Saturday, December 29, 2018

March of the warm air plumes has stopped



That big storm destroyed our plume generator, and we'll have to see whether it starts up again.  But the plumes have changed character, hitting Canada high.  This will mean cold Alberta clippers for us.  Most likely the plumes will stop for the UK, making this scenario likely.


They haven't been right yet, but you never know.


Friday, December 28, 2018

Linux -- Unboxing the Tinkerboard S part 2


So, that's the tinkerboard in a pi case.  After hours of work, I have concluded that the wifi doesn't work.  It suffers the same problem as the raspi3 with stretch.  However, the ethernet works, which it doesn't with the pi3.  They are still working on the problem.

Next will be the i2c.

ps.  Even switching to wicd, we find that Deb Stretch on arm cannot complete a wifi connection with my router.  There might be some that work.  This is probably a kernel thing.

Thursday, December 27, 2018

Come to Toronto

We are soon opening a room on Homestay.  As soon as they approve us, which might be never, if they don't have a sense of humour.


All our kids are gone.  A neighbour across the street is biggly into this, so we are giving it a try.


Must love dogs.

Reasons to learn in Toronto

Think of all the rest of the world as a small town with no hope for young people.  They flee as soon as they can and come to Toronto which has the only jobs in Canada, and probably the world.

So, all you world students, polish your English in Toronto, and see an accent eliminator person. Shed all your cultural baggage.  Get computing skills as your only hope for a job.  Get into Toronto's 'exciting' start-up scene, exciting because you never know when you are fired.  Beef up the CV, and then get a corporate job with a dental plan.  Those corporate types are in awe of the start-ups, which never succeed because all the money went into the Toronto housing bubble.  All the smart Torontonians went to the Palo Alto start-up scene, but you can't go there any more.




Linux -- Unboxing the Tinkerboard S part 1

I'll write this live.  I got this for Christmas because the Raspi3 is now garbage.  It won't take the new Debian Stretch system.  That's because it was so cheap for a reason, and I can't fault the designers.  They used extra-weird, super-cheap, components that require 'binary blobs'.  It's okay if you have a super-genius to do these things, but eventually he has to go to a job with a dental plan. 

The tink has components that all have open source drivers.  This makes it 4 times more expensive, but at least it's supposed to work.  I'm going to find out.


This is the package.


It comes with a big adhesive heat sink.  The original tink was notorious for overheating, and it needed a small fan.  We'll see with the new model.  Usually it will just get hot when serving utube. 


It sort of fits in a r3 box, but I'll have to get the dremel out.  Mainly the heat sink and the gpio.

--to be continued.


Anak Krakatua

Reference



I think that means 'Son of Krakatoa', to the use 1883 spelling.

The eruption of Krakatoa, or Krakatau, in August 1883 was one of the most deadly volcanic eruptions of modern history. It is estimated that more than 36,000 people died. Many died as a result of thermal injury from the blasts and many more were victims of the tsunamis that followed the collapse of the volcano into the caldera below sea level. The eruption also affected the climate and caused temperatures to drop all over the world.

The big blast was a classic boiler explosion, about 200 megatons.  Seawater hit the magma chamber and flashed to steam under high pressure.  It was heard thousands of miles away.



It is located on top of a very active subduction zone.  You can see how clean it is, and that means an M9 earthquake every 3-500 years.  The big 2004 tsunami was just up a bit, and we can expect another one on the lower section 'soon', give or take 100 years.  The volcano is at the red dot, and is famous because it is in the sea.  There are lots of other big volcanoes around.



That's the remaining cluster after the big explosion of 1883. 


The little guy has a while to go before he builds up to be like dad before the big blast.


Ocean Currents -- Dec. 25, 2018

Not much happening.


The big news is that the Atlantic current has risen and completely shut off the leakage to the south.  That should be it for the year, and we'll see what happens next year.

The reverse current in the Pacific seems to be weakening, but that goes on and off.


That huge storm in the west Pacific is still chugging along, but the plume machine has spit out another one.  However, instead of being tight and narrow, they've combined into a big fat thing.  BC may get another storm.  In the old days, these used to go very high into the Yukon and then brought down an Alberta Clipper of very cold air.  Could happen again.


Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Linux - KDE on the fritz again

Every once in a while, an update makes KDE unavailable.  I'm beginning to think that all the bright ones have left.  I had to move over the Cinnamon, and I'm slowly getting used to it.  It lacks some features, but works well enough.  Good-bye kde. 

Giant storm may eat our next warm air plume



These giant plumes are keeping us warm right now.  This map shows 'precipitable air', which is warm, moist air.  All our weather comes from these things.  Without them, we have dull default air, which right now in Toronto is somewhat cold.

