WHY the Responsible Adult in Your Family ALWAYS Told You To:

BUCKLE UP FOR SAFETY

Quote Of The Day

Via our dear friend Tim, who shows us that once again that “Utopia” is but Latin for “nightmare”

That’s one explanation: that no sane person shouts, ‘Stuff your pension!’ and clears off to a field near Inverness. Another is that designs for living always end in tears, or worse. From the Russian Revolution to Jonestown, programmes for human happiness come a cropper. It’s best to muddle along as we are, not because human beings are morons or suckers, or traitors to the cause, but because life is meant to be messy, muddled, contrary, comic. In any event, when the balloon goes up, I have my plan ready. I shall hide in the stockroom at Morrison’s (Strood branch), spending what’s left of eternity scoffing their individual fruit pies.

Read the whole delusional, pathetic, and tragi-comic tale. Keep it in mind every time some Government Expert or PhD-wielding Academic insists that we all must follow their path to Enlightenment.

I Find It Humorous…

…that the weather forecasters who were hyperventilating “ZOMG we’re all going to DIE!!!!!” when we got 8″ of snow last week are all “Yeah what-EV” about the 6-12″ we’re supposed to get on Monday.

Well That Was A Bit Under-Whelming

We only got about 8″, about half of what we were *guaranteed* to get just a few hours prior. Now don’t get me wrong: if they’re going to blow a forecast this is definitely the direction I want them to screw it up in.

But it does make me hope that someone somewhere will stop just for half a second a think that, just perhaps, if all the billions of dollars of fancy equipment and thousands of PhDs focused on the weather can’t get it right for TOMORROW then maybe they sorta kinda maybe shouldn’t be so 100% sure that they can declare with Absolute Consensus what’s going to happen over the next 100 years.

I am personally thankful for this mistake, however, as it allowed me to have this for breakfast

before I went out and cleaned off the cars, driveway, and sidewalk.

A Light Dusting This Morning On The Way In

Certainly fewer people on the bus, that’s for sure. And from our friends at the NWS

THE LATEST MODELS THOUGH ARE INSISTING THAT THIS STORM WILL EVOLVE
INTO A HIGH IMPACT WINTER STORM/BLIZZARD MONDAY NIGHT AND TUESDAY
FOR PORTIONS OF THE NORTHERN MID-ATLANTIC…EASTERN NEW YORK AND
SOUTHERN AND EASTERN NEW ENGLAND. THIS INCLUDES MAJOR METROPOLITAN
AREAS ALONG THE I-95 CORRIDOR FROM PHILADELPHIA THROUGH NEW YORK
CITY AND UP TO BOSTON. THE MODELS DEPICT A POWERFUL DEFORMATION
ZONE DEVELOPING AND SPREADING INLAND IN RESPONSE TO RAPIDLY
DEEPENING LOW PRESSURE OFF THE MID-ATLANTIC COAST.

SOUTHERN AND EASTERN NEW ENGLAND ARE EXPECTED TO SEE VERY INTENSE
SNOWFALL AS VERY STRONG FRONTOGENETIC FORCING…ATLANTIC MOISTURE
TRANSPORT AND UPPER JET DYNAMICS COMBINE FOR INTENSE SNOWFALL
RATES. ASIDE FROM THE FAVORABLE SYNOPTIC SCALE SET-UP…THE MOIST
ONSHORE EAST NORTHEAST FLOW FAVORS OROGRAPHIC ENHANCEMENT IN THE
TERRAIN OF WESTERN CT TO THE HILLS WEST OF BOSTON.

MESOSCALE BANDING FEATURES ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE LARGER AREA OF
HEAVY SNOW TO RESULT IN LOCAL ENHANCEMENTS. THERE IS A LIKELIHOOD
FOR BLIZZARD CONDITIONS TO IMPACT MANY AREAS FROM NORTHERN NEW
JERSEY NORTH ACROSS SOUTHEAST NEW YORK AND SOUTHERN AND EASTERN
NEW ENGLAND.

