Wednesday, June 30, 2021

CLIMATE DENIAL RECORDS SHATTERED AS WATTS REPORTS
          RECORD COOLING IN WAKE OF RECORD HEAT WAVE



The Big Heat Post Mortem

Reposted from The Cliff Mass Weather Blog




A DOZEN HYPERTHERMIA DEATHS LATER HE ADDED: 

"Most interestingly, another record wasn’t trumpeted by the news media. 

With the heat-dome high pressure moving east, Seattle and Portland saw record rates of cooling...

That all-time record cooling event didn’t get much press because it goes against the groupthink narrative that “ climate change ” causes only bad things. "




Friday, June 25, 2021

                        VIRTUE SIGNALING IS FOREVER

These Diamonds Are Made With

 Carbon Pulled From the 

Atmosphere


 


... lack of traceability has inspired a contentious debate over which type of diamond is more virtuous. 

Traditional diamond suppliers insist their stones have a lower carbon footprint, as labs require intense machines and chemicals to “grow” slivers of carbon into stones... and more often than not, it’s from fossil fuels... a third option: diamonds made from excess carbon drawn from the atmosphere.


“Now we aren’t harming the planet at all. Every single diamond we sell makes the world that much better.”

each carat removes approximately 20 tons of carbon out of the sky—a number that’s higher than the average American’s carbon footprint per year.


 “If you buy a two-carat diamond, you’re essentially offsetting two and a half years of your life,” Shearman adds.






Monday, June 21, 2021

TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT : THE ITCHY & SCRATCHY SHOW

Harvard Belfer Center

Technology assessments should “scratch real itches,” responding to needs of the end user or people directly impacted by the technology.
The U.S. Capitol building with the sun rising in the background

Building a 21st Century Congress: A Playbook for Modern Technology Assessment


The next generation of technologies will be transformative. How those technologies – from artificial intelligence to synthetic biology tools – are developed, distributed, and managed will affect how societies reap their benefits and mitigate their costs.

To protect the lives and livelihoods of all Americans, the 117th Congress and the Biden Administration must prepare to take a deeper look at the social impacts of emerging technologies, Mike Miesen and Laura Manley write in a new report, Building a 21st Century Congress: A Playbook for Modern Technology Assessment.” ... that Congress and the Executive Office of the President (EOP) incorporate four “pillars” of effective technology assessment into their processes. 

Those pillars are strong governance; responsiveness to consumer needs; input from experts; and a presentation of policy options, not answers...

AN EXCERPT:

A technology assessment is not an argument for a specific policy or set of policies, or the answer to a policy problem.

Instead, a technology assessment should offer policy options, where appropriate, to help policymakers reckon with the technology and its potential implications. A technology assessment should be an important input into the policymaking process without deciding on the “right” option—a task best left to elected officials, who are best suited to represent their constituencies’ needs and values as they weigh various policy options.

Practically, members of Congress do not want answers from a technology assessment body, because it is their responsibility to come up with the answers. Legislation that is grounded in the analyses of legislative committees and individual members—and supported by a thorough technology assessment—will be stronger and more likely to pass, as it will be responsive not only to an analysis of the technology but also to constituents.

 

Politically, this ensures that the technology assessment body serves as a resource, not a rival.











ALBEDO CHANGE : WHITE WATER ON THE WINE DARK SEA

A WIRED  ARTICLE  SHOWS  HOW  BIOSURFACTANTS  IN THE BOSPHORUS  CAN  CHANGE THE  COLOR  OF  WATER.

JUST AS  OFFSHORE  STORMS  CAN  SHRED  REEF FAUNA, ONSHORE POLLUTION AND WATER WARMING CAN FEED DIATOM BLOOMS. ALL THREE INCREASE THE RELEASE OF SYRUPY POLYSACCHARIDES THAT RAISE REFLECTIVITY BY EXTENDING THE LIFETIME OF SMALL BUBBLES  GENERATED IN SURFACE WATERS BY WAVE ACTION AND DECAY.
NOT YOUR AVERAGE WINE DARK SEA 
THIS BRIGHT SEA SURFACE IS AN EXTREME CASE OF OCEANOGRAPHIC "UNDERSHINE."  THE BACKSCATTERED LIGHT COMES NOT FROM THE INVISIBLE SURFACTANT MOLECULES, BUT 
MICROSCOPIC AIR AND GAS BUBBLES TRAPPED IN THE WATERY GOO.


