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Short-Lived Slouchabout Insurgency Interrupts Serial Sitting Session – December 5, 2012
• Thursday, October 25 10:22 a.m. A man in blue jeans, a ripped green hoodie, with "scruffy" facial hair and carrying a pizza box came into a non-skeezy Valley West hotel demanding the best rate and room. He seemed confused as he spoke of medieval times, frightening someone there. He then left in an unknown direction, but soon called back to tell the hotel staff that they were mistaken in not giving him a room because he was a millionaire. He said he'd be back at 3 p.m.
11:33 a.m. A traveler, complete with long, gray jacket and cane, was arrested at the community pool after allegedly offering hash to a girl who was swimming there.
5:31 p.m. Perhaps future historians will ascertain why a man at a Valley West bus stop had both his hands down in his pants. And for that matter, why he wore a white flannel shirt with black tennis shoes.
• Friday, October 26 1:03 a.m. A half dozen or so celebrants at a wingding in a Union Street apartment building drank, balcony-peed and neighbor-front-door-prank-knocked the night away.
8:24 a.m. "You will remember my decayed body," read the e-mail, which also mentioned an open field. Soon, a troubled person was en route to a mental health facility.
11:06 a.m. A lodger in a low-expectations Valley West motel's lobby had a patience-trying telephone conversation with his elderly father, made worse by the desk clerk disrespectfully listening in on the call. This supposed eavesdropping made him very, very upset with the motel employee.
11:21 a.m. A man had "issues" with his cousin, foremost among them that the cuz had threatened to shoot his brother in the head. The troubled cousin was committed to a mental health facility.
12:01 p.m. Losses from a Buttermilk Lane burglary included a rust-colored, pump-action 12-gauge shotgun, a Savage Wood/Brown high-powered handgun and several men's and women's watches.
3:27 p.m. A man down and defunct in an F Street gutter was in danger of being struck by a car. He had a traffic warrant out of San Bernadino, was arrested and taken to the drunk tank.
4:10 p.m. After a multi-car accident at Samoa Boulevard and H Street, one driver was arrested for DUI.
8:48 p.m. A woman returned to her D Street home to find a glass door smashed, but nothing stolen.
• Saturday, October 27 7:04 a.m. Multiple persons were reported on top of a trailer on Lewis Avenue, attempting to steal the air conditioning unit. They scattered as police arrived.
7:55 a.m. A G Street business and a neighboring home were vandalized in the night.
8:45 a.m. A yard in the 400 block of F Street was "destroyed" by someone who pulled up and tore apart the plants there.
9:08 a.m. Another G Street business was ravaged, with car mirrors broken off and power tampered with.
9:31 a.m. Plants and trees were vandalized on Fifth Street, and a car ransacked.
10:08 a.m. A bunch of cannabis trim was dumped at 13th and Union streets.
11:51 a.m. A man dressed in black set a paper plate on fire at a Ninth Street hardware store, then wandered off, making nonsensical statements.
12:24 p.m. A Farmers' Market shopper returned to his car just off the Plaza to find a note claiming that he had struck another car, and if he didn't respond to the note, "Action would be taken against him." But he hadn't damaged any other vehicles, and the note had only a Post Office box address, no phone number.
1 p.m. A man and woman with a bloody forehead argued yellingly outside a Sixth Street apartment building, and the witness said the man held an arrow to the woman's head. He was arrested for public drunkenness, she on outstanding warrants and their van was towed.
1:40 p.m. "I'm going to kill you" screamed a woman's voice in a field south of Ariel Way.
5:04 p.m. After an orgiastic bout of smoking, drinking and harassing customers on the sidewalk outside a Valley West restaurant, six sitabouts were dispersed. Something called "Brazzell" was warned away on pain of trespass.
5:17 p.m. A woman tried on multiple outfits at a Plaza clothing store, then left without buying anything. An employee then found four empty hangers in a dressing room.
• Sunday, October 28 11:38 p.m. A man wearing sunglasses tried to steal a woman's cat on the Plaza, then whapped her on the leg with his walking stick.
• Tuesday, October 30 9:18 a.m. A small H Street business reached a tipping point with the slouchabouts who smoke, drink and socialize in the parking lot and alley. Following complaints, several slouchers swarmed the business, entering inside to declare that they had not been smoking and drinking at the beginning of the previous week and frightening the staff. Later, while walking to her car, an employee was verbally harassed by several of the not-smoking-or-drinking hangarounders, one of whom bellowed, "That's the girl who always calls the cops!" The building was subsequently graffiti-tagged.
12:45 p.m. An L.K. Wood Boulevard resident returned home to find that $300 cash inside a brass canister had been stolen from his unlocked bedroom.
2:56 p.m. A woman said that every morning when she runs on the forest trails, a horny old man makes unsolicited sexual comments and advances to her. "I'd like to do something illegal to you," quipped the randy codger, something the woman didn't find charming in the least. Police left a message at the man's house.
• Wednesday, October 31 12:29 p.m. A woman with a bloody face asked for medication inside a Uniontown pharmacy, but later someone figured out that it may have been a Halloween costume.
2:14 p.m. An unsavory man was reported staying in local motels and selling drugs. He reportedly told his girlfriend that he planned to "cut off her hands."
9:22 p.m. A man dressed as a Secret Service agent brought an assault rifle and ammo clip down to the rowdy Plaza, which police didn't think such a great idea. Officers took the weapon from him for safekeeping.
9:28 p.m. A man at a downtown yogurt shop talked about having two young girls at his house, then asked when the store closed and "what kind of favors the [employee] would do for him." He said he'd be back at closing time.
9:54 p.m. Left unattended for two hours, a 12th Street home was burgled of three computers and cash, leaving multiple victims.
11:52 p.m. A lower H Street resident called and asked which dispatcher he was talking to. Told it was APD and asked what he needed, he hung up.
