Thursday - April 28, 2011

Oh Noes!

A tornado warning has been issued for our part of New Jersey. High winds, hail, intense rain, severe thunderstorms. Run away, hide, panic!

The TV stations are going whacko.

I’m not taking this lightly; it’s good that such warning systems exist. In Kansas and Iowa and the other states in Tornado Alley they can save your life. And there has been some awful and unusual weather around the country over the past couple of weeks. Including tornadoes in the most unlikely places.

It’s just that I have some doubts about such things here in New Jersey. And I’ve seen the weather people overreact so many many times before.

But if somehow you stop hearing from me in the middle of a po

update, 40+ minutes later: ..st.  Ha, a bit of self inflicted irony there. We got some really heavy rain as the system came in, and some really heavy rain a bit later when the system moved out. That’s it. No hail or thunder, no big winds, no twisters. Now it’s just back to our regular heavy rain that we’ve been having nearly the entire month. Oh joy.

The tornado anomaly over the past few days has been very severe. Tornadoes have touched down and caused massive damage in the most unlikely of places. The news this morning said that over 200 people have died from these storms.

So don’t take the warnings lightly. Even if you live in New Jersey or other places where tornadoes almost never happen. “Almost never” can still get you killed. Be alert, be prepared. 

Posted by Drew458     on 04/28/2011 at 09:43 AM   
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   Friday - April 01, 2011

Not Funny

Mother Nature is pulling her own April Fool’s joke here. It’s snowing. We’ve been having “wintry mix” since last night, wet sloppy bits falling from the sky. But now it’s pretty much all snow, and it’s starting to stick.

Bad Gaia, bad! Winter is over. Go away. Go back to Binghamton and Watertown NY where you belong!

Huh, I wonder if Al Gore is in the area?

Posted by Drew458     on 04/01/2011 at 10:35 AM   
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   Thursday - March 10, 2011

The Groundhog Was Right

We’re having another day of torrential rain here. This makes it the 8th heavy rainstorm we’ve had since about Valentine’s Day, when winter unofficially ended here. Before that it had been viciously cold, and we’d had more than double the usual amount of snow for the whole season. But the ice and snow here is long gone, washed away by the rains and the warmer weather. Large parts of the state have had serious flooding. Not Clinton, not yet. But the river is pretty high. Keep your fingers crossed.

Looks like the old groundhog Punxsutawney Phil was correct with his prediction this year. He didn’t see his shadow, probably because he froze to death the instant they pulled him out of his burrow. If all this rain since had come down as snow, we’d be buried. We’d have 10 feet of snow on the ground. More. Which would be cool. But not really.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/10/2011 at 11:51 AM   
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   Sunday - February 20, 2011

Oops They Did It Again

FREDERICTON — A $200-million wind farm in northern New Brunswick is frozen solid, cutting off a potential supply of renewable energy for NB Power.

The 25-kilometre stretch of wind turbines, located 70 kilometres northwest of Bathurst, N.B. has been completely shutdown for several weeks due to heavy ice covering the blades.

Wintery conditions also temporarily shutdown the site last winter, just months after its completion. Some or all of the turbines were offline for several days, with “particularly severe icing” blamed.

The accumulated ice alters the aerodynamics of the blades, rendering them ineffective as airfoils. The added weight further immobilizes the structures.

Vitek says workers are trying to find a way to prevent ice buildup from occurring again in the future. The shutdown has not had any effect on employment at the site, which provides 12 permanent jobs.

Now, if they’d thought of this ahead of time, and realized that it actually gets cold in Canada in the winter, they would have built the turbine blades with electric heating elements in them. Yeah, that’ll fix it. Or maybe if they got government funding to build giant greenhouses over the pylons to keep the weather off. Yup, that’s another brilliant solution. Thank you, thank you very much.

But you know how the leftist/greenie mind works. They’ll blame anything and everything before admitting that their ideas are wrong.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/20/2011 at 09:19 AM   
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   Saturday - February 05, 2011

Phew

We’re catching a small break in the weather here. All the snow and ice we expected turned out to be rain; it’s been raining steadily since 9:30 this morning. Temperature has gone up a lot; I can hardly see my breath outside. Right now at 10pm it’s 38°F out. All this means the roads are getting nice and clear, and some snow is thinning off the roofs. But the snow on the ground was already rain saturated and then frozen hard, so it isn’t melting much yet at all, or shrinking either. And the forecast is for an even warmer day tomorrow. Excellent. So we get a couple days off, before the next big storm hits us in a few days. There is no escape. Damn this global warming.

