.
An agreement, if we can enforce it. Per the Washington Post:
LE BOURGET, France — Negotiators from 196 countries approved a landmark climate accord on Saturday that seeks to dramatically reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for a dangerous warming of the planet.
The agreement, adopted after 13 days of intense bargaining in a Paris suburb, puts the world’s nations on a course that could fundamentally change the way energy is produced and consumed, gradually reducing reliance on fossil fuels in favor of cleaner forms of energy…
The deal was struck in a rare show of near-universal accord, as poor and wealthy nations from across the political and geographic spectrum expressed support for measures that require all to take steps to battle climate change. The agreement binds together pledges by individual nations to cut or limit emissions from fossil-fuel burning, within a framework of rules that provide for monitoring and verification as well as financial and technical assistance for developing countries.
The overarching goal is to bring down pollution levels so that the rise in global temperatures is limited to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial averages. Delegates added language that expressed an ambition to restrict the temperature increase even further, to 1.5 degrees C, if possible…
The accord is the first to call on all nations—rich and poor—to take action to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, with additional reviews required every five years to encourage even deeper pollution cuts. A major goal, officials said, is to spur governments and private industry to rapidly develop new technologies to help solve the climate challenge.
“Markets now have the clear signal to unleash the full force of human ingenuity,” said Ban Ki-moon, who praised the pact as “ambitious, credible, flexible and durable.”
“The work starts tomorrow,” he said…
***********
Apart from planning for the future, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Keith G
A nice bit of political news for the good guys is the election of State Rep. Sylvester Turner as mayor of Houston. He will be Houston’s second mayor of African American descent and he will replace the first lesbian politician to helm a major American city.
I like Sylvester. He has been around our politics for a long time. He is soft spoken but a very intense guy.
Here is his acceptance speech if you want a hint of his personality. I liked the ending, and yes that is Houston’s own US Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee standing next to him (camera side) as she is want to do
Peter
I’m sanguine about the fact that that this agreement will almost certainly not go as smoothly as everyone involved would like, but it does represent a very positive step in the right direction.
Amir Khalid
@Peter:
I look forward to hearing the Republican party, especially its presidential candidates, denounce this agreement, refudiate the science behind it, and declare that the world is not the boss of the USA.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Silly Amir, don’t you know America is Exceptional™.
BillinGlendaleCA
I finally uploaded(and took more) pics of local Christmas displays around these parts, here’s a link to the Flickr Album.
Gimlet
Last I heard was something about Kaus and a goat
http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/kausfile#.sleK76Or5K
Mickey Kaus finally stopped blogging this year when he got fired from The Daily Caller for criticizing Fox News — from the right.
He now lives off his savings, and writes solely on Twitter, where he has emerged as an unlikely man of this political moment: a Democratic intellectual who thinks that Donald Trump is the “most credible” candidate for the presidency.
“The hope, maybe even Trump’s hope, is that by going ‘too far’ Trump may push us to go ‘far enough’” in limiting immigration, said Kaus in a recent email. A total outsider, seen by even his close friends as a bit unhinged, Kaus offers a glimpse at how we got to the ugly place in which we find ourselves at the end of 2015.
Baud
The differences continue to be heightened.
@BillinGlendaleCA: Your morning photo links are quickly becoming something I look forward to.
Baud
@Gimlet: Democratic intellectual?
raven
I’m making duck gumbo for the garden club xmas thing.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Thank you. I’ll be adding to the Christmas album over the next few weeks(I also use the pics as my desktop background on this here PC). Get yourself some red/blue anaglyph glasses, I’m going to put a 3-D album.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: He ran for Senate here and lost badly, to I think DiFi.
ETA: Nope, Boxer in 2010. He did run as a Dem. Intellectual? Well, wiki says he went to Havad(college and HLS).
OzarkHillbilly
‘Good without God’: Nebraska atheists take over nativity to promote tolerance
Some kind of tolerance. Appears they are so busy promoting their own agenda they couldn’t tolerate the traditional Nativity. Idiots.
Gimlet
@Baud:
Democratic intellectual?
I guess that’s what you call a self-identified Democrat that spews conservative and Republican political positions.
Amir Khalid
@BillinGlendaleCA:
George Walker Bush want to Yale and Harvard, and no one calls him an intellectual.
MattF
Larry Kudlow at National Review (no link) thinks we should ‘seal the borders’. Am I the only one who’s noticed that right-wing ‘solutions’ to international terrorism always seem to involve vast increases in domestic police power? Needless to say, when the emergency is over we’ll all go right back to normalcy… Amirite?
Baud
@MattF: Happy to do that if he’s on the other side.
Baud
@Gimlet: Even Democratic intellectuals like Kaus…
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Have seen his brother John? In that family, he just might be.
OzarkHillbilly
So… Time to add “Male Dancer and Friend” to the list of things that will “stop a bad man with a gun:.