11:57 p.m. A lower H Street resident called police saying that his roommate was calling him names. Asked the roommate's name, he hung up. He then called back to say that the roommate had gone to his room and closed the door, but was yelling and calling him names. Told response would be delayed (due to downtown Halloween enforcement), he hung up.
• Thursday, November 1 12:30 a.m. Someone called from a Plaza bar complaining that a homeless man was preventing him from retrieving his glasses.
12:43 p.m. A man in a gray hoodie was reported taking "upskirt" photos at the donut shop. He wasn't found.
1:55 a.m. A man dressed as a doctor was reported trying to start fights in front of a Plaza hotel.
2:45 a.m. A shaven-headed Batman was reported being aggressive outside the donut shop.
4:26 a.m. An ambulance carried away a 31-year-old man who had mixed sleeping pills and alcohol.
8:36 a.m. Someone entered a Fifth Street home and stole two Mac laptop computers.
9:41 a.m. A man spending Halloween with his girlfriend said his estranged wife came and took his truck, which had in the back his tools and checks for $12,300.
12:21 p.m. After a woman with a big purse and her two daughters visited a Plaza store, a $135 garment went missing. This is the third time merchandise disappeared when she visited, and all three were banished from the store.


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Putin Shirtless Again
57-year-old Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once again released to the public 20 pictues of him being super-manly, riding horses shirtless and walking along a river on a camping trip.
According to the Times of London:
The photos will inevitably trigger mass swooning by women all over Russia - as well as unfavourable comparisons of their husbands to Mr Putin's manly physique. They will also confirm the Russian Prime Minister's status as a gay icon.
Yes, well, you said it.
On his virility-proving camping trip, Putin also rode a mini-submarine to the bottom of Lake Baikal and attached a tracking device to a whale. During Obama's trip to Russia, Putin dressed in black and bragged of performing a wheelie on a motorcycle with a local biker gang. "He has also been shown co-piloting a fighter jet and shooting a tiger."
Observers say these comically extreme demonstrations of archaic tropes of virile masculinity suggest that the despotic ruler of Russia is a quirky Wes Anderson surrogate father figure and Russia is his shiftless, emotionally damaged Wilson brother/Jason Schwartzman. Russian state-owned television is expected to edit the camping trip footage into a quirky montage scored by something from the Nuggets box.

subset: commoncrawl


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Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In a recent post, I described how the El Nino/La Nina alteration operates as a giant pump. Whenever the Pacific Ocean gets too warm across its surface, the Nino/Nina pump kicks in and removes the warm water from the Pacific, pumping it first west and thence poleward. I also wrote about dolphins in a piece called "Here There Be Dragons".
Fulfilling an obligation I incurred in the latter paper by saying I would write about emergence and climate, let me take a larger overview of the situation by noting that both the El Nino pump and the dolphins are examples of a special class of things that are called "emergent" phenomena.
Figure 1. Hands emerging from the paper …
Emergence is a very important concept. Systems with emergent phenomena operate under radically different rules than those without. Today I want to talk about emergent systems, and why they need to be analyzed in different ways than systems which do not contain emergent phenomena.
Examples of natural emergent phenomena with which we are familiar include sand dunes, the behavior of flocks of birds, vortexes of all kinds, termite mounds, consciousness, and indeed, life itself. Familiar emergent climate phenomena include thunderstorms, tornadoes, clouds, cyclones, El Ninos, and dust devils.
Generally speaking, we recognize emergent phenomena because they surprise us. By that, I mean emergent phenomena are those which are not readily predictable from the underlying configuration and physics of the situation. Looking at a termite, if you didn't know about their mounds there's no way you'd say "I bet these bugs build highly complex structures a thousand times taller than they are, with special air passages designed to keep them cool". You wouldn't predict mounds from looking at termites, no way. Termite mounds are an emergent phenomenon.
The El Nino phenomenon is another excellent example of emergent phenomena. Looking at a basin of water like the Pacific, there's no way you would say "Hey, I'll bet that ocean has this complex natural system that kicks in whenever the ocean overheats, and it pumps millions of cubic kilometers of warm water up to the poles." You wouldn't predict the existence of the El Nino from the existence of the Pacific Ocean. It also is an emergent phenomenon.
In addition to their surprising emergence from the background, what other characteristics do emergent phenomena possess to allow us to tell them from other non-emergent phenomena?
One common property of emergent phenomena is that they are flow systems which are far from equilibrium. As a result, they need to evolve and change in order to survive. They are mobile and mutable, not fixed and unchanging. And locally (but of course not globally) they can reverse entropy (organize the local environment). Indeed, another name for emergent phenomena is "self-organized phenomena".
Another key to recognizing emergent phenomena is that they arise spontaneously when conditions are right. They don't have to be artificially generated. They create themselves in response to local conditions (temperature, humidity, etc.) passing some threshold.
Next, they often have a lifespan. By a "lifespan", I mean that they come into existence at a certain time and place, generally when some local natural threshold is exceeded. Thereafter they are in continuous existence for a certain length of time, and at the end of that time, they dissipate or disappear.
Another characteristic of emergent phenomena is that they are not cyclical, or are at best pseudo-cyclical. They do not repeat or move in any regular or ordered or repetitive fashion. Often they can move about independently, and when they can do so, their movements can be very hard to predict.
Another feature of emergent phenomena is that they are often threshold-based. By that I mean that they rarely emerge below that threshold, but above it, their numbers increase rapidly.
Another attribute of emergent systems is that they are often associated with phase changes in the relevant fluids, e.g. clouds occur because of a phase change of water.
One final attribute of threshold-based emergent systems is crucial to this discussion—they exhibit "overshoot" or hysteresis. In the Rayleigh-Bénard circulation shown below, it takes a certain threshold temperature difference from top to bottom to cause the emergence of the circulation pattern. But once that circulation is established, it will persist even though you turn the heat down far below the initiation threshold temperature.
So those are some of the characteristic features of emergent phenomena.
• They are flow systems far from equilibrium that arise spontaneously, often upon crossing a critical threshold.
