doxa-science

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source:Sceptical Science

But wait a minute: we are in an era of population growth, so human CO2 just joins the line-up waiting to be recycled. And we eat animals, who eat a lot of plants. And they breathe too...

Shout-Out for Climate

The concensus on CO2 driven climate change does have the great virtue of calming the most virulent environmentalists - and why deprive ourselves, here - but is it really altogether wise to rely on this 'story' to base government policies for the next century.

The first climate change analysis was done to benefit the nuclear industry in England, under Margaret Thatcher. And has grown from there.  As the below Arte documentary explores, there are other findings that might be of equal interest.

The key to harmonization of these different findings has to be time scale: short term fluctuations -which even-out or lead to behaviours, whatever is the case - seen within long-term trends. And one should not be afraid to do isolate analysis: the oceans might heat more as a function of  cosmic mechanisms, land masses from behavioural changes. How do we know? Perso, I would measure change with respect to outside temperature for oceans (that -18°C) and look to human activity for land masses. And refine from there.

Because seen from an observer perspective, that Paris conference looks awfully fragile, something of a loss opportunity before it even begins. We need adult behaviour from everybody, here.

RegExp (W3Schools)

Search a string for "Crazy!", and display the position of the match: Let's get Crazy!

KeystoneXL

 

What is at stake is Phase4, a second route to the refineries on the Gulf of Mexico for Alberta.



The major environmental concern is the effect on the aquifer which lies below the juncture point. It furnishes water to 30% of the US population, and is already fragile from overuse. The con argument is that over the 50 years of life of this pipeline, one could expect a certain number of spills, and wonder if they can be stopped and cleaned up in an orderly fashion.

Environmental Impact Assessment has one flaw as a procedure: it pits industry against environmentalists in an adversarial procedure. One can fear VW syndrome from industry,where they are tempted to cheat to just get on with it. In truth, a pipeline is meant to be less disruptive than over ground transport. Industry is a stakeholder in environmentalprotection. Engineers are smart people and could see this as an opportunity to innovate.

Both Canada and the US would be moving oil on this pipeline. The leave it in the groundargument is unanswerable, and it is true that the market price for oil is low. But it is low because of abundant supply...

True, Alberta oil is doing ugly things to the landscape. As an industry, the measures forsafety and security for its workers are excellent.

A Canadian firm is the protagonist here; not sure how it ended up not having American partners.

LegacyR

Temperature is falling and I'm okay with it. Just made a legacy recipe for date nut bread; the one where the dates are soaked in boiling water, and its brown sugar because margarine hadn't even been invented. Below:

http://www.joyofbaking.com/breakfast/DateWalnutBread.html

PhotoFun

In the age of digital photography, there is no real original photo but only luminance data. Most cameras will present an optimized jpeg as the photo, but that is a convenience.

Photobooth Jpeg:

Greyscale ie all the shades of luminance available:

Straightened, cropped, and adjusted. The available luminance is always the same, but greyscale with filters in various combinations will bring out different aspects:

The controls on PhotoBooth:

Mortality

Internet News (Le Monde) reported yesterday the rather astounding results of a recent study in the U.S.: White adults are doing less well than their Black counterparts: they have a lowered life expectancy. Why? Noteworthy, this is true of less educated whites at fifty, those with no post-secondary education that an earlier generation would have called working class. In effect, these workers are ravaged by drugs, alcohol and sciatica (overwork).

The presenting article seems to think we are dealing with the effects of stress due to competition, but I would tend to see it differently. To my mind, they are exhausted consumers, consumers of everything: yes, drugs, alcohol, but also of work and leisure. The movie critic Pauline Kael called it years ago: employment has become our last area of heroism, it is a priviledge we compete to enter. And in current times, chilling with Netflix has become something of an achievement as well, so that working and not working, playing and not playing, have become equally exhausting.

Am I advocating regression? In a way; there are stages to aging, ways to let go of youth. Without hurtling oneself forward...

http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2015/11/03/hausse-inedite-du-taux-de-mortalite-au-sein-de-la-population-blanche-americaine-la-moins-eduquee_4801740_3222.html