Fascism creeps more into America every day

Fascism creeps more into America every day--literally, every day--and other people are protesting by standing around with signs in their hands every two weeks. I'm not an activist, and maybe I'm wrong but I think that's futile. When it gets serious they will just shoot them. The last way I want to spend my day is in big open spaces with many thousands of people, any one of whom could be carrying a gun, and not just any gun. 

America has been in decline for about 50 years--since Nixon, Watergate, the Vietnam War and, especially, since Reagan denigrated government and "trickle-down" economics sent more and more money up to the top. Now we see the monsters that all that wealth inequality has created. 

A president who, as far as I can tell, wants to destroy everyone but the wealthy. And I do mean "destroy." I can't think of a single thing Trump has done for the people since he was elected. 

I'm just not interested in fighting. I own nothing in the US except a very old car that is onto its last legs. I have a cat I have to take care of, but I'm thinking he can probably survive a long transport to somewhere new. There is nothing else I'm invested in, financially or emotionally. I'll never be able to retire here, so why stay? I'll just end up diving off a bridge eventually. I've earned too little as a writer and I'll never be able to retire anywhere. 

I made a lot of bad decisions along the way.

I can't stomach the US anymore anyway. 

When the Ice Leaves the Port

Lake Winnipesaukee is the largest lake in New Hampshire, US, at 185 km² (71.4 mi²) (8.4 mi)². I still find it interesting because for about 6 years I lived high above it and close in a cozy mother-in-law apartment, with a screened porch, and the Lake spread out before me like...well, like a big lake. At least a good part of it. 

Consequently, I can still spell "Winnipesaukee." 

From CoPilot:

The name "Winnipesaukee" is derived from the Algonquian language and translates to "The Smile of the Great Spirit" or "Beautiful Water in a High Place".

The Lake freezes over in the winter, and people go out ice-fishing, etc. There's an airport runway on the ice over in Alton on the east end of the Lake--"the only FAA-certified, plowed ice runway in the continental United States." It doesn't (viz. can't) open every year, but it did open this year. Global warming is affecting the Lake.

A popular metric in that region is the Lake's "ice-out" date.

Ice-Out is declared when the cruise ship MS Mount Washington can make it to every one of its ports: Center Harbor, Wolfeboro, Alton, Weirs Beach and Meredith. It is also considered the unofficial start to the boating season as well as the end of winter in New Hampshire.

These day a local pilot flies over the Lake multiple times a day this time of year to declare Ice-Out. I wrote about him for Yale Climate Connections several years ago.

There is also an "ice-in" date, but it's not as popular because it means the start of a long, cold, dark winter and nobody gets too hyped for that. (In truth winter there sets in long before ice-in, which usually is announced in January or early February.) But ice-out is a ritual of spring, and soon your cabin fever will break. About mid-May, if you can just hang on.

Anyway...and please pardon me if I've written about all this before somewhere on this blog...this year's Ice-out was declared this morning at 7:02 am. (Seems suspiciously exact, but anyway.) The time series of Ice-Out dates is carried by Wikipedia. I had to look up the time in the local news, and I only have times since 2020. For earlier years there is ice-out data, but no time, so I took it as noon.

Here's the time-series of ice-out dates on Winnipesaukee since 1887. The red line is the 30-year moving average.

So the 30-year moving average has decreased about 10 days since 1917, that is, ice-out arrives earlier. The linear trend is about -0.75 days/decade, but of course the R² is small, just 0.28. That's -7.5 days/century. A week per century. 

The data are a pretty decent proxy for global temperature. I should make a histogram. Soon. Maybe. 

BTW, there was a year without an ice-out date--2001, when I was living there--because there never was an ice-in--the Lake didn't freeze over that year. This was before smartphones so I don't have pictures of it. I did take a lousy picture with a digital camera, but can't find it now. Any more it's kind of like life started only when smartphones became ubiquitous.

Ice fisherman lost some trucks.

Addendum: Once up there I saw a section of the lake surface freeze over in real time--a rolling edge of freezing, maybe traveling over a half-mile. Maybe a mile. Took about 10-15 seconds. I wasn't sure if I really saw that or not--I thought I did, but it seemed impossible--so I contacted a few limnologists--scientists who study lakes--and more than one told me they'd heard of such a phenomenon, but had never seen it, and called me lucky or fortunate or some such word.

