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December 09, 2009 04:46 PM UTC

Wednesday Open Thread

  • 69 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“It’s like the good ol’ boys had a barbecue and said: ‘This is the way it’s going to go down. Now go let the peons know about it.”

–Jerry Denney, Southern Colorado Tea Party

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69 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread”

        1. Norther Europe is warmed by the Gulf Stream which flows north from the south Atlantic.  Because the Ocean is so saline, the Gulf Stream is carried close enough to the surface to warm the European continent.  If you check out the latitude  of Northern Europe you will see it lies parallel to Canada and Alaska, yet Ireland has palm trees.

          So, one scenario that some models predict is that as the fresh water gushes into the North Atlantic as the Artic and Greenland ice caps melt, the salinity of the ocean will be diluted and the Gulf Stream will sink and Europe will enter an ice age because of the lost of the warming currents of the Gulf Stream.  

          How the Japanese Current might be impacted by the melting of the ice cap and how they might directly impact our weather is something I don’t know.

          Granted, forecasting is as much an art as it is a science.  It all depends on the accuracy of the data fed into a model.

          The problem is that the weather data collection over the centuries has not been consistent or comprehensive.

          1. Sinking water in the North Atlantic (creating the North Atlantic Deep Water, with a return flow to the south at 2000-3000 m) pulls the Gulf Stream return flow further north than it otherwise would be.  In the North Pacific there is no deep water formation, so the Kuroshio Current returns at a lower latitude and thus the northern portions of western Canada and southern Alaska do not see the same warming effect that the UK does.  

            Natural follow-up is why do you have deep water formation in the North Atlantic and not the Pacific?  That’s a longer answer than anybody around here probably wants to read.

            1. I stand educated. So this is my question, Did I understand the consequences of a less saline North Atlantic? Or do I not understand that dynamic?

              What would you anticipate then, would be the consequence  of the release of fresh water into the North Pacific from the melting ice cap ?

              My scientific knowledge is exceeded only by my ability to spell, which gives you an idea of where I am.  But your explanations are very much appreciated.

              1. You’re basically right.

                Lots of fresh water coming out of the Arctic could keep warm Gulf Stream water further south. The density of seawater is a function of temperature and salinity. Gulf Stream water is warm but salty. It stays at the surface due to its warmth. If water exiting the Arctic is sufficiently fresh, it will be less dense (more buoyant) than the Gulf Stream Water, even though it’s colder. This cold, fresh surface water is what could deflect the Gulf Stream water to the south.

                Regarding the Pacific, most exchange in and out of the Arctic occurs through Davis Strait (between Norway and Greenland). Very little exchange occurs through the Bering Strait (Pacific); it’s too shallow. So a fresher arctic won’t have much of an effect.  

              2. Less saline N Alt due to Greenland and Eastern Canadian shield land ice melting potentially leads to a shut down of NADW production, which leads to the Gulf Stream return flowing at a more southern latitude (it still returns, each ocean basin has a massive gyre that spins clockwise in the northern hemisphere, other way in the southern hemisphere).

                There is a nifty internal cycle in the ocean-atmophere system that some people call the Bond Cycle (after Gerald Bond, now deceased) that appears to run on a ~1500 year cycle, where the NADW alternatively shuts down and ramps up.  The original evidence for the Bond Cycle is periodic large  pebbles showing up in Atlantic ocean bottom cores — they got transported by icebergs floating much further south than they do today.

                There is no deep water formation in the North Pacific, so nothing to shut down up there by addition of fresh water to the ocean.  But fresh water pulses will probably mess with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which works with ENSO to influence the Pacific Northwest’s climate.

                Deep water is also formed at two places in Antarctica, for what it’s worth.

                1. This is fascinating stuff.  Thank you both.  I have learned just enough to wish I was young enough to  go back to school.

                  What you all have done, is begin to describe how very complex these systems are. You have done it in a straightforward way which is easy to understand.  To say nothing of raising the discussion to a level, seldom if ever, seen on these pages.

                  Now can we get college credit for this?

                  1. I have my biases about climate change, but I’m a scientist and understand the difficulty of doing compilations of other people’s data (because I have participated in one–aeromagnetic map of the United States).

                    I’m always on the lookout for something that explains both sides of the climate change issue.

