August 20, 2019 Night

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Good evening! Mostly clear and 68 degrees in Dormansville, NY. Calm wind. The dew point is 61 degrees.

Earlier today I got home and unpacked from my extended weekend trip up to Pisceo-Powley Road. ⛺ It wasn’t perfect weather but there was times when it was quite nice and I camped near a nice swimming hole 🏊 and laid in the hammock, listening to music and reading a book. 📖 I have more pictures I’ll post in the coming days although a lot of things I saw and did weren’t exactly photographic. The clams though were good. Sunday Dinner delayed at the folks house was chicken which was pretty good.

Tonight will have a chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 5am. Partly cloudy 🌃, with a low of 62 degrees at 3am. Three degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 62 at 6am. Calm wind. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 65 degrees. The record low of 42 occurred back in 1977.

Tonight will have a Waning Gibbous Moon 🌖 with 64% illuminated. The moon will set at 11:49 am. The Last Quarter Moon is on Thursday night with severe thunderstorms. The Harvest Moon 🌝 is on Friday, September 13th. Spooky! Shine on Harvest Moon. The sun will rise at 6:08 am with the first light at 5:39 am, which is one minute and 4 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 10 hours and 20 minutes of darkness, an increase of 2 minutes and 37 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly between 11am and noon, then showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm after noon. Some storms could be severe, with heavy rain. Mostly cloudy 🌩, with a high of 79 degrees at 2pm. One degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around August 24th. Maximum dew point of 71 at 3pm. South wind around 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. It was somewhat humid. The high last year was 80 degrees. The record high of 98 was set in 1916.

In four weeks on September 17 the sun will be setting at 7:01 pm,🌄 which is 47 minutes and 39 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2018 on that day, we had humid, mostly sunny, warm, mist and temperatures between 82 and 67 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 72 and 51 degrees. The record high of 89 degrees was set back in 1942.

Looking ahead, Constitution Day 📜 is in 4 weeks, October 🛥 is in 6 weeks, Election Day 2020 🗳️ is in 63 weeks and Inauguration Day 2021 👴🏻 is in 17 months.

Six Miles to Horseshoe Lake

Quit listening to the news

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I often get tired of listening to the news and the liberal narrative that we must all be afraid of gun violence and we need more arbitrary restrictions on gun rights. I don’t need to hear such things so I just don’t listen to the news anymore. I’m glad I couldn’t hear the news while I was up in the wilderness due to valley blocking the radio signal.

Damn Traffic Lights

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I drove up to the Voorheesville Traffic light this evening, waited for three minutes — there was over a 1/4 mile traffic backed up behind me — and the light never turned green. I tried rolling forward, but still couldn’t trip the damn induction loop.

Ultimately, ended up running the red — the light turned as soon as the next car moved up the sensor.

This happens from time to time — but it’s been happening more frequently for me. I wonder if the DOT has turned down the sensitivity on the induction loops. It’s not like I replaced my truck with a completely plastic vehicle.

Big Red

NPR

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U.S. Recycling Industry Is Struggling To Figure Out A Future Without China : NPR

John Caturano of Nestle Waters North America, which makes bottled water, said plastic is getting a bad reputation. "The water bottle has in some ways become the mink coat or the pack of cigarettes. It's socially not very acceptable to the young folks, and that scares me," he said during a panel called Life After National Sword.

Sunil Bagaria, who runs recycling company GDB International, took his colleagues to task. "Forever, we have depended on shipping our scrap overseas," he bemoaned. "Let's stop that." European countries, he added, "are recycling 35% to 40% [of their plastic waste]. The U.S. only recycles 10%. How tragic is that?" 

After a couple of days of this, a woman named Kara Pochiro from the Association of Plastic Recyclers stood up and said not to panic. "Plastic recycling isn't dead, and it works, and it's important to protecting our environment, and it's essential to the circular economy," she reassured.

"Circular economy" is now a catchphrase that some say is a way out of the plastic mess. The idea is essentially this: Society needs plastic, but people need to recycle a lot more of it and use it again and again and again. That will eliminate a lot of waste and cut down on the avalanche of new plastic made every year.

The false promise of nuclear power in an age of climate change – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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The false promise of nuclear power in an age of climate change – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Commentators from Greenpeace to the World Bank agree that climate change is an emergency, threatening civilization and life on our planet. Any solution must involve the control of greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out fossil fuels and switching to alternative technologies that do not impair the human habitat while providing the energy we require to function as a species.

This sobering reality has led some prominent observers to re-embrace nuclear energy. Advocates declare it clean, efficient, economical, and safe. In actuality it is none of these. It is expensive and poses grave dangers to our physical and psychological well-being. According to the US Energy Information Agency, the average nuclear power generating cost is about $100 per megawatt-hour. Compare this with $50 per megawatt-hour for solar and $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour for onshore wind. The financial group Lazard recently said that renewable energy costs are now “at or below the marginal cost of conventional generation”—that is, fossil fuels—and much lower than nuclear.

In theory these high costs and long construction times could be brought down. But we have had more than a half-century to test that theory and it appears have been solidly refuted. Unlike nearly all other technologies, the cost of nuclear power has risen over time. Even its supporters recognize that it has never been cost-competitive in a free-market environment, and its critics point out that the nuclear industry has followed a “negative learning curve.” Both the Nuclear Energy Agency and International Energy Agency have concluded that although nuclear power is a “proven low-carbon source of base-load electricity,” the industry will have to address serious concerns about cost, safety, and waste disposal if it is to play a significant role in addressing the climate-energy nexus.