But these plumes, generated like clockwork in the West Pacific have been keeping us to above freezing, and giving us one-day-wonders of 10c.  They suck up more warm air from the Gulf of Mexico and go to warm up the UK.

But, look, something is happening in Volcano Paradise.


A giant storm is coming to eat up Mr Plume-Generator.  Will he survive?  All of us may now have a January without warm plumes.  Fly your Christmas drones before it gets to 30 below.  :)


Yes, Virginia, there is a Gatwick Drone


Dear Fish, Mean old Suzie says that the Gatwick Drone doesn't exist.  Say it isn't so.
--Virginia.


Dear Virginia,  Of course Gattie exists.  He exists in the hearts and minds of thousands of displaced passengers.  If he didn't exist then why the mess?

Some people may say this was a perfect example of 'mass hysteria', that one person thought they saw a drone, and then hundreds saw it.  It is our life without physics, everything exists in the mind.  Note the severe response from the authorities.  What a total embarrassment if he didn't exist?  They have forced their collective minds to accept him.

And so, open your presents and enjoy a Merry Christmas.  Perhaps you'll get a drone....

--Fish

ps.  There's also a famous song "Gattie, the Christmas Dronie".  Too many airplanes were flying.  so, "Then one crowded Christmas Night, Santa came to say, Gattie with your light so bright, won't you stop the planes tonight"...

Monday, December 24, 2018

Linux - New 4.20 Kernel does not compile

I've been compiling all the release candidates (rc), and never had a problem.  Now it just barfs out a lot of errors on useless scsi drivers.  Old Linus will not be a happy camper.  We have to wait for 4.20.1. 

Merry Christmas To All



Huddle up to your fire knowing that all is well in the world, as per ice and snow.  As you freeze, do not let 'Warming Despair' ruin your family time.  My son sends this from the Ukraine.


Such a peaceful scene.  No blood on the snow.  :)

Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Northern plumes have changed their pattern

All our weather comes from the butterfly wings in the western Pacific.


The western Pacific plumes have gone low, but are still popping out like clockwork.  Meanwhile the latest Atlantic plume has gone straight up and will stir up the Arctic.  This usually means we'll see the dreaded 'Arctic Vortex' again, which isn't really a vortex, but an agitated air mass.

ps.  They've gone back to being regular.  BC could get more storms.


Saturday, December 22, 2018

Wave propagation for Christmas

For my Master's thesis I wrote a program with 2D wave propagation.  It was to study a method to detect fractures in rock.  Really, I want to put a bag on my head for that, but it got through.  Yeah!

I expanded it to study the effect of seismic waves on tunnels, and I got some great insights.  Eventually, I used a very expensive program (while at work) to study wave propagation on structures.  That's where I got my militant stance on the use of peak ground velocity (PGV) only.

Wow, 40 years ago and it has had no impact on the world whatsoever.  Nobody likes physics and so they go into lala land on everything. 

For Christmas I am reviving this for me.  Mainly because I have found that the humble gpu is a giant Cray vector processor (my dream when I was in University).  You can do this type of analysis with any computer.

I'm following this right now.

Since I have a horrible cold, I'll be slow.  It has a great demo on how waves propagate on a string.  Wow!


It is incredible.  Can't wait to code this.  Put the damping low to see how a fixed point reflects.  It's sad that earthquake engineers don't play with this stuff.


Ocean Currents - Dec 20, 2018 - Merry Christmas


Yeah, it's rising as a Christmas present to the Northern Hemisphere!  Now, we are only condemned to 20 years of cold.  Enjoy the snow!

ps.  Toronto is currently in 'default weather' for the latitude.  About -6c at night because of the lakes.  We should get to -20c in January.  Huntsville at -40 when Georgian Bay freezes up.


Friday, December 21, 2018

Clockwise and anti-clockwise storms


Above and below the equator.  It's interesting to see it all in one shot.  :)

Linux -- Vectorizing calculations for the gpu

Reference

The tinkerboard s comes with a gpu that can work with Python.  This article shows that if you can vectorize the calculation, you can perform the calculation on the gpu 100 times faster. 

This will be very useful for processing time histories of acceleration in real time.  It is also good for a Fourier analysis.  I've always wanted something better than a mere acceleration trigger for the accelerometer.  Also, you can do discrete finite difference analysis like you had a super computer.  Can't wait to do that!

My main computer has a ryzen5 and now Linux is working great.  You should be able to set up analysis on the gpu.


Thursday, December 20, 2018

Global warming non-linear tipping points

Reference



They just love to make this stuff up.  No math required, just a vivid imagination.  We are back to the 'exponential rise' or hockey stick thing again.

