Merry Xmas, or other seasonal festivity of your choice!
Regular blogging schedule will resume on Monday. In the meantime, feel free to use this as an open thread for anything in need of discussion or report.
Update: Belatedly added a picture from my snowshoeing expedition this afternoon in the land trust and state forest above our new house. I went for an hour before seeing any human tracks. Here's a couple more pics:
Is there a way to independently confirm (or otherwise) the recent Harvard report on a high rate of DDOS attacks on sites belonging to human rights groups?
ReplyDeleteThe cover story of the new National Geographic is titled Population 7 Billion- how your world will change. Robert Kunzig tells us why we shouldn't panic - at least not yet. He starts by noting that 7 billion people could dance in a state the size of Rhode Island or stand shoulder to shoulder in Los Angeles. See that's not so bad. There is a reasonable discussion of the history of demographic thought. The pictures include one of India pulsing with people and one depicting London as a glowing furnace at night and noting that wealthy countries use more resources per capita. Paul Ehrlich is discussed but I found no mention of Hugh Moore who gave Ehrlich the phrase population bomb. Joel Cohen who wrote the authoritative book How Many People Can the Earth Support is allowed to update his thoughts. He says that the question is unanswerable with our current knowledge - he has found an enormous range of political numbers. Global warming is mentioned - population control will not save Bangladesh from sea level rise.
ReplyDelete---I found no mention of peak oil.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Many-People-Earth-Support/dp/0393314952/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293330472&sr=1-1
In the holiday spirit, here is a little essay I wrote on the topic of community gift-giving.
ReplyDeletehttp://squashpractice.wordpress.com/2010/12/24/the-gift-of-good-giving/
Merry Christmas to all, and best wishes to Stuart and his family with their new adventures.
hi Stuart, Merry Christmas too!
ReplyDeleteNow, several signs of coming market crash (2nd phase):
"Margin Debt Soars to Highest Levels Since September 2008":
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/12/margin-debt-soars-to-highest-levels.html
"Amazing Satellite Images Of The Ghost Cities Of China"
http://www.businessinsider.com/pictures-chinese-ghost-cities-2010-12?slop=1#slideshow-start
ghost cities are also growing in Ireland (bankrupted) and Spain (yet to bankrupt),
oil price has jumped over 90 dolars, expect it to slide down to between 10-30 dolars per barrels in next few months. Expect also long term decline in home prices in developed world somewhere between 80-90 %...
then expect crash in future energy investment etc...
Alexander
Guys:
ReplyDeleteJust so you know, Google does allow you to embed links in text using the usual anchor html tags. Like to Gary's post say.
I found the recent paper in Science called "Dynamical Response of the Tropical Pacific Ocean to Solar Forcing During the Early Holocene" to be quite interesting. It seems to suggest that the future will be La Nina like (dry California) and that current climate simulations underestimate climate sensitivity.
ReplyDeleteLink here
Stuart,
ReplyDeleteWhen I see your winter landscape I can not resist mailing a link to a short movie from a skating tour on the sea we made yesterday. We have a cold winter on the west coast of Sweden and the sea around the islands at Göteborg is already frozen.
http://www.glsk.se/skridskonet/film/filmlink-v.asp?idFilmLink=1469
Lars:
ReplyDeleteThat looks incredible!
I snowshoed all round my pond yesterday without a hint of a crack, so it's definitely bearing. However, there's about 8" of snow on top of the ice, and the ice surface underneath is very rough. So it clearly requires a fair amount of clearing and grooming before we could skate on it. Not sure if we'll tackle that this winter or not.
Stuart,
ReplyDeleteYou do not have to clear the ice, nature will handle that. If you don’t get too much additional snow, the snow will absorb water from cracks in the ice and turn into gray ice, which often is really nice.
A rule of thumb for how much point load black ice will carry in kg is ten times the second power of the thickness in cm, thus 5 cm of black ice will carry 250 kg. However I prefer 7 cm of black ice to feel comfortable.
Well, the forecast says sunny with highs above freezing in the next few days, culminating in a high of 46F (8C) on New Years Day! We'll see what's left after that...
ReplyDelete