MattF
@Gimlet: Oy. That excerpt has a lot of ‘I can’t be too explicit about this ’cause I don’t want to get sued’. We’re clearly doing compare-and-contrast between ‘reality-based’ vs. ‘not so much’.
JPL
@BillinGlendaleCA: Your pictures are wonderful.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
At first I thought they vandalized the nativity scene. They simply booked the space first.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Yes. All available space. I’m an atheist and I am sick and tired of assholes like this who give the Bill O’s of this country all the ammo they so desire.
BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: Thanks, but I’m really unhappy with the way one shot came out. These folk have a headless Santa on their porch, the shot came out too dark and grainy(even after some work in Photoshop).
Schlemazel
@Amir Khalid:
I can’t say I look forward to it but I do expect it. In fact, I expect there to be a race to see who can claim the worst steps he (or she) would take to ensure the agreement is not followed in the US.
I figure the starting position is “This is not a treaty so:”
a) we don’t have to follow it
b) it requires approval from Congress
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t know. As tactics go, this seems reasonable. It’s not like they’re going to local retail establishments and wishing people “Happy Holidays.”
JPL
@BillinGlendaleCA: The headless Santa means somebody has been naughty.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: Needs snow.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: And, don’t forget, blame Obama.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: There is making sure you get to put forth your point of view, and then there is making sure nobody else can. Sounds pretty dogdamn childish to me.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: It snows here in town every night at 7pm and 8pm; though just at the fancy outdoor mall.
BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: Heh, my kink of people.
ETA: I meant to say kind, but kink works.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s a debate about religion. Of course it’s childish.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: In southern California, they call it “blow.”
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: Wow, scheduled snow. I’m gonna have to talk to the weather Gods about that.
Botsplainer
Another early morning flight, another Delta equipment fuckup with a bunch of useless “I’m sorrys”. Fucked up our connection, too.
Fourth time on a leisure trip in 14 months – and that’s 4 out of 6, a record of service clearly unsurpassed. Obviously, the CEO deserves a bonus and a tax cut.
Schlemazel
@OzarkHillbilly:
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: True. I just think people who default to reason are supposed to be better than that, at least as a group if not individually. Naive, I guess.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: As I said, it’s a fancy outdoor mall. Americana at Brand.
Elizabelle
Good morning, BJ pals. Missed you. Back from my non-wired Caribbean cruise. It was lovely.
NYTimes yesterday. Republicans Make Presence Felt at Climate Talks by Ignoring Them
Watched BBC World News on the cruise. Europeans and those watching BBC are better informed than TV viewers in our country, by a factor of at least 10. [Did you hear that Chennai, India experienced 100-year flooding recently?] Ship had MSNBC too (in full-on San Bernardino crisis mode for about a week, then Trump, Trump, Trump and some limited topics after), as well as Fox and CNBC (didn’t watch, but for a 2-minute Fox segment I’ll mention later).
Around the ship, TVs in public rooms were overwhelmingly turned to BBC, with MSNBC in second place.
And mostly going unwatched. It was thrilling.
PS: TVs mostly tuned to sports.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: Proof that the Gods must be crazy.
Kay
@MattF:
Yeah sure we will:
70 million people.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle:
And here I thought the whole point of a cruise was to get away from it all. Glad you enjoyed it anyway.
debbie
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I love Christmas lights. They’re so exuberant!
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: That’s actually shocking to me; so many of my online friends in other countries have explained in the past several years that they’re either terrified of or morally opposed to traveling to the United States, and won’t unless they absolutely have to. You’d think we were becoming an isolated hermit kingdom.
The Golux
@Schlemazel:
I fully expect at least one of the clown car occupants to arrive at a rally rolling coal.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle:
Yes, actually… but through work. People in tech industry hear what happens in Chennai.
Matt McIrvin
I am actually deeply skeptical that we’re going to come anywhere close to keeping temperature rise under 2C, let alone 1.5C. I just don’t see it. We would have had to get started on it 20 years ago. At this point it’d take something like a nuclear war or plague that destroys most of modern civilization.
That said, it’s important to understand that 2C isn’t some kind of binary threshold between “OK” and “end of the world”. It was a line drawn many years ago for the sake of having a line, as a rough indication of “this much would be very bad”. Even if we don’t make that goal, it’s not as if we failed and might as well do nothing. Eliminating carbon emissions actually gets more urgent, not less.
p.a.
@raven: filé? Or does that go with only certain proteins?
ThresherK (GPad)
@OzarkHillbilly: If the only change in background noise, however much ignored, is from CNN Airport to BBC, that’s an improvement. Beats the hell out of Fox news.
In the general sense I agree but apparently it’s cheaper to put up an LCD Tv in public areas than it is to put up wallpaper or windowpanes. When every Dunkin Donuts over a certain size switched to them I knew it was inescapable.
Remember this one little scene in Robocop? In the men’s room sight there was a throwaway bit of how executives got a monochrome stock ticker over each urinal. In 1987 that was the bright of cutting edge futurism, and today it pales in comparison to the church that runs in 1/57th the screen during money news.