Here’s a link to how much snow has fallen in the major city areas around the USA. Although it’s still early February, we’ve had more than 4 times as much snow so far this season than the usual amount for the entire season.

Crivens, is it Spring yet?

Posted by Drew458     on 02/05/2011 at 09:52 PM   
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   Friday - February 04, 2011

Brrr

From the Weather Channel -

“and now, your local on the 8s”

“Currently, in your area it is 1 degrees”

Aiy yai yai!

yeah, but somewhere it’s bright and sunny and the beaches are full of pretty girls catching some rays. Argentina maybe? Not here, that’s for sure. Nor Australia, where the cyclone finished what the floods started. Maybe Fiji? Nope. Ah ha, found it. The place you want to be today is Niue in the Cook Islands, where it’s been between 68 (20) at night and 84(29) in the afternoon for the past several days. Niue is an island about 1000 miles east of Fiji and about 300 miles south of American Somoa, and is home to the University of the South Pacific, one of only two regional universities in the world. Missy under the fold here must be one of their international students, taking a little time off to enjoy the weather native style.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/04/2011 at 07:35 AM   
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   Wednesday - January 26, 2011

Round Two

We had about 4” here today I’m guessing, and the sleet compacted that a little and put a nice crust of ice on top of it. The weather wienies are saying that that was just a warm up, and that we can expect another 8-10” from this part, which will snow all night and into tomorrow. So about a foot total.

We got out to the store around noon; the roads were fine because they’ve been heavily salted. I don’t expect that is the case right now.

Crap, I should have gone to the library too. I’m reading Triumph of the Sun by Wilbur Smith, a bit of historical fiction, probably for the 6th time. At this point Khartoum has fallen, General Gordon is dead, the dashed British relief forces never got there, and Rebecca has been taken to be a concubine for the Mahdi. So it’s all downhill from here, and my interest in the familiar old story is waning. Who wants to read about the jihadis winning? That sux.

Guess I’ll have to watch the TV. Is it Spring yet?

AM Update: Looks like the weather folks called it conservatively for once. We picked up about a foot last night alone, and it’s still snowing gently. 20” total for this storm in parts of the state; 19” is the official measurement in NYC. Reporters are calling it “Snowmageddon, Round 7”. I’m not sure they’re counting properly. It’s hovering right around freezing now, so I guess it’s time to go and dig out the car.

Commuters up and down the East Coast began the all-too-familiar task of digging out cars, shoveling sidewalks and slogging and slipping through a treacherous morning commute on Thursday after a drawn-out storm dumped more than a foot of snow in some areas overnight, heaping more misery on a region that has been hit by one snowstorm after another.

The storm started Wednesday with icy mix but overnight gave a wallop of heavy blowing snow in many places, stranding thousands of airplane passengers and leaving more than 400,000 customers in and around the nation’s capital without power.

Since Dec. 14, snow has fallen eight times on the New York region — or an average of about once every five days. That includes the blizzard that dropped 20 inches on New York City and paralyzed travel after Christmas. When the snows arrived Wednesday, the city had already seen 36 inches of snow this season in comparison with the full-winter average of 21 inches.
...
Through Tuesday, Boston had received 50.4 inches of snow, a nearly 270 percent increase over normal snowfalls of 18.8 inches at the same time in the season. The central Massachusetts city of Worcester had gotten 49.3 inches while the norm is 28.7 inches. Providence, R.I., had recorded 31.7 inches for the season, twice the norm of 15.7 inches.

Damn that Global Warming!

We have another storm forecast for Friday into Saturday. Oh joy.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/26/2011 at 08:53 PM   
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Let it snow, let it snow, let it … NO !!!

Here we go again. Another major snowstorm crawling across the Northeast today. Heavy snowfall all morning, all day, into the evening. Predictions of 6"-10" even for my dry corner of the state.

Wife’s office is closed, all the local schools are closed. This is the second time in a week. It’s either been seriously sub-freezing, or snowing, since ... before Christmas? Which seems ages and ages ago, even though we’re still in January.