STORM TOTAL AMOUNTS OF 1 TO 3 FEET CAN BE EXPECTED WITH THE
HEAVIEST AMOUNTS GENERALLY FROM NEW YORK CITY ACROSS SOUTHERN AND
EASTERN NEW ENGLAND. SEVERAL MODELS AND ENSEMBLE RUNS INDICATE
EASTERN MA AND RI AS HAVING THE HIGHEST TOTALS. THE
MODELS/ENSEMBLE MEAN HAVE TRENDED A FEW INCHES LOWER ON THE
NORTHERN FRINGE OF THE SNOW AREA ACROSS NORTHERN NY/NORTHERN NEW
ENGLAND.

“Very Strong Frontogenetic Forcing” sounds really kinky…

Blizzard Watch!

We got us some Gerbil Warmening™ on the way:

Issued by The National Weather Service
Philadelphia, PA
Sun, Jan 25, 10:10 am EST
… BLIZZARD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM MONDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH TUESDAY MORNING…
* LOCATIONS… THE NORTHEAST AND CENTRAL NEW JERSEY COUNTIES OF MONMOUTH AND OCEAN.
* HAZARD TYPES… HEAVY SNOW WITH WIND GUSTS TO 45 MPH CAUSING CONSIDERABLE BLOWING AND DRIFTING.
* ACCUMULATIONS… SNOW ACCUMULATION OF 10 TO 18 INCHES.
* TIMING… SNOW BEGINS NEAR DAWN MONDAY AND SHOULD SLOW THE MORNING COMMUTE. THERE MAY BE SOME MELTING OF THE SNOW ON PAVEMENT MONDAY AFTERNOON. THE MUCH MORE IMPORTANT PORTION OF THIS STORM BEGINS SOMETIME MONDAY AFTERNOON OR EVENING THEN EVENTUALLY WINDS DOWN MIDDAY TUESDAY.
* IMPACTS… COULD BE A MAJOR IMPACT ON COMMERCE AND TRAVEL MONDAY NIGHT THROUGH TUESDAY MORNING WITH BLIZZARD CONDITIONS POSSIBLE.
* WINDS… NORTH 20 TO 30 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 45 MPH.
* TEMPERATURES… MID 20S TO LOWER 30S.
* VISIBILITIES… ONE QUARTER MILE OR LESS AT TIMES MONDAY NIGHT INTO TUESDAY MORNING.

Good thing I hit the liquor store yesterday to avoid the rush!

Update: Woo-Hoo! Now we’s got us a WARNING!!

… BLIZZARD WARNING IN EFFECT FROM NOON MONDAY TO 6 PM EST TUESDAY…
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MOUNT HOLLY HAS ISSUED A BLIZZARD WARNING, WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM NOON MONDAY TO 6 PM EST TUESDAY. THE BLIZZARD WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.
* HAZARD TYPES… HEAVY SNOW WITH STRONG WINDS CAUSING CONSIDERABLE BLOWING AND DRIFTING.
* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS… 18 TO 28 INCHES, WITH LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS.
* TIMING… SNOW BEGINS AROUND DAYBREAK MONDAY WITH SOME IMPACT TO THE MORNING COMMUTE, THEN IS EXPECTED TO BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES LATE MONDAY AFTERNOON INTO TUESDAY MORNING BEFORE TAPERING OFF DURING TUESDAY AFTERNOON. THE BRUNT OF THE STORM LOOKS TO OCCUR MONDAY NIGHT THROUGH EARLY TUESDAY AFTERNOON, WHERE SNOWFALL RATES OF 2 TO 4 INCHES PER HOUR ARE ANTICIPATED.
* IMPACTS… EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TRAVEL DUE TO HEAVY SNOWFALL AND STRONG WINDS, RESULTING IN WHITEOUT CONDITIONS. SECONDARY AND TERTIARY ROADS MAY BECOME IMPASSABLE. STRONG WINDS MAY DOWN POWER LINES AND TREE LIMBS.
* WINDS… NORTHEAST 15 TO 20 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 30 MPH MONDAY, THEN BECOMING NORTH 20 TO 30 MPH WITH GUSTS 40 TO 50 MPH MONDAY NIGHT INTO TUESDAY WITH THE HIGHEST GUSTS CLOSER TO THE COAST.
* TEMPERATURES… AROUND 30 DEGREES MONDAY, THEN DROPPING INTO THE MID 20S MONDAY NIGHT AND TUESDAY.

I assume this means AlGore is scheduled to be in NYC on Monday…

German Green Chickens May Soon Be Coming Home To Roost

If you’ve got a few minutes read this to get an update on how things are going with Germany’s drive to generate only Green EcoPower.

