Dredd Blog: 2019-07-28

Thursday, August 1, 2019

Snoring While Woke - 4

In a previous post of this series the disgusting practice of one person depriving the full Senate of a vote on various issues was discussed.

Since then "Moscow Mitch" has doubled down.

Comrade Moscow Mitch was criticized for criticizing the "socialism" that is called "the general welfare" in the Preamble while embracing "socialism" in government a la Moscow socialism.

Being a good Samaritan is criticized by Moscow Mitch while he protects the authoritarian efforts of comrade Pootie Poot and comrade Donnah Dump to trash the democratic dynamics of U.S. elections yet again:

"... the Senate majority leader, is incensed by the name 'Moscow Mitch,' and even more miffed that he has been called a 'Russian asset' by critics who accuse him of single-handedly blocking stronger election security measures after Russia’s interference in 2016." - NY Times

"The Kentucky Democratic Party on Wednesday launched a 'Moscow Mitch' online store, making use of a nickname handed to Senate Majority [Comrade] Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) over his blocking of election security legislation.

The party’s online store is promoting red buttons, vinyl stickers, a T-shirt and a cossack hat, all decorated with the phrase, 'Just say nyet! to Moscow Mitch,' in Soviet-style lettering.

The nickname comes after McConnell last week blocked two election security bills, despite warnings from intelligence officials and former special counsel Robert Mueller that Russian interference in the 2020 election was likely to take place.

One of the bills would require the use of paper ballots, and the other would require candidates, campaigns or family members to notify the FBI about assistance offers from foreign governments.

The majority leader's move prompted widespread backlash.

MSNBC host and former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough later called McConnell’s actions 'un-American,' labeling the Kentucky lawmaker 'Moscow Mitch' and accusing him of 'aiding and abetting Vladimir Putin’s ongoing attempts to subvert American democracy.'" - The Hill

"McConnell brought this opprobrium on himself. Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) hit the nail on the head when he declared Tuesday that 'so long as the Senate Republicans prevent legislation from reaching the floor; so long as they oppose additional appropriations to the states; so long as they malign election security provisions as ‘partisan wish lists,’ the critics are right to say Leader McConnell and Republican Senators are blocking election security. Because at the moment that’s true.' Well, at least he didn’t call him Moscow Mitch. McConnell just hates being called Moscow Mitch.

Kentucky voters in 2020 get their chance to render their verdict on McConnell’s loyalty to his oath of office. Either Moscow Mitch, or Democrat and former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath? If nothing else, the prospect of that matchup should spur McConnell to bring an election security bill to the floor." - Washington Post

(emphasis added). Moscow Mitch is like the people who embrace denialism because of a host of now-popular trances (Choose Your Trances Carefully, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

Some of his ardent ideological followers are "acting out" their short game rather than eschewing it:

"In the northeastern state of Connecticut from 2010 to 2017, housing valued at $880 million went up more than three times faster in high-risk flood zones than on safer ground.

Another East Coast state, New Jersey, outpaced all other states at building homes in high-risk zones, with about 4,500 new homes worth $4.6 billion erected in such areas from 2010 to 2017, the researchers reported."

(Reuters, emphasis added). A big welcome to socialist government comrades and global warming is McCon's thing (because communism and global warming are hoaxes to comrades of Moscow Mitch).

Denial never does end well.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Ode to the Rus People:

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

The Less Well Known Areas of Sea Level Change

Fig. 1 Just for grins

I. Background

Dr. Mouginot and Dr. Rignot pointed out that concentrating on too few examples to the exclusion of others can lead to mistakes or over emphasis ("This result illustrates the risk of summarizing the ice sheet loss on the basis of the fate of a few glaciers." - see their recent paper at p. 9242).

Their take-home suggestion and practice ends up being consideration of the entire ice sheet, or at least all of a particular type of glacier, such as tidewater glaciers.

I think that the same reasoning goes for "sea level fingerprints" or "sea level DNA" as I like to call it, because we can also make mistakes when considering the competing impacts from different areas of the Cryosphere on the whole of the sea level change picture (Bamber et al.).

Fig. 2 NASA detective work sees ghost water

II. Overviews

The graphic at Fig. 1 shows the segmented view that results when multiple sources are detailed.

The graphic at Fig. 2 shows a different result when most or all of the contributing factors are considered as one dynamic.

Fig. 3 WOD Zones in high SLF areas

I modified that Fig. 2 graphic by superimposing WOD Zone numbers onto it in the high sea level rise areas Rignot et al. set forth (Fig. 3).

Not all of those zones have tide gauge stations (more below).

I also made changes to the shoreline of East Antarctica (Fig. 3) where sea level fall is taking place and will continue to take place according to another Rignot/Mouginot paper indicating that ice mass loss is accelerating there in significant and robust numbers of gigatons.

III. Graphs Of The High SLR Zones

Even though many of those high water zones are out in the deep ocean where there is no shoreline upon which to place tide gauge stations, nevertheless, there are a lot of tide gauge stations to use (56 currently).

So, I was able to generate graphs that show in fact that considerable sea level rise is taking place as expected.

The graphs are displayed in Appendix One and Appendix Two.

Appendix One contains the three-line DNA graphs while Appendix Two has the same lines with the added fill-in so as to hint at the scope of the sea level changes there.

There is one graph in each appendix that includes all of the zones with tide gauge stations, additionally there are multiple "layer graphs" which only contain the tide gauge stations included in one latitude layer (layer 3 through layer 14).

In a future post of this new series I hope to calculate sea level rise at zones that do not have tide gauge stations.

That entails using arc-of-the-earth's surface trigonometry.>

In other words, we can calculate the height (sagitta) at the center of the arc using two tide gauge stations at two different longitudes at each end of the arc, but at the same latitude (hopefully).

It will also require satellite records enhancement, if it can be done at all.

Then we can also make an attempt to calculate the gigatons of ice mass loss using the maximum sea level height factors derived with the trigonometry / satellite calculations (Ice Sheet Melt According To Tide Gauge Stations - 2).

It will probably take until midnight to complete it.