Most towns in this part of the country, from DC up to northern Maine, are reporting more snow so far this season than they usually get all year long. I’m know I’m tired of it, that’s for sure.

Radio was saying last night that NJ has already used up it’s entire winter snow plowing budget and will have to take extra funds from other areas. We had a similar situation at our condo park last year, which wasn’t all that snowy. Everybody had to pay a few hundred extra to the Association in the Spring.

I’m having the thought that we’ve become too ... sensitive? ... to the snow. And too used to those warmer years we had where not much snow fell. My mother always tells me about the winter of 1960, when there was so much snow piled up that cars had to have tall flags on them so that other drivers could see them at intersections. And how it snowed every week. I certainly remember the winter of 77-78 when the cold came so early we were ice skating by early November. I don’t remember schools and businesses being constantly closed. Seems that people managed a little better in those days somehow.

Not that I’m suggesting that everyone should be out there risking their lives to get to school and work. But is there that much risk in just muddling through? I recall my first boss yelling at me on the phone to put on skis or get out the dogsled, whatever was necessary, just get to work dammit!  And I did. And the store was just about empty the whole day, but that’s beside the point. I got there, through half a foot of unplowed snow. Looking back, I’m kind of proud of that. Was that stupid? When I lived up in Binghamton NY, 4” of snow was just weather; we got about our business. The tri-state metro area seems to go belly up over the smallest amounts of the white stuff ... but consider the population density before reacting to that. I think about 15% of the national population lives in the Philly-NJ-NYC zone. This is the most densely peopled part of the nation, and there is only minor public transportation outside of the biggest cities. Come to think of it, even though this whole area has always been rather built up, there wasn’t this kind of population in 1960 or in 1978. So maybe this is the best approach?

There can’t be many snow days left for the school kids. If it keeps snowing like this all season, I guess they’ll be giving up their Spring Break and going to class until mid-July.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/26/2011 at 09:19 AM   
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   Friday - January 21, 2011

I Miss Global Warming

We had another snowstorm late last night. This was just 72 hours after the pile of wet slop that fell from the sky on Tuesday, which was a few days after the snow that fell on Friday, which was a few days after the snow that fell on ... well, you get the picture. We’re having winter this winter. Quite unusual for the New Jersey I’ve come to know and detest. Just about everywhere in the northeast has had 20-50% more snow so far this season than they usually average for the entire winter.

When I first moved here, back in the halcyon days of Global Warming, I distinctly recall going outside for coffee breaks in February in only a light jacket; we only had one or two snows the whole winter with no more than a few inches total. It was awesome.

Today the temperature is just below freezing, and the predicted high for the day is just over freezing. I’d better get out there and enjoy it, because the weather wienies say that by Monday it’s going down to -9. Which is somewhere between “quite vexing” and “my goodness” on the English thermometer. After that it will warm up ... and snow again.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/21/2011 at 07:57 AM   
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   Friday - January 14, 2011

crickey!

Pity the poor land down under. Australia and Tasmania have been inundated by heavy rains for weeks now. Flooding across huge parts of the nation, especially in Queensland. And the rains aren’t over yet.

In several places the flood waters have been 25 - 30 feet deep. It’s going to cost them billions to clean up when this is all over. Still, no worries. The Aussies will pitch in and get the job done. No whinging.

But here’s a wild little bit of flood news that sounds like one of their famous tall tales ...

Two bull sharks have been spotted swimming past the McDonald’s restaurant in Goodna. Goodna butcher Steve Bateman saw one of the sharks swimming through the flooded waters of Williams Street near his bucher’s shop in the St Ives shopping centre yesterday. There were several reports of another shark spotted in Queen Street, the main street through Goodna.

Bull sharks have been spotted in the Goodna sections of the Bremer BRISBANE River previously, with fishermen regularly catching them from the Goodna boat ramp.

Ipswich councillor for the Goodna region Paul Tully said while it may sound almost too bizarre to be real, the shark sighting was valid.

“It would have swam several kilometres in from the river, across Evan Marginson Park and the motorway,” Cr Tully said.

“It’s definitely a first for Goodna, to have a shark in the main street.

Goodna was awash with water eight metres deep during the past 48 hours. The water receded dramatically overnight.

