| Author | Message | ||
     Ducbsa |
Money quote: "Given the many scandals that have emerged in recent years, it is reasonable to ask: can liberals be trusted to do science? " http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/06/anot her-left-wing-science-scandal.php | ||
| Ducbsa |
Bad news on models and renewables: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/06/blac k-monday-for-the-climatistas.php | ||
| Aesquire |
Go to college in a King Coal state and do your grad paper on tailing piles at coal plants and how radioactive they are. Don't expect to graduate. It's not just leftists that influence research. Yes, leftists lie pathologically. Sure, their heroes admire Satan. Absolutely, they are the most likely to murder entire ethnic groups. But they don't have a monopoly on self interest over science. Freon. Patent runs out. Mexican companies poise to make money with no licensing fees. Suddenly Freon is evil, politicians get huge bribes, and it's banned. The original patent holder has it's replacement. Not as efficient, not as safe, mildly corrosive, billions in profits for the companies making heat pumping equipment. And of course, more expensive with a higher profit margin. ( not the same thing ) Gas with alcohol. Bribes. Kick backs. Big money. Tax dollars. Farm subsidies. Hemp. Big bribes from cotton lobbyists. Ties directly into. Prohibition. Ends leaving thousands of police trained to ruin people's fun. Switch the boogeyman to keep the tax dollars and illegal theft of property going. Why is a drug only used by a handful of jazz musicians suddenly a national crisis? Hemp. Cheap fabric in competition with cotton. Round and round. Bribes and lies. But even the War on Drugs started as a treatment program for vets hooked on heroin in Vietnam, then perverted into a massive prison industry & theft conspiracy, pales next to "end of the world" eco-terrorism. ( I'll note in passing the Klan Party is primarily responsible for both ) | ||
| Aesquire |
Macbuell, I am no way calling you ignorant. The probably mythical "mother" in the image above? Damn skippy. Consider another "health movement" from the past. ( and watch heads explode ) Fluoridation of drinking water. I have no evidence that putting Fluoride in a city's drinking water will hurt anyone. In small doses. ( large amounts can be harmful ) OTOH, there was no study done on long term effects on a sizable population. High levels of Fluoride in the water are harmful. This occurs naturally, as does high levels of arsenic. Such water is unsafe to drink long term. There are fears that poorly managed water systems could put too much Fluoride in the water and cause a health problem. I am unaware of this happening. ( it could be hushed up, like Flint's cover up of lead poisoning ) But I rather doubt it, since it would cost more to do so, and bureaucrats can be very good at controlling costs where they can so they can spend it on themselves. In any event, such an overdose would be temporary, and probably not a realistic health issue. Probably. ( You'd be better off to fear terrorists putting VX in the water supply. ) Fluoride is interesting, chemically. In the human body it is mildly reactive and tends to be quite stable, with fluoride producing hydrogen fluoride, and back, depending on the PH of the area. At no time does Fluorine occur as a by product. Which is good because elemental Fluorine is as nasty a stuff as you can think of. People who are against fluoridation point out that it would be cheaper, safer, and easier to just give every child a shot of free mouthwash to swish & spit ( but not to swallow ) at schools as part of an overall public health plan. I'm ambivalent on the subject. I can see both sides, and am open minded here. Next week.... Rabies, and why England shouldn't allow any Democrats in the country to protect the badger. | ||
| Aesquire |
Posted before, I think, but still a funny read. http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010 /02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride What's worse than a chemical that killed every chemist who tried to isolate it, for decades, until Henri Moissan in 1886 succeeded? ( and he was poisoned and died young ) Let's make it MORE REACTIVE! FOOF is so nasty none can exist at room temperature... thank goodness. This stuff was first prepared in Germany in 1932 by Ruff and Menzel, who must have been likely lads indeed, because it’s not like people didn’t respect fluorine back then. No, elemental fluorine has commanded respect since well before anyone managed to isolate it, a process that took a good fifty years to work out in the 1800s. (The list of people who were blown up or poisoned while trying to do so is impressive). And that’s at room temperature. At seven hundred freaking degrees, fluorine starts to dissociate into monoatomic radicals, thereby losing its gentle and forgiving nature. But that’s how you get it to react with oxygen to make a product that’s worse in pretty much every way. or http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008 /02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time I have not encountered this fine substance myself, but reading up on its properties immediately gives it a spot on