Sunday, February 9, 2025

Carney is a warmie, Freeland is rational

 


Any moment now, this whole warmie thing will blow, as the US runs out of natgas.  They'll be wearing their parkas at the superbowl, as the temperature goes down to 18C.  Brrr!

So, I've seen enough that Freeland is my man (I only recognize zero genders).  Who knows, maybe she'll mention physics one day?

ps I'll be rooting for the other team tonight, whoever that is.  I so much want to see a pouty face, along with uncontrolled rioter rage on the field.



401 tunnel is a go!

 


Yeah, there are such a huge train-load of geotechnical disasters coming down the tracks, that I will be in stitches the rest of my life.  After all this, we will have geotechnical engineers again.  

The 401 tunnel is the best because it will have to go under two huge faults -- the Humber and Don valleys.  These have never been drilled, and no transit line has dared to go under.  But the 401 tunnel has to.  We can finally find out what they are! Of course, the sleazy contractors will charge extras when their machines are stuck.  Who investigates anything these days?


Canada's revenge M9 Arctic blob freezes the US

 


Lots of snow, as well.



Can we freeze the pipelines of Texas?  For sure.  This is over the entire US.  The hansencrowd will have a tough time explaining this off.  If people buy the whole 'magic thing' then wait for the next one.


The winds are lined up with this one, so it has the legs to get to all of Florida.  We don't buy their stinkin' oranges anyway.  

ps. snowblower time in Toronto.  It's not electric - ha ha.


ps and trump is cutting off the heat for biology


ps omg, that snow was heavy.  Snowblower needed.

Saturday, February 8, 2025

Huge Caribbean earthquake

 But absolutely in the middle of nowhere.


It's strike-slip on the upper sliding zone of the big thumb that forms the Caribbean.

No tsunami expected not many people feeling it, but that's a big mamma!

ps the wonderfully clean geology means an M9 every 300 years.  This earthquake is nothing compared to the big boys.

ps this is an absolutely perfect foreshock for an M9, but the odds are the same for any earthquake in the region.  

Turbulence increases tremendously at the Pacific equatorial belt

 That's turbulence with the ocean currents.  I normally do this in a 'State of the Oceans' report, but I am lazy today.



There is no measurement of general turbulence, but nobody measures anything anyway.  The count of the huge water swirls is up to 4.


I just noticed this on the world sea temperatures.  The nature of the cold feed is changing.  All the sea temperature charts are diving, except for the Nino Zone, so there is something happening there.


Starship has a physics problem

 Starship was something conceived by musk after his insanity set in.  Super-brights like him always have a depression problem after age 40.  My shrink told me, when I had that problem.  The big issue is how you treat it.  He uses every recreational drug known to man.  That's not a good thing.  I use the proper drugs, but limit my intense thinking.  It all comes from cross-connections in the brain.

He wanted the starship to look like the spaceship in tin-tin.  They went through many iterations, and the size of the ship came out of his cratering brain.  The first launch, the ship bored a hole in the ground.  Then they upped the ground bearing strength by 10% and it flew.




We now know they are sending it up empty, as the debris shows.  Who would send it up full?  But the ship barely can lift off without digging a giant hole to the other side.  Time to fill it up with concrete to see how it flies.

Honestly, that little bit of work deflecting the launch blast isn't much on the bearing strength of a normal concrete pad.  Fully loaded, the bearing pressure is probably ten times that of empty.  We shall see.

Nobody reads me, and I'm not accusing anyone of concealing the bearing pressure.  They will simply defy the laws of physics and get it going.  Everybody in the US does that.  No problem.


Santorini earthquake cluster almost gone

After the first few days, it  became a cluster and not foreshocks.  The earthquake hazard is now at background, and everybody can move back again, if they are used to living on the edge.  The cluster is activated by fluid motion, and now it shows that it is very 'rough' in terms of the fault texture.

The main hazard for faults is 'bathtub slip' or stick-slip, which requires a very smooth fault.  Every cluster event smooths out the fault, but there may be many of these.


