How Do You Drive Every Day?

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I have not owned a car since the summer of 1998, when I sold for a pittance a rattly Dodge Omni I had been driving for a decade. In New York City, I have only driven twice: once on the day I moved in, and once coming back from my summer class at Cornell. I hated it both times.

Yesterday, business brought me to San Diego, actually north of it, to Carlsbad. I drove from the airport the thirty miles north early in the morning. Keen observation showed that a holy mass of cars were traveling south, crawling along in a jerky fashion, like lazy bees.

Of course, the drivers of these cars would say that the benefit of living outside the city—a yard, barbecue, endless trips to Home Depot—outweigh the cost of the daily NASCAR event in which they are forced to participate.

I did my business yesterday and returned to my nondescript m/hotel room and realized that I needed toothpaste and razor blades. So I mapped out the location to the nearest stores and popped back into the car. Dodge Omni

The store was only four or five miles from the hotel—four or five miles—but it took me almost fifteen minutes to get there. Chunks of cars would ooze from one traffic light to another. California, at least in this region of it, runs traffic lights on the theory that only one side of the four should be green at a time. Florida (near Lakeland) does this, too, far as I can recall. Hence the pileups at the lights.

But it was this I could not understand. A trip to buy toothpaste took me well over half hour. It didn’t help that the CVS was, to my city eyes, the size of Delaware.

When I was learning to drive, I lived in Northern Michigan where people were sparser than Republicans on the staff of the New York Times. And places where I had to be were separated by vast distances. The blond I was courting lay 56 miles distant. Driving Up North was, if not enjoyable, was at least not unpleasant.

In San Antonio, where the Air Force in its wisdom first placed me, there was this red 1965 Barracuda with bubble window and chrome gas pipe with which I was in love. But I had to sell it in 1986 when I was PCSed to Okinawa.

When I returned to the States, I bought the Omni. I never could do more than tolerate it, though. No radio, no AC, crank windows, bad brakes: cheap transportation.

Since repatriation, I cannot stand driving. It’s becoming worse as cars grow smaller. The rental car I have this time is an Aveo which resembles a circus clown car. I cannot see out more than a tiny portion of the windshield without bending forward and peering up. I have the idea that automotive engineers are unaware the humans taller than six feet exist.

Cars now run the price of small islands. And on top of that there are car washes, gas, oil, gas, insurance, parking permits, gas, tickets, maintenance, gas, and on and on.

So I ask you, dear reader, how do you cope?

Cosmic Radiation, Clouds, & Global Warming

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Rumor is that James Hansen was so upset by CERN’s CLOUD experiment results that he and a gaggle of rabid environmentalists stormed the White House and demanded that cosmic rays be outlawed. Or something: it is always difficult to say what is on the collective mind of a mob.

Anyway, Hansen was shuttled off to the cooler and hasn’t been heard from since. And as of this morning, there is still no word from the White House on how cosmic rays could be blamed on George Bush.

Why the fuss? Jasper Kirkby and a swarm of co-authors from CERN have just seen their “Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation” published in Nature. Jasper Kirkby and CLOUD

What Kirkby and his colleagues did was to build a tinfoil-wrapped container in which they simulated an artificial, high-altitude atmosphere in the lab. They let this replica atmosphere be bombarded by cosmic rays and noticed that cloud nuclei were created in the process. Why bother?

This: “Despite extensive research, fundamental questions remain about the nucleation rate of sulphuric acid particles and the mechanisms responsible, including the roles of galactic cosmic rays and other chemical species such as ammonia.”

The official synopsis (read it!):

We find that atmospherically relevant ammonia mixing ratios of 100 parts per trillion by volume, or less, increase the nucleation rate of sulphuric acid particles more than 100–1,000-fold. Time-resolved molecular measurements reveal that nucleation proceeds by a base-stabilization mechanism involving the stepwise accretion of ammonia molecules. Ions increase the nucleation rate by an additional factor of between two and more than ten at ground-level galactic-cosmic-ray intensities, provided that the nucleation rate lies below the limiting ion-pair production rate. We find that ion-induced binary nucleation of H2SO4–H2O can occur in the mid-troposphere but is negligible in the boundary layer. However, even with the large enhancements in rate due to ammonia and ions, atmospheric concentrations of ammonia and sulphuric acid are insufficient to account for observed boundary-layer nucleation.

Translation: cosmic rays cause clouds. Clouds, depending upon where and when they float, both cool and heat the climate. Ipso facto, cosmic rays affect the climate.

What is a cosmic ray? A ray whose origin is cosmic. I.e., a ray born in space, a region which includes the sun and beyond, and whose existences owe nothing to mankind. That is a long-winded way to say that our climate is, at least in part, regulated by forces completely outside political control.