Other topic: Mickey Kaus is two questions; Democrat? Intellectual?
Satby
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, I heard from friends who are former co-workers in IT. India has had killer heat waves and 100 year floods this year.
Satby
It’s December 13, and I had my morning coffee out on my deck this morning. It’s not quite 60 degrees out with very light rain. As much as everyone is enjoying the perfect springlike weather, we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. Hard.
p.a.
@Amir Khalid:
The Wayback Machine strikes again. Above can NEVER be unwritten.
Satby
@BillinGlendaleCA: Really nice! But yeah, seems odd with no snow. Of course up here in the tundra we don’t have any either.
Schlemazel
@The Golux:
Cheeze! I never thought of that, it would make a great statement coming from the candidate. I could picture the Dumpster arriving in some big monster truck belching out soot, the crowd going wild.
You should volunteer to do PR for baud ’16 you have a vision!
Schlemazel
@p.a.:
I don’t follow the funnies but isn’t the modern ‘Joker’ supposed to be a genius too? Not that Boy Blunder actually appears to be smart (to anyone other than ass rocket and his ilk) but smart does not necessarily connote good or decent.
debbie
@Satby:
I once went to a sales conference in Puerto Rico during the first week of December. Palm trees draped with twinkle lights, Feliz Navidad on a loop piped in everywhere, 95 degrees on the beach with umbrella drinks. It was all very surreal.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Satby: But can you assure us that “By nine a.m. the morning fog has cleared”?
OzarkHillbilly
@ThresherK (GPad): I guess it’s just me. When I go away, I. GET. AWAY.
Reminds me of some friends experiences on 9/11. They had taken the week off to float the Missouri River from KC to STL. They had noticed a distinct lack of planes overhead and were curious but otherwise took little note of it. Didn’t know anything had happened until 9/13 when they pulled into a small river town for supplies.
Elizabelle
@Satby: Was running around in 65 degree weather in NYC yesterday, looking at Manhattan department store windows. Get thee to Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor windows, among others. They’re superb. Better than the Rockefeller Center tree (meh).
Confluence of springlike weather and Christmas/holiday decorations made staying another day in NYC a no-brainer.
On November 29, spied little trees blooming in Brooklyn. White blossoms. Will they come out again in Spring, or is some little creature who was counting on them appearing then going to be disappointed?
It’s like South or North Carolina’s weather has been displaced to the mid-Atlantic and points elsewhere.
WereBear
@p.a.: It is embedded in my brain. Things that happen that are terrible and shocking have a way of doing that.
Siri tells me our next chance of snow is the 21st. And we are a NE skiing town.
Matt McIrvin
Having been pessimistic above, I should add that I think decarbonizing a modern society (without some kind of radical deindustrialization) is actually a lot more feasible than it would have seemed even a few years ago.
Brad DeLong just linked to this interesting article by Ramez Naam arguing that large-scale energy storage is in the early stages of a technological virtuous cycle that will put it everywhere in the energy grid.
If that’s so, then running civilization on renewable energy is going to be feasible, and even competitive. The prices of wind and solar power have crashed over the past decade, but the bottleneck is still finding ways to deal with their inherent intermittency. Grid-scale and household-scale energy storage can fix that if they can be made cost-effective. At some point it doesn’t even matter if people think anthropogenic climate change is real.
The article gets a bit speculative when betting on future technologies like flow batteries and compressed air; the tech that wins on the grid might not be either of those, but there are a lot of avenues being explored. I’ve also heard of some early work on batteries that could be usable for things like car and household applications that use more plentiful substances than lithium.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Forsythia is blooming and crocuses are coming up in Ohio.
Marc
@Matt McIrvin: There is already .5º in the pipeline, so 2º is just where we’ll see the sign which reads; “Here Be Dragons”. The reality deniers will point to the mounting effects as ‘Dog’s Will’ punishing us for our sinful ways. Between the radioactive release in the western Pacific, an overdue super volcano under Yellowstone, and the nits infesting the House of Representatives, I’d bet we will be harmed most by the nits.
Elizabelle
From The Economic Times (of India): Chennai floods result of bad town planning; the new project that never took off could have averted the havoc
Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/50152691.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst ..
Satby
@debbie: @Elizabelle: it does seem a bit surreal, and it’s been happening more the last few years I think. Nicer November and December, then cold, dank, horrible January, February, and March. I noticed yesterday that my lilac bushes are beginning to bud out, and some of the butterfly bushes never even went dormant all the way.
Satby
@ThresherK (GPad): nope, not here. Now it’s pouring rain.
p.a.
@BillinGlendaleCA: Nice stuff. Those hi tech blue headlights make the nighttime street scenes pop.
Do you ask homeowner permission to photo? Because I know some areas near me where there could be issues for someone doing this.
PurpleGirl
@BillinGlendaleCA: Nice pictures. Thanks for posting them.
