Round Up

Time for another round up of interesting articles:


Small Lake In Northwest Territories Will Soon Fall Off Cliff

There's an interesting photo at the website, and, of course, global warming is cited as exacerbating the "problem". Never mind that these sorts of geological events have been taking place since time immemorial. One wonders if an article can be written these days without tying in global warming.

Shocking statistics about black slavery liberals will NEVER admit

This article was written by one of my heroes, Allan West. He writes about the breakdown of the African-American family. He quotes another author thus:

"“Today’s black illegitimacy rate of nearly 75 percent is also entirely new. In 1940, black illegitimacy stood at 14 percent. It had risen to 25 percent by 1965, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” and was widely condemned as a racist. By 1980, the black illegitimacy rate had more than doubled, to 56 percent, and it has been growing since. Both during slavery and as late as 1920, a teenage girl raising a child without a man present was rare among blacks.”"

[---]

“Much of today’s pathology seen among many blacks is an outgrowth of the welfare state that has made self-destructive behavior less costly for the individual. Having children without the benefit of marriage is less burdensome if the mother receives housing subsidies, welfare payments and food stamps. Plus, the social stigma associated with unwed motherhood has vanished. Female-headed households, whether black or white, are a ticket for dependency and all of its associated problems. Ignored in all discussions is the fact that the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits since 1994.”"

Reminds me of something an Indian elder once said to me, namely: "Welfare spoiled the Indian."


Study Finds Abrupt Climate Change May Have Rocked The Cradle Of Civilization

"Canadians are entitled to ask whether the more than $1 billion of taxpayers' money now going to the public broadcaster could be reallocated and used more efficiently in providing and promoting Canadian content," added deputy chair and Conservative Senator Don Plett.

"We learned that the CBC/Radio-Canada must improve in the areas of transparency and accountability. Facing declining ad revenues and increased competition from Netflix and YouTube, things cannot be 'business-as-usual' at the CBC," said Plett.

Half of the 22 recommendations address aspects of governance, while the rest focus on issues of programming, funding and the public broadcaster's mandate.

The report calls on CBC/Radio-Canada to make public "financial information, procurement and contracts, and salaries."

It also calls on the public broadcaster to "review all non-executive salaries and compensation to ensure they are in line with those for comparable positions with private broadcasters."

And it calls on the CBC's board of directors to "conduct a thorough review of all internal policies to reverse the trend of implementing effective policy only after serious incidents have occurred."

The responsibility for implementing "stringent restrictions on the external activities, including outside paid-employment, of all senior staff and on-air talent to prevent any possible conflict of interest," according to the report, should also fall to the board, as should the hiring of the president and CEO."

The entire report can be found here.

Friends of the CBC, er, I mean Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, doth protest too much, of course:

"...said in a release Monday that and other recommendations would amount to a "thinly disguised cut" to CBC's parliamentary grant."

Too bad, so sad.

Don't tell that to today's warmanistas.

Another one:

Did climate change rock the cradle of civilisation? Global warming shaped the Middle East 5,000 years ago, claims study

And yet another: Abrupt climate change destroyed civilisations

Now, how much CO2 did those early civilisations emit, I wonder.


Senate report on CBC calls for new revenue sources, greater transparency

How ironic that the CBC chooses to report this. Fishing for greater taxpayer sympathy, perhaps? My reaction to this is that perhaps our grandmother's corpse is on the chopping block, after all. There is the small matter, though, of the Supreme Court's ruling that that requires a constitutional amendment.

The whole thing is very interesting. Apparently there are "22 recommendations ranging from finding new sources of funding, to publicly disclosing how much its employees make and putting a stop to all in-house production of non-news and current affairs." Not far enough if you ask me. I'll be delving into this at greater length in a day or two.


Two new studies use gene analysis to suggest that Native American people were settled by Amazon, New Guinea and Australian peoples

I might do more on this one in the next few days, as well.

Mangroves and Global Sea Rise: Even More Resilient Than Thought

The climbdown continues.

Expert says boreal forest 'wouldn't exist' without wildfires

Yes. I've often wondered whether our fighting forest fires may actually causing greater problems than they are solving. But there are probably a lot more of them now, due to campers failing to put out their campfires.

Province issues heat advisory

"Environment Canada has forecast temperatures over the next five days to be in the high 20s and low 30s, Thursday temperatures hit 30C with a Humidex of 31; Saturday temperatures are expected to hit 31C."