Goodna is about 20 miles southwest of Brisbane, though about 40 miles up the meandering river from that city. Brisbane is on the east coast of Australia, right above the middle of the eastward bulge of the continent.

BRISBANE, Australia, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Floods left parts of Australia’s third-biggest city on Thursday looking like a war zone in need of years of reconstruction, the state premier said, while fresh threats loomed with a cyclone forecast offshore.

The floods across the state of Queensland have killed at least 19 people, 12 of whom died in the Toowoomba area inland, and 61 were missing, the state government said.

Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley region, west of state capital Brisbane, were devastated by tsunami-like flash flooding on Monday.

Large parts of Brisbane have become muddy lakes, with an entire waterfront cafe among the debris washing down the Brisbane River, a torrent that has flooded 12,000 homes in the city of 2 million and left 118,000 buildings without power.

Aerial views of Brisbane showed a sea of brown water with rooftops poking through the surface.

“What I’m seeing looks more like a war zone in some places,” Queensland Premier Anna Bligh told reporters after surveying the disaster from the air. “All I could see was their rooftops ... underneath every single one of those rooftops is a horror story.”

Floodwaters in 35 suburbs, which on Thursday peaked below disastrous levels predicted a day earlier, forced residents to take to boats to move about the streets, where traffic signs peeped above the water.

Rescue teams and victims of the flooding have already had to deal with crocodiles and snakes, with Australia’s northeast [Queensland]-- which has been battered by weeks of flooding—home to some of the world’s most dangerous species.

A series of recent ultra-high resolution photographs, in scalable map format, are available here.

And, just because, here’s a picture of Charisma Carpenter from a few years ago. And one of Karina Lombard, who still brings that exotic ferocity, even though she’s positively “ancient” (41) by Hollywood standards. I think she’s just getting warmed up.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/14/2011 at 11:58 PM   
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   Thursday - January 13, 2011

Schrödinger’s Penguin

The Daily Bayonet slides a foot of cold steel between the ribs of Climate Change scientists, by reporting on yet another bit of flawed science.

For the past decade or so, these “highly educated” folks have been studying penguins in Antarctica as a way of gathering climate change impact data. Problem is, they’ve been banding the birds with flipper tags instead of the ankle bands almost all other bird research folks use. And the tags themselves have caused the penguins to swim slower, catch less food, mate less, and generally suffer and die much more than regular penguins. So an entire decade’s worth of data is considerably skewed. And thus useless. Total waste of time and money, and half a career down the drain for the scientists involved. Not to mention harmful and abusive to the penguins themselves.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/13/2011 at 11:00 AM   
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   Wednesday - January 12, 2011

2011 Freedom Update: Legislating Common Courtesy

Yes, I can’t stand those lazy bastards either. Getting behind a driver who has barely cleared a porthole in the snow on his windshield can be both frustrating and dangerous. Frustrating, because all the crap blows off his SUV - it’s usually a minivan or a damn Jeep Cherokee - leaving a wake of blown off snow on everyone else as they blast down the highway. And dangerous, especially with the bigger SUVs and trucks, when a great chunk of ice comes flying off the roof and heads right at you at 75mph. So now NJ has passed a law. For your own good. Another one of those laws, like their “move over” law, that legislates common sense and common courtesy. I hate laws like that, and I think they are unconstitutional. But this one twists my soul, because it makes sense, and it really is necessary. I hate that in an unconstitutional law, don’t you?

Judging from the last snowfall, I guess not everyone got the memo — the one from Trenton after years of debate.

That would be the law making New Jersey the first state to impose fines on drivers who don’t clear snow or ice from their vehicles before it flies off and inflicts damage or injury.

Statute 39:4-77.1 finally took effect just in time for the post-Christmas blizzard as well as Friday’s snowfall, but that didn’t stop drivers from carrying several inches of snow on roofs and hoods. As you can see from reader photos taken in such places as Fair Lawn and Woodland Park, drivers and their employers must think this new law is only advisory.

It isn’t. The fine is $25 for the first offense. Subsequent offenses can cost $75 each. They’re higher if your snow causes injury or damage — $200 to $1,500.

