All Solar, Et Al, In 12 Years?

[Meandering]

RANDOLPH,

YOU FOUND IT!

THE REASON AMCs cant pay C&R is

GLOBAL WARMING!

AND LOOK! IT CAUSED A FINANCIAL CRISIS TOO! the banks sucked all the heat out of the world when the market crashed.

And I want to thank you for that civil war comment.
I spit coffee all over my monitor.


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[Randolph Kinney]

RANDOLPH,

YOU FOUND IT!

THE REASON AMCs cant pay C&R is

GLOBAL WARMING!

AND LOOK! IT CAUSED A FINANCIAL CRISIS TOO! the banks sucked all the heat out of the world when the market crashed.

And I want to thank you for that civil war comment.
I spit coffee all over my monitor.


.

Well, global warming caused by man does explain many things. It even unifies the laws of physics that did not exist until the big bang.

 

[Meandering]

Actually,

I think this heat map pretty much mirrors loan originations.

But I did want to clarify something, as I'm a right coaster and not overly familiar with the left coast el nino experience.

So is it true that el nino brings hoards of rain, torrents, flooding high winds and mudslides?

If that is the case, don't these folks know that you can't fight a war in bad weather? Planes can't fly in stormy weather, trucks get bogged down in the mud and troops can't see to shoot straight with rain pelting them in the eyes.

While I am sure there are many fine athletes in poorer countries. Running in-between rain drops is still a human fantasy.

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[Randolph Kinney]

So is it true that el nino brings hoards of rain, torrents, flooding high winds and mudslides?

It can but it is not guaranteed because the rain is not guaranteed to be inches per hour or days. High winds are not a symptom of El Nino.

According to our governor, drought and fires are caused by CO2 produced by man. Rain? Not so much.

 

[Meandering]

Big Solar Projects Are Still Being Built in the Wrong Places

Despite efforts to keep large-scale solar power plants out of California’s pristine deserts, more than half of current or planned commercial projects are in those environmentally sensitive places, a new study has found.

“We saw case studies about the adverse impact on habitat, but this is really the first time that we’ve looked at these patterns in the aggregate,” said Rebecca Hernandez, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral ecological scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“Developers and stakeholders were prioritizing the worst places for…utility-scale development and not prioritizing areas that were more logical and smart in terms of benefiting the environment,” Hernandez said.

Using “large swaths of space” for solar energy in undeveloped areas “may exacerbate habitat fragmentation resulting in direct and indirect ecological consequences,” according to the study, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers looked at 161 current or proposed solar farms and found that 233 square miles of fragile desert area were dedicated to large-scale solar energy projects, compared with 73 square miles of farmland and 44 square miles of developed land.

Many of the sites on undeveloped land are near state and national parks, which can be directly affected by habitat degradation in surrounding areas. These sites also tend to be far from cities, requiring the construction of large power lines through other desert areas.

The findings are particularly challenging given California’s ambitious plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and to obtain half its electricity from renewable sources by that year. The installation of solar facilities in undeveloped areas increases greenhouse emissions through soil disturbance and vegetation removal while also impeding animal migration and crowding out flora and fauna—including desert tortoises, bighorn sheep, fringe-toed lizards, and other rare species, according to the study.

For years, some environmentalists have fought to block solar plants they contend harm imperiled wildlife, such as the desert tortoise. In an attempt to defuse those tensions, the United States Bureau of Land Management in 2012 finalized the Western Solar Plan, which covers six states and, according to the agency, “allows the permitting of future solar energy development projects on public lands to proceed in a more efficient, standardized, and environmentally responsible manner.”

Next month, the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, a state-federal effort to minimize big solar power plants’ environmental impact, will finalize regulations for building renewable energy projects on public lands, O’Shea said. Regulations for private land will follow at a later date.

“One takeaway from this study is that it actually highlights why it’s so important to have planning efforts like the DRECP,” O’Shea said. “It identifies places that should be completely off the table and need to be protected permanently and areas that are more appropriate for development.”

One surprising finding from the study was that nearly 30 percent of large-scale solar projects have been built on cropland and pastures, mostly in the state’s vast Central Valley. Many were installed on farmland suffering from the state’s ongoing drought or contaminated with salt after decades of irrigation.

Farmland will likely continue to relieve some of the pressure placed on desert areas, O’Shea said. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Let’s build here—let’s not just look to the desert,’ which is fragile and incredibly biodiverse.”

http://news.yahoo.com/big-solar-pro...vbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjAzNDFfMQRzZWMDc2M-

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[Randolph Kinney]

Let's talk about who should pay for all that CO2 that humans caused

Sleight of hand politics. Cap and trade tax to reduce CO2 emissions goes to government corruption.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Aggressive rooftop solar proposal clears key legal hurdle

The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday approved a ballot initiative that would deregulate a growing sector of the electricity industry in that state.

The proposed ballot initiative by Floridians for Solar Choice – an unusual grass-roots coalition of Tea Party and Christian Coalition conservatives, Libertarians, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and others – would allow rooftop solar owners to sell power directly to other consumers under virtually any circumstance.

Currently, only utilities can sell power directly to consumers in Florida.

If successful, the initiative would surpass even the rooftop solar regulations in California, the nation’s leader by far in electricity generated from the sun. The grass-roots effort challenges investor-owned utilities’ control of electricity, which could help reshape the future of power generation across the country.

Utilities nationwide, in particular in California, are grappling with the impact the growing rooftop solar industry is having on their business model. That model has relied on centralized power rather than homeowners and businesses generating their own electricity.

"We are thrilled with the high court’s ruling so that voters may have the opportunity to vote on removing a barrier that currently blocks Florida’s families and businesses from greater energy choices through the power of the free market,” said Tory Perfetti, chairman, Floridians for Solar Choice.

“People power is what will get us on the ballot, and we continue to gather thousands of signatures each week from Floridians eager for solar choice.”

The coalition still must collect 683,149 verified signatures on petitions by Feb. 1, 2016, to get the initiative onto the 2016 ballot.

The group has 183,000 verified signatures to date, with 100,000 more awaiting certification by elections officials. At least 60% of voters must vote in favor of the initiative to pass it.

“This is a huge victory for the people and businesses of Florida who want to freely choose the companies that will provide them clean solar power in a cost-effective manner,” said Stephen Smith, executive director, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-rooftop-solar-proposal-clears-court-20151022-story.html

Wow! All eyes on Florida. Wonder if the utility will raise their rates to make up for power sales?

 

[Randolph Kinney]

THE ONLY GLOBAL WARMING CHART YOU NEED FROM NOW ON

Oooh—that looks scary! Look how fast CO2 is rising! We’re galloping toward the all-important doubling of CO2, after which the world will come to an end.

A little hard to get worked up about this, isn’t it? In fact you can barely spot the warming. No wonder you need a college education to believe in the theory of climate change. No wonder the data (click here for original NASA data if you want to replicate it yourself) is never displayed this way in any of the official climate reports.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Evaporation for review—and with it global warming
October 22, 2015

The process of evaporation, one of the most widespread on our planet, takes place differently than we once thought - this has been shown by new computer simulations carried out at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. The discovery has far-reaching consequences for, among others, current global climate models, where a key role is played by evaporation of the oceans.

They all evaporate: oceans and seas, microdroplets of fuel in engines and the sweat on our own skin. For every one of us evaporation is of paramount importance: it shapes the climate of the planet, it affects the cost of car travel, and is one of the most important factors controlling the temperature of the human body. So common is it that it seemed that evaporation was a phenomenon that had been stripped of any more secrets. In the renowned scientific journal Soft Matter physicists from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw, Poland, prove that this belief was erroneous and the mechanism of evaporation must operate differently than had previously been assumed.

"Science copes badly with descriptions of processes occurring in nature. We are perfectly able to describe the states at the beginning of the process and at its end. But what happens in between? How does the given process really take place? For so many years we have been asking ourselves this question in relation to the phenomenon of evaporation - and we are coming to ever more interesting conclusions," says Prof. Robert Holyst (IPC PAS).

In scientific and technical deliberations we use the Hertz-Knudsen equation, known for over a hundred years, to describe the evaporation rate. What follows from it is quite an intuitive prediction: that at a given temperature the rate of evaporation of the liquid depends on how different the actual pressure at the surface is from the pressure which would be present if the evaporating liquid were to be in thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment.

"The further the system is from equilibrium, the more dynamically it should return to it. It's so intuitive! So we checked the Hertz-Knudsen equation - because we like to check. In order to do this we prepared exceptionally accurate computer simulations which allowed us for the first time to take a closer look at the process of evaporation," explains Dr. Marek Litniewski (IPC PAS).

Advanced computer simulations carried out using molecular dynamics showed that the values of some parameters describing evaporation are even several times larger than those predicted by the Hertz-Knudsen equation. However, an even more interesting effect was noted: the stream of gas being liberated from the surface of the liquid during evaporation changed very little despite significant fluctuations in pressure.

"There could only be one conclusion from this observation: the rate of evaporation and the vapour pressure, that is, the physical quantities that were previously considered to be closely related, were not so. For more than a century we had all been making a serious error in the theoretical description of the phenomenon of evaporation!," says Dr. Litniewski.

The hitherto model of evaporation was based on the principle of conservation of mass: the mass of molecules released from the surface of a liquid had to respectively increase the mass of the gas in its surroundings. Physicists from the IPC PAS noticed, however, that since the particles released from the surface have a certain velocity, in order to describe this phenomenon what should be applied is the principle of conservation of momentum.

"We realized that to some extent evaporation resembles shooting from a cannon: the missile flies in one direction, but the overall momentum of the system must be maintained, so the gun recoils in the opposite direction. The same happens with the molecules of evaporating liquid. Since there is an increase in momentum, there must be recoil, and if there is recoil, the pressure felt by the molecules on the surface of the liquid will be different," says Prof. Holyst.

The new computer simulations were also used to measure the velocities of the molecules released from the liquid surface. They proved to be small, of the order of hundreds of micrometres per second, which corresponds to only a few kilometres per hour. This fact means that practically any naturally occurring flow over the surface of the liquid has to strongly interfere with the evaporation process. The evaporation cannot thus be described by an equation derived for a very specific case, for liquid that is in thermodynamic equilibrium with the environment.

The discovery of the IPC PAS researchers is of the utmost importance for, among others, the understanding of the real mechanisms responsible for global warming. Contrary to common belief, the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere of our planet is not carbon dioxide but water vapour. At the same time, it is known that the speed of flow of air masses over the oceans can significantly exceed one hundred kilometres per hour and therefore they will certainly affect the rate of evaporation. The hitherto evaluation of the rate of evaporation of the oceans must therefore be subject to error, which will certainly affect the accuracy of the predictions of contemporary models of the Earth's climate.

http://phys.org/news/2015-10-evaporation-reviewand-global.html

Really shocking.

 

[Meandering]

Uhm,

Water in the atmosphere?

Okay,

This happened here once since I've been here.

Residents stunned as hundreds of fish fall out of the sky over remote Australian desert town
Residents of a small outback Australian town have been left speechless after fish began falling from the sky.

Hundreds of spangled perch bombarded the 650 residents of Lajamanu, shocking local Christine Balmer, who was walking home when the strange 'weather' started.

She said: 'These fish fell in their hundreds and hundreds all over the place. The locals were running around everywhere picking them up.

'The fish were all alive when they hit the ground so they would have been alive when they were up there flying around the sky.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254812/Hundreds-fish-fall-sky-remote-Australian-town-Lajamanu.html#ixzz3pLHmFOIj

Raining Frogs & Fish: A Whirlwind of Theories

For millennia, people have reported a rare and strange phenomenon: a sudden rain of frogs — or fish or worms — from the sky. You may be minding your own business walking in a park on a blustery day when a small frog hits you on the top of the head. As you peer down at the stunned animal, another one comes down, and another and another all around you, in a surreal rain of frogs in various states of trauma

Charles Fort, an early collector of reports about strange phenomena, noted the following in his 1919 tome, "The Book of the Damned": "A shower of frogs which darkened the air and covered the ground for a long distance is the reported result of a recent rainstorm at Kansas City, Mo." This report first appeared in the July 12, 1873, issue of Scientific American. Fort noted dozens of similar reports from around the world and wrote that as "for accounts of small frogs, or toads, said to have been seen to fall from the sky, [a skeptical] writer says that all observers were mistaken: that the frogs or toads must have fallen from trees or other places overhead."

Any number of small animals have been reported falling from the sky, including ants, small fish and worms. Modern examples tend to be rare, but reports do surface occasionally in magazines devoted to strange phenomenon such as Fortean Times (named after Fort). Frog rains were mentioned in an episode of "The X-Files" titled "Die Hand Die Verletzt" ("The Hand That Wounds"), in which Agent Scully exclaims, "Mulder... toads just fell from the sky," to which the unflappable Agent Mulder replies, "I guess their parachutes didn't open
What about the reasons that Fort and others cite for why a whirlwind is not a good explanation? Frogs and fish do not of course live in the sky, nor do they suddenly and mysteriously appear there; in fact they share a common habitat: ponds and streams. It's certain that they gained altitude in a natural, not supernatural, way. [Countdown: Fishy Rain to Fire Whirlwinds: The World's Weirdest Weather]

That there are very few eyewitness accounts of frogs and fish being sucked up into the sky during a tornado, whirlwind or storm is hardly mysterious or unexplainable. Anytime winds are powerful enough to suck up fish, frogs, leaves, dirt and detritus, they are powerful enough to be of concern to potential eyewitnesses. In other words, people who would be close enough to a whirlwind or tornado to see the flying amphibians would be more concerned for their own safety (and that of others) to pay much attention to whether or not some frogs are among the stuff being picked up and flown around at high speeds. These storms are loud, windy, chaotic, and hardly ideal for accurate eyewitness reporting.
http://www.livescience.com/44760-raining-frogs.html

Fish rain down on Sri Lanka village 6 May 2014



Does it rain fish in Honduras?
We are all aware that rain occurs as a natural phenomenon because of water evaporation on the earth which leads to cloud formation, returning as rain obviously consisting of water. But what if it rains fish? It may sound magical but raining fish in Honduras is a phenomenon that is a natural fact. Come the months of May till July, the city of Yoro experiences heavy rains and not just rains but it rains fish which the people actually cook and eat them up.