Wetness in the Mountains...

Yesterday Debbie and I were planning to do a little four-wheeling in the valley just south of Corte Madera.  But as we got ready to leave, we noted that it was drizzling out, and threatening even more rain.  Since parts of that route are steep and rocky, and potentially difficult when wet, we decided to change plans.  Instead, we drove up the tiny little road from between Guatay and Pine Valley up to Laguna, paralleling the Nobel Canyon trail.

This drive brought some most unexpected scenery.  The clouds were moving from the coast inland, but as we drove up to Laguna we were in front of them.  As we got to vantage points where we could see to the west, we could see the clouds pouring through all the low spots surrounding Cuyamaca's three peaks.  The views were particularly nice as we drive north on Sunrise Highway approaching Cuyamaca Lake – glorious vistas with dramatic, moving clouds and mountains.  People were stopped all over the place to take photos (and naturally, I didn't have my camera!).  Truly beautiful.

Then we drove past Cuyamaca Lake and up Engineer Road (between Middle Peak and North Peak).  We took this west across the gap, and down to the intersection with Boulder Creek Road.  As we traversed this gap, we entered the clouds, and the vistas changed completely.  Most of the time we could see a few hundred yards, but sometimes when the clouds were thick, our world shrank to 100 feet or so in radius.  There was drizzle the entire time, and everything outside was completely soaked.  The colors and textures of fall in the chaparral were all changed from the stark, sun-drenched dry hues we're used to; instead, everything was in soft light, as if seen through a romantic photo filter.  All colors were subdued, the saturation reduced by the mists.  Most colors were darkened by the dampness.   The brown buckwheats were deep reddish-brown; the gray tree trunks almost black.  The color that stood out the most was the green mosses, awakened by the moisture.  We greatly enjoyed the views as we drove south toward Descanso.

American Kestrel

The best part of all, though, was something neither of us had anticipated.  The raptors that are normally soaring through the skies about the chaparral were all grounded by the mist.  Well, “perched” would be more accurate.  Debbie was spotting them at what seemed like 10 foot intervals, sitting up on top of burned pine tree skeletons, looking made.  Around one turn we got a particularly pleasant surprise: a small falcon sitting about 20 feet high in a tree right next to the road!  I passed it before I could stop, so I backed up until I was right next to it – and for a minute or so, it sat there staring us down.  It was an American Kestrel (as in the photo, which is not mine). After that, it flew to a tree perhaps 50' away, and we were able to view it for a little longer through binoculars.  Finally it left in disgust.  What a beautiful bird!

At the end of our delightful little trip today was the Descanso Junction Restaurant.  As it was Sunday night, that meant the fried chicken special.  As always, it was great.  Afterward we turned homeward, very content with our afternoon...

Succinct Statement of Our Objective...

Via my mom:

Oh, yes, please!

A German's View...

Interesting piece passed along by reader Jim M.:

I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War Two. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

“Very few people were true Nazis” he said, “but, many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”

We are told again and again by “experts” and “talking heads” that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unquantified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is, that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is, that the “peaceful majority” is the “silent majority” and it is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The Average Japanese individual prior to World War 2 was not a war mongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of Killing that included the systematic killing of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were “peace loving”.

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by the fanatics. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Bosnians, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others, have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

I've often pondered humanity's poor track record of learning from past experience (i.e., history). Never got any good answers, though...

Climate Change Skeptics: A Good Introduction...

Warren Meyer (of CoyoteBlog) has a column in Forbes that provides an excellent introduction into the skeptics view of current climate science.  A sample:

Skeptics, however, point out that the computer models were built by scientists who have only a fragmented, immature understanding of complex climate systems. Moreover, these scientists approached the models with the pre-conceived notion that CO2 is the main driver of temperatures, and so it is unsurprising that their models would show CO2 as the dominant factor.

In fact, the period 1978 to 1998 featured a number of other suspects that should have been considered as potentially contributing to warming. For example, the warm phase of several critical ocean cycles that have a big effect on surface temperatures, including the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, coincided with this period. Further, the second half of the 20th century saw far greater solar activity, as measured by sunspot numbers, than the first half of the century. Neither ocean cycles nor solar effects, nor a myriad of other factors we probably don’t even know enough to name, were built into the models. Even man’s changing land use has an effect on measured temperatures, as survey efforts have shown urban areas, which have higher temperatures than surrounding rural locations, expanding around our temperature measurement points and biasing measured temperatures upwards.

But go read the whole thing!

Such a Lovely Forecast...

Nothing but cool, humid, cloudy, rainy days in the forecast.  It's all foggy outside right now.  Fire seasons don't get any better than this!

What Has America Become?

Read this letter to the editor.  Via my brother Mark D.

Then re-read it just before you vote on November 2.

Billboard of the Day...