PurpleGirl
@Marc: You forgot the tsunami that’s going to hit the East Coast of the US when the Cumbre Vieja volcano on Isla La Palma (Canary Islands) explodes and sends most of the ridge down into the Atlantic Ocean.
gelfling545
Moving slowly this morning. Went with my sister & her husband to dinner at Ulrich’s Tavern (founded 1868) for fine German food & on to the holiday concert of the Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus. Great food; great concert – moving, funny & everything one wants in a holiday event. Concert venue was a prominent Lutheran church in the area (ELCA which, if you know anything about Lutheranism, you’d know immediately that it had to be.) Wonderful to see this group & their supporters welcomed into a mainstream Christian church, a thing I would never have thought possible 10, maybe even 5 years ago. Also cool to see lots of elderly parishioners turning out to hear the group though I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised as Lutherans have a long musical tradition. Still, heart warming, eclectic and a high quality musical performance – what else can one ask for?
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone:)
gelfling545
@Satby: My chrysanthemums & snapdragons are still blooming – in Buffalo.
p.a.
@Schlemazel: Epistemology, philosophy are way above my head, but as far as Hindrocket and W’s ‘genius’ all I have to add is to note that to an ant a curbstone looks like a mountain.
debbie
It never ends. I can only hope this is a joke:
US town fears solar farms would ‘suck up all the energy from the sun’
https://www.rt.com/usa/325536-us-town-fears-solar-farms/
Betty Cracker
@Satby: Highs have been in the 80s for the last couple of weeks here in West Central FL. That’s not unheard of, but it is unusual to have such sustained warm weather. The poor manatees seem confused!
MomSense
It was really warm here the last few days so we went out on some nice hikes. Today it is down to the 40s which is still warm for December. Another outside day for us.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
A couple friends are “wintering” in Siesta Key, which is experiencing red tide. Is that normal for this time of year?
Satby
@gelfling545: Nice!
@gelfling545: if I had not stopped watering them, I think the snapdragon in my deck flower boxes would still be blooming too. I quit after we had a hard freeze,but they were protected on the deck and now are a wilted but still green bunch of almost dead things.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Satby: I guess it’s living in the north country, no snow is quite normal. The only time I’ve lived in a place it snowed was Seattle, and in 3 years we got about 3 weeks of snow.
Satby
@Betty Cracker: oh boy. My mom was complaining the other day that it “was only” 70ish out and she thought it was cold. I must have talked to her early in the day.
Schlemazel
@p.a.:
The ass rocket is a lawyer in a very high power firm downtown Minneapolis. I assume that he is not stupid, at least in an academic sense. That means he is either crazy or a BS spewing sycophant. While I often hoped to run into him when I worked downtown I never did but I assume he is not crazy or the senior partners would have eased him out. That leaves only one option and it seems to fit. He wrote that garbage to get attention from his betters. He got patted on the head and bet grinned for weeks at how clever he was. As far as I can tell he fell off the end of the earth after being named Time Blogger of the year.
Satby
@BillinGlendaleCA: You aren’t missing anything you can’t get going to the mountains. Much as I love snow (I snowshoe and cross country ski) slogging through it to get to work is a nightmare sometimes. My exchange daughters were thrilled by our first snowfall, but I could tell the thrill was fading by about day three. Then it got nice again and it all melted.
BillinGlendaleCA
@p.a.: You know, I don’t; Google runs down these streets about every year and takes pictures, they put up lights to be noticed and it’s a public street. The only time I’ve been asked not to take pictures is our local malls, the fancy one is kind of puzzling since they have an Apple store and the first thing folk do after getting their new fruity phone is take pictures. I think it was because I was using a real camera.
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: Well, that *is* RT, always known for its objectivity in covering US affairs.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Satby: The kid and I have plans to hike up on one of the local mountains(8500′ level), we might see some snow up there.
ETA: It’s supposed to rain here tonight and it’s a toasty 39 degrees outside.
Germy
Hansen On COP21
Guardian UK: James Hansen, father of climate change awareness, calls Paris talks ‘a fraud’ -The former Nasa scientist criticizes the talks, intended to reach a new global deal on cutting carbon emissions beyond 2020, as ‘no action, just promises’
“It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
Not sure I’ve ever heard of RT, but I assume you don’t think much of them.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, the laws on photography on public streets are very liberal. If you can see it from the street you can photograph it, you don’t need permission. If someone is walking down the street, you can take their picture, again no permission required. The mall, being private land, can ban photography. The only exception I know of is the post 9/11 restriction on taking pics/videos of certain gov’t buildings and I really don’t know how they thread that needle or even how stringent they are.
bystander
@Elizabelle: Ran by Bergdorf the other day. The 58th Street side windows are as spectacular as the 5th Avenue side, and maybe a little less congested. The surprising part was the counterpart to the mob scene on the sidewalk, the very quiet men’s store. Also, I’m really shocked that they haven’t finished the 57th street side renovations for Christmas.
Why is Jon Stewart not shaming the repubs for holding up the Zadroga bill? Are there any major Dems opposing the bill?