Of note, a nice earthquake just popped over in Italy.  The location of the next damaging earthquake is now random.  That said, we still have the normal odds that a damaging earthquake could pop off under Santorini tomorrow, like anywhere in this area.  If you move back to your lovely stone pile, don't blame me if you become a pancake tomorrow, but this cluster isn't telling you anything.

The normal odds are showing a damaging earthquake for anywhere in this zone, of about 1 in 100, or 500, for any given spot.  These are the same odds for a house-wiping tornado in NA, or something horrible in California -fire, flood, earthquake.  Go back and enjoy your life of danger.  I am estimating 5 cm/sec on solid rock, and 40 to 80 on soft soil.  It is my contention that everybody should just breeze through these levels anywhere on earth.  That requires steel construction and screw piles down to rock.

ps  the Greeks were about to be put on my 'Smarty List', but they've been installing, and there is no improvement.  Thus, I have to assume they are doing it wrong.  Taiwan was on the list, but they allowed a building made of tin cans to be exposed to several earthquakes, until it fell.



UK is frozen, weather generally mucky

 The US agencies are dropping like flies, with their reporting.  I suspect that all the diversity interns are fleeing, while everything becomes white male territory.  It is funny to note that the 'buyout', which always sends out the brightest, is all smoke and mirrors.  You have to sign away all legal rights, and they can cancel on the trumpy whim.  Doesn't matter, any day now muskie will be sending out AI bolts of lightning.

Back to the weather, we are now into ambient heat energy for the central continent.  That's the sun heating during the day, and it takes a few hours to convect out at night.  I can feel the sun now on the dog walk.


The mimic is confusing because of the solar heating and the 3d situation.  No more clear boundaries.



The clearest signal is Greenland totally white.  This is my best 'thermometer' for the Arctic.


And for the first time ever, the northern Greenland Gap is full of ice slush.  Next year it will be ice, but it is getting too late in the season for now.


Some of the warmth in the continent is due to a huge storm coming to Toronto.  You can see it swirling away in the video.  All in all, we are cold, and the natgas draw will break records again.  The US is cruisin' for a bruisin' when they run out of natgas and another cold blob comes down.  The '2 n's' are fighting for their lives with warm forecasts, and the EIA storage report won't be coming out because all the interns are gone.  As well, don't look up.

The God of all Gods of Global Warming is now safely away from nosa, and in a tenured university position - James Hansen.  He is still powerful, and I admire him.  Never give up, never surrender!


Friday, February 7, 2025

Linux -- adxl355 on Raspberrypi 5

 I am back to my accelerometers.  I want to make a cheap, broad-band seismometer for Santorini.  It just my dream, but it will never be used.  It is one of those things that can bust the monopoly of seismologists, and earthquake engineers, and has the same snowball's chance in heck, as doing simple physics in the atmosphere.

I can report on my first progress in weeks.  That's getting the brand-new rp5 working with I2C for the adxl355.  They did everything new for this raspi and the timing was off for 12c.  Finally, they have fixed it, but it is not in the regular kernel.

The first thing you do with a new is to update to the latest kernel -- rpi-update as root.  Then, don't use a very old pin extender like I did.  The pins are a bit rearranged with the rp5.  Then check 'i2cdetect -y 1' and it works!  hailey-you-la!  Now I am off to the python code.  Set a python environment using Thonny.


A City of Toronto geotechnical problem

 I've said before that all geotechnical engineers are gone, replaced by everybody and their dog who think they can do it.  The city and province have endless geotechnical disasters, but it's all charged to the taxpayer.

In the neighbourhood, we have a complex street corner with steep hills.  There has been a small section up the hill that is continuously sinking.  I've written the city a few times saying you have to look at that.  They just keep filling it up, and in the fall there was a major resurfacing.  No trace of it now.

Last week the water from that decided to pop up 30m down the hill, perhaps because of the cold.  They've had 20 workers and 10 trucks at that corner for a week now.  They've dug holes all over the place.  When I said hello this morning, one of young guys blurted out they can't find it.  