What's With All This Ooey, Gooey Sea Snot?

A phlegmy film is coating the coast around Istanbul—
and warmer water could be to blame.

THIS STORY ORIGINALLY appeared on Atlas Obscura and is part of theClimate Desk collaboration.

For months the waters around Istanbul, Turkey, have been coated with a gloopy film. Sometimes creamy, sometimes khaki, it can appear slightly dreamy or superlatively gross, depending on the vantage. From overhead, it’s almost romantic, like clouds glimpsed from space, white squiggles marbling Earth’s blue. Up close, the stuff is much more phlegmy. The shore-hugging substance is sometimes known as “sea snot,” and it’s easy to see why. It looks like the marine equivalent of a big, wet sneeze.

Sea snot is more scientifically known as “marine mucilage,” and it’s an ecosystem of its own. In a 2009 paper in the journal PLOS One, a team of scientists led by Roberto Danovaro, a marine biologist at Italy’s Polytechnic University of Marche, described it as a “gelatinous” stage of marine snow, the jumble of organic material—such as feces and fragments of dead plants and animals—that drifts from the surface to the ocean floor.

The snot is produced by a bunch of microorganisms, one Turkish research team explained in a UNESCO bulletin called Harmful Algae News, especially microalgae known as diatoms. These petite algae are known to exude polysaccharides, sugary carbohydrates that can get quite sticky. Sampling sea snot that clotted several locations in the Sea of Marmara in 2007 and 2008, the researchers also identified species of dinoflagellates and more.
A drone photo shows an aerial view of increased mucilage level at Caddebostan shore in Istanbul, Turkey on June 15, 2021.PHOTOGRAPH: MUHAMMED ENES YILDIRIM/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
 ( THE WIRED PIECE IS EXCERPTED FROM ATLAS OBSCURA  )  : 


THE BACKSTORY IS  A LONG ONE: ARISTOTLE TAUGHT THAT  QUARTZ CRYSTALS WERE WATER TOO SUPERCOOLED BY ALPINE COLD TO EVER THAW OUT AGAIN, 

HE DID BETTER IN DESCRIBING THE DIATOMACEOUS CHALK  MODERNS CALL MEERSCHAUM AS FOSSILIZED SEA FOAM.

AS HE WAS BORN ON AN ISLAND NOT FAR FROM THE SEA OF MARMARA, HE MAY HAVE SEEN SCENES LKE THESE





Thursday, June 17, 2021

THE ANTHROPOCENE WITNESSED THE RAPID EVOLUTION 
               OF JOURNALS WITH LESS THAN ONE EDITOR

LE CROIX DE GUERRE CLIMATIQUE
3eme Classe a

 M. NOEL CASTREE


In 2008, a Science and Technology Studies  guru told
American Scientist readers that

 “science does not always serve the public interest best by widening the scope of policy choice” 

This award reflects M.Castree's critical role in affirming the continuity of discourse in journals of critical theory that share the same editor
Free first page

HAVING ONE EDITOR DICTATE THE CONTENT OF MANY JOURNALS IS NOT PROBLEMATIC WHEN THEY HAVE MORE WRITERS THAN 
READERS   :







Tuesday, June 15, 2021

                             AS I WAS GOING TO SAINT IVES
                             I MET A BUS WITH ZERO LIVES

 A CARBON NEUTRAL COACH HAS FOUND ITSELF STRANDED  IN CORNWALL

The Carbon Battle Bus came to Cornwall to tie in with the G7 Summit in Carbis Bay where World  Leaders  have  been discussing climate change and the need to reach targets for zero carbon.

Planet Mark, the organisers of the Zero Carbon Tour, successfully travelled from London to the Eden Project, a distance of 263 miles with one recharge, in the electrically-powered Yutong coach...

But with 60 to 70 miles it has found that there are no serviceable chargers left on the network and the five that they attempted to use in Cornwall were unable to charge the bus.


