina, which was a rebound of El Nino.  No more.  We didn't have these ocean temperature charts at the end of the 60's warm cycle, going into the 70's ice cycle.  I can't tell if we are going into a short decades cycle, or we are diving off the edge of the long cycle.

I find it hilarious how long the established nooaa and noosa can ignore this.  Of course, they have everything to lose.  "Hey, we got the physics wrong on this.  My bad."  Not going to happen.  

The 'Heart of Coldness', the UK is having fun.

The cbc will only cover our single heat wave from now on.  Surly, the UK will splash 'Balmy weather at 18C' this summer, and brave girls will take off their winter coats for minute to pose for their usual bikini pics.

Cold final curtain -- I did it my way

 

The Pacific is so low in heat energy that the plumes can no longer penetrate North America.  In December, we had the mild plumes hitting Vancouver straight east, and going right across the continent.  This was mild weather.  Then we had big hits up at Alaska, but the plumes could only go partially in and then the cold deflected the plume downward at a 45 degree angle, to the south-east.  It dragged cold air with it, and it was an Alberta clipper.

Lately, we've had weak plumes slashing down the west coast, and bringing up warm Gulf plumes.  This was our alternate warm and cold times.

Now, we aren't getting any of that.  The plumes can't even hit North America.  They just flop around in the ocean.  However, I am sad to say that a monster cold incursion is starting.  You can see the cold, clear air starting to hit the provinces.

These monster air glaciers are just driven by their own density, and/or being pushed from the other side.  This is another Texas freezer.  Nothing will stop it.  Of course, we have endless uncertainties, but the 80% chance is something big.

The warmth has allowed some natgas to go back into storage.  This got everybody excited and the price went down.  When Cold Blob #5 hits, the price will go up to $11 bucks.  You can follow its progress on the channel "All cold, all the time.", my favourite tv.  :)  

This isn't over, so if you are in Huntsville, just plant your tomatoes June 1.  We'll have snow and frost all May.  The philosophers will come up with some explanation after the fact, like La Nina.  They've been doing that for years now, and everybody just gobbles it up.  Good for them!

The essence of the Scientific Method and a working hypothesis is that you can predict response to forces.  You can't do that with philosophy, and you make up 'Just So" stories, like how the leopard got its spots.  It makes great tv.

ps.  I was in Huntsville for the last few days. Very pretty walks, but I wrote nothing that nobody had to read.  :)  

pps.  normally this time of year, the plumes would be travelling all over NA, demolishing the cold blobs.

more:  Looks like this blob is only giving us frost, and solar energy is beating it back.  

evenmore:  snowblower is going, lawnmower coming out.

No barrier to final winter blast

 

You'll recall that the last plume ran into a solid wall of surface winds.  It was driven down and then sucked up the warm Gulf air we are going to enjoy.  So, as the wife asks, is it time to put away the snowblower?  No, she'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands -- very cold.

This big plume is coming up to Alaska, and nothing stands in its way.

It will scoop out the cold air, and send it down on us.  blah.

I'll declare spring is sprung when all that really cold air is gone.  

US natgas goes down based on warmth

 The US natgas is set by people looking out the door in NYC.  Right now, we have warmth coming.

However, there is a monster plume setting up, and if it goes the way I expect then we'll get another big blast of winter.

Naturally, I'll throw in the boring uncertainties, which always cripples physics.  The phillies never have to worry about that, they are always absolutely certain.

As the heat energy leaves the world, we'll have a compressed, intense summer.  So, the warmies are good.

We may have spring one day

 

Yeah, lots of snow coming down.  We may have winter right to the end of April.

The Pacific plumes are hitting weird.  If that last one continues to come in flat, then we'll have spring.  But I think there will be one more hitting high, and bringing down that cold air.  The forecast shows a Gulf plume coming up by the weekend, and it will be warm.  

State of the oceans - Apr 17, 2022

 Ocean currents dated Apr. 16.

I started to look at this, and thought, 'Oh, the Pacific is getting active again'.  

The East Pacific starts to look like a heat engine again.  There is even some temperature building up.

But, alas, everything is cold on the anomaly map.

And here we have the great crime of the 'two n's'.  Nobody is doing the physics here.  I wonder how many years of the cold Pacific we have, before they stop calling it "La Nina', as though it is a temporary cycle.  It should just be called 'Icebox Pacific'.  But, semantics is the job of the philosophers, they coin the terms.

ps.  so for the one year weather forecast, nothing to do with climate change, we are looking at a winter worse than this one.  You define winters by heating degree days, and summers by cooling degree days, not peak temperatures.

Large cold air mass on the move

 

This is the final 'big one', or I hope it's final.  We've been getting this all winter, and it's a 'clairslide' or air glacier.  It's on the move with a curved front and clear air behind.  These generally don't stop until Texas.  The US is out of natural gas storage, and the effect will be interesting.

Weather pattern confusing

 

The last Pacific plume has slashed down and raised a Gulf plume.  However, it is a question of whether it gets to Toronto.  We finally have a high hit of a Pacific plume, but it is weak and not penetrating the cold air.  

