It is Friday so I don’t want to end the week of blog entries on a sour note, but I can’t help it. Hypocrisy is running rampant. I read this article today about how China is doing better than the U.S. in somemeasures of green (environmentally friendly) initiative. First, I can’t accept at face value, everything that the Chinese government reports. If people don’t believe half the information that comes from the U.S. government they should be twice as skeptical of the data coming from an authoritarian government such as China. Secondly, China is the most polluted country on earth and some of their polluted air crosses the Pacific and pollutes our air as well (aerosol and particulate pollution). China is also the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and ABSOLUTELY REFUSES TO SIGN ANY INTERNATIONAL GLOBAL WARMING TREATIES. Why do they get a pass on this? Why is Newscientist tripping over themselves write about China in such glowing terms? Let me tell you this, if the U.S. refused to sign any new AGW treaties, the condemnation would be unparalleled. Everyone would be caterwauling about how the U.S. is leading the way to the destruction of the environment, the oceans, polars bears, and what-not. Newscientist is already dumping on the U.S. (past articles) for not agreeing to larger emission cuts, even before any ink is dry.

Here is an interesting quote from this article:

“China is making substantial progress in controlling its emissions of climate gases,” says Deborah Seligsohn, the author of the WRI report. “The challenge for US-China collaboration in climate change mitigation is for each country to understand the other’s approaches, and to find creative solutions when those approaches don’t align.”

So the international community is supposed to understand China and work with them, while trashing the U.S. no matter what it does. I know some rather jaundiced commentators that would claim that since many environmentalists organizations are really “socialist” or “communist” in nature, they feel a kinship with the Chinese government, and thus go easy on them. I don’t know if this is true. I do know that China is making an effort to install more alternative energy and this should be applauded, but I don’t understand why they get a pass on new AGW treaties. I could go on-and-on about human rights violations, oppression in Tibet, the 3 gorges dam, and other issues, but it is Friday….end rant.

As far as weather goes for the weekend, it looks like a breezy afternoon today and again a breezy start to Saturday. For trick-or-treaters, it will be rather cold. The wind will die down by 6 or 7 in the evening but it will still feel cold as the temperature will be falling into the 30s during the normal trick-or-treating hours. At least it will be dry. The weather also looks dry for the big Packer-Viking game on Sunday. It is a late afternoon game and skies should be partly to mostly cloudy. The game time temps will be around 48 with temps dropping into the low 40s by the end of the game. Go Packers! For next week, high temps will remain in the 40s and it still looks like we could see a significant stretch of mild and tranquil weather during the 2nd week of November. Perhaps a few days with highs in the 50s.

A couple other follow up items:

The Ares 1X rocket developed a large dent at some point in its flight. Mission engineers are investigating but do not seem too concerned at this point, judging by the tone of the article.

The Global Green Challenge has a winner! The “Challenge” is the annual solar car race across Australia. This year’s winner is from Japan. Here is a video of the winning car crossing the finish line. They did a great job making the finish seem exciting and I liked the music, however, I was disappointed at the lack of a crowd at the finish line. The applause was anemic. I felt a little sorry for the driver after his important victory.  One would think this famous race would draw more of a crowd. Maybe they need to have the finish line be in a stadium or in a larger city where people can line the streets or something.

Here is an update on some highly speculative engineering that I first reported on last year - the EMdrive. It is a relativistic engine that is supposed to produce thrust (similar to a rocket thruster) even without any outside energy input. It is a closed system. The EMDrive uses resonant microwaves in a tapered chamber to create the thrust. I don’t even pretend to know the detailed mathematics and physics behind it, but it is plausible enough to draw interest from around the world. Many governments are working on the EMDrive and no one is talking about it. The inventor, of course, claims it works just fine, but it has yet to be publicly demonstrated. Even though there is some wiggle room within relativity theory and quantum mechanics to come up with “free energy”, these things almost always end up being mistakes (in the calculations) or cases of fraud.

Have a nice weekend! Meteorologist Justin Loew

Posted under AGW, Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Environment, Science, Space