Sunday, July 29, 2007

State Police Blow up Global Warming - Updated

Well almost.

Climate Audit brings us the following from Salem Virginia:

The suspicious device blown up by a State Police Bomb Squad Thursday evening turned out to be a weather station.
It happened outside the Medical Office Building on the east side of Lewis Gale Medical Center. We were told a visitor contacted authorities after seeing a suspicious object hanging from a tree. Authorities brought out a robot to check it. The device was blown up around 7:00 p.m. At no time was the hospital or any other buildings at Lewis Gale evacuated.
Friday afternoon, Salem Police said the package was actually a remote weather station. A hospital employee had attached it to the tree and used putty to weather-proof it. Police say no criminal charges will be filed.


I would like to know how long the weather station was there before someone noticed.

===============================

The Global Warming theory assumes that the world temperature data is of consistent quality over time. To verify that Climate Audit is building a data base of all the official USHCN weather stations to evaluate their data.

While some stations are excellent examples of a well located and maintained station following USHCN standards, this is all to common. There is a change in the external environment of the station which effects the results, usually raising the reported temperatures. The stations are unmanned and not visited very often.


weather station  station data

In 1999 the air conditioners were removed from the roof of the adjacent building and placed a few feet from the weather station. The station has reported an average temperature four degrees higher since the move.


Garbage In -- Garbage Out

HT: David Duff
David says the real Hat Tip goes to Anthony Watts

UPDATE August 11, 2007


Anthony Watts provides more information. It seems there is more at play than the air conditioners, which if not entirely innocent should have their offense down graded from felony to infraction.

Regular readers may remember that I posted about a climate station in Detroit Lakes MN last week, surveyed by volunteer Don Kostuch, and cross posted it to the website Climate Audit that had two air conditioner units right next to it. It looked like an obvious cause and effect because in 1999 on May 5th, it was determined that the a/c units were moved off the roof of the radio station where this station resides and moved them to the ground where the temperature sensor is close by.

However, some folks on the blogosphere just went, well, a little ballistic over that assertion. It was a good thing too, because their very loud and somewhat uncivil complaints led to an examination of this idea: if its not the a/c units, what then did cause the temperature jump at that time?


Steve McIntyre, of Toronto operates www.climateaudit.org and began to investigate the data and the methods used to arrive at the results that were graphed by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
What he discovered was truly amazing. Since NASA does not fully publish the computer source code and formulae used to calculate the trends in the graph, nor the correction used to arrive at the "corrected" data. He had to reverse engineer the process by comparing the raw data and the processed data..
Here is one of his first posts where he begins to understand what is happening. "This imparts an upward discontinuity of a deg C in wintertime and 0.8 deg C annually. I checked the monthly data and determined that the discontinuity occurred on January 2000 - and, to that extent, appears to be a Y2K problem. I presume that this is a programming error."


Read the whole post: It gets even more amazing



NOTE:

He also reports

Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit is down due to excessive traffic that may have been caused by either or a combination of these things:
1- Rush Limbaugh mentioning the website in Thursday's Show
2- Denial of Service (DOS) attacks
3- Being Slashdotted the next day
4- All of the above

surfacestations.org has been off line for unrelated reasons, someone accidentally cut a cable.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

A March Up Country?

In 401 BC the Cyrus the Younger hired a large army of Greek mercenaries to take the Persian throne. Though they the won at the battle of Cunaxa, near modern Baghdad in Iraq, Cyrus was killed in the battle. This left the Greeks stranded in hostile territory and having to fight their way home. Xenophon, one of the senior leaders of the expedition, recorded their story in one of the classics of ancient literature Anabasis (The March Up Country) often subtitled Xenophon and the 10,000

Since we are talking about Iraq.

/rantmode=ON

I was very ambivalent about the war to begin with. There was a stable balance of power in the region, but stable balance of powers can protect genocidal governments for years. Sadam was accused of following what Hans Morgantahau called an anti-status quo policy, I thought it was a prestige policy, but the two are often difficult to tell apart, and he had invaded two counties. Saddam got more from the prestige of having (or having people think he had) WMD’s than he could ever get from using them outside Iraq, but what ever you think chemical weapons do to people it is much worse, and he did use them ine past. My pre-blog comments have long since disappeared off the net. Paul Cella expressed what I was thinking then and said it better than I did.

Whatever one thinks of the war the Secretary of Defense had very misguided ideas on how to run a Defense Department and fight a war.