I remember temperatures of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (around 103 or 104 degrees Celsius) when I was a kid, and one summer, back when I was living in Saskatoon, the temp got up to +40 Celsius or 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Okay. Bedtime for Bonzo.

Fascinating...

...history of planet earth. Kinda drives home the real possibility that some day we will be extinct.

About That Big Bang...

..try bang, bang, bang, bang...

Canadian Geological History

The constancy of change and the new catastrophism: a personal reflection on crisis-driven science

"What is patently obvious from reviewing Canada’s ancient history is that scientists still do not have an adequate understanding of Earth’s complex systems on which to base sound economic and environmental policy. From the upper reaches of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans onwards to the deep interior of the planet our knowledge of complex earth systems is still rather rudimentary. Huge areas of our planet are inaccessible and are little known scientifically. There is still also much to learn from reading the rock record of how our planet functioned in the past.

In so many areas, we simply don’t know enough of how our planet functions.

And yet……

Scarcely a day goes past without some group declaring the next global environmental crisis; we seemingly stagger from one widely proclaimed crisis to another each one (so we are told) with the potential to severely curtail or extinguish civilization as we know it. It’s an all too familiar story often told by scientists who cross over into advocacy and often with the scarcely-hidden sub-text that they are the only ones with the messianic foresight to see the problem and create a solution. Much of our science is what we would call ‘crisis-driven’ where funding, politics and the media are all intertwined and inseparable generating a corrupting and highly corrosive influence on the scientific method and its students. If it doesn’t bleed it doesn’t lead is the new yardstick with which to measure the overall significance of research.

Charles Darwin ushered in a new era of thinking where change was expected and necessary. Our species as are all others, is the product of ongoing environmental change and adaption to varying conditions; the constancy of change. In the last 15 years or so however, we have seemingly reverted to a pre-Darwinian mode of a fixed ‘immutable Earth’ where any change beyond some sort of ‘norm’ is seen in some quarters as unnatural, threatening and due to our activities, usually with the proviso of needing ‘to act now to save the planet.’ Honest scientific discourse and debate is often rendered impossible in the face of the ‘new catastrophism.’

Trained as geologists in the knowledge of Earth’s immensely long and complex history we appreciate that environmental change is normal. For example, rivers and coastlines are not static. Those coasts, in particular, that consist of sandy strand-plains and barrier-lagoon systems are continually evolving as sand is moved by the waves and tides. Cyclonic storms (hurricanes), a normal component of the weather in many parts of the world, are particularly likely to cause severe erosion. When recent events such as Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy cause catastrophic damage, and spring storms cause massive flooding in Calgary or down the Mississippi valley, and droughts and wildfires affect large areas of the American SW these events are blamed on a supposed increase in the severity of extreme weather events brought about by climate change. In fact, they just reflect the working of statistical probability and long term climate cyclicity. Such events have happened in the past as part of ongoing changes in climate but affected fewer people. That the costs of weather and climate-related damage today are far greater is not because of an increased frequency of severe weather but the result of humans insisting on congregating and living in places that, while attractive, such as floodplains, mountain sides and beautiful coastlines, are especially vulnerable to natural disasters. Promises of a more ‘stable future’ if we can only prevent climate change are hopelessly misguided and raise unnatural expectations by being willfully ignorant of the natural workings of the planet. Climate change is the major issue for which more geological input dealing with the history of past climates would contribute to a deeper understanding of the nature of change and what we might expect in the future. The past climate record suggests in fact that for much of the Earth’s surface future cooling is the norm. Without natural climate change Canada would be buried under ice 3 km thick; that is it normal state for most of the last 2.5 million years with 100,000 years-long ice ages alternating with brief, short-lived interglacials such as the present which is close to its end."

Brrrrrrrr.

Related:

World Disasters Report for 2013 – lowest number of catastrophies and deaths in 10 years

More Interesting Stuff...

Is Sahara Desert several million years older than previously thought?

"It is widely believed that Sahara desert first appeared during the last 2 to 3 million years, but recent discoveries such as ancient sand dunes and dust records in marine cores push the possible onset of Saharan aridity back in time by several million years. Until now, however, there have been no good explanations for such an early Sahara onset.