Basically, a tip bucket is a non-linear thing.

The tip bucket fills up with water to a certain extent, and then it slams down.  So, all of these tipping effects are postulations that if they reach a certain point, we all die.

But, all the Earth's systems are self-regulating.  If they weren't then things would have 'tipped' a long time ago.  They could give the 'unprecedented' argument, but that is garbage.  Every thing that is happening now, has happened before.

But, these guys are in power now, and say no more....

Repeated Pacific Plumes Keeping Us Warm



I didn't really expect this, so colour me wrong.  The great warmth of the Western Pacific has spewed out these plumes that are hitting us like clockwork.  These plumes suck up more warm air from the Gulf of Mexico as they go by, keeping Toronto warm.  This all mashes together into a big plume that hits the UK.  I don't see another one starting up, so maybe that's it.

Normally, I would expect that a northern current would regulate these plumes, but it seems that they are having fun all themselves.  This is the fun of chaotic behaviour.  Perhaps soon this pattern will change, and we'll see something else.

I can't complain.  I don't make or lose any money being right or wrong, and I enjoy my dog walks.  I was thinking about 10 below right about now, and I couldn't be happier.  :)

Really, I can't get over how evenly spaced these things are.  They can't last forever....

ps.  Although these clockwork plumes have shattered my confidence, the Arctic is still doing nicely at 30 below.


pps.  the warm water off South America continues to increase.

New accelerometer 16 times more sensitive

This is exciting.  I've lined up my Christmas presents for my wife to give me.  First off is the latest Asus Tinkerboard S, which is many times more powerful than the Raspi3.  I found I just couldn't get my old r3 to work with the new 'Stretch' operating system.  Many people have reported the same thing.  The r3 was full of many proprietary things and there are no new drivers.  The tinkerboard is way more expensive but everything has open source drivers.  It has the same sort of pins and the same Python libraries.

The new accelerometer, adxl355, is 20 bits, 4 more bits than the 345, which has been around for a long time.  You can get a 345 breakout board for 2 bucks, but the 355 is $60.  I wrote the drivers for the 345, and it will fun to read 20 bits on 3 registers.

So, theoretically, I'll use two of these babies, and it will give me the equivalent array of 32 adxl345's.  I'll want to see footsteps on the concrete basement floor, and if I can do that, I'll call it seismometer grade.

For years now I've been trying to build something that is an order of magnitude (10x) cheaper than the existing equipment.  I want every building in Alaska, and such, to be instrumented, and to have a noise test.  However, I have found out that in order to calibrate, as installed, you need something that can record distant earthquakes.  Thus, you need a huge dynamic range.  24 bits is ideal, but maybe 20 bits will do.  You don't need anything more sensitive than standard noise.

So, when the Oklahoma earthquakes start up again, you instrument the old concrete office towers.  A noise test might show the base frequency at 7 Hz, which is good.  An earthquake might soften it to 3 Hz which is bad, and you raze the sucker.  Standard inspection just doesn't do it.


Sunday, December 16, 2018

Ocean currents - Dec 15, 2018

Everything is about the same, except for the Atlantic current, which is showing a stronger diversion.  This sort of rapid change is 'unprecedented', at least for me.  That's why I'm putting this down for history.


This is the first time I've seen a concentrated current going down.  The surface temperature map seems to be unchanged.


We continue to set up for a major ice age, even though we should have another 150 years of warmth.  But ocean currents are chaotic and hate following any predictable pattern.  :)

Buy Goose stock!

Weather forecast - next couple of weeks



The north is set to be hit by successive weak plumes of moist air.  This means it will be cold with lots of snow.

This is the map of warm, moist air.  Other than hurricanes, these plumes are the main mechanism for cooling the tropical ocean.  The rule of thumb is that when things get too hot, the air instability starts.  When we had northern ocean currents, the plumes would follow the troughs and we would get hit with very strong plumes.  Not now.


This weather pattern looks to be with us for the next few weeks.


Friday, December 14, 2018

Daily UK Tabloid Contest

This is the winner.


ps. look at the UK webcams for the first snow.  None yet.

The Physics Behind the Global Warming Spurious Correlation - Part 2

Earth Shine

Those beautiful temperature maps need calibration.  That is done by sending up balloons.  The satellites come up with a temperature for the various atmosphere layers, and this is checked with the actual temperatures.  You can come up with a calibration curve over time, of the adjustments required.

Had the carbon thing been real, I would have read a lot about the difficulty of calibration.  The carbon would have interfered with the measurement of temperature at the surface of the earth.  As the carbon dioxide went up, we would have heard all sorts of moaning.