Commercial big rig trucks are NOT exempt. Somebody better get up on top of the trailer and brush it off:

… other New Jersey drivers favor the snow ban by a 2-1 ratio, according to a AAA poll. But if truckers, or anyone else, can’t bear to clean up, here’s the best motivation:

“We don’t issue warnings for this violation,” said state police Capt. Frank Davis. “Drivers are expected to comply.”

BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:

9 1. Section 1 of P.L.1997, c.124 (C.39:4-77.1) is amended to read as follows:

11 1. a.
(1) Each driver of a motor vehicle operated on a street or highway in this State shall have an affirmative duty to make all reasonable efforts to remove accumulated ice or snow from
exposed surfaces of3 the motor vehicle prior to operation [; this] ,which surfaces shall include, but not be limited to, the hood, trunk, windshield, windows, and roof of the motor vehicle, the
cab of a truck, the top of a trailer or semitrailer being drawn by a motor vehicle, and the top of an intermodal freight container being carried by an intermodal chassis. A person who violates the
provisions of this subsection may be stopped on a street or highway by a law enforcement officer who believes the accumulated ice or snow may pose a threat to persons or property and shall be subject to a fine of not less than $25 or more than $75 for each offense regardless of whether any snow or ice is dislodged from the motor vehicle. No motor vehicle points or automobile insurance eligibility points pursuant to section 26 of P.L.1990, c.8 (C.17:33B-14) shall be assessed for [this offense] a violation of this paragraph.

Did you get that? You don’t even have to be driving around such that any snow is falling off your vehicle. If a cop thinks your vehicle is a danger, you get fined. No ifs, ands, or buts. But at least you can only be fined once per day, and they can’t nail you until it stops snowing:

Every day upon which a violation occurs shall be considered a separate violation, but no person shall be subject to more than one fine for a violation of this paragraph in a period of consecutive hours.

(2) This subsection shall not apply to any driver of a motor vehicle operated during a snow or ice storm that began and continued for the duration of the motor vehicle’s operation or to any operator of a motor vehicle while it is parked.

(3) No fine shall be imposed pursuant to paragraph (1) of this subsection on the driver of a commercial motor vehicle, as the term is defined in R.S.39:1-1, that is traveling to a location where
equipment or technology that is used to remove snow and ice from commercial motor vehicles is available, provided that the driver has not already passed a location with snow and ice removal equipment or technology after snow or ice shall have accumulated on the exposed surfaces of the commercial motor vehicle.

blah blah blah. This law went into effect in the fall, and it looks like commercial vehicles will have one year to comply. So all the truck stops and weigh stations are going to be getting roof scrubbers I guess. And part of the fine money will go towards grants to provide such things to the truck stops. Read the whole thing if you have the inclination.

Now I think I’ll start pushing Trenton to pass my Mud Flap bill. It would require all vehicles, SUVs and tractor trailer trucks included, to have fenders that extend at least 1.5” out further than the sidewall of their tires (that part already is law, although I think it’s limited to the tread groove area) and mudflaps in the back that are at least 2” wider than the tires AND hang down at least 3” below the center of the wheel, or to within 4” of the pavement, whichever is closer. And they have to be stiff enough or heavy enough to stay in place at 90mph on dry pavement. I utterly HATE getting behind some assmunch oblivion bastard driving his fatpig SUV down the highway, with such aggressive off road tires on it that you can hear them screaming from half a mile away, blasting up thousands of gallons of spew on rainy days.  Get some street tires numbnuts, and cover your damn treads. Jeep drivers are the worst offenders, especially those dimwits in Cherokees (which NEVER go off-road even as far as a gravel driveway in NJ). Every single car in this state has chips in the hood and in the windshield from gravel kicked up by your inconsideration, and I for one am sick of being blinded by the fog you jerk offs leave behind you when you cut me off in wet weather. Cut the spew, or we’ll cut you. Legally that is, via nasty fines and points on your license. And I’ll get the law written like this snow law, so that all a cop has to do is put a ruler up against your car in the parking lot. It won’t even have to be raining. And you’ll get a $200 fine in the mail.

PS - next time you’re out on the highway during a rain storm, pay attention to the trailers on the UPS trucks. They all have this brush arrangement above the wheels, and it does a better job of catching the water and stopping the spew than anything I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure how it works, but it does work quite well. As far as I’ve seen, they are the only ones using this design.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/12/2011 at 10:34 PM   
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   Wednesday - December 29, 2010

Stoners For Global Warming?

