Posted on: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1899606766246433608&postID=1640724837437046035&page=1&token=1542311896110
11/15/2018
I never paid much attention to Chomsky before 3 or 4 years ago when my sister sent me a transcript of an interview and asked for an evaluation. On the whole, it dealt with a grand conspiracy of advertisers and capitalists whose propaganda steered a gullible society toward an apathetic materialism, while at the same time enlarging the gap between rich and poor. To be charitable, it bordered on incoherence. He bemoaned the growing poverty in America, the falling standard of living of the middle class and the poor, blaming all greedy capitalists, without ever mentioning the surge in immigration which is largely responsible for the drop in American workers' wages and the influx of welfare cases.
I couldn't help but surmise that he knew better, that this grand distortion of basic economics was not accidental, that his characterization of the situation was intended for an ignorant and gullible audience that would never ask pertinent questions. He keeps up the revisionist history with claims like this in Scientific American a couple of weeks ago: "As Amartya Sen has shown, Maoist China saved about 100 million people – not a small number – as compared with democratic capitalist India from independence to 1980, not from “enlightenment” in the usual sense, but from rural health programs and other reforms."
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/noam-chomsky-calls-trump-and-republican-allies-criminally-insane/
He continues with this view: "As for the Enlightenment and modern science, no serious analyst can question their major achievements – or overlook their role in the age of discovery that brought untold horrors to much of the world, devastating the Western Hemisphere and Africa, crushing the leading world centers of civilization in India and China."
Trying to make sense of that, is he talking about the disease induced annihilation of Native Americans, else which "devastati[on]" are we talking about? And if so does he not distinguish between the Enlightenment, which came after the "Colombian Exchange," and the Renaissance (which didn't)?
And now Chomsky, who over the years has condemned the press and both political parties alike as corporate puppets, is softening his stance on the press in order to distance himself from the new great satan, the Donald, and seems to be teaming up with it, condemning Republicans who don't believe in the "truly existential threat" of global warming, and evil bankers who are "..increasing investments in fossil fuels, knowing very well what they are doing." Fossil fuel disinvestment surely is a current fad, but not one which thinking people take seriously. It's not the bankers' fault or even Big Oil's fault that I'm willing to pay good money to buy gas and drive a car, or that Chomsky likes to make good money flying from lecture to lecture.
There are many good reasons those competent in economics or history or climate science (or linguistics, for that matter) can't take Chomsky seriously. Intelligent lies have currency; idiotic lies don't. --AGF
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Wilkins Ice Runway
Oct. 24, 2012
BBC, in concert with a number of media outlets announced today that global warming was melting the Wilkins ice runway in Antarctica. This announcement lends itself to examination of the nature of media behavior regarding global warming--what is really happening and where? First of all one might wonder, what season is it in Antarctica as I write this response? Our October is equivalent to the South Pole's April. Summer has not yet arrived, yet runway meltdown is announced. And just a little digging brings up the source story, from January of this year in the Tasmanian "Mercury." It turns out that last summer, nine months ago, the ice runway had its second season of extra warm weather, which prevented its use in January.
Australia spent some 40 million dollars on this asset, and so far only a few dozen flights have been made from Tasmania, thus costing about a million dollars per flight so far. The fact that the runway is only four years old leaves us to wonder, how much has the planet warmed in the last four years, and didn't these planners know about global warming four years ago? And are they absurdly blaming on global warming what is really the result of their own incompetence? Or have they just had a couple of years of bad luck with the weather? After all, we've had over a decade with no global warming to speak of.
So no, global warming is not responsible for the limited usefulness of a nearly new ice runway, and no, this is not spontaneously generated news of a recent event. Rather it is the calculated propaganda of a consortium of radical environmentalists--who understand that there's a sucker born every second--and gullible or complicit journalists. Take an old story, dress it up in the garb of long term climate change, and the media will eat it up. And most of the people will believe it. Shame on the fools! --AGF
Monday, August 11, 2008
Fallen arches
Wall Arch, at Arches National Monument, near Moab, took a tumble Monday night, Aug. 4-5, 2008.