                    I think I found a good discussion at this link:

                    http://www.informationisbeauti…

                    1. Thank you.  What it points out, however, is that in order to meaningfully understand or interpret the data, you need advanced scientific training.  This makes the credibility of the messenger so important.  It is why the Repubs/corporate/etc.  attack and attack the scientists because most of us  can not analysis the data on our own and are dependent on the integrity of the scientific community.  

                      In this context, the hacking of the emails is really deadly for the climate change scientists.

                      As for me, the first thing I was told when I took the mandatory statistical analysis in grad school was if I had to  deal with statistics, I should hire a statistician.

                      Thanks again to all of you for the insight and the education and the links, and you too, Libertad for sparking this worthwhile discussion with your absolutely predictable comment on global warming.

        2. 1) each bear market has proven that stocks don’t tend to increase in value over time,

          2) when drivers going north on I25 want to take I70 to the west coast, the fact that they turn east onto the exit ramp proves that they’re going to end up on the east coast instead,

          3) in the iterated algorithm f(x) = 2x – (1/2)x, when x1 is a positive number greater than 1, and the product of the function is fed back into the function for each successive iteration, the fact that in every iteration the value of f(x) decreases by (1/2)x is evidence that f(x) will decrease over time….

          Thanks for sharing your astounding grasp of both logic and how dynamical systems function, Libby. Where would we be without you?

        3. -37F observed in 1919.

          (According to Western Regional Climate Center . This site has weather data from before the station was moved to UNC.)

          BTW, according to the Weather Underground, the official overnight low for Greeley today was -13F. Where did you get your 20 below from?

          Back to the WRCC data, 27 of the 31 days in December have record lows of -13F or colder. Twenty of the records were set pre 1920. So, although today’s 13 below is bitter cold, it’s not completely unexpected. Certainly not record breaking.

          What is interesting is that only two low temperature records have been set in the last 25 years. In contrast, twenty of the low temperature records were set in the first 25 years of temperature monitoring at Greeley. Trend?

          From a practical perspective, have you never gone outside at night in the winter, Libby? When it’s clear, it gets butt-cold. This happens as reliably as you posting inane comments on COPols.

      2. The Obama administration is warning Congress that if it doesn’t move to regulate greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will take a “command-and-control” role over the process in a way that could hurt business.

        The warning, from a top White House economic official who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity, came on the eve of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s address to the international conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark.

        http://www.foxnews.com/politic…

        As if they haven’t hurt employment enough already.  In a recent poll, 80% of CEOs don’t she themselves hiring in 2010.

    3. 2000-2009 is the warmest decade on record.  confirmed by liberal thermometers worldwide.  isn’t it just amazing how a liberal scientist can program 30,000 thermometers to give liberal readings?

      http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12…

      conservative thermometers also tell us that the temperature is warming, but at a smaller rate than liberal thermometers

      1. Here’s an idea: How about relying less on dividing the world into arbitrary and uninformative categories that serve as sloppy proxies for determining who’s more correct and who’s less correct, and, instead, rely more on reason applied to evidence in pursuit of equitable and sustainable utility maximizing outcomes?

        Then we can stop using words like “conservative” and “liberal” as though they add anything to any argument, and focus instead on the application of the human mind to the challenges and opportunities that confront us.

        Crazy idea, I know, but worth considering….

        (just to save you the time and effort, knowing your priorities: the first sentence has 48 words in it, which, like your use of categories, is irrelevant to the topic under discussion)

          1. I apologize.

            It’s just that, sometimes, the repetition of the words “liberal” and “conservative” in political discourse becomes like fingernails on a blackboard for me. It was the wrong time to react to it.

      2. today’s Tmin observed in Greeley wasn’t included in that analysis, was it?

        Now those liberal climatologists will need to redo all their calculations because today’s temperatures on the Colorado shortgrass steppe are sufficient to alter the global trend over the last centuries.

        So there!

  5. Now that Sirota canvassed this guy on 760 this morning I am encouraged that you liberal nut bags are finally waking to the corruption inspired destruction of America that the Administration is projecting.

    No wonder the banks aren’t lending, no wonder there is deminishing capital investment, sans ARRA, TARP, bailout dujour

    Sirota pimps this very guy on his website

    Now on the EPA…who do these Administration officials think they are?  Is Barney Frank prepared to regulate the massive carbon dirivatives market he is intent on creating?  Next you’ll propose we just shutter all manufacturing and begin a long forced march to Mexico where we can re-establish ourselves as a hunter-gatherer civilization.

