IS IT REALLY GETTING HOTTER?

This week I focused on global warming.  Well, this has been one hot summer.  Here we are into the Fall, and if you missed it, that was the Fall Equinox this past Monday.  Temperatures hit 90 F and higher all this week in Honolulu.  I don't remember when this ever occurred so late after the summer.  Actually, I golfed 18 holes yesterday at the Leilehua Golf Course, and thought, what a great day.  With a cool breeze every few seconds, this was still paradise.

Well, it turned out that last month was the hottest August in recorded history.  Record-keeping began in 1880.  And that was not all.  Summer 2014 was the warmest on record for Planet Earth, at least since 1880.  So, yes, it is getting hotter.

My postings this week have been long and pedantic, so, have a great weekend.

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HOW SERIOUS IS ISLAMIC TERRORISM TO AMERICA?

A week ago I posted on:

  WHY THE USA SHOULD COMPLETELY PULL OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

To quote:

This war in the Middle East is over the soul of Islam.  Yes, the USA is like a lightning rod by poking our nose into their business.  They don't want us there and 9/11 was a statement showing their jealousy of everything we represent.  Thus, if we just simply leave the region, there is good reason we could be left alone.  Sure, every so often there could well be another car bomb or terrorist mischief, but we'd save several trillion dollars by avoiding this portion of the world.

So I'll make the case that, compared to World War II and the Cold War, islamic terrorism is inconsequential.  But that is not a fair comparison, for WWII might have killed 85 million, and the CW brought us to the brink of a nuclear winter.  

WWII is said to have cost slightly more than $4 trillion (in dollars today), and indicators show that the Iraq-Afghanistan wars might cost as much as $6 trillion (which was money mostly wasted, compared to what we would have gained from a better educational system, national infrastructure and climate change remediation).  Said to be the two largest megaprojects in modern history are our interstate highway system at somewhat less than $500 billion and the International Space Station (now this was a lemony white elephant) at $150 billion.   

But we have today Mars One, a TV survival "stunt", to send a team to Mars in 2024 for $4 billion, and leave them there.  A quarter century ago, NASA thought it would cost $500 billion (about a trillion today) to take Man to Mars and back, but as early as 1952, Werner von Braun wrote that just the fuel to Mars would be $500 million  ($4 billion today).

As I'm off on one of my tangential excursions anyway, for the record (these are sometimes pure guesses):

• Great Pyramid of Giza:  $5 billion
• Manhattan Project  to build atomic bombs:  $26 billion
• Apollo Project to send us to the Moon and back:  $100 billion
• Great Wall of China:  $65 billion to $265 billion

Can you believe we could have had 60 monumental initiatives on the scale of the Apollo Project had we skipped those Middle East Wars?  SIXTY!!!

So back to Islamic terrorism in America, some history:

• 1993  World Trade Center bombing in New  York City (6 killed)
• 2001  World Trade Center (nearly 3000)
• 2010  Times Square car bomb attempt (zero)
• 2012  Boston Marathon (3)

That's it!  And the latter two were lone wolves.  Three Islamic-related terroristic deaths in the past 13 years.  Was that the general absence of terrorists on our soil or competence of our security system?  No doubt some combination of both.

But you need a scorecard these days:

• al-Queda:  Sunni (Wahhabi)
• ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria):  Sunni
• ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant):  same as ISIS
• other al-Queda spin offs:  Sunni

Wait a minute, where are the Shi'a terrorists?  Well, these would be Iranian state agents and Hezbollah  operatives, the latter having a feud with Israel only.  There has never been a Shi'a terroristic act in the USA.  Now you can better appreciate the statement:  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.  Note how the USA and Iran are now talking to each other.  Click here to read further about the differences between Shi'a and Sunni terrorists.

The following map reveals who is who:

Further, the great majority of Muslims in Egypt (99%), Indonesia (99%) , Bangladesh (99%) and Pakistan (87%) is Sunni.

One more ethnic group, the Kurds, numbering anywhere from 26-38 million (sometimes it's hard to tell who is a Kurd), lives in Kurdistan, which, unfortunately, includes parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq.  They are mostly Sunni, meaning they are definitely a minority in Iraq, Turkey and Syria.  There are Kurdish terrorist groups, but in Syria, they are mostly supplied by the USA against ISIS.

The CIA says that there are 31,500 ISIS fighters, including maybe 100 "Americans."  ISIS once was al-Queda in Iraq.  However, it is not all that simple, for there remain these two terrorist groups, with ISIS focused within the Middle East and al-Queda continuing to be upset about U.S. presence in the region, and therefore we remain a target on opportunity.