And despite all that, owing more to the troops on the ground and the Iraqis, the military situation in Iraq, while difficult, is nowhere near as bad as the press reports would have you believe.

The original insurgency of pro-Saddam Baathists has been effectively defeated since the end of 2005. Of course like all insurgencies some idiots will be throwing bombs for years, but it is really an Iraqi police problem at this point. Al Quida is on the run, its policy of trying to get Iraqi support by killing Iraqis, only got Iraqis mad. They may be more than a strict police problem at this point, but AQ is not likely to overthrow an Iraqi government of any type. Since about the beginning of 2006 a number of armed groups that had been sitting out the original insurrengency decided it was time to use force to get a better bargaining position for the final settlement, maybe even settle old scores, and get rid of some competitors. This is a very different dynamic than previously, which could be analyzed in the framework of standard guerilla warfare. Now we have groups that purport to represent major portions of Iraqi society, though if they weren’t armed and willing to kill people it is doubtful how much support they would have. When commentators in the last year or so have been worried that Iraq was slipping into a civil war they are expressing a concern that these groups may be able to pull whole sections of Iraqi society in to combat with other sections. Some of these groups have better outside forign connections than the Baathists which is why we are seeing more foreign (especially Iranian) weapons and other support than the Baathists received

The role of military action is limited but critical. They have to keep all the non-government factions from getting into a military position where they can dictate their terms, hurt them enough that a peaceful settlement will get them more than they have the ability to take by force. This has to be done without alienating the larger groups the militants claim to represent. Basically this is protecting the Iraqi Governments efforts to reach a peaceful settlement. The war will not be won by a straight military victory in the field, but also it can’t be done without military operations. The war can be lost militarily.

This does not sit well with the traditional American: ”If you want it done right do it yourself” attitude - forging the peace must be done by the Iraqis themselves. It is going to take time. The famous American impatience is getting thin. Insurgencies lose in the long run almost all the time, usually only winning when the other side loses confidence or gets tired.


And speaking of American Impatience.

Major political leaders in the US are demanding the withdrawal of American forces.

With all the discussion on the possibility of a withdrawal it seems that most of the discussion is an Americentric approach to US domestic politics. Some even give the impression that they see the issue is about George Bush, what happens to Iraq, neighboring countries, US ability to conduct international relations in the future, or even US troops in Iraq is unimportant or a distraction. Yes, one can have differences of opinion about Bush's policies, I do, but harming our country and others for what ultimately amounts to patronage and contacts is just plain stupid.

A refreshing voice comes from Austin Bay who asks:

What happens if the United States and coalition forces withdraw rapidly from Iraq? The U.S. and the Iraqi governments have their own scenarios. Iran, al-Qaida, Syria and Turkey have also analyzed potential outcomes.
. . .
Here are seven "scenarios" sketching "potential outcomes" of a quick withdrawal from Iraq. These scenarios are not mutually exclusive. You will find bits and pieces in all seven:

1)Three New Countries
. . .
2) Regional Shia-Sunni War: [extending well beyond the borders of Iraq] . . .The War Over Mesopotamia could last for weeks, or it could grind on for years.


3) Turkey Expands: Turkey takes control of northern Iraq to the city of Kirkuk. .. . . Turkey would pay a huge political price, however. It would lose all chance of joining the European Union. As ties with the West deteriorate, Turkey might become less secular and more Islamic in both identity and in political orientation.


4) Shia Dictatorship:


5) "Gang Up": . . . Rwanda in the desert. Shia Arabs and Kurds launch a coordinated campaign to eliminate Iraq's Sunni Arab community…. . .


6) Chaos: Iraq shatters into ethnic enclaves, . . .
the kind of disaster that allows al-Qaida to build training facilities and base camps for operations throughout the Middle East and Europe.


7) The Iraqi Center Holds: The democratic government proves to be resilient. The assumption behind this scenario is that Iraq's government is just responsive enough and its security forces are just strong enough to withstand attacks by extremists and give Iran pause. After several months of brutal warfare, the Iraqi Army destroys insurgent groups.

Out of seven "rapid withdrawal" scenarios only one -- number seven -- clearly benefits the majority of Iraqis.


Of course any of options one to six could have far reaching results that are good for no one.

Also Robert Kagan’s interesting article End of Dreams, Return of History in the latest issue of Policy Review makes the same point in a larger context.

