The Cloud Mystery

I don't know about anyone else, but I find a lot of synergy with this clip;

I think Henrik Svensmark's theory has legs because it does show a link between cloud formation and cosmic rays which has been public since Wilson's work on cloud formation in the early 1900's. I find myself agreeing with most of the content for the following reasons;

1. The 'greenhouse effect' of water vapour makes the minimal effect of CO2 look positively ineffectual.
2. The Sun is a variable star and is apparently heading into a prolonged minima.
3. Svensmark is experimentally demonstrating his postulation, not just using speculative computer models and 'adjusted' data which do not accurately reflect reality.
   

Interesting stuff. Certainly more credible than the CO2 lobby's "We can't think of anything else it might be".

Current weather & current reading

More 'global warming' in the shape of snow and sleet today. Having seen the stupid people who insist that man has any appreciable effect on the worlds' climate, despite clear cut evidence to the contrary, (Polar Bears fine, No predicted cataclysmic climate effects evident, rather chilly don'cha think) are so blinded by their own scientifically illiterate dogma that they think anyone with an alternative opinion is mentally ill; I've given up commenting on other climate related blogs. Only a new ice age will convince the pro AGW crowd, but even if that were to come to pass I have the horrible sinking feeling that even when the last of them is being hunted by hungry Polar Bears across the Icy Tundra of just for the sake of a laugh, let's say Florida, they will still think that the climate is all the fault of those nasty SUV driving bunch of 'deniers'. Oh gawd.

By the by, Have picked upon this Ayn Rand meme that is going around and begun to read her work to see what all the fuss is about. Have completed 'We the Living' (Movie link here) and 'Anthem' and heard her speaking in old interviews about her philosophy of 'Objectivism'. I find her work surprisingly easy to read despite it's literary reputation, and extremely hostile to any authoritarian collectivist doctrine such as communism or socialism, yet I do not feel so far that the policy of enlightened self interest as espoused in her novels is any more attractive than Anarchy. This opinion may change.

Current book open on the bed stand is 'Romanitas' by Sophia McDougall. Like the story, but her style is a little opaque for my tastes. Still plugging away at it nonetheless.

But what about....?

The less evidence the advocates of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change have for their case, the more their fellow travellers seem to want opposition to their views sidelined or muzzled. A sensationalist media and a distant political elite throughout the western world seem to be obsessed with the meme that the fact that the climate is in a near constant state of minor fluctuation is it's-all-our-fault-and-we're-all-gonna-die-won'cha-think-of-the-children! One would highlight the following; The IPCC conference gets almost all the mainstream coverage, and the resultant sensational assertions of things that might happen if their base premise that man made CO2 is to blame for all the changes in the world's climate were true. Yet a conference attended by 600 people with more Ph.D's in climate science (and therefore more highly qualified to speak on the subject) over the water in New York gets labelled dismissively as a bunch of redneck 'Deniers'.

Look guys, the climate changes and no-one is precisely sure why it does what it does (Although I get ever more convinced that solar influences are a pretty hefty component). That is not under dispute. It's this big expensive eco-guilt trip I don't understand.

A picture speaks a thousand words

Wife managed to get into work this morning despite several inches of snow. I'm working from home today, but it might be worthwhile dragging our little 4x4 up and down the road a few times to help keep things clear for her on the way home this afternoon. Neighbour prophesised blandly that 'this crap' will be gone by tomorrow. I hope so. My diary is full of meetings and schedules this week, and all this white global warming stuff is inconvenient to say the least.

Image taken of our view over the southern end of Dodd Narrows at 10:50am PST.

All seasons in a day

This morning when I took Dog for his tri-yearly shearing, I was wearing sunglasses and the sky was a brilliant blue with nary a cloud in sight. When I drove to pick him up from the dog groomers at lunchtime, the sky was a solid light grey. Two hours later, it was raining, then the sky closed down and it snowed. It is now 3:30pm PST and the sun has just come out again.

