View from the Mountain

Roanoke and Alaskan Permafrost

The ice which we received in early December has refused to leave.  There is even still ice on our road in a couple of places.  It makes you wonder if we're in a mini ice age.  Of course it is hard to have an ice age if the temperatures still get into the fifties once in a while.

Today I read  in the  Toronto Star that there is a computer simulation which shows the potential of serious melting of the  permafrost in Alaska, Russia, and Canada.

I've read of other drastic changes, such as glaciers melting and record high temperatures.

The blazing sun this morning reminded me that the welcome heat of the sun on a winter morning can be too much of a good thing for us.   Global warming seems to be on us.

Perhaps, I'll not  compain as much  about the ice as I once did.

The Da Vinci Code of Global Warming

I just finished listening to Michael Crichton's "State of Fear."  It's a challenging book much in the same way that Dan Brown's book the Da Vinci Code is.

Crichton challenges many of the assumptions of global warming.  In fact the book spends much of its time lecturing us on how wrong global warming theories are.

Challenging all of Crichton's assumptions is well beyond the scope of my blog.  If you are interested in some of the challenges to Crichton's theories, I suggest reading the "State of Fear" review by Dr. Jeffrey M. Masters.

I give Crichton credit for attempting to weave what is obviously to him a very important bit of personal philosophy into an action-thriller novel. I also give him credit for taking the initiative to educate himself on the Global Warming issue, something that I believe all citizens should do (if you've got 10 minutes, a good place to start is the latest scientific summary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of over 2000 scientists from 100 countries working under a mandate from the United Nations in the largest peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history). However, "State of Fear" is a disappointment both as an action-thriller novel, and as a credible source of science on the Global Warming issue.

Listening to "State of Fear" brought to find some other accepted "facts" such as the population bomb.  It turns out the its more of a fizzle than a bomb.  According to this article, "The Fizzling Population Bomb," things are slowing down.

In the 44 developed countries, which account for 19% of the world population, the fertility rate is now running at only 1.56 children per woman. The report also notes that in 15 countries, mostly located in Southern and Eastern Europe, fertility rates are now below 1.3 children per woman, a level so low as to be "unprecedented in human history."

Of course population isn't going to drop any time soon.

World population growth continues to slow down, with a projected figure of 9.1 billion in 2050, up from today's 6.5 billion.

All of this points out that we need to carefully examine our assumptions on a lot of issues.  While Crichton might be wrong on some of his points, he got some of them right according to  Dr. Jeffrey M. Masters.

On the positive side, Crichton does emphasize the little-appreciated fact that while most of the world has been warming the past few decades, most of Antarctica has seen a cooling trend. The Antarctic ice sheet is actually expected in increase in mass over the next 100 years due to increased precipitation

Strange happenings in Canada

The weather is still warm here with the nights even staying pleasantly mild.  More importantly my garage door opener is working which is more than Canadians living within 25 miles of the US Embassy could say earlier in November.  This story from CBC Ottawa provides the details.

Hundreds of automatic garage doors in the Ottawa area have suddenly and strangely stopped working, due to a powerful radio signal that appears to be interfering with their remote controls.

Angolan Ambassador Miguel Puna couldn't close the embassy's iron gates using his remote control Thursday.

Angolan Ambassador Miguel Puna couldn't close the embassy's iron gates using his remote control Thursday.

The phenomenon began suddenly last weekend, J.P. Cleroux of Ram Overhead Door Systems said, adding that a strong signal was blocking garage door openers.

"It's affects a 25-mile radius. That's huge," said Cleroux.

It turns out that the signal is on a frequency that is only used by the US Military and garage door openers.  Perhaps it is a new strategy for urban warfare or taking over Canada finally.  We'll jam their garage doors open and they'll freeze to death in the harsh Canadian winter or at least their cars won't be able to start.  They'll have to start using their block heaters and that will overload the power grid which is already pretty shaky.  The good news also reported by CBC Ottawa is that the signal stopped as quickly as it started.

The powerful radio signal causing the problem stopped transmitting on Thursday afternoon, around the time CBC News contacted the U.S. Embassy to ask if it knew anything about it.

The embassy categorically denies that it had anything to do with it.

The signal was being transmitted at 390 megahertz, a U.S. military frequency used by the Pentagon's new Land Mobile Radio System. The same frequency is used by garage doors openers, which started to malfunction around the city about almost two weeks ago. A similar problem has popped up around military bases in the States.

I sure the Canadians believe the protestations of innocence from the US Embassy.  I  certainly hope this isn't the sign of another secret prison.   In other more recent Canadian news, artist Robert Bateman recently took part in the Toxic Nation project whose goal was to measure "volunteers for 88 harmful toxic chemicals, such as stain repellants, flame retardants, PCBs, lead, mercury and pesticides."

