AG and Tipper are done. Deal. Forgot so quickly about that.
Hey, Mrs. iluv and I (and our Pomeranian and Chow Chow) have shipped out to NE Nevada now, Elko to be exact. Left the two cats behind with our son in Willcox. The hospital in Willcox started turning much too Twilight-Zonish for me and since my wife worked there too, she saw it up-front and personal and we both quit! Right ta work state BS. It took me one week to find another RT job. That is quicker than I thought-the recruiter found me just as the Nevada hospital really needed an RT bad.
We rent up here in NV and still own the house in the SE Arizona cowboy town. Our son and his buddy are renting from us, because if we tried to sell now in this market the results would be too scanty to bear.
Today in Elko it was about 86 degrees and hot and sunny. I'd venture a guess SE AZ was baking at about 98 degrees, too!
I don't suppose the huge trucks they use in the Elko mines help the global warming...I mean pollution...I mean global warming AG situation out much. I just read in a local brochure that one of the tires on these particular mining trucks cost some $68,000. Does that sound right? Yikes.
Just about makes me want to vent some extra carbon dioxide.
It was an ok post ... except for the ad linked at the bottom.
I just started reading the Michael Crichton anti GW book, State of Fear, btw. He's like Buckley - a good read even if you don't like his politics.
Don't bebop up to Boise too soon Iluv - we're in Taos for a few weeks. Just drove over a 9800' pass this morning with fresh snow on the road. Cool today but it's been about 80° down in town (around 7,000'). Wasn't expecting the white stuff, especially not on the asphalt.
I read "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton and although it's a fictional story, he gives extensive data through his character, Kenner, with footnote references to a plethora of sources. Especially when you're around the pages 500-575, there's a lot of good information which really helped my alter my perspective of GW.
The National Grid fears that on breezy summer nights, wind farms could actually cause a surge in the electricity supply which is not met by demand from businesses and households.
The electricity cannot be stored, so one solution — known as the 'balancing mechanism' — is to switch off or reduce the power supplied.
The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place three weeks ago. Scottish Power received £13,000 for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning.
Whereas coal and gas power stations often pay the National Grid £15 to £20 per megawatt hour they do not supply, Scottish Power was paid £180 per megawatt hour during the test to switch off its turbines.
Earlier this year, The Sunday Telegraph revealed that electricity customers are paying more than £1 billion a year to subsidise wind farms and other forms of renewable energy.
In the USA, some places have forced the shut down of coal generators to make room for the Wind power. Of course when the wind stops, it is not just turning on a switch to bring a coal fire generation system back on line. So who is winning in this and other alternative energy boondoggles?
This is why the corrupt crony capitalists at GE are so into green energy that they have devoted their NBC Universal holding to propagandizing on its behalf. It is an utter boondoggle, but so long as it is coercively subsidized to the hilt, they'll make a fortune off it. Meanwhile, the "small people" (as Obama's pro-green energy financiers at BP call us) will pay much more for much less, so that politicians can thump their chests and proclaim that they've saved the polar bears by altering the weather.
Finally she got away. Later, she talked to friends, liberals like herself, who advised against telling police. One asked her "to just suck it up; otherwise, the world's going to be destroyed from global warming."
Just another hypocritical liar and power-mad person exposed. I hope Tipper takes him for all his carbon-credits and leaves him destitute.
Hey some GW advice Al - sell the yacht, stop the jet-setting, give the multiple houses to some poor people (probably several families could live in each of his houses), and quit pushing your Grade B sci-fi stories and movies to the gullible. We have enough people in our society who see man mainly as "sinners", without you adding your phony issue, to this mental health problem.
Mankind's vehicle-effect is insignificant compared to the effect of the activity of the Sun, and the Earth's natural cycles.
Mankind's vehicle-effect is insignificant compared to the effect of the activity of the Sun, and the Earth's natural cycles
Amen to that, kernick. AG and weather disturbances and pollution and GW all add up to some uncomfortable times, at times. But as a money-making scheme and movie hysteria it's sad that there are those who will take something like this and only think about their pocketbook(s). Eh?
....I couldn't have said it much better myself... :-)
Add to this that one good vulcanic erruption blows more sulfuric acid, particles and other un-holy gases into the athmosphere, than all of mankind's sumtotal of any and all pollutans produced. When one looks at a scale model of our planet's cross section, it is a miracle that the dang mess hasn't blown apart a long time ago. It's a a bit like a water balloon sailing at twice the speed of sound through space. Even the most 'minor' impact with any other object has to be catastrophic at the least... And we think of ourselves as soooo tough and mighty, paaahhh, -- not so. We are no more than microbes crawling around on a grain of sand.
though it's not a popular view these days it is truth. And that is that I can't help but think of the Man upstairs who is in control of all of these earth-physio matters. It is stated in the most-read Book of all time, the Bible, that the earth that is standing will last forever.
Ahh...so AG is all about bringing back the Scopes monkey trial? Think about it a minute...is he all about man trying to save himself and not relying on a personal relationship with a Creator? Might he be? And he figures that as mankind is floundering around with all of these earthquakes and storms and fighting against each other that he'd just butt his political [non-permissible content removed] in there and profit off of anyone dumb enough to throw their white peace flag in with him then. Scoundrels and thieves. I mean that sincerely, too. Don't listen to him. Listen to the man upstairs and those he sends out to you.
Quite interesting, then. We've monkeyed around long enough with this one and look where our thoughts can wander to. Humm-humm.
I've read and enjoyed a lot of Crichton's books, but this one gets pretty disjointed at times. It's like he's struggling trying to fit some data into a story instead of letting the story tell itself.
Sort of like real life....
I think Airframe is still the best one of his I've read.
While this thread mostly enlightens on the scam known as AGW. The new emerging scam is High Speed Rail. The CA voters by 52% voted to float a bond of $9.95 billion to get the ball rolling. The Feds are supposed to kick in another couple billion. But will it be good for the environment, as originally advertised. Will travelers in 2035 pay $105 to travel from LA to SF? By that date I would expect an electric car would make the trip for about $15 in electricity with 4 people in the car.
Arpad Horvath , Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Mikhail Chester, an ITS post-doc researcher, have made it easier to compare and contrast the different transport modes with their development of a life-cycle analysis for high-speed rail. Their work, “Life-cycle assessment of high-speed rail: the case of California,” was published recently in Environmental Research Letters.
But under current conditions—with the model of HSR trains proposed and its energy source, as well as the types of automobiles and airplanes now in existence—the ITS researchers found that high-speed rail has the potential to be the lowest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter only if it consistently travels at high occupancy or uses a low-emission electricity source such as wind, both of which will require appropriate planning and continued investment.
Depending on occupancy levels in all modes, there are scenarios where HSR will or will not perform environmentally better than the other modes: with 75 percent occupancy, HSR’s energy ROI is recouped in eight years, its GHG emissions in six years. But at 25 percent occupancy its ROI is infinite. At mid-level occupancy HSR ROI is achieved at 28 years for energy and 71 years for GHG emissions.
While HSR’s huge new infrastructure counts against it environmentally, the electricity required to run the trains—and how it is produced—also has major environmental costs. Under the current electricity mix, high-speed rail will emit much larger amounts of sulfur dioxide than other modes because it will be fueled by California electricity, which is produced in part from fossil natural gas and coal. The other modes use lower-sulfur fuels and have emissions-control devices. In fact, the researchers noted that the ROI on sulfur dioxide emissions will never be achieved for HSR no matter how full its trains are packed.
HSR has worked fine in other countries without being labeled a "scam" but now you think an LA to SF HSR is a "scam?"
We here in the USA are merely behind the times.