So it curious that in its editorial accompanying Kirkby et al.‘s paper, Nature said, “Scientists on both sides of the debate welcome the findings, although they draw differing conclusions.” Do they? Welcome it, I mean.

There is already a “flap” over the comments of CERN’s director-general Rolf-Dieter Heuer:

I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them. That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.

It is clear that cosmic radiation is, as Heuer says, one of many parameters. But it is far from clear just how important this parameter is. Is it the predominate driver of climate? A bit player? To say requires interpretation, which Heuer supposedly forbade.

But don’t let’s be too hard on Heuer. Another view of his advice is that his comments were fatherly, purely protective. I can tell you from personal experience how one’s career can be sunk into the toilet when one dares go against “the” consensus. Best to publish the results with no commentary and save yourself a ton of grief.

Too, these experiments were in the lab, not in situ. To say how cosmic rays influence the real climate will require observations on the actual atmosphere: expensive and time-consuming observations. The last word is not yet.

Still, old hands in climate science will recall the IPCC’s first report (AR1) eschewed entirely the sun’s role in the climate. The sun was just a bright yellow orb, supplying a constant, fixed, unvarying amount of radiation to Earth. Any changes in the climate caused by non-humans were due to orbital variations, and even these were barely worth mentioning.

Each subsequent report allowed a little more respect to the sun, but extra-human causes always played a minority role. It will be fascinating to see how “the” consensus incorporates CLOUD into AR5.

Best guess is that it will garner a footnote, possibly a sentence or two. The excuses for largely ignoring it will be two: as noted the experiments were in the lab and not the real atmosphere, and climatologists will not have had sufficient time to incorporate better cloud physics into their models. It’s a lot of work, you know.

So, while we’re waiting for more experiments and improved models, it’s better to be safe than sorry and claim that models that exist are more than good enough. That “tipping points” are just around the corner. That it’s “worse than we thought.” That “the science is settled.”

Anybody care to bet against me?

Mental Illness To Increase Due To Climate Change

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Look out! “Climate change is here, now.” And it is causing an increase in nuttiness and lunacy among the those that dwell Down Under.

Or so says Tony McMichael “AO, MB BS, PhD, FAFPHM, FTSE” and others at The Climate Institute, who are authors of A Climate of Suffering: The Real Costs of Living With Inaction on Climate Change.

This report’s purpose is to “raise awareness.” Of what? Of scientists anthropomorphizing climate, apparently: “a failure to reverse rising carbon pollution levels will see Australia’s inherently moody climate become even more volatile.”

The report claims that after a severe weather event “as many as one in five” will slip down the slope of sanity and “suffer the debilitating effects of extreme stress, emotional injury and despair.” These symptoms “can linger for months, even years.”

In recent years, a body of evidence has emerged showing just how insidious, pervasive, deep and—for some people and communities—profoundly dangerous the mental health impacts of climate change-related disasters can be.

For example: heat waves drive up suicides by “8 per cent”. Also increasing: “Depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, substance abuse…including the anxiety of watching reports of others being swept away in floods.” Be on the alert for an uptick in “Numbness & Apathy”, too.

One farmer was found to have claimed low “self-esteem” after a drought. Other farmers kept a stiff upper lip (I don’t know the Australian translation of this phrase). It’s also so that “farmers often demonstrate a higher sense of wellbeing than non-farmers”, but we musn’t be fooled! “[W]hat at first glance appears to be individual resilience may in fact simply be persistence in the face of limited alternatives.” Beneath that smile lies gloom, friends.

Climate change, of course, “compounds the chronic difficulties and inequities that already face many communities.” The “r” word wasn’t specifically mentioned, however.

Global warming, through an increase in both droughts and floods, will force mass migrations and because of that there will be a “heightened risk of stress and tension amongst both newcomers and their host communities.” Civil war?

What about the children! The wee ‘uns are particularly “vulnerable to pre-disaster anxiety and post-trauma illness.”

More than one in ten primary school children were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder the three months following Cyclone Larry1 in March 2006. Common symptoms included flashbacks, nightmares and general state of distress, all of which may have had a deleterious effect on the children’s education and future life prospects.

Yes, future life prospects. But even worse are the adults’ “failure to act on climate change may, like the indecision that perpetuated the Cold War2, lead to long-lived insecurity and anxiety in young people.” Bet you that was the first time you saw the cold war linked to global warming.

Luckily, those who live in North Queensland are used to storms. Long-term residents have thus learned “ways of coping psychologically with the threat.” But it’s not the time for complacency: “as the risk of more violent storms increases, and perhaps spread seasonally, with global warming, we can expect these
normal coping mechanisms to be strained.” So there.

What about heat? It’s not good:

People are better able to cope if the temperature is consistently and predictably hot than if temperatures suddenly soar. Those already suffering from mental and physical illness are particularly at risk. Even people successfully managing their illness may be vulnerable, with psychotropic medication a risk factor in heat-related death. Alcohol and other kinds of drug abuse also raise the chances or injury or death during a hot spell.