So, spring is coming even to New England. There's hope. Here in Oregon it's getting into the 70s. (Fahrenheit. About 20 degrees Celsius.)

Have a nice day.

A1, Artificial One

Andreas Schleicher, the head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times, “Thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child.” He continued, “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”

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Why? The US Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, who with her husband and business partner Vince McMahon founded the clownish WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment recently pronounced "AI" (as in artificial intelligence) as "A1"--"A One." No kidding. That's the kind of inspiring leadership this country has now. Unfortunately, her job working for Trump is to dismantle [of course] the Department of Education because 30 percent is apparently too low. Trump said when campaigning the Department is filled with "radicals, zealots and Marxists," which are apparently new synonyms for "teacher." 

Actually what the Department mostly does is distribute money and administer the student loan program, which Trump doesn't like either because too many push “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” and he wants to (AP) "reward states and schools that end teacher tenure and enact universal school choice programs." In short, they want that money for private schools, religious and otherwise, and to keep the poor poor in subpar public schools. Remember, Trump "likes the poorly educated." Yes, he actually said that while campaigning.

I wish this was just a crazy stupid made-up story, but it's all true. No, it makes no sense for us either. The Trump administration is increasingly looking like clowns running amuck in a shooting gallery. Except the gallery is the entirety of the United States of America.

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Costa Rica, Portugal, Greece, the Philippines, Romania, Mexico. Where to go? 

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Check out this brutal putdown of the US by a Chinese official. "We expect to survive for another 5,000 years." 

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Sign from a recent protest rally:

NOAA, Is This Really Necessary???

Sheesh.

Via: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/global/time-series/globe/tavg/land_ocean/1/0/1850-2025

Musk Popularity

At least Elon Musk's popularity (in the US) is tanking. Or at least declining:

 

Imagine the richest person in the world getting to decide who gets to work in the federal government and how many benefits Americans receive. It sounds like something from a bad Ayn Rand novel. (As if all of them weren't bad.)

Fortunately Tesla sales in Europe are tanking even more. Here's even more bad news. Even cabinet members in the Trump regime are getting sick of him: 

Gizmodo: "Elon Musk Is Annoying, Unfunny, and Should Probably Take a Drug Test, Trump Officials Reportedly Say: A senior official describes the billionaire as an awkward and obnoxious asshole."

I mean, Musk's idea of being funny (or something) is throw up Nazi salutes. He should be drummed out of any public life for that alone. Somehow that no longer happens in today's America. I can't come close to explaining it.

from "The Dispossessed"

“Suffering is a misunderstanding,” Shevek said, leaning forward, his eyes wide and light. He was still lanky, with big hands, protruding ears, and angular joints, but in the perfect health and strength of eariy manhood he was very beautiful. His dun-colored hair, like the others', was fine and straight, worn at its full length and kept off the forehead with a band. Only one of them wore her hair differently, a girl with high cheekbones and a flat nose; she had cut her dark hair to a shiny cap all round. She was watching Shevek with a steady, serious gaze. Her lips were greasy from eating fried cakes, and there was a crumb on her chin.

“It exists,” Shevek said, spreading out his hands. “It's real. I can call it a misunderstanding, but I can't pretend that it doesn't exist, or will ever cease to exist. Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes, you know it You know it as the truth. Of course it's right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality. All of us here are going to know grief; if we live fifty years, we'll have known pain for fifty years. And in the end we'll die. That's the condition we're born on. I'm afraid of life! There are times I — I am very frightened. Any happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn't all a misunderstanding — this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain . . . .  If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could . . . get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It's the self that suffers, and there's a place where the self — ceases. I don’t know how to say it. But I believe that the reality — the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don't in comfort and happiness — that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.'"

“'The reality of our life is in love, in solidarity,' said a tall, soft-eyed girl. 'Love is the true condition of human life.'

“Bedap shook his head. ‘No. Shev's right,’ he said. ‘Love's just one of the ways through, and it can go wrong, and miss. Pain never misses. But therefore we don't have much choice about enduring it! We will whether we want to or not.”

-- The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin

"Henry Fonda for President"

Movie trailer, from an Australian director who posits that actor Henry Fonda was the embodiment of America itself. 