Nothing.  I haven't asked them, but I'm sure the calibration curve is flat, ie no effect from carbon.

The other thing that is easy to do is calculate the total amount of heat energy radiated out into space, per layer.  I am guessing that the surface is less than 1%, and 99% is from the upper layers.


Exciting physics that can be done

The Dead Hand of the Church of NASA is suppressing all new atmospheric physics, since they have the only direct connection to The Truth.  You can imagine that they'll never budge.  That leaves out the US for doing stuff.  Forget Canada because of Trudeau, and Doug Ford is too cheap.

All my hopes lie with Denmark.  Surely they can smell something fishy....

Cheap Physics

Get the calibration curves from the earth shine people.  Make the calculation of total heat energy radiated out per layer.

More expensive

Recalculate balloon data.  Review the old laser data from the 70's. 

Very Expensive

A new big balloon with lasers that looks at convection cells.  Measure heat flow.

Glorious

A permanent station that regularly sends up a balloon-assisted drone.  There are many questions, such as the role of water vapour.  More work in the heart of equatorial convection cells.

fin.

The Physics Behind the Global Warming Spurious Correlation - Part 1

Harvard is ready to fill the world with chalk dust, and the basic physics hasn't been done.  They need some background, and will be quite surprised when the dust flies away on clear-air convection currents.

The poster-child against 'global' warming is this map.


It shows conclusively that all the warming action was in the Northern Hemisphere.  The physics behind this map is quite interesting.  Any warm object 'shines' at microwave and infrared frequencies.  There are a lot of satellites that can measure this.  Different frequencies come from different altitudes, but, basically, the temperatures at points on the Earth can be measured instantaneously. 

I find this amazing, and it's only since the warming period started that we can do this, from about 1980.  Actually, it was still cold to about 1990, and you can see this with the Arctic Ice volume chart.

 I remember those days.

The 'Earth Shine' maps give us temperature, which is an odd physical attribute.  It has nothing to do with heat energy, and is like using acceleration in earthquake engineering, rather than velocity.  The global temperature is just an average of the pixels over the whole earth.  You can also break it up into various sections.

It was the great contribution of nasa that gave us the concept that all the Earth's heat energy at the surface of the Earth is directly radiated out to space using Earth Shine.  This can be 'held in' by a global net of carbon dioxide which interferes with this shine.  Thus, the carbon acts as a thermal blanket and warms us up.  Magnificent!

They made this grand announcement without a speck of physics.  They have continued to maintain it by not doing any new physics.  All the warmie extremists are happy with that, since they say all the necessary physics was done in 1850, in the lab.

This assertion breaks so many laws of physics that I don't know where to begin.  But all opposition was brutally suppressed by our leftie extremists.  Nobody survived raising objections, since the spurious correlation was so evident to the masses.  Carbon goes up, temperature goes up, qed.

It is only now, with coming cold that scientific dissent --the lifeblood of the Scientific Method-- can come out of the bomb shelters.

-to be continued.

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Previous warm periods

The biggest scam by the UN IPCC was the total elimation of the Medieval Warm Period.  Just now, I'm beginning to see it mentioned on rebuttals in the Guardian, so I looked it up.

Reference

I'm supposing these guys might be the famous 3%.  It's an interesting read in light of recent warming super-hype, wanting to change 'global warming' to 'global heating'.



I was interested in the charts, which I haven't seen before.  The mwp was characterized by growing grapes in Greenland and Northern Scotland.  We never reached that point in this 20 year cycle.
Our wonderful heat since 1850 was the recovery from the little ice age.

So, the full wave of the longer cycle is 600 years.  That should fill us with joy that we aren't plunging into a major ice age.  Perhaps after this 20 year cold-cycle, we can once again grow grapes in Greenland.


Final Alaska Strong Ground Motion


The maximum ground motion was 0.8 g, and 40 cm/s.  Nearly all of the seismic energy of the quake was directed down, so this a very low ground motion for an M7.  As an example, look at the Kobe, Japan earthquake M7, where all the energy was directed up.

So, Anchorage dodged a bullet.  I just picked up this last ground motion, and I'll go into a long explanation for Penny.

The main damage from an earthquake is from shaking.  There can also be ground slips, and landslides.  Your frame house is quite secure up to 50 cm/s, but you'll lost your knick-knacks.  Use tacky mounting stuff to secure your valuables.  Those in Anchorage might think about using latches on the cupboards.  You can also strap down the hot water heater.