Before closing, here is a quote worthy of deep introspection:

Even more worrisome, the Washington Post reports that America’s “secret wars” are waged by “Special Operations forces” in “75 countries” (and “that number will likely reach 120″); in other words, the United States will have engaged in military acts in over 60% of the world’s nation-states.  After all of this, Americans will turn around and ask: “why are Muslims so violent and warlike?”

So how serious is Islamic terrorism to us?  Minimal.  Sure, continue to bomb ISIS in Syria and use the Navy Seals for special operations, but return most of our foreign deployed troops (270,000 in 150 countries) back home and cut in half the defense budget.  Keep making noises about Ukraine and Russia, but we can later worry about China, which has no interest in taking over the USA.

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UPDATES ON EBOLA, SCOTLAND, AND PAHOA BEING INUNDATED BY LAVA

On August 4 I first reported on Ebola when deaths hit 1000.  Today:

• USA Today:  21,000 cases by November (about 50% die).
• CNN World:  550,000 cases by January
• Washington Post:  1.4 million cases just in Liberia and Sierra by January

Do you get the idea something exponential is occurring?

Ebola first appeared in 1976 in the Congo (then known as Zaire) by the Ebola River.  Can this contagion spread throughout the USA?  Almost surely not unless the disease evolves to become transmittable through airborne mechanisms.

September 18 came, and went with Scotland still part of the United Kingdom.  The vote was 55% against, with 85% of those eligible casting votes.  Interesting that the largest city, Glasgow voted FOR independence 53%-47%, while Edinburgh, the second largest, went CON by 61%-39%.  Next, Texas could vote to secede in March.  Will this happen?  Nah.  Why?  Polls show 60% to 75% would vote against independence.  On the other hand, if the other 49 states in the Union vote on whether Texas can stay, there is a good chance Texas could be kicked out.  This is a joke.  I think.

The latest news today from the Hawaii Tribune Herald is that the lava flow towards Pahoa has slowed to a crawl, still about a mile from that town.  Two hundred and fifty businesses and 9,400 residents are being impacted.  Click on THIS for updates from the USGS on the Puna lava threat.

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There is a new tropical storm that popped up in the West Pacific, Kammuri at 35 MPH, expected to strengthen into a typhoon and head straight towards Japan.  However, current models show the track turning northeast before making landfall:

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SO, HAS THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE OF OUR ATMOSPHERE INCREASED OR NOT?

After trying to embarrass climate change deniers at this blogsite yesterday (scroll down to the next article), this morning I see a report that any West Coast warming was not caused by Man.  This was a NOAA study co-authored by Nathan Mantua (left) and James Johnstone (right) of the University of Washington, published by the National Academy of Sciences.

I suspect that the blowback will be a consensus that there are, of course, local differences, but the overwhelming evidence that we are, indeed, responsible, will in time prevail.  Nevertheless, I thought I'd address the matter which appears to provide global climate change skeptics their highest credibility:  WHY HAS OUR GLOBAL TEMPERATURE NOT INCREASED FOR ALMOST 18 YEARS?

First of all, there is no denying that our burning of fossil fuels has increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere:

There is also acceptance that an increase in carbon dioxide will induce a Greenhouse Effect, which will raise the temperature of the air around us.  So it is no surprise that NOAA published the following increase in the temperature of Planet Earth, in the air and on land:

Here is our temperature profile over 2000 years:

No question that the global surface temperature has for at least the past century increased.  Further, the temperature of our oceans have increased by about 1.5 F since 1880, with two-thirds of of this occurring since 1980.  So, then, how do you explain the following graph?

I can repeat:  NO GLOBAL WARMING FOR 17 YEARS AND 6 MONTHS!!!  This information comes from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), a private research company founded in 1974 to process microwave data from a variety of  NASA satellites.  This is a reputable company.

Well, this graph has been touted by Climate Depot, a web site Wikipedia indicates is run by Marc Morano, a global warming skeptic who has a degree in political science, and has worked for Rush Limbaugh and U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe.  Everyone knows the views of Limbaugh (he says the media are lying about global warming).  Inhofe  shows signs of being certifiably nuts, but has also been characterized as "a shrewd politician from the reddest of red states (Oklahoma), playing to a conservative base that appears ever more comprised of elements from the fringes of the political mainstream."  Two decades ago Inhofe had a 3G campaign strategy:  Guns, God and Gays.  Well, he has added a fourth:  Global warming.  To quote:

One of the issues he takes pride in is his insane position on the environment and climate change. Inhofe believes that catastrophic global warming is a hoax conceived by the United Nations and spread by the “Hollywood elite.” He has also stated that Global Warming is “the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state. Inhofe had previously compared the United States Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo and he compared EPA Administrator Carol Browner to Tokyo Rose.