In Cornwall the electric coach visited the following charging points but were unable to successfully charge the vehicle:

Bodmin Business Park – Genie Point – 50kW – machine not working, despite Zapp Map not reporting an issue.

Bodmin Morrisons – Genie Point – 50kW – recognised the coach but did not deliver the charge.

Kingsley Village – Shell – New Motion – Tritium charger – 170 kW – registered coach and charge left on coach but would not charge

Cornwall Services – Ecotricity – 50 kW – error with the charger, engineer informed but did not work. At 11pm we met a Nissan Leaf driver who had tried three other charging stations experiencing problems.

Eden Project car park – Genie Point – 50 kW – recognised the coach but did not deliver the charge.



Saturday, June 12, 2021

         ARE COVID VACCINES CHANGING THE WEATHER?

New York Magazine 

Hot New Conspiracy Theory:Vaccines Turn You Into a Magnet

IF A COVID SHOT CAN ATTRACT CAR KEYS,
WHAT WILL TEN BILLION DO TO SOLAR WIND,
 GALACTIC COSMIC RAYS, AND SPACE WEATHER ?

By Paola Rosa-Aquino

On Tuesday, dozens of people packed into a Cleveland, Ohio, health committee meeting to review a bill in the legislature that would weaken the state’s vaccination laws. Then a physician and “expert witness” stepped forward with an awesome claim: 

The shots magnetize people, causing metal objects from pennies to forks to stick to their bodies.

“I’M SURE YOU'VE SEEN PICTURES... OF PEOPLE WHO'VE HAD THESE SHOTS, AND NOW THEY'RE MAGNETIZED" 
SAID OSTEOPATH DR. SHERRY TENPENNY.
"THEY CAN PUT A KEY ON THEIR FOREHEAD. IT STICKS. THEY CAN PUT SPOONS AND FORKS ALL OVER THEM AND THEY CAN STICK." 

 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a bulletin last week: 

“No. Receiving a COVID-19 vaccine will not make you magnetic...” 

because the vaccine is free of  “metals such as iron, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth alloys, as well as any manufactured products such as microelectronics, electrodes, carbon nanotubes, and nanowire semiconductors” that can create an electromagnetic field.


THIS PECULIAR BELIEF IS NOT, ALAS, UNPRECEDED:



Friday, June 11, 2021

THE NEXT BIG THING IN TINY EXISTENTIAL THREATS

Extreme heat can 

ground hot air balloons

Heat waves are growing more common as the climate warms.

by YALE CLIMATE CONNECTIONS TEAM

JUNE 7, 2021


Each year, people travel to hot air balloon festivals to see giant, colorful balloons floating up into the sky. Some people even take a ride.

“Just being up in the air in a balloon is so different than anything else,” Jason Jones says. “It’s just very peaceful.”

He says the basic science behind ballooning is simple. Warmer air is less dense than cooler air, so it rises.

“It’s literally just heating the inside air of the balloon hotter than the ambient temperature to get the balloon to lift,” he says.

So on warmer days, the air inside the balloon has to be heated even more. That means running the balloon’s burner more, and on an already hot day, the heat it throws off can make passengers uncomfortable.

And when it’s really hot out, the heat needed to take off and fly can even damage the balloon...

And as the climate warms, extreme heat is growing more common in many regions. So there could be more hot days when balloons must stay deflated on the ground, instead of rising skyward.

Thursday, June 10, 2021

      REMEMBER, ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT SOLAR FLARES !

  HOW CAN YOU EXPECT ME TO ADJUST THE  EARTH'S ORBIT WITHOUT 
 AUTHORIZATION FROM THE HOUSE APROPRIATIONS COMMITEE?
At a recent House National Resources meeting, Rep. Louie  Gohmert of  Texas  asked National Forest  Deputy  Chief  Jennifer  Eberlein  if  her service  and  The Bureau of Land Management could halt climate change by changing the orbit of the Earth or the Moon?

"I understand from what's been testified to, the Forest Service and the BLM, you want very much to work on the issue of climate change," said  Gohmert .



Eberlein paused before responding, 

"I would have to follow up with you on that one, Mr. Gohmert."