• They are not obviously predictable from the underlying conditions.
• They move and act unpredictably, they are often associated with phase changes, and they exhibit "overshoot" (hysteresis).
However, not all emergent systems are created equal. Some of them are what might be termed "field-wide". An example of this is the spontaneous emergence of "Rayleigh-Bénard" natural circulation in a fluid heated from the bottom and cooled from the top.
Figure 2. Rayleigh-Bénard circulation. At the end of six seconds (lower right) an organized series of rising and falling areas is emerging. It is characterized by narrower rapidly upwelling sections, separated by larger, slower-moving downwelling sections. Original Caption: Onset and development of thermal convection cells in Rayleigh-Benard convection. Note the regularity of initial "bubbles" and their coalescence to form larger loops. SOURCE
Another, more complex type of emergent systems are what might be called "independent". Examples of these in the climate world are thunderstorms and dust devils. Unlike the field-wide emergent phenomena, these are free to roam about the landscape. Like all flow systems far from equilibrium, they are constantly adjusting and evolving to meet the physical constraints. For example, thunderstorms move preferentially across the surface to warmer areas.
As I said above, I want to highlight the difference between the analysis of systems that do and do not contain emergent phenomena. My thesis is that systems with emergent phenomena cannot be analyzed in the same manner as systems without emergent phenomena. The corollary is that climate models are appropriate only for systems without emergent phenomena. Let me give an example of each kind of system so you can see the difference.
For the first system, let me consider a flat slab of iron that is warmed by the sun or some other heat source in a vacuum. As the heat source varies, the temperature of the slab of iron varies as well. This variation in temperature with energy input is quite regular and predictable. If we graph the changes, we'd see that there are no sharp bends in the graph. In addition, the more energy that the iron is receiving, the hotter it gets, with an unchanging mathematical relationship between downwelling radiation and the temperature of the iron slab. So we could approximate it by a straight line.
Now, let's replace the flat slab of iron with a flat slab of cool water, and we'll add the possibility of clouds and thunderstorms as the emergent phenomena. Starting with cool water, at first, we'd see basically the same thing as with the iron slab—the more energy we add, the warmer the water gets. Everything is all nicely proportional, the water is acting just like the iron. (Yes, there are a million details, but work with me here. It's a thought experiment.)
But at a certain point, a curious and surprising thing happens. A threshold is passed, and clouds form.And when they do, it reflects some of the incoming energy back to space. So we get a "knuckle" in the graph of incoming energy versus temperature. We're no longer warming as fast as we were.
If the incoming energy continues to rise, however, a more surprising thing happens. Another threshold is passed, and thunderstorms begin to form. These cool the surface in a host of ways, most importantly by piping the warm surface air through the middle of the thunderstorm up to high altitudes. This avoids almost all of the greenhouse gases (H2O and CO2) in the lower troposphere and allows for free radiation of huge amounts of thermal energy to space. Not only that, but thunderstorms are radically different from a feedback because they cool the surface down to well below the thunderstorm initiation threshold temperature. This means that they can not only slow down a local temperature increase—they can stop the warming in its tracks and even cool things down.
And at that point, when thunderstorms start forming, the water basically stops warming. Further increases in incoming energy are simply equaled by further increases in thunderstorms and changes in their orientation such that the surface temperature hardly warms after that.
Now, one of the claims of the AGW supporters is that there is a linear relationship between downwelling energy and temperature. They say that any increase in incoming energy must be matched by an increase in surface temperature. Despite the known non-linearity of the system, the claim is made that over a narrow interval, a linear approximation of the relationship between energy and temperature is a very reasonable approximation to the reality.
But in the thunderstorm part of the tropical thermal regime, it is important to note that not only is the relationship between incoming energy and temperature non-linear, but in fact, there is no relationship between incoming energy and temperature. So you cannot even approximate it with a linear relationship. In that regime, increases in incoming energy are generally balanced out by increases in thunderstorm numbers and associated increased evaporation and convection, leaving only small residual temperature changes.
So one reason you can't simply map a linear approximation to a non-linear relationship is that in the thunderstorm regime, there is almost no relationship, non-linear or otherwise, between incoming energy and temperature. Given the number of phase changes of water that are involved in the thunderstorm system, this should be no surprise at all—the same exact situation occurs when water is boiling. The temperature of the boiling water can no longer be even approximated by looking at how much energy is going into the water. The boiling water system simply moves energy through it at a faster rate, it doesn't run any hotter. The exact same thing is going on in the thunderstorm regime. If you increase the solar radiation, all you get is more thunderstorms moving faster. The surface doesn't get hotter, the energy and the water just circulate faster.
There is a second reason that you can't just take an average, then note that the average doesn't move much, and assume linearity. The problem is that in the tropics, the climate sensitivity is very different depending on the time of day. Here's why. First, without reference to anything else, tropical climate sensitivity is an inversely proportional function of temperature for several reasons.
• Radiation is a function of T^4.
• Parasitic losses increase with temperature.
• Emergent cooling mechanisms (thunderstorms, dust devils, rain) are temperature based with high numbers appearing once the local system goes above some threshold of emergence.
So clearly, climate sensitivity is inversely proportional to temperature, falling as temperature rises. It is not a constant in any sense of the word.
Next, climate sensitivity varies over both space and time. In the early morning in the all-critical tropics where the energy enters the planet-sized heat engine we call "climate", the temperature rises rapidly because of the lack of clouds—a high change in temperature per change in watts (high sensitivity). In the late morning, the watts are still rising but the clouds greatly reduce the temperature rise—smaller change in temperature per change in watts (low sensitivity). And indeed, certain areas at certain times can show negative sensitivity, and some areas of the planet are not sensitive to further forcing at all.
Now, the global average climate sensitivity, the one that people take as a constant, is no more than the average of these highly varying sensitivities. But the average is greatly misleading because it is taken as constant or semi-constant. In the real world, however, climate sensitivity not constant in any sense. It is both inversely proportional to temperature and highly non-linear.