So why are those graphics above so contradictory?  For one:

Satellites do not measure temperature. They measure radiances in various wavelength bands, which must then be mathematically inverted to obtain indirect inferences of temperature.^[1][2] The resulting temperature profiles depend on details of the methods that are used to obtain temperatures from radiances. As a result, different groups that have analyzed the satellite data have produced differing temperature datasets.

RSS publishes thousands of data sets.  The above graph showing no temperature change in 17 years and 6 months is just one of them for a specific group of parameters.  Cherry-picking is the modus operandi of global warming skeptics.

However, the following temperature plot of the past 130 years does show that there has been a definite recent stabilization, and this has been the magnum opus of the skeptics:

Here is one quote:

Scientists believe causes could include: greater-than-expected quantities of ash from volcanoes, which dims sunlight; a decline in heat from the sun during a current 11-year solar cycle; more heat being absorbed by the deep oceans; or the possibility that the climate may be less sensitive than expected to a build-up of carbon dioxide

I find this explanation less than compelling, but the science is complicated.  I suspect that this issue will encourage fossil fuel organizations to expand their broad scale disinformation campaign that seems to working, for Americans continue to believe that the danger of global warming is exaggerated (that's the dark green line at the top):

Only 23% of us feel that the media representation is accurate.

So is the average temperature of Planet Earth increasing or not?  Certainly, going back 2000 and 100 years, but, maybe there has been stability over the past 17 years and 6 months, and counting.

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IS THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE OF PLANET EARTH INCREASING OR NOT?

Yesterday, 311,000  joined the People's Climate March on the United Nations in New York City to spur an international summit beginning tomorrow to do something about global warming.  The headline this morning said:  Greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2013.

The headlines blare:

• NOAA:  2012 Hottest and 2nd-Most Extreme Year On Record.

• More recently from NOAA:

• The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for May 2014 was record highest for this month, at 0.74°C (1.33°F) above the 20th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F). 
• The global land surface temperature was 1.13°C (2.03°F) above the 20th century average of 11.1°C (52.0°F), the fourth highest for May on record. For the ocean, the May global sea surface temperature was 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20th century average of 16.3°C (61.3°F), making it the record highest for May and tying with June 1998, October 2003, and July 2009 as the highest departure from average for any month on record. 
• The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the March–May period was 0.74°C (1.33°F) above the 20th century average of 13.7°C (56.7°F), making it the second warmest such period on record, behind 2010.

• At  his most recent State of the Union speech last year, President Barack Obama indicated:  12 of the hottest years on record have come in the last 15 years!

I can go on and on, but, is there another reality?  Mind you, this is from FORBES, a publication representing the enemy to the notion that Planet Earth is dangerously warming:

• The New York Times' Global Warming Hysteria Ignores 17 years of Flat Global Temperature

• While global warming has been trumpeted as an epic climate change crisis with human-produced CO2, a trace atmospheric “greenhouse gas” branded as a primary culprit and endangering “pollutant,” remember that throughout earlier periods of Earth’s history CO2 levels have been between four and eighteen times higher than now, with temperature changes preceding, not following atmospheric CO2 changes.

• ...consider that, even today, about 97% of all current atmospheric CO2 derives from natural sources.

• Several tens of thousands of scientists have lodged formal protests regarding unscientific IPCC practices. Some critics include former supporters. One of them is Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt, a socialist founder of Germany’s environmental movement, who headed the renewable energy division of the country’s second largest utility company. His recent coauthored book titled The Cold Sun: Why the Climate Disaster Won’t Happen, charges the IPCC with gross incompetence and dishonesty, most particularly regarding fear-mongering exaggeration of known climate influence of human CO2 emissions.

• In that State of the Union presentation indicated above, Obama also said:
• Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods – all are now more frequent and more intense.

        This FORBES article retorted:

• In reality, there has been no increase in the strength or frequency of landfall hurricanes in the world’s five main hurricane basins during the past 50-70 years; there has been no increase in the strength or frequency in tropical Atlantic hurricane development during the past 370 years; the U.S. is currently enjoying the longest period ever recorded without intense Category 3-5 hurricane landfall; there has been no trend since 1950 evidencing any increased frequency of strong (F3-F-5) U.S. tornadoes; there has been no increase in U.S. flood magnitudes over the past 85 years; and long-term sea level rise is not accelerating.

