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| Sun Oct 7 17:40:58 2012 Mt Baker Prediction |
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| Wed Aug 15 22:37:13 2012 Eurozone |
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| Sun Aug 5 17:00:31 2012 Mars is Dumb |
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| Sun Oct 7 17:40:58 2012 Mt Baker Prediction How much snow will Mt Baker get in 2012-2013? |
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| Well, it is getting close to the 2012-2013 ski season. How much snow will Mt
Baker get? (I'm talking about the ski area).
I'm guessing around 600 inches this year. That's pretty good for most ski areas, but low for Mt Baker. Still, I think it will be a decent year, since although less precipitation is expected, it is supposed to stay cold. Historically, snowfall is influenced by ocean heating events such as El Nino (warmer than usual surface water in the tropical Pacific) and La Nina (colder than usual water). Oddly, the impacts aren't 100% predictable (you can get more or less snow with either) but generally they can influence predictions. The 2012-2013 season is expected to be an El Nino year, according to The Weather Centre. There are all sorts of El Nino years, apparently. This one is a "mainly west El Nino", meaning the warmer surface water is more to the west. That means as much to me as it does to you. Anyway, what have previous El Nina years looked like? Here is the list of total snowfall per year at Mt Baker, courtesy of bestsnow.net
Way back in 2009, I attempted to predict the snowfall for the 2009-2010 season ( The 2009-2010 Winter Forecast). I was way off: I guessed 450 inches, but in fact (you can see above) it was 634 inches. That was a good year! And that was another El Nino season. So this year may not be as epic as past years, but odds are it will still be very rideable throughout the winter. Comments |
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| Wed Aug 15 22:37:13 2012 Eurozone How long will the Euro last? |
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| There has been a litany of bad news lately for the Eurozone.
For one thing, most Eurozone countries have had a crappy Q2, with many countries (particularly the most vulnerable such as Spain and Portugal) seeing a contraction. In general, people fear that a second recession may be about to hit the Eurozone. Greece is sputtering along. It barely avoided bankruptcy in its latest bond (treasury bill) sale, but also saw a contraction of over 6% in the second quarter. However, it is failing to keep up with fiscal reform promises it made in March, and is now asking for a two-year extension to meet bailout terms. What are the odds the Eurozone will survive? Personally, I think several countries (Greece and Portugal) are likely to leave on their own accord, and other countries (Spain) may be kicked out. The core of the Eurozone (countries using the Euro as currency) may remain--Germany, France, and others--but several countries will and should leave. Greece and Portugal have historically spent far more than they earned ( Portugal's record and Greece's record), and have usually devalued their currencies as an effective extra tax to catch up. Now that they are tied to the Euro, this extra taxation source has dried up, and their deficit spending can't be financed. In fact, instead of the ability to devalue their currency to raise money, Greece and Portugal are being hit with austerity measures instead. In a recession, this just makes the problem worse. Portugal is very upset about this, and rightly so. What do Greece and Portugal gain by staying in the Eurozone for the next 5-10 years? Nothing. In fact, staying in the Eurozone will probably push them into years of economic stagnation. I think Greece and Portugal are foolish to stick with the Euro! I'm sure many of them will come to the same conclusion. Over time, I don't see the Euro surviving, for exactly this reason: countries have historically used devaluation as a way to catch up with overspending. Being in the Eurozone denies countries this capability, and they have grown used to it. There is one way the Eurozone could survive: centralize taxation and spending. That is, countries in the Eurozone could not set their own budgets, but would instead send taxes in to a central agency, which would distribute the funds as well. Personally, I don't see that happening, since no country will give up both their tax receipts and their budget discretion. And so, over time, countries will drop out as they feel the need to devalue currencies. I'll give the Euro 10 more years as an independent currency! Comments |
Related: economics geopolitics predictions Unrelated: books energy environment lists mathematics science |
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| Sun Aug 5 17:00:31 2012 Mars is Dumb Why the persistent fascination? |
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| Tonight, in just a few hours, NASA will
attempt to land the Curiosity rover on Mars, in what will be one of the more remarkable engineering feats of the decade.
It is very exciting. I'm going to watch the live feeds if I can, and I certainly wish all the teams luck. That said, why is everyone so interested in Mars? Compared to other bodies in the solar system, it doesn't really have much to recommend it. Former President George Bush declared that NASA's next mission should be to land people on Mars by 2020, although I'm not sure why. His plan was scrapped in 2010 (I noted that at the time: Space Plan). Fortunately for us all, Bush is still working on his plan. Manned missions to Mars have been very popular for some time. I can see why landing people on Mars looked cool in 1960, when it looked like everyone would have personal rocket ships by 1990. But as the realities of space flight--and science--have set in, a Mars landing looks increasingly expensive, dangerous, and meaningless. As I've noted before ( No Moon), manned missions are currently considered suicide and we don't have a feasible way to get human beings to get to Mars orbit and back, not even counting the problems of landing and then taking off again. Why are people so keen to get to Mars? Some of the ideas I've seen so far... 1. We may someday terraform Mars and live on it. This is bogus for many reasons. We are generations away from terraforming anything. Mars doesn't have enough gravity to hold an atmosphere (it's current atmosphere is about 1/1000th of Earth's atmosphere--it is basically vacuum). And Mars has no magnetosphere, so anything running around on the planet will be constantly zapped by high-energy particles from the Sun. Mars will never be habitable, except for bunkers buried deep underground, or space stations, and we can do that anywhere. 2. There may be life on Mars. At this point, almost all planetary scientists believe we'll discover life all over the place. Maybe not multicellular life, but certainly basic single-cell organisms. Nonetheless, being the first to prove that life exists somewhere else will be a huge career boost for whoever does it. However, Mars is not the best place in the solar system to look for life: Europa is. Europa, the ice-covered moon of Jupiter, is believed to contain oceans of water that could harbor life. If you are looking for life, past or present, Europa is a much better choice than Mars. Still, people are gaga about Mars. The latest proposal is to send people to Mars with a one-way ticket. The theory is that people will be willing to live on Mars as the first inhabitants, even though they won't be able to get home or even reproduce. I'm all for people being free to do what they want, so if people want to go, more power to them. Still, do the volunteers realize that living in Antarctica instead would be thousands of times easier? Fortunately, there appear to be more sane targets for space exploration, such as asteroids. Asteroid-based missions have more potential to be immdiately useful, such as mining or learning how to deflect a killer asteroid. So although I hope tonight's landing will be successful and exciting, I also hope people start to realize Mars isn't where we should be spending all of our time and limited exploration money. Comments |
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