Like, wow man, the total irony.

I was bopping through the news this morning, looking for something interesting to post on, when I found an article at FoxNews on indoor gardening.

How to Build a High-Tech Indoor Garden This Winter

The dark days of winter are upon us, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up on gardening until the spring. Grow lamps are becoming increasingly popular in gardening circles these days. And new breeds of low-power lights make them affordable options for those looking to keep a kitchen stocked with green herbs through the winter months, or those just looking to jump start their seedlings for next spring.

Before going any further, we need a quick scientific crash course. Plants need fairly intense light to grow, and the intensity of light in measured in a factor called lumens. The higher the lumen value of a bulb, the stronger the light and the better your plants will grow. For noticeable growth, you’ll want a bulb that puts out at least 4,000 lumens, and some bulbs can produce upwards of 40,000 lumens.

But a light’s intensity isn’t the only thing you have to look for; the temperature of the light is also important, a value measured in kelvins. Temperature in this case refers to the color of the light: the bluer, or colder the light, the higher the kelvin value. The warmer, or redder the light, the lower the value.

... and so on. Who is he kidding? And how did this article sneak in? It’s instructions on how to build a grow room. For your flowers, of course. And your “green herbs”. Uh huh. He goes on a bit about the different kind of bulbs out there and how well they work for growing plants. Incandescent (very poor), fluorescent (poor), etc., up to HID lamps (awesome). I think he wanted to write that the newest LED bulbs were the be-all and end-all, but they aren’t. Not yet. They don’t use much electricity, and they can be built to emit specific frequencies of light, but they simply don’t put out anywhere near enough light. And yet ... neither this author nor any other has really taken a look at the latest generation of Cree LEDs. I think they are the wave of the future, but the thing about the future is that it isn’t here yet.

What is the Cree LED? This is not the little red light on your coffee pot. These little 1/4” bitches are awesome! They generate an extraordinary amount of light. I’ve got a digital flashlight that uses one of them, and at the two highest settings it’s a weapon. The painfully bright light will shut your eyes down, causing near temporary blindness. 630 lumens for several hours from 8 AA batteries. Other flashlights drive these LEDs even harder, and produce 900-1000 lumens but with shorter battery life. Imagine a few of these as reflector lamps run off of low voltage transformers. Still, even 630 lumens - about the same light output as a regular 40 watt lightbulb - from something the size of the head of a carpet tack, that needs only 12 volts, is might impressive. 16 of them on a 1” square lamp would light up a barn while using perhaps 32 watts of electricity.

[ HUGE amounts of redacted writing here, as Drew decided he didn’t really want this post to be a lesson on how to build a grow room and a step by step guide to light usage, placement, intensity, and purpose over the life cycle of short season plants. Like those “green herbs”. Uh huh. ]

Once upon a time this was all semi-secret underground information. But thanks to the internet, today it’s just a mouse click or two away, and you can read all sorts of scientific papers on indoor gardening, starting with the original ones, done by the Department of Defense back in the late 50s, who envisioned vast underground bunkers filled with people waiting for the Nuclear Winter to end and the post-apocalyptic radiation levels to fall, and knew that those people would need to eat. So they went out and figured out just what kind of light, how much and how many hours of it per day, what ambient temperature, what N-P-K soil additives, and even what CO₂ levels would produce the most efficient plant growth. Many other studies have been done since then, and now all sorts of data is easily available.

What about the stoners dude?

You can’t spend very much time looking up information on building an indoor greenhouse before you run across carbon dioxide. It’s the greenhouse gas you want in your greenhouse. Plants breath the stuff, duh. And a good greenhouse is a fully controlled environment, right down to the air itself. And ... surprise, surprise! ... it turns out that plants LOVE CO₂! They adore it. Hell, they literally live for it. And study after study after study shows that significantly higher levels of the stuff promotes plant growth. Those studies also show that when the CO₂ levels get really high, plants need higher temperatures to get the most out of it. And more light and water too, and eventually more fertilizer. A rich moist brilliant almost-hot hothouse environment.