For example, in Figure 3 above, the "climate sensitivity" is taken as the average slope of the linear trend line relating temperature and incoming radiation. As you can see, if the earth were like an iron slab with no emergent phenomena, a straight light approximates the curve extremely well at every temperature. But in the real world with water and clouds, the trend line is meaningless—it doesn't represent the actual climate sensitivity at any temperature.
As a result, you can't just say that because the global average surface temperature doesn't vary much, we can treat it as a constant. The average is not real, it is a mathematical chimera. In the real world, we don't see an average temperature. If the "average temperature" goes up by one degree, and it happens to be evenly spread out, let's say the morning temperature goes from say 7°C to 8°C, while the afternoon goes from 22°C to 23°C.
But both the climate sensitivity, and the change in climate sensitivity with temperature, are very, very different in the two temperature regimes of morning and afternoon. It takes much, much more energy to go from 22°C to 23°C than it does to go from 7°C to 8°C. So while the average temperature doesn't change much, that is highly deceptive. In reality, the dependence of sensitivity on temperature makes a huge difference in how the system actually reacts to changes in forcing.
To explain this in detail, I'm going to shamelessly steal, re-heat, and re-forge a section from my earlier post called "It's Not About Feedback" because it is highly relevant to the questions I'm discussing. To understand why emergent phenomena are critical to understanding the climate, here is the evolution of the day and night in the tropical ocean. The tropical ocean is where the majority of the sun's energy enters the huge heat engine we call the climate. So naturally, it is also where the major thermoregulatory mechanisms are located.
At dawn, the atmosphere is stratified, with the coolest air nearest the surface. The nocturnal overturning of the ocean is coming to an end. The sun is free to heat the ocean. The air near the surface eddies randomly.
Figure 4. Average conditions over the tropical ocean shortly after dawn.
As you can see, there are no emergent phenomena in this regime. Looking at this peaceful scene, you wouldn't guess that you could be struck by lightning in a few hours … emergence roolz. As the sun continues to heat the ocean, around ten or eleven o'clock in the morning there is a sudden regime shift. A new circulation pattern replaces the random eddying. As soon as a critical temperature/humidity threshold is passed, local Rayleigh-Bénard-type circulation cells spring up everywhere. This is the first transition, from random circulation to Rayleigh-Bénard circulation.
These cells transport both heat and water vapor upwards. By late morning, the Rayleigh-Bénard circulation is typically strong enough to raise the water vapor to the local lifting condensation level (LCL). At that altitude, the water vapor condenses into clouds as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 5. Average conditions over the tropical ocean when cumulus threshold is passed.
Note that this area-wide shift to an organized circulation pattern is not a change in feedback. It has nothing to do with feedback. It is a self-organized emergent phenomenon. It is threshold-based, meaning that it emerges spontaneously when a certain threshold is passed. In the wet tropics there's plenty of water vapor, so the major variable in the threshold is the temperature. In addition, note that there are actually two distinct emergent phenomena in the drawing—the Rayleigh-Bénard circulation which emerges prior to the cumulus formation, and which is enhanced and strengthened by the totally separate emergence of the clouds.
Note also that we now have several changes of state involved as well, with evaporation from the surface and condensation and re-evaporation at altitude.
Under this new late-morning cumulus circulation regime, much less surface warming goes on. More of the sunlight is reflected back to space, so less energy makes it into the system to begin with. Then the increasing surface wind due to the cumulus-based circulation pattern increases the evaporation, reducing the surface warming even more by moving latent energy up to the lifting condensation level.
Note that the system is self-controlling. If the ocean is a bit warmer, the new circulation regime starts earlier in the morning and it cuts down the total daily warming. On the other hand, if the ocean is cooler than usual, clear morning skies last later into the day, allowing increased warming. The system is regulated by the time of onset of the regime change.
Let's stop at this point in our examination of the tropical day and consider the idea of "climate sensitivity", the sensitivity of surface temperature to forcing. The solar forcing is constantly increasing as the sun rises higher in the sky. In the morning before the onset of cumulus circulation, the sun comes through the clear atmosphere and rapidly warms the surface. So the thermal response is large, and the climate sensitivity is high.
After the onset of the cumulus regime, on the other hand, much of the sunlight is reflected back to space. Less sunlight remains to warm the ocean. In addition to reduced sunlight, there is enhanced evaporative cooling. Compared to the morning, the climate sensitivity is much lower. The heating of the surface slows down.
So here we have two situations with very different climate sensitivities. In the early morning, climate sensitivity is high, and the temperature rises quickly with the increasing solar insolation. In the late morning, a regime change occurs to a situation with much lower climate sensitivity. Adding extra solar energy doesn't raise the temperature anywhere near as fast as it did earlier.
Moving along through the day, at some point in the afternoon there is a good chance that the cumulus circulation pattern is not enough to stop the continued surface temperature increase. When the temperature exceeds a certain higher threshold, another complete regime shift takes place. Some of the innocent cumulus clouds suddenly mutate and grow rapidly into towering monsters. The regime shift involves the spontaneous generation of those magical, independently mobile heat engines called thunderstorms.
Thunderstorms are dual-fuel heat engines. They run on low-density air. At the base of the thunderstorms that air rises and condenses out the moisture. The condensation releases heat that re-warms the air, which rises deep into the troposphere.
Figure 6. Afternoon thunderstorm circulation over the tropical ocean.
There are a couple of ways to get low-density air. One is to heat the air. This is how a thunderstorm gets started, as a strong cumulus cloud. The sun plus GHG radiation combine to heat the surface, which then warms the air. The low-density air rises. When that Rayleigh-Benard circulation gets strong enough, thunderstorms start to form.
Once the thunderstorm is started, the second fuel is added to the fire — water vapor. Counter-intuitively, the more water vapor there is in the air, the lighter it becomes. The thunderstorm generates strong winds around its base. Evaporation is proportional to wind speed, so this greatly increases the local evaporation.
