Letter from England; warming; science; more. Mail 20110908

Mail 691 Thursday, September 08, 2011

I like to boast that this place has the most interesting mail on the net, and it’s true; but I have fallen behind in posting it. This won’t catch up, and worse some interesting mail will have to be posted without comments. Between the weather and other pressures I’ve fallen behind here. I’m dancing as fast as I can…

Letter from England

A comparison of the two countries.

Gasolene prices: about $1.00/quart in Mariposa; about $2/quart in Sunderland. Groceries to feed two for a week: $138/Mariposa; $136 in Sunderland. Prices for comparable houses: $237,000 in Mariposa; $480,000 in Sunderland. Real estate tax: $2600/year in Mariposa; $1800/year (ave) in Sunderland Sales tax/VAT: 9.25% in Mariposa; 20% in Sunderland. State income tax: 10% for a middle class income in Mariposa; 0% in Sunderland Marginal income tax rate for a middle class income: 25% in Mariposa; 40% in Sunderland National insurance/social security: 15.3% in Mariposa; about 20% in Sunderland Medical costs: about 17% of GDP in Mariposa; included in the income tax/national insurance in Sunderland.

Not a lot of news.

Darling: Blair said Brown was like dental treatment without anaesthetic http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/02/darling-blair-brown-memoirs

— Harry Erwin, PhD

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." (Benjamin Franklin, 1755)

Be careful who you take money from

Labour financial sleight of hand to blame (in part) http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/top-hospital-to-be-closed-as-cash-crisis-engulfs-nhs-2349300.html

—

Harry Erwin

It is Time to Take Federal Insanity Seriously.

Jerry,

The quality of life United States will be little affected by the restriction of the breeding of pet rabbits, or the substantial fine levied on the child who rescued and cared for an abandoned baby woodpecker. So great a Nation will easily survive the closure of the Gibson Guitar factory should the Federal authorities succeed in what is clearly their unstated aim. In any event any shortage of guitars will quickly be corrected as the Chinese increase their production. With the prevailing unemployment rate as it is, throwing Gibson’s employees out of work will not show in the statistics. The shortfall in tax income caused by the collapse of Gibson’s, like the shortfall of the supply of guitars, can easily be corrected by borrowing more dollars from China.

Far more serious is the news that the EPA have brought formal enforcement action against the owner of a feedlot for not keeping a specific pollutant in a pollutant containment zone. This is not some chemical weedkiller with an LD50 measured in micrograms per kilo, it is hay. Yes, sun dried grass. Hay. My mind, as Chamber’s Dictionary has it, "Starts as at a bogle."** Should the EPA’s action succeed, hay making will have to cease and all winter feed grass will have to be turned into silage. I confidently predict that the EPA inspectorate will then turn their attention to the back yards of private houses in their tireless struggle against this newly discovered danger, and the EPA’s need to levy extortionate fines on transgressors. A short course of ECT for selected officials would probably abate this nuisance. With abatement guaranteed if I am allowed choose the applied voltage.

Far more sinister is the appearance of domestic terrorists on no-fly lists. Notably those journalists who have had the temerity to report the solidly fact based failings of the TSA, including the blatant lies that this dubious organization resorts to. Come on America. Get a grip. I grew up in Britain during the Hitler war and still have fond memories of American soldiers in spite of the funny way they spoke, and their funny uniforms. They were generous towards children with their sweets even if they did call them respectively, kids, and candy. These are the people who gave freely of their blood and treasure to defeat fascism. How have such a people’s children and grandchildren have come to such a pass?

Here endeth the rant of John Edwards for today.

**This is Chamber’s definition of the word boggle.

John Edwards

Good rant. Thanks. And here is an example of the Obama jobs program:

Private pools used for public swim meets might have to install or rent lifts for the disabled during events because of recent changes in the Americans with Disabilities Act, an action that could cost metro Atlanta homeowners associations thousands of dollars.

Private pools deal with disabilities act, potential added cost

By Christopher Quinn

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Private pools used for public swim meets might have to install or rent lifts for the disabled during events because of recent changes in the Americans with Disabilities Act, an action that could cost metro Atlanta homeowners associations thousands of dollars.

CHRIS RANK, Special Neighborhood associations are determining whether their swimming pools are affected by an updated regulation in the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Longshoremen storm Wash. state port, damage RR – Yahoo! News

Jerry

Making good on Trumka’s promise to be Obama’s army

http://news.yahoo.com/longshoremen-storm-wash-state-port-damage-rr-144921214.html

Jim Crawford

Arise ye starvelings from your sluimber, arise ye criminals of want! For reason in revolt now thunders!