This arch has been sitting around for half a million years or so without falling. Of course the long term cause is gradual erosion, but I suspect the immediate causes were weather and tide related:a drier cllimate than normal, coupled with shear stresses caused by a temperature gradient. The problem is, August 1 had a 40 degree differential compared to a 25 degree drop Monday night, and the new moon occurred 2 days earlier as well. The winds were stronger Friday than Monday night. Did it fall two days after it cracked? I doubt it, but there must have been some reason it fell when it did. We're a month past aphelion, with its weaker tides, but the arch has gone through the worst of a summer full of expansion and contraction. Winter freezing and thawing does the long term damage, but summer probably provides better triggering mechanisms. Ice ages may set the arches up to tumble during interstadials. I think natural global warming could be the culprit.
Here's a tenuously proposed triggering mechanism: the humidity was rising that night, and sandstone constitutes a semipermeable membrane. H2O molecules are lighter than N2 and O2, vibrate more rapidly, and find their way through the rock faster than dry air. This enables the rock to build up a partial pressure of water vapor faster than the total pressure of dry air in the rock can be dissipated, so that the gasseous pressure in the rock may build up a few mmHg of pressure--maybe enough to trigger a collapse. I suppose the mechanics and magnitude of such a phenomenon could be studied experimentally. --AGF
This arch has been sitting around for half a million years or so without falling. Of course the long term cause is gradual erosion, but I suspect the immediate causes were weather and tide related:a drier cllimate than normal, coupled with shear stresses caused by a temperature gradient. The problem is, August 1 had a 40 degree differential compared to a 25 degree drop Monday night, and the new moon occurred 2 days earlier as well. The winds were stronger Friday than Monday night. Did it fall two days after it cracked? I doubt it, but there must have been some reason it fell when it did. We're a month past aphelion, with its weaker tides, but the arch has gone through the worst of a summer full of expansion and contraction. Winter freezing and thawing does the long term damage, but summer probably provides better triggering mechanisms. Ice ages may set the arches up to tumble during interstadials. I think natural global warming could be the culprit.
Here's a tenuously proposed triggering mechanism: the humidity was rising that night, and sandstone constitutes a semipermeable membrane. H2O molecules are lighter than N2 and O2, vibrate more rapidly, and find their way through the rock faster than dry air. This enables the rock to build up a partial pressure of water vapor faster than the total pressure of dry air in the rock can be dissipated, so that the gasseous pressure in the rock may build up a few mmHg of pressure--maybe enough to trigger a collapse. I suppose the mechanics and magnitude of such a phenomenon could be studied experimentally. --AGF
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Ice breakup
The explosiveness of the recent breakup of part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf requires some explaining. I propose the following mechanisms:
1) Continued post-glacial rebound of the Arctic moves the earth's center of gravity toward the North Pole in the long term, pulling the center of mass of the hydrosphere northward, but reshaping the lithosphere as well, leaving no net change of sea level in Antarctica.
2) Seasonal snow in the Northern Hemisphere concentrates ocean mass toward the North Pole, reducing average sea level globally, and moving the earth's center of gravity a few inches northward on a seasonal basis, reaching a maximum in late winter or early spring. The weight of snow in the north pushes the lithosphere southward relative to the hydrosphere.
3) These mechanisms combine to "float" the Antarctic continent with its attached ice shelves, lifting the ice shelves beyond their natural flotation, and producing significant lateral stress.
4) The outer edges of the ice shelf sag downward due to the slight flexibility of the ice, which increases where the ice is thinnest. This sagging means that the outer ice floats better, and reduces the stress on the inner ice by contributing to its flotation.
5) Though the outer ice undergoes less stressing, it is after all, thinner and weaker, and may be the first to fracture under the gravitational stress.
6) Once it fractures its contribution to the flotation of inner ice is removed, leaving the inner ice even more stressed and vulnerable to fracture, and leading to the potential for a cascading effect, even an explosive one.
The question arises, is this due to global warming or unusually high snowfall in the northern hemisphere? The explosive mechanisms suggested, and their seasonal timing clearly implicate northern snowfall, but the outer ice is presumably weakened because of temperature rises. What other factors are involved in ice shelf formation and destruction?
