More Wasteful Government Effort

Yes, Hurricane Isaac has passed, but I cropped this photo to be the right size for Blogger and a wide computer monitor, so here it is:

Image credit: NASA photo edited by Cujo359.

While Republicans were getting ready to tell us about what rugged individualists they all are and how they don't depend on no government for nuthin', NASA and NOAA were tracking hurricanes and warning people about the dangers. The Army Corps of Engineers was analyzing how badly things would go for a given storm surge. Yet somehow, government is the problem, at least to some folks.

I'd say arrogance and the stupidity it engenders has more to do with our problems lately, but then I'm just listening to what these folks tell me they believe. Maybe their willingness to capitalize on other peoples' arrogance and stupidity is the problem.

Click on the image to get the full sized wallpaper I created. Go to the image credit link to see larger sized images.

Sunday Photo(s)

In the Midwest, and some parts of the basin and range region, there are days when the clouds provide their own amazing scenery. Being able to see long distances without obstructions like hills and mountains allows an observer to watch clouds pass by for hours as the weather changes.

When you live on either the East Coast or West Coast of the United States, such opportunities are more limited. There are always hills or mountains around to block your view, as well as the occasional building. One of the better vantage points out here for cloud watching is the shore itself.

This is the view from Lincoln Park, in southern Seattle, just west of the ferry docks:

Image credit: All photos by Cujo359

(More pictures after the break)

Hope You Don't Mind Brown For Christmas ...

Caption: My front yard on Christmas day, back in 2008. This will be an increasingly rare sight in the years to come.

Image credit: Cujo359

Looks like Think Progress has found another measurement of climate change to supplement the not-quite-universally recognized Climate Change Cherry Tree:

This winter has been unusually warm, crippling ski resorts, ruining holiday traditions, and dashing hopes of a white Christmas across the northern hemisphere. While the billions of tons of greenhouse pollution in our atmosphere sometimes encourage freak snowstorms, the primary effect of global warming on winter is, well, warmer temperatures — making white Christmases less likely.

Global Warming Hates A White Christmas

Locally, the National Weather Service is predicting rain for Christmas day.

Seems like one of the costs of our continued dependence on fossil fuels will be fewer white Christmases and less opportunity to engage in winter sports that can't be played indoors.

Personally, even this doesn't cost doesn't seem worth it to me.

I (Won't) Be Home For Christmas

Caption: Denver Airport snowed in, December, 2006.

Image credit: ashleyniblock/Flickr

I'm so glad that I'm not traveling over the holidays this year:

Delta Air Lines plans to cancel 500 flights Saturday because of heavy snow expected in Nashville and Atlanta. For the first Christmas in 17 years, Nashville and Atlanta could get more than just a dusting of snow, according to the National Weather Service. The storm is expected to intensify and move northeast on Sunday to the mid-Atlantic states and New England.

In fact, a good section of the U.S. is getting snow Friday night. Winter weather advisories were in effect from Kansas east to Kentucky and from Minnesota south to Arkansas on Friday.

Some Regions Getting Fresh Snow for Christmas

Atlanta is a major hub airport for Delta. Odds are fairly good that if I'd been flying Christmas day, I would have been going through Atlanta. Of course, it could be worse, I could have been trying to get to or from Europe:

Thousands of travellers were stranded at the main Paris airport Saturday after hundreds of Christmas flights were cancelled, as freezing weather and widespread snowfalls caused travel chaos across Europe.

About 400 flights in and out of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle were scrapped, with some 30,000 travellers plans disrupted by the cancellations and delays, said the airport's director Patrice Hardel.

Flights in Belgium and Germany were also affected and motorists stayed off the roads as western Europe battled the latest cold snap.

Christmas chaos in Europe as snow strands thousands

Frankfurt and Heathrow, the other two of Europe's three busiest airports, have been either closed or operating at reduced capacity much of the week.

As it turns out, at least part of the problem is that the airlines in Europe weren't planning ahead:

Airport authorities at Charles de Gaulle ordered part of Terminal 2E to be cleared of passengers because of fears that the roof might collapse under the weight of 60cm (2ft) of snow.

In 2004, the same roof collapsed shortly after the terminal opened, killing four people.

