Light Amusements

Now some, not Eli to be sure, might thing that blogging is all serious work and philosophizing.  However there are things that make life worth living.  Amongst them are some twitter sites such as

Florida Man

Florida Man Crashes Car Into Business While Trying to “Time Travel” https://t.co/upfurKKRF4

— Florida Man (@_FloridaMan) December 23, 2015

and of course, Florida Woman

Florida Woman Eats Cinnamon Rolls and Rotisserie Chicken While Driving Drunk Through Walmart on Motorized Scooter https://t.co/FU35kxQVsy

— Florida Woman (@_Flor1daWoman) December 29, 2015

People of Walmart is not recommended for those of you trying to hold your dinners down, they may have greeters but they don't turn anybody away, maybe except for the fully naked.  OTOH, academics appreciate Associate Deans

Please remember that we have our all day mandatory retreat on January 2nd. We don't have an agenda yet but already know it will take all day

— Associate Deans (@ass_deans) December 27, 2015

and news from Durango that Roger Cohen, a former Exxon exec is folding his bet with Roger Grossman, a retired doc, that it will be colder in 2017 than in 2007

In 2008, fed up with doomsday predictions about global warming, Cohen threw down the gauntlet on a $5,000 bet that the Earth’s overall temperature would be colder in 2017 than in 2007. The wager was inspired by Wharton School of Business professor Scott Armstrong’s similar $10,000 challenge to Al Gore over climate change, which the former vice president declined.

back in the 1980s when Exxon was actually researching climate change Cohen had writtern

“It is distinctly possible that the (research scenario) will later produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic – at least for a substantial fraction of the earth’s population,” he wrote in a 1981 memo. 

Cohen said he doesn’t remember writing the memo, but that in the days before he became more familiar with the science, it’s possible he was influenced by the “drum beat” telling everyone to be afraid of a new threat from something called “global warming.”

Since the proceeds went to charity it is a bit of a push, but as Grossman said, although he is too old to see the worst to come

I am concerned about my three granddaughters and the generations that come after us. They’re going to know a world very different than the one we have known and selfishly enjoyed.

Then a rather longer piece in the Griffith Review with a fine history of climate change

IT IS 1859, the Origin of Species has just burst upon the world and we are in London in the laboratory of the Irish scientist John Tyndall. Like Louis Agassiz, Tyndall is a very keen mountain climber, and he too is spellbound by glaciers. He has just returned from a summer in the European Alps and in a few years will lead an assault on the Matterhorn. Tyndall is investigating a possible cause of ice ages; he is interested in how the atmosphere might control Earth’s temperature. He wants to test the accepted notion that all gases are transparent to radiant heat. In his laboratory he first tests the main gases in the atmosphere, oxygen and nitrogen, and he finds that, yes, they are indeed transparent. Perhaps he will abandon this experiment. But then he thinks to test coal gas. There it is, easily accessible to him, for it is piped into his laboratory for lighting, an industrial gas, mostly methane produced by heating coal. When he tests it, he finds that it is opaque – it traps heat rather than letting it through. ‘Thus,’ as one writer put it, ‘the Industrial Revolution, intruding into Tyndall’s laboratory in the form of a gas jet, declared its significance for the planet’s heat balance.’ Tyndall then tries other gases and finds that CO2 is also opaque. In 1859, already a celebrated year in the history of science, the role of greenhouse gases in controlling the temperature of the planet has been identified.

BTW, there is a bit of a subtle mistake in that paragraph.  Anybunny notice it?

The Information and Technology and Innovation Foundation has a list of 22 reasons why USAns and others should be thankful for federal support of research

And finally the Washington Post at the end of November had an excellent graphic based piece for Uncle Bob at the festive table, explaining why climate scientists are running about with their hair on fire.  The last time the Uncle Bobs of the world ignored such we had 9/11

 Each of those indicators has a little blurb explaining exactly why things are going wrong.