An oddity in the Karl et al. 2015 buoy data adjustments

via Watts Up With That?http://ift.tt/1Viafi3

Frank Lansner writes via email: I just want to make sure that people are aware of this little maybe-oddity regarding argumentation for ERSSTv4 data changes due to the shift from ship measurements to buoys. We are all focusing on the data changes ERSSTv3b to ERSSTv4 after year 2003 as these affect the pause. And so […]

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February 14, 2017 at 03:56AM

Predicted in 1941 — the end of democracy in Europe

via JoNovahttp://joannenova.com.au

Thierry Baudet, leader of the Dutch political party “Forum for Democracy” writes about the inexorable attrition of democracy, as predicted 75 years ago.

James Burnham, 1941 foresaw so much in “The Managerial Revolution. It’s a book that George Orwell used for inspiration.

According to Burnham, the civil democracies of the second half of the 20th century would – more or less gradually – be overgrown with backroom bureaucratic networks that make the actual decisions, all far away from the electorate and public debate.

He predicted that separate nation states would still exist, but as their sovereignty was gradually absorbed into a superstate, the nation states would really be just an administrative subdivision.

Elections will also remain in place; they will provide managers valuable insights into the preferences of the consumer-citizen, while at the same time functioning as an exhaust valve to possible opposition forces. Burnham predicted a form of political theatre in the guise of sham elections between candidates who happen to be like-minded on every fundamental subject, who are paid to debate in front of clueless spectators in mock parliaments, while the results were known in advance – after all, the actual decisions have already […]

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February 14, 2017 at 02:44AM

The Oroville Dam Crisis: What Happened, What’s Next?

via Roy Spencer, PhD.http://ift.tt/1o1jAbd

After watching the Oroville Dam crisis evolve over the last several days, and reading various experts’ opinions about what might be going on both with both the facility itself and behind the scenes decision-making, I thought it might be time to step back and discuss where we are at, and where we might be going.

The Dam Spillway Situation

First of all, the immediate crisis has passed. At this writing (4 a.m. PST Tuesday), the lake level has been lowered to 11 feet below the emergency spillway, and is dropping at a rate of about 8 feet per day. The goal is to get it to about 50 feet below the top of the concrete weir of the emergency spillway, which was topped by 1.5 feet at the peak of the crisis.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that in order to achieve this, the flow through the main concrete-lined spillway, which has been heavily damaged, has had to be increased to 100,000 cubic feet per second (CFS), creating a spectacular waterfall over the lip of the remaining portion of the concrete flume:

More on that later.

The other bad news is that the relatively brief use of the emergency spillway led to a lot more erosion into the rock below the concrete weir than engineers expected. This rapid erosion is why evacuations were suddenly ordered, since there were fears that it would backcut to the concrete weir, which was at risk of collapse:

If that happened, a 30 ft. wall of water would cascade downstream. At least two large gouges are currently being patched with sacks of rock and some concrete. The emergency spillway was supposedly designed to handle 350,000 CFS, but it only took a day at 10,000 CFS to cause the damage, leading up to an official warning that the spillway could collapse within an hour and the mandatory evacuation order. (The main earthfill portion of the dam is in no danger, since the emergency spillway, 20 ft. below the level of the main dam, would keep the main dam from ever being topped).

My (admittedly non-expert) view of the situation is that the emergency spillway is of lesser concern at this point. Rains will return Wednesday night beginning a 7-day wet period during which 5 to 12 inches of water-equivalent precipitation will fall on the watershed:

That might sound bad, but the good news is that most of that precipitation will fall as snow, except over the lake itself, in contrast to earlier warm rain events that led to the current crisis.

Despite the new precipitation, I suspect that they will be able to keep the lake level to around 850-860 feet or so, which is 40-50 feet below full-pool. It might briefly rise by 10-20 feet if the rain is exceptionally heavy. The main danger to Northern California dams is heavy rain events; spring snow melt typically occurs more slowly and is easier to handle by adjusting outflow from reservoirs.

