Free Republic

Yeah, I thought water vapor was supposed to be worse than CO2.

Whatever water vaoir we add through hydrogen combustion, fossil combusttion, etc is trivial compared to global evaporation. All the water vapor that is lost in rainfall is quickly replaced naturally. Our contribution is negigible.

So yes, while water vapor is a much more important greenhouse gas, there's nothing we can do to increase it. In contrast the rise from 280 to 420 ppm of CO2 is mostly manmade.

True, NATO is not Russia. But that's not the point. NATO was a defensive organization until Clinton and then it turned offensive, some coincidence, some corruption and some wag-the-dog. Russia quite properly saw that as a threat and responded with non-war. They did it like NATO with political machinations and finesse but last year they escalated to all out war. The big picture is that Russia will always inevitably resort to war when non-war approaches fail. You point to the war and their war crimes like that was their first option.

In NATO's case the non-war approaches almost always work. Ukraine is a good example of taking over through non-war. Lots of corruption enriching our oligarchs instead of the Russian and Russian-allied oligarchs. Worked out great for the Bidens and many others.

The result of "defeating" Russia in Ukraine is easy to predict. Russia will come back in 20 or 30 or 40 years and take it back. The way to avoid that is a negotiated settlement.

As you see Russia is NOT a defensive organism.

NATO used to be a defensive organization. That changed when they bombed Serbia. Before that they had already taken sides in the Balkans as a "peacekeeper". They decided to "keep the peace" by allowing ethnic purges.

NATO has stolen NOTHING from Russia.

NATO has stolen from Russians by allowing the Baltics to "deRussianize", e.g. ban teaching Russian in schools under NATO protection. The Baltic states would say they are deSovietizing and they were the victims in the past. That's all true, but that doesn't justify reverse ethnic cleansing. Peaceful ethnic cleansing is still ethnic cleansing, and in Ukraine the ethnic cleansing wasn't peaceful before Russia attacked.

WWII made America the richest nation in the entire history of planet earth!

WWIII won't have that same effect. The crux of the issue is how to contain Russian without them waiting a few decades and coming back stronger than ever. We lack a long term plan.

My home came with a Kirkland fridge, circa 1999. I got worried when it got unreliable, I thought maybe too cheap. Sometimes it cooled, sometimes it didn't. I would jigger the thermostat setting to get it to kick on and cool. Finally I looked online and saw a website that sold a replacement thermostat and had a video showing how to replace it.

My fridge had food in it so I had to replace it quickly. Watched the video at least a dozen times and took apart as much as possible without removing the thermostat or leaving the door open too long. Finally the time came when I took the old thermostate out and installed the new one. About 20 minutes.

That was March, still going strong. My AC unit outside, washer and dryer are similar vintage. I am going to try not to replace anything with anything new.

I was thinking of Jan 6th and the insane effort to impeach Trump. Seemed very strange, first because Trump didn’t do anything wrong, and second, because Trump would be gone in 2 weeks anyway. So why?

The answer is in the papers by "legal scholars" to apply the 14th amendment to throw Trump off the ballot. Here's an example:

And in particular, it disqualifies former President Donald Trump, and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted over- throw of the 2020 presidential election. https://akhilamar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/The-Sweep-and-Force-of-Section-Three.pdf

Here's why they say Trump is covered under section 3 even though he has not been convicted of anything:

The Senate’s vote to convict Trump of this charge, while falling short of the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution’s impeachment process, constituted a substantial majority (57 to 43) of the Senate endorsing the House’s charge and characterization. Majorities of both houses of Congress thus determined—at least twice—that January 6th was an insurrection; and in the impeachment proceedings majorities of both houses determined that Trump was responsible for having incited that insurrection

That's it. They are basing their "conviction" of Trump of insurrection by a partisan vote (plus a few R squibs). That was the plan all along as noted back then by many observers.

From the New York Times:

By Mike McIntire
April 5, 2016

For Donald J. Trump, it is a long-held legal strategy, if not a point of pride, to avoid knuckling under to plaintiffs in court.

“I don’t settle lawsuits — very rare — because once you settle lawsuits, everybody sues you,” he said recently.