The disruption at Charles de Gaulle was also blamed on a shortage of de-icing fluid, and the cancellation of flights led to 2,000 people being stranded at the airport overnight.

The French authorities, struggling to cope with the country's third major snowfall of the winter, said fresh supplies were on their way but would not arrive before Monday.

Snow paralyses transport in parts of Western Europe

Who could have foreseen that there would be lots of snow in winter, or that they might need de-icing fluid? Only people familiar with air travel, I suppose. You'd think they'd rather have a little extra on hand than have to refund thousands of tickets, and having to put 2,000 people up for the night in Paris hotels.

There's at least one woman who is probably sorry her flight wasn't canceled.

Claire Hirschkind, 56, who says she is a rape victim and who has a pacemaker-type device implanted in her chest, says her constitutional rights were violated. She says she never broke any laws. But the Transportation Security Administration disagrees.

Hirschkind was hoping to spend Christmas with friends in California, but she never made it past the security checkpoint.

"I can't go through because I have the equivalent of a pacemaker in me," she said.

Hirschkind said because of the device in her body, she was led to a female TSA employee and three Austin police officers. She says she was told she was going to be patted down.

"I turned to the police officer and said, 'I have given no due cause to give up my constitutional rights. You can wand me,'" and they said, 'No, you have to do this,'" she said.

Hirschkind agreed to the pat down, but on one condition.

"I told them, 'No, I'm not going to have my breasts felt,' and she said, 'Yes, you are,'" said Hirschkind.

When Hirschkind refused, she says that "the police actually pushed me to the floor, (and) handcuffed me. I was crying by then. They drug me 25 yards across the floor in front of the whole security."

Woman arrested at ABIA after refusing enhanced pat down

They're really good at beating up and arresting 56 year old women, but they don't seem to be much good at finding security problems:

Houston businessman Farid Seif says it was a startling discovery. He didn't intend to bring a loaded gun on a flight out of Houston and can't understand how TSA screeners didn't catch it.

Nearing the height of last year's Christmas travel season, TSA screeners at Bush Intercontinental Airport somehow missed a loaded pistol, one that was tucked away inside a carry-on computer bag.

"I mean, this is not a small gun," Seif said. "It's a .40 caliber gun."

Man boards plane at IAH with loaded gun in carry-on

I'm sure Mr. Seif obeyed all the instructions from the TSA agents. It would be nice if they were just useless, but sadly, the TSA are a danger to travelers, and they're an expensive one, at that. Their current budget (PDF - see page 24) is just shy of $7 billion. That could buy a lot of snow plows and de-icing fluid.

Based on the dates of those reports, these two incidents with TSA occurred roughly a week apart.

Why do I hate traveling in winter? Your fate is in the hands of airport administrators who don't think they need to have collapsed roofs beefed up to meet worst case winter conditions, airline logisticians who can't plan for a snow storm, and "security" people who couldn't find their asses with both hands and a big type copy of Gray's Anatomy.

Come to think of it, those are good reasons to avoid airline travel the rest of the year...

UPDATE: James Ala has a quote from a report about the man who managed to smuggle that gun through the TSA (in)security checks. It appears that the TSA does, as I expected, routinely miss these things. It's not the first such report, either.

Cool Image Of The Day

Caption: A composite image by NASA of water levels in the Pacific Ocean for early November, 2009. The water level is an indication of the temperature of the surface water, with higher levels indicating higher temperatures. The expanded El Nino is the big red blob that starts at the west coast of Mexico and stretches toward the equator.

Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory

According to a recent NASA Earth Observatory image of the day, the El Nino's going to be big and honkin' this winter:

El Niño is experiencing a late-fall resurgence. Recent measurements of sea level height from the Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 oceanography satellite showed that a strong wave of warm water, known as a Kelvin wave, had spread from the western to the central and eastern Pacific. This warm wave appears as the large area of higher-than-normal sea surface heights in the area between 170 degrees east and 100 degrees west longitude.

El Nino Resurging in November 2009

For those of us on the west coast of North America, this should mean a wetter and somewhat warmer winter than last year. For others, it will mean dryer weather:

Severe droughts in India have always occurred in El Niño years, yet every El Niño does not cause monsoon failure and drought — a mystery that researchers have been struggling to crack.