Do you think I would tell them to look 30m up the hill?  Nope.  The hero of geotechnical engineering could just rub soil between his fingers, and tell you everything about it.  Not happening in this world.

ps after the dog walk, I have my morning meditation/snooze.  I chant "Let the stupidity flow over me like a tropical breeze."  And I thing of my very boring fantasy novels, and python code.


Santorini starts to show the lower line of a full extension mechanism

 My general theme is that there is no physics in anything, and that includes earthquakes.


We had the upper line, and now we have the lower line.  However, the locations are so bad that everything looks like a mess.  We only have 'general impressions'.

I would say we are evolving to a classic 'New Madrid Mechanism' but with extension, instead of thrust.  That said, there is no reason to believe this is any more of a hazard than anywhere else in the region.  Clusters come and go, and there could be a big earthquake that gives no warning whatsoever.

Looking at the earthquake history, we have a big 'wipeout' earthquake for a given island every hundred years or so.  This is the same as Italy, and all the regions in the area.  This allows for everybody to put up piles of rock as housing.  Most likely, this cluster just dies, and another one starts somewhere else.  Sooner or later there will be a large earthquake.

ps I just read a Greek guy saying reational things like 'mechanisms'.  I did my little happy dance.


Full Arctic pour continues

 Getting into February, the pattern has changed.  We are no longer getting 'clean front' Arctic blobs, mainly because the ambient temperature is starting to rise.


You can barely see a blob front in the clear air of Western Canada.


Greenland is showing full white, which has indicated the magnitude of the blob before, but it is a very raggy front.


The anomaly plot has a nice lobate front in the States, but it is different from the other plots.


There's a curve on the wind now, but the air stream is coming right over the Arctic.


That is such a beautiful straight flow over the Arctic.  So, I am stopping my magnitude estimates of Arctic blobs because things are changing.  Nevertheless, the natgas draw this week will be a show-stopper.  

As usual, nooanosa are forecasting warm, warm, warm.  The warmies have somehow found a plot that says January is the warmest ever.  I predicted this a long time ago, that we would have a conflict between happy-talk, and reality.


Get out your shorts and sandals

Thursday, February 6, 2025

The US natural gas problem

 I got into natgas watching because of the Oklahoma earthquakes.  Then, all the gas came from the NE and they used fresh water for fracking.  When they injected this into the ground to get rid of the waste, they activated earthquakes.  The earthquakes went up when the price of natgas went up.  Now, it's all Texas, and they keep their earthquakes to themselves.

I'm not even looking today.  The natgas storage report will be going straight to the bottom, and there may be no price change, because NASA has doubled down on a warm Feb.  Why is nasa doing the weather?  Because they have a total monopoly on their data interpretation, and they are the warmies supreme.  I regularly wonder how cold it can get before they break.  Most likely, never.

I am sorry for anybody who listened to me on the natgas prices.  They lost their shirts.  Every other year, the natgas traders have reacted to a bad storage report.  Now, they ignore the cold outside their windows, and the fact that the storage is slurping.  It will be warm any minute now, is their cry.  I greatly underestimated their stupidity.

ps storage down, on a new slope.  Business as usual.


ps I think they are happy the draw difference went from 300 something to 150 something, but this last week was warm, with those weird Pacific jets.  This week will have the big Arctic blob.


Full M9 Arctic blob coming down

 

CANADA IS NOT HAPPY




Greenland and Northern Canada are probably as cold as they can get in February.  Clean out all nasty natgas in the US storage.


On the anomaly map, please note that warm for us is -30C.


The winds are fully aligned with the blob.  That's why I call it an M9, and it's a Texas freezer.  

NOAA is still calling for a nice warm February, so get out your natgas bbq's.


ps


ps



AND THEN ALL THE PLANES GO BOOM!

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Santorini earthquakes now show standard dual-fault mechanism

 


In a rock mechanics testing lab, you compress rocks to failure.  You can look at the detailed mechanisms of fault movement.  No seismologist does this.

