Anybody tried ducks? They are supposed to be hardier, less disease prone. Some breeds are supposed to be good layers.
B-Rock
JoinedPosts by B-Rock
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27
Raising Chickens!
by jgnat ini had another great idea the other day; raise chickens!
in this rapidly changing recessionary world, i cast my mind back to stories of the depression.
farmers fared better than urban dwellers.
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113
Should I walk away from my "underwater" home?
by The Berean inmillions are now facing the dilemma of making house payments on a property that is not worth what is being paid.
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after originally promising to repay the bank, is there a "moral" obligation to continue in a dwelling, even at a loss ... or is it best to exercise the "legal" right of foreclosure and pay the consequences ?.
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B-Rock
The mortgage is a promise to pay on borrowed money. The house is just collateral. They can still go after you for deficiencies after foreclosure. In an up market, that wasn't likely. In a sharply down market it is much more likely with a foreclosure sale not covering the mortgage balance. You are far better off trying to negotiate and making an arrangement with the lender. But if they see that you are able to pay your contractual obligations and are just refusing to, they probably won't be changing anything.
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Mr. Bloom explains Global Warming.
by Nathan Natas inhttp://www.breitbart.tv/scam-scam-scam-european-parliament-member-rips-global-warming-hysteria/.
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B-Rock
I don't respond to videos. And villabolo lies:
And that December 2009 with all the blizzards in portions of the US, Europe and China had cold temps only in about 10% of the planet's surface while the other 90% had warmer temps?
Right there. See that? A lie. NASA MODIS November 2009. December was even colder.
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It feels like the Ice Age and not Global Warming
by MsDucky init's cold!
are the ice caps still melting?
idk?.
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B-Rock
Where did I miss the memo where a scientist said "due to global warming, it won't get really cold anymore?"
There is one in this article.....
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/members/politics/187242/1/The-beginning-of-a-new-ice-age
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Climate Greenhouse Warming Equation Wrong
by VM44 ini mentioned this over in the thread.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/186270/1/climate-change-nee-global-warming-strkes-again.
i thought the subject should have a thread of its own.. researcher: basic greenhouse equations "totally wrong".
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B-Rock
Jasper Kirby, CERN researcher for 25 years, on the relationship between Cosmic Rays and Climate:
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56
Climate Greenhouse Warming Equation Wrong
by VM44 ini mentioned this over in the thread.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/186270/1/climate-change-nee-global-warming-strkes-again.
i thought the subject should have a thread of its own.. researcher: basic greenhouse equations "totally wrong".
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56
Climate Greenhouse Warming Equation Wrong
by VM44 ini mentioned this over in the thread.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/186270/1/climate-change-nee-global-warming-strkes-again.
i thought the subject should have a thread of its own.. researcher: basic greenhouse equations "totally wrong".
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B-Rock
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/please-show-us-your-code/comment-page-2/
Scafetta and Wilson findings coincide with those of Dr Nahle’s in Amplitude of Solar Irradiance and Change of Temperature:
“Last week, Nicola Scafetta and Richard C. Wilson published a peer reviewed paper in which they revealed a considerable Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) increase of 0.033 % per decade between the solar activity minima of 1986 and 1996, which is comparable to the 0.037 % found in the ACRIM composite. The data gathered by satellites, which were reported by Scafetta and Wilson, coincide with my theory of a correlation between the Amplitude of TSI and the Change of the Earth’s Tropospheric Temperature until 1998. In my article “Heat Stored by Greenhouse Gases”, I concluded that the fluctuation of the TSI of the last 300 years had been 1.25 W/m^2, causing a change of the Earth’s temperature of 0.56 °C, which is the maximum averaged change in tropospheric temperature achieved in the 1990s (the average of change of temperature in 1998 was 0.51 °C). The correlation resides in the total change since 1610 AD, which I had calculated was 1.25 W/m^2. The new findings fix the change at 1.32 W/m^2 which would produce a change of temperature of 0.594 °C, while the change I had calculated would produce a change of temperature of 0.56 °C. Nonetheless, both calculations of the changes of temperature based on the fluctuation of the TSI coincide with the natural change observed in 1998 (0.52°C) and with the total natural oscillation of temperature of -3 °C to 3 °C in the Holocene Period.”
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56
Climate Greenhouse Warming Equation Wrong
by VM44 ini mentioned this over in the thread.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/186270/1/climate-change-nee-global-warming-strkes-again.
i thought the subject should have a thread of its own.. researcher: basic greenhouse equations "totally wrong".
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56
Climate Greenhouse Warming Equation Wrong
by VM44 ini mentioned this over in the thread.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/186270/1/climate-change-nee-global-warming-strkes-again.
i thought the subject should have a thread of its own.. researcher: basic greenhouse equations "totally wrong".