Dog has been defurred, the house has been cleaned top to bottom, and Wife is currently sitting reading Ayn Rand's 'Anthem'. Not so much a novel, more a long polemic poem against the evils of collectivism. A Good read, and despite her 'literary' reputation, pre-eminently readable. Have yet to read 'Fountainhead' and 'Atlas Shrugged', but was impressed by the power of 'We the living'.

Me, I am struggling with the theme of mental infidelity against the backstory of burgeoning space colonisation. Time for tea and a break from the keyboard methinks.

Life's a beach

Still winters day down in the Narrows this afternoon after a good mornings work. Dog and I went to stretch our legs down by the cold clear waters. Me to watch the Grebes. Buffleheads and occasional Blue Heron, and Dog to find any old bone he fancied crunching.

I often think that a Beach is the charnel house of the sea. It's where all the odds and ends cast into the deep tend to wind up. We get a lot of logs because they escape from the daily log boom traffic. The whole foreshore is made up of pulverised shells and larger rocks, periodically resculpted by a stormy night. No analogy, just an observation.

Still plenty of snow lying about closer towards town. Just when you think you're about to get rid of the last batch, down comes another. Fortunately the new all weather tyres on the van cope very nicely thankyou.

An Austrian researcher thinks he has found the cause of belly button fluff; but quite frankly I'm not shaving my belly, which he claims is the 'cure'. It's like all this anthropogenic climate change' nonsense that keeps on popping up in the news. Fluff. Fluffy news about fluff all.

Day at home

Worked up until ten last night, and find this morning that I've done everything I should. No meetings to attend today, and I'm told that town (Nanaimo) is a bit chaotic right now with last nights snowfall.

Wife is road testing new all weather tyres on the van and just phoned home to let me know that she got to work safely. Dog and I have been for a walk in the three or so inches of snow lying on the ground. I've read the online papers, had breakfast but right now I'm not in the mood for anything serious.

Outside, the Narrows are a steely blue and the trees and hedges lumpy whiteness. No more snow is falling.

Snow falling on Cedars

The sound of snow falling on Cedars makes is a crackling, pattering sound like rain on high voltage lines, but less harsh and with a pattering as the flakes dust down onto the fragile leaf litter from last fall. That is what I learned today. It has a calming effect.

Busy day. Finally got my correspondence and notes organised. Which as Wife might be heard to remark; "Blood and sand Jones?! You, organised?" Such is life.

Another set of isolated weather events

Snow in Saudi.

Hail and snow in Dubai last night.

Did someone say it was getting warmer?

Reality bites.

Update: Oh yes, and it snowed this morning outside our house. All melted by midday.

Foggy bottom

Todays little sojourn down to the waters edge saw me entering the set for a Hammer Horror movie. Thick layer of mist up to two metres above the water flowing down and dispersing from the neck of the narrows, then a thin haze up to about sixty metres or so. Dog splashed happily in the shallows like a two year old with his first pair of galoshes, and I inadvertantly upset a couple of the local Blue Heron population that flapped away croaking complaints. A Stellers Sea Lion was snorking and snuffling while it hunted in the middle of the channel, with no signs of human activity but the far off mournful klaxon at the Duke Point ferry terminus. Very peaceful.

Yesterday I was happy to see the return of our local Bald Eagle population. I was within fifty feet of them when we simultaneously spotted each other. They cussed me in fluent Eagle, and I just stood there marvelling at the sheer size of the damn things. Wingspans broader than I am tall, and talons the size of my hands. This means there's fish out there. Wonder if we'll get a repeat performance of last years Herring run when fish were being sold at five dollars a bucket?

Continually watching the exchange rates. Looks like we'll be moving the last of our funds out of sterling, but I want to see how the markets react when the reality of the new US Presidency hits home. Maybe Barack Obama will do the smart thing and keep fobbing off the wilder assertions of the environmental lobbyists, and look after his country first. As for the country of my birth, I have the horrid feeling that the UK economy may end up doing a Weimar because the pillocks in charge know less about sound economic management than a lightly stunned Lemming. Either way, we have to be prepared to shift our funds to where we lose the least. If commodities drop a little more, it may be worth buying gold again. Although the best time to do that was last year.

Anyway, back to the grindstone, I have work to do, and may even get some plot mapping done on the sequel MSS.