The advice that one should ease up on the “psychotropic” drugs during the summer months may be particularly hard for Australians to swallow (or not, as the case may be).

You might have thought there was more crime in the summer because the weather allowed more people to go outside. But several “studies suggest that more aggressive and antisocial behaviour can come simultaneously with high temperatures.” Strangely, there was no crime wave associated with the heat wave across the American south this summer.

How do we save the sanity and “avoid another frightened generation” of Australians? One might have guessed that the answer would be to not frighten the current generation. After all, “one 2007 survey of Australian children’s fears and aspirations for the future revealed that as many as one in four believe that the world will end in their lifetimes.”

Again, no. The best way to avoid frightening is to warn that unless we do something now, the end is nigh.

I don’t want to be too hard on McMichael and The Climate Institute. After reading their report, I find myself depressed, thus proving that thinking about climate change is not good for mental well being.

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1Larry hit as a Category 5, causing an estimated billion dollars damage. The hurricane led to a banana shortage, and missing their regular sundaes is doubtless what put the kiddies on edge. As near as I have been able to discover, Larry caused no deaths.

1“On the other hand, psychologists and general practitioners suggest that the climate challenge lends itself to positively empowering individual actions in a way that the arms race did not.”

Thanks to Marc Morano for the heads up on this.

Al Gore Says Climate Skeptics Are Racist

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The Algore, a creature created from worn parts of defunct Tennessee Politicians—the vile experiment funded by Big Tobacco—a creature made wealthy by his wailing, awash in the money of Big Green, vaunted, feted, and lionized by those whom he terrorizes, a creature once thought vanquished, has again struck fear into the hearts of the citizenry.

“You are racists!” the Algore moaned.

This lumbering Climate Creature knows what spooks. No cry can freeze the heart faster than this. The American heart, that is. America is a land where the subject of race evinces a unique and peculiar lunacy. Calling somebody a racist in America is worse than calling him a murderer. If you accuse a man of murder, you at least have to have proof of the deed. But charging racism requires no evidence other than a fervid imagination.

The Climate Creature was caught on camera by UStream, affording us a rare opportunity to study him.

True to his malicious nature, he told the interviewer that what matters is to “Win the conversation.” Chilling words!

 

 

Why? Because he did not say we must “Determine what is true.” Through his dark ways, he would turn science into a battle of Good versus Evil. In his nightmarish vision, scientists would abandon objectivity and convince the unwary by mere “depth of conviction and strength of passion.” In the same way, that is, the Climate Creature woofs and bays to scare up donations.

Strange words seeped from the Climate Creature’s mouth. His agony was apparent. Only the evil believe that pain shared is pain alleviated. He wanted it to cut when he cried “Racist!” He asked,

Explain to me why it’s right to discriminate against people because of their skin color?

He was not asking the admissions boards of the University of Michigan or of Harvard, nor did he direct his question to various Fire Departments who must hire by quota, nor even to Eric Holder, all agencies who would answer that discrimination based on skin color is not only necessary but good in and of itself.

He meant that skeptical climate scientists should answer it. Rather, he thought that the act of asking would contain sufficient force to turn to jelly the souls of his enemies. Alas, he failed. I will answer the question.

It’s not right. It is even harmful. Explain to me then, Creature, why you support those who think it is not only right but who would increase its practice?

The Algore attacked with a new weapon and claimed that to use the word climate is “politically incorrect.” By this he sought what every political monster yearns for: victimhood. If you can convince the electorate—an easy task—that you are not a sole sufferer but a member of a group which anguishes, then you are equipped with an unanswerable argument.

It matters not that there is no power which can be shown to hold sway over this group. All that is required is that the group can be identified. For then the government can be redressed. Funds can be administered. Votes garnered. Bureaucracies engaged.

Horror increases!

The Climate Creature likened racism to the “moral component” of climate science. A tortuous, tenuous analogy made null because there is none. There is no moral component to any science. There is what is true and what is false, and how we can or cannot tell which is which. Morals are a matter for people, not science. And the people whose business is science are no more equipped to tell us what is morally important about science than the statesman, priest, novelist, or philosopher.

Sensing his flaw, and now flailing, in a becalmed rage, the Creature said there was an “Organized effort to attack” the scientific community as a whole. Who attacks? “Powerful polluters”—who want to keep the public mired in confusion.

What do you want to be when you grow up, son? A Powerful Polluter, dad.

He has invented an enemy who does not exist. The brilliance of this ploy is evident. If the enemy, because of his vaporous nature, cannot be dispatched, he will always be an enemy which can be alluded to, a force which must be forever held at bay with the proper application of money and political power.

Lock your doors and turn off those televisions! Beware Algore, the Climate Creature!