This, of course, makes the air lighter, and makes the air rise faster, which makes the thunderstorm stronger, which in turn increases the wind speed around the thunderstorm base, which increases the evaporation even more … a thunderstorm is a regenerative system, much like a fire where part of the energy is used to power a bellows to make the fire burn even hotter. Once it is started, it is much harder to stop.
This gives thunderstorms a unique ability that, as far as I know, is not represented in any of the climate models. A thunderstorm is capable of driving the surface temperature well below the initiation temperature that was needed to get the thunderstorm started. It can run on into the evening, and often well into the night, on its combination of thermal and evaporation energy sources.
Thunderstorms can be thought of as local leakages, heat pipes that transport warm moist air rapidly from the surface to the lifting condensation level where the moisture turns into clouds and rain, and from there to the upper atmosphere without interacting with the intervening greenhouse gases. The air and the energy it contains is moved to the upper troposphere hidden inside the cloud-shrouded thunderstorm tower, without being absorbed or hindered by GHGs on the way.
Thunderstorms cool the surface in a host of ways, utilizing a combination of cold water, shade, wind, spray, evaporation, albedo changes and cold air.
And just like the onset of the cumulus circulation, the onset of thunderstorms occurs earlier on days when it is warmer, and it occurs later (and sometimes not at all) on days that are cooler than usual.
So again, we see that there is no way to assign an average climate sensitivity. The warmer it gets, the less each additional watt per metre actually warms the surface.
Finally, once all of the fireworks of the daytime changes are over, first the cumulus and then the thunderstorms decay and dissipate. A final and again different regime ensues. The main feature of this regime is that during this time, the ocean radiates about the amount of the energy that it absorbed during all of the previously described regimes. How does it do this? Another emergent phenomenon …
Figure 8. Conditions prevailing after the night-time dissipation of the daytime clouds.
During the nighttime, the surface is still receiving energy from the GHGs. This has the effect of delaying the onset of oceanic overturning, and of reducing the rate of cooling. Note that the oceanic overturning is once again the emergent Rayleigh-Bénard circulation. Because there are no clouds, the ocean can radiate to space more freely. In addition, the overturning of the ocean constantly brings new water to the surface, to radiate and cool. This increases the heat transfer across the interface.
As with the previous thresholds, the timing of this final transition is temperature-dependent. Once a critical threshold is passed, oceanic overturning kicks in. Stratification is replaced by circulation, bringing new water to radiate, cool, and sink. In this way, heat is removed from the ocean, not just from the surface as during the day, but from the entire body of the upper mixed layer of the ocean.
There are a few things worth pointing out about this whole system.
First, this is what occurs in the tropics, which is where the largest amount of energy enters the hot end of the great heat engine we call the climate.
Next, sometimes increases in incoming energy are turned mostly into temperature. Other times, incoming energy increases are turned mostly into physical work (the circulation of the ocean and atmosphere that transports energy to the poles). And other times, increasing energy is mostly just moved from the tropics to the poles.
Next, note that this whole series of changes is totally and completely dependent on temperature threshold based emergent phenomena. It is a mistake to think of these as being feedback. It's more like a drunk walking on a narrow walkway. The guardrails are not feedback—they are a place where the rules change. The various thresholds in the climate system are like that—when you cross them, everything changes. The ocean before and after the onset of nocturnal overturning are very different places.
And this, in turn, all points to one of the most important control features of the climate—time of onset. How much energy the ocean loses overnight depends critically on what time the overturning starts. The temperature of the tropical afternoon depends on what time the cumulus kick in, and what time the thunderstorms start.
Finally, look at the difficulty in analyzing or modeling this kind of situation. You have a grid box that is far larger than any cloud or thunderstorm. And all you have to go on, the only things in your model, are the average statistics of that gridbox. And the main control system is the timing of the initiation of threshold-based phenomena that are far below your model's gridcell size …
Think about say the average humidity of the tropical Pacific where there are thunderstorms. As soon as the thunderstorms kick in, they start discharging dry air up high. This dry air cools and descends in the area between the thunderstorms. So if you were to average the relative humidity of the bulk of the atmosphere across say one gridcell of a climate model, a hundred miles square or so, you'd see humidity falling as thunderstorms develop.
But this bulk drying of the downwelling air masks what is really happening. Under the thunderstorms, the storm-driven winds kick the evaporation into overdrive. The dry surrounding air is drawn in, loaded to the brim with moisture via the increased evaporation, and shot skyward at rates up to 10 m/sec. In a few minutes, it has moved up to the LCL, the "lifting condensation level", where it condenses as clouds and rain.
As a result, despite the fact that the bulk atmosphere is drying, immense amounts of moisture are being moved vertically through the system. So simple averages are useless. The system is moving more water but the average relative humidity of the bulk atmosphere has dropped.
As this shows, increasing energy input may only increase the throughput, rather than increasing the temperature. Not all of the energy that hits the tropical ocean is immediately radiated back to space. A large amount of it is moved, via the ocean and the atmosphere, towards the polar regions before finally returning to space. This means that one of the crucial determinants of the temperature of the tropical regions, as well as of the polar regions, is the rate of energy throughput—how much energy is moved from the tropics to the poles. Once the system is into the thunderstorm regime, almost all of the incoming energy goes to simply turning the wheel faster, moving more energy from the surface to the upper troposphere, moving more air and water from the tropics to the polar regions. So instead of warming up the surface, the energy is moved skywards and polewards.
Again, however, these changes in throughput make the situation difficult to analyze. The dang system won't ever stand still, it responds to everything that happens. How can one accurately measure how much energy is being moved and transformed by a thunderstorm? It can be done but it's not easy.
An allied difficulty is with the size of the phenomena. Thunderstorms are one of the most common natural emergent heat engines on the surface of the planet. But they are way, way below the typical grid size of a climate model. As a result, they simply cannot be simulated in modern global climate models. This means that they must be "parametrized", which as near as I can tell comes from the Latin and means "made up to fit the programmer's preconceptions". But while parametrizing a simple system is not difficult, parametrizing a system containing emergent phenomena is a very hard thing to do well.