We are such an "individual car per person-based" society that anything that threatens that independence is seen as a BAD thing by a certain, small section of society.
So silly. So, Oh So Silly.
Gary says, "I would expect an electric car would make the trip for about $15 in electricity with 4 people in the car. "
People can drive from LA to Phoenix cheaper than they can fly, but the flights still sell.
I will admit that as a Seattle brat I was taught ta be a good little boy and learn ta drive and drive amongst all the other selfish punks in the metro Seattle area. Add to the mess a hurt, it's the way it is in America.
But those of us who want to still drive and not fly (if we have the time) are really becoming the minority. Notice how so many more times now we have people with those sullen looks on their faces when their flights get canceled?
Us, ride a bus? A light rail train? When we can just as easily grab a Snicker's and a can a Classic Coke and hit the open road in our Mitsubishi? Bite your tongue, boy!
But you edge in talk of all-electrically propelled transportation and I perk my ears up. Can a 2011 BYD e6 really go 200 miles on only one charge? But you see, like gagrice mentioned, it's the EV's I'm salivating over. I can go on electrical charge here. With my own unit. I can take my quick charger with me and use it in one of Portland, OR's fast charging stations on my way ta Seattle from Elko, NV. Just ram it through Portland. How do I make it to Portland from Elko. Boise, 229 miles to the north of Elko, and it's public charging system. Oh it's all so fun and gilded-edge and exciting.
We'll fig-yaa it out, larsb. But stifling our fat American frames in to a stinky bus? Oh, we shudda at the thought. HVAC systems do get built in ta buses, too, don't they?
See what I mean? To our detriment, even. You don't drive? How do you survive? Oh, it's so sad, Mertle, she doesn't drive! We are independent...this is the prime time for all-electric car/battery system developers to think up some kind of car battery/powertrain that will go 600 miles on only one charge.
The heck with BYD's e6 leading the new world order all-electric way with some 200 miles on only one charge. This is America, big hamburgers and big Cokes and big Cadidillacs and big Mitsubishi screens in our homes and in our Dallas Cowboy Stadiums. We are independent and we must at times wait at traffic lights.
That's just us. I can't see it ever changing, larsb. Can't see it. Even if Toyota shrivels up and gets eaten up by some of the other aggressive Ford alligators. Whose CEO just deposited a $43 million dollar bonus check in the bank of his choice. Or Ford's choice. Keep your eye on Fo-Mo-Co. And BYD. And those willing to build a car battery drive system that will take us 600 glorius all-American miles in our Henry Ford mota-cars. And our 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS. Or whatever you drive. It's no sin to drive an ICE-mobile. Just get the thing tuned up. And drive. Car-crash deaths are down the past several years. Relieve your mind of that particular worry.
And we love our big American pick-em-up trucks. Can we wean ourselves off that oil? Relish it and take a big bite of that backyard grilled burger. Turn up the Montrose and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
I might need another road trip. Or at least getting a little further out of Elko than I have for the first month and a half my wife and I and our 2 y/o Chow Chow and 6 y/o Pomeranian have been in this successful Nevada miner's paradise.
Ahh...even if some of the snow is melting off the top of Ruby Dome it still looks glorious in all of it's pristine NE Nevada 11,300 foot beauty. Time for a big heaping bowl of faux-Raisin Bran. Topped with some powdered milk. No sugar required-the raisins provide quite enough sweetness, thank you very much.
Anyone heard from BO lately? Is the oil spill still topping the news? I've been caring for dozens of people's health care needs so intently Iately I'm afraid I've lost touch of Anderson's 360 just a titch.
I just can't see where this would benefit more than 0.001% of the population, and 0.01% of the people in CA. If the project was $50M to put a new train on existing track - OK. The plan I hear is a totally ridiculous cost for moving so few people.
As a tourist to CA, I once did a trip from SF to San Diego. Would I have taken a HSR to LA, and then drove. No way!! The whole point of the trip was to leisurely meander along stopping where I want to stop. So I really don't see a HSR getting much tourist business.
A HSR connects 2 points; while there are millions of "points" that it can't get to. When the train empties, people need a personal auto. You might as well drive yourself, and not deal with leaving an auto behind, and then having to get a rental when you get there.
Kernick, you are just too practical for some people. The percentage of travelers that would use this multi billion dollar boondoggle is infinitesimal. The opportunity for graft and and outright thievery of tax payer funds is huge. The state is on the verge of bankruptcy. Yet we are taking on a project that is very likely to be MORE polluting than the Planes, trains and automobiles it will replace. It is just another classic case of warring Eco nuts.
My simple question. How are you going to get a HS train up over 200 mph when the track is twisting and turning around every pond & woods with some endangered specie living therein? Of course now they are saying riders may be few and far between.
BERKELEY — The California High-Speed Rail Authority’s forecasts of demand and ridership for a new San Francisco-to-Los Angeles high-speed train are not reliable because they are based on an inconsistent model, according to a new study by researchers at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (ITS Berkeley).
“We found that the model that the rail authority relied upon to create average ridership projections was flawed at key decision-making junctures,” said study principal investigator Samer Madanat, director of ITS Berkeley and UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering. “This means that the forecast of ridership is unlikely to be very close to the ridership that would actually materialize if the system were built. As such, it is not possible to predict whether the proposed high-speed rail system in California will experience healthy profits or severe revenue shortfalls.”
And larsb, why do you want the U.S.A. to be like the rest of the world? We have been on the cutting edge of most of the human advances in our brief history and it has been the U.S.A. that has dragged the rest of the world along with us.
No, we are not perfect...but somebody has to take charge, step up and be the leader. That task has fallen on our shoulders whether you like it or not.
The opportunity for graft and and outright thievery of tax payer funds is huge.
Yes. What I see the main reason for this project is that the area "needs" some new mega-project at ALL times, and there is a looming void. If there wasn't some large public-works project going on (whether we need it or not) then how would the politicians payback their patron construction companies and union-workers? Yes, the politicians are always challenged to keep the bulldozers rolling, in order to keep their campaign contributions coming in from the construction companies and unions.
Separately, it's great to see the incompetence (or is it stonewalling) of CA's payroll dept. They told Ahnold it would take the better part of a year to reduce the state employees wages to minimum-wage. I bet they don't have any trouble increasing the wage every year on the exact date that that it needs to be done. And that is with employees making many different wages. So ask yourself why a single-rate would be so hard to implement.
I like most of the people of your state. I like your environment. But I would never consider living there, given the socialist politics, nanny-state and high taxes and cost-of-living.
It's waste like that that will bankrupt this country. Individual transportation is always necessary to get to every nook and cranny of this country.
Also: How exactly would CA guard the tracks of a HSR for hundreds of miles? It would seem to me that a single terrorist with a small bomb could set it off a couple of hundred yards in front of the train, and kill everyone on board.
Also: How exactly would CA guard the tracks of a HSR for hundreds of miles? It would seem to me that a single terrorist with a small bomb could set it off a couple of hundred yards in front of the train, and kill everyone on board.
No, don't give the monsters any ideas. Oh, that's right, they're gonna think of these nutty terroristic ideas anyway, on their own. Even with our collective trains of thought wishing they wouldn't.
But, yes, it is a concern. Paying more State of California employees to guard the tracks is just what Ahh-Nold needs. But it's true that they'd have to have it watched.
By video cameras, and dozens of highly-paid professional security employees. Just up the price of the light-rail tickets to cover the cost. I don't fault them for thinking about these types of alternative transportation. Do any a you?
Put simply: it's a waste. Of time, money, press releases, etc. It will NEVER happen. Just another diversionary puff in the breath of mans seemingly limitless idiocy. Where do these "ideas" come from???? Oh yeah, POLITICIANS...