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B-Rock
The Unbearable Complexity of Climate
27 12 2009Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Figure 1. The Experimental Setup
I keep reading statements in various places about how it is indisputable “simple physics” that if we increase amount of atmospheric CO2, it will inevitably warm the planet. Here’s a typical example:
In the hyperbolic language that has infested the debate, researchers have been accused of everything from ditching the scientific method to participating in a vast conspiracy. But the basic concepts of the greenhouse effect is a matter of simple physics and chemistry, and have been part of the scientific dialog for roughly a century.
Here’s another:
The important thing is that we know how greenhouse gases affect climate. It has even been predicted hundred years ago by Arrhenius. It is simple physics.
Unfortunately, while the physics is simple, the climate is far from simple. It is one of the more complex systems that we have ever studied. The climate is a tera-watt scale planetary sized heat engine. It is driven by both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial forcings, a number of which are unknown, and many of which are poorly understood and/or difficult to measure. It is inherently chaotic and turbulent, two conditions for which we have few mathematical tools.
The climate is comprised of five major subsystems — atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere. All of these subsystems are imperfectly understood. Each of these subsystems has its own known and unknown internal and external forcings, feedbacks, resonances, and cyclical variations. In addition, each subsystem affects all of the other subsystems through a variety of known and unknown forcings and feedbacks.
Then there is the problem of scale. Climate has crucially important processes at physical scales from the molecular to the planetary, and at temporal scales from milliseconds to millennia.
As a result of this almost unimaginable complexity, simple physics is simply inadequate to predict the effect of a change in one of the hundreds and hundreds of things that affect the climate. I will give two examples of why “simple physics” doesn’t work with the climate — a river, and a block of steel. I’ll start with a thought experiment with the block of steel.
Suppose that I want to find out about how temperature affects solids. I take a 75 kg block of steel, and I put the bottom end of it in a bucket of hot water. I duct tape a thermometer to the top end in the best experimental fashion, and I start recording how the temperature change with time. At first, nothing happens. So I wait. And soon, the temperature of the other end of the block of steel starts rising. Hey, simple physics, right?
To verify my results, I try the experiment with a block of copper. I get the same result, the end of the block that’s not in the hot water soon begins to warm up. I try it with a block of glass, same thing. My tentative conclusion is that simple physics says that if you heat one end of a solid, the other end will eventually heat up as well.
So I look around for a final test. Not seeing anything obvious, I have a flash of insight. I weigh about 75 kg. So I sit with my feet in the bucket of hot water, put the thermometer in my mouth, and wait for my head to heat up. This experimental setup is shown in Figure 1 above.
After all, simple physics is my guideline, I know what’s going to happen, I just have to wait.
And wait … and wait …
As our thought experiment shows, simple physics may simply not work when applied to a complex system. The problem is that there are feedback mechanisms that negate the effect of the hot water on my cold toes. My body has a preferential temperature which is not set by the external forcings.
For a more nuanced view of what is happening, let’s consider the second example, a river. Again, a thought experiment.
I take a sheet of plywood, and I cover it with some earth. I tilt it up so it slopes from one edge to the other. For our thought experiment, we’ll imagine that this is a hill that goes down to the ocean.
I place a steel ball at the top edge of the earth-covered plywood, and I watch what happens. It rolls, as simple physics predicts, straight down to the lower edge. I try it with a wooden ball, and get the same result. I figure maybe it’s because of the shape of the object.
So I make a small wooden sled, and put it on the plywood. Again, it slides straight down to the ocean. I try it with a miniature steel shed, same result. It goes directly downhill to the ocean as well. Simple physics, understood by Isaac Newton.
As a final test, I take a hose and I start running some water down from the top edge of my hill to make a model river. To my surprise, although the model river starts straight down the hill, it soon starts to wander. Before long, it has formed a meandering stream, which changes its course with time. Sections of the river form long loops, the channel changes, loops are cut off, new channels form, and after while we get something like this:
Figure 2. Meanders, oxbow bends, and oxbow lakes in a river system. Note the old channels where the river used to run.
The most amazing part is that the process never stops. No matter how long we run the river experiment, the channel continues to change. What’s going on here?
Well, the first thing that we can conclude is that, just as in our experiment with the steel block, simple physics simply doesn’t work in this situation. Simple physics says that things roll straight downhill, and clearly, that ain’t happening here … it is obvious we need better tools to analyze the flow of the river.
Are there mathematical tools that we can use to understand this system? Yes, but they are not simple. The breakthrough came in the 1990’s, with the discovery by Adrian Bejan of the Constructal Law. The Constructal Law applies to all flow systems which are far from equilibrium, like a river or the climate.
It turns out that these types of flow systems are not passive systems which can take up any configuration. Instead, they actively strive to maximize some aspect of the system. For the river, as for the climate, the system strives to maximize the sum of the energy moved and the energy lost through turbulence. See the discussion of these principleshere, here, here, and here. There is also a website devoted to various applications of the Constructal Law here.
