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Post by glennkoks on Jun 21, 2021 2:31:22 GMT
The problem I have with chaos theory and climate is there are too many cyclical patterns. We have the seasons, Milankovich Cycles, AMO's, PDO's and probably an endless other number of cycles and feedbacks we do not know about.
I don't doubt we are in a warmer pattern. I was around in the 1970's. But the same factors that have driven our climate long before the Industrial Revolution are still doing so. And those cycles will certainly repeat themselves. A little bit of Chaos only makes it harder to forecast.
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Post by glennkoks on Jun 4, 2021 23:20:20 GMT
Strange weather. Houston has only recorded one 90 degree day this summer. The high today in Bismarck, ND as we type this is 100F. We have also received rain on 19 of the last 23 days.
And to think a few years ago drought was the new norm for Texas in a warming world...
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Post by glennkoks on Jun 1, 2021 12:22:26 GMT
May was about 1 degree cooler than average for my tiny part of the globe. Mostly due to cloud cover and a wetter than average month. Very comfortable by our standards. Dr. Roy Spencer has not updated the UAH global temperature yet but it will be interesting to see if it is the second month in a row below the baseline.
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Post by glennkoks on May 26, 2021 23:21:29 GMT
So long as they remember why they have shifted and don't vote for the Turkeys down there. They are slow learners, 100 Years, 100 governments, 200M dead, and zero success. Keep saying it. The problem is that they moved because they didn't like the consequences of their actions - but they don't connect their actions to those consequences. Hence the pattern repeats. Someone who voted for more gun control and then moved because the crime rate went up will cheerfully vote for more control in their new location. When it comes to the Californication of Texas it is quite the opposite. They are cashing out of their multi million dollar houses, buying in the Lone Star State for much less and living off the so called "fruits of their labor". They firmly believe it was the liberal policies that led to their success. Like locusts that swarm over the landscape they have taxed and regulated their way to prosperity. Those left behind in the Golden state will be left with overpriced real estate, outrageous taxes, no water, a pile of debt in what really resembles a Ponzi Scheme. Those who got out early will prosper. Those left behind will pay. After they ruin Texas they will most likely move to Arkansas where cheap land and a moderate climate will attract them. Real estate prices are so crazy in Texas homes are selling for 20% more than listing price with cash offers. I have no idea how this is sustainable and I can't see how this ends anywhere else but in a huge crash. Probably in the stock market first...
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Post by glennkoks on May 22, 2021 13:55:23 GMT
I'm probably going to curse myself by saying this but the weather down here has been quite bearable. A cooler May than average for sure. But the month is not over yet either.
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Post by glennkoks on May 10, 2021 2:57:58 GMT
Copy, Paste and stick everything you can on a jump drive because the newest movement from the AGW crowd is to erase the AMO. "Today, in a research article published in the same journal Science, my colleagues and I have provided what we consider to be the most definitive evidence yet that the AMO doesn’t actually exist." www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-atlantic-multidecadal-oscillation/Currently even NOAA recognizes the existence of the AMO not only from modern instruments but from paleo-climate proxies and has this to say: Is the AMO a natural phenomenon, or is it related to global warming? Instruments have observed AMO cycles only for the last 150 years, not long enough to conclusively answer this question. However, studies of paleoclimate proxies, such as tree rings and ice cores, have shown that oscillations similar to those observed instrumentally have been occurring for at least the last millennium. This is clearly longer than modern man has been affecting climate, so the AMO is probably a natural climate oscillation. In the 20th century, the climate swings of the AMO have alternately camouflaged and exaggerated the effects of global warming, and made attribution of global warming more difficult to ascertain. Now that it is showing signs of flipping from it's warm phase to it's cold phase there will be a huge push to erase it's very existence.