Even allowing for the fact that Edmunds is an automotive-based forum I cannot comprehend some of the raw negativity I'm reading here. HSR should not be just a California topic - it should be a national project in much the same way that President...............er, forgotten which one,,,,,,,,,,,,,caused the Interstate Highway system to be built and for similar reasons. Yes, I know, I'm being a simplistic Brit but I truly believe there are many advantages to be had from a good national passenger rail system, (you already have lots of freight moving on the rails).
HSR surely goes between two points but it can stop at waypoints. The object lessons are to be found in Japan and France. Even poor old London has a HSR link to Paris and Brussels, (Eurostar), and it is superb centre-to-centre tansport linking cities where a car is mostly a darned inconvenience. I can go to my local rail station get a fast train to London in 1h 20m, walk 5 minutes across the street, board a Eurostar train to Lille in France in 1 hour, change trains there, (same station), onto a French TGV and get off in Marseilles, (or an intermediate stop), some 6 hours later..........totally relaxed having worked on my laptop, (power points and WiFi all the way), read a book, done some paperwork, eaten in comfort or just watched the scenery and dozed. Do that by car ? Mais non, monsieur. Likewise, I can train from the UK to southern Italy in comfort and cheaper, and with less hassle, than flying. Ditto to, say, Hamburg. The list is endless.
You have the engineering expertise, you have the workforce and you should have the vision and the will. So GM, Ford, Big Oil and the airlines won't like it ? Either they run the country or you do. You really do need to start looking at what is best outside USA borders and adapting it to your use and ditch the "If we don't have it now, we obviously don't need it" mentality.
As an aside; some of you may need to be reminded, (or even told for the first time ?), that America did not give the world everything worth having. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Most of, (all ?), your aerospace technology/rocketry technology came from non-USA minds. How about Frank Whittle and Werner von Braun ? In the sacred auto industry how about Gottlieb Daimler or Rudolf Diesel ? Need I go on ? Making lots of something isn't the same as inventing it.........it's more a question of market size, despite the output of the Hollywood myth machine. Right now the rest of the world is even showing you how to make automobiles. Apple Pie might be next !
Come on guys, you can do better than this.
This post is considerably shorter than my originally-envisaged mega-rant in deference to the date. Have a truly wonderful celebration. You are a great nation but you seem to be getting prematurely old, complacent and a little short-sighted.
Please accept my criticisms as being from an old Brit who loves America, it's people and most of what it stands for - and wishes to see it return to it's true values.
It is not the concept of HSR that is troubling. It is the cost. How many countries in the EU could afford $90,000,000,000 to build a HSR system that covers a little over 300 miles? My wife takes AmTrak to visit the grandkids North of LA. It costs $80 business class and beats fighting the LA traffic. I know the Brits are used to lots of red tape. I am not sure you can compare with the warring ecologist groups in CA. Heck we cannot even get a power line from the desert to San Diego approved to take advantage of Solar power. No less than a hundred different groups have filed suits to block the line. That is small potatoes compared to the litigation getting a HSR from San Diego to San Francisco. Do you have any idea how many endangered oak trees are in the path?
Also a reminder. The USA led the way to railroads. We had tracks running everywhere long before Europe got with the program. CA cannot afford HSR. We are broke, busted, out a moola, bankrupt.
That about sums it up. It has less with an unwillingness to mimic the ideas of others rather than the entire system being tightly controlled by profiteering special interest groups.
I'd also like to see the UK return to what it was rather than what it is...going to be a dark future for both nations at this rate.
Maybe Europe can pay the US for the longterm military defense afforded over the decades, and the US can use that money to build transit. It does beg the question...if Europe had been defending itself against the Soviets for the past 60 years, would all of the amazing infrastructure still exist? I believe not.
That is a good point, that also applies to Japan and their modern rail system. I think a better idea of what is happening would be to compare China's recent HSR system to CA's feeble attempt. China just does it and now has the fastest most modern rail system in the World. Do you think they allowed every Eco nut in the country to block their progress? What a difference 150 years can make.
BEIJING — Nearly 150 years after American railroads brought in thousands of Chinese laborers to build rail lines across the West, China is poised once again to play a role in American rail construction. But this time, it would be an entirely different role: supplying the technology, equipment and engineers to build high-speed rail lines.
had this particular area of expertise. I still have a view of independence among the American people, that this HSR system wouldn't get enough ridership. Maybe it would work for some people, but, a link from S.F. to L.A. and on to Anaheim? Would there be constant and consistent ridership for this route? I guess we could figure that this Cal. HSR group that has responsibility for implementing the project has already studied the viability for the construction of this HSR route and feels strongly it will succeed.
G.E. estimates that the United States will spend $13 billion in the next five years on high-speed rail routes. China, with a much more ambitious infrastructure program, will spend $300 billion in the next three years on overall expansion of its rail routes, mainly high-speed routes, according to G.E.
Look at that lead China has in this department over the U.S. Phew!
The link between L.A. and Las Vegas has been talked about for at least a couple years and apparently that privately-funded project will go on eventually, too, as they can fill in all of their needs.
I believe your view would be fine, if the U.S. had its other needs taken care of first. As we have stated there are other priorities much more important to spend those HSR funds on.
CA is broke and is going to have to make massive cuts in its current funding. The U.S. government for the most-part is broke, with a fairly substantial debt, and a much larger problem of obligations of Medicare, Social Security and government pensions looming.
Spending $$$ on HSR is like buying a new car at the same time you don't have $ to fix the broken furnace in your house, and the termites are eating the foundation. The best thing CA could do if it has the $$ that would be spent on HSR, would be to secure the borders and deport the illegals who overload the CA social and health systems.
No more luxury boondoggles, until the basics are fixed. 1 train line or 100 isn't going to reverse man's GHG emissions.
It didn't feel that way as high temperatures were at record lows in San Diego County today, says the National Weather Service. It was quite a contrast from the East Coast, where such big cities as New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore experienced record highs.
A trough of low pressure and a thick marine layer kept most of the western half of the county cloaked in clouds for much of the day.
The temperature only reached 62 degrees in Oceanside Harbor. The record "low high" for this date is 65. That record was set in 2002. The harbor averages a high of 74 degrees this time of year.
Whatever is causing the cooling, I like it. This has been one of the nicest Summers that I can remember. A little cool over night. But we are hitting 75-80 every day in my part of San Diego County. Which is the most important part for me. Overall about 10 degrees below our normal Summer weather. We keep thinking maybe next week it will be in the high 90s and it just does not materialize. Taking longer for the tomatoes to ripen. But they are much bigger than usual.
PS I have not used the heating or AC since last year. Hope the AC works when it does get hot.
A thick blanket of heat settled over New York on Tuesday, triggering scattered power failures and turning a simple trip to the corner for lunch into a sweat-drenched slog.
The mercury hit 103 degrees in Central Park, breaking the record set in 1999 by 2 degrees. Only three days have been hotter since 1869, when officials began keeping records.
More than 18,000 Con Edison customers in the city and Westchester County were without power for some parts of the day.
By 10 p.m., 10,130 customers were still in the dark - most of them in Staten Island, Queens, the Bronx and Westchester.
"This is ridiculous. It's not even this hot in Florida, and they have power," said Marie Musanti of Staten Island, where more than 4,300 customers endured evening blackouts.
Inside Musanti's home, it was more than 90 degrees. "I'm too old to be this hot!" fumed Musanti, 55, of Rosebank.
Remember Gary - every "local weather" story you post about "cooling" will be countered one-for-one by a "local weather story" about warming.
