HOLY SMOKE!!!

Good info, IMO, on this and much more at wattsupwiththat.com



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If anyone missed this before then it is worth your perusal...

http://www.freakonomics.com/books/superfreakonomics/chapter-excerpts/chapter-5/

What Do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo Have in Common? Let’s melt the ice cap! . . . What’s worse: car exhaust or cow farts? . . . If you love the earth, eat more kangaroo . . . It all comes down to negative externalities

Rog,

On the decline does seems to be the pattern when I looked at it the first time. Your other blow ups of the charts clarify it more.

Good work.

"Nick, if someone bought the land near your house and started an intensive pig rearing operation immediately upwind of your backyard, would you support their right to do so?"

Not sure if I am the correct person to ask, as I am embroiled in a couple "disputes" with my local regulators/bureaucrats :)

But...assuming I have lived in my house prior to your pig farm, AND the pig farm restricts the use or value of my property, I may have legal recourse in a court of law... if I can prove damage. However, if you had the pig farm first and then I built my house it becomes a different set of circumstances. A prime example in the place where I live is the people who build houses next to airports, and then decide the noise from the airplanes restricts their use of the property and demand the airport to close or change the flight schedules, etc.

I have no problem with zoning if 100% of the landowners agree to them. If someone purchases land it is up to them to find out what the zoning is, and what land use is permitted. What often happens here in my state is that after you purchase land, our fine politicians re-zone it to the detriment of the owners, and often to the benefit of some special interest group.

Rog asked, "Think I'm a black helicopter nutcase?"

I am very familiar with them, but that was many decades ago. No markings. Often carried "soldiers" without ID/dog tags into countries we were not allowed to be in. They were not all black. Some were ugly olive. Here are a couple. Note that they have no markings or national identification. Many of them flew military missions into Laos, Cambodia, and even Communist China.

These are Bell UH-1's (Hueys). But we used may different choppers and fixed wing aircraft. Some were all black with no identification.



My Favorite blackbird is this one. Structure is 85% Titanium and 15% composite materials... UL! It could fly from NY to London in less than 2 hours.



SR-71 Blackbird.

Careful Rog, Big Brother is watching you.

"Careful Rog, Big Brother is watching you."

He's watching all of us, with a million cctv cameras and other intrusive devices, databases and profiling softwares. At the moment he's not interfering with my right to free speech. What worries me is how fast that could change if the prevailing view of our spurious leaders became that the population needed to be more tightly controlled.

Announcements have just been made in the UK for planned outages in the power system, ostensibly to cope with big solar flares. It would take a big X class flare to pose a risk to the transformers on the grid. They are pointing to the footage of the flare I posted for George, hundreds of times weaker, an M2.5. We're being softened up for something.

Whether it is just an excuse for reaching carbon dioxide reduction targets, or a means of curtailing communication, I don't know. Maybe it's just a scare story to draw attention away from the AGW nonsense and ready us for 'new discoveries' that the Sun actually has far more influence on Earth's weather and climate than they thought before...

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/13/power-grid-worries-flaring-over-solar-flares/

" What often happens here in my state is that after you purchase land, our fine politicians re-zone it to the detriment of the owners, and often to the benefit of some special interest group."

Life can be a constant battle with Bureaucrats, bullies and bad neighbours. I try to let most of it wash past without getting aggrieved about it. In the final analysis, the result of the balance between bureacratic governance, private interest and quality of life seems to be a function of corruption levels, mutual respect, and population density.

OK, how do we fix it? Lasers?
Maybe a global tax? taxing soemthing usually fixes the root problem /sarc.
Carbon offsets (haha..oh you were serious?)
So,if I kill my neighbor but I help someone else live I have offset the murder of my neighbor? Makes perfect sense to me. Be right back.
Stop driving our cars, turn off the central air and using laptops?
Ok, you first.

Edited by i_charles on 06/14/2011 07:46:33 MDT.

"OK, how do we fix it?"

Oh, you ask the easy question :)

In the US we fix it by electing officials with a clear mandate from the people, and hold them accountable. Easy and very difficult at the same time. I actually think that Americans can take control of their government back from the politicians and special interests, but it is not an easy or simple task.

"In the US we fix it by electing officials with a clear mandate from the people, and hold them accountable."


Sorry but that was more of a strategy than a solution.
It begs the question, what will they do to fix the problem?
After all our "leaders" from both parties have done such a magnificient job so far.yipes.
I suggest as a solution blasting Neptune with laser beams 15 minutes everyday. I know that is probably not a good solution..? but it is a concrete plan of action.
Otherwise, before they start blasting Neptune I have decreased my toilet paper consuption from 20 squares to 15 squares per use in an effort to do my part.

"In the US we fix it by electing officials with a clear mandate from the people, and hold them accountable."

If there could be a coalition between liberals, libertarians, religious people,... then this might be possible

Currently, the powerful have "the best government money can buy" and have successfully divided any groups that might threaten this.