The Army goes Droid

We Want Our Smart Phones And We Want Them Now

September 8, 2011: After years of trying to avoid it, the U.S. Army has agreed to quit trying to create a device that does what a smart phone does, but does it on the battlefield. The troops want a combat smart phone, and they have been increasingly critical of army procurement officials. Not just snide remarks in unofficial military message boards (where posters are anonymous, but obviously in the army) but also in the official ones (where you are identified.) Combat veterans can get away with this, and what they are saying is that a combat smart phone is a matter of life or death. So the army has issued a request for combat smart phones. They don’t call them that. Even procurement bureaucrats have their pride. The request is for a NWEUD Nett Warrior End-User Device). The description of NWEUD is for something that sounds like a smart phone. Oh, and it must use the Android operating system……………………….

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htinf/20110908.aspx

John

Following ISS across the Moon during Transit

Jerry,

Peter Rosen of Sweden took some pictures of the ISS in transiting the moon. He then created a wonderful little film.

FLY ME TO THE MOON on Lunar Photo of the Day <http://lpod.wikispaces.com/September+8%2C+2011>

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Police called after man butchers cow in his driveway

Jerry,

Been there, done that.

http://www.standard.net/stories/2011/09/06/police-called-after-man-butchers-cow-his-driveway

Why did he need a saw? I’ve never needed one.

Jim Crawford

No one would have called the police when I was young. Ah well.

‘Nor is there any longer reciprocity in our separation of powers. While the other branches cannot enforce their statutes and decisions, the executive now legislates and rules.’

<http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-ruler-of-law-7141>

Roland Dobbins

Imagine what they can accomplish with four more years!

Education

A message from my 14 year old Granddaughter.

Dumb(I mean Dear)_ Teachers/Administrators:

I must inform you that being ‘smart’ isn’t something you can brush off but, being dumb is something you can!! So please!! Stop putting us smart kids with all the dumb ones because we become no longer smart in class and in order for us kids to ‘fit in’ we must act dumb. Acting dumb results in being dumb!! If you want us to succeed in anything at all…then stop putting us in with them!!!!!!

This is what’s wrong with our systems. 100 and below isn’t what a 138 IQ needs to work with.

Carl

Carl Sanders

Cheers and empathy. I have been there. But at least she has the Internet. I had the Encyclopedia Britannica, and afternoon radio…

Video Game Targets ‘Tea Party Zombies,’ Fox News Personalities | FoxNews.com

Jerry,

I know I’ve came across as being excessively willing to cope with anarchy, but this is why I feel resigned to it.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/07/video-game-targets-tea-party-zombies-fox-news-personalities/

In context of the repeated threats to gang rape Gov Palin and her daughters, the incitement to violence is rather blatant. (I seem to remember a Queen or Princess of the Britons leading a revolt against the Romans after she was flogged and her daughters were raped by tax collectors…)

If the Burning City is going to burn, then the kinless must be willing to respond in kind.

Jim Crawford

The kinless can either learn to fight, or make common cause with the Lords. Those in thrall have fewer choices than those who are free. See The Burning City

Global Warming

I have several reservations about the global warming hypothesis.

1. A paper, written in 2006, by Essex, McKitrick, and Andresen, correctly questions the fundamental thermodynamic underpinnings of the concept of ‘Global Temperature.’ Andresen is a thermodynamicist at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. I read the paper, and don’t see any problems with it. In concluding, the authors, in part remark:

"There is no global temperature. The reasons lie in the properties of the equation of state governing local thermodynamic equilibrium, and the implications cannot be avoided by substituting statistics for physics. Since temperature is an intensive variable, the total temperature is meaningless in terms of the system being measured, and hence any one simple average has no necessary meaning. Neither does temperature have a constant proportional relationship with energy or other extensive thermodynamic properties. Averages of the Earth’s temperature field are thus devoid of a physical context which would indicate how they are to be interpreted, or what meaning can be attached to changes in their levels, up or down. Statistics cannot stand in as a replacement for the missing physics because data alone are context-free."

The global warming enthusiasts, with all their modeling, fail to answer these objections. So I believe your position, that they have not made their case, is defensible.

2. For many years, rhere have been problems with the disagreements between satellite vs. surface measurements. Recently, the paper: “On the Misdiagnosis Of Surface Temperature Feedbacks From Variations In Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” By Spencer and Braswell 2011″ has recognized that the discrepancy is not going away. Quoting:

Quoting: “The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”

“The main finding from this research is that there is no solution to the problem of measuring atmospheric feedback, due mostly to our inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in our observations.”

