Harvey’s Micro-Macro Climate (GW) Synergy

Hurricane Harvey’s flooding of Texas’ low lying coastal areas with record rains were especially severe around the Houston asphalt heat absorbing micro-climate. Houston at night releases far more heat to the atmosphere than surrounding unpaved rural areas. Heat and cold temperature differences are prime elements in hurricane behavior.

Harvey will reignite national controversy over global warming and how to prevent political ostriches from taking over to thwart defense against it. Global warming greenhouse gas releases from fossil fuel powered cars is the nation’s biggest contributor to global warming. A lesser known enabler of global warming is heat-absorbing asphalt.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/just-1-c-ocean-warming-can-upend-marine-ecosystems

Micro-climates are created in cities with so much asphalt. Poor people die. A common image from Hurricane Harvey and Houston is poorer people (comparatively) walking to leave through flooded streets.

Urban micro-climates and their mortality of the poor

Surprisingly asphalt and the Arctic ocean have at least one thing in common; each absorb heat better than ice. As the Arctic ocean loses its icepack it takes longer to freeze and captures more heat. Ice has a higher reflectivity ability of sunlight. Dirt and grass to not absorb as much light-heat from the sun as asphalt. As permafrost melts- and as much as 40% of it may with global warming, carbon stored in the permafrost may be released further contributing to the greenhouse gas effect, Arctic tundra fires in the decades ahead may increase inexorably as hurricanes may be attracted more to Houston and linger there with the asphalt-Galveston bay axis of empowerment.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10042017/permafrost-climate-change-arctic-carbon-release

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080304200902.htm burning tundra occurred thousands of years ago

More than 1000 billion tons of carbon are stored beneath permafrost that will be slowly released with global warming effect. 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/09/arctic-carbon-bomb-may-never-happen-say-scientists

Fire in tundra could release materials from human industrial processes too that have accumulated in the tundra over hundreds of years

 https://phys.org/news/2017-07-toxic-mercury-accumulating-arctic-tundra.html

There are numerous, obvious architectural responses that are possible to counteract coastal flooding from hurricanes that would require mass architectural and engineering design, Actually there are too numerous to describe here. Artificial mountain range with curved shapes that allow wildlife to live on the outside and that would channel winds and concurrently change the micro-climate of given areas, large artificial river-canals used to desalinate pumped-in seawater periodically and for flood control rarely, fast above ground level monorail evacuation lines from coastal areas to inland safe points, etc.

image credit NOAA

Donald Trump Did Business During Campaign- Why is That Unethical?

The Post and several other organizations are perennially (apparently) trying to throw dirt on the President. They must believe that doing business with Russia isn't ethically o.k. If it was legal though then why would that particular bit of business be considered not ethically o.k.? Bezos would probably never want Amazon.com to work in Russia. Perhaps Russians already use Ali Baba.

Sure Russia is the evil empire forever to Democrats and others that want to annex as much of the former Imperial Russian empire to Wall Street servers as possible. Democrats have changed their states to true blue states and made Putin's Russia the new evil empire to replace the former Soviet Evil Empire. The Republicans are the new red state reds (and watch out for pinko independents!). Not everyone wants to bite off America's nose to spite its face in a manner of speaking by amputating good Russian relations permanently. That is very costly.

Already more than 30% of U.S. energy production is foreign owned. America's policy of putting sanctions of Venezuela may result defaults that will make them unable to pay loans to Russia so that Russia will take over CITGO. American efforts to enact foreign policy aren't always or usually very well thought out or co-ordinated-takes too much work.

America should cut back any regular monthly outlays or payments of rent to foreign entities evil or not. Electrical and fuel consumption are two of the most obvious. Home produced alternative, off-grid energy is American energy. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars each month to foreign corporations mericans should produce their own electricity for home and even electric automobile fuel. Saudi Arabia owns the largest oil refinery on the U.S. Gulf coast. They don't even buy America light sweet crude oil-instead preferring the heavy crude from Brazil and Saudi.

Mr. Trump at least has the good sense to know that good business is good business and better than no business or bad business. Positive relations with Russia allow constructive engagement socially and economically and societies evolve over time to be more like those they trade with. Democrats could take comfort in knowing that if they send enough dope smoking, cocaine sniffing queers to Russia on business, that Russia will have its political immune system against that sort of thing corrupted. 

On second thought, maybe America shouldn't have much to do with Russia. Even so I don't think that trying to do business in that country last year was anything to make news. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-business-sought-deal-on-a-trump-tower-in-moscow-while-he-ran-for-president/2017/08/27/d6e95114-8b65-11e7-91d5-ab4e4bb76a3a_story.html?utm_term=.c68b905aa11c

Sagan and Subsurface Moon Life- Geothermal Sanctuaries for Aliens

The former astronomer Carl Sagan published a scientific paper in 1961 on the possibility that life exists on the moon below the surface.  https://www.nap.edu/read/18476/chapter/5

Plainly the possibility that life could find a habitat amenable for existence in the warmer and sometimes cooler conditions below the surface can not be discounted.

Lunar subsurface temperatures may be as high as 32 degrees f in some locations. Subsurface temperatures on many solar system extra-terrestrial objects vary greatly from air or near-vacuum surface temperatures. Even on Earth, I have kept a gallon of water from freezing in minus zero temperatures simply by setting it on the ground and covering it with a a thick blanket; the heat rising from the Earths core provides enough heat to keep water liquid for a time.

Sagan's theory was that if life had existed at some point when conditions were favorable on e.t. object X, that when conditions gradually deteriorated for surface existence it may have migrated underground.

That makes me wonder if future Venus probes couldn't land and nifty drill themselves into the ground to avoid the 800 degree atmospheric temperature since it might be cooler a hundred feet below the surface. Below the surface it might be possible for computer hardware to survive. Then it could extend some sort of periscope to the surface to monitor things, as well as to release small drones on suicide missions.

I also wonder about using geothermal power, or more properly exothermal power, to power a number of project missions on Mars and elsewhere around the solar system. With electro-magnetic cannot becoming common, a cheap high-quality power supply on Mars and elsewhere could be used to send piles of exploration and supply shells through the atmosphere or space surrounding any world.

Another Cold Can of Empty (poem)

Machine sprayed shining, shapes
jumping with bar codes, like

little cat feet, snapping
over red hatch-cover, cylinders 

drained smooth like circles, never
again full from the start, packing

fizzy imprints of enterprise, painted
pixels of instants, nothing

deep nothingness given, volumes
specific space-time dilations, added

six pack’d end of days.

What Apple's Next After the Next Hardware Should Be

Steve Jobs developed better mouse traps, or a computer mouse, given a prototype by NEC (?). He continued to take existing hardware and dramatically improve it for consumers. Apple's strength was in hardware. 

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2017/08/apple_s_future_isn_t_a_self_driving_car_it_s_siri.htmlv

Apple will of course have hidden product development projects. One that it should add to its list would be the paradigm of producing quantum-teleportation technology in consumer products. Physicist have been able to generate space to Earth quantum teleportation of quanta.Besides science fiction-fantasy ideas of sending monkeys to congress and beyond to a moon base,  there may be no practical consumer product ideas for quantum teleportation hardware applications.They probably exist a priori in a Platonic realism sort of way.

https://phys.org/news/2017-07-physicists-transmit-earth-to-space-quantum-entanglement.html