You still have not responded to the discrepancies with the RAWS data used by the NWS to push their AGW agenda. Ignoring that are we? My local RAWS is always 6 to 10 degrees warmer than all the temps in the area. Most of the personal weather stations in our area had a high yesterday of 75 degrees, which matched my high for the day. The RAWS had a high of 82 degrees. If you like to be lied to by the NWS that is your right. Does not make it factual or scientifically true.
Gary says, "Most of the personal weather stations in our area had a high yesterday of 75 degrees, which matched my high for the day. The RAWS had a high of 82 degrees. If you like to be lied to by the NWS that is your right. Does not make it factual or scientifically true."
Gary, you surely understand this concept, right:
Any city can only have ONE OFFICIAL TEMPERATURE STATION.
You understand why that has to be true, right?
Before I continue this discussion, let's make sure you understand that concept.
_____ I, Gary, do understand that simple concept Signed, Gary.
Great message, but I think the biggest problem is simply the staggering cost and the resulting bang for you buck measurement. Quite frankly the dollars spent vs the benefit gained just don't make sense.
Now think of the individual vehicles out there, especially if they transition away from gas (electricity, hydrogen, or something else) Spend all that HSR money on that kind of technology and you impact lots and lots of people in hopefully a positive way.
Could HSR rail work? Yes in some areas of high density to high density - e.g. any where in the NE down to Florida between November and March! But to blanket the whole country? I don't see the number of riders supporting that.
You are absolutely WRONG. No need to shout your lack of knowledge on the subject. And even those cities that have only one weather station, I would expect to accurately report the weather. San Diego has dozens of MADIS sites all being dumped into the data base that NOAA uses. Phoenix, AZ has nine MADIS sites. All of which could be considered OFFICIAL. I see a variation in Phoenix of 8 degrees currently. When you are trying to say the earth is warming by a fraction of a degree. It does not take a lot of discrepancies to throw the whole database off. That is what blew the AGW perps out of the water. Fudging a little here and there to give the desired results. I say the system is flawed. You believe what you want to believe. It is just not factual.
You need to study the MADIS system and then get back to us.
And no one "shouted." It's called EMPHASIS. It's used to make people pay particular notice what you are typing, instead of just having them assimilate it with the rest of the regularly formatted text.
The "official weather station" for the city of Phoenix is at Sky Harbor Airport.
That is "THE ONE AND ONLY OFFICIAL TEMPERATURE" for the city of Phoenix.
When you search 25 years from now, for the "official High Temperature for Phoenix AZ on July 6th, 2010" you will see that it was 105 degrees.
REGARDLESS of what MADIS concludes, there is and will ALWAYS BE only ONE OFFICIAL high temperature for any particular day in Phoenix.
Madis seems to be even MORE accurate than that, since it uses multiple recording stations.
Your points are, of course, entirely valid. Living on a, relatively, crowded island it's too easy to forget the wide open spaces in the centre of your country........and the distances involved. Building HSR from NYC to LA and from Seattle to Miami would surely attract a couple of thousand tourists and retired folk onto the rails, each year. Of course, the single-trip fare would entail selling off your house and pension fund but hey, that's the price of progress and stress-free scenic travel.
Yes, high-density to high-density makes sense but blanket coverage never could. I am suitably chastened. As an old boss would say; "Before putting mouth in gear, engage brain".
Like the UK, USA has other, more pressing, needs right now. However, our new(ish) coalition government seem to be trying to reverse quite a few of the excesses of 13 years of Socialist, (almost Marxist ?), government and the general population like the idea; even if the unions don't. Gordon Brown has disappeared from public life and Tony Blair is a Special Envoy to the Middle East, (which is quite poetic, really), when he's not earning £millions from lecture tours like the good Socialist he is :confuse:
Your current incumbents appear to have learnt some good lessons from Blair and Brown but I fear you will pay dearly for them - unless BP can be persuaded to pay for everything. Sorry. Couldn't resist.
UK runs it's trains as private companies and we struggle; but things are improving. French railways are state-run and heavily subsidised but are generally superb, particularly the TGV expresses. There is something very civilised about sitting in comfort, eating a decent meal whilst watching the scenery glide past at 180mph+. I truly hope that USA gets it's house in order and then builds a couple of HSR lines. You guys deserve nothing less.
There is at least 1 high speed rail, that connects Boston to NYC, and it may go on to Washington. It's the "Acela" train. But I don't think it is super-fast and not all sections of the track are "fast".
Anyway I never really considered it a good option. I can leave my house and drive to NYC in 4 hours. It would take me 2 hours to drive to Boston and get parked for the train. I figure I'd need to get there 0.5 hr early. A ticket is over $100 per person. The train trip is 3 hours? Now if I want to stay in NYC I don't need a car. But if my real destination is 30 miles outside the city, then I need to rent a car after getting off the Acela. Meanwhile I'm paying about $20/day to have my car parked at the Boston Acela station.
I've been on the French HSR from Paris to Valence (60 miles north of the Riviera). It was comfortable. The scenery was so-so, mostly being blocked by grassy berms on each side. I never got to see any of Paris or even the Eiffel Tower, as the train station was downstairs from the air-terminal. I didn't get any food with my ticket, not even a bag of peanuts. When I returned to Paris there was some sort of strike going on at the airport. Doesn't parts of the transportation system in Europe get paralyzed a few times per year by union-strikes?
I don't know. I just don't see why I want to trade my door-to-door personal transportation in, and support a system that is susceptible to strikes, terrorism, spread of infections, and a schedule that probably does not match mine. I like the ability to wake up 4am Saturday morning and decide I want to go somewhere, throw some clothes in a bag, walk to my garage, and go in any direction I want for $30 gasoline. I can stop where I want for what food I want, and stop along the way where I want. I'm not on the train's schedule nor do I only have a set stop.
The only public transportation that I found really useful, and as good as a car, was the bus on an island - Oahu. They have frequent buses, they go everywhere, and they have frequent stops.
It's good to see that not everyone with free-time is wasting it. Someone had the initiative to try and be a mini-Al Gore, and make some $ from the gullible.
"But certainly the evidence we have today shows we do have global warming, and that most of this is due to human action,"
Remember that the evidence that the Greeks had in 350 B.C. until the time of Galileo and the first telescopes ((1600 A.D.) = 2000 years!) - said that Ptolemaic system of the universe was correct.
If you do a little research, you'll find that climatologists admit that because nature is so complex, that they really won't have a good model until 2030 - 2040. Today's fastest computers are no where near sophisticated enough to model the climate accurately.
What we have curretnly is a bunch of scientists who try and compare temperatures from 100 years ago, 50 years ago, and current with the various spots measured and errors in the technology and methods of which the temperatures were measured. And guess what there is a whole bunch of fame and $$$ being pumped into the field because there's this "exciting developments of MMGW."
Understand that without supposed-MMGW, the field of climatology might get $1B of research money. With supposed MMGW the field of climatology might be getting $20B of research money. Now $20B can certainly tempt men to make data look like evidence of something.
Anytime there is money being made, including from your link, I suspect a significant bias. Don't you?
I think we need to make some DVDs for sale and create a similar website. How to survive in a World controlled by AGW nut cases. That is where we are currently living. And the future does not look all that bright. We could be back in the caves within a couple generations if they are allowed to continue their scams such as Cap n Trade.
I'd start that business with you gagrice, but I've become a 2012-nut. Since the end-of-days is near, I have plenty of $$ to last thru 2012, so I'm not working anymore. :P I am stocking up on survival supplies though, all offered at a good price I'm sure.
Isn't it a wonderful psychology lesson for societal to see how some people like to scare themselves and have armageddon on the horizon, and others are the wolves watching the sheep.