1) The extent of an ice shelf is determined by its flow rate less its rate of melting.
2) Its flow rate is determined by the rate of snowfall contributing to its source, and
3) the depth and temperature of its flow fields.
All these factors are temperature related or equivalent, and it is no obvious deduction that any particular breakup or series of breakups signals climate change. On the other hand, it is quite obvious that every loss of flat ice subtracts from regional albedo, contributes to the absorption of solar energy, and should contribute to a regional increase in temperature.
But in a larger context, taking into consideration the history of navigation in the southern seas and the long term climatic evidence, it is a fairly reasonable tenet that the region has generally been warming. Magellan and Drake chose treacherous inter-island passages over what we presume was a previously ice-choked Antarctic sea. And 19th Century explorers sailed over open seas that 18th Century sealers and whalers had charted as continental ice. It is time for climatologists to return to the spirit of the Age of Exploration, become more the investigators and less the priests of doom or prescribers of salvation. --AGF 3/26/08
1) Continued post-glacial rebound of the Arctic moves the earth's center of gravity toward the North Pole in the long term, pulling the center of mass of the hydrosphere northward, but reshaping the lithosphere as well, leaving no net change of sea level in Antarctica.
2) Seasonal snow in the Northern Hemisphere concentrates ocean mass toward the North Pole, reducing average sea level globally, and moving the earth's center of gravity a few inches northward on a seasonal basis, reaching a maximum in late winter or early spring. The weight of snow in the north pushes the lithosphere southward relative to the hydrosphere.
3) These mechanisms combine to "float" the Antarctic continent with its attached ice shelves, lifting the ice shelves beyond their natural flotation, and producing significant lateral stress.
4) The outer edges of the ice shelf sag downward due to the slight flexibility of the ice, which increases where the ice is thinnest. This sagging means that the outer ice floats better, and reduces the stress on the inner ice by contributing to its flotation.
5) Though the outer ice undergoes less stressing, it is after all, thinner and weaker, and may be the first to fracture under the gravitational stress.
6) Once it fractures its contribution to the flotation of inner ice is removed, leaving the inner ice even more stressed and vulnerable to fracture, and leading to the potential for a cascading effect, even an explosive one.
The question arises, is this due to global warming or unusually high snowfall in the northern hemisphere? The explosive mechanisms suggested, and their seasonal timing clearly implicate northern snowfall, but the outer ice is presumably weakened because of temperature rises. What other factors are involved in ice shelf formation and destruction?
1) The extent of an ice shelf is determined by its flow rate less its rate of melting.
2) Its flow rate is determined by the rate of snowfall contributing to its source, and
3) the depth and temperature of its flow fields.
All these factors are temperature related or equivalent, and it is no obvious deduction that any particular breakup or series of breakups signals climate change. On the other hand, it is quite obvious that every loss of flat ice subtracts from regional albedo, contributes to the absorption of solar energy, and should contribute to a regional increase in temperature.
But in a larger context, taking into consideration the history of navigation in the southern seas and the long term climatic evidence, it is a fairly reasonable tenet that the region has generally been warming. Magellan and Drake chose treacherous inter-island passages over what we presume was a previously ice-choked Antarctic sea. And 19th Century explorers sailed over open seas that 18th Century sealers and whalers had charted as continental ice. It is time for climatologists to return to the spirit of the Age of Exploration, become more the investigators and less the priests of doom or prescribers of salvation. --AGF 3/26/08
Thursday, March 20, 2008
AP Science writer
AP's science writer, Seth Berenstein, is full of anecdotal evidence for global warming. In his latest report (3/19/08) he tells us that spring arrives on 3/20, at 0348 hours. One wonders how he arrives at this hour, for it is true in Greenland but nowhere else. But such are the calculations of science reporters: the only competent one I know of is Nigel Calder, who is a very vocal critic of the global warming craze. We're all still waiting for someone to put together a concise proof of the doom that awaits our continued CO2 pollution, but all we ever see is selective anecdotal evidence--citrus crop freezes are rarely mentioned, let alone explained.
--AGF
--AGF
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