Friday, June 4, 2021

                  LOUD AS CICADAS, AND MORE BORING STILL





ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE AUTOMATION OF PROPAGANDA 
According to the South China Morning Post,  Wu Dao 2.0 is a neural net based multimodal natural language emulator, with  Chinese and English skills acquired from 4.9 terabytes of images and texts

"Wu Dao 2.0's mulitmodal design affords it a range of skills, including the ability to perform natural language processing, text generation, image recognition, and image generation tasks," reports VentureBeat. "It can write essays, poems, and couplets in traditional Chinese, as well as captioning images and creating nearly photorealistic artwork, given natural language descriptions."
"Mike Gruszczynski, a professor at Indiana University who studies online communications... points out that bots have played a key role in spreading false narratives in recent years..."
 

 

QUITE RIGHT--  BUT A BIT SLOW ON THE DRAW: EIGHT YEARS AGO, ANTHONY WATTS BOT-FRIENDLY CLIMATE DENIAL BLOG AUTOMATED ITS CENSORSHIP SOFTWARE TO FACILITATE UPVOTING ITSELF WHILE CURBING COMMENTS FROM SKEPTICAL COMMENTS BY CLIMATE SCIENTISTS

AI CAN WRITE Disinformation Now—and Dupe Human Readers

GEORGETOWN  RESEARCHERS  USED TEXT GENERATOR GPT-3        TO WRITE MISLEADING TWEETS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS.   PEOPLE FOUND THE POSTS PERSUASIVE.


... Over six months, a group at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology used GPT-3 to generate misinformation, including stories around a false narrative, news articles altered to push a bogus perspective, and tweets riffing on particular points of disinformation.

“I don't think it's a coincidence that climate change is the new global warming,” 

read a sample tweet composed by GPT-3 that aimed to stoke skepticism about climate change. 

“They can't talk about temperature increases because they're no longer happening.” 

A second labeled climate change

 “the new communism—an ideology based on a false science that cannot be questioned.”...


Not to be outdone, China's Communist Party has entered its own horse in the social engineering robot  race:

Wu Dao 2.0 apes human comments using ten time more parameters than GPT-3 : 

https://www.engadget.com/chinas-gigantic-multi-modal-ai-is-no-one-trick-pony-211414388.html 


( Deeply shocked thanks to  the person or entity what  signed itself   :

jacksmith4tx says    in forwarding this link in an ATTP comment)

Tuesday, June 1, 2021

 RIDING HERD ON THE CARBON FOOTPRINT OF THE GODS

Can the Gods reduce their carbon footprint by demanding burnt sacrifices of Beyond Burger instead of beef ?  

But Netflix has superceded Hesiod, and its cthonic Gods belong to a more bloodthirsty pantheon. According to the Sacred Script of Lovecraft Country,  Cthulhu's kindred spirits devour galaxies like hors d'ouvres, which could complicate the carbon capture debate:

If Cthulhu heeds Megan Markle's counsel, and goes Vegan, will Yog Sothoth devour an infinite number of galaxies? 

Or will the Destroyer of Worlds achieve apotheosis as the avatar of galactic carbon capture? 
 
Moral philosphers at the beyond climate blog Astral Codex Ten are at work on these perplexing questions

Scott Alexander writes :
"... meat-eaters concerned about animal welfare should try to eat beef, not chicken. The logic goes: the average cow is very big and makes 405,000 calories of beef. The average chicken is very small and makes 3000 calories of chicken. If you eat the US average... eating chicken exposes 160x more animals to that suffering than eating beef...
Imagine a world where Yog Sothoth was constantly devouring galaxies full of intelligent life forms, an atrocity beyond your ability to imagine. But there was a charity that could stop him at a cost of $1 per galaxy…Someone thinks:
"I could eat chicken and offset it with $1, or I could eat beef and offset it with $2, I'm not actually going to do the offsetting, but the market has said chicken is less morally costly than beef".
Then that person eats chicken and destroys a galaxy, when they could have eaten beef and produced a few extra pounds of carbon.. "

In the end, it may boil down to the cost of a solar mass of Beyond Burger.