Via my brother Mark D.:

Oh, I don't know, Jimmy...it might be a tie!

Season's Greetings...

Via reader Jim M.:

T'was the night before elections
And all through the town
Tempers were flaring
Emotions all up and down

I, in my bathrobe
With a cat in my lap
had cut off the TV
tired of political clap-trap

When all of a sudden
There arose such a noise
I peered out my window
Saw Obama and his boys

They had come for my wallet
They wanted my pay
To give to the others
Who had not worked a day!

He snatched up my money
And quick as a wink
Jumped back on his bandwagon
As I gagged from the stink

He then rallied his henchmen
Who were pulling his cart
I could tell they were out
To tear my country apart!

On Fannie, on Freddie,
On Biden and Ayers!
On Acorn, On Pelosi
He screamed at the pairs!

They took off for his cause
And as they flew out of sight
I heard him laugh at the nation
Who wouldn't stand up and fight!

Please vote to throw the bums out on November 2.

Quote of the Day...

Thank God for Barack Obama!

From Gary Hubbell, writing at RightNetwork:

But Barack Obama has ripped the lid off a seething cauldron of dissatisfaction and unrest.

In his post he contends that Barack Obama is the best thing that's happened to America in a long time – a thought I've often had myself over the past few months.  Gary does a nice job articulating the reasoning...

Interplanetary Conclave of Light...

Unarian “polarities”

I have posted about the Unarians on several previous occasions.  By this time I've read quite a bit about them – a couple books, many web articles, etc.  I've visited their headquarters in El Cajon.  Learning more about them doesn't help me with my fundamental Unarian problem: I just cannot fathom how adult humans can actually believe this stuff.  In fact, the more I learn about them, the more they seem like a comedic parody – but they most decidedly are the real deal.  These people walk among us. 

Even more frighteningly, they can vote.

On October 9th and 10th (last weekend), they held their annual “Interplanetary Conclave of Light”.  This news article is clearly written by someone who has the same difficulty believing the Unarians as I do.  Here's one quote of particular interest to those who, like me, live in Lawson Valley:

...when the space brothers come, it will be in 33 different spaceships that will land one on top of the other on 60 acres of land near Jamul, Calif., a small town about 30 miles east of San Diego that is known for its rolling, rocky terrain.

You see, that 60 acres is just a mile or so from my home. We've visited it several times, looking for any signs of its specialness. I'm pretty sure that the only special thing about this particular plot of land is that at the time the Unarians bought it, it was very cheap.

But I can't get the Unarian's claim out of my brain – their claim that 33 spaceships are going to land here, one atop the other, to form a 33 spaceship tall tower over yonder. I can see where that tower would be through my living room window. This tower of light would dominate the view to the northwest of me.

I don't want a spaceship tower there, thank you very much. I like the glowing spaceship-free view I have right now.

Here's what that photo is about:

With that flourish, 33 Unarians came out from stage right and stage left. Each carried a banner with the name of a planet and its "polarity," the person who has been the main contact with the Unarians.

For instance, Susa is the polarity for Endinite, a planet that, a while back, suffered a series of wars that caused the people to be born with two extra arms growing out of their stomachs. The arms were useless, but after Susa contacted Uriel, the spiritual name of Unarius co-founder Ruth Norman, he was able to "raise the frequency" of the planet and get the arms back to normal.
For 27 years, the members of the Unarius Academy of Science, a UFO group based near San Diego, hold the Interplanetary Conclave of LIght, a two-day event celebrating Earth's admission into a Confederation with 32 other planets.

After the conclave, the Unarians made every effort to keep the frequencies high throughout the whole weekend with an open house at their center in El Cajon, Calif., that featured what Kennedy described as "some futuristic objects on display"; a demonstration of technology discovered by 19th century scientist Nikola Tesla that can supposedly supply the world with free energy; a past life therapy meeting; and what may have been the highlight: a mental transmission from a representative from one of the planets in the confederation, sent through one of the Unarians.

The central mystery for me remains – how on earth does one talk oneself into believing such utter and obvious rubbish?

And if you do believe in such rubbish, who are you voting for on November 2, and why (though I tremble to ask that last bit)?

Roof Update: It's Done!

While I was away, our roof contractor came (as promised) to finish the job.  We are just tickled pink with the roof itself, the way that our contractor did the work, and the way our contractor worked with us.

Which means, dear local readers, that I can now recommend him without reservation.  Here's the contact info for our contractor:

Bolt Sheet Metal Works
9445 Doheny Rd
Santee, CA  92071
619/449-5991

The proprietor (and sheet metal master craftsman) is Chris Lavin, and he can also be reached by email (but usually only in the evenings, as he's usually off at work sites during the day.  Chris' sons also sometimes work in the business, along with other employees.