Currently, the most recent CO₂ level measurement from Hawaii is 388.59 PPM. For optimum plant growth, the ideal indoor greenhouse level is 1500 PPM, more than 4 times higher than current world conditions. In regular sunlight, plants really want levels 5 times higher than what’s outside. 500% more. Just to attain their full potential. Other studies have shown that plants can live in atmospheres with as much as 10,000 PPM of CO₂, even though levels over 2500 PPM are lethal for people.

This is pretty much common knowledge across dozens, if not tens of thousands, of Grow Pot In Your Closet websites. And just as many nominally upstanding horticultural ones, a few of which I’ve linked to in this post.

So there it is, in digital black and white. The truth is out there. More carbon dioxide plus warmer temperatures equals more plant growth. More plant growth equals higher crop yields. Left leaning stoner hippies already know this, and go to great lengths to make it happen for their crop of bud. Higher crop yields mean more food ( or more “green herbs” ) for more people. More food for more people means less hunger and starvation. So why is anyone unhappy about a possible slight increase in global temperatures or CO2 levels? I’d call it cause for celebration! More food for everybody, let’s eat!

Posted by Drew458     on 12/29/2010 at 12:40 PM   
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   Sunday - December 26, 2010

Run Away!!

Yup, plans change. We got home here at 5 after midnight. That was not the original plan, but the weather wienies are going nuts. A “perfect storm” of 3 different snow systems is coming together “much faster than anticipated” and is going to hammer the Philly - NY - Boston corridor but good. Expectations of a foot and a half, maybe more.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A rare white Christmas in parts of the South was complicating life for some travelers as airlines canceled hundreds of flights, while snow was predicted for the nation’s Capital and travel authorities warned of potentially dangerous roads.

The National Weather Service said the storm could bring 6 to 10 inches of snow to the Washington region, beginning Sunday. The Weather Service was also forecasting possible Sunday snow for the New York and Boston areas, with overnight temperatures in the 20s and wind gusts up to 30 mph.

This must be an old weather post from Fox News today.

So we figured we’d be better off home, so after a few cups of coffee and a little post-dinner rest we got back on the highway and drove. Traffic wasn’t too bad, only a few holiday crazy folks. I really wanted to stay over, but the weather is the boss this time of year, and you do what you have to do.

Somehow I think my cousin’s plan to drive tomorrow from his home in Marblehead MA across NY to his sister’s place outside of Syracuse NY and then down to my uncle’s in Binghamton NY isn’t really going to work. A foot or two of snow can change your plans.

OTOH, if it doesn’t now snow like mad, I’m gonna be miffed. But I’ll be miffed here and just go and do my Sunday job, versus being up there and having to worry whether the storm will hit while I’m trying to drive back here with 2 million other post holiday drivers out on the roads. Yeah, I think we made the right decision.

Snow will spread east from the Tennessee Valley into the Carolinas Christmas Day, continuing into Sunday. Below are the accumulations we are forecasting with the heaviest totals expected to fall over North Carolina, including Raleigh and Charlotte.
...
Sunday:
From there, the storm rapidly intensifies just off the Mid-Atlantic coast. Snow will spread northward from southern Va. and the southern Delmarva Peninsula early Sunday morning into southern New England, Long Island, and the Delaware Valley by midday Sunday. This includes most of the Northeast Megalopolis, particularly New York City and Boston.

There remains uncertainty with the exact low track, which could keep the greatest snows east of Baltimore and Washington, D.C..

Sunday afternoon and evening, snow will intensify in southern New England. At this time, the period of heaviest snow appears to fall in the NYC metro area Sunday afternoon & early evening, and in the Boston metro area Sunday night. Expect maximum travel impact during these times!
...
Monday morning, heavy, wind-driven snow will continue in New England, including the Boston metro area. Lighter, “wrap-around” snow will linger, then end around midday from New York City southward along the Jersey shore.
...
Late Monday afternoon into Monday night, the most significant snow will pull into Maine. However, strong northwest winds in the storm’s wake could produce areas of blowing and drifting snow, making travel by car still quite difficult.

Yeah, this report is a bit more up to date than the first one.

We snagged all sorts of leftovers on our way out the door, including about 5 pounds of glazed ham. That may have been a good idea.

Very tired now. Long day. And so to bed. Merry Day After, and I’ll post when I can.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/26/2010 at 12:41 AM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Holidays •  
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