3. The recently reported CERN experiment, addressing the induction of nucleation via cosmic ray activity suggests a mechanism other than greenhouse gas concentration which could be a significant driver of local surface temperature by directly affecting the Earth’s surface albedo. Now this is work in progress, but such effects are apparently not currently incorporated in the ‘doomsday’ models. The CERN publication states:

The CLOUD results show that a few kilometres up in the atmosphere sulphuric acid and water vapour can rapidly form clusters, and that cosmic rays enhance the formation rate by up to ten-fold or more. However, in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, within about a kilometre of Earth’s surface, the CLOUD results show that additional vapours such as ammonia are required. Crucially, however, the CLOUD results show that sulphuric acid, water and ammonia alone – even with the enhancement of cosmic rays – are not sufficient to explain atmospheric observations of aerosol formation. Additional vapours must therefore be involved, and finding out their identity will be the next step for CLOUD.’

“It was a big surprise to find that aerosol formation in the lower atmosphere isn’t due to sulphuric acid, water and ammonia alone,” said Kirkby. “Now it’s vitally important to discover which additional vapours are involved, whether they are largely natural or of human origin, and how they influence clouds. This will be our next job.”

4. Given that current research is in the process of evolving our understanding of climatic driving processes, it seems inappropriate to conduct witch hunts for ‘deniers.’ At least as far back as Galileo reactionary philosophers have been lashing out at critics with ‘inconvenient’ data. The Ptolemaic armillary sphere displayed at the Museo Galileo in Florence, built by Antonio Santucci, is a magnificent example of a previous attempt of a failed model. The instrument was completed and dedicated in 1593. Galileo went public in about 1610. After which, of course, he was arrested, which is probably what the local goons would like to do with the ‘deniers.’ If you haven’t seen the sphere, its image can be viewed online by googling Museo Galileo.

Best regards,

Bill Graves

There is some controversy over the cited paper, but there is sufficient ambiguity in the data to justify skepticism in the consensus agreements. All the charts show about 0.8 degree rise in a hundred years, then postulate a much higher rate of temperature rise in the 21^st Century. That latter is not obvious in the data.

Subj: FBI Worries: massive EMP Attack

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/09/06/what-does-the-fbi-worry-about/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FoundryConservativePolicyNews+%28The+Foundry%3A+Conservative+Policy+News.%29

I have been writing about this since 1964, although most of my early papers were classified. If China wants to take Taiwan, they will begin with a nuclear explsion above their Lop Nor test base. That will remove US space assets. Then they can decided what to detonate over Omaha.

Post-American geopolitics

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I think you will find this essay fascinating.

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2011/09/06/pax-americana-we-hardly-knew-ye/

It traces the actions of many countries as they scramble for a place in a world where America has a greatly reduced role. Some of the more interesting points:

1) Turkey is rattling the naval saber around the Aegean Sea – and is planning to sign a strategic cooperation agreement with Egypt http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/turkey-egypt-to-sign-strategic-cooperation-deal-1.382547  this month. The agreement will reportedly include military cooperation. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who did an interestingly-timed turn in Somalia last month http://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/as-armed-conflict-erupts-erdogan-demonstrates-his-actual-priority/  , plans to visit Egypt – and, reportedly, Gaza – in mid-September. It’s no accident that Russia and Iran will be celebrating at Bushehr at the same time Erdogan is exercising Islamic leadership in post-Mubarak Egypt.

2) Not unnaturally, Greece has just concluded a security cooperation agreement with Israel http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/09/05/3089230/greece-israel-sign-security-cooperation-agreement  . Those in the Eastern Mediterranean expect the offshore plans of Cyprus to become a flashpoint, and Israel is a cooperative partner in the Cyprus endeavor, having agreed with Cyprus in 2010 on a maritime boundary and a mutual recognition of seabed claims (and being an offshore gas driller herself). Israel, Greece, and Cyprus have a common interest in both freedom of economic action off Cyprus and reining Turkey in across the board.

3) Central Europeans aren’t taking this trend lying down. In May 2011, the Central European consortium called the Visegrad Group, which traces its modern history to the mid-1930s, decided to form its own military “battlegroup http://blog.usni.org/2011/05/17/the-visegrad-battle-group-a-new-eastern-european-reality/  ” under the command of Poland. (The Visegrad Group consists of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia.) The land-warfare oriented Visegrad battlegroup will operate independently of NATO.

Interesting times, indeed.

Respectfully,

Brian P.