Here’s a hint: not well.

The Day Before Thanksgiving

What could possibly go wrong?

GIVEN THE POTENTIAL FOR MAJOR TRAVEL DISRUPTION DURING THE PEAK PRE THANKSGIVING TRAVEL PERIOD ON TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY…THE FORECAST FOR THIS STORM IS QUITE CRUCIAL. A SIGNIFICANT CYCLONE IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP IN THE EASTERN GULF OF MEXICO ON TUESDAY EVENING AND THEN RIDE UP ALONG THE EAST COAST ON WEDNESDAY. A BAND OF SIGNIFICANT QPF IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP WITHIN THE ENTRANCE REGION OF A 200 KT 250 MB JET OVER THE NORTHEAST. NOT UNEXPECTEDLY…THERE ARE QUITE A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS WITH VERY DIFFERENT IMPACTS. RIGHT NOW…THE MOST SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES INVOLVE WHETHER THE STORM BECOMES RATHER INTENSE ON A SLIGHTLY MORE WESTERLY TRACK VERSUS A SLIGHTLY WEAKER MORE EASTERLY TRACK…THOUGH THERE MAY ME A TREND TOWARD SOME MIDDLE GROUND BETWEEN THESE FORECASTS. IN EITHER EVENT…SIGNIFICANT SNOW IS POSSIBLE ALONG THE I95 CORRIDOR..WHETHER OR NOT IT IS ALONG THE CORRIDOR OR SLIGHTLY WESTWARD. THE DETERMINISTIC FORECAST MADE SHOWED THE HEAVIEST SNOW JUST INLAND WITH SOME ACCUMULATIONS IN THE BIG CITIES REFLECTING A COMBINATION OF RAIN CHANGING TO SNOW.

SNOW IS EXPECTED TO INITIALLY DEVELOP ALONG THE APPALACHIANS ON
TUESDAY EVENING/NIGHT…POSSIBLY AS FAR SOUTH AS THE HIGHER
ELEVATIONS OF NORTHEAST GEORGIA ACROSS NW SOUTH CAROLINA/WESTERN
NORTH CAROLINA AND WESTERN VIRGINIA AND EASTERN WEST VIRGINIA.
SNOW AND COASTAL RAIN SHOULD CONTINUE TO SPREAD NORTHEASTWARD
ACROSS THE REST OF THE EASTERN SEABOARD ON WEDNESDAY/DAY 3…THE
PEAK OF THE PRE HOLIDAY TRAVEL AND THEN END ACROSS EASTERN MAINE
ON THANKSGIVING MORNING.

HOWEVER…THIS SCENARIO IS MERELY ONE OF MANY THAT TYPIFY
POTENTIAL SIGNIFICANT SNOW EVENTS ALONG THE EAST COAST.

All this snow is PROOF of Gerbil Warmening.

or something.

Had Some Wet Snow Last Night

Very very nice to see.

I lurves me some Winter.

Ten Degrees On Mt. Washington This Morning

Damn.

Time to break out the wool boxers.

From “The Sod Off Swampy” Files

Via Tim we learn that sensible, rural Indian villagers are shockingly not amused by condescending liberal Westerners

Denied energy for 33 years, the Indian village of Dharnai nevertheless rightfully rejects sub-standard electricity:

Greenpeace decided to use the village as an example to the world to showcase how communities can do just fine on renewable energy. Greenpeace India set up a “solar-powered micro-grid” to power the village and it was paraded before the media as a success.

But the villagers hate it, because their new power source is rubbish. India Today reports:

They now want asli bijli (real electricity) from the government.

Slogan such as “Hamen nakli nahin, asli bijli chahiye (We do not want artificial energy, give us the real one,)” greeted former Chief minister Nitish Kumar, as he went to the village to see how the long forgotten region, devoid of electricity since 1981, looked after dusk.

Nitish … was met by village youngsters carrying placards demanding “real source of energy”, and “not the fake solar powered” one.

How dare they not worship at the feet of Greenpeace for their solar set-up…which is useless at night. Hell, they should be sleeping and not worry about such corrupting icons of Western Decadence like refrigerators. And lights. And hospitals.

Sing it with me now: “Hamen nakli nahin, asli bijli chahiye (We do not want artificial energy, give us the real one!)”

Ah, good times, good times!