Fog in the Narrows

Woke up this morning and did a bit of a double take. Down in the Narrows, a dense ribbon of sea fog obscured our view of Mudge Island, the water, and everything up to sixty metres high over the water. It was flowing North to South down the channel at about 15 knots (My estimate)like a slow river of indistinct grey slurry. Above this line the sky was totally clear.

Very strange, but we've had a lot of low cloud and fog recently. The past two days have had sunny periods where it looks like God unzipped the clouds over the city for a few hours during the day just to see if everything was okay with Nanaimo, then zipped them right back up again at night.

Price of Gas is perplexing. Most Gas stations are selling it at 93.9, a rise of 19 cents from two weeks ago. Oil prices haven't gone up that much, so what in the hell is going on? Are the Gas companies trying to make some extra bucks before that idealistic fool the Americans have elected screws them with extra taxes to prevent the non existant 'global warming'? Shut up Jones, you've MSS to write. You promised Wife you would ignore the issue for a while and took a serious work break.

Today the Weather is a side issue, we're going to the movies to see 'Defiance' starring Daniel Craig.

Update: Gas prices seem to be associated with currency fluctuations affecting the Canadian Dollar....

Ink capable

Much as I am enamoured of Inkjet printers for their versatility and economy, the one I have has an unerring sense of bad timing. Yesterdays farce saw me running out of ink twenty pages into a fifty page document. Result; I have to spend valuable time away from day job getting refills done. This entails a fifty kilometre round trip and over a valuable hour out of my working day. It also meant that the MSS samples due for despatch yesterday didn't go until lunchtime today.

The upside is that it got me away from my desk for a while. Wife remarked at how crabby I've been getting lately and that it was a good thing for the whole household that Mr Grumpy had got off his backside and away from the keyboard.

Writing the initial manuscript is the easy bit. The thing I find frustrating and what drives everyone else completely crackers, including Dog, is my tendency to revisit every damn paragraph in 240,000 words and fiddle with them. Change the metaphor, delete a simile, tone down the hyperbole, alter the key descriptive terms, and occasionally even delete a character while generally behaving like an obsessive compulsive with a bad case of the fidgets and attention deficit disorder. The MSS samples are now, for better or worse, out of the door and I am forbidden by Wife upon pain of agony to revisit them until I get a reply from the agency that wanted to look over my work.

"Get on with the next one Jones." Wife has laid down the law and I defy her at my personal peril. Just as well she keeps me on the straight and narrow because I'd never have gotten even this far without her.

The other edict Wife has decreed is forbidding me to write about the Weather, as I only get uptight about the whole global warming bullshit. "Everyone around knows it's a load of crap to line politicians pockets." She vouchsafed unto me. "You have better things to do with your time." She's right of course. I have a trilogy to finish. One must complete the tasks one begins, or what's the point?

We were promised sunshine today but I didn't see any.

Al Gore to be sued?

A classy action.

Outlook changeable

"There do be a change in the wind me hearties. A change do be a comin'" (In my best Geoffrey Rush impersonation). Well not so much in the weather, as that always manages to catch you off guard on the Island. Sudden thick snow shower this afternoon had a number of people (Including us) forced to make a quick dash into the big Canadian Tire store, several making sharp wisecracks about "this goldarn global warming eh?" as sleet and snow began liberally coating everything in sight.

I just had to laugh. Wife has often told me off for being an "obsessive old grouch" about the whole issue, and I've been forced to silence by my dear spouse upon pain of torture. This is not a vain threat. Wife knows where all my sensitive little places are, and kitty has sharp little claws. Ow.

Notwithstanding, all of a sudden the 'Global warming' bandwagon looks like the wheels are finally beginning to come off. Dishonesty and / or outright incompetence from unregulated 'Carbon trading' companies. Articles in the mainstream and online media casting doubt upon the dogma of man made climate change springing up like Hydra's teeth. It's not just the long time sceptical commentators like Christopher Booker. The climate change bubble bursts as the weather refuses to comply with the doomsayers predictions.