Once you get above 50 cm/s, the foundation cracks, and you get serious structural damage.  Still, the house shouldn't kill you until 100 cm/s.  Even then, it will be the chimney.  :)

I always use peak ground velocity (PGV) as an indicator of damage.  I've done the literature, and numerical analysis, and it perfectly scales with damage.  The more standard peak ground acceleration (PGA) is useless on soft ground and should be scrapped.  This is the Grand Stupidity in earthquake engineering.  It results in a lot of tilted buildings.

We haven't learned anything from this earthquake.  However, in couple of months (give or take decades) the big M8 should rip through the whole rift.  Then we'll learn something.

ps.  Anchorage should upgrade enough to shrug off 40 cm/s, and go on with normal business.  They seem to have achieved this (I would styrofoam the road ramps).  The next step is to not have anybody killed up to 100 cm/s.  That may need work.

Sludge Drizzle for Toronto


Nice wet snow on the dog walk.

We have some weak Pacific plumes coming over us, and this tends to suck up the Gulf warmth.

  Looking at the Pacific, we'll be hit by one of these every few days.


These plumes are generated very far west, where the only hot water huddles and tries not to be dissipated. 

Meanwhile in the UK, they shall enjoy a very white Christmas.



Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Ocean Currents - December 10, 2018

This is the Atlantic equatorial current.  I don't notice any great increase in the warmth going south, but it's not decreasing either.  I do note that the general bulk of the current continues to descend south.





This is the powerful Arctic current, composed of the saline leftovers from the Arctic ice build-up.  It is having a massive effect on Atlantic currents.  Nasa and noaa have doubled-down on warming and say this current is fresh water from the melting Arctic ice.  




This is the steady reverse current of the Pacific.  I've watching this for years, and the current always went West, creating a big heat energy build-up.  I was so excited watching it reverse for the first during the monster 2016 El Nino that changed everything.  Now I think a modest reverse current will be with us for 20 years.  It drains all the heat energy from the Pacific.




I've started to record these events in detail, and for the record.  I have watched these currents for years, but I have found out nobody else has.  There are no time-lapse recordings.

None of this can be mentioned at intellectual Christmas parties.  The world has flushed a trillion dollars down the crapper on the "War Against Carbon".  This is comparable to the "War Against Drugs", and general war.  In each case, some people are making a lot of money, but the waste lowers the Standard of Living for the working poor.  Some fall off the cliff of poverty.  There is no bigger mass killer than lowering 'total money' per person.  The intellectual elite never suffers.

We've still got another year or two before nasa has to come up with something for starting this whole thing.  Perhaps a distraction?  For now, the Guardian can talk about the past warmth, and ignore the present cold, but if every year gets colder and colder?  The tabloids will have a field day.

I can't help but think what would have happened without nasa throwing the concept of 'greenhouse gases' into the world.  We'd be into clean coal, which would have put a lot more money into the working class.  Russia wouldn't have been so brave, if Germany had coal instead of sucking on the Russian natural gas teat.  No trump, and no riots in France.  The concept of promoting diesel cars instead of coal is the highest corruption, so many people died for a false god.

The ocean currents predict our weather for the next few years, and it is cold.  We, in Canada, may be the best off, just like we were the best off during the big warm cycle.  That cycle was a combination of the peak of the 20 year and 300 year warm peaks.  We won't see its like for a long time.

ps.  another warning about talking physics at Christmas this year.  You'll run into one of these guys.  Don't do it!

pps.  or perhaps you could have this made into earrings for the season.  It shows the warming trend for the whole cycle from 1979.  The N. Hemisphere benefited the most.


Tuesday, December 11, 2018

NASA Cracked About Arctic Ice

Reference

I was about to say they're on crack, but that would be rude.


They continue to double down on climate change, which they invented.  Here they are admitting that the ice is building up in winter, but they are making a bizarre claim that ice volume dips lower than previous years in summer.


That's where the crack comment comes in.  What are they smoking?  Recent ice volume is the red line.  It is crossing lanes, which means it is going back in time and recovering previous losses.  During the summer it just stays in the lanes, meaning it neither gains nor loses relative to the other years.  They also mentioned that the Arctic current is fresh water.  Go sample it nasa!

ps.  I'm thinking this is a bit much, even for nasa.  What they could have said is "Although Arctic ice volume is gaining back previous losses, we believe that past performance is a guide to future losses, and that ice volume will soon go back to trend."

Monday, December 10, 2018

LInux - 4.20 rc 6

The screen-off now works for KDE.  I am amazed.  Apparently, the Ryzen 3 doesn't work yet, that may have to wait for 4.21, but the Ryzen 5 is peachy.

Hold it!  It worked once when I tested it at 1 minute.  Now it refuses to work.