In part, this problem arises from the very thing causing the need to parameterize—the small size of the thunderstorms. The problem is that those small thunderstorms cool down small hot spots before they ever get large. I have seen, for example, a single solitary thunderstorm in the morning, sitting over some warm spot in the ocean, with not another cloud in the sky. It was feeding off of some very local hotspot that had persisted through the night, and as long as it was hot, the thunderstorm stayed and cooled it down.
How on earth can one parametrize such an instantaneous response to excess warmth? Thunderstorms spring up over hot spots and cool them down to below the initiation temperature of the thunderstorm. And that kind of quick proactive response containing overshoot is not easily put into parameters.
And given that all you have are grid box averages, how will you model the critical changes in the time of onset of the various emergent phenomena? If the cumulus doesn't appear until an hour later, or shows up an hour earlier, it makes a huge difference. And of course, the clouds and thunderstorms never show up off-time. They emerges only as and when required, because their appearance is set by the immutable laws of wind and water and evaporation and condensation. It can't occur late or early, it's always right on time. But in the models, there are no thunderstorms …
As I mentioned above, there is a range of emergent climate phenomena. In general, they work together to maintain the temperature of the planet within fairly narrow bounds. The most important one of these is the tropical thunderstorm system described above. And there is something very critical about this system, something you may not have noticed so let me repeat it. A main control on the temperature is exerted by the timing and strength of the emergent phenomena, particularly clouds and thunderstorms. Now, here's the important part. The time of day when a cloud forms is a function of the physics ruling the winds and the waves and the water and evaporation and condensation and the air and how they react to temperature.
Here's why that statement is important. It is important because of what is missing—there is no mention of CO2 because CO2 doesn't exert any direct effect on when clouds form. Clouds form in response to temperature and pressure and the like, not CO2.
So if there is a bit of additional forcing and the surface is a bit warm, the clouds simply form earlier, and the thunderstorms form earlier, and the nightly overturning of the ocean starts earlier … and that balances out the additional forcing, just like it has done for millions of years.
Nor is this just theory. I've shown that at the TAO buoys, days that start out colder than average end up warmer than average, and days that start out warmer than average end up colder … just as this theory predicts. See here and here for further discussion of the effect of emergent systems as seen in the TAO buoy records.
Now, note that I didn't say that this kind of system containing emergent temperature control systems was impossible to model … just that it is hard. I've done a lot of computer modeling myself, both iterative and non-iterative models, and so I've both written and used physics-based models, economic models, models using neural nets, machine learning algorithms, computerized evolution models, tidal models, I've played the game a lot in a lot of fields and a lot of ways. It could be done. But it can't be done the way that they are doing it because their way doesn't account for the emergent phenomena. See my post entitled "The Details Are In The Devil" for a discussion of this difficulty in modeling systems dominated by emergent phenomena.
The emergence of clouds and thunderstorms radically cooling the surface, plus the increase in convection and evaporation with temperature, plus the thermal radiation going up as the fourth power of the temperature, all combine to put a serious barrier in the way of any increases in temperature. As near as I can tell, the climate models have no such barrier. In the model world, going up six degrees or even ten degrees seems to be no big deal, model runs achieve that without breaking a sweat.
But in the real world, of course, Murphy conspires with nature to make sure that every single additional degree is harder and harder to achieve … and emergent phenomena not only stop warming, they actively cool the surface down. Until both the theory and the models robustly embrace the emergent phenomena, the models will continue to be a funhouse-mirror version of reality … you can recognize it as some kind of climate but with all the distortions, you can't use that as a guide for anything.
One last question—how would I recognize a good climate model? Well, in a good model all of the emergent phenomena we know about would actually emerge, not be parametrized … because the free actions of those emergent phenomena, the variations and changes in their times and locations of appearance are what control the temperature, not the CO2 "control knob". So when the forcing from CO2 increases a watt or two, in an accurate model the clouds will emerge a few minutes earlier on average across the tropics, and the balance will be restored. This system of control by emergent phenomena has worked very well for billions of years, and it handles large swings in radiation every single day—it won't be altered by a few watts of extra forcing from CO2.


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As we wait for those apples, of course we still enjoy eating and cooking with other different varieties. Tonight's Apple Turkey Picadillo that we had for dinner used a kind of apple that we almost always have on hand - Granny Smiths! As I scanned through what we needed to make this, I was unsure if the flavor from the of mix of spices and ingredients would be something we would like or not. Once the typical combination of garlic and onions was taken care of, ground turkey (you could use all-breast meat, but I like to grind a combination of white and dark for a better texture) is added to cook and brown the meat. Smoky cumin, oregano, salt, pepper and a sweet twist with a dash of ground cloves is added to spice up the mixture. To lift up any bits of caramelized flavor-packed bits from the bottom of the skillet, tangy cider vinegar is added to loosen them up.
Tart chunks of Granny Smith apples, juicy chopped tomatoes, pungent green olives and savory Worcestershire sauce are then added to cook down and release some of their liquid to create a syrupy glaze to help keep the mixture moist. The smell that filled the kitchen was wonderful when the cumin and cloves hit the pan - the mixture of sweet, tart and savory made for a fragrant filling dinner that I'll be sure to make again during this apple season. You could serve this over tortillas or even on a bed of nutty brown rice, but I decided to use it as a stuffing inside a couple halves of whole wheat pita bread. We also thought it would be fun to use this as a filling in those Tostito's Scoops!
Apple Turkey Picadillo


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North Benson
Additional Photos
North Benson
Ask almost any citizen of Omaha about the Benson area and their reply will be that "Benson's Back" not that it's ever really been gone. But there's a new vibrancy and energy along Maple Street that is attracting an eclectic clientele—foodies, musicians, lovers of music and people of all ages who enjoy having a good time.