As If Getting Their Heads Whacked Off by Wind Turbines WASN’T ENOUGH…

…now we’re vapourizing them in mid-air. Oh, is there anything Green Energy CAN’T DO?!!

Solar plant’s downside? Birds igniting in midair

Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant’s concentrated sun rays – “streamers,” for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.

Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one “streamer” every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator’s application to build a still-bigger version.

The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.

The deaths are “alarming. It’s hard to say whether that’s the location or the technology,” said Garry George, renewable-energy director for the California chapter of the Audubon Society.

“There needs to be some caution.“

Ya THINK?

When The Facts Don’t Fit Your Theory…

Well, hell, you just change the facts

Prior to the year 2000, NASA showed US temperatures cooling since the 1930?s, and 1934 much warmer than 1998.

…Right after the year 2000, NASA and NOAA dramatically altered US climate history, making the past much colder and the present much warmer. The animation below shows how NASA cooled 1934 and warmed 1998, to make 1998 the hottest year in US history instead of 1934. This alteration turned a long term cooling trend since 1930 into a warming trend.

You know, it almost seems as though this is all about government control.

Joe Bastardi

…has some historical hurricane perspective for you East Coasters.

Yech.

Imminent Glacier Collapse Update: Not ONLY Is It Going to Take 10,000 Years, Vice the NEXT WEEK (OMGS!!!) the Reports’d Have Us Believing

…but, actually READING the report, it turns out the little frozen BASTARD’S PULLED THIS TRICK BEFORE!!!

WAIT AN APOCALYPTIC MINUTE! That damn Antarctic glacier's DONE THIS BEFORE? Who'd they blame 3.5 million years ago? http://t.co/FjK3tiHkgp

— tree hugging sister (@treehuggingsis) May 13, 2014

…The Wilkes Basin likely experienced a similar episode of massive ice discharge about 4.8 million to 3.5 million years ago, according to sediment remains in the area. That past discharge occurred during the Pliocene epoch when global climate was warmer than it is today, but similar to the climate projections for the end of the 21st century.

Silent But Deadly

Forget meteorites: the “Great Dying” mass extinction event 252 million years ago may have been caused by farts

The physical environment can produce sudden shocks to the life of our planet through impacting space rocks, erupting volcanoes and other events. But sometimes life itself turns the tables and strikes a swift blow back to the environment. MIT researchers have identified a different culprit — one coming from biology rather than geology. They argue that the carbon disruption and, consequently, the end-Permian extinction were set off by a particular microorganism that evolved a new way to digest organic material into methane.

The end-Permian (or PT) extinction event occurred 252 million years ago. It is often called the Great Dying because around 90 percent of marine species disappeared in one fell swoop. Similar numbers died on land as well, producing a stark contrast between Permian rock layers beneath (or before) the extinction and the Triassic layers above. Extinctions are common throughout time, but for this one, the fossil record truly skipped a beat.
“The end-Permian is the greatest extinction event that we know of,” said Daniel Rothman, a geophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The changes in the fossil record were obvious even to 19th Century geologists.”

Understanding the cause of this biological devastation requires understanding the geochemical clues that go along with it. Chief among these clues is a sudden swing in the balance of carbon isotopes stored in rocks from that same time period. If geologists can find what disrupted the carbon, they’ll likely know what killed off so much of the Earth’s life forms. Several theories have tried to explain the carbon perturbation as, for example, massive volcanism, or a drop in sea level, but none of these environmental causes have fully matched the data.

With this genetic innovation, these methane-producers, or methanogens, ran rampant across the ocean, overturning the carbon cycle. The resulting changes in ocean chemistry would have driven many species to extinction.

Based on my own experience after a particularly tasty curry, this is a theory I can believe.

(via Ace’s sidebar)

Thanks for All the Good Wishes, You Guys

This is a Tuesday night shot of the brand new bridge over Escambia Bay that replaced the one Ivan blew away.

Interstate 10 bridge over Pensacola Bay flooded: pic.twitter.com/pnLN8ilrnA

— Fight the Blight (@Goodcleanliving) April 30, 2014

Miraculously, WE came out of it ~ in our low lying house ~ with nothing worse than a soggy garage and rattled nerves from a night of incessant thunder and lightening. I have NEVER in my life experienced anything like it. Just would NOT quit.