This study pinpoints the Tortonian stage (~7-11 million years ago) as a pivotal period for triggering North African aridity and creating the Sahara desert. Using snapshot simulations with the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM) model suite, the international team explored the climate evolution of North Africa through major tectonic shifts over the last 30 million years. They found that the region undergoes aridification with the shrinkage of the Tethys -- a giant ocean that was the origin of the modern Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas -- during the Tortonian.

The simulations are the first to show that the Tethys shrinkage has two main consequences for North African climate. First, it weakens the African summer monsoon circulations and dries out North Africa. Second, it enhances the sensitivity of the African summer monsoon and its associated rainfall to orbital forcing. The Tortonian stage thus marks the time when North Africa shifted from a permanently lush, vegetated landscape to a landscape experiencing arid/humid cycles on orbital time scales.

Interestingly, these major changes in North African climate and environment are coincident with an important time period for the emergence of early hominids."

And, you see. Science is never settled.

Someday...

...before too long, in geological time, there will be no more Chile:

Chile 8.2 earthquake: Tsunami spurs evacuation along coast, at least two deaths reported

I expect there will still be Chili though.

Lots Of Stuff..

...that I like:

Resurrected protein's clue to origins of life

"The resurrected protein is thought to have existed almost four billion years ago in single-celled organisms linked to the earliest ancestor of all life.

The protein survives in the extreme environments of high acidity and temperature expected on early Earth and, intriguingly, also Mars."

Mind you, the language in the article is barely understandable to a non-scientist like me, but it does speak to the question about the origins of life, which has always fascinated me.

THAILAND: Muslims in the South are slaughtering Buddhists in order to ethnically cleanse the area (WARNING: Graphic Images)

"Muslims account for a mere 4.6% of population, yet have been spreading fear among the indigenous Buddhists of the region, using violence and brutality. They have resorted to the random killing of Buddhists, including school teachers and Buddhist monks."

Hardly news, but.... I went to graduate school with a woman from Thailand. I hope she's alright.

Major Danish Daily Warns: “Globe May Be On Path To Little Ice Age…Much Colder Winters…Dramatic Consequences”!

"So now even the once very green Danish media is now spreading the seeds of doubt. So quickly can “settled science” become controversial and hotly disputed. The climate debate is far from over. And when it does end, it looks increasingly as if it’ll end in favor of the skeptics."

Really good read, BTW, but damn it!! I so wanted some of that global warming stuff. Oh well. This should solve some of that "overpopulation" hysteria. If only it would take "the sky is falling" hysterical folks first.

Creak. Groan.

Some things make me feel so old:


Please insert more coins: Payphone’s future is on the line

"Already a quaint relic in many parts of Canada, the old-fashioned payphone could become even harder to find after the country’s telecommunications regulator rejected Bell Canada’s request to double the cost of a call to $1.

The phone company asked for the price hike because it’s getting harder to make a profit from payphones as more consumers carry cellphones in their pockets and communicate via texts and instant messages. An average payphone took in $1,000 only five years ago; that number is closer to $700 a year now."

I grew up with an massive old wooden box attached to the wall, with a mouth piece to speak into and an ear piece resting on a cradle on the side. There was a hand operated crank on the side of the box. The phone was on a party-line with four or five households on the line. To dial someone else on the line, one used the crank to ring a code of long and short rings - for example 2 long and 1 short. I don't remember what our code was, but I do remember that you could hear anyone's phone ringing, if they were on the same line, and were only supposed to lift up the receiver if your code was ringing. You could lift up the receiver (ear piece) and listen in on your neighbours' conversations, or, if need be, interrupt them and tell them to hang up because you needed to make some sort of urgent call. I don't remember when  that changed, but the next big innovation was a rotary dial and then push-button. Ooooo. Progress!!

I also remember when payphones needed only 10 cents to operate.

But there are some things older than I am:

50 million year old fossils found under Brisbane roadworks

What We Don't Do...

...to/for our neighbours:

Fossilized feces: Saskatchewan museum sending dinosaur poop to Smithsonian

"The fossilized feces from a meat-eating T. Rex was deposited 65 million years ago in what is now the province's southwest."

Enjoy!

More.

"It is a unique specimen," Royal Saskatchewan Museum director Harold Bryant, himself a paleontologist, explained. "It's the only coprolite that can be attributed to Tyrannosaurus Rex."

More, still

"...analysis shows the dino's dinner that day was probably a juvenile duck-billed dinosaur or a horned Triceratops."