Weather forecast by energy distribution

I'll do this every 5 days when the new ocean currents maps comes out.  Standard weather forecasts treat high and low pressure areas as objects, when they are actually effects.  Same as the jet stream.  Storms are objects driven by energy, and could still be called effects.

If you go a bit deeper into the physics, then you can do forecasts based on heat energy flows.  All of the Earth's weather is driven by the heat in equatorial belts.  That's 'major' weather.  The dull stuff is our season default weather, which is determined by latitude, or solar energy flux.  As well, the weather around Southern Ontario is moderated by the Great Lakes.  In the middle of the western prairie we have very hot summers and very cold winters.  The default UK weather is moderated by the ocean, but without the Gulf Stream, it is the weather (climate) of Labrador.

Climate is just a statistical compilation of weather, over a given time, determined by philosophical debate.  We live in a unique time where 'climate' dominates over weather, and people make linear extrapolations.  Never used to happen.

The Earth has a wonderful sweet spot of temperature at 30c for moist air.  It is just an empirical law that things start to happen above that.  Convection starts to go wild and takes away heat.  In the ocean, we can start hurricanes, warm air plumes, and new ocean currents.  The oceans are our great air conditioning system, and everything wants to stay at 30c.  It is no coincidence that life centres around this temperature.

All normal life is happy at 30c.  The internal reactions of life optimize at 37c, and fall off a cliff at slightly above that.  Exotic life can go on at 40c, but not much else.  Warm-blooded animals can't move much about 30c because internal heat starts to build up.  Small is beautiful above that because of the great ratio of surface area to mass. 

Cold-blooded life enjoys rapid movement from 30 to 37.  Thus, you can see giant alligators tromping across golf courses at that temperature.  At 37, they could easily outrun a hot horse.

The Earth has gone through big cycles of temperature in the past 2 billion years of life.  Yet, because we exist, everything is self-regulating, and nothing has gone 'ballistic', or the Earth would be like Venus, and nobody to fret about climate.  Each cycle of 300 million years or so sees us going from 'Snowball Earth' to 'Hot Steamy Earth", yet the variation is not that great.

It is known that Mother Earth has accumulated at least 3 oceans worth of water and mucky carbon in the deep crust.  The people confirming this never speculate what would have happened if the Earth had been 'just' accumulating for 4 billion years.  That's right, all the water would be deep underground, and the Earth would be a dried prune.  That doesn't happen.  What goes around, comes around.

So, at some point, all that water and carbon has to come barfing back at us, in a never-ending cycle.  I have speculated that this happens during our 'steamy' cycle, when all the continents are jammed together.  The one we have the most info on, is the Mesozoic, although this has happened many times before. 

The cycle before the Mes, was the Permian.  It was cold, and life was dominated by large proto-mammals, warm blooded.  Cold weather favours large warm-blooded animals, the larger the better.  That's because they needed to keep all the heat in, and being large has a smaller ratio of surface area to mass.

Unfortunately for these guys, we went into another cycle when all the continents smooshed.  At this point, the continents form a huge thermal blanket over the hot deep part (mantle).  All the water and carbon muck is baked, and blows out in the form of massive volcanism.   Very high carbon dioxide, that pales in warming the Earth, compared to the massive amount of water vapour.  A very hot time in the old town tonight, but not that hot.

Large mammals all died out, and reptiles ruled the Earth, because the temperatures were above 30c.  Not too much more, because of the self-regulating convection.  We know that the dinosaurs were happy and jumping around at the North Pole.  Such a fine time to be cold-blooded.

Alas, the reptile party ended at the next cycle, where we now find ourselves.  We are going back to 'Snowball Earth', but we are lucky that our major ice advances are still at 10,000 year cycles.  Perhaps, in the future, the continental glaciers will be permanent, until the next cycle.

During a major ice advance, large mammals are dominant, such as the woolly mammoth.  This is just a heat retention/dissipation thing.  

Take Aways

The Earth is a perfect self-stablizing heat engine.  Any instability and we'd be dead. 

Carbon dioxide has gone up orders of magnitude over today, and yet we still live.  Water vapour is the main atmospheric insulator.

We are in a 'Snowball Earth' era.  The general trend for the next few million years is a major freeze.

Ocean currents are the main heat pipes that take care of us.

Looking at the charts

I'm ending it here, because I wrote too much for Penny.  The 'air plume' chart (MIMIC) and the sea temp chart tells me everything.  The ocean current chart shows longer term trends.

Weather forecast

Look to more 'default weather', and the ocean breezes are nearly dead.  Toronto will be at -20c this winter because of Lake Ontario, and Huntsville will be at -40c.  The UK should be at -10c because it is surrounded by ocean. 