Accurate monsoon prediction is crucial to India's economy: nearly one-fifth of the country's gross domestic product comes from agriculture. Even moderate crop failures have severe economic and societal impacts.

Scientists Solve Riddle Of El Niño And Indian Monsoon

So, maybe bad for India, but good for California:

Although El Niño means drought in some parts of the world, in other places it can bring drought relief. “In the American West, where we are struggling under serious drought conditions, this late-fall charge by El Niño is a pleasant surprise, upping the odds for much needed rain and an above-normal winter snowpack,” said oceanographer Bill Patzert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

El Nino Resurging in November 2009

While it's sad that droughts will happen elsewhere, and we have all the rain we need up here in the Pacific Northwest, California can certainly use the change.

It's Still Winter Around Here

Image credit: Cujo359 (click to enlarge)

Apologies to dial-up users, but this is a nice photo.

Not all that long ago, I was telling a friend who just recently moved to this area that winter tends to end by late February up here in the Pacific Northwest. Not this year. This isn't a photo from December, it's from today.

One of these days, winter will end. Possibly by Spring.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like The Solstice

Image credit: Cujo359 [Click for a larger version.]

You can tell it's winter around here. It's cold, there's snow on the ground, and no one who doesn't have chains and four-wheel drive can get anywhere. Still, there's something lovely about new fallen snow, isn't there? If it can make my backyard look picturesque, it can beautify just about anything.

People who are out on the roads aren't finding it so picturesque, I'm sure. Dana Hunter's winter driving experience is a typical one:

It's late. I can 'splain. I just spent over a damned hour trying to get home. It is snowing in the northern 'burbs of Seattle, and this city has no idea what a plow looks like. Total fucking insanity. I counted at least three buses stuck, not to mention all of the optimistic folks who've never tried to drive in three inches of fresh, slick snow before but thought they'd make it.

A tremendous shout-out to the folks on the 522 overpass to the 405 who were pushing cars up the slope, mine among them, between the stuck bus and the stuck cars. Without them, I'd be spending my night waiting for a tow. I don't know who they were, but I love them dearly.

Happy Hour Discurso (Dec. 17)

That's another of the things that makes this area livable in winter - people want to help out. Without such people, winters would really suck here.

Our local transportation agencies' ability to deal with these conditions is limited. We don't get much snow around here, although we do get lots of ice. Maybe all those tax-cutting initiatives have something to do with this? I can't be sure. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer elaborates:

King County road crews labored to keep main arterials clear, but trouble spots still snarled drivers.

The county had about 50 snow-removal trucks deployed and was busy dumping 25 tons of salt and about 8,000 cubic yards of sand on area roads to keep them passable.

'Thundersnow' Whites Out Seattle

That's fifty snowplows for a county that's the size of some states, with a population of two million people. Something tells me that they'll be behind for a while.

The problem is that the temperatures, as usual, are falling after the snow has fallen. The snow starts to melt, then turns to ice. Then you see stuff like this, courtesy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

WSDOT has cleared the semi that was blocking I-405 north at Coal Creek Parkway. So 405 north is now open.

Earlier this post read:

The center lane of I-405 going north has been blocked at Coal Creek Parkway near Bellevue by a disabled semi for the past 25 minutes, WSDOT reports.

Snow update: Semi no longer blocking traffic on I-405

The PI has some lovely photos at its online edition.

The Everett Herald writes:

Many drivers heeded warnings to stay home and there were no major traffic problems in Snohomish County by mid afternoon, officials said.

Still, the Washington State Patrol responded to dozens of mostly minor accident throughout the day.

State Department of Transportation officials spent the day watching drivers spin out, spokeswoman Aurora Jones said.

While the snow is forecast to stop tonight, cold temperatures are expected to make the morning commute slippery.

“We will be trying to clear snow and ice off the road,” Jones said.

Roads crews are expected to work through the night spreading sand and deicer.

Snow Turning To Ice

Even so, they're not kidding. Tomorrow's commute is going to suck for the people who have to make it. Weren't we all supposed to be telecommuting by now?

UPDATE: Fixed the quote from the PI about the truck blocking I-405. Earlier, my sentence immediately following had been included in the quote, making it look as though the PI was congratulating itself on the artistry of its photos.