The neat thing is that 'no fault is an island'.  You always need a dual, perpendicular mechanism for large fault movements.  I was all about this for the Oklahoma earthquakes.  The California usgus doesn't need this, because their faults are driven by sliding plate tectonics, and they think everybody is the same.

If an isolated extension fault is opening up, then at at least one boundary must slide.  Most likely we will see two.  Right now, the upper section is sliding, and if we had better seismometer coverage, we would see the sliding mechanism.

So, the mechanism of this, is that there has been some fluid motion that started the extension fault, and this has moved enough to active a release srike-slip fault.  I now upgrade the chance of an M7 to one in 50.  Every building in Santorini would be leveled for this, but it is only a chance, not much above the random chance of it happening anywhere in the region.

The lesson for these beautiful towns is to have an underground shelter, rather than total evacuation, which could be a long time.

ps. asked qwen ai, for a list of the islands damaged by earthquakes

Greece is located in a seismically active region, and many of its islands have experienced significant earthquake damage over the past century. Below is a list of Greek islands that have been affected by earthquakes in the last 100 years, along with some notable events:


---


### **1. Crete**

- **2021**: A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck near Heraklion, causing damage to buildings and infrastructure.

- **1926**: A major earthquake caused widespread destruction on the island.


---


### **2. Rhodes**

- **2008**: A magnitude 6.5 earthquake hit near Rhodes, causing structural damage and injuries.

- **1926**: A significant earthquake damaged parts of the island.


---


### **3. Kos**

- **2017**: A magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck near Kos, causing fatalities, injuries, and damage to buildings, including historical sites like the Castle of the Knights.


---


### **4. Samos**

- **2020**: A magnitude 7.0 earthquake occurred near Samos, resulting in fatalities, injuries, and significant damage to buildings. The earthquake also caused a small tsunami that affected the Turkish coast.


---


### **5. Lefkada**

- **2015**: A magnitude 6.4 earthquake caused damage to buildings and infrastructure on the island.

- **2003**: A magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck, damaging homes and injuring residents.


---


### **6. Zakynthos (Zante)**

- **1953**: One of the most devastating earthquakes in Greek history struck the Ionian Islands, including Zakynthos. The quake destroyed much of the island's infrastructure and led to a large-scale rebuilding effort.

- **2018**: A magnitude 6.8 earthquake caused minor damage and triggered a small tsunami.


---


### **7. Kefalonia**

- **1953**: The same earthquake that devastated Zakynthos also severely impacted Kefalonia, destroying most of the island's buildings.

- **2014**: A series of earthquakes, including a magnitude 6.0 event, caused damage to homes and infrastructure.


---


### **8. Lesbos**

- **2017**: A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck near Lesbos, causing damage to buildings and injuring several people.


---


### **9. Chios**

- **1949**: A significant earthquake caused damage across the island.

- **2020**: The same earthquake that affected Samos was felt strongly on Chios, causing damage to buildings.


---


### **10. Corfu**

- **1953**: The Ionian earthquake also affected Corfu, though the damage was less severe compared to Zakynthos and Kefalonia.

- **2003**: A magnitude 5.0 earthquake caused minor damage.


---


### **11. Santorini**

- **1956**: A major earthquake caused significant damage to the island, leading to evacuations and reconstruction efforts.


---


### **12. Kythira**

- **2006**: A magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck near Kythira, causing damage to buildings and triggering landslides.


---


### **13. Milos**

- **1953**: The Ionian earthquake caused minor damage on Milos.

- **2018**: A magnitude 5.0 earthquake was felt on the island, causing limited damage.


---


### **14. Amorgos**

- **1956**: A magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck near Amorgos, causing damage and triggering a tsunami.


---


### **15. Patmos**

- **1953**: The Ionian earthquake caused minor damage on Patmos.


---


### **16. Icaria**

- **1953**: The Ionian earthquake caused minor damage on Icaria.


---


### **17. Symi**

- **2008**: The earthquake that affected Rhodes also caused damage on Symi.