Hello Gagrice and you may very much enjoy reading: How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World.
Can you believe after all of the news of complete fraud with the hockey stick graff and emails being erased that we are still dealing with this nonsense.
Trillions are at stake and there is nothing to fixate the human mind like fear.
If only the collectivists were as successful in the markeplace as they are in selling propaganda. Is collectivism a self immolation gene pool throw back to tribalism?
Marxism redux now remarked as saving the environment. It really is a brilliant sales presentation to the uninformed.
Collectivism in all of its guises is really the political manifestation of envy, the dark side of human nature.
This is about control of Liberty, property and our very lives people.
It was an independent panel, the 3rd one to clear them of misconduct:
Third Time's a Charm?
The report marks the third and final inquiry into the cache of hacked material.
The first was released in March by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. The second, completed in April, was conducted by a group of independent researchers recommended by the Royal Society, a national science academy in Britain, and led by Ron Oxburgh, a former geologist and Shell chair.
All three audits have exonerated the British and American researchers involved of any willful impropriety. But none carry more weight than the so-called Russell Review.
Russell and his four-member team, who boast "100 years' collective expertise of scientific research," were asked by the University of East Anglia on December 3, to examine the conduct of CRU researchers and inspect allegations of data manipulation.
CRU uses temperature data recorded at 4,000 of the world's 7,000 land-based weather stations worldwide, the study said.
One of the main complaints thrown up by skeptics is that CRU withheld that data and the computer code needed to reproduce the numbers.
But the review said the data is "freely" available to independent researchers. Further, "the computer code required to read and analyze the instrumental temperature data is straightforward to write based upon the published literature."
"We conclude that the argument that CRU had something to hide does not stand up," Russell told reporters on Wednesday.
Not unlike the two other inquiries, the quality of climate science itself was not under scrutiny
"The main issue is that they conclude that the rigor and honesty of the CRU scientists is not in doubt ... and we are very pleased to have this proclaimed so vigorously," they wrote in a joint post. "Secondly, they conclude that none of the emails cast doubt on the integrity and conclusions of the IPCC, again, something we have been saying since the beginning."
something we have been saying since the beginning."
Here is a view on the Russell report.
"The Muir Russell report on the ClimateGate scandal does a highly professional job of concealment. It gives every appearance of addressing all the allegations that have been made since the ClimateGate e-mails and computer files from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Institute were released last November. However, the committee relied almost entirely on the testimony of those implicated in the scandal or those who have a vested interest in defending the establishment view of global warming. The critics of the CRU with the most expertise were not interviewed. It is easy to find for the accused if no prosecution witnesses are allowed to take the stand.
Muir Russell is a AGW hack hired to make CRU and Phil Jones look good. Pure and simple. There was NO INDEPENDENT review of Climategate. NONE, NADA end of story. Phil Jones is a liar along with Muir Russell.
Comments
Hey, Mrs. iluv and I (and our Pomeranian and Chow Chow) have shipped out to NE Nevada now, Elko to be exact. Left the two cats behind with our son in Willcox. The hospital in Willcox started turning much too Twilight-Zonish for me and since my wife worked there too, she saw it up-front and personal and we both quit! Right ta work state BS. It took me one week to find another RT job. That is quicker than I thought-the recruiter found me just as the Nevada hospital really needed an RT bad.
We rent up here in NV and still own the house in the SE Arizona cowboy town. Our son and his buddy are renting from us, because if we tried to sell now in this market the results would be too scanty to bear.
Today in Elko it was about 86 degrees and hot and sunny. I'd venture a guess SE AZ was baking at about 98 degrees, too!
I don't suppose the huge trucks they use in the Elko mines help the global warming...I mean pollution...I mean global warming AG situation out much. I just read in a local brochure that one of the tires on these particular mining trucks cost some $68,000. Does that sound right? Yikes.
Just about makes me want to vent some extra carbon dioxide.
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It was an ok post ... except for the ad linked at the bottom.
I just started reading the Michael Crichton anti GW book, State of Fear, btw. He's like Buckley - a good read even if you don't like his politics.
Don't bebop up to Boise too soon Iluv - we're in Taos for a few weeks. Just drove over a 9800' pass this morning with fresh snow on the road. Cool today but it's been about 80° down in town (around 7,000'). Wasn't expecting the white stuff, especially not on the asphalt.
And Taos is in...the state of New Mexico?
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The electricity cannot be stored, so one solution — known as the 'balancing mechanism' — is to switch off or reduce the power supplied.
The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place three weeks ago. Scottish Power received £13,000 for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning.
Whereas coal and gas power stations often pay the National Grid £15 to £20 per megawatt hour they do not supply, Scottish Power was paid £180 per megawatt hour during the test to switch off its turbines.
Earlier this year, The Sunday Telegraph revealed that electricity customers are paying more than £1 billion a year to subsidise wind farms and other forms of renewable energy.
In the USA, some places have forced the shut down of coal generators to make room for the Wind power. Of course when the wind stops, it is not just turning on a switch to bring a coal fire generation system back on line. So who is winning in this and other alternative energy boondoggles?
This is why the corrupt crony capitalists at GE are so into green energy that they have devoted their NBC Universal holding to propagandizing on its behalf. It is an utter boondoggle, but so long as it is coercively subsidized to the hilt, they'll make a fortune off it. Meanwhile, the "small people" (as Obama's pro-green energy financiers at BP call us) will pay much more for much less, so that politicians can thump their chests and proclaim that they've saved the polar bears by altering the weather.
And the screws keep turning on the Tax payers
Finally she got away. Later, she talked to friends, liberals like herself, who advised against telling police. One asked her "to just suck it up; otherwise, the world's going to be destroyed from global warming."
Crazed sex poodle
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
Hey some GW advice Al - sell the yacht, stop the jet-setting, give the multiple houses to some poor people (probably several families could live in each of his houses), and quit pushing your Grade B sci-fi stories and movies to the gullible. We have enough people in our society who see man mainly as "sinners", without you adding your phony issue, to this mental health problem.
Mankind's vehicle-effect is insignificant compared to the effect of the activity of the Sun, and the Earth's natural cycles.
Amen to that, kernick. AG and weather disturbances and pollution and GW all add up to some uncomfortable times, at times. But as a money-making scheme and movie hysteria it's sad that there are those who will take something like this and only think about their pocketbook(s). Eh?
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Add to this that one good vulcanic erruption blows more sulfuric acid, particles and other un-holy gases into the athmosphere, than all of mankind's sumtotal of any and all pollutans produced.
When one looks at a scale model of our planet's cross section, it is a miracle that the dang mess hasn't blown apart a long time ago. It's a a bit like a water balloon sailing at twice the speed of sound through space. Even the most 'minor' impact with any other object has to be catastrophic at the least...
And we think of ourselves as soooo tough and mighty, paaahhh, -- not so. We are no more than microbes crawling around on a grain of sand.
Ahh...so AG is all about bringing back the Scopes monkey trial? Think about it a minute...is he all about man trying to save himself and not relying on a personal relationship with a Creator? Might he be? And he figures that as mankind is floundering around with all of these earthquakes and storms and fighting against each other that he'd just butt his political [non-permissible content removed] in there and profit off of anyone dumb enough to throw their white peace flag in with him then. Scoundrels and thieves. I mean that sincerely, too. Don't listen to him. Listen to the man upstairs and those he sends out to you.
Quite interesting, then. We've monkeyed around long enough with this one and look where our thoughts can wander to. Humm-humm.
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Sort of like real life....
I think Airframe is still the best one of his I've read.