Folks in our neighborhood suffered terribly, though. A new military family who STILL had the UHaul from their move two days ago in front of their house had everything they owned baptised by half a foot of swamp water through the house. The new drainage system ~ put in after the 22 in. in one day event 3 years ago ~ may have solved a problem existing at the time, but the sure need to check out the water flow it’s creating.

Brand new drainage culvert undermined in Coral Creek. Was complete $1mil redo after 22+ in rain event couple yrs ago. pic.twitter.com/zuPQw4Ej55

— tree hugging sister (@treehuggingsis) April 30, 2014

Through, under and around someone’s house is not an optimal result of county “improvements”, I HATE to tell our district commissioner.

Water undercut this house foundation in Coral Creek subdivision. #Pensacola #Westside pic.twitter.com/6d7z3iaNQk

— tree hugging sister (@treehuggingsis) April 30, 2014

So, I’d say ~ conservatively ~ there’s at least 20+ houses in our little sub-division alone completely inundated, if not, like the poor folks above, damn near destroyed.

And we look GOOD compared to town and the rest of the county.
Seems like every other other one of our everyday roads and major arteries look like this:

Of course, in the middle of every disaster, a little levity emerges…

It was thundering again last night and now they’ve got storms forecast for the rest of today and Friday.

As we were already 18 inches above average when this hit and the schwamp behind us is filled to overflowing, I’m gonna have to wonder where any water is supposed to go.

April 16th, 2014

Gerbil Warmening strikes again.

Climate Change!

The damn-you-bush-it’s-so-warm-we’ll-never-see-snow-again non-Winter continues to take its toll

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — U.S. and Canadian Coast Guard crews kept up their battle Monday to clear pathways for vessels hauling vital raw materials on the ice-clogged Great Lakes, where a shipping logjam forced a weeklong shutdown of the nation’s largest steel factory.

Traffic remained largely at a crawl after a winter that produced some of the heaviest ice on record across the five inland seas, where more than half the surface area remained solid this week. Icebreaking ships slogging across Lake Superior were still encountering ice layers 2 feet to 3 feet thick. In some areas, wind and wave action created walls of ice up to 14 feet high.

…Only three ships were able to haul coal on the lakes in March, their cargos combining for 102,000 tons – down 70 percent from the same month in 2013, he said. Coal trade was 54 percent below the long-term first-quarter average.

…The shipping season officially began two weeks ago with the opening of navigational locks on the St. Marys River connecting Lakes Superior and Huron, a bottleneck for vessels hauling iron ore and coal to manufacturers and electric power plants. But just one convoy of vessels – including two icebreakers and the two ships hauling iron ore – had traversed Superior with loads of freight.

If only they all converted to wind and solar, there would be flowers blooming and birds sweetly singing all the year round.

In Those Golden Days Of Gore

March 11th, 2012

Sigh.

We had our consensus then.

March 26th Gerbil Warmening Update

Just a sugar coating as the storm stayed well off the coast.

Man I hope this is the last of it for this year.

22 Degrees This Morning

And a couple of inches of snow for Tuesday.

It’s March 24th.

I want to go back to New Orleans.

Now.

When Tim Blair Steals A Snow PLow

Upset at getting stuck in the snow gorebal warmening, Tim has decided to take manners into his own hands…

I Guess Warren Buffet’s Not Getting a White House Christmas Card Next Year

Talk about your old man wandering off the proverbial porch…

Warren Buffett: Supposed Increase in Extreme Weather ‘Hasn’t Been True So Far’

Any climate alarmist will tell you that climate change is increasing extreme weather events, but liberal billionaire Warren Buffett easily destroyed that argument.

…Buffett said the supposed increase in extreme weather “hasn’t been true so far, Joe. We always think it’s cold. We always think it’s cold in Omaha. But, it was cold in Omaha 50 years ago.”

…Specifically, Buffett rejected claims that hurricanes have increased due to climate change, citing his experience in hurricane insurance. He said “we’ve been remarkably free of hurricanes in the United States in the last five years.”

He added “If you are writing hurricane insurance, it has been all profit.“

…In that same interview, Buffett rejected two other liberal talking points. He expressed concern over an increased minimum wage, agreeing with the Congressional Budget Office that wage hikes would kill jobs. He also expressed support for the Keystone XL pipeline, calling it “useful.”

Jingle Bells

Yay, more snow.