Couple of additions to the sidebar along with a little tidying up. Roy Spencer, Climatologist, Author, and former NASA scientist, and Skeptics Global Warming. Oh, and a dog, named Kyoto of all things.

What I'd like to see now is all those scientists and other people who have had their careers ruined by the warmista's shrill demands given some form of recompense, and some long overdue impartiality returned to academia. Perhaps the jailing of a couple of the leading lights for the fraud they have attempted to perpetrate upon us all. Which would be poetic justice after their calls for "denier's" to be treated like criminals and locked up. Although, he said thoughtfully to himself, I won't be holding my breath. I'll just be happy when all the extra 'green' taxes are dropped.

Back to Sci-fi MSS editing. Second draft almost finished. It's looking good.

Global cooling?

Quiet start to the New Year, with much to do come Monday morning.

Am getting increasingly peeved with the "Global Warming Denier" tag, although there is an element of perverse pride in being identified as one not taken in by the whole alarmist nonsense. Notwithstanding, I'm not one of the "coming ice age" faction either, although the Weather phenomena would suggest that we are in one of those cooler cyclic climate events. To be honest, there's so much delusion, obfuscation and downright dishonesty going on that it's hard to know what the damn truth of the matter is anyway.

Being a cynical soul, I try not to 'believe' in much at all when it comes to the climate. Cooling or Warming, it's all the same, and that humankind has precious little to do with the global climate, the main drivers of which appear to be Solar activity, volcanism, the water cycle, and electromagnetic variations. To suggest that an atmospheric trace gas currently measured around 385 parts per million is responsible for it all sounds very shaky from even my limited layman's perspective. Especially when the estimated total human contribution of this gas is a mere 19.25 parts per million. By comparison, there's much more Argon in the atmosphere, just under three times more. CO2, I would say, is the least of our worries. As it gets cooler, if my reading of physics is right, then we should see Atmospheric CO2 levels begin to drop in the next few years as the oceans cool.

My concerns regarding current weather trends are being raised by the number of incidences of ice crystal related phenomena being observed around the world; Nacreous clouds, icebows, and various other ice crystal refracted phenomena. Norwegian observers I am reliably informed, are seeing far more Nacreous cloud formations this year, and Icebows have been reported in the national and international media quite late in the year. Using the simple logic that says "Ice crystals are evidence of cooling" I tend to be swayed more towards the viewpoint that we are currently in a cooling phase of the Earth's climate cycles. Although I fervently hope we are not in for a Dalton type minimum. That would be worse than everything the doomsayers predict.

Those who still deny that these cooler weather phenomena truly exist really need to step away from the keyboard and get out a bit more. Rather like those observed trudging along in the snow holding banners reading 'stop global warming'. The past two years have been cooler than usual, and rather give the lie to the 'Man is responsible' standpoint. They cling to inaccurate assertions like CO2 rise leads temperature change (Which it doesn't), and think that applying political logic in a scientific debate will change the weather (It won't). In addition they seem to be suffering from the delusional belief that Man as a species has much significance when it comes to the weather (We don't).

Anyway, no-one's going to read this. Humans as a species don't like logic much. Fantasy appears far more preferable. That's what it looks like to me.

Snow Casualties

The recent snow has wrought much inconvenience and a number of casualties including eight Snowmobilers who got caught in two consecutive avalanches. Seven of the party are still unaccounted for at the time of writing.

Fortunately our only local casualty was a young female Deer which had taken shelter under a bush and died of cold. Took a walk with Dog this morning to see the still deep frozen carcase emerging from a thawing snowbank. Venison anyone? The only human casualty in our little enclave has been the wounded pride of a number of 4x4 drivers who have come to grief in roadside culverts despite snow chains etc.

Driving in the snow is a skill and requires decent snow tires, steady and slow acceleration and deceleration. Oh yes, and migraine inducing concentration. Having driven vans, cars and ridden a motorcycle in snowy conditions, I know whereof I write. There are those who can put the hammer down, trust to luck and come up smiling every time, but I'm not one of them. The ditch would beckon strongly. As for indulging in festive cheer; I won't even breathe on a glass of wine within twenty four hours of driving because sure as shooting, I'd get pulled over and busted for drink driving if I did.