In the late 1887's Benson Place was established as its own entity northwest of the city of Omaha by Erastus Benson, a land speculator and investor. By 1917 the population had grown to over 5,000 people and was annexed by the city of Omaha. At that time, the town was the site of many well maintained houses of various styles and sizes and had an active main street. It was also home to many churches and progressive schools, which were a terrific addition to the city.
Today, the area is family friendly with homes that are affordable for first time buyers. And with revitalization of the area's core streets and membership in the Benson Ames Business Alliance, it appears that the future is bright for the Benson area.


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White Papers For DummiesExplore Book Buy On Amazon
Use the right type of white paper for the right challenge: either a backgrounder, a numbered list, or a problem/solution. The following table outlines the features of each type of white paper and gives you an idea of when to use each one.
|Numbered List
|An in-depth look at the features and benefits of a certain product or service
|A numbered set of tips, questions, answers, or points about some issue
|A persuasive essay that uses facts and logic to present a new solution to a problem
|B2B buyers near the bottom of the sales funnel
|Anyone interested in the issue
|B2B buyers near the top of the sales funnel; also analysts, bloggers, channel partners, and journalists
|A factual description of the technical or business benefits of a product or service
|A light and lively roundup of points or highlights about some issue
|Useful information about an industry-wide problem that educates readers and positions your company as a trusted advisor
|When to use
|To support your firm's position as an undisputed leader
in the field
To support technical evaluations
To support a product launch
|To get attention with provocative views
To cast FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) on competitors
To nurture prospects through a complex sale
|To generate leads
To educate your market
To build recognition for your company
|8+ pages plus cover
|5 to 7+ pages plus cover
|8 to 12 pages plus cover
|Typical contents
Features and benefits of each feature
Conclusions and call to action
About the company
Numbered points (between 3 and 9)
Conclusions and call to action (optional)
About the company (optional)
|Executive summary
Industry-wide problem
Existing solutions and drawbacks
New, improved solution
Case study (optional)
Buyer's guide
Conclusions and call to action
About the company


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VIDEO: Mitt Romney Sings 'America The Beautiful'
Maybe it's the latest poll numbers. Maybe it was being among a crowd of a few thousand supporters.
But Mitt Romney, long-known for being a little stiff, broke out into song during a campaign event at a retirement community in The Villages, Fla.
As The Washington Post puts it, the song marked a jubilant end to a pretty negative campaign in Florida. And one thing you can take away from it is that Romney sounds like a confident candidate.
Of course, this also follows President Obama's singing detour at Harlem's Apollo Theater, so the two will inevitably be compared. So we ask:
h/t: NPR's Kathy Rushlow.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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iLounge, the Web site devoted to the iPod and iPhone has taken its show on the road—specifically the iLounge Pavilion at the International Consumer Electronics Show. Hosting more than 100 vendors, stretching three aisles, and spanning the breadth of the Las Vegas Convention Center's North Hall, the iLounge Pavilion is where I spent the bulk of Thursday. The Pavilion, in addition to being a good place to find iPhone, iPod, and some Mac products gathered in a single area, was enlightening in that it underscored the make-up of today's iPhone and iPod market.
To begin with, although a variety of products were on display in the various vendors' booths, there were a lot of cases—vendors selling cases included Case-Mate, EasyHood, Fruitshop, Hard Candy Cases, Helium Digital, Incipio, , IvySkin, Otterbox, and Tunewear. Interestingly, however, the vast majority of these cases were for the iPhone and iPod touch. I saw only a handful of cases for the iPod classic, nano, and shuffle.
I spoke with one vendor who had been selling iPod cases for years who confessed that interest in cases for "traditional iPods" had fallen off to the point where his company simply wasn't going to make them any longer. Other vendors said they were still selling cases for these iPods but that they were devoting the bulk of their energy to the iPhone and iPod touch. Apple is shy about detailing exactly how many specific iPod units it sells each quarter, but if these vendors are any indication, interest in accessorizing traditional iPods is on the wane.
Going hand-in-hand with new cases were earbuds as fashion accessories. I saw a lot of earbuds that sported colorful exteriors. And when pitching these earbuds, that's what you heard about—their look. The subject of how they sounded was rarely broached.
Power accessories were also popular. Again, many were designed with the iPhone in mind. Dexim, for example, was showing off its $55 P-Flip Foldable Power Dock, a folding dock that includes a 2000mAh Lithium Polymer battery. Macally, Griffin Technology, and XtremeMac were also offering external chargers for iPod and iPhone. Although many of these products were compatible with traditional iPods as well as the iPhone and iPod touch, vendors specifically mentioned lengthening the charge of an iPhone's battery. And, even more specifically, citing the advantage of using such an external battery on a long-distance flight when you want to watch video as you fly and still have a charged phone when you land.
The Pavilion offered more than a collection of case vendors. Microvision, for example, showed off its $500 iPhone-compatible pico projector. Etymotic Research and Westone were on hand with their professional headphones. Alpine Electronics offered looks at its iPod/iPhone compatible auto systems. And the iLounge booth featured a nostalgic look back at the history of the iPod by creating display cases that included a version of every iPod model released by Apple.
Read more of our coverage of CES 2010.


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|LUO, JUAN - University Of Maryland
|YU, YING - China Agricultural University
|MITRA, APRATIM - University Of Maryland
|Zhang, Huanmin
|Liu, Ge - George
|SONG, JIUZHOU - University Of Maryland
Submitted to: Plant and Animal Genome Conference
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/30/2012
Publication Date: 1/14/2013
Citation: Luo, J., Yu, Y., Mitra, A., Zhang, H., Liu, G., Song, J. 2013. Genome-wide copy number variant analysis in inbred chickens lines with different susceptibility to Marek's disease [abstract]. Plant and Animal Genome XXI Conference, January 12-16, 2013, San Diego, California. A-P0649. Avaliable: https://pag.confex.com/pag/xxi/webprogram/Paper5185.html.