Iowa Old Lady
@bystander: Stewart is shaming them. He did a long segment as a guest on The Daily Show.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: It happens. IIRC, no one really knows why. Hope it goes away soon!
@Satby: Yeah, the temps have been plunging into the mid-60s overnight! I don’t know how old your mom is, but it seems like elderly folks have a tough time with a chill. I was at the Gulf beaches yesterday, and everyone was running around in bathing suits, shorts and t-shirts except for the very old and very young. The water was too cold for a swim, IMO. I wouldn’t go in past my knees. But plenty of others were swimming.
Poopyman
@debbie: The Rooskie Times, doncha know.
Here’s the article from the local paper, the Roanoke-Chowan News Herald. Makes the natives actually sound worse than the RT article does.
bystander
@Iowa Old Lady: I caught the Colbert appearance and thought it was pretty tepid. I don’t question Stewart’s commitment to the issue, but he has a history of “both sides do it”ism.
That’s from queerty, and it sounds like the lip-smacking kiss of death.
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: RT is Russia Today, a government-funded and -controlled Enlish-language media outlet. Here is a great recent exchange between their reporter and the US State Dept spox.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
The big US travel growth areas are tourists from South America and China. I just can’t stand the “seal the borders!” nonsense. That is never, ever going to happen if it in any way hampers any kind of commerce, and it would.
ThresherK
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, me too. There’s just something messed up in the extent to which I have to do this. I’m getting my teeth cleaned next week, and my dentist’s office has more TVs in it now than my entire neighborhood did when I was a kid.
Also, your punctuation of I. GET. AWAY. is very stealable.
Mike in NC
@bystander: How is it that somebody named “Bob Vander Plaats” is not a ridiculous cartoon character?
Schlemazel
@Kay:
We spent a week at Yellowstone this summer (better than advertised in case you were thinking of it) and there were time I felt we were the only European decedents in the park. We often found ourselves in huge crowds of Chinese speaking tourists and it made me realize THEY have the new middle class that we have lost. I can’t imagine it is a cheap trip for them & there were thousands, as a percentage of 1.4 billion probably not that many but an impressive number.
Debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
Thanks. Do you think they would go so far as to make up statements like that guy saying he’s afraid the solar farm would suck up all the energy from the sun?
WereBear
On some level, he is.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: Geez, Ozark, it’s in the capitol building. Is that really an appropriate place to be selling winter holiday display space to the highest bidder?
We don’t live in the 7th century anymore. We live in a pluralistic society. It might be appropriate for the capitol to have a space dedicated to small displays from multiple faiths if that’s what they really want to do. (That’s separate from whether there’s decoration the public doesn’t see in work areas–this is what the legislature is broadcasting to the whole citizenry.)
Clearly the atheist group gamed the (stupid) system to make a point. The lege may have created the stupid system because they were comfortable with sectarian displays in their space and wanted to avoid a first amendment lawsuit, so they set up a “what, us push Xtianity?” setup which the atheists have just 0wned.
They really, really need to stop using public buildings to push Christianity. Many Americans belong to minority religions such as Judaism or Buddhism or even to Christian sects that don’t celebrate the same holidays as the majority of Christians. It is not appropriate to use public spaces for religious displays. Leave that church-state marriage buried in the ground with the Roman Empire.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud:
God forbid anyone other than a Christian should feel welcome to be an American during the winter holiday season!
The angels bring strife on Earth and hate between men!
ThresherK
@Schlemazel: Where in Yellowstone? All I have heard of the summer season is that for such a big place and yet the concentration of tourism takes place in one very small area of it, near (I think) the West Yellowstone WY entrance.
PS Winter there is indesribably wonderful; some companies have Sno-Cat transport in to heated yurts.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: Well, I guess this is your Sistah Souljah moment.
Personally, I don’t care for the coercion, which is hardly only directed at atheists–hello? But these atheists are people who are otherwise people of privilege. So they take it more personally and they don’t fear reprisals.
It seems this state decided to do something illegal but play games about it because they know it’s illegal, so they beat the game to make a point.
There’s no reason they can’t allow multiple small sectarian displays showing favor towards none. They don’t because THEY DON’T WANT TO. They want a giant Jebus display to smack visitors between the eyes.
Robert Sneddon
@Schlemazel: Last summer when I was in Tokyo the shopping areas in places like Akihabara had busloads of Chinese tourists buying up household goods, kitchen appliances, computers and the like. All the big stores like LAOX and Yodobashi Camera had Chinese-friendly signage and in-house staff who spoke Chinese. I did notice the tourists seemed to be buying Japanese-branded goods, stuff from Panasonic, Hitachi and the like possibly for the cachet of having non-Chinese goods at home.
We get a lot of Chinese tourists here in Edinburgh but not usually busloads of them, more like family groups or young couples. There’s also the semi-permanent population of Chinese students too as Edinburgh University and its satellite universities (Heriot-Watt, Napier etc.) have a top-class reputation around the world (Professor Higgs, step forward and take a bow please…)
Another Holocene Human
@Matt McIrvin: Maybe we’re getting more non traditional visitors from countries with rising standards of living.