Chris and his guys did a simply outstanding job for us, from our first contact with him right up to the finish.  We couldn't be more pleased...

Back Home Again...

And it sure is nice to be here.  I picked up another danged virus of some kind on the way home, but this one is nowhere near as bad as the last one.  I just feel slightly peaked, with a touch of a stuffy nose.  Not so bad...

As I write this, the sky is completely overcast and everything is wet from drizzle, and the forecast is for rainy conditions and cool temperatures.  Two weeks from now is the third anniversary of the awful Cedar and Harris fires, and the environmental conditions could hardly be more different.  That year we were getting serial serious Santa Anas (not one this year so far!), the fuel load in the chaparral was dry as a bone, and we had high temperatures and low humidity.  Fire danger crackled in the air.  This year you'd have a hard time igniting the chaparral around our home (though we can't be complacent, as this could change in just a few days of the wrong kind of weather).  For now, though, we can relax and be cheerful about the next-to-nonexistent firestorm risk.  Whew!

Our beautiful red metal roof is now finished – more on that in the next post!

Now You Will Pay...

Excellent Republican ad, via my sister-in-law Gina:

ClimateGate: New Zealand Fraud...

New Zealand's National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) issued a report claiming that New Zealand has been warming at the rate of nearly 1° per century.  This result independently supports the IPCC report.

A group of New Zealanders wanted to understand this better, and they knew that all the data used by NIWA was publicly available.  So they requested the data and did their own analysis (well worth reading as yet another debunking of the massive fraud that Hal Lewis cites).  Oops.  No statistically significant warming was evident in the raw data.  So how did NIWA come to the conclusion they did?  Why, they “adjusted” the data, of course!  Quoting the report:

The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below. There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this.

I'm not shocked. We've seen too much of this from the IPCC folks.

Follow the money, folks.  Evidence of warming in New Zealand translated directly into increased research grants for NIWA.  Follow the money...

Light Blogging Alert...

I'm about to go on another business trip, this time for four days.  I'm not sure what my time and Internet access will be, so there may not be much blogging activity.  I'm visiting the land of “Big Boy” Chris Christie, the first memorably admirable politician I've ever heard of who hails from New Jersey.  After that, I'll be in deep-blue Obama country, in Stamford, Connecticut...

The Unraveling of ObamaCare...

Investor's Business Daily has an excellent piece about ObamaCare posted.  It concludes:

Remember the days of sharing the burden and spreading the wealth? These 30 waivers exempt coverage for around a million workers, teachers, farmers and young people who can now go to the polls with a little less angst. The rest of us working for other companies and small businesses who got no waivers aren't so lucky.

The irony here is that most of these million workers are on the lower end of the income scale, the very people ObamaCare was supposed to help by getting them the insurance they couldn't afford on their own. They nearly got priced out of the market.

We were told everybody had to be unconstitutionally forced to buy health insurance or the plan wouldn't work. We were told health care costs would be lower, rates wouldn't rise and that if we liked our coverage we could keep it. We were lied to. The plan still doesn't work.

What we're seeing is ObamaCare revealed as the fraud that it is. The waivers granted leave us with an "Animal Farm" version of health care in which everyone is equal, but the politically favored in an election year are more equal than others.

Remember this, please, on November 2...

This is What Happens...

...when you continue a little further down the path this country has been on, and that Obama et al would like it to stay on.

I'm feeling hopeful that on November 2nd, the voters will deliver a course correction...

Quote of the Day...

By Claire Berlinski, writing at Ricochet:

God must love the lazy, mendacious socialist nimrods; he made so many of them.

Believe it or not, this is her conclusion of a post (well worth reading) about the blurb on a book about Margaret Thatcher!

Celebrations in Chile...

I've thought of those trapped Chilean miners often in the past couple of months.  Thirty-three men stuck deep (almost a half-mile!) underground, at first without even knowing if anyone was trying to rescue them.  What an awful, awful feeling this must have been.

Then a small hole was drilled through to them, and they knew the world was working to get them out.  Plus they could talk with their loved ones, and food, water, and medicine was sent down the tiny hole.  How wonderful and hopeful that moment must have been!

And now the first of three separate holes has been drilled into the area the trapped miners are in.  I'm overwhelmed by it, and I'm just watching the news.  Imagine what joy this moment must be for the miners and their families!

I celebrate with them.  With any luck at all, those miners will be reunited with their families within a few days...

Hal Lewis Resigns from the American Physical Society (APS)...

A prominent physicist and longtime anthropogenic global warming (AGW) skeptic has resigned from the American Physical Society in protest.  He wrote a letter explaining his reasons; that letter is reproduced in its entirety below.  It's an excellent summary of scientific AGW skepticism:

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara

To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence---it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer "explanatory" screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind---simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members' interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people's motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don't think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I'm not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)