There are several conclusions that we can make from the application of the Constructal Law to flow systems:
1. Any flow system far from equilibrium is not free to take up any form as the climate models assume. Instead, it has a preferential state which it works actively to achieve.
2. This preferential state, however, is never achieved. Instead, the system constantly overshoots and undershoots that state, and does not settle down to one final form. The system never stops modifying its internal aspects to move towards the preferential state.
3. The results of changes in such a flow system are often counterintuitive. For example, suppose we want to shorten the river. Simple physics says it should be easy. So we cut through an oxbow bend, and it makes the river shorter … but only for a little while. Soon the river readjusts, and some other part of the river becomes longer. The length of the river is actively maintained by the system. Contrary to our simplistic assumptions, the length of the river is not changed by our actions.
So that’s the problem with “simple physics” and the climate. For example, simple physics predicts a simple linear relationship between the climate forcings and the temperature. People seriously believe that a change of X in the forcings will lead inevitably to a chance of A * X in the temperature. This is called the “climate sensitivity”, and is a fundamental assumption in the climate models. The IPCC says that if CO2 doubles, we will get a rise of around 3C in the global temperature. However, there is absolutely no evidence to support that claim, only computer models. But the modelsassume this relationship, so they cannot be used to establish the relationship.
However, as rivers clearly show, there is no such simple relationship in a flow system far from equilibrium. We can’t cut through an oxbow to shorten the river, it just lengthens elsewhere to maintain the same total length. Instead of being affected by a change in the forcings, the system sets its own preferential operating conditions (e.g. length, temperature, etc.) based on the natural constraints and flow possibilities and other parameters of the system.
Final conclusion? Because climate is a flow system far from equilibrium, it is ruled by the Constructal Law. As a result, there is no physics-based reason to assume that increasing CO2 will make any difference to the global temperature, and the Constructal Law gives us reason to think that it may make no difference at all. In any case, regardless of Arrhenius, the “simple physics” relationship between CO2 and global temperature is something that we cannot simply assume to be true.
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Climate Change (nee Global Warming) Strkes Again!!
by slipnslidemaster inthe mid-atlantic states were completely white on sunday, december 20, 2009, in the wake of a record-breaking snow storm.
the storm deposited between 12 and 30 inches of snow in virginia, maryland, and washington, d.c. on december 19, according to the national weather service.
for many locations, the snowfall totals broke records for the most snow to fall in a single december day.. the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (modis) on nasas aqua satellite captured this view of the chesapeake bay region as the clouds were clearing on december 20. the snow highlights the courses of the potomac and susquehanna rivers from the appalachian mountains to the chesapeake bay.
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B-Rock
Our current weather: A test for forecast models – December shaping up to be one of the coldest on record in the USA
27 12 2009It has often been said that “Weather is not climate”, but ultimately it provides the only meaningful way to verify climate models. Did the climate models predict the cold, snowy weather which has been seen across much of the US?
According to NOAA, October was the third coldest on record in the US, with almost every state showing temperatures from one to ten degrees below normal. Some Parts of Colorado received record snowfall during October, starting the first week of the month.
Image from HPRCC – University of Nebraska at Lincoln
With a few days left, it appears that December is headed for a repeat, with temperatures ranging from one to fifteen degrees below normal. (Note that the color scale is different from October, now the greens show more negative departure, even South Texas is at -6F)
Image from HPRCC – University of Nebraska at Lincoln
Temperatures for the rest of the month are forecast by NCEP to be below normal for almost the entire country, so it is unlikely that the map will change much before New Years Day.
So let’s compare the complete Autumn temperatures vs. the forecasts from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. In August, CPC forecast that most of the US would have above normal temperatures from October through December, and perhaps more importantly did did not predict that any areas would have below normal temperatures.
As you can see below, their prediction was largely reversed from what has happened. Most of the country has seen below normal temperatures during the same period.
Image from HPRCC – University of Nebraska at Lincoln
So my question is – if the climate models can’t reliably predict the next three months, what basis do they have to claim their ability to forecast 100 years out? It is well known in the weather modeling community that beyond about three days, the models tend to break down due to chaos.
We have all heard lots of predictions of warmer winters, less snow, animal populations moving north, drought, dying ski resorts, etc. But did anyone in the climate modeling community forecast the cold, snowy start to winter which has occurred. If not, it would appear that their models are not mature enough to base policy decisions on.
On the other side of the pond, The Met Office forecast 2010 to be the warmest year ever, as they last did in 2007. On cue, the weather turned bitter cold immediately after the forecast and it appears that the unusally cold weather will continue at least through mid-January. As in 2007, the Met office 2010 forecast is not getting off to a good start:
