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2 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

I have an electric mower, blower, and weed wacker. Not noisy, greasy, or smelly. Starts instantly. Always works

And for the person who doesn’t understand blowing leaves. I have four Bradford pear trees in my front yard and I live in a place with 4 seasons. All the leaves fall off, and if you don’t blow them off your lawn, all your grass dies. 
 

 

You can mulch the leaves, too, and that way they don't end up in a plastic bag in the landfill.

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4 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

All it takes to start are city ordinances making all lights downward pointing or equipped with a shade that blocks light in establlished locations from leaking skyward.

I’ve noticed lots of street lights are purple now? Haven’t looked into it, but it makes a huge difference. 

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On our last anniversary- the wife and I drove around the hill country. If you’re going to drive, might as well get the most out of it. We had boiled shrimp on ice, fruit, cheese, and Prosecco for sunset viewing time, and I found a great spot west of 290, north of Johnson City. Really was lovely. Wife was elated.

Only when the sky was black, and we were on our way home, did we notice the light bomb a bit east of that location. Apparently, the owner of whatever it is says fuck you, other people, I got every right to put as many lumens as I can afford. into our shared sky, and that is what I am gonna do.

Texans used to respect other people. They really did.

Edited by Willfully Horn
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On 11/22/2023 at 2:49 PM, Willfully Horn said:

On our last anniversary- the wife and I drove around the hill country. If you’re going to drive, might as well get the most out of it. We had boiled shrimp on ice, fruit, cheese, and Prosecco for sunset viewing time, and I found a great spot west of 290, north of Johnson City. Really was lovely. Wife was elated.

Only when the sky was black, and we were on our way home, did we notice the light bomb a bit east of that location. Apparently, the owner of whatever it is says fuck you, other people, I got every right to put as many lumens as I can afford. into our shared sky, and that is what I am gonna do.

Texans used to respect other people. They really did.

I live outside of Johnson City now. Never knew how much I'd love the country.

A stupid amount of light comes from Johnson City from just a couple of sources. The local women's group approached the last mayor about preserving the night sky and doing something about the lights.

"I like bright lights!" was the combative answer. I think reverse psychology is the best way to go now.

We want increase the brightness around here. The socialists say it's a good idea. They say the brightness already here is a good start. We'll be bringing in some environmental wackos and feminazis to help with the campaign.

This place would probably look like London at night during the blitz.

Edited by RomaVicta
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I’m almost certain the only reason my wife doesn’t complain when I strike a non-insignificant check for the lease each year is the time she spends stargazing with the kids down there. Sad, but I still remember the first clear night the kids spent out there, and them realizing there are exponentially more stars than they had ever seen in the Houston sky.  Now they keep telescopes there and have the apps etc. 

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I spent much of my early life in Houston. In elementary school (Cynthia Ann Parker), they bussed us to the planetarium. 

I'd spent all my life in the 'burbs. The most memorable moment of that visit was when they announcer put up Houston's night sky. Then he said, "this is what the sky in the country is like." I was startled as the stars expandied and new ones appeared.

It stuck with me to look at the sky when I'm away from the city. We've made regular November trips to Lost Maples. I like it best when there is no moon. You can see why the ancients thought the stars were near.

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1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

I spent much of my early life in Houston. In elementary school (Cynthia Ann Parker), they bussed us to the planetarium. 

I'd spent all my life in the 'burbs. The most memorable moment of that visit was when they announcer put up Houston's night sky. Then he said, "this is what the sky in the country is like." I was startled as the stars expandied and new ones appeared.

It stuck with me to look at the sky when I'm away from the city. We've made regular November trips to Lost Maples. I like it best when there is no moon. You can see why the ancients thought the stars were near.

Pics from my trip to big bend two years ago. My buddy is an astrophotographer and sent these to me after he got them done. 
 

 

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1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

I spent much of my early life in Houston. In elementary school (Cynthia Ann Parker), they bussed us to the planetarium. 

I'd spent all my life in the 'burbs. The most memorable moment of that visit was when they announcer put up Houston's night sky. Then he said, "this is what the sky in the country is like." I was startled as the stars expandied and new ones appeared.

It stuck with me to look at the sky when I'm away from the city. We've made regular November trips to Lost Maples. I like it best when there is no moon. You can see why the ancients thought the stars were near.

Brazos Bend has a cool telescope deal they do during the summer. Typically a couple of Rice grad students out there explaining what you’re looking at, etc.  We take the kids a couple times a year.  Still close to Houston, but darker i suppose. 

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3 minutes ago, elfenix said:

Ha.  Was just about to say, I’ve seen them in a bunch of small south Texas towns that you wouldn’t think would have the budget for new fancy streetlights.   Makes a lot more sense    I’ve seen it quite a bit in the last year tho.  I can still see fine with it, so figured they were a new thing. 

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5 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

I live outside of Johnson City now. Never knew how much I'd love the country.

A stupid amount of light comes from Johnsone city from just a couple of sources. The local women's group approached the last mayor about preserving the night sky and doing something about the lights.

"I like bright lights!" was the combative answer. I think reverse psychology is the best way to go now.

We want increase the brightness around here. The socialists say it's a good idea. They say the brightness already here is a good start. We'll be bringing in some environmental wackos and feminazis to help with the campaign.

This place would probably look like London at night during the blitz.

The light bomb I mentioned is between Henley and Dripping Springs, emanating from a business called CTX Field of Dreams. A baseball complex, of course, and one of a number of similar businesses with similar names in the state of Texas.

The owner’s refusal to spend the money (inconvenience himself) to preserve the beauty of the night sky for his neighbors, for Texans, for others, is rooted in the disease that calls itself conservatism. Laws ought bind thee, but not me.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
2 minutes ago, hookem2010 said:

Yea, that's some bullshit. It should be at an island nation that could be underwater by the end of the century. That way, at least the decision-makers have to look the people who are most fucked in the eye as they kick the can down the road.

Maldives. They may be gone within decades. I watched the water erode the beach in real time. 

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Maldives. They may be gone within decades. I watched the water erode the beach in real time. 
Cue the complaints about elites forcing normies/poors on driving vacations while the ridiculously wealthy and connected fly private to exotic locations.

Always amused by people on the Internet getting upset that the wealthy and connected do wealthy and connected things while normies/poors can't do wealthy and connected things because they're not wealthy and connected.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Each column of dots in the chart below represents a 12-month period. Global temperatures have increased by at least 1 degree Celcius (1.8F) in most of our lifetimes.

Earth Was Due for Another Year of Record Warmth. But This Warm?
Scientists are already busy trying to understand whether 2023’s off-the-charts heat is a sign that global warming is accelerating.

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Earth is finishing up its warmest year in the past 174 years, and very likely the past 125,000.

Unyielding heat waves broiled Phoenix and Argentina. Wildfires raged across Canada. Flooding in Libya killed thousands. Wintertime ice cover in the dark seas around Antarctica was at unprecedented lows.

This year’s global temperatures did not just beat prior records. They left them in the dust. From June through November, the mercury spent month after month soaring off the charts. December’s temperatures have largely remained above normal: Much of the Northeastern United States is expecting springlike conditions this week.

That is why scientists are already sifting through evidence — from oceans, volcanic eruptions, even pollution from cargo ships — to see whether this year might reveal something new about the climate and what we are doing to it.

One hypothesis, perhaps the most troubling, is that the planet’s warming is accelerating, that the effects of climate change are barreling our way more quickly than before. “What we’re looking for, really, is a bunch of corroborating evidence that all points in the same direction,” said Chris Smith, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds. “Then we’re looking for causality. And that will be really interesting.”

As extreme as this year’s temperatures were, they did not catch researchers off guard. Scientists’ computational models offer a range of projected temperatures, and 2023’s heat is still broadly within this range, albeit on the high end.

On its own, one exceptional year would not be enough to suggest something was faulty with the computer models, said Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University. Global temperatures have long bobbed up and down around a steady warming trend because of cyclical factors like El Niño, the climate pattern that appeared in spring and has intensified since, possibly signaling more record heat to come in 2024.

“Your default position has to be, ‘The models are right,’” Dr. Dessler said. “I’m not willing to say that we’ve ‘broken the climate’ or there’s anything weird going on until more evidence comes in.”

One thing researchers will be watching is whether something unexpected might be happening in the interplay of two major climate influences: the warming effect of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and the cooling effect of other types of industrial pollution.

For much of the past 174 years, humans have been filling the skies with both greenhouse gases and aerosols, or tiny particles from smokestacks, tailpipes and other sources. These particles are harmful to the lungs when inhaled. But in the atmosphere, they reflect solar radiation, partly offsetting the heat-trapping effect of carbon dioxide.

In recent decades, however, governments have begun reducing aerosol pollution for public-health reasons. This has already caused temperature increases to speed up since 2000, scientists estimate.

And in a much-discussed report last month, the climate researcher James E. Hansen argued that scientists had vastly underestimated how much more the planet would warm in the coming decades if nations cleaned up aerosols without cutting carbon emissions.

Not all scientists are persuaded.

Arguments like Dr. Hansen’s have been hard to square with patterns in recent decades, said Reto Knutti, a climate physicist at the Swiss university ETH Zurich. In recent years, scientists have also discovered that global warming is shaped not just by how much heat is trapped near Earth’s surface but also by how and where this heat is distributed across the planet.

This makes it even harder to conclude with confidence that warming is poised to accelerate, Dr. Knutti said. Until the current El Niño is over, “it’s unlikely we’ll be able to make definitive claims,” he said.

Pinning down the precise scale of aerosols’ effect has been difficult, too.

Part of how aerosols cool the planet is by making clouds brighter and deflecting more solar radiation. But clouds are devilishly complex, coming and going and leaving few traces for scientists to examine, said Tianle Yuan, a geophysicist with NASA and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “That’s fundamentally why it’s a hard problem,” he said.

This year, aerosols have been of particular interest because of a 2020 international regulation that restricted pollution from ships. Dr. Yuan and others are trying to identify how much the regulation might have increased global temperatures in recent years by limiting sunlight-reflecting aerosols.

Dr. Hansen’s argument for faster warming leans in part on reconstructions of climatic shifts between ice ages over the past 160,000 years.

Using Earth’s distant past to make inferences about climate in the coming years and decades can be tricky. Still, the planet’s deep history highlights how extraordinary the present era is, said Bärbel Hönisch, a scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Fifty-six million years ago, for instance, geologic turmoil added carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in quantities comparable to what humans are adding today. Temperatures jumped. The oceans grew acidic. Species died en masse.

“The difference is that it took about 3,000 to 5,000 years to get there” back then, Dr. Hönisch said, compared with a few centuries today.

It then took Earth even longer to neutralize that excess carbon dioxide: about 150,000 years.

 

 

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Not sure why you posted the CO2 chart in the DACA thread, but I thought I'd go ahead and respond over here.

While it's true that the US's share of global emissions, along with our total amount, we're still well ahead of other major countries in per capita emissions. Both the US and EU are heading in the right direction, though. China and India, however, are not. Still, their per capita emissions curve hasn't been quite so steep since 2010, so that's a plus (I guess).

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https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

 

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Not sure why you posted the CO2 chart in the DACA thread, but I thought I'd go ahead and respond over here.
 


Climate change is driving people to the Mexican border and will only continue to get worse.
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  • 3 weeks later...

Every accusation is a confession with conspiracy theorists. 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/17/climate/canada-conspiracy-theorist-arson-wildfires-intl/index.html
 

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A Canadian man who posted conspiracy theories on social media claiming the government was deliberately starting wildfires has pleaded guilty to starting 14 blazes that forced hundreds of people from their homes.

Brian Paré, appearing in a Quebec court Monday, admitted to 13 counts of arson, and one count of arson with a disregard for human life, relating to events between May and September last year.

Quote

Prosecutor Marie-Philippe Charron said one of the fires Paré set forced the evacuation of around 400 people in the town of Chapais, Quebec. The largest fire Paré admitted to starting destroyed more than 870 hectares.

“Mr. Pare does not remember all of the fires he could have started, so we have currently 14 fires, we have 14 counts,” Charron told CNN. “It’s possible there are more but we do not have evidence of that,” she added.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Coincidentally, we just crossed another threshold in record-breaking heat.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68110310

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Ocean surface temps are also at an all time high. And given the time of year, likely to go higher before El Niño fades and they come back down.

 

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But yeah, it’s winter in the northern hemisphere and it’s snowing somewhere so there’s always some yutz who comes along to declare that that means global warming is a hoax. Every winter, without fail. I wonder if the Aussies and Argentinians deal with the same morons during their winters while we’re baking in record heat here in the north.

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Since the graph in average per capita usage above seems to inversely reflect changes due to gas prices (below):

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Doesn't the gap indicated between our per capita and the EU's per capita seem to reflect our fucking absolute reliance on automobiles and our unwillingness to provide alternatives to them? The downward trends in per capita usage also suggest that we don't need such high levels of per capital gasoline usage. High prices drove consumers to find ways to decrease usage. Continued decreased usage wouldn't be a problem as we can see in the time periods after price spikes. Why not maintain lower usage?

Doesn't this reflect that we don't give a shit generally about buying large, less efficient vehicles that we don't need (driving to the office in a full size pick-up? Tooling around the neighborhood in a large, heavy SUV?) so we can drive in style?

Automakers succeeded in getting the MPH requirement for advertising repealed. Oil company scientists raised doubts about scientific consensus. Republicans promote the notion that any attempt to get an American to give up absolutely anything for the future of their children and grandchildren is a socialist plot with an (dreaded word coming!) agenda to enslave Americans.

We're not citizens. We're taxpaying consumers who refuse to be denied anything even if it kills our fellow citezens now and in the future. Even the benefits for a number of things that could be brought on by eating less beef becomes a campaign where the government wants to take away your beloved hamburger.

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Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream? How's that for your post war commie conspiracy?

Since college, I've always been a bit irked that you're not supposed to discuss politics or religion when people gather. I don't believe in the value of blind faith or blind anything. Since Reagan, both topics have become blind faith issues for the right.

Way back a little after then, I recall a debate with the younger brother of a friend of mine (he was in college). I think the discussion was about defense spending which I was pretty well up on. It was an amiable discussion in which no ground he picked out could be held against the facts. At the end, he said, "well, I know I looked at this a while back and had a good reason for my [argument]."

That was it.  A smart young man had made a decision at some point in the past. He could not recall his thought process or sources of information, but he was sure his decision then must have been correct and non-refundable.

I think my mouth literally dropped open. It's my first encounter with the arguement-proof mind of the "conservative." That disease has gone beyond epidemic.

If I could go back and change that old saw, I'd make it, "You must discuss politics and religion whenever people gather." Discussing politics is the responsibility of the citizen. Some, even rudimentary, form of civic discourse is the only way to keep things at least a little bit on some sort of track in a positive direction.

That's gone. My graphs up above are useless. Anytime I achieve a logical, impassive argument, it's equally useless in this dying republic. On these CR threads, we seem to be mostly refining the quality of our buggy whips.

Americans will stay fat, happy, coddled, ignorant, self-congratulatory, debt-strapped, and blindly faithful until the seas rise up and the deserts spread. Probably a little bit beyond that if I'm any judge of the strength of denial.

Idiot World.

I hate it.

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14 hours ago, Pimphand said:

Why must this forum be so fucking replete with clown car fuckfaces?

Eat shit.... from the real world

What? Global warming means additional energy in the weather system, means changing equilibrium, means instability, means in addition to warmer global average temperature, new extreme temperatures, both cold and hot, in some locations. 

It is sort of like how getting a big raise at work may cause some new spending patterns, including periods of having less cash on hand than before, but overall your yearly average amount of money is higher.  Not having cash in wallet (say after going to the strip club) doesn't mean you don't have money elsewhere.

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18 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Shits gonna get really real really fast when it goes. 

It reminds me of an experiment we did in my high school chemistry class. I can't recall too many of the details since this would've been around 1986-87 but I think the point of the experiment was to teach about tipping points. Basically, we had a clear solution in a beaker and then a different one in a vial. We had to record the number of individual drops of the latter into the former until it changed color.

One drop. No change. Another drop. Again, no change. After a few more, the clear solution, without any perceptible difference prior, instantaneously became all red. 

So, yeah, that's the lense through which I see this and a lot of other climate stuff going.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not sure where else to put this, but this is a good thing.  And something that Rs would NEVER have done and may very well undo if they get back in power.

https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/blog/feds-deny-dam-permits-tribal-lands

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Feds Deny Dam Permits on Tribal Lands

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Last week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) took a historic step in recognizing the need for tribal consent for energy projects proposed on tribal lands by halting seven proposed pumped storage hydroelectric projects on the Navajo Nation. 