Arpad Horvath , Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Mikhail Chester, an ITS post-doc researcher, have made it easier to compare and contrast the different transport modes with their development of a life-cycle analysis for high-speed rail. Their work, “Life-cycle assessment of high-speed rail: the case of California,” was published recently in Environmental Research Letters.
But under current conditions—with the model of HSR trains proposed and its energy source, as well as the types of automobiles and airplanes now in existence—the ITS researchers found that high-speed rail has the potential to be the lowest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter only if it consistently travels at high occupancy or uses a low-emission electricity source such as wind, both of which will require appropriate planning and continued investment.
Depending on occupancy levels in all modes, there are scenarios where HSR will or will not perform environmentally better than the other modes: with 75 percent occupancy, HSR’s energy ROI is recouped in eight years, its GHG emissions in six years. But at 25 percent occupancy its ROI is infinite. At mid-level occupancy HSR ROI is achieved at 28 years for energy and 71 years for GHG emissions.
While HSR’s huge new infrastructure counts against it environmentally, the electricity required to run the trains—and how it is produced—also has major environmental costs. Under the current electricity mix, high-speed rail will emit much larger amounts of sulfur dioxide than other modes because it will be fueled by California electricity, which is produced in part from fossil natural gas and coal. The other modes use lower-sulfur fuels and have emissions-control devices. In fact, the researchers noted that the ROI on sulfur dioxide emissions will never be achieved for HSR no matter how full its trains are packed.
Inconvenient Truth about HSR
My guess is most of the $12 billion will end up in consultants pockets and 10 years from now we will be no closer to having HSR in CA.
I agree with your guess. Unfortunately I bet it's gonna be right on. If a program like this is really gonna be a done deal. To try and...deal.
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HSR has worked fine in other countries without being labeled a "scam" but now you think an LA to SF HSR is a "scam?"
We here in the USA are merely behind the times.
We are such an "individual car per person-based" society that anything that threatens that independence is seen as a BAD thing by a certain, small section of society.
So silly. So, Oh So Silly.
Gary says, "I would expect an electric car would make the trip for about $15 in electricity with 4 people in the car. "
People can drive from LA to Phoenix cheaper than they can fly, but the flights still sell.
Time is money, Gary.
But those of us who want to still drive and not fly (if we have the time) are really becoming the minority. Notice how so many more times now we have people with those sullen looks on their faces when their flights get canceled?
Us, ride a bus? A light rail train? When we can just as easily grab a Snicker's and a can a Classic Coke and hit the open road in our Mitsubishi? Bite your tongue, boy!
But you edge in talk of all-electrically propelled transportation and I perk my ears up. Can a 2011 BYD e6 really go 200 miles on only one charge? But you see, like gagrice mentioned, it's the EV's I'm salivating over. I can go on electrical charge here. With my own unit. I can take my quick charger with me and use it in one of Portland, OR's fast charging stations on my way ta Seattle from Elko, NV. Just ram it through Portland. How do I make it to Portland from Elko. Boise, 229 miles to the north of Elko, and it's public charging system. Oh it's all so fun and gilded-edge and exciting.
We'll fig-yaa it out, larsb. But stifling our fat American frames in to a stinky bus? Oh, we shudda at the thought. HVAC systems do get built in ta buses, too, don't they?
See what I mean? To our detriment, even. You don't drive? How do you survive? Oh, it's so sad, Mertle, she doesn't drive! We are independent...this is the prime time for all-electric car/battery system developers to think up some kind of car battery/powertrain that will go 600 miles on only one charge.
The heck with BYD's e6 leading the new world order all-electric way with some 200 miles on only one charge. This is America, big hamburgers and big Cokes and big Cadidillacs and big Mitsubishi screens in our homes and in our Dallas Cowboy Stadiums. We are independent and we must at times wait at traffic lights.
That's just us. I can't see it ever changing, larsb. Can't see it. Even if Toyota shrivels up and gets eaten up by some of the other aggressive Ford alligators. Whose CEO just deposited a $43 million dollar bonus check in the bank of his choice. Or Ford's choice. Keep your eye on Fo-Mo-Co. And BYD. And those willing to build a car battery drive system that will take us 600 glorius all-American miles in our Henry Ford mota-cars. And our 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS. Or whatever you drive. It's no sin to drive an ICE-mobile. Just get the thing tuned up. And drive. Car-crash deaths are down the past several years. Relieve your mind of that particular worry.
And we love our big American pick-em-up trucks. Can we wean ourselves off that oil? Relish it and take a big bite of that backyard grilled burger. Turn up the Montrose and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
I might need another road trip. Or at least getting a little further out of Elko than I have for the first month and a half my wife and I and our 2 y/o Chow Chow and 6 y/o Pomeranian have been in this successful Nevada miner's paradise.
Ahh...even if some of the snow is melting off the top of Ruby Dome it still looks glorious in all of it's pristine NE Nevada 11,300 foot beauty. Time for a big heaping bowl of faux-Raisin Bran. Topped with some powdered milk. No sugar required-the raisins provide quite enough sweetness, thank you very much.
Anyone heard from BO lately? Is the oil spill still topping the news? I've been caring for dozens of people's health care needs so intently Iately I'm afraid I've lost touch of Anderson's 360 just a titch.
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As a tourist to CA, I once did a trip from SF to San Diego. Would I have taken a HSR to LA, and then drove. No way!! The whole point of the trip was to leisurely meander along stopping where I want to stop. So I really don't see a HSR getting much tourist business.
A HSR connects 2 points; while there are millions of "points" that it can't get to. When the train empties, people need a personal auto. You might as well drive yourself, and not deal with leaving an auto behind, and then having to get a rental when you get there.
My simple question. How are you going to get a HS train up over 200 mph when the track is twisting and turning around every pond & woods with some endangered specie living therein? Of course now they are saying riders may be few and far between.
BERKELEY — The California High-Speed Rail Authority’s forecasts of demand and ridership for a new San Francisco-to-Los Angeles high-speed train are not reliable because they are based on an inconsistent model, according to a new study by researchers at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (ITS Berkeley).
“We found that the model that the rail authority relied upon to create average ridership projections was flawed at key decision-making junctures,” said study principal investigator Samer Madanat, director of ITS Berkeley and UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering. “This means that the forecast of ridership is unlikely to be very close to the ridership that would actually materialize if the system were built. As such, it is not possible to predict whether the proposed high-speed rail system in California will experience healthy profits or severe revenue shortfalls.”
HSR boondoggle
Very similar to AGW scam with RAWS reporting fallacious temperature readings around the globe.
And larsb, why do you want the U.S.A. to be like the rest of the world? We have been on the cutting edge of most of the human advances in our brief history and it has been the U.S.A. that has dragged the rest of the world along with us.
No, we are not perfect...but somebody has to take charge, step up and be the leader. That task has fallen on our shoulders whether you like it or not.
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Yes. What I see the main reason for this project is that the area "needs" some new mega-project at ALL times, and there is a looming void. If there wasn't some large public-works project going on (whether we need it or not) then how would the politicians payback their patron construction companies and union-workers? Yes, the politicians are always challenged to keep the bulldozers rolling, in order to keep their campaign contributions coming in from the construction companies and unions.
Separately, it's great to see the incompetence (or is it stonewalling) of CA's payroll dept. They told Ahnold it would take the better part of a year to reduce the state employees wages to minimum-wage. I bet they don't have any trouble increasing the wage every year on the exact date that that it needs to be done. And that is with employees making many different wages. So ask yourself why a single-rate would be so hard to implement.
I like most of the people of your state. I like your environment. But I would never consider living there, given the socialist politics, nanny-state and high taxes and cost-of-living.
It's waste like that that will bankrupt this country. Individual transportation is always necessary to get to every nook and cranny of this country.