my “no way, no how” list. Let’s put it this way: during World War II, the Germans were very interested in using it in self-igniting flamethrowers, but found it too nasty to work with. It is apparently about the most vigorous fluorinating agent known, and is much more difficult to handle than fluorine gas. That’s one of those statements you don’t get to hear very often, and it should be enough to make any sensible chemist turn around smartly and head down the hall in the other direction. The compound also a stronger oxidizing agent than oxygen itself, which also puts it into rare territory. That means that it can potentially go on to “burn” things that you would normally consider already burnt to hell and gone, and a practical consequence of that is that it’ll start roaring reactions with things like bricks and asbestos tile. It’s been used in the semiconductor industry to clean oxides off of surfaces, at which activity it no doubt excels. | ||
| Aesquire |
http://fusion.kinja.com/a-guide-to-the-15-powerful -people-charged-with-poisonin-1796227940 Speaking of Flint... | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/06/nasa_n ot_publicizing_8_months_of_cooler_temperatures.htm l | ||
| Ducbsa |
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/20/tesla-car-b attery-production-releases-as-much-co2-as-8-years- of-gasoline-driving/ I'll have to cancel my order for one now. /sarc | ||
| Ducbsa |
The canceled flights due to high temperatures in Phoenix were big news this week, without any mention of if it happened before, therefore, not really being news. http://www.azfamily.com/story/32257743/flight-to-p hoenix-returns-to-houston-due-to-heat https://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KPHX/ 2016/6/19/MonthlyHistory.html?req_city=&req_state= &req_statename=&reqdb.zip=&reqdb.magic=&reqdb.wmo= Ooops, it did, during our enlightened era when we were in the Paris Accord. How could that be and how could all the MSM crack journalists not take a look at previous years? | ||
| Aesquire |
Many modern light airplanes are made of composites, fiberglass & carbon fiber. Using several different types of resin as a binder. You might notice that they all are painted white. That's because a dark color absorbs more heat from the sun, like blacktop does, and that can weaken the resin... to the point where the wings actually droop. ( and are thus destroyed, you can't bend them back ) There are a lot of composite parts on airliners today, too. Radar & radio transparent panels, ( radio doesn't go through aluminum sheet very well ) and the elegantly curved parts that shape the airflow around tips and bumps, easier to make a mold and use "plastic" parts than bend sheet metal. In many cases, like sailplanes, the composite structure is smoother, ( no seams or rivets ) and more accurate than sheet metal. To maintain laminar flow you want no little ripples in the skin, and ideally you want smooth to within .006", which you get with metal wings only with bondo and precision sanding. ( adding weight and hundreds of hours of manual labor ) So, yeah. You can drive your black Corvette through Death Valley on a hotter than average day with no problems, probably. The composite parts are just shells. On a Cirrus or Lancair, or Bombardier? The composite parts are structural, and it matters if they get soft. BTW airports being too hot to fly happens a lot in the Southwest. Hot air is less dense, and you have to fly faster, just to take off and land. It's exactly like being at high altitude. Mix Hot & High, like Telluride airport, and it's not unusual to either take off right after dawn, or not at all. as the thinner air makes it seem the runway is too short. | ||
| Aesquire |
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| Ourdee |
Arizona airports were closed yesterday, I heard. | ||
| Hootowl |
They'll definitely find some in mine. http://bgr.com/2017/06/16/uranus-mission-probe-nas a/ | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.surfacestations.org/ A survey of weather stations to check for local error sources. Like putting the thermometer next to the BBQ. | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4629660/ Low-carb-diet-similar-effect-brain-ecstasy.html Why your Atkins diet friends are so evangelical. Several of my friends have done the low carb diet fad. All lost weight, in some cases dramatically. All got fatter than they started when they quit. It was fun and alarming to watch folk eat a pound of bacon for breakfast and steaks for lunch. Not sure on the long range results of paleo-diets like "Neanderthin". | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2017/06/23/ nasa-calls-bs-on-gwyneth-paltrows-latest-goop-prod uct/ Gwyneth is an incredible beauty. A great actress. I appreciate her work in the Marvel movie world. Perfect casting, great chemistry. But she makes Luna Lovegood look like a beacon of sanity. Hey, I could be wrong, I can't tell you that steaming your vagina doesn't make you youthful by personal experience. ( we might ask Alfau ) Taking life advice, especially medical, from the genetic lottery winning pretty people that pretend to be other people with a script for a living is unwise. Better to ask the professional jock who took guts courses in college about boson decay. | ||