"Caged and fighting the bars but timid of the light."

 

Myanmar Earthquake Waves Traveling Through Europe

Very cool:

Sick Goal

Pardon me, I try to avoid blogging about hockey, but this is an amazing goal by Brian Rust of the [my] Pittsburgh Penguins.

 

Notice how Sidney Crosby--number 87 and one of the best hockey players in the visible universe--first whacks down a pass to him that was above the ice, controls the puck, then passes the puck while lifting it over the stick/blade of the guy defending him. Then Rust (#17) stretches and hits the puck after a bounce over the goalie. I've never seen a goal like this.

 
The Penguins, legendary in the '00s and '10s, have really lost it and are now ranked #28 in the league (of 32 teams). They will miss the playoffs for the third straight year. But it's worth watching because every game Crosby does something you've never seen before.

Last game Crosby set a record of 20 seasons scoring one point a game or better. (A point is a goal or an assist.) He beat out Wayne Gretzky, who had 19. Incredible consistency, since he joined the league at 18 years old. In fact, he's never had an NHL season where he's scored less than one point per game.

New Record Low for Arctic Sea Ice

The NSIDC says that Arctic sea ice just set a record for the lowest annual maximum. This is from their press release. I've abbreviated some of the units, which they choose to write out in their long-form, and made everything metric (because around here we don't dabble in the black arts):

On March 22, Arctic sea ice likely reached its maximum extent for the year, at 14.33 Mkm²..., the lowest in the 47-year satellite record. This year’s maximum extent is 1.31 Mkm²...below the 1981 to 2010 average maximum of 15.64 Mkm²...and 80,000 km²...below the previous lowest maximum that occurred on March 7, 2017.

But this is meaningless in the US now, because climate change doesn't officially exist. (They know it does, but practice fake denialism.) Trump recently said he thinks science don't know what's causing climate change.... NSIDC gets plenty of US federal government funding, so perhaps they won't exist for next year's annual maximum (not kidding), and maybe even the satellites will be turned off (also not kidding). After all, that's money that should properly be going to (more) tax cuts for billionaires (still not kidding). You don't know what you can't measure, and President Krasnov clearly doesn't want us to know.

Great Image of Venus

from "The COSPAR planetary protection requirements for space missions to Venus," María Paz Zorzano et al, Life Sciences in Space Research, Volume 37, May 2023, Pages 18-24.

note: orange represents a data gap. 

Is Ocean Heat Content Really Accelerating?

An article in the NY Times (free link) reports on a World Meteorological Organization report that says the 10 warmest years in the surface temperature records are the last 10 years. That's very bad. 

One sentence in the article especially caught my eye. 

This warmth is especially apparent in the oceans, where key indicators of climate change are now accelerating.

They don't say which indicators, but I assume ocean heat content (OHC) is a prominent one. 

I used to think, based on the data, that it was indeed accelerating. But from my amateurish calculations, it looks like the OHC in the 0-2000 meter range (top half) has stopped accelerating. It had a peak in the first quarter of last year, and the last three readings are below that. OK, ENSOs and whatnot. A very recent peak isn't important or interesting.

Here are the data:

The leading coefficient of the second-degree polynomial is now 0.037 ZJ/yr² (ZJ=zetajoules=10²¹ joules). But it has a 2-sigma uncertainty of 0.044 ZJ/yr², calculated by the standard linear regression (with no autocorrelation, which would only make the error bars higher (I think)).

The 0-2000 m acceleration is twice this coefficient, and in more typical units is 0.0046 ± 0.0055 (W/m²)/yr. So it's not statistically significant at the 2-sigma level.  

The 0-700 m acceleration is statistically significant at 0.0088 ± 0.0004 (W/m²)/yr.

I don't have data on the lower half of the ocean. I don't even know if it exists, though I have seen a few papers years ago that it's warming, though at a much slower rate. (Now I can't find them.)

Don't know if this means anything--the ocean heat is still increasing strongly, of course. I could calculate that, but I'm not going to right now because I'm tired. Maybe tomorrow. Likely the recent OHCs are messed up wonky because of the big El Nino than the small La Nina. 

Just wanted to put up my the little calculations, to justify the time it took to build the spreadsheet. (Really, I just like making spreadsheets & keeping track of the basic climate data).

Cheers.

How Tariffs Work