Also: How exactly would CA guard the tracks of a HSR for hundreds of miles? It would seem to me that a single terrorist with a small bomb could set it off a couple of hundred yards in front of the train, and kill everyone on board.
No, don't give the monsters any ideas. Oh, that's right, they're gonna think of these nutty terroristic ideas anyway, on their own. Even with our collective trains of thought wishing they wouldn't.
But, yes, it is a concern. Paying more State of California employees to guard the tracks is just what Ahh-Nold needs. But it's true that they'd have to have it watched.
By video cameras, and dozens of highly-paid professional security employees. Just up the price of the light-rail tickets to cover the cost. I don't fault them for thinking about these types of alternative transportation. Do any a you?
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Just another diversionary puff in the breath of mans seemingly limitless idiocy.
Where do these "ideas" come from???? Oh yeah, POLITICIANS...
HSR surely goes between two points but it can stop at waypoints. The object lessons are to be found in Japan and France. Even poor old London has a HSR link to Paris and Brussels, (Eurostar), and it is superb centre-to-centre tansport linking cities where a car is mostly a darned inconvenience. I can go to my local rail station get a fast train to London in 1h 20m, walk 5 minutes across the street, board a Eurostar train to Lille in France in 1 hour, change trains there, (same station), onto a French TGV and get off in Marseilles, (or an intermediate stop), some 6 hours later..........totally relaxed having worked on my laptop, (power points and WiFi all the way), read a book, done some paperwork, eaten in comfort or just watched the scenery and dozed. Do that by car ? Mais non, monsieur. Likewise, I can train from the UK to southern Italy in comfort and cheaper, and with less hassle, than flying. Ditto to, say, Hamburg. The list is endless.
You have the engineering expertise, you have the workforce and you should have the vision and the will. So GM, Ford, Big Oil and the airlines won't like it ? Either they run the country or you do. You really do need to start looking at what is best outside USA borders and adapting it to your use and ditch the "If we don't have it now, we obviously don't need it" mentality.
As an aside; some of you may need to be reminded, (or even told for the first time ?), that America did not give the world everything worth having. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Most of, (all ?), your aerospace technology/rocketry technology came from non-USA minds. How about Frank Whittle and Werner von Braun ? In the sacred auto industry how about Gottlieb Daimler or Rudolf Diesel ? Need I go on ? Making lots of something isn't the same as inventing it.........it's more a question of market size, despite the output of the Hollywood myth machine. Right now the rest of the world is even showing you how to make automobiles. Apple Pie might be next !
Come on guys, you can do better than this.
This post is considerably shorter than my originally-envisaged mega-rant in deference to the date. Have a truly wonderful celebration. You are a great nation but you seem to be getting prematurely old, complacent and a little short-sighted.
Please accept my criticisms as being from an old Brit who loves America, it's people and most of what it stands for - and wishes to see it return to it's true values.
God Bless America, (well, except in soccer).
Also a reminder. The USA led the way to railroads. We had tracks running everywhere long before Europe got with the program. CA cannot afford HSR. We are broke, busted, out a moola, bankrupt.
That about sums it up. It has less with an unwillingness to mimic the ideas of others rather than the entire system being tightly controlled by profiteering special interest groups.
I'd also like to see the UK return to what it was rather than what it is...going to be a dark future for both nations at this rate.
BEIJING — Nearly 150 years after American railroads brought in thousands of Chinese laborers to build rail lines across the West, China is poised once again to play a role in American rail construction. But this time, it would be an entirely different role: supplying the technology, equipment and engineers to build high-speed rail lines.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/business/global/08rail.html
G.E. estimates that the United States will spend $13 billion in the next five years on high-speed rail routes. China, with a much more ambitious infrastructure program, will spend $300 billion in the next three years on overall expansion of its rail routes, mainly high-speed routes, according to G.E.
Look at that lead China has in this department over the U.S. Phew!
The link between L.A. and Las Vegas has been talked about for at least a couple years and apparently that privately-funded project will go on eventually, too, as they can fill in all of their needs.
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CA is broke and is going to have to make massive cuts in its current funding. The U.S. government for the most-part is broke, with a fairly substantial debt, and a much larger problem of obligations of Medicare, Social Security and government pensions looming.
Spending $$$ on HSR is like buying a new car at the same time you don't have $ to fix the broken furnace in your house, and the termites are eating the foundation. The best thing CA could do if it has the $$ that would be spent on HSR, would be to secure the borders and deport the illegals who overload the CA social and health systems.
No more luxury boondoggles, until the basics are fixed. 1 train line or 100 isn't going to reverse man's GHG emissions.
It didn't feel that way as high temperatures were at record lows in San Diego County today, says the National Weather Service. It was quite a contrast from the East Coast, where such big cities as New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore experienced record highs.
A trough of low pressure and a thick marine layer kept most of the western half of the county cloaked in clouds for much of the day.
The temperature only reached 62 degrees in Oceanside Harbor. The record "low high" for this date is 65. That record was set in 2002. The harbor averages a high of 74 degrees this time of year.
Whatever is causing the cooling, I like it. This has been one of the nicest Summers that I can remember. A little cool over night. But we are hitting 75-80 every day in my part of San Diego County. Which is the most important part for me. Overall about 10 degrees below our normal Summer weather. We keep thinking maybe next week it will be in the high 90s and it just does not materialize. Taking longer for the tomatoes to ripen. But they are much bigger than usual.
PS
I have not used the heating or AC since last year. Hope the AC works when it does get hot.
New York City temperature hits 103 degrees; thousands lose power
It was a scorcher for the record books.
A thick blanket of heat settled over New York on Tuesday, triggering scattered power failures and turning a simple trip to the corner for lunch into a sweat-drenched slog.
The mercury hit 103 degrees in Central Park, breaking the record set in 1999 by 2 degrees. Only three days have been hotter since 1869, when officials began keeping records.
More than 18,000 Con Edison customers in the city and Westchester County were without power for some parts of the day.
By 10 p.m., 10,130 customers were still in the dark - most of them in Staten Island, Queens, the Bronx and Westchester.
"This is ridiculous. It's not even this hot in Florida, and they have power," said Marie Musanti of Staten Island, where more than 4,300 customers endured evening blackouts.
Inside Musanti's home, it was more than 90 degrees. "I'm too old to be this hot!" fumed Musanti, 55, of Rosebank.
Remember Gary - every "local weather" story you post about "cooling" will be countered one-for-one by a "local weather story" about warming.
Gary, you surely understand this concept, right:
Any city can only have ONE OFFICIAL TEMPERATURE STATION.
You understand why that has to be true, right?
Before I continue this discussion, let's make sure you understand that concept.
_____ I, Gary, do understand that simple concept
Signed, Gary.
Great message, but I think the biggest problem is simply the staggering cost and the resulting bang for you buck measurement. Quite frankly the dollars spent vs the benefit gained just don't make sense.
Now think of the individual vehicles out there, especially if they transition away from gas (electricity, hydrogen, or something else) Spend all that HSR money on that kind of technology and you impact lots and lots of people in hopefully a positive way.
Could HSR rail work? Yes in some areas of high density to high density - e.g. any where in the NE down to Florida between November and March! But to blanket the whole country? I don't see the number of riders supporting that.
You need to study the MADIS system and then get back to us.
http://madis.noaa.gov/
AGAIN.
And no one "shouted." It's called EMPHASIS. It's used to make people pay particular notice what you are typing, instead of just having them assimilate it with the rest of the regularly formatted text.
The "official weather station" for the city of Phoenix is at Sky Harbor Airport.
That is "THE ONE AND ONLY OFFICIAL TEMPERATURE" for the city of Phoenix.