| Hootowl |
"We never intended to mislead anyone" "we stand by the quality and effectiveness" Those two statements are mutually exclusive. | ||
| Aesquire |
Mexican biker gang steals 150 Jeeps with tech. Read the vin number, go to a database for key & codes. Programmable key fob transmitter & keys cut ( where needed ) pick them off the suburban streets in San Diego and drive them over the border. ..... Cyber crime made physical. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Not only is a modern car easy to steal, it has no security. And....... this is scary, the first owner of a car has his cyber fingerprints impressed. And the dealer reboot doesn't erase & reset that. So not only can you track your car you sold two years ago, you can still use your phone apps to control it just like you still owned it. Oh, wait, it gets better! Subsequent owners can, with the right tools, access your history in your car. Location, top speed, phone apps......... I can see buying a politician's or business rival's used car and mining it for blackmail material. "Look, on Tuesday the 8th, when he was supposed to be at work he drove to x address for 2 hours. .... the home of????? Alleged lover....... brothel. ...... VP of a rival company/party............ notorious drug sales hood ......... Gay bar......." But wait! There's More! We'll throw in the ice crusher! Actually ball crusher. You notice the cyber ransom trend? That's coming for your car. When the "computer in everything" trend started the smart people went paranoid your car would be hacked to shut off your brakes and steer you off the cliff. That's still a concern..... but supposed a terrorist or assassination mindset. Thieves would just lock it down until you paid them. You would have significant disruption in your life. Call a cab to get to work. Call the dealer to tow your car and hope they can fix it. Tens of thousands of your dollars and ongoing debt useless. And dealers might not want to touch your car. Lawyers and liability. The fear that their very expensive networks could be comprised. We live in interesting times. | ||
| Ducbsa |
Will they take over my Ford's engine management system?  | ||
| Aesquire |
Only by physically taking the car from you as a crime against humanity.  Don't think a genius with a laptop is going to hold your car ransom any other way. My 2013 dodge caravan otoh....... I admit my distrust of computer controlled cars came to a head this year when I found I needed to have the computer reflash to turn on the circuit for fog lights or seat heaters. I understand the reasons but am not happy with the extra costs of car mods that are not emissions related. Doubles the cost of installing fog lights. Etc. Cars being taken over remotely is old news. It hasn't been an actual problem as far as terrorist action, like turning off brakes on the highway. It is now manifesting as a car theft technique. And that's going to be widespread. It's more profitable to sell car stealing tools than stealing cars, and internet commerce makes anonymous sales easier. The ransom threat has the potential to be huge. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://pjmedia.com/parenting/2017/06/27/teachers- are-now-performing-monthly-mental-health-exams-on- your-child/ | ||
| Ducbsa |
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/29 /delingpole-trump-is-right-to-reject-carbon-captur e-and-storage-expert-report-confirms/ | ||
| Aesquire |
Carbon Capture is hard enough. Hiding it in a hole in the ground is borderline insane. First, this isn't bricks of carbon shoved into an abandoned mine like fly ash. This is CO2 in gaseous & compressed liquid form. They pump it into the ground in old oil fields, presumably into the impermeable layers that once held oil. Like fracking, you should expect mini quakes when you pump fluid into rock. Unlike fracking you are expecting the fluid to stay where you put it and never leak out. Fracking pulls the pressure out with the oil. Carbon Storage just cranks it up. So what happens? Mostly we don't know. In some places the CO2 will dissolve the rock holding it. Some places it will seep through cracks that oil can't. And some places it will mix with water to make acid. If a storage well fails catastrophically a bubble of acidic non-life supporting gas will flow down wind until it dissipates into harmless levels. Imho this is a certain thing over time as abandoned and forgotten wells corrode. Hopefully in the middle of nowhere so no one gets hurt. Some gas may leak into lakes. Possibly forming a dense layer of saturated acidic water on the bottom waiting for a turn over to dump the gasses into the air. See volcanic lakes and death tides in the air. Most of the volcanic death lakes are in climates where there isn't a seasonal turn over like in most of N America. Not sure what a summers load of leaked CO2 in a major lake like NY's Finger Lakes would do. It could be locally apocalyptic. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/07/2 6/lake_nyos_killed_1746_when_it_released_a_huge_po cket_of_co2.html It's not certain that such a disaster could happen in a temperate climate where the lakes usually over turn a couple of times a year. Lake Nyos has had hundreds of years of gas bubbling into it. One season worth of leakage from a storage complex may not be a major hazard. Of course we may only find out it is when an invisible cloud of burning acid vapor snuffs the lives of a small city. But as long as Leonardo DiCaprio can fly his private jet to exotic lands to tell us how Green we should be I guess it's worth it. Too bad about Watkins Glen. | ||
