St Patrick’s day, and the new iPad is here

View 717 Saturday, March 17, 2012

St. Patrick’s Day

There seem to be a number of malcontents determined to call this by some other name. I can’t think why. For those wondering why the fuss about St. Patrick, I can recommend How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. If you find the title an exaggeration, you may have a different view after reading the book; the claim is not at all unreasonable. It’s also a good story of how the Dark Ages came about.

The rush is on to the Apple stores. Steve Wozniak was first in line at the Century City mall Apple Store to get the new iPad. Steve has a habit of being first in line for new Apple products, although usually up in Silicon Valley rather than down here. I suppose he has long forgiven the other Steve for killing his Apple III and forcing Woz out of the company; I can remember when he was pretty bitter about that, and told the story often. Over time he came to appreciate Jobs, as has just about everyone else.

Everyone I know who has the new iPad likes it. Given that I make a living from books, which are marked up by 100% by the seller from the price paid to the distributor, I can hardly complain that Apple routinely marks up the iPad to about twice what it costs to make. Their service is good, and whether for good or not Apple always went for immediate profit rather than market share. It’s about time for me to upgrade my iPhone and iPad, but I may have to wait: I want to get mine from the local Apple store and they keep running out.

The faster than light neutrinos are getting less and less likely all the time: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57398740-264/not-so-fast-neutrinos-cern-says-lights-speedier-still/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&tag=nl.e703 They haven’t completely gone away, but that’s the way to bet it. Of course that’s always been the best way to bet it.

Dr. Roy Spencer has a new essay on Global Warming Belief as Cargo Cult science. That’s a fun idea, and no harder on the true believers than they have been on the skeptics, but it is a bit unfair. Some of the Global Warming Believers continue to look for other sources of heat retention and climate variation, and certainly some kind of greenhouse effect (which, as farmers will tell you, ain’t the way their greenhouses work, but that’s another story) and they just can’t find one that they think adequately covers the bases.

The problem is that even if it’s all due to CO2, that hardly justifies the draconian measures proposed to lower atmospheric CO2 content, particularly since those measures will never be adopted by the developing nations, or by India and China which are morphing from “developing” or “third world” status to tigers. I said forty years ago in this context that short of conquest there wasn’t any way for the West to impose “green” on the rest of the world. As my South African friend said one day, “Now that we have a seat at the table you tell us the game is over. So we’ll play our own game.” China and India have the same attitude.

Slowly we are developing the proper tools to deal with all this. We need to know more about what might be the optimum CO2 level and for that matter the optimum temperature. We certainly don’t want to go back to mile thick glaciers –which, by the way, can’t develop without there being some source of energy to move the water into the high northern latitudes so it can fall as snow. And we know that when that ice starts to form the glaciers can come with dazzling rapidity. England and Belgium apparently went from deciduous trees to being under year round ice in well under a century. Once you’re under a foot of Ice year round you may as well be under a hundred feet – you aren’t going to be growing wheat, or practicing dairy farming any more. As the Vikings in Greenland found. The Inuit ceased to be dairy farmers and learned to live off the land in the new climate. The Vikings went home to Iceland and Scandinavia.

We need to study climate, but we also need to develop energy. I had thought that by now the United States, like France, would be generating a substantial part of our energy from nuclear sources, which would make electric vehicles – beginning with trains, then interstate trucks, and eventually town cars – desirable and economical. Instead we seem to have thrown money in all directions, hoping that something would work.

But it’s late, Roberta and I are going out, and that’s a topic for another time .

Happy St. Patrick’s Day