It was a dog eat dog - er - dinosaur eat dinosaur world.

I'm Baaaaack...

...and I'm thinking it's good to be Canadian:

Foreigners buy up Canadian bonds

I guess Laurier had it wrong, by a century.

Related: That's one way to choose a leader.

Not related: Just thought I should warn you. Watch out for rabid roos. Especially if you're a politician.

Kinda related: Water Trapped For 1.5 Billion Years Could Hold Ancient Life

Well, it is Canadian.

That's 'Cause It's ...

...colder here:

First feathered dinosaur fossils found in North America

"Scientists in Canada have unearthed the first fossils of a feathered dinosaur ever found in the Americas, the journal Science reported on Thursday.

The 75 million year old fossil specimens, uncovered in the badlands of Alberta, Canada, include remains of a juvenile and two adult ostrich-like creatures known as ornithomimids."

Looks like he's ready to do the chicken dance. Oops. Is that raaaaaacist?

Ever Wonder How...

..all those wooly mammoths being discovered in places like chilly Siberia managed to survive before anthropogenic global warming? After all, Siberia was supposedly a very cold place. What did they eat?

I wonder if this was an adaptation to the cold?

""His one-metre-long penis is also intact so we can conclude that this was a male," Tikhonov told AFP."

Duh!!

By Golly!!!

We've found our next man-caused cosmic disaster. Waiting for leftards to grab on to this one:

Earth is overdue for magnetic field flip with possible enormous consequences

Eat, drink and be merry, 'cause we're all gonna die.

Yet More Inconvenience

Persistent near-tropical warmth on the Antarctic continent during the early Eocene epoch

"The warmest global climates of the past 65 million years occurred during the early Eocene epoch (about 55 to 48 million years ago), when the Equator-to-pole temperature gradients were much smaller than today and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were in excess of one thousand parts per million by volume. Recently the early Eocene has received considerable interest because it may provide insight into the response of Earth’s climate and biosphere to the high atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that are expected in the near future as a consequence of unabated anthropogenic carbon emissions."

"unabated anthropogenic carbon emissions"

They did have to slip that last bit in though, didn't they? Gotta get bigger balls, folks. You're half way there. Keep going.

Same topic. Another story.

"The study in Nature suggests Antarctic winter temperatures exceeded 10C, while summers may have reached 25C.

Better knowledge of past "greenhouse" conditions will enhance guesses about the effects of increasing CO2 today."

[---]

"The early Eocene was a period of atmospheric CO2 concentrations higher than the current 390 parts per million (ppm )- reaching at least 600ppm and possibly far higher.

Global temperatures were on the order of 5C higher, and there was no sharp divide in temperature between the poles and the equator."

Inneresting, no?

Also on the same topic, I've been rereading portions of Ian Plimer's book, Heaven and Earth: Global Warming. The Missing Science. There are times in the earth's history when CO2 concentrations were much, much higher than that but no catastrophic runaway global warming occurred.

Cool!!

A video about the valley where I grew up.

Enjoy.

Idiots got a couple of things wrong, though. They say the Town of Fort Qu'Appelle is situated between the Katepwa and Pasqua lakes.  Not so. Katepwa Lake is further downstream and Pasqua is further upstream. Fort Qu'Appelle is on a flat flood plain between Mission Lake and Echo Lake.

And the over-the-top romanticization of Native people is rather sickening, too.

I learned to skate on that river. Used to walk for miles along its banks and up the valley banks. Tobogganing down those valley banks in the winter was a blast, although rather dangerous, but we were invincible then. We were kids, after all.

Latest ICCC in Chicago

Lots of links and videos of this year's (the 7th) conference sessions as well as the past six.

Here's Something...

...to replace the AGW scam especially made for scaremongers, except this one has happened before and could be genuinely catastrophic:

Mysterious Siberian blasts point to rapid pole reversal

First time I've heard of Tunguska explained this way. Not much we can do about it, either.

From Pangaea to...

...Amasia in only 500 million years. Since the Great Global Warming Scam is receding into history, let's see if we can create a global panic about that. After all, we need to do something. I don't think the sky is going to fall.

Ian Plimer Again

I've got about 30 pages left to read in his book.  This a just a taste of what he deals with in Heaven and Earth: global warming, the missing science:

And No...

...It wasn't me or any of my relations:

Saskatchewan dinosaur recognized as new species