Seen a lot of East Asian students with parents visiting, and I know that South Asians travel a lot to get together with family.
Also, I’ve heard Canadian tourism is up in South Florida. I guess folks got over the new border protocols.
benw
@debbie: someone should tell them that the sun sends billions of neutrinos through the earth every day, so a nearby solar array will help suck up those dangerous particles!
PaulW
Today is 1) laundry, 2) Bucs vs. Saints, 3) confirming my ebook upload took on Smashwords and Amazon Kindle, 4) blogging
Another Holocene Human
@debbie: It’s RT. Even if the guy did say that, they didn’t say it was a city commissioner, crucially. We all know that kooks show up to say kooky stuff at public comment.
RT is Putin’s propaganda arm. In case anyone was still in doubt about that.
Another Holocene Human
@BillinGlendaleCA:
They thought you were scoping them out to do the burglary, or, even more frighteningly, the terrorisms.
In our post 9/11 world there’s nothing worse than making a record of what a commercial place looks like and then posting it online. I got scolded by Small Business Owners (our modern saints, amen) for trying to make a map of the street leading onto a T station in order to put it online. Heaven forfend somebody should know there’s five storefronts down until you get to the convenience store that sells T passes.
Oh well, Google did it, too late, assholes!! Enjoy the terrorisms, oh wait, you never did get blowed up. How disappointing.
MattF
@debbie: This is the original news report. I have to say, Virginia doesn’t seem like a prime area for solar farms, but I’m no expert.
Another Holocene Human
@Poopyman: The comments are classic.
eta: agree with the commenters who think there is a money agenda behind the city commission’s decision. if they approved 3 other projects and not this one? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
public comment on the day of rarely sways a vote the day of. that doesn’t mean it’s pointless, but you have to understand what it does and doesn’t do. no way photosynthesis lady changed their minds.
Gin & Tonic
@Debbie: No, I doubt they’d manufacture something like that.
Another Holocene Human
@Schlemazel: We did not “lose” the middle class. We demolished it.
Chinese spies did not make jerky white people vote for Ronnie Rayguns.
Another Holocene Human
@Gin & Tonic: Looks like they were so sloppy they attributed the comments to the wrong loon, though.
Local paper says it was a retired science teacher. Cry … for the children …
Anoniminous
@Matt McIrvin:
With the spread of anti-biotic resistance the “plague” part is being locked in.
opiejeanne
@Elizabelle: Al Jazeera had the news about the flooding in India.
CNN was the station that had the shooting in San Berdoo at first, so we did watch it until the local stations caught up. My husband grew up there (on the north end of town), worked around the corner from the shooting for years, and his parents were in a “board and care” about two blocks away for several years. He played golf at the course across the street from the shooting, in an “Engineers and Drunken Contractors” tournament quite a few times.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: That makes sense. The people fretting about being shot or disappeared by the authorities if they set foot in the US are mostly European or Anglospherian.
debbie
@MattF:
I have a friend in North Carolina who installs them as a side business (in addition to his photography business) and it seems to be going well for him. It’s probably just a matter of time until the Roanoke ethos oozes into North Carolina.
Dolly Llama
@OzarkHillbilly: Sounds like the Christians can dish it out but can’t take it.
ArchTeryx
Could someone post a link to the new pie filter? Tired of the trolls infesting the board, and my copy broke weeks ago.
Matt McIrvin
@Anoniminous: It takes a lot to wipe out a large fraction of the human population. Antibiotic resistance is a big problem, but plagues that big were infrequent events even when people didn’t understand what a germ was. The biggest one ever was caused by a new contact between continents that hadn’t had significant human traffic between them in thousands of years.
Redshift
@Another Holocene Human: No, the local science teacher was a different nutty comment. She was also worried about photosynthesis, but wasn’t the one who talked about it sucking up all the sun’s energy.
My favorite part was this, which seems like the purest distillation of old-school conservatism:
“Back when we were small and isolated, everything was fine, and young people didn’t move away because they had nowhere to go!”
Tom
@debbie: I suppose the good news is that if this is the best argument opponents can make against solar, they’re on their last legs.
Another Holocene Human
@Redshift: Everything was fine when locals could scam unwary travelers on the US route system, but when those interstates with their “government contracts” and their “corporate convenience stores” showed up it just killed everything! Makes me sick!
scav
@Another Holocene Human: Well, the one intelligent person they let move into the town must be sucking up all the neural energy from the inhabitants, no?
Svensker
@Betty Cracker:
What does a confused manatee look like?
Baud
@Elizabelle: Welcome back!!!
Mike J
@MattF:
It’s 15° south of Berlin, and Germany has lots of solar.
FlyingToaster
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m going to have to disagree with you here; there’s two factors going on that may not be on your radar.
1) Turnabout is fair play; this is exactly what was done to them last year.