• Quoted is Steven Goddard (that's the photo he uses to identify himself) from Real Science:

•  Coldest summer on record at the North Pole
• Highest August Arctic ice extent since 2006
• Record high August Antarctic ice extent
• No major hurricane strikes for eight years
• Slowest tornado season on record
• No global warming for 17 years
• Second slowest fire season on record
• Four of the five snowiest northern hemisphere winters have occurred since 2000

[But, who is Steve Goddard?  Well, that is the  pseudonym of global warming skeptic Tony Heller, who manages the blog site Real Science.  That leaf is what Heller shows to represent himself.  I wonder what he's trying to hide?  FORBES makes it seem like "Real Science" is a credible peer-reviewed scientific journal.  Nope.  I'm disappointed that this reasonably credible magazine has to stoop to this level of disinformation.  Of course, Goddard is cherry-picking data, something all climate skeptics do.]

When you read FORBES and similar perverted publications, you need to appreciate from where they're coming.  Incredible, too, how many journalists actually go to conferences sponsored by the Heartland Institute (oh, I now get it about Heller and his public image) and report on the discussions as if they represented the truth.  What network is dumb enough to use this info?  Well, Fox News, for one.  And Forbes.  Read a blog from that camp.

So is the average temperature of Planet Earth increasing or not?  Should you believe dedicated scientists or publications sponsored by the fossil fuel industry?  If you can't correctly answer these questions, then Planet Earth and Humanity are in deep trouble.

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MY ALL-TIME TOP TEN SONGS

When I woke up this morning I wondered what were my top ten songs.  While I don't have a prepared list and a year from now I will adjust this posting, for now, here goes.  I pondered about having this in three parts, but, it's Sunday, and someone out there might have ten hours or more to spare.  To begin with,  I have a rather eclectic set of genres, which I indicated earlier this month:

• Baroque (1600-1750)
• Broadway shows
• Popular music of the early '50's
• Post World War II Japanese music with a Hawaii connection

While one's favorite song is usually linked to some past memory, let me begin with compilations of what others consider as the very best:

• Baroque Top Ten (click on to listen to all ten):  Bach's Tocata and Fugue for Organ is #1, Pachelbel's Canon in D is #2 and Bach's Air on the G String is #3.  Bach's Brandenburg Concertos (yup, all 2:22 hours worth of the three) and Vivaldi's Four Seasons (that was the 42 minute set, but if you want more, here is an 8-hour version to put you to sleep...but watch those kaleidoscopic colors, wow) are prominent.  Bach, right, was dominant, but he did not make my top ten list.

• Let me combine broadway and films.  Here is a list of top 100 show tunes, with Tonight from West Side Story as #1.  That was the 1961 movie version.  Wikipedia has a compilation of compilations, and Judy Garland's Over the Rainbow seemed to be the most impressive of the lot.

• Billboard's Top 100 for the 1950's has Elvis Presley with Don't Be Cruel / Hound Dog as #1, Bill Haley and the Comets' Rock Around the Clock as #2 and Roger Williams' Autumn Leaves as #3, but the only early 50's song was Tommy Edwards' All in the Game at #31, which did not become popular until the later 50's.  This song almost made the top ten as it reminded me of a lost love.  #1 by year from Billboard:

• 1946:  Prisoner of Love, Perry Como
• 1947:  Near You, Francis Craig
• 1948:  12th Street Rag, Pee Wee Hunt
• 1949:  Riders in the Sky, Vaughn Monroe
• 1950:  Goodnight Irene, Gordon Jenkins and the Weavers
• 1951:  Too Young, Nat King Cole
• 1952:  Blue Tango, Leroy Anderson
• 1953:  Song from Moulin Rouge, Percy Faith
• 1954:  Little Things Mean a Lot, Kitty Kallen (also almost made the final list)

• Post World War II Japanese music with a Hawaii connection was covered in my posting earlier this month.

So sifting through the above  plus what's in my memory, here are my Top Ten:

• #10  While the baroque period of classical music is dominated by Johann Sebastian Bach, my top song of this era is by another Johann, Pachelbel, with his Canon in D.  Click on it to spend an hour of your Sunday afternoon with Pachelbel.

