Am I moving left or did Bubba move right?

kw: current events, world events, articles

I just read in the current (Oct 1, 2012) issue of Time Magazine the article "The Case for Optimism" by Bill Clinton. I was quite unfavorable to President Clinton while he was in office, but I did notice that he moderated quite a bit during his second term, to the point that George W. Bush began his first term seeming to be to Clinton's left. Of course, 9/11 and the two wars changed all that. A wartime President has to govern from the right, as FDR and Truman both did.

In the article, Mr. Clinton stressed five items, which I'll list along with their subtitles:

1. Technology: Phones Mean Freedom
2. Health: Healthy Communities Prosper
3. Economy: Green Energy Equals Good Business
4. Equality: Women Rule
5. Justice: The Fight for the Future is Now

To some extent, the article could be considered a long plug for the Clinton Global Initiative, because CGI efforts are mentioned throughout. However, that is the arena where he spends his time, and what he knows the best. It is amazing that more than 85% of everybody has access to a cell phone. This is good for business, it is good for the economies of developing countries, and it is making the notion of a Digital Divide obsolete. Similar things could be said for green energy. And listen: resource conservation was originally a Conservative cause (just ask Teddy Roosevelt). The level of personal responsibility that widespread communications make possible just makes a Conservative grin. The other three areas, while appearing more "Liberal", are treated in an even-handed way that nobody is likely to argue with very much.

It is a funny thing, that a decade or so of being out of office has gone a long way towards rehabilitating the former President. There were a few storm clouds overhead by the end of his second term, mostly because of personal failings. But he is attaining stature as a statesman, a "wise old head", and people seem more ready to forgive (me, too, slightly grudgingly).

The CGI is worth a look, not because they are a charity but because they aren't. CGI is a connection machine for those wishing to do good and those who know how to go about it. Perhaps it is not a FaceBook for the philanthropically inclined, but that gives a bit of its flavor.

Last words of a tyrant

kw: world events, coups, assassinations

One way to spell his name is Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi. He was usually called Gaddafi or Kadhafi. Now he is dead, and the world breathes a sigh of relief. While some deplore that he was killed without a trial, can you imagine the circus that would have resulted from bringing him to trial?

It is reported that his last words were, "What did I ever do to you?" What appalling self-blindness! I can imagine him asking the same thing of the thousands who were killed at his order, or the tens of thousands who were tortured. He takes his place among the genuinely evil, alongside Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Ceauşescu and Amin.

Mid totality

kw: world events, eclipses

One more: This was taken from the slooh.com live feed right at 3:17 AM, at precisely mid-totality. The southern limb of the moon, to the left here, is very near the center of the umbra. I just looked outside, and to the eye the moon looks more yellowish brown than this.

A brighter eclipse

kw: world events, eclipses

Here is how the moon looked at 2:50 AM EST. The image is from slooh.com, or perhaps this Slooh link. I got up at 2:00, just halfway between first contact and second contact, and watched until 2:45, then dashed down to the computer to download the first live feed I could find. Until I get a longer telephoto lens for my camera, it doesn't make much sense to photograph the moon myself.

I've seen all kinds of lunar eclipses. For most of them, the moon after second contact (just after it enters the umbra) looks a lot like this, but redder. This time it is brighter and more yellow-orange. The global skies must be quite clear and free of dust. One time about thirty years ago, a few weeks after a major volcanic eruption, there was a lunar eclipse in which the moon simply vanished into the umbra and could not be seen at all until third contact.

The Weather: 56; Human Race: 0

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, weather, climatology, history, world events

A kiloton of TNT, the basic unit of nuclear explosion energy, is just over a million kilowatt-hours (1.16x10⁶ KWH). The Megaton, about the energy of the smallest thermonuclear bomb, is a thousand kilotons, or about a billion KWH. These factors allow us to compare large amounts of solar and wind energy with the largest energies we are capable of directly wielding.

The atmosphere weighs about 11.6 quintillion pounds, or 5¼ quintillion kg. This mass is kept in motion by a small amount of the solar energy that strikes Earth, at a speed that averages a few meters per second. The earth intercepts 172 trillion KW of solar energy, mostly in the tropics and subtropics. Some fraction of this drives the atmosphere, and a (very roughly) similar fraction evaporates water from the oceans into the air. Condensation of water back out of the air drives those focused thermal energy systems we call storms, from summer showers to tornadoes and hurricanes.

Water vapor condensing to rainfall in a category 1 hurricane releases heat energy of about 14 trillion KWH per day. Divide that by the billion or so KWH in a kiloton bomb, and we see the energy equivalent of thousands of H-bombs, daily, in an "ordinary" hurricane. It took all the members of the Nuclear Club about sixty years to stockpile enough bombs to equal about two days' energy release by a "small" hurricane.

So where am I going with this? I just read Blame it on the Rain: How the Weather Has Changed History by Laura Lee. The book consists of 56 stories, in essay form, of the weather having a strong impact on human events. (Before I go further, I should mention that the stories we hear of a "nuclear winter" being caused by a nuclear war are overdone. We don't get a "hurricane winter" each time one of these storms roars through a tropical sea or pummells a coastline. Nor when a similarly-sized winter supercell (rarer, but just as energetic) covers the middle third of a continent and drops something like four feet of snow over a half million square miles. Such a supercell, a thousand miles wide, shut down all the airports from Oklahoma City to Chicago about thirty years ago...Winter ended on schedule anyway. And by the way, none of the numbers above are in the book. It's just my musings to get this essay rolling...)

One point of Ms Lee's book is that all human plans and powers need to take the powers of nature into account, or we are the losers. Among the essays are the four-part saga of various belligerent nations trying to defeat Russia, which is always well defended by "General January". Less well known is the spring mud that follows, the "rasputitsa". This "coroner" buries the dead the General kills...and most of the survivors as well.

Other stories include fog hiding armies, rain delaying battles until crucial reinforcements arrive, and winds helping or hindering, seemingly at random, our various schemes. One ill-timed wind gust ensured that the Wright brothers' first flight was not scooped by Langley. An extra-strong El Niño did away with Robert Scott in Antarctica, while aiding Amundsen's team to the first South Pole visit.

Mark Twain (or a co-author) wrote, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." We're a long way from doing so. So-called "weather modification" is typically "weather irritation", and the storm in questions tends to act like a flea-bit dog and scratch back. In 1972, west of Rapid City, SD, a small airplane flew up the front of a gathering storm and "seeded" it with silver iodide. This storm stopped in its tracks, blasted through to the stratosphere, and dumped a foot of rain into Rapid Valley, just below a flood-control dam. A quarter of Rapid City was washed downstream. This isn't in the book, either; most of the stories are about political and military events.

So don't go around singing "Don't rain on my parade." The weather just might take you up on it.