2) The discourse in Nebraska is an ongoing right-wing Xtianist Gish Gallop. If you want to be heard at all, you need to either come up with a way of drowning them out (good luck) or take away their soapbox, at least temporarily.
My sib who lives there thinks they’re all insane. Like Opus Dei without any education, replaced by buzzwords.
p.a.
@Matt McIrvin: The Columbian Exchange William Cronon’s Changes in the Land is another example especially of interest to New Englanders. They’ve probably been bypassed by more recent works, but were among the first of their type.
p.a.
@scav: Small towns are closed systems. Everyone knows that. Exogenous inputs ruin everything.
jeffreyw
Kittehs! Discuss.
Baud
@jeffreyw:
The mobile site still says
Reply: Awwww
Mike J
@Baud: I just wish I didn;t have to scroll down so far to get to the submit button. The whitespace between Name, email, and website needs to be tightened a lot, and preferably, move them ahead of the comment box.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Holocene Human: Maybe they were like Bernard on Black Books. You wouldn’t want perfect strangers learning the actual location of their shop so they could come in and disturb their tranquility.
p.a.
How ’bout: BJ atheists’ favorite xMas music.
Mine:
Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown stuff.
Chieftains have a nice cd.
Booker T & MG’s xmas album.
Mahalia Jackson xmas stuff. (Like Mozart, she’s almost proof there is a higher being.
Don’t remember artist(s), German Christmas Music of the High Renaissance.
Alligator Record’s Blues xMas cd
Baud
@Mike J: Maybe the scrolling is the blog’s subtle way of asking, “Do you really want to post that?”
It was probably implemented in response to some of my comments. Sorry.
FlyingToaster
@Another Holocene Human:
What a bunch of tools. They ought to be worrying about the Red Line Ghost Train.
Matt McIrvin
@Mike J: One thing I do remember noticing is that the American Southeast has relatively little potential for wind power. I once saw a map of wind farms in the US and initially assumed that the paucity of them in the South (east of Texas) was political, but it’s not.
Solar, though, they could do.
Baud
@srv: I agree with Sanders, but he should have pitched it as ignoring the entire Democratic side.
Amir Khalid
@Mike J:
Oh jeez. When did Alain do that? And why?
Kilgore Troit
@Elizabelle:
What ship? My wife and I just got back this morning on the Getaway. She kept tweaking me by putting on Fox News when we were in the cabin for a few minutes. What a joker she is.
Mike J
@Amir Khalid: I assume it happened on green day.
The comment editor hasn’t worked for me since the first set of changes rolled in. It won’t show as a pop up, takes over the whole screen, and edits don’t stick. Javascript is allowed (but not cross site), adblocker either on or off.
Mike J
West Brom got one to stick.
PurpleGirl
@jeffreyw: Baud is right… Awwwww!!!
Amir Khalid
@Mike J:
Ouch. Liverpool scored first today. Now they’ve blown a lead and gone behind.
Matt McIrvin
@Matt McIrvin: …though the Appalachians in western Virginia and North Carolina, eastern Tennessee and Kentucky are actually an exception.
scav
@Baud:
(formerly) 50 ways to Leave a Reply.
Mike J
@Amir Khalid: Lazy Sunday for me. I woke one minute before the opening whistle, lay a-bed until the half when I put on my Seahawks t shirt and made coffee. The Hawks game starts seconds after the Liverpool game.
After that I may relax some.
Baud
@scav:
Oh behave, scav(e).
scav
@Baud: But I’d be all alone!!!!
Another Holocene Human
@Svensker: About the same as a regular manatee, I would reckon.
cosima
Making gallons of tomato sauce & prepping for dinner. While also being amused by this:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1240879722596037&set=o.652511461552216&type=3&theater
Is there a U.S. facebook equivalent that mocks the misspellings of racists/teapartiers/right-wing-loons, or is that left to bloggers?
Shlemazel
@Another Holocene Human:
No doubt but that was not my point. The ugly American tourists is being replaced by the ugly Chinese one. They have the economic means to travel as well as the time. These are things we have lost ans Dt. Reagan was just a start
Another Holocene Human
@FlyingToaster:
Actual Opus Dei is pretty fucking insane.
Shlemazel
@ThresherK:
There are several’choke points’ all the well known attractions are often packed. We sceduled our days for less busy times at those. The only geyser works notover run eas in the northwest corner. Forget the name but there is a town there too.
Svensker
@Another Holocene Human:
Me too
Mike J
Liverpool equalise!
Amir Khalid
@Mike J:
Liverpool are hammering at the West Brom goal, but nothing’s going in. Feh.
ETA: I type too slow. Double feh.
Another Holocene Human
@FlyingToaster: My brother sent it to me. I was astounded at how thoroughly Charlie Baker managed to put his foot in his mouth. I’m sure the underlings told him EXACTLY what probably happened (setting something wrong and getting off the train or bus or truck is sadly not an uncommon occurrence in the transportation industry and sadly quite a few operators have died–yeah, hurr hurr Darwin Award, but it’s not very funny when it happens close to you), but Charmin’ Charlie just had to put his own spin on it!