I further suspect that concern will be shifted to the main spillway, the continuing heavy use of which is absolutely required in order to keep the lake level low enough to allow repairs to the emergency spillway, as long as there is significant runoff into the lake. The hydro plant generators have been shut down from debris, and they would have only allowed an additional 16,000 CFS outflow anyway. The diversion tunnels were damaged years ago and are unusable.

So, the damaged main spillway is essentially the only way that the reservoir can shed sunstantial volumes of water as rains occur, and as spring snow melt begins.

I predict that they will shut the main spillway down soon to see how fast the damage is eroding uphill. If I had to guess, I’d say that shutdown might actually happen today…a three hour shutdown will only reduce the lake level fall by 1 foot. They need to assess the situation, because…

A PR Disaster is Rapidly Approaching

From watching the daily press briefings, I think that the experts and emergency officials have been less than forthcoming on details. As dam expert Scott Cahill wrote yesterday, the public has been treated a little like children so far. Reporters’ questions have gone unanswered, and the experts opinions have careened between “no danger” and “imminent failure” in less than 24 hours.

This is NOT the way for “experts” to engender confidence in the public.

Of particular concern is the estimated 185,000 residents who have evacuated to higher ground, and are anxious to return to their homes. We live in an age where we want results now, and the longer these people have to wait with only general information being provided, the more anger and frustration will grow. Reporters are going to cover this frustration, with face-to-face interviews, and officials had better get ahead of the impending PR disaster while they can.

When will people be allowed home? I can only speculate. If emergency officials are being very cautious they might wait until the coming wet weather period has passed, which would be at least 10 days to make sure the lake does not rise too much, and until after they have verified the concrete flume of the main spillway isn’t eroding uphill very much.

Or, they could let people return at any time, warning them to keep alert for a possible future evacuation with little notice. I really dont know. If I had to guess, I’d say they will go the cautious route. But if they were to inspect the main spillway today and see only minor additional erosion uphill from where it previously was,

…maybe they will let people come home very soon.

No matter what happens in the coming days and weeks, Oroville Dam will remain an issue for months — maybe even years — to come. Repairs will be expensive and lengthy. And there will be second-guessing of decisions made, including the 12-year old report by experts that the emergency spillway was just fine as-is.

via Roy Spencer, PhD. http://ift.tt/1o1jAbd

February 14, 2017 at 12:49AM

Station At Germany’s Highest Summit Measures Midwinter Cooling Of Over -3°C Over Past 30 Years!

via NoTricksZonehttp://notrickszone.com

The summit of Germany’s tallest mountain, Zugspitze, located in the Bavarian Alps near the Austrian border, is 2,962 meters high and thus well isolated from any temperature data corruption sources, such as urban sprawl.

The weather station at the “Top of Germany” has measured 3°C of cooling for the month of January over the past thirty years. Photo cropped here.

The Zugspitze’s peak find itself at an elevation where global warming theory tells us the warming would really be most noticeable. However the January data over the past 30 years tell us a very different story. Instead of warming, the atmosphere at that location above Europe has been cooling, and doing so quite impressively.

Josef Kowatsch, a self proclaimed “active environmentalist and independent researcher” has crunched the data for January from Germany’s DWD National Weather Service himself and found the following:

 

January mean temperature at the summit of the Zugspitze over the past 30 years has plummeted over 3°C. Chart: Josef Kowatsch.

He comments that our supposedly independent media — the DPA and the AFP — have maintained that “winter has been continuously warming. But this is how the warming looks at the Zugspitze.”

Another interesting aspect about the Zugspitze is the movement of its Höllentalferner glacier. According to Wikipedia here, “the Höllentalferner reached its greatest around 1820 with an area of 47 hectares. Thereafter its area reduced continually until the period between 1950 and 1981 when it grew again, by 3.1 hectares to 30.2 hectares. Since then the glacier has lost (as at 2006) an area of 5.5 hectares and now has an area of 24.7 hectares.”

That means the glacier GREW during the 1950 to 1981 period – fully in line with the global cooling period of the 20th century, which NASA has recently been trying to fudge out. Also it tells us the retreat began well before the start of the industrial revolution, and thus natural factors are more at play.

 

via NoTricksZone http://notrickszone.com

February 14, 2017 at 12:49AM