Warm And Cold Might Be An Old Pattern

Warm US West, cold East:  A 4,000 year pattern:

It is not new for scientists to forecast that the current warming of Earth's climate due to carbon dioxide, methane and other "greenhouse" gases already has led to increased weather extremes and will continue to do so.

The new study shows the jet stream pattern that brings North American wintertime weather extremes is millennia old – "a longstanding and persistent pattern of climate variability," Bowen says. Yet it also suggests global warming may enhance the pattern so there will be more frequent or more severe winter weather extremes or both.

"This is one more reason why we may have more winter extremes in North America, as well as something of a model for what those extremes may look like," Bowen says. Human-caused climate change is reducing equator-to-pole temperature differences; the atmosphere is warming more at the poles than at the equator. Based on what happened in past millennia, that could make a curvy jet stream even more frequent and-or intense than it is now, he says.

Bowen and his co-authors analyzed previously published data on oxygen isotope ratios in lake sediment cores and cave deposits from sites in the eastern and western United States and Canada. Those isotopes were deposited in ancient rainfall and incorporated into calcium carbonate. They reveal jet stream directions during the past 8,000 years, a geological time known as middle and late stages of the Holocene Epoch.

Next, the researchers did computer modeling or simulations of jet stream patterns – both curvy and more direct west to east – to show how changes in those patterns can explain changes in the isotope ratios left by rainfall in the old lake and cave deposits.

They found that the jet stream pattern – known technically as the Pacific North American teleconnection – shifted to a generally more "positive phase" – meaning a curvy jet stream – over a 500-year period starting about 4,000 years ago. In addition to this millennial-scale change in jet stream patterns, they also noted a cycle in which increases in the sun's intensity every 200 years make the jet stream flatter.

So, essentially, the climate grant-seekers admit that all this stuff we are seeing is more or less normal.  That is what the actual evidence shows.  They speculate that carbon dioxide and methane and "other" gases -- which would be water vapor, trap more heat and exacerbate patterns.  But there is no evidence for that.  They plug some data into computer models which seem to corroborate what the grant-seekers what them to corroborate.

In fact the primary factor in "climate change" is the intensity of solar radiation.  More carbon dioxide and water vapor are a result of sun-driven warming rather than a cause.  The earth will regulate its own temperature.  Let's just hope we are not headed into a new ice age.  That would be a lot more catastrophic than a slight rise in sea levels.   

Weather patterns change in large and dramatic ways over time, and they always have.  Temperatures are always going to vary from the mean.  That's why they call it "average".  It has predictive value only in a range defined by the standard deviation.  Sometimes it's hotter; sometime colder.   We used to call it "weather".

A Few Good Men Review

I have mentioned Sarah Hoyt, writer of science fiction and other things, before when she wrote of building a "Galt's Network".  At that time I had read one of her free books called Draw One in the Dark, a fantasy novel of shape-shifting waiters and waitresses.  Yep. 

Anyway, Mrs. Hoyt is a high-quality writer, if not entirely appealing to my tastes, and I decided to give one of her "space opera" novels a shot.  I bought a copy of A Few Good Men recently and got a chance to finish it -- which doesn't always happen even with the best of books and intentions. 

I like good space opera -- H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy and Space Vikings, for example, are among my favorites.  Hoyt has created a "Darkship" universe set three or four hundred years in the future when Earth is ruled by genetically modified "Good Men", and there are renegade humans in space.  (It's called "space opera" because of the setting rather than the science.) 

A lot of people compare her work to Heinlein.  Two of Heinlein's works that are especially near to my heart are Glory Road and what I consider the old master's best -- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  Hoyt has some of the same themes.  A Few Good Men reflects a libertarian world view.  It is well-written.  I liked it. 

Here's a kind of spoiler -- the main protagonists are queer as three-dollar bills.  The romance is a little different than we are used to.  I think Mrs. Hoyt handles it well -- perhaps even too well. 

Look, if we had a pair of adulterers as protagonists, we could accept that, but I think we would want to be careful about endorsing that aspect of their relationship.  We understand this happens.  We recognize that such things don't necessarily mean that people aren't good in other ways, but there is this part of their character that is flawed. 

Personally, I tend to lump homosexuality -- between consenting adults -- with other forms of fornication, like adultery and sex outside of marriage.  I reject the idea of homosexual marriage, though I do not have a problem with civil domestic partnership contracts, which I think should be available not just to homosexual couples but to anyone.  In any case, the libertarian part of my Christian Libertarian approach says that it a person's own business who or what they choose to sleep with -- so long as it doesn't involve children and no innocent people are deprived of their freedom.