The US natgas tank on empty

 The 'empty' light is flashing.  There's always the tension of wondering how far your reserve gets you.

That's the storage report and it's lying flat when it should be turning up.  It's so flat that you must wonder that it has hit a physical limit.  

The market is now panicking, and there is still a mass of cold air coming down.  The entire Arctic is pouring down on us.  The papers say the high price is due to the war, but we know better.  It's due to the ice cycle starting, and everybody believes the 'la la' artsies.

ps.  of course the price went up because Quebec banned all oil and gas exploration.  :)  

pps. looking at the storage, it seems 100% that they have run out.  It would have dropped lower with the price so high.  I've been expecting this for years.  

more: none of the articles mention that they have run out of natgas.  They all believe this is just a temporary spike.

NOAA shows a slight rise in temperatures

 

This is interesting, but these things are spiky.

The Haywood plot shows the monthly to be lower.  but it is the 5th or 6th warmest year so far.  Their PR department won't go over '7th warmest'.  When the US monthly was over that, then they just said 'warmest third'.  soon it will be 'warmest half', but they'll do something else after that.

Nooa doesn't do an 'official' time series plot.  You have to assemble it, and everybody dismisses it.

ps.  they went with 5th warmest March, even though the globals have no seasonal issue.

Linux - switch your disks to GPT partitions

 My main storage disk was giving me a lot of trouble.  It was partitioned with mbr and it kept losing the mbr record.  Now, there is a new partitioning method call GPT, and it uses a UUID for each partition.  Neat.  I moved all the important files to a different disk and then used gparted to do a new partition table.  

Works great, and it is the new thing for disks larger than 2tb.  

A huge descent of cold air

 

It's all just coming down like rain.  The descent was so powerful it deflected the Pacific plumes.  I don't know the mechanism for this, since it is new to me.  It is certainly a major event and will use up a lot of natgas.

Cold blobs strike like missiles

 

They're all over the place.  The most interesting is the huge blob coming down the west coast.  It's the air blocking the pacific plume.

There is still a lot of cold air ready to come down.  I think this cold air is now opening up a chance for the pacific plumes to hit high.

Then, Toronto will get the last clipper.

ps.  no end in sight for natgas price.

When the final big cold hits, I expect them to run out in the US.

Arctic ice volume remains flat

 

You would even say it's rising.  At least, I would.  We'll probably get less and less articles about the polar bears dying.  If are at the end of the big warming cycle (since 1850), then we'll see it starting back up and recovering.

Pacific plume fights cold air

 

Our final blast of winter depends on this plume in the middle.  It is trying hard to break through, but there is a big blob of cold air coming down.  I find it funny that if the plume fails, it's because the northern air is too cold, thus not giving us our Alberta clipper.  Irony.  We will have a steady spring without snow, if and when the plumes start a new pattern of flat plumes straight west.

That plume should break through and hit Alaska.  Then, all cold heck breaks out. 

ps.  it's cute how that plume is being stopped by intense air movement.

ps.  nooa has its article about March.  Now, it's  -- The average monthly temperature across the contiguous U.S. was 44.1 degrees F (2.6 degrees above the 20th-century average) and ranked in the warmest third of the 128-year climate record.

Neat, the month is so far down, they switched to 'warmest third', next it will be 'warmest half'.

Another peg falls in the group think

 Group think always ends in disaster, because that's the only way it can end.  You can chip away at it, but it's self-healing.  Nosa was into total groupthink with the o-rings of the shuttle.  One engineer thought it should not launch in freezing weather, and he was shouted down.  Boom!  Then they just went into another bout of it.  They never learn.

Reference

This is cute because it's a big part of the clange groupthink.  The carbon heat is melting Greenland, which makes it colder.  It stops there, and nobody expands on that, like 'that should stop the ice from melting'.  No, it is just a philosophical statement, like an Internet myth.

These studies show that the ocean currents are unstable enough, even without a mythical ice melting that can't exist.  They didn't have to pay homage to the groupthink, because they danced around it.  A physics article at its best.

Swirls dominate the weather today

 

The skies are in a swirly mess today.  We are still waiting for that Pacific plume to hit high and bring us winter again.  It's taking its time.

A small tongue of cold air is lunging towards us.  And here are the surface winds.

This is just a beautiful video, You can loop it as your screen background on zoom.  The tips of the warm plumes are always a storm spinning counter-clockwise with convergent wind, as in the Atlantic.  The Pacific has a rare divergent storm caused by very cold air.  It is spinning clockwise.  Neat.

ps.  the Pacific plume is still low, but looking to break into a high sprint.  We'll have a nice spring if the plumes remain low.  We'll have a horrible blast of winter if that plume goes high.  Natgas will go ballistic.  Yeah, that's down to 50/50.  

Natural Gas Hits 5 Year High in US

 

And look at that sad wobble in the Thursday storage report, it's going down again.  Yep, think of all the money I could have made, if I was right with the timing.  Unfortunately, I only predicted it would zoom at some time or other.

With the brutal cold that will most likely descend on us, I'm not putting away the snow blower.

When that happens the storage chart will punch a hole in the bottom, and all the gas will drain out.