Interpretive Summary:
Technical Abstract: Breeding of genetically resistant chickens to Marek's disease (MD) is a vital strategy to poultry health. To find the markers underlying the genetic resistance to MD, copy number variation (CNV) was initially examined in inbred MD-resistant and -susceptible chicken lines. A total of 45 CNV regions (CNVR) were found in 4 lines of chickens, and 28 of them were potentially involved in immune response and cell proliferation. More importantly, two CNVRs related with MD-resistance were transmitted to descendent recombinant congenic lines that differ in susceptibility to MD. Our findings may help to make a better strategy for MD resistance in poultry.


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Old Dogs Could've Used a Few New Tricks
- Christa Banister Crosswalk.com Contributing Writer
- 2009 25 Nov
DVD Release Date: March 9, 2010
Theatrical Release Date: November 25, 2009
Rating: PG (for some mild rude humor)
Genre: Family/Comedy
Run Time: 88 min.
Director: Walt Becker
Actors: John Travolta, Robin Williams, Kelly Preston, Ella Bleu Travolta, Connor Rayburn, Lori Loughlin, Seth Green, Bernie Mac, Rita Wilson, Amy Sedaris
In what's not exactly a ringing endorsement for a tasteful family comedy, the movie trailer for Old Dogs boasts that it's brought to you by the director of Wild Hogs.
While it's safe to say that Walt Becker doesn't dig quite so deep in the slop bucket for his low-brow giggles, (it is rated PG, after all) Old Dogs could've used a few new tricks, namely a stronger, less-schmaltzy script, a more convincing friendship between our protagonists played by John Travolta and Robin Williams respectively, and well, a few more laughs that don't involve bodily functions. Or a perpetually cross-eyed character who constantly runs into things and inevitably frightens small children (even more shocking is that it's Rita Wilson who signed on for that unfortunate cameo).
Truth be told, not many people at our packed Saturday morning screening, an audience that included kids, teens and parents alike, were laughing much at all. And that's because Old Dogs, save for a scene or two, just wasn't very funny. Worse yet, the familiar moral of valuing what's really important in life (and it's not those long hours at the office, surprise surprise) feels
particularly tacked on and inauthentic.
Note to the writers: It actually helps if the children are more than just for show. As cute as they are, they never truly feel part of the story.
Back to what we do know, apparently, Charlie and Dan have been friends for a long time. Or that's what we're shown in the opening montage with a slew of cutesy pics anyway. And through thick and thin and Dan's two divorces, they've also been successful business partners for an independent sports marketing firm.
While we have no idea what their work actually entails (aside from telling over-the-top, embarrassing stories about each other to prospective clients), Charlie and Dan are on the cusp of a huge business deal that'll bring in the really big money, the kind of fundage that'll help them be set for life. That is, if Dan can lose a little of his emotional baggage and get his act together before it ruins the duo's chances of landing that deal. See, he's still lamenting a one-night stand with Vicki (Kelly Preston), a relationship that began on a vacation to Miami that segued into a quickie marriage (and a quickie divorce once everyone was sober) seven years ago.
Even though Charlie constantly extols the many virtues of the bachelor life, Dan just ain't buyin' it. He desperately longs for a love to call his own and gets in touch with Vicki via a seven-page, single-spaced letter (yes, an actual letter, not a Facebook message), hoping for a second chance.
Conveniently, right around the time that Vicki receives Dan's magnum opus, she's in a bit of a legal pickle. After an episode of environmental protesting, she doesn't just get a fine for her wrongdoing. Instead, she's landed herself a two-week jail stint. As the mother of fraternal twins Emily (Ella Bleu Travolta, rounding out what's ultimately a family affair) and Zach (Conner Rayburn), she's not quite sure how she's going to take care of them when she's behind bars. So in an act of desperation, she pays a visit to their father who doesn't even know he's a father: Dan (quelle surprise).
Of course, saying that Dan is surprised by this turn of events is the understatement of the century. Set in his ways and technically old enough to be the kids' grandfather, he doesn't take too kindly to Vicki's request to care for his kids while she's in the slammer. But to win her back? It might be worth it.
Since she's got no one else, he eventually agrees to the task, which leads to a slew of predictable, fish-out-of-water moments for Dan and Charlie, who reluctantly agrees to the share the parental load. But instead of offering the "old dogs" an opportunity to see life through a new lens, the scriptwriters offer up a boring, by-the-numbers journey jam-packed with juvenile humor that's simply a waste of talented actors like Williams, Travolta and comedic scapegoat Seth Green, who is simply picked on again and again for his slight stature.
Why anyone thought any of this would deliver the funny is a real mystery to me, and the timing couldn't be worse. Truth be told, if you're looking for some family-bonding laughs after you've enjoyed the turkey and all the trimmings, watching a re-run of John Hughes' Planes, Trains and Automobiles on cable (preferably the edited version) is a far better choice. Somehow, Hughes found that delicate balance between serving up gut-busting laughs and telling a story that thoughtfully underscores the importance of family without resorting to the gimmicky theatrics that drags Old Dogs way, way down.
- Drugs/Alcohol: Social drinking during business meetings, plus an ongoing joke about getting Charlie and Dan's prescribed meds all mixed up, a funny scene that would probably be pretty dangerous if this wasn't a movie.
- Language/Profanity: Not much in the way of actual expletives, just a lot of rude banter, scatological and otherwise.
- Sex/Nudity: A reference to a one-night stand, plus ongoing suspicions that Charlie and Dan are a gay couple, when in truth they were just two friends watching a couple of kids.
- Violence: Only of a comedic nature, and there's plenty of slapstick violence throughout including characters getting hit hard in rather sensitive areas.
Christa Banister is a full-time freelancer writer, specializing in music, movies and books-related reviews and interviews and is the author of two novels, Around the World in 80 Dates and Blessed Are the Meddlers. Based in St. Paul, Minn., she also weighs in on various aspects of pop culture on her personal blog.
For more information, including her upcoming book signings and sample chapters of her novels, check out her Website.