The Salmon Cannon

An innovative solution to the problem of helping salmon return to their spawning grounds. Said to be suitable for other fish as well.

Selective Environmentalism: The Greenies Are Silent on the Nicaragua Canal

The government of Nicaragua has made a deal with a Chinese engineering firm to build a canal across Nicaragua, which will compete with the Panama Canal. The idea of a canal in Nicaragua is not at all new – the US had strongly considered building a canal there before the deal was done with Panama back in 1900 (and Wikipedia says Napoleon III had previously looked into the idea). From time to time, the idea has been revived.

What is new is the immense size of this planned project. The Panama Canal at its narrowest points (the locks) is currently 110 feet wide (widening is either currently happening or planned (I'm not certain which). The plan in Nicaragua, though, is for a ditch whose narrowest point is 754 feet in width.

While there is considerable doubt in some quarters as to whether the project will go far, another point of interest beyond the immensity of the undertaking, is the silence of major environmental organizations in the face of something that will unquestionably have an incredible impact on the environment.

An article in Nature is quoted here as saying the project will require …

“The excavation of hundreds of kilometres from coast to coast, traversing Lake Nicaragua, the largest drinking-water reservoir in the region, [and] will destroy around 400,000 hectares of rainforests and wetlands.” 

And yet ...

Interestingly, despite this potential massive threat to one of the most pristine environmental reservoirs in the Americas, none of the leading international environmental organizations, such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth or the Sierra Club, has issued a single statement about the Nicaragua Canal.

A Dumb Sport Engages in Dumb Politics

Disclaimer: I am not a hockey fan, to put it mildly.

The National Hockey League, custodians of the dying sport, have decided to sign on to global warming hysteria:

... the NHL released its first sustainability report, part of the league's effort to get a handle on the energy and environmental aspects of pro hockey. One of the conclusions? By leading to shorter winters, thinner ice, and truncated outdoor skating seasons, global warming could choke the game's future lifeline and keep potential Gretzkys and Lemieuxs cooling their heels. 

"Before many of our players took their first stride on NHL ice, they honed their skills on the frozen lakes and ponds of North America and Europe," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said in the report. "Major environmental challenges, such as climate change and freshwater scarcity, affect opportunities for hockey players of all ages to learn and play the game outdoors."

There is, of course, little evidence in the real world (meaning other than in computer models) of any shortage of winter ice, and the computer models are showing up as pretty consistently wrong.

This appears to be little more than an attempt by the NHL to be politically correct.

If You Disagree with Me You're Not Just Wrong ...

... you are "immoral, unethical and despicable."

Well no, I don't actually think that way, but Al Gore does. He said in a recent speech in Hawaii that anybody who doesn't believe in global warming is, to repeat, "immoral, unethical and despicable."

The 'immoral' part is particularly interesting, I think, as it is the sort of language and thinking one normally associates with religion. Global warming has become a religion for its adherents, and they seem to speak and act more and more in ways emulating religious fanatics.

A Record Is Set in Nenana!

I posted yesterday about the Nenana Ice Classic. I figure the two or three human beings and numerous spambots who visit this blog have been waiting in breathless anticipation for the outcome, so here it is, from the Alaska Dispatch:

After hanging on to set a record, the Tanana River ice in Nenana finally gave way Monday afternoon at 3:41 p.m. local time, netting a Kenai couple $318,500. Warren and Yvonne Snow were declared the winners when the river began flowing, tripping a clock mounted to the familiar black-and-white tripod.

The ice broke three hours later than the previous record, set in 1964. Al Gore was unavailable for comment.

In other Global Warming news, a Democrat Senator took the opportunity presented by the tragic tornadoes in Oklahoma to make political points, blaming the tornadoes on Republicans (emphasis added):

“So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said. “Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas, it hits Montana with dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together.”

Of course, as we noted here only a week or so ago, the number of tornadoes in the US is at a near-record low this year.

The Nenana Ice Classic

Nenana is a river town in central Alaska, where it gets really, really cold: the record is -69F. To amuse themselves, I suppose, workers building a railroad there almost a hundred years ago started a betting pool on when the river ice would break up. The pool has continued ever since. Records, back to 1917, of the time of breaking are here -- the earliest date is April 20 (in 1940 and 1998), the latest is May 20 (1964).

As of the time I am writing this (just before 2pm May 20 Philippine time, so late night -- I could look it up, but I'm too lazy -- on May 19 in Alaska) the ice has not broken. Thus, this is already the second-latest breakup of the past ninety-seven years, and in twelve hours or so might be the latest.

This picture was just posted at the official site (they update every thirty seconds) -- looks like it's getting close.

According to a geophysicist at the University of Alaska: "The Nenana Ice Classic is a pretty good proxy for climate change in the 20th century,"

Update: It's past midnight now, and it's still standing, so this is only the second time the ice has made it to May 20. Still questionable whether it will last to 11:41am to set the record. The excitement is building!

Tornadoes: What a Difference a Couple Years Makes

As long as I just posted my first item on this blog about Global Warming, I might as well follow it with the second. A few days ago, I saw this item about a blessedly quiet tornado season in the US:

The USA in the past 12 months has seen the fewest number of tornadoes since at least 1954, and the death tolls from the dangerous storms have dropped dramatically since 2011. 

Just two years after a ferocious series of tornado outbreaks killed hundreds of Americans, the USA so far this year is enjoying one of the calmest years on record for twisters. Through Thursday, tornadoes have killed only three Americans in 2013; by the end of May 2011, 543 Americans had died. 

The seven people killed from May 2012 to April 2013 is the fewest in a 12-month period since five people died in September 1899-August 1900, according to Harold Brooks, research meteorologist with the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.

Great news. As the article mentions, just a couple years ago, 2011, there was a terrible series of tornadoes (an especially bad one in Joplin, Missouri) that killed hundreds.

What isn’t mentioned in the article is that the Warmists used those tornadoes and those deaths to advance their cause.  Here's an egregious example from "a distinguished scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont." It's too stupid to quote, but you can read it for yourself. And the leftist website Think Progress had this:

In an email interview with ThinkProgress, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, one of the world’s top climate scientists, who has been exploring for years how greenhouse pollution influences extreme weather, said he believes that it is “irresponsible not to mention climate change” in the context of these extreme tornadoes.

Two years later, the silence of the Warmists is deafening. But I guess they’re too busy burning books.

(NOTE: I don't think one year of exceptionally low tornado activity is proof of anything. But the scientists who promote Global Warming should have likewise known better than to claim in 2011 that one year of exceptionally high activity was proof of their viewpoint. It's too bad they are so willing to cast their scientific training aside when it is convenient to do so to advance their political agenda.)

The Global Warmists Demonstrate Their Openness to Debate

One of the frustrations of the global warming debate is that there is none. Anyone who has any questions is derided as a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, a science-denier, or worse. The academic establishment passes notes among themselves freezing out skeptics from publication in journals. “The science is settled,” intones the noted scientist Al Gore.

This extends to universities, which once were noted for being (or at least trying to be) places where ideas are openly discussed and examined. That is less true than it once was, in all areas, I’m afraid – especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences. But even in one of the hard sciences, Meteorology, the sign is out: “Questioning Authority Forbidden.”

Nothing could demonstrate the current state of meteorological thinking than this picture of two professors at San Jose State University.

The caption on the picture read:  This week we received a deluge of free books from the Heartland Institute. The book is entitled "The Mad, Mad, Made World of Climatism". Shown above, Drs. Bridger and Clements test the flammability of the book.

The picture appeared on the website of the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science. It has now, of course, been sent down the Memory Hole, but you can see it here.