Climate Change -- Lives of billions hang on a thread

This is the real climate change, not the soda pop fizzers.  Due to geology and plate tectonics our northern lives hang on a thread.  This news might stop immigrants.  :)

You have to click on the large version.  This is the week's ocean current map (find it yourself!).  It's a great video that leaves my Linux chuffing with heat.  In it you can see a strong lunge of El Nino, which, if it keeps up, means mudslides for Callie.  Of even more interest, is a 10% leakage off the tip of South America.

Now here's the knife edge, or thread of life.  There's no reason for El Nino to keep a regular 7 year cycle.  It regularly turns off for 100 years or more.  If that happens then all of Callie must desalinate with nuclear plants.  If the Atlantic equatorial current shift south, then we Canadians are aiming blowtorches at advancing walls of ice.  At least the Europeans will stop whining about their shrinking glaciers.  How about one big glacier, huh?  Bunch of crazies.  **

I always like writing about this, but my opinions are tomorrow's fish wrap.  :)

**Not just crazy -- TOTALLY EVIL CRAZY.  What sort of Nasti organization could keep that diesel thing secret for so long.  Look for the bodies!

***(I have no European readers :)

Water-Induced Earthquakes Rule the Week

Once again, in a boring week, water-drain earthquakes rule the world.  I have developed my hypothesis by combining rock mechanics with seismology.  Nobody else does this, since the world is too specialized, and everybody in science depends on hand-to-mouth political funding.  That's sad.

For myself, I have elevated it to a theory which has been proven time and time again.  I can be arrogant about this, since I am the only one, and totally isolated from the closed world of the Pay Wall.  :)  Others do not have this freedom, always worried about the fat old white farts who have tenure.

Earthquake mechanics is a philosophical science, since we can't actually can't go down there and look.  I use lab physics, and mining observations to construct my theory, but other people can come up with bizarre ideas.  Like all such science (climate), the discussions can become vicious, and always have been.

So I stay outside, safe in my bubble of no readers.  :)  It's fun.

Uber Takes Toronto

Yesterday, my son pigged out on free Uber stuff.  It started with a free lunch delivered by Uber eats.  In the evening, he and his downtown friends found that there were special Uber cars (top line) giving away Air Miles cards.  They would wait until the special cars were free and then book them for a little trip.  They got hundreds of dollars.

Uber lives on causing downtown congestion for free.  This is a massive economic externality which should be captured.  It's because the cities have tried to capture this by taxi medallions, which is horrible and won't stand in court.  They can give all the bylaw tickets they want, but they'll all be squashed.

Uber will go all out in creating new congestion.  Soon you'll see mobile uber restaurants and hotels rented by the hour.  There is nothing to stop them.

The only solution is to release the taxis, and create a uniform congestion charge.  This can be done with smart phones, no need for a major corrupt computer infrastructure.  In fact, that's a great idea for a Palo Alto startup!  Give the cities a means to fight Uber free-riding.  Of course, nobody running cities has any brains.  Too bad.  :)

Also, all this Uber stuff means that young people will sell a kidney to get a job downtown!