Conflicts are more likely to erupt if the United States withdraws from its positions of regional dominance. . . . It is also optimistic to imagine that a retrenchment of the American position in the Middle East and the assumption of a more passive, “offshore” role would lead to greater stability there. . . . An American withdrawal from Iraq will not return things to “normal” or to a new kind of stability in the region. It will produce a new instability, one likely to draw the United States back in again.
HT” The Duck of Minerva

I sometimes sarcastically think that the President should sign one of the withdrawal bills then he and Chaney resign, now the fun part: watching the now President Pelosi try to get the law repealed, declared unconstitutional, or just telling congress she's going to ignore it “so impeach me!” I assume that she realizes how stupid the idea is and is only trying to force a veto for leverage in the general election. If she were to have any effectivness as president she could not start with a meltdown in Iraq, especilly as a result of her actions. But even if she didn't every country in the Middle East and Europe will explain it to her - the US broke it, the US fixes it.


But there is another scenario to be considered. When the withdrawl announcement is made, for an Iraqi survive in Iraq he will need to be more radical than the radicals. Intelligence sources will dry up. Any thing that depends on employing Iraqi’s will stop. Iraqi Army and Police units will follow their own agendas. While they might not attack US units they will have no incentive to cooperate. Many as a means to get equipment, revenge, or prestige will atack any US activity that is practical. Many, possibly millions, will want to be evacuated with US forces. In the the worst case US forces could very likely be stranded like Xenophon with no way home except to march against opposition to a coast where the Navy can pick them up. I suspect the better cases will not be much better.

Will the members of Congress who created the problem put legal obstacles in the way of allowing the troops to get home, allowing the Navy to pick them up, and allow entrance for the refugees? I don’t know. The political backlash might force them to support a fighting withdrawal, but this same wing of this same political party forced the abandonment of the Vietnamese boat people.


Since The March Up Country II - Petraeus and the 100.000 has no potential literary merit as a sequel, it is time to take US domestic politics out of the discussion and bring in some common sense by all parties.

/rantmode=OFF


all my Iraq posts

NOTE 08/14/2009: This post was published about a month before General Petreaus make his report to Congress requesting the troops for what became the “The Surge”

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Error Message Haiku

The Web site you seek
cannot be located,
but countless more exist.
--------------------------------------------
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
-----------------------------------------------
Program aborting:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.
------------------------------------------------
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
-------------------------------------------------
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
-------------------------------------------------
Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
-------------------------------------------
Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.
-------------------------------------------------

A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
-------------------------------------------------
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
-------------------------------------------------
You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
-------------------------------------------------
Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
but we never will.
------------------------------------------------
Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
must now be retyped.
-------------------------------------------------
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.



HT: Julie the : Happy Catholic


====================================================

And that pesky 404 error.Won't go away!!

Saturday, July 07, 2007

The Alamo

Alamo day

In 1718 Franciscan Missionaries established mission San Antonio Velara which moved to it’s current location in 1724. It was the first of what became five missions, a presidio, and a town settled by pioneers from the Canary Islands. In 1794 the Spanish Government secularized the mission, the Indians were given the land they worked and the church buildings went to the Church and the rest went to the Crown. The Spanish Army took over the common buildings 1n 1801 and they continued in military use for one country or another until 1880’s. The name Alamo most likely comes from the name of the first unit to occupy the site.

Mexico became independent in 1824 with a federal Constitution. And invited American settlers to help populate the land. In 1835 Santa Ana came to power abrogated the Federal Constitution and took away many local rights. In Texas after some attempts to smooth thing over both the American settlers and the local Tejan population rebelled. After much back and forth Santa Ana’s Army came to lay siege to the Alamo.

In 1836 it was the scene of the famous battle where the Texans held out for 13 days against Santa Ana’s much larger Army, going down to the last man, but buying the time for Sam Houston to build up the Texan army and defeat Santa Ana. A more detailed account of the batle is Here.

It is now owned by the State of Texas and entrusted to the Daughters of the Texas Republic as a shrine to those who died here.

An interesting note is that the Mexican solidiers are getting more coverage than previously. Which is good, serving well under a petty tyrant like Santa Ana requires a special valor all to itself.


They did not allow taking pictures inside the Alamo or museum, the Alamo website has a picture

See more pictures here.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

San Antonio

Work took me to San Antonio last week,
and I stayed the weekend to see the sights.

The Alamo


Mission San Antonio de Valero
AKA
The Alamo



Flags over Texas

The Six National Flags
that have flown over what is now Texas.

The United States

The Republic of Texas

France

Spain

Mexico

The Confederacy
(the national flag, not the battle flag (Stars and Bars.)



Pictures and more this weekend.
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