    The Obama administration is warning Congress that if it doesn’t move to regulate greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will take a “command-and-control” role over the process in a way that could hurt business.

    1. Well I can attest to the phone working.  They keep calling (and e-mailing) me even though I keep telling them I’ve already decided to support Bennet. Politico article probably represents a pretty good objective view of the situation as opposed to Huff post which seem to have bought the whole Romanoff is the progressive one thing.  

  7. The truth is that Libertad and myself are just random number generators, with each number assigned to a word or phrase of our master’s choosing. Whenever you see a post from us, it’s just a series of random numbers that you perceive as sentences and words.

    This is why, on occasion, our posts don’t make very much sense. It’s also why we’re not very good at linking things. There’s no html code written into our programming other than embedding various colored YouTube videos.

    We apologize if you were under the impression that what we were saying was cat food bird water golf monkey tonight joke right your fibulator gee door egret.

    3. the way the climate system works is to take  a sea current down to a rho of 36.9 radians and then convection heating from insolation of 3.6 tau giving a record low global norm of blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

      (did your system crash yet?)

      1. I know someone who speaks Liberloon.

        “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.” –Lauren Caitlin Upton

    1. After all, wasn’t she the party’s vice presidential nominee in the last election? I don’t know who would be more credible, perhaps Sen. McCain? Oh that’s right, he actually acknowledges that climate change is a real problem that needs to be fixed.

  9. Good job Republicans:

    The number-two Republican in the House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, presented Obama with the “No-Cost Jobs Plan,” which suggests freezing tax increases and halting some public spending.

    The plan also calls for more domestic production of energy, including oil, as well as corporate tax cuts intended to encourage firms to repatriate earnings collected abroad and the approval of pending free trade deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

    Remember when the stimulus package passed and 40% of it was in the form of tax cuts? When Republicans were complaining about the cost of the stimulus, tax cuts weren’t free. What gives?

    Oh, right, Cantor is proposing tax cuts for rich people. Giving money to rich people costs nothing!

    2. Certainly Congress passes lots of stupid stuff, but normally it’s just to honor someone or give a “sense of the Congress,” and thus inconsequential.

      Why not regulate American Idol? I totally thought Sanjaya should have won!

          2. the same 11 years since the BCS system was established, only 11 different teams have played for the “national championship” of Division 1A college football.  Many  more teams have finished their seasons undefeated, but were never in consideration.

            You see, some of us really like college football.

            Personally, I’m happier if my team wins the so-called “national championship” than if my candidate wins the Presidential election.  My team hasn’t won a “national championship” since 1986, so it happens a lot less often.

            It would be really nice if it meant something.  It would be nice for the players, nice for the students, and nice for the alums.  All politics is local, after all.  We care, so it’s local to us.

            Some of us care about college football more than we care about, say, trading derivatives,  “net neutrality,” or balancing the budget.  It’s something we can root for and be happy or sad about.  It’s a diversion, much as feel-good movies were a diversion during the Great Depression.  It touches some of us.  Your mileage may vary.

            That doesn’t make us wrong or irrelevant.  Just different.

            1. but that issue is. It exists purely for entertainment, and you can’t legislate that something should be more entertaining for you.

              Why not legislate that the Sopranos should have had a better ending? Some people watched the show regularly. Many of them probably cared more about the show than about health care. That doesn’t make it relevant to national politics.

              I care more about the Star Wars movies than about most national political issues, but it would have been kind of silly to legislate that George Lucas make the prequels differently.

              1. I’ll make a deal with you.

                You write your congressman about shit you care about, and I’ll do the same.  I won’t question what’s important to you, and you don’t question what’s important to me.

                1. The fact that it’s important to you doesn’t mean it’s relevant to Congress. You haven’t explained why it should be, nor why Congress shouldn’t regulate American Idol or the Star Wars movies or level 9-7 of Super Mario Bros.

                    1. there were a place where we could debate the actions of the government despite not being in the government…

                      If only…

                      If only…

      2. …this is NOT the version they’re working on the G3 TOC/TAC at Forces Command. That version makes sense to Operations folks, and it’s formatted much, much different.

        However, this is some GS Civilian’s idea of a “clear chart.”

        Someday, I’ll get back into the Defense Media Agency, and I’ll bring all of my books by Edward Tufte with me.

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