---


This list highlights the seismic activity affecting Greek islands over the past century. Earthquakes remain a recurring natural hazard in the region due to Greece's location along tectonic plate boundaries. 


**Note**: While this list includes major events, smaller earthquakes may have occurred that are not documented here.

State of the Oceans - Feb 5, 2025

 The hypothesis is that the oceans distribute 90% of the heat energy around the world.  They have a complex, non-linear heat valve that turns solar heat acquisition on and off.  


Every single spike on the standard world temperature plot can be traced to an ocean current event, where the heat-valve has turned on.  We are now in a big dive as the world temperature heads back to the base line.  The NOAA chart has a mathematical drift due to the way they integrate world temperatures.


Are we growing grapes in Greenland?  Nope.  Their drift is not real.


My favourite 'Ocean Thermometer' is a tide gauge in Oregon.  It shows all the historic warm and cold spells that have been acknowledged by general observation - the 30's dust bowl, Hitler's freeze in Russia, our 70's freeze, etc.  These are the observations that are important, not flawed temperature compilations.  It shows that this latest spike is nothing, compared to 2016, when I had 4 months of warm cottage weather.  Natural observations rule!


The second best natural world thermometer is the 'Nino Zone'.  This is a small section in the middle of the Pacific.  It always shows the world heating events.  It showed a huge effect for the last heating event.

In the last few years, the Pacific equatorial ocean current has completely turned over from feeding from the North to feeding from the South.  This was a major world event, but is not acknowledged by NASA or NOAA, since they don't do ocean currents.  They have a sacred belief that their all-important atmosphere drives the ocean currents, when, in fact, the tail cannot wag the dog.


Their sacred 'El Nino Cycle' has been 'blown out of the water'.  However, they have a monopoly on all weather observations, so we just sit here and freeze.

ps Kimmel quote - “If Canada also had 54 electoral votes, forget MAGA,” he said. “Our next president will be a kind-hearted lesbian moose.”




Don't worry, it will be warm soon

 


NASA:  Don't worry, be happy, warm weather any minute now.


And now, back to the cold reality.



A huge clipper is coming down on us, but this one is pure cold, having gone through the Arctic cold laundry.


Greenland gets whiter and whiter, and the Arctic gets black.


The Spencer plot finally shows the big world drop.

The Arctic winds are a big mess, due to an Atlantic plume.


The Atlantic plumes are so powerful because North America kicks them out on a very smooth path.


Due to the warm air coming up, New York is still in for some tremendous snow.


Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Cartoon of the day

 


Due to my efforts, Canada's inflow of fentanyl has gone from teensy-weensy to extra-teensy-weensy.

ps note that the Qwen spells like a trump on the picture

Santorini gets an earthquake cluster

 


Back to earthquakes.  The only beautiful islands here are the ones which haven't had a big earthquake yet.  These buildings are just big piles of rubble, like most of the region.  


We have a huge cluster of M5 earthquakes, or so.  It is following a line that is the size of an M7.  People are taking this cluster as foreshocks.  However, it could just go away.  I don't know what will happen, but it is a good earthquake drill.


The region is in extension, due to a little stress curl, in an area of general compression.  All these islands are tilted blocks, with one steep and one side gently sloped.  The islands are formed from huge earthquakes.  I would say an M9 per island.  Being extension, it also get civilization-destroying volcanos.  Good to take your leave when things get restless.

ps I'm still putting the odds of this cluster being foreshocks at 1 in 100, the usual level.  Italian seismologists got put in jail when they said 'no chance' of their cluster being foreshocks.  They really need my '2 buck' accelerometers, which I am still working on.

All quiet on the front again

 Well, that was some excitement.  I'm looking forward to some quiet time for a while.


Looks like a big clipper is setting up again.


While the clipper is forming, the Arctic is not getting black again.


With the clash of fronts, it looks like huge snows for the rotten Americans.

ps Yeah, he is turning his attention to destroying California.


They don't need no stinkin' water.

ps the dog walk today was very icey.  We wore our boot ice clips.