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Post by glennkoks on May 10, 2021 2:29:13 GMT
Old Farmers Almanac did NOT get Winter 2020-21 very accurate. They missed the nail and hit themselves in the head. You decide on their summer forecast. Accuweather's looks more realistic. In all fairness I am very skeptical of anyones ability to forecast the weather outside of two weeks. Did anyone forecast in advance anything close to the arctic outbreak we endured during mid February? Especially in Texas? In the minimum it was top three coldest outbreaks in the last half century or so. When it comes to long term weather forecasting I doubt anyones ability to correctly forecast. Which is one of the reasons why I seriously doubt the models when it comes to longer term climate.
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Post by glennkoks on May 3, 2021 20:56:21 GMT
From Bermuda to the Azores to Gibraltar, the sub-tropical high pressure ridge is collapsing. Is this a collapse of the Hadley cells? If it is then the Ferrel Cells and associated weather will all move toward the equator the polar cell circulation will follow and it will get colder in North Europe and North Africa (it is already) from weather reports in the sub Saharan Africa and the Middle East. That is a good question. According to PNAS an expansion of the Hadley Cells "drive a pattern of global dryness featuring widespread reduction of tropospheric humidity and increased frequency of dry months, particularly over subtropical and tropical land regions." So it would stand to reason a collapse of the Hadley Cells would drive the opposite pattern. www.pnas.org/content/112/12/3630It seems to me the climate is going through a change. Perhaps the opposite of the Pacific climate shift of 1976 that ended decades of cooling? Perhaps something stronger and more abrupt?
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Post by glennkoks on Mar 2, 2021 20:48:28 GMT
Spring looks depressing around here after the big freeze. Grass is all dead, palm trees look dead, bushes, shrubs, citrus trees. Dead
Hopefully some will make it back
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Post by glennkoks on Feb 24, 2021 13:38:54 GMT
The Valentine's Day Freeze of 2021 will probably surpass Hurricane Harvey as the second costliest weather event in our Nations history. Harvey's price tag was about 20 billion in todays dollars. That does not include the 50 billion in electricity costs that will have to be passed down to the tax payer.
Residential, agricultural and auto insurance claims are all mounting.
Unfortunately I wonder how many busted pipes and home insurance claims could have been avoided if we would have had the power to keep our homes above freezing? Natural disasters suck, self inflicted gunshot wounds suck even more.
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Post by glennkoks on Feb 22, 2021 12:57:08 GMT
It did not freeze this morning at my casa! So things are looking up. In addition the price of electricity is back down and things are getting back to normal after the coldest arctic invasion since 1989. I can't move much further south and still stay in the U.S. so I guess I better adapt. Glen you could always go right a little then down - Florida did not get the freeze (this time) and whereas Texas is full of Californians we are full of expat New Yorkers. Same number of hurricanes although we can get them from both sides. Florida power companies do not have the same variable rate approach so there is a level of consistency in the charging. Nautonier, My wife loves the panhandle of Florida and we vacation quite often there in Sea Grove just east of Destin. The beaches there are pristine. And if I have to pick between mostly liberal expat New Yorkers and crazy liberal expat Californian's you could just flip a coin. Liberal is liberal and I don't want to live near them... Neither Florida or Texas have a state income tax so that is a draw. But the one thing I can't deal with in Florida is the traffic. It seems you can't get anywhere in that state without getting stuck in it. So while I could go further south there and avoid some of the bad winters we have every 30 years or so, I think I will stay in Texas. With that being said if I could go back in time I would love to be born in Key West in about 1946 when it was a quaint fishing island. Re-live my life as a lobster or stone crab fisherman!
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Post by glennkoks on Feb 21, 2021 13:35:47 GMT
It did not freeze this morning at my casa! So things are looking up. In addition the price of electricity is back down and things are getting back to normal after the coldest arctic invasion since 1989. I can't move much further south and still stay in the U.S. so I guess I better adapt.