| Ducbsa |
What happened at Watkins Glen? | ||
| Aesquire |
Nothing has happened to Watkins Glen. Yet..... but it's at the south end of a Finger lake and as such a possible disaster area IF ( and only speculatively ) you have a major leak of a CO2 Storage site. Mind you, this is just speculation. Modern Frakking technology does a very good job of keeping contaminants out of drinking water layers, even if the frakking pipes run through them. Lots of concrete involved. But pumping liquid CO2 back into the ground? This is problems looking for a place to happen. http://elements.geoscienceworld.org/content/4/5/32 5 Just look up carbon dioxide sequestration, and you'll find a lot of articles, mostly pimping the idea, since it's Soylent. ( Politically Correct Green ) But there are those who paid more attention to the science than the politics in class. And some folk are looking at the technology with an eye to finding the problems before it kills people. CO2 in water makes acid, ( like in my Coke ) so you don't want to pump CO2 into a place where the acid will eat Limestone, or other rock that is sealing it from migrating around. There's a LOT of tax money and Carbon Credit scam cash involved. The rules that let a big company put money into "green" projects to counter the "evil" energy use, and taxes that are part of that, also let a company sell the Carbon Credits to other companies. I'm concerned, that companies run like Solyndra, that bribe politicians to get great deals and contracts, then go out of business, with the Executives taking the money and running, will be players in Carbon Storage, leaving us with ticking time bombs under our feet, in the name of Saving the Planet. Why not use shortcuts and be lazy about safety when you're going to be out of business, out of the country, somewhere where you can't be extradited, living in the mansion next to where Obama is vacationing? Tahiti, maybe. Naturally, the above is a biased, simplified version of a Very Profitable scam. The folk on the other side of this argument would tell you they are saving the planet, and that I am a Heretic, no doubt in the pay of the Evil Exxon. ( I wish! ) | ||
| Ducbsa |
I re-subscribed to Engineering News Record recently after getting a deal and they have totally drank the koolaid. It is primarily a construction magazine and the editorials and the slant of the articles are very pro-climate change mitigation and the $$ that brings, plus the reflexive Trump bitching. I am glad I am retired and not in a position to have to participate in boondoggles like sequestration. | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/chri stopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-gr eatest-lie-ever-told.html Six year old tale of lies and deception. My complaint with sequestration is 2 fold. 1. Planetary engineering without proper study. By amateurs, with no qualifications. 2. The potential for disaster when ( not if ) some scheme fails spectacularly and a big cloud of CO2 gets released. The best outcome is only a few people die and megatons of CO2 dissipate harmlessly with only mild freakout by the Soylents because of the imagined effect on climate. Worst case is dependent on where the gas escapes. I doubt even the most idiotic Greenies would pump CO2 into NY City's unused pneumatic tube subway, but if they were? Luckily the NIMBY effect applies and the Soylents won't want the noise and dirt of drilling the hiding places for CO2 anywhere near them. Since they cluster in Urban areas where their romantic views of nature are never challenged by reality, this accidentally serves as a safety check for sequestration locations. In the end, problem #1 is my greater concern. IF they actually lowered the planetary temperature, I'd expect the results to be the same the last time temperatures went down naturally. While being aware there are more people than before, and they are living in an even more artificial world being fed, in large part, by the overproduction of food in this country. Lower temperatures would kill millions from starvation alone. Mostly the poorest folk, women and children hardest hit. | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/nutritio n/not-squeaky-clean-surprising-dangers-hidden-insi de-healthy-food/ America's Test Kitchen has a great recipe for little ( 1 1/2" ) potatoes that you start baking on a sheet pan, then crush to 1/2" thick with another, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper, and finish baking to crisp. Easy, lazy, and delicious. They've been criticized for brining meats and using human desirable amounts of salt. They argue their home cooked meals still have a fraction of pre packaged meals. True. One frozen name brand Chinese food serving has over 1000 milligrams of sodium. Potato chips aren't that bad and salt falls off them. |
