In the interest of fair and balanced discussion, one year doesn't make a trend. If this holds true and weather goes back to normal*, that'd be great. In fact, that'd be exceptionally great (and ruin my master plan to own beach-front property when the ice-caps melt).

*Agree that normal is hard to define. Normal for the existence of recorded history would probably be better. Except that this is wildly variable, too.

bastards.

"In the interest of fair and balanced discussion, one year doesn't make a trend."

Unless the temperature is rising, in which case one month = OMG TEH SKY IS FALLING

for some of the loons, yes, that was the case. But from what I've read of the IPCC (just the summary), they actually looked at trending. Not that they don't have issues, but the actual scientist types are much better than the loons.

Well, you can complain all you want about economy-strangling regulations in the name of the environment. but without the regulatory laws already in place, the air you breathe and the water you drink--or at least have made into booze and soda--would be a LOT filthier than it is now. Witness Pittsburgh, L.A., Cleveland, etc. for examples.

Same with greenhouse emissions. While the Chinese and the Indians will never regulate their industries--or even if they do, they'll never enforce their regulations--our own piece of that pie is significant enough that if only WE cut back, it'd make a sizable impact.

And even if the threat of greenhouse emissions IS overblown, that the planet is only going through one of its periodic heating phases in its weather patterns and human interference is insignificant--though most contemporary non-whacko science suggests the contrary--then by cleaning our act up we only leave a better place. Nothing is lost.

But if it IS us who are the problem, and we DON'T try to fix it...well, all I can say is enjoy all the mountainside beachfront property once the ice caps melt.

Well, you can complain all you want about economy-strangling regulations in the name of the environment. but without the regulatory laws already in place, the air you breathe and the water you drink--or at least have made into booze and soda--would be a LOT filthier than it is now. Witness Pittsburgh, L.A., Cleveland, etc. for examples.

Same with greenhouse emissions. While the Chinese and the Indians will never regulate their industries--or even if they do, they'll never enforce their regulations--our own piece of that pie is significant enough that if only WE cut back, it'd make a sizable impact.

And even if the threat of greenhouse emissions IS overblown, that the planet is only going through one of its periodic heating phases in its weather patterns and human interference is insignificant--though most contemporary non-whacko science suggests the contrary--then by cleaning our act up we only leave a better place. Nothing is lost.

But if it IS us who are the problem, and we DON'T try to fix it...well, all I can say is enjoy all the mountainside beachfront property once the ice caps melt.

I wouldn't say the regulations are strangling, as of yet. Some of the nonsense I hear could be strangling, though. Personally, I think economics are having some bearing on what's going on. Unfortunately, the question is will the government let economics run it's course or will they decide they need to step in and mandate change? Sometimes that's good, sometimes it's not.

But then again, if this becomes a trend where temps stabilize down 1-2 degrees (back to "normal", IIRC), then I'll be happier for the environment. Not so much with the scientists - and it'll be damned funny to see if any backpedaling occurs.

However, even then, I'll push for greener solutions - if nothing more than to break the petroleum stranglehold. Nuclear power, wind power, geothermal, solar, etc., FTW!

the code should be better as:

Petard.Hoist(them);

it doesn't seem like a good class definition to have the owner be a property of the petard itself. more likely the reverse, the owner class would have a collection of petards that it owns. so...

foreach(Petard p in them.Petards)
{
p.Hoist(them);
}

but that would be to hoise them on every petard. if we want to hoise them just on their AGW issue petard, we'll need a method in the PetardCollection class to pull out a specific petard of a given type, or alternately, a method in the owner class to do the same. so...

Petard p = them.GetPetard(PetardType.GlobalWarming);
p.Hoise(them);

wow. it's rare that I get out-geeked, but this one is clearly in a class by itself.

My hat's been tipped in your direction, MikeJ. Kudos.

(yes, this is sincere)

The trick, of course, is coming up with a statement which a) fits on a single line and b) makes my wife laugh. While much more syntactically proper (and funny from my perspective) I don't think yours would pass the tests.

Besides, I think the newest construct would run:

var petards = from p in them.petards
where p.PetardTypeActual == PetardType.GlobalWarming
select p;

foreach (Petard p in petards)
{
p.Hoist(them);
}

But again, it'd fail both acid tests. Even though it does make me smile.

Of course, I'm using the Moonbat.Environmentalist.Watermelon namespace. Yours may be different :)

The best part is, it took me writing this post to finally get my head around how to use linq on generic lists. Ain't geeking out grand?

wow. it's rare that I get out-geeked, but this one is clearly in a class by itself.

My hat's been tipped in your direction, MikeJ. Kudos.

(yes, this is sincere)

Yeh, you get that with MikeJ. I've known him for about 17 or 18 years now. One of the geekiest (and I totally mean that as a term of endearment) people I know--that's saying a lot--yet, I am always loath (or Lolth, when it comes to D&D) to cross swords with him on the facts, esp. as relating to data processing.

Mark: I certainly agree that cleaner is better. But that's not what the AGW advocates want. They want to SAVE THE WORLD. They want to have the world truly, seriously be ENDING except for their efforts to pull it back from the brink.

Which is a better rallying cry, "let's reduce environmental lead emissions by 0.5%!" or "THE POLAR ICE CAPS ARE MELTING, BAN PRIVATELY-OWNED VEHICLES NOW!!!"

Get used to sudden blackouts if you go with wind or solar. Still no engineering solution to the fact that flipping a light switch doesn't make the sun shine or the wind blow, like it turns on other power generators.

Unfortunately, your article doesn't necessarily support your conclusions.

In addition, ERCOT said multiple power suppliers fell below the amount of power they were scheduled to produce on Tuesday. That, coupled with the loss of wind generated in West Texas, created problems moving power to the west from North Texas.

At the time of the emergency, ERCOT demand increased from 31,200 MW to a peak of 35,612 MW, about half the total generating capacity in the region, according to the agency's Web site.

So, it seems there was an engineering solution in place for when the wind stops blowing - use some portion of the other half of the state's capacity. The problem is that it wasn't used quick enough. Better detection systems for wind interruptions, shorter lead times for getting power generation up, etc., solve this.

Oh - and as you know, wind and solar aren't meant to be primary sources of power. They're ancillary. Nuclear seems to be the best current option.

Too bad Helen Caldecott is a better writer than any of us, or there might actually be a chance to convince people to go nuclear.

ooh, C# 3.0, excellent...

if you want to consolidate the filtering in the petard collection, don't use the sql-like LINQ syntax, instead use the extension/lambda form:

var petards = them.petards.Where(n => n.Type==PetardType.GlobalWarming);

foreach(Petard p in petards)
{ p.Hoise(them) };

and so we can collapse that to:

foreach(Petard p in them.petards.Where(n=>n.Type==PetardType.GlobalWarming)) { p.Hoist(them) };

one line!

and I prefer the cold anyway... here's hoping the solar minimum sticks around. if for no other reason than so we can finally move on to the next world-ending problem that never actually happens...

Good Goddess that was some serious crap she wrote. I think the debate on nuclear power, however, can be easily separated from her ravings - just takes a bit of positioning.

It's crap, but immensely appealing crap, not unlike Jerry Springer or General Hospital. She knows all the tricks, which is why she has a yearly federally funded literary award named after her, even though her claims that the most radioactive isotopes have the longest half life is not unlike a self-proclaimed marine biologist writing a book in which he claims whales are actually fish.