(can of worms alert) Globe hasn't warmed in the last 16 years 76

[beej67]

Worth a read. One significance of the article to me is the 'skeptic' isn't a loon, she's the head of the EAS department at Georgia Tech.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-report-quietly-released--chart-prove-it.html



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[JohnRBaker]

That so called ‘traffic circle’ in Massachusetts, if the hand-drawn sketch was to scale, is not at all what you see most of the time in the UK.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[moltenmetal]

rb1957: "keep right except to pass" is just fine and makes sense on roads without speed limits, and on roads with very little traffic. I too have no patience for people driving in the left lane on an empty road.

When I'm on a German autobahn, I don't pull out until there's nobody in the rear view mirror, then I pound it until I've passed and pull back in as fast as possible. No cops, no problem. Failure to do that will result in a Mercedes in your back seat! Similarly, I pound it whenever overtaking on a 2-lane highway. I've lost family members to head-on collisions so I want the hell out of the lane carrying the opposing traffic as fast as my car will get me there.

The guys riding your bumper in the left lane every time you try to pass someone here in Ontario on multi-lane divided highway are usually expecting you to drive at a speed which is certain to get you (as lead car), not them, a speeding ticket if there's a cop over the next hill. I don't like tickets and I certainly don't like demerit points, thanks.

On a multi-lane highway I have a maximum overtaking speed, and I drive at that speed until I pass the lead car by a safe distance and can pull over and drive again at my cruising speed. I'm going back into the right hand lane as soon as I can, but if there's a long string of cars or trucks to the right of me, all driving slower than my cruising speed and too close together to allow me to pull in between them, you're going to have to wait a bit.

Honest, I'm not a road hog. But I have no less right to drive at my cruising speed than anyone else does, either.

Some people have a sense of entitlement which says they and they alone are permitted to drive as fast, or as slow, as they like, in any lane they choose, regardless whether someone is in front of them, or beside them, or not. Those people are the real "road hogs". Riding someone's bumper is dangerous aggressive driving. Take a pill- we're all going to get there!

 

[TGS4]

moltenmetal - amen. I completely agree.

 

[KENAT]

molten, I certainly wasn't implying that the implication of the speed limit should be ignored, and diving into every gap between cars on a multi lane highway has it's own risks if 'keep over' is too strictly implemented.

I've driven on busy freeways/motorways plenty in both US (CA) & UK at rush hour and I'm inclined to think that even when very busy, the road system where keeping over except to overtake or allow to merge was the rule flowed better.

As to when you have a convoy of speeding vehicles; I always thought it would make more sense for the police to stop the rear guy in the convoy - on the assumption that he'd managed to catch up with the rest of the convoy so must have been going fastest at some point and if it wasn't for the cars in his way would still be going faster. (I know not necessarily the case.)

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[cranky108]

This maybe a dumb question, but why is it that the speed limit dosen't change on an up hill streach or a down hill strech? For efficienciy reasons the speed limit should increase on a down hill segment, and decrease on up hill segments. I'm not just talking about the small hills either, but like the 4, 5 , & 6% grades.

The speeds do change for sharp corners, and I still see marks in the concret up to 10 or 12 Ft high, meaning the speed signs are ignored, by people with dented cars, and trucks.

 

[KENAT]

Cranky, generally speed limits are (at least nominally) about safety not efficiency aren't they? (Though there have been exceptions such as the old US national 55 limit which Sammy had such trouble with.)

I've seen reduced down hill speed limits for trucks etc. on some roads.

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[rb1957]

i thought speed limits were just for non-tax revenue ... but i guess they are needed today, to stop people doing 120kph in a school zone

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[SomptingGuy]

60 mph on a twisty B road in the middle of nowhere in the UK is still legal. And fun.

- Steve

 

[rb1957]

and with stone hedges and wandering sheep to avoid.

story where i used to work was when we were "supporting" a UK partner, sending no end of engineers to "help" them. apparently one of them developed a reputation for returning rental sans RH side mirror ...

can we say that this thread has been successfully hi-jacked ?

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[rb1957]

oops, meant LH (pax) mirror ...

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[cranky108]

There was a story on the news about the US removing 600 weather stations because they were problematic. How does this fit with global warming?
This might be within the margen of error of the whole population of weather stations, but how many or few actual weather station data were used for any reports?

This just backs up my assesment that reports without a margen of error, or confedence factor are only intended to influence people.

To tie this in with what was discussed above, human caused warming is not because we drive cars, but because stupid excessive goverment regulations and interference.
This is not to say some regulation isen't needed, but to say some is not and is wastful.

Can we get a refund on bad goverment?

 

[beej67]

There was a story on the news about the US removing 600 weather stations because they were problematic.

How did they define "problematic?"


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[rb1957]

they were giving "bad" results ... ie results that didn't agree with the opinion ...

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[cranky108]

Some of the problematic stations were identified as being to close to heat trapping structures, which tended to keep the night time tempetures higher that the souranding area. It did not however say how many were like this or if there was another issue or reasons.

 

[zdas04]

There is a guy named Anthony Watts with NOAA who has been going from station to station and cataloging their deficiencies. A bunch of the stations are located in the exhaust plume of high rise HVAC units. Some were located in heat concentration zones (i.e., flat roof of a building with a 3 ft wall and 6-inches of gravel over the roof, the gravel absorbs heat and gives it up very slowly through the night). Some were in such bad repair that they didn't capture any new data, but kept reporting "latest" readings from sometime in the past. Some weren't reporting at all and the data collection software just made up numbers for those stations. The 600 that will be dropped from FUTURE data collection (but the last few decades will be kept in the system) were the ones that were beyond repair. There is an interesting article at CFACT.com, but I'm not going to link to it because cfact.com is a denier site and the zealots discount everything there out of hand, I don't need the grief.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"

 

[cranky108]

Bottom line is if you want to prove something, using bad data is not the way to impress an engineer. Be careful of your data sources.

Having 600 bad weather stations could be twisted either way to say either side is right. It's just bad form for NOAA to have them.

Problem is with the removals is will there be any additions?

We saw the same thing here with the removal of weather stations, that we can no longer prove our wind speed with tempeture coorlation.

 

[rb1957]

"and the data collection software just made up numbers" ... IMHO, says it all !?

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[beej67]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/en...o-actually-were-cooling-claim-scientists.html

Despite the original forecasts, major climate research centres now accept that there has been a “pause” in global warming since 1997.

The original predictions led to billions being invested in green measures to combat the effects of climate change. The changing predictions have led to the UN's climate change's body holding a crisis meeting, and the the IPCC is due to report on the situation in October. A pre-summit meeting will be held later this month.

But the leaked documents are said to show that the governments who fund the IPCC are demanding 1,500 changes to the Fifth Assessment Report - a three-volume study issued every six or seven years – as they claim its current draft does not properly explain the pause.

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