So, as far as Hoyt making her hero an unrepentant homosexual, no big deal.  He's a character in a book, and this is who he is.  Cool.  However, I think anyone as clearly intelligent and self-aware as this character would probably have more qualms about his lifestyle.  This guy has been genetically modified, so, theoretically, that could have an impact on his preferences.  In our world of "natural" humans, most homosexuals are made through family dynamics, molestation, and other factors rather than born.  I don't believe in the "gay gene". 

That quibble aside -- and, despite the space I wasted on it here, it does not hurt the story overall, my other complaint has to do with the amount of time spent on eating.  It seemed to me like about sixty percent of the novel involves what goes on while these guys are having a meal.  And that, my friends, is the difference between a novel written by an honest, traditional man and a novel written an honest, traditional woman.  There's nothing wrong with it, I just ended up thinking that all these people really do is eat. I get the feeling that meal times are important at the Hoyt house.

This is a good, enjoyable, solidly written, philosophically appealing science fiction novel in the tradition of greats like Heinlein and Piper.  It is the first installment of the "Earth Revolution" series.  I may well read the subsequent installments, and I am seriously considering her Darkship Renegades and Darkship Thieves novels as well.   

God Bless President Obama

For the first time in his presidency, Barack Obama has done something for which he has my genuine gratitude.  Following a fund-raiser in Austin, TX, the wind picked up while the Obamas were boarding Air Force One.  The First Wookie's skirt threatened to rise, and Obama threw himself on a grenade:  he put his hands on the Wookie's carrier-deck derriere to protect all Americans -- heck, the entire wired world -- from a sight no one should have to see. 

President Obama, I know that I have called you a liar, a psychopath, a narcissist, an idiot, a coward, a manipulative little twit, a loser, a waste of oxygen -- well, the list is too long to repeat, and I meant every word of it.  But, honestly, man to man, you went the extra mile on that one, and I, for one, salute your courage in the face of a very ugly situation.

Turning Off the Firefox compatMode in Pale Moon

Because the Pale Moon browser is based on Firefox, it reports itself to websites as Firefox.  You can turn that off.  From Vox Popoli:

Since Pale Moon is built upon a Firefox base, it still reports itself to be Firefox to web sites by default. Fortunately, it is trivially simple to turn this off and cause the browser to correctly report itself as PaleMoon.

1. Create a new tab.
2. Type "about:config" into the Address Bar as if it were an internet site (URL).
3. Type "compatMode" into the Search box that will appear right below the Address Bar.
4. On the line general.useragent.compatMode.firefox there are three settings: user set, boolean, true. Click on "true" and it will change to false.
5. Close the tab.

That's it. Web sites will no longer incorrectly attribute your pageviews to Firefox. If as many people have switched to Pale Moon as have switched to Chrome, the decline in Firefox usage may actually be twice what I originally estimated.

A Variety of Pocket Knives

I will have some reviews of some "true" pocket knives I picked up during my absence.  One is the Buck stockman manufactured in the U.S., and another is a Victorinox Boy Scout Huntsman -- which is the same as the Fieldmaster -- as best I can tell -- except it has the Boy Scout emblem on it.  I'm kind of bummed with the Boy Scouts, but I bought the wrong one. 

I also picked up three of the Chinese Schrades -- now made by Taylor.  The Bruin lockback is a copy of a Utica-made Bruin I have had since before Schrade went toes-up here in the States.  It was interesting to me to see the differences.  The other two are interesting as well, for different reasons.  One is a small gunstock trapper with a single blade and brass linerlock.  It's actually a dandy little carry piece for the pocket of your dress pants or, in my case, pajamas or running shorts.  The other is a larger trapper called the Buzzsaw, which has a primary clip point blade and a secondary locking saw blade.  So now I have more knives and tools with saw blades than most sensible people have knives in their houses.

Anyway, I'll have to get out and do some testing with these, as yard work is starting to get underway, and begin reporting back on my findings.   

No More Mozilla

It's a shame that Mozilla is a bunch of fascists.  I have been running Firefox for most of this century -- which sounds odd to say.  I won't use Chrome, though it is a good browser.  I keep Opera around, but I just don't like the feel of it.

So, I downloaded Pale Moon and installed it on this W7 machine.  I had to run a little app, pmmig.exe to get all of my Firefox profile over, but once I did that, the only real difference between Pale Moon and Firefox is that Pale Moon seems faster.

Firefox is off my computer for the first time since v1.5 -- nearly a decade ago.  It's kind of sad, like when your horse breaks his leg and you have to put him out of his misery.

Updated to add Brendan's link to the perversion of Safari for Win-ders.

What's Important

Things have finally calmed down and returned to abnormal after the last couple of weeks.  All it takes is a somewhat bizarre and quite serious family health crisis to remind us of why we do what we do.  Disaster can come in many forms and from unexpected directions. 

Life is more or less back on track, though it may be a while before I am able to resume regular posting.  Right now, I'm just happy that we are all alive and better if not altogether well.