But Mr. Trump made an exception when buyers of units in Trump SoHo, a 46-story luxury condominium-hotel in Lower Manhattan, asserted that they had been defrauded by inflated claims made by Mr. Trump, his children and others of brisk sales in the struggling project. He and his co-defendants settled the case in November 2011, agreeing to refund 90 percent of $3.16 million in deposits, while admitting no wrongdoing.

The backdrop to that unusual denouement was a gathering legal storm that threatened to cast a harsh light on how he did business.

Tearing down candidates is pretty easy.

With each mutation it becomes less dangerous.

Part of the reason they never admit that is because it makes it painfully obvious that most early variants were engineered in a lab.

A member of U.S Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s security detail takes a bike off an SUV, April 1, 2021. Mr. Buttigieg then used the bike to travel a short distance to a Cabinet meeting

Yeah, it's headed back out to sea. There's no support in any model for it to turn west or north or slow down. It's not going to be a very fast mover so some locations could get a dumping, but the rivers should be ok.

I am in Wilmington, NC. Does anyone have any information on whether or not to evacuate? I can’t find out anything online.

No. The storm might make cat 3 by the time it hits FL but will weaken over land. It won't be a hurricane by the time it gets to NC although the NWS will say it still is based on cherry picked winds. Your winds will be 40-50 sustained, maybe gusts to 70. Some trees might fall on power lines so be prepared for that.

Just checked Wilmington NWS and they are downgrading all the threats (e.g. tornado, surge) but keeping the flood threat. But they keep saying this: it's not Florence, It's not going to stall.

The problem is years like 2020 and many others where they put out every fire by 10am (that's official policy in Alberta, less rigid in other provinces). That lets the fuel build up and lead to bad years. This is common scientific knowledge since the 1970's. But in 2020 they had ess than 0.1% burned area despite having a goal of 0.1% fire (which is way too low).

Globally fire (burned area) is decreasing thanks in part to better use of fire.

There was way more than enough documented fraud to throw the election to Biden in Georgia and AZ. E.g. people who moved out of state before voting. Not sure about WI but the same day registrations are suspect there.

I think Trump has a great case to make in GA although I'm sure the lawyers will look at legal technicalities first. But between out-of-state voters and lack of signature checking there were 10's of thousands of potentially fradulent votes there.

"Post Editorial Board" aka Murdoch. The guy who helped Biden steal the last election is pontificating

The NY Post covered the laptop when the other major media repeated the fake news Russian disinformation line. Once Trump lost the Post threw him overboard with any hopes of getting to the bottom of the fraud. There was ample fraud but there was not enough to flip enough states.

The hurricane had nothing to do with the wind on Maui. Much too far away, over 600 miles. A large hurricane can have a non-zero effect on wind up to 500 miles, but Dora was a compact hurricane. The 39 mph winds from Dora extended 100 miles to the north.

The weather service said Dora had an effect (pressure gradient) but that was an incorrect forecast that was never corrected.

The point is there is ample evidence that many times more votes than Biden's margin were cast illegally. His best (IMO only) defense is to present all of it. His tweets were mostly statements of facts that were true then and now.

Viewable on Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/status/1691228480556429312

RFK Jr also points out that Fauci was in charge of bioweapons.

100 trillion gallons is 150 million swimming pools (660000 gallons per pool). I don't remember where I got my numbers a year ago, but I did it to point out that the heavy rains a year ago could not be caused by that water even if it all magically migrated to one spot.

Don't remember, so I'll have to redo it. NASA says 58,000 swimming pools time 88,000 cubic feet per pool or 5104000000 cubic feet. Atlanta is 134.0 square miles or 3735705600 square feet. Divide the cubic feet by the square feet and get 1.3 feet of water.

Something is off. Maybe I used more than Atlanta itself. Even so, it's not a lot of water compared to the troposphere.

Moisture in the stratosphere doesn't cause rain. A year ago or so I calculated that total amount of moisture in the stratosphere from the volcano was enough to cover greater Atlanta in a couple of inches of water. Trivial compared to what's in the troposphere, except that because it is in the stratosphere it causes warming in the troposphere.

I happened to listen to that live. He said something like Joe Biden wasn't working with his son, he was just sitting there (the sleepy Joe defense).