Finally, a governor dumber than Mitt Romney* and William Weld** combined!
*-in all fairness, Mitt Romney wasn’t dumb, just a flaming asshole who didn’t care about Mass
**-objectively an idiot
Kathleen
@BillinGlendaleCA: I refer to those places as “Fake Town”.
Amir Khalid
A face-saving draw for Liverpool. It would have been really embarrassing to lost at home to West Brom. But it would have been a win if not for the Mignolet clanger that gave away West Brom’s first goal.
Schlemazel
@ThresherK:
The well known tourist place get jammed at the peak times. We made it to them either early or late & it was not as bad. There are several other, not as well known beautiful places that generally do not draw the same crowds but that varies. Yes, the East side of the park is the worst, Mammoth, which has a really beautiful set of attractions is in the far Northwest & was not busy at all.
Hint you don’t see in every guide book. Twice a day the lower falls sports a huge rainbow (assuming good sunshine) There is a place on the official website that tells you when the times are, go and enjoy the view but have your camera ready because it only lasts a minute.
Schlemazel
@Another Holocene Human:
Yeah, I made no value statement about how we lost the middle class. I was noting that Chinese have the vacation time and the money to see Yellowstone in large numbers, something Americans gave up & St. Ronnie was only a major player in a century-long battle between workers and masters.
Schlemazel
@Robert Sneddon:
Having been to Europe in the 70s and having the misfortune of running into American tourists I admit the ugly tourist reputation was a fair cop. But I bet the Europeans love us a whole lot more now than they did then. Yes, American tourists are loud, boorish and provincial but we are not as pushy as the rest of the world. It took me a little while in Europe to understand that it was expected when using public transportation to use your elbows and bags to force yourself in front. I got beaten up by more than one little old lady before the light went on. It passes for polite I guess, the way we act but I’m not sure.
The CHinese tourist we ran into were hyper aggressive but did not expect to not be jostled back so I was OK with that. They also were fearless to the point of insanity. Selfie sticks were everywhere & I saw more than a few people stand within 3 feet of wild animals, turn their backs to the animal and whip out the selfie stick for a picture. I don’t know how they didn’t end up gored.
Schlemazel
@ThresherK:
BTW I would love to go back in winter and only in part to avoid the mobs. We did a little very light hiking while there in large part because of mobility problems, the Mrs. knee (the one a student attacked with a metal desk drawer) chose this time to really act up. But she is tough & powered through some times & others (like the hike to the bottom of the upper falls) she was willing to let me do on my own. I think it would be great to snowshoe the park but it is so huge and we are so green I’d have to have help. I did a lot of camping as a scout/leader but I am not so silly as to think I am well prepared.
One thing that made me wonder, they rent bear spray in the park. Now I understand there are bears there and had I thought of serious hiking I would have taken the standard precautions and not given it more thought. Maybe these rented repellents are just a gimmick to fleece the tourists but it shook me to think it is that serious. I really would be more afraid of a bull elk or bison than a bear out there and I bet those first two get a lot more scores than the bears but it does make me stop and think.
Elizabelle
@Kilgore Troit: Twas the sister ship, the Breakaway. Loved it. First cruise ever; won’t be the last. Hope you enjoyed your days at sea as much.
Cermet
Well, our best hope for a carbon free energy sources that can provide gega-watts is nuclear fusion – the energy source of the future and appears that it always will be …that is, after one failure after another over the decades or at best, vastly expensive break-even jokes (break even if one doesn’t count most of the power used by the device (lol).)
That all said, the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) just came on line with its first plasma. This stellator is currently using helium for its first test plasma. If all goes well, after twenty years (!) in the development, this advanced stellarator will use hydrogen in January to test plasma stability and confinement with the very near real thing. Unlike ITER, this design does not operate as a pulsed system but will run for 30 minutes; also, it is modular so the design lends itself to power plant design, These two characteristics tend to make these devices better for power plants – that is, if it works. In fact, it could operate continuously which is a very important feature in any power plant.
The question – will it offer similar or superior plasma confinement compared to tokamaks? If not, it is an expensive “yet another failure”; but if it does, it offers the basic design for a true fusion power plant prototype.
mclaren
@Matt McIrvin:
You’re really not thinking it through. Widespread antibiotic resistance means: sky-high infant mortality; women dying like flies in childbirth…no more major operations like cardiac bypass; and diabetes as a quick death sentence.
J R in WV
@Shlemazel:
We went there the week before Memorial Day – Old Faithful was being faithful, even tho few were there to watch – maybe 30% of the seats were taken. As we left Jacksons Hole on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, there was bumper to bumper RVs for miles heading north to the Hole and the two huge parks. But we missed that crowd by going earlier. Timing can matter.
If you walk a mile on a path, you will suddenly feel alone… people don’t walk any more. There are mud pits and steamers and sprayers and smokers everywhere, although nothing really compares to the major field like below Old Faithful, which is the most active field in the world.