When you search 25 years from now, for the "official High Temperature for Phoenix AZ on July 6th, 2010" you will see that it was 105 degrees.
REGARDLESS of what MADIS concludes, there is and will ALWAYS BE only ONE OFFICIAL high temperature for any particular day in Phoenix.
Madis seems to be even MORE accurate than that, since it uses multiple recording stations.
Your points are, of course, entirely valid. Living on a, relatively, crowded island it's too easy to forget the wide open spaces in the centre of your country........and the distances involved. Building HSR from NYC to LA and from Seattle to Miami would surely attract a couple of thousand tourists and retired folk onto the rails, each year. Of course, the single-trip fare would entail selling off your house and pension fund but hey, that's the price of progress and stress-free scenic travel.
Yes, high-density to high-density makes sense but blanket coverage never could. I am suitably chastened. As an old boss would say; "Before putting mouth in gear, engage brain".
Like the UK, USA has other, more pressing, needs right now. However, our new(ish) coalition government seem to be trying to reverse quite a few of the excesses of 13 years of Socialist, (almost Marxist ?), government and the general population like the idea; even if the unions don't. Gordon Brown has disappeared from public life and Tony Blair is a Special Envoy to the Middle East, (which is quite poetic, really), when he's not earning £millions from lecture tours like the good Socialist he is :confuse:
Your current incumbents appear to have learnt some good lessons from Blair and Brown but I fear you will pay dearly for them - unless BP can be persuaded to pay for everything. Sorry. Couldn't resist.
UK runs it's trains as private companies and we struggle; but things are improving. French railways are state-run and heavily subsidised but are generally superb, particularly the TGV expresses. There is something very civilised about sitting in comfort, eating a decent meal whilst watching the scenery glide past at 180mph+. I truly hope that USA gets it's house in order and then builds a couple of HSR lines. You guys deserve nothing less.
Anyway I never really considered it a good option. I can leave my house and drive to NYC in 4 hours. It would take me 2 hours to drive to Boston and get parked for the train. I figure I'd need to get there 0.5 hr early. A ticket is over $100 per person. The train trip is 3 hours? Now if I want to stay in NYC I don't need a car. But if my real destination is 30 miles outside the city, then I need to rent a car after getting off the Acela. Meanwhile I'm paying about $20/day to have my car parked at the Boston Acela station.
I've been on the French HSR from Paris to Valence (60 miles north of the Riviera). It was comfortable. The scenery was so-so, mostly being blocked by grassy berms on each side. I never got to see any of Paris or even the Eiffel Tower, as the train station was downstairs from the air-terminal. I didn't get any food with my ticket, not even a bag of peanuts. When I returned to Paris there was some sort of strike going on at the airport. Doesn't parts of the transportation system in Europe get paralyzed a few times per year by union-strikes?
I don't know. I just don't see why I want to trade my door-to-door personal transportation in, and support a system that is susceptible to strikes, terrorism, spread of infections, and a schedule that probably does not match mine. I like the ability to wake up 4am Saturday morning and decide I want to go somewhere, throw some clothes in a bag, walk to my garage, and go in any direction I want for $30 gasoline. I can stop where I want for what food I want, and stop along the way where I want. I'm not on the train's schedule nor do I only have a set stop.
The only public transportation that I found really useful, and as good as a car, was the bus on an island - Oahu. They have frequent buses, they go everywhere, and they have frequent stops.
"But certainly the evidence we have today shows we do have global warming, and that most of this is due to human action,"
Remember that the evidence that the Greeks had in 350 B.C. until the time of Galileo and the first telescopes ((1600 A.D.) = 2000 years!) - said that Ptolemaic system of the universe was correct.
If you do a little research, you'll find that climatologists admit that because nature is so complex, that they really won't have a good model until 2030 - 2040. Today's fastest computers are no where near sophisticated enough to model the climate accurately.
What we have curretnly is a bunch of scientists who try and compare temperatures from 100 years ago, 50 years ago, and current with the various spots measured and errors in the technology and methods of which the temperatures were measured. And guess what there is a whole bunch of fame and $$$ being pumped into the field because there's this "exciting developments of MMGW."
Understand that without supposed-MMGW, the field of climatology might get $1B of research money. With supposed MMGW the field of climatology might be getting $20B of research money. Now $20B can certainly tempt men to make data look like evidence of something.
Anytime there is money being made, including from your link, I suspect a significant bias. Don't you?
http://2012base.com/Products_and_Merchandise/Survival_Equipment/
Isn't it a wonderful psychology lesson for societal to see how some people like to scare themselves and have armageddon on the horizon, and others are the wolves watching the sheep.
Can you believe after all of the news of complete fraud with the hockey stick graff and emails being erased that we are still dealing with this nonsense.
Trillions are at stake and there is nothing to fixate the human mind like fear.
If only the collectivists were as successful in the markeplace as they are in selling propaganda. Is collectivism a self immolation gene pool throw back to tribalism?
Marxism redux now remarked as saving the environment. It really is a brilliant sales presentation to the uninformed.
Collectivism in all of its guises is really the political manifestation of envy, the dark side of human nature.
This is about control of Liberty, property and our very lives people.
Hacked email scientists exonerated of misconduct for a third time (Solveclimate.Com)
Climate scientists praise report on hacked email scandal (Reuters)
I guess lying and cheating and destroying evidence in OK in that realm.
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
It was an independent panel, the 3rd one to clear them of misconduct:
Third Time's a Charm?
The report marks the third and final inquiry into the cache of hacked material.
The first was released in March by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. The second, completed in April, was conducted by a group of independent researchers recommended by the Royal Society, a national science academy in Britain, and led by Ron Oxburgh, a former geologist and Shell chair.
All three audits have exonerated the British and American researchers involved of any willful impropriety. But none carry more weight than the so-called Russell Review.
Russell and his four-member team, who boast "100 years' collective expertise of scientific research," were asked by the University of East Anglia on December 3, to examine the conduct of CRU researchers and inspect allegations of data manipulation.
CRU uses temperature data recorded at 4,000 of the world's 7,000 land-based weather stations worldwide, the study said.
One of the main complaints thrown up by skeptics is that CRU withheld that data and the computer code needed to reproduce the numbers.
But the review said the data is "freely" available to independent researchers. Further, "the computer code required to read and analyze the instrumental temperature data is straightforward to write based upon the published literature."
"We conclude that the argument that CRU had something to hide does not stand up," Russell told reporters on Wednesday.
Not unlike the two other inquiries, the quality of climate science itself was not under scrutiny
"The main issue is that they conclude that the rigor and honesty of the CRU scientists is not in doubt ... and we are very pleased to have this proclaimed so vigorously," they wrote in a joint post. "Secondly, they conclude that none of the emails cast doubt on the integrity and conclusions of the IPCC, again, something we have been saying since the beginning."
Here is a view on the Russell report.
"The Muir Russell report on the ClimateGate scandal does a highly professional job of concealment. It gives every appearance of addressing all the allegations that have been made since the ClimateGate e-mails and computer files from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Institute were released last November. However, the committee relied almost entirely on the testimony of those implicated in the scandal or those who have a vested interest in defending the establishment view of global warming. The critics of the CRU with the most expertise were not interviewed. It is easy to find for the accused if no prosecution witnesses are allowed to take the stand.
nice try
Let's hear from some unbiased sources on the subject.
I already posted them. 3 independent reviews cleared them.
Every "denier" website has their own take.
Every "climate change blog" has their own take.
Doesn't change the facts - independent reviews, 3 of them, cleared them.
'Nuff said.
No, don't try posting back. I already said, "Nuff Said" which means....you know....