The article "I am Canadian and I am polluted" in today's Toronto Star goes on to say the following.

On average, 44 chemicals were found in each volunteer. Forty-eight toxic chemicals were found in my body, including 32 associated with cancer. The fact Toxic Nation found so many chemicals in all the volunteers should concern every Canadian, because it means that we're all polluted.

Pollution knows no boundaries, and overcomes even the greatest distances. The highest levels of mercury were found in one test volunteer — a First Nations Chief — from a remote village on the shores of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec.

I can't imagine the results would be less frightening if done on American volunteers.  According to Bateman, who did one of the first real prints that we ever purchased, he feels like a guinea pig.

Test results tell me I'm a guinea pig in a large-scale chemical experiment — only no one is monitoring the results and it is out of control. Many chemicals found in me persist for decades in the environment so I can only assume that my grandchildren will carry increasing levels of toxins.

I don't suppose anyone in Washington would be interested in these results.

 

Could this be 1708 instead of 2005

From the looks of the lights from downtown tonight, I doubt it.  However, I just read a really strange article which discusses the possibility that 297 years were added to our calendar.

The Phantom Time Hypothesis suggests that the early Middle Ages (614-911 A.D.) never happened, but were added to the calendar long ago either by accident, by misinterpretation of documents, or by deliberate falsification by calendar conspirators.

The author goes on to decide that the evidence isn't strong enough for there to be any credibility to the theory.  Just think if this is 1708 then I was born in 1652.  That is just plain weird.  I've always thought I was born in the wrong century, but I'm not sure 297 years earlier was what I had in mind.

I also just read an interesting article in the Washington Post, "A Double Dose of Failure," by Sebastian Mallaby.  Based on this article we could use some extra time to stockpile Tamiflu, the current hope against the avian flu.

France has enough of the drug on hand to treat 24 percent of its people. Britain expects to be at a similar level soon. But this policy of buying the drug from the patent holder works only for the countries that get in line early...

Already some 40 governments have placed orders. If every country ordered enough Tamiflu to treat a fifth of its people, it might take Roche a full decade to deliver.

The United States has failed to get in line early...

If the feds and the states resolve their burden-sharing arguments quickly, the earliest conceivable point at which the nation may have stockpiles equivalent to that of Britain or France appears to be mid-2007. In terms of getting access to Tamiflu, the United States has been a failure.

Heck, right now I would settle for a regular flu shot.  Our normal provider of the flu shots had a sign on the door Friday that we should check back at the middle of the month.  We didn't even try for a shot last year.

I used to think that the inherent inefficiencies in our government were a check against anything stupid happening quickly, but recent events seem to indicate otherwise. It  does seem all the challenges can be fixed with a large dose of our (or our grandchildren's) money.

All that extra money seems to mean another company gets rich because we can't figure out how to be efficient with our government. The country ends up going farther into debt because we can't plan effectively or execute those plans once they're in place without paying overtime or making it very profitable for companies to pick up the slack from the government.

It's similar to the new product syndrome at Apple.  Apple would start planning a new product with plenty of time to get the product from the far east to the US by inexpensive boats.  Then Steve Jobs would intervene at the last minute with some "critical" new details. That would destroy the product's time line.  Then the only way to get the product to the US on time was expensive air transportation.  It was a huge drag financially on the bottom line a few years ago.  Of course with the way Apple is manufacturing money these days,  having to hire a fleet of air planes to bring in the millions of iPods probably isn't even an issue or a rounding error on the balance sheet.

Of course the US government doesn't have a huge cash horde like Apple, and it doesn't even sound like faster shipping will help us out very much since we haven't even locked down a supply yet.   

In a recent post I mentioned taking a ferry to Canada just to get the flu shot that is included in the price.  Now I'm thinking that I should check to  see if they'll have me back.  After all with global warming, Prince Edward Island might turn out to be the next Outer Banks.

You really don't want to know this

I caught this nifty bit of information last night while reading my latest copy of "The Week Magazine."  A Google search turned up the full article, "Your bed is really an ecosystem" in Newsday.  It turns out that our bed isn't really that safe harbor that we thought it was.

It's not just your bed, it's an ecosystem. New research has found that your pillow is home to millions of fungal spores from the bathroom, kitchen and other places where you might not want to rest your head.

It's well known that few people actually sleep alone: Most beds are home to thousands of microscopic dust mites, which produce so much excrement they can add a pound or two of weight to your mattress every year, by some estimates.

Well I guess no more naps alone.  The article goes on to report that if you're healthy all the company shouldn't bother you.

Sleeping with fungi isn't dangerous for healthy people, Woodcock said. But it could be deadly for sick people, especially those with weakened immune systems