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Post by glennkoks on Feb 20, 2021 13:30:44 GMT
"Texas was "seconds and minutes" away from months long blackouts" Texas Tribune.. Sounds like a really scary headline framing the producers and grid managers in Texas as hero's because they "saved the grid for months". I am no electrical engineer, but when I overload my generator it trips a breaker and shuts off. It does not catch my house on fire. I am very skeptical of these claims. There were probably dozens of factors that came into play with this fiasco. Two of the biggest factors outside the fact Texas was not prepared for a once in every 30 year or so event was: 1.) First and foremost ERCOT allows producers to charge a maximum rate of 9.00 a KwH when the grid is facing high usage in rare situations. They call this "scarcity pricing". It has been my experience in life that when regulators offer economic incentives people find a way to meet these incentives. Texas is a de-regulated state, which means power is bought and sold in a quasi free market. The thought process behind this is it would strongly discourage usage in rare situations where demand is about to exceed supply. In reality it is a goal for producers to meet to hit the jackpot. 2.) ERCOT has very low capital requirements for REP's (Retail Electric Providers). These REP's buy electricity on the futures market normally for around .02 cents a KwH. They mark it up to around .12 cents and sell it to residential customers. What happened in this instance was many of these fly by night REP's did not anticipate this once every 30 or so year event and were forced to buy electricity on the spot market at "scarcity pricing". These REP's were almost instantly insolvent because for days their residential customers are burning through electricity at 9.00 a KwH and were locked into fixed rate billing at .12 cents. Now here is the situation Texas is in. Up to 22 REP's face insolvency. They owe millions of dollars and someone is not going to get paid. The producers normally work on very narrow margins can simply not afford to "not get paid". They have paid for the gas and coal to fire these plants in advance. So the only logical scenario since you guessed it the Texas Grid is clearly too big to fail is the tax payer picks up the tab for this. But it's good to know Texas was "seconds" away from month long black outs and these hero's saved us. www.energychoicematters.com/stories/20210218aa.html
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Post by glennkoks on Feb 18, 2021 17:16:24 GMT
Most pallet wood is oak and of course it's fine for your fireplace. But I'm sure I'd burn some sooty conifer wood if it came to it. I remember a few years back in 2011 during a worse storm than this one in OK, the power was out for over a week. They would get it back on, lights would come on, then boom! Something blows and its lights out for another night. happened a few times. It's pretty disheartening. That was a longer cold spell with no reprieve in sight. Walnut, it's been so cold I would burn oak pallets, old fence, my high school yearbooks, or even a brick of marijuana if it would provide some extra BTU's
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Post by glennkoks on Feb 18, 2021 15:51:42 GMT
After 3 days the power is back on at least temporarily. And a couple of lessons learned that may provide food for thought and hopefully ease pain for someone in the future.
Lesson one: If you have an all electric home and gas is available get the gas. It's reliable and cheap. Natural gas is now a priority.
Lesson two: Generators. If you can afford a big generator that kicks on all by itself and runs on natural gas get it. If you can't afford a big one get one of the small Honda 2000 models or an equivalent. Why? Fuel consumption. There is a range at which you have more than enough power to get the things you need but not enough to power the 220 bigger appliances. For example my neighbor has the Honda 2000 series and is up and running everything that I am with my 3500 KW generator. He is using 1/2 the fuel I am.
Lesson three: Firewood. I have used an incredible amount of firewood over the last week. Everyone being out I have sourced pallets from my local box stores to supplement my supply. Look for the ones that have an HT brand on them. It stands for heat treated and they are well seasoned. Clean oak or other hardwood ones are preferable.
Lesson four: An old school coffee or bean can, a roll of toilet paper and a pint of 70% isopropyl alcohol make a great emergency heater. I sourced a bunch of bottles of alcohol for a dollar each and have been using them for emergency BTU's. They burn clean and carbon monoxide is not a risk.
I am amazed at the number of families who have simply huddled around a small room wrapped in blankets in the dark because they either don't have the knowledge or skills to provide the simplest comforts. I have neighbors who have said they were afraid to use their gas stove to heat their house? WTF? I asked several of them what have they been cooking on the last twenty years without dying? And then there is the ever so common "pallet wood is bad for your fireplace". And the looks I get from my emergency canned heaters...
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