• #9  Tommy Dorsey's I'm Getting Sentimental Over You is haunting and meaningful, but, I don't know why.  The song was recorded about 80 years ago, and Frank Sinatra sang this song when with Dorsey, but it is Tommy's trombone that makes this rendition memorable.

• #8  Judy Garland's Over the Rainbow deserves to be in this list, if nothing else because Wizard of Oz, which came out in 1939, was such a great film.  Rotten Tomatoes rated this at #1, with Citizen Kane as #2 and The Godfather at #3.

• #7  It was just about 60 years ago that a paunchy Billy Haley, already 30, with his Comets, started it all with Rock Around the Clock, from the movie Blackboard Jungle.

• #6  The Vietnam War was beginning, so to avoid the draft I joined the heralded 442 Regimental Combat Team Army Reserve, and in 1963 entered basic training, without doubt the most physically difficult 16 weeks of my life (I volunteered for advanced infantry training).  The Chiffons had two hits during my ordeal, One Fine Day and He's So Fine .  One remembers difficult periods.  The songs reminded me that I was A-Okay.  Interestingly enough, in 1971 the corporation that published these songs sued George Harrison and his hit, My Sweet Lord, for plagiarizing the second one.  The solution?  Harrison bought the company for $587,000 and is on record as being guilty of subconscious plagiarism.

• #5  Freddie Aguilar's Anak is an interesting entry into my list of favorites.  Aguilar left home in the Philippines without completing school.  After five years of gambling and worse, he wrote Anak (this is the modern version with London electropop band Ooberfuse) forty years ago as a song of remorse and apology to his parents.  It is the best selling Filipino song in history.  In my travels through the Orient in the eighties and nineties there was always a group from the Philippines entertaining in the bar.  I many times asked them to sing this song, and I immediately became their friend.  I now and then sing Anak  (English version) in a karaoke bar...in Filipino.  My older brother once recorded my doing this and put it on his Christmas CD for gifts.  If you have one of those, burn it immediately.  But Freddie is Freddie, and last year, at the age of 60, converted to Islam to marry his 16 year-old girlfriend.  He is now known as Abdul Farid.

• #4  Honolulu City Lights by Keola and Kapono Beamer was Pearl's favorite and is the view I have had now for 32 years at night, until my apartment sells, perhaps two weeks from now.  At one time the color was blue (mercury vapor lamps),  now orange (sodium vapor), but still ethereally relaxing.

• #3  Ezio Pinza's broadway version of Some Enchanted Evening has given me hope since my youth.  Of course, South Pacific, the movie, is my all-time favorite, for it was filmed in my backyard...literally.  Here are Pearl and Pepper at the Slippery Falls on Kauai where we lived.  Note the resemblance between Pearl and France Nuyen.

• #2  Ghost Riders in the Sky by Vaughn Monroe is just a fill-in for now.  The next time I adjust this list, something else might be here.  For example, there was a song from China that became popular in Japan soon after World War II, but I can't remember the title.  It would be in this slot for a very special reason I'll explain when I find it. However, for now, Monroe's recording of this cowboy song in 1949 is here.  Since then there have been hundreds of other versions. Why #2?  At virtually every sunset, this song returns to my mind.  Something fearful, anticipatory...

• #1  I copy here my posting of 3September2014:

#1  Wakare No Isochidori is the only song of this genre that was first popular in Hawaii, then gained fame in Japan.  The singer here is Sparky Iwamoto, from Club Nisei.  The composer was Francis Zanami, and he either unfortunately died of a heart attack in 1949 at the age of 44, or at the age of 34 from kidney failure.  The latter seems more probable.  He was the leader of the Hawaii Shochiku Orchestra.  He is third from the right in the top row below, with then Doris Taketa to the extreme right:

Four years ago I reported on this song while I was traveling through Japan.  I noticed now that all the links of the song to You Tube have been deleted because of copyright infringements.  According to Rev. Hoshu Matsubayashi:

One of the eight kinds of suffering in Buddhist teaching is: "separation from a loved one." The sentiment of this suffering was expressed in a Japanese popular song, "Wakare no Isochidori (Departure of Beach Plovers)." The song is about separation from a loved one in Hawaii. A line from the song is "Although I know the meeting is the beginning of the separation, the memory remains cherished in my heart..."

I did not know the title had to do with beach plovers.  Anyway, if you did not earlier click to hear Wakare No Isochidori, you can do it now.  It is a sad song, evoking a long journey, homesickness and hope.  It still brings tears to my eyes, and I don't know why.

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