Slow day

Spectacular view this morning. Fog and low cloud on the other side of Mudge Island positively glowed like a Turner seascape in the morning light.

Our roads are now a lot safer to drive. The snowplough, (Or in our case a Road Grader) a curious looking contraption with a hydraulically controlled ram blade slung under the cab, came through last night and cleared off most of the compacted slush and ice that made driving so tricky yesterday afternoon. Well done City Hall. It was getting too tricky out there.

Today we've stayed in and hunkered down. Wife to catch up with her reading, and me to pursue my literary ambitions and occasionally delve into 'Sarum'.

I see Christopher Booker in the UK Daily Telegraph has claimed that the Anthopogenic theory of Global Warming has been disproved in 2008. Personally I think it was disproved by the complete failure of all the apocalyptic doomsayers predictions to even begin coming true by 2005. Someone should let the warmista's know that theories need observable proofs, which the theory of Man made CO2 driven climate change has been conspicuously lacking in. Well, apart from unfounded scare stories and a lot of fudged statistics. Yet even now there are those with demonstrable evidence of non man made climate shifts, still choose to believe that humankind has any significant effect on the globalclimate. Obviously the salutory tale of the 'Emperors new clothes' is no longer taught in elementary schools any more.

Now, climatewise at least, we are in the midst of a Solar Minima and cool phase of the Pacific and Atlantic Decadal Oscillations. Things will get quite chilly for the next few years, and it may be worth considering moving further south. New Mexico maybe. Although there have been news items about Florida suffering from snow and ice recently. There goes the price of Orange Juice. Fortunately the latest weather news suggests it's got warmer down there again. Just goes to show that it isn't a warmer climate we should be worrying about.

Back to the grindstone tomorrow. I have calls to make and e-mails to shoot off.

I see Longrider has dropped off the blogging map. Looks like a domain ownership issue, so I'll wait a week or so before editing him off the sidebar. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.

Thaw

We are undergoing a very welcome thaw at present. Unfortunately, thaws pose their own hazards. Packed snow and slush turns to ridges of hard packed ice that renders useless all your petty attempts at steering in a straight line. The first kilometre out from home at present is a real queen bitch to drive. After that the middle of the road is mostly clear and makes for easy driving. When the thaw finally reaches our little enclave I will be a very happy bunny.

In the woods the underbrush is surfacing as the tide of crystalline white recedes. For days the only tracks into the woodland have been those of Dog and myself. Only the Deer have ventured under the laden canopy of branches. When the paths are clear I might even venture down to the beach to see what else has arrived.

Well, that's my first White Christmas since the 1960's and as far as I'm concerned you can keep it. White Christmases are for kids.

Back to business

More snow. A fine dust this time, but thickening with every keystroke. Getting home last night was fun if you like that sort of thing; especially the last kilometre. Having abjured alcohol for over twenty four hours my reactions got us safely along stretches of road where far more well equipped vehicles had come to grief in the ditch. These were vehicles with 4 wheel drive, snow tires, snow chains, the works. Just like the one in the picture. Yet they were off the road and we somehow safely skittered past, up hill and down dale, jouncing over every icy slush packed rut. After we arrived home I slumped into a nervous collapse over a large, and well earned, glass of Malt Whiskey.

MSS revision day. Have already 'Murdered my darlings' and will resubmit MSS sample to publishers in the new year. The mini screenplay is done, and I'll get that out of the door in January too.

BC Sunshine

Rain glorious rain. The snow has stopped and as of 12pm it started raining. Of course it'll take a day or two to clear all the snow, but I've never been so glad to see good old British Columbian Sunshine. I don't care if it rains all January.

Back to Nanaimo's usual temperate climate.

We've been having trouble with our 4x4 of late with some damp in the fuel line which has caused cut outs and a good deal of embarrassment on the highway. Half a tank of 94 octane and half a flask of STP fuel additive later and good ol' Sue is purring like a Puma on steroids.

Wife and I are off to party with family, leaving our fearless guard dog (not) with friends so he can courageously cower under the sofa. Bless.