"I suggest as a solution blasting Neptune with laser beams 15 minutes everyday."

From that I deduce you think there's no problem : )

I know this is an exercise in futility, but

Consider Vostok ice core data:



For the last 450,000 years CO2 ranged from 180 to 300 PPM

Now we are at 380 PPM, close to twice as much higher as the range over this time period

Who knows what the effect of this will be. Maybe Rog is right that nothing will happen, but there is a huge correlation with temperature and over that time period.

We are in a huge science experiment.

Better to take prudent actions now to reduce CO2 before it's obvious we have major problem and it will be more difficult to do anything about it.

100 years from now, if there are major climate changes, they will look back to us today as greedy, selfish, immoral, stupid people.

"Better to take prudent actions now to reduce CO2 before it's obvious we have major problem and it will be more difficult to do anything about it."

I thouhgt you were talking about the economy for a second.:)
Otherwise, you have suggested a vague solution involving some sort of reduction of current CO2 levels?
Again, how do we do that in concrete terms? What do we reduce and what levels?
If we choose to not comply we are subject to fines or jail time or both?
All I want to hear is a clear cut plan of action...thats all.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/14/google-solarcity-residential-panels/

Search giant Google is investing $280 million in SolarCity, a company that leases out solar panels to home owners, bringing its total investment in the clean technology sector up to $680 million.

The investment creates a new fund for residential solar power projects that should include Google Employees as part of SolarCity’s new customers. The new fund will give SolarCity the capital it needs to create more reasonable financing options for home owners that are interested in planting solar panels on their homes’ roofs and don’t necessarily have the cash to buy panels outright. The leases for the residential solar panels can last upwards of 15 years.

"It begs the question, what will they do to fix the problem?"

Ah, and that is the point of the entire thread. Do we have an indentifiable and confirmed problem? And if we do, what is the root cause?

"Currently, the powerful have "the best government money can buy" and have successfully divided any groups that might threaten this."

No disagreement here. And that is the problem, we have allowed it to happen.

"I thouhgt you were talking about the economy for a second.:)
Otherwise, you have suggested a vague solution involving some sort of reduction of current CO2 levels?
Again, how do we do that in concrete terms? What do we reduce and what levels?
If we choose to not comply we are subject to fines or jail time or both?
All I want to hear is a clear cut plan of action...thats all."

Reduction of current CO2 levels would be very difficult, except wait many years (centuries?). Reducing increases in CO2 level is what I meant.

What do we do?

Eliminate all subsidies of coal and oil - tax loopholes, financing of military from income tax,... Make them pay for all the external costs - like burning coal releases mercury and other noxious chemicals that produces health effects.

Subsidize alternatives - efficiency, solar, wind. These are more expensive today but cheaper in the long run. The other industrial countries are doing this and are leaving us behind. This will also provide jobs and economic development.

"Currently, the powerful have "the best government money can buy" and have successfully divided any groups that might threaten this."

No disagreement here. And that is the problem, we have allowed it to happen."

How could a liberal and a libertarian unite against the "best government money can buy"?

I believe you went as far as saying that if we have publically financed education it should at least be efficient - or something like that.

Maybe agreeing to have limited, efficient government spending on social programs?

The goal is to have people make money to support themselves with a limited government safety net?

I don't know, seems somewhat hopeless actually...

Interesting...

http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/06/chinese-vs-us-vehicle-fleets.html


the relative size of the US Interstate and Chinese Expressway systems are now of roughly equal size. China'a are relatively empty

The US fleet is still five times the size of the Chinese fleet

However, over the last decade, the average growth rate of the Chinese fleet has been about 23%/year

those new expressways may not remain empty for too long

How to solve the problem that a neither a liberal nor a libertarian will argue with...

Just start off everybody with $10 million and then tell them they are own their own.


Bill Gates interview about what he will leave his kids...

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/06/13/how-much-for-lifetime-health-insurance/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/14/the-major-aas-solar-announcement-suns-fading-spots-signal-big-drop-in-solar-activity/

Well, mainstream solar science finally concurs with predictions made by Solar-Planetary theorist Theodor Lanscheidt 28 years ago. His refined 2003 prediction in one of the last papers he wrote was this:

We need not wait until 2030 to see whether the forecast of the next deep Gleissberg minimum is correct. A declining trend in solar activity and global temperature should become manifest long before the deepest point in the development. The current 11-year sunspot cycle 23 with its considerably weaker activity seems to be a first indication of the new trend, especially as it was predicted on the basis of solar motion cycles two decades ago. As to temperature, only El Niño periods should interrupt the downward trend, but even El Niños should become less frequent and strong. The outcome of this further long-range climate forecast solely based on solar activity may be considered to be a touchstone of the IPCC’s hypothesis of man-made global warming.

Needless to say, this work was written off by the mainstream physicists as 'Astrology'

Judge for yourselves:
http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/new-e.htm