On February 15, FERC issued orders denying permits for controversial dam projects proposed across the Navajo Nation in Arizona, citing the fact that the Navajo Nation had formally objected to each of these projects.

No dams on tribal lands without tribal consent

In a reversal of previous policies, FERC announced through these orders that it was "establishing a new policy that the Commission will not issue preliminary permits for projects proposing to use Tribal lands if the Tribe on whose lands the project is to be located opposes the permit." FERC noted that the projects’ developers had not sought or obtained consent from the Navajo Nation for projects on Navajo Nation land that could affect Navajo Nation water, wildlife, and other resources. 

The new FERC policy is a historic victory for tribal sovereignty across the United States.   

Major concerns about water use

The seven projects that FERC denied were Black Mesa South, Black Mesa East, Black Mesa North, Chuska Mountain, Chuska Mountain North, Western Navajo 1, and Western Navajo 2. Collectively, the projects could have drained up to 687 billion gallons of water from the Colorado River, San Juan River, and groundwater aquifers to initially fill their reservoirs.

 

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On 2/10/2024 at 3:42 PM, bolverk said:

It reminds me of an experiment we did in my high school chemistry class. I can't recall too many of the details since this would've been around 1986-87 but I think the point of the experiment was to teach about tipping points. Basically, we had a clear solution in a beaker and then a different one in a vial. We had to record the number of individual drops of the latter into the former until it changed color.

One drop. No change. Another drop. Again, no change. After a few more, the clear solution, without any perceptible difference prior, instantaneously became all red. 

So, yeah, that's the lense through which I see this and a lot of other climate stuff going.

 

 

Classic acid/base titration using phenolphthalein as an indicator. The beaker contained an acidic solution with a little phenolphthalein in it. Under acidic conditions, phenolphthalein is colorless. You slowly added drops of a base slowly increasing the pH. As soon as the pH reached a certain threshold (about pH = 8 iirc), phenolphthalein turns pink. One drop less, pH below the threshold = colorless. One drop past the threshold = pink. 

Before electronic pH indicators, by carefully measuring the volume of the acid in the beaker, and the delivered volume of the base with a known pH required to change the color, its fairly easy to calculate the exact pH of the acid in the beaker.  

 

FINALLY, that minor in chemistry comes in handy. 

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On 2/21/2024 at 3:25 PM, Boss Hogg said:

 

California's utility bills are high because their infrastructure is old and in fire prone areas (which are increasing due to climate change). It has absolutely nothing to do with things like renewable energy or electrification of vehicles except in the very broad sense that any power source on the grid needs updated infrastructure to function. That's even directly addressed in the article, which I assume you didn't actually read. 

 

Edited by Dahobbs
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I’m posting the following in this thread because I don’t know where such a thread would belong, and because the cattle industry is part of what drives climate change.

Our eldest told me about alpha-gal. It is the cause of a syndrome that results in an allergy to food made from mammals. The allergy can be deadly. The alpha-gal syndrome is believed to be predominantly spread by Lone Star ticks, though ticks in other countries can carry alpha-gal, too. The name alpha-gal reminds me of Mother Nature.

I wasn’t surprised this info was new to me when I learned it was first described in 2002, and was linked to ingesting mammal based products, not only flesh and milk, but derivatives, too, in 2008. The syndrome is now an emerging concern, as “reported cases of AGS are still on the rise. Salzer’s report recorded over 90,000 suspected AGS cases from 2017 to 2022; nearly three times the 34,000 suspected cases documented between 2010 and 2018.”

The resulting allergy might well last the rest of an individual’s life.

https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/alpha-gal/index.html
 

https://www.statnews.com/2023/07/27/alpha-gal-syndrome-lone-star-tick-bite-red-meat-allergy/


tldr

  • Alpha-gal (galactose-α-1,3-galactose) is a sugar molecule found in most mammals.
  • Alpha-gal is not found in fish, reptiles, birds, or people.
  • Alpha-gal can be found in meat (pork, beef, rabbit, lamb, venison, etc.) and products made from mammals (including gelatin, cow’s milk, and milk products).

Contracting AGS could mean that your next hamburger or steak, will end your life.

Edited by Willfully Horn
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