Fin.


Sunday, December 9, 2018

I've left Mastodon

It's the growing social network you never heard of.  I enjoyed the first week, since it was just like the early days of Usenet.  But then I saw too much into its doom, and decided to leave.  I'll still note things on my blog.

Issues:

Oklahoma earthquakes have totally gone.  Something happened.

Getting colder.  I'll do the monthly charts on temps, ice, etc. 

I feel I'm getting detached from humanity more and more.  I won't do any more stories of my experiences. 


Friday, December 7, 2018

Note to future generations about the ice age

Dear Kiddies,

You see here the first observations of the turning of the climate.  By now you know that this has happened like clockwork for millions of years.  You can rummage the dustbin of history to see the articles of this time talking about the boiling of the seas.

You see, those people treated physics with contempt, simply because it got in the way of political expediency.  There was too much power to be gained, money to be made riding the Heat Wave.  They ignored any facts which went against the grain.

Now you are snug in your underground house, with realistic screens as windows.  The surface has been given up to polar bears and ice.  Although His Royal Muskiness died of a crack overdose, you give thanks that he invented a cheap way to excavate.

At this time all the ocean currents started to dump all the equatorial heat to the south, leaving the North absolutely frigid.  Nobody saw at the time, except one person who was stoned to death by snowballs.  He was a convenient scapegoat.

As the glaciers grind overhead, have a Merry Christmas.

ps.  as noted in the comments, all the Guardian people are living in the past, about the Arctic ice.  It's funny.

Stop the presses, ice is forming in the Arctic in winter! Meanwhile the long term trend is down.
Arctic Sea Ice Volume anomaly and Trend from PIOMASS 1980-2018

View discussion
Sea levels may rise more rapidly due to Greenland ice melt
Erik Frederiksen's avatar
Erik Frederiksen
6 Dec 2018 22:40
14  Recommend In response to hasmis
"Arctic ice is happy"

Graph of Arctic sea ice over the last 1,450 years, which doesn’t include the last decade, if you tried to put recent years on there it would blow off the bottom of the chart a long ways.

View discussion
Sea levels may rise more rapidly due to Greenland ice melt
rockyrex's avatar
rockyrex
6 Dec 2018 18:02
26  Recommend In response to hasmis
Global temperatures are not flat.

2001-2010 14.47 deg C
1991-2000 14.26 deg C
1981-1990 14.12 deg C
1971-1980 13.95 deg C

That's from "The Global Climate 2001-2010, a decade of climate extremes" from the WMO.

The World Meteorological Organisation produces those average global temperatures per decade, calculated from all the major datasets.

To date, all 17 years of the 21st century rank among the 18 warmest on record (adding 1998 makes up the full 18.)

The top 5 years (from NOAA) are - 5th, 2010 ....... 4th, 2014 .... 3rd, 2017 ...... 2nd, 2015 .... 1st, 2016.

Every La Nina year since 1998 has been warmer than every El Nino year before 1995.

*******
I think the British still live in the Victorian era, which is the latest warming physics that they always quote.  :)

South America Nose Bleed Heading for a Mini Ice Age

I have propose three types of ice ages.  We have the micro ice with a 20 year cycle.  It is caused by the Pacific El Nino foundry running out of heat.  Then there is the mini ice age of 300 years or so, full wave.  A major ice advance happens every 10,000 years.  It is controlled by isostatic uplift.  A major ice advance hooks when we have a mini ice age and all the highlands have popped up again.  We should have a good 3000 years for that.



The South American Nose Bleed is all the red forming south of the nose.  It's getting huge now, and I've never seen it like that.  I could use the climatist word 'unprecedented', but that would be silly.

The new ocean currents map shows the water flowing south.  THIS IS NOT NORMAL!  We hope and pray it will turn soon.





I have proposed that when enough hot water is diverted, then we have a 'latch circuit', the flow stays like that for 150 years.  Read up on the last one.  Not pretty.

ps.  that weird 'Upper Return' on the Pacific has stopped.  No more huge warm air plumes to warm North America for a week.  The Pacific plumes are dead again.

pps.  more detail as requested by Penny.  A latch circuit is a button press that stays pressed.  In this case, enough flow to the south keeps it flowing south, like a tip bucket. 

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Toronto real estate continues flat


One house in the neighbourhood sold real fast.  I expect they priced it low.  Other houses are languishing.  I don't know what a big crash would look like on this chart, since there would be such a variance on pricing.

ps.  what I mean is mathematically, I don't think this chart can go down.  We're in a big crash now with homes at 20-30%.  But the average price will stay up if more big houses are sold (maybe 30%).  Condos are still going up because people signed their lives away.  We won't see the capped condos of the 80's.  The banks will absorb everything.

Arctic Ice Volume Crosses Lanes Again



My usual source has frozen up, so I went to the Danes.  In November, the arctic ice volume powered past the other years, and may be going for a world record.


Basic Physics - Cold is merely the absence of heat.  Temperature is a measure of the vibration of a single molecule or greater.  It has no bearing on energy.  Thus a spark from a sparkler can land on your hand with no pain, but a spark from your wood fireplace can hurt like heck.  Heat energy is a function of temperature and thermal mass.  Heat energy flows from hot to cold.

In the Arctic, since the 80's, we have had a warm period, and ice volume measured by satellites.  There is no early context.  Ice volume is a better measure of energies than ice extent.  During this last warm cycle, there has been a persistent warm Pacific breeze flowing over the Arctic, driven by the North Pacific current.  If we looked at the Arctic temperature map for the past 20 years, we would have seen a warm zone near Alaska.


No more. 

The Arctic gives up every speck of heat by convection to the upper atmosphere, and then that radiates out into space.  As all the heat leaves, the water molecules lose all vibration and start to freeze.  That selectively picks up fresh water, and leaves saline water behind to sink.  That saline water then causes a lot of trouble by flowing out of the Arctic and into the Atlantic where it destroys the Gulf Stream.  Some people have said that this water is fresh and comes from a melting Greenland.  It would just take somebody to throw a sampling jar out, but they never do this.

For the last 20 years, we have had a gentle Pacific breeze melt the ice in a linear manner.  The ice volume chart shows all the volume lines parallel and going with the season.  It takes a drastic change in the forcing function for the curve to 'cross lanes', and this is what we have now.


Deep-Fry Apocalypse Delayed for a Day

Reference


Global temperatures as determined by satellites, the 'gold standard'.

Below, is the extraction since 2014


You can see the huge El Nino of 2016-17.  This month's global temps have gone down, but it is generally flat.



Below, we have an extraction of North Mid Latitudes, plotted on Google Drive, since 2014

Even without the tremendous dive this month, you can see it has been flat as it crested the sine wave.  This is the temperature you have felt and will feel this winter.  You can expect that next month will have a dive just as great.  It's quite amazing that Northern Mids were NOT warmed by the big El Nino.

The charts show global temperatures turning away from The Line.  And this is not THE LINE which was derived from early 2000.

Basic Physics

Weather is what can hit you on the head.  Climate is statistical compilation of weather.  These weather compilers banded together and called themselves Climate Scientists.  They defined themselves as those who believed in carbon warming, and found out that 97% of them believed in carbon warming.  I don't how they lost 3%.  Must have been a math error.

It is Basic Physics that you can fit any curve to data.  Whether you choose a straight line or a binomial should depend on the physics.  You can force a straight line through anything, and that's what climatists did.  Then they worshiped The Line, more than the data.  Now it doesn't matter how much the temperatures curve away from the line, it is the line that is featured in all the stories of doom.

The climaters anchor their line by saying that climate is defined as a 30-year sliding window, but that is semantics.  When they worship a line, it implies the physics of 'momentum' as in 'momentum investors'.  I suppose they expect actual temperatures to someday zoom back to the line.

Physics and observation show us that ocean currents can turn on a dime, at least within a year.  Climate follows the major ocean currents.  For example, the Gulf Stream defines the climate of Britain.  It has totally died recently, and the UK will be colder.  That is a rapid change.


Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Anchorage, Alaska earthquake -- almost no structural damage

I'm reading all the reports now, and if you were on stable ground, the pgv did not exceed 30 cm/s.  Structural damage begins at 50 cm/s.  This is consistent with the only full strong ground motion coming out of the place.  I'm guessing all the other accelerometers fell off their perch.

However, I believe there was softening in the concrete structures, and this will not be addressed.  However, the coming M8 will overwhelm any of this.  If you got another M7, then softening would come into play.

But, it's Christmas time, and I hope everybody cleans up and has a good party.  You'll have time to put everything on piles next year.

Basic Physics - there is a contention in the earthquake biz on what's the best parameter for damage.  I push for pgv, and California pushes for pga (peak ground acceleration).  pga saturates on soil to about 1 g, and is actually less on soft soil than rock.  pgv is directly related to base shear, while pga has no physics, since related force becomes a function of frequency.

ps. 


Ground velocities are dribbling in.  Looks like basement was less than 10 cm/s, and roof was 75 cm/s.  Some good resonance there.  Top of the building was 0.6 g.  This was a totally small earthquake.