An entire night of rain

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Morning blogsters. 

Good, fine, lovely whoopteedoo freaking morning.

 

It's difficult to imagine a better night of sleep than one that happens with the sound of rain pattering on the roof, sploshing into the yard.  It just doesn't happen. 

New Mexico style rain is a fast-moving thunderstorm that passes quickly, fills the arroyos and roars into the Rio Grande. 

Those are a joy, but a long soaking rain is such a rarity as to lift the soul, the spirits into an entirely different order of magnitude.

 

Hmmmmm.  So having said that, pondering where do I go from here... hitting the post blog entry button and head for the front porch to watch the lightning, or try to write some of the near- bursting whoopteedoo I'm feeling.

Ahhh.  Here's something.  Someone saw a thing on the Internet, says you can boost your gasoline mileage by 20-30 percent by adding two oz per 10 gallons of acetone to your gasoline. 

If it works I'd look for the next discovery that prices are too low to be on the acetone shelf down at the hardware store.  I'm going to pick up a gallon and give it a shot.

I see where there's some unusual sunspot activity.  Maybe that's contributed in some unsuspected way to me sitting here listening to the rain, or maybe it's just the inevitability of the "It's an ill wind that blows no good" piece of reality. 

Maybe this is rain people didn't want down in Texas or Louisiana, rain that was scorned and vilified as a curse down in the lowlands where they tend to selfishly hog all the rain, then complain of it when it comes.

 

If so, thankee Texans, for nudging it over this way.  We appreciates it.

Jack

A not-too-well-preserved '60s freak

with a barely-disguised agenda

 

 

Entry #329

Comments

Avatar Todd -
#1
I suppose that the Hollywood starlets will come out saying that your long soaking rain has been caused by global warming. In fact, the sunspots were probably caused by global warming too.
Avatar Rip Snorter -
#2
Morning Todd:

Thanks for the comment.

I don't much care what the Hollywood starlets say. I'm grateful for the rain. If it's caused by sunspots, global warming, or just by a lot of people from Hollywood starlets to strip miners hurling accusations at one another about issues they know little about, driving those clouds inland, it's still all right by me.

I'm grateful for the rain.

Jack

Avatar Todd -
#3
I know what you mean, because I too enjoy a nice steady rain.

I was just pointing out the fact that any mention of different weather patterns becomes an immediate reaction of "global warming" these days, and it's pretty moronic.

I also wouldn't listen, if it were not for the mainstream media, which injects the comments of those morons into every news story dealing with weather, forcing their opinions on everyone.

-Todd
Avatar four4me -
#4
Rip said: Ahhh. Here's something. Someone saw a thing on the Internet, says you can boost your gasoline mileage by 20-30 percent by adding two oz per 10 gallons of acetone to your gasoline.

If it works I'd look for the next discovery that prices are too low to be on the acetone shelf down at the hardware store. I'm going to pick up a gallon and give it a shot.

Four4me: says be careful with acetone it has a nasty habit of ruining rubber, softens it and could be bad for o rings and such like fuel lines. The rubber could rupture and cause them to leak. Try whatever amount you are going to use as a mixture on a peice of rubber and see it it eats it. Say if your going to use 1 oz with 5 gals of gas hang a peice of rubber fuel hose in the can and look at it in a few days to see if the rubber was affected

Todd wrote: I was just pointing out the fact that any mention of different weather patterns becomes an immediate reaction of "global warming" these days, and it's pretty moronic.

I also wouldn't listen, if it were not for the mainstream media, which injects the comments of those morons into every news story dealing with weather, forcing their opinions on everyone.


Four4me says: it's a scientific fact that fossil fuels cause harm to the environment while the earth produces much of it on it's own without our help. The inhabitants of earth are putting copious amounts of green house gases in the environment every minute of the day. Causing catastrophic effects (The eventual extinction of our peoples). Mother nature has a way of dealing with such events and can easily do something to cause whatever is messing with her to go away. Even if it means reducing the population of the earth inhabitants. Global warming warnings aren't just surfacing today. The scientists warned the general public about this 30 yrs ago yet our leaders continue to allow the use of substances they know are killing our planet. The biggest culprits being gasoline. And the destruction of our forests. It way past the halfway point to stop using oil based fuel in automotive transportation. With all the technology the world has they are still using the one element that never needed to be used to propel many vehicles. And the oil producers and automotive industry refuses to get it's emission measures under control, buy making some other kind of engine that doesn't need gasoline for propulsion. If they had fased out gasoline burning engines 30 yrs ago like the sceintists warned there wouldn't be this problem today.

The media while expressing it's views are mainly just voicing the scientific facts that the scientist explained to the general public numerous times year in and year out. Are people so blinded by these facts that they think this problem is just going to fad away or is it they just don't care if 10/20 yrs from now they will have to where breathing apparatus just to walk out of their homes. Or should we learn to breath methane instead of oxygen.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/autos/gasoline-faq/part1/
Avatar Rip Snorter -
#5
Thanks for the info, Four4me. I particularly appreciate the heads-up about the acetone.

As for the greenhouse gases, I'd say there's a footrace going on between that and all manner of other barely-noticed elements of a human population bent on consuming energy as though it were limitless, depleting mineral reserves of every kind as though there were no descendants of the future who might wish some were available, and who-knows-what-else we haven't even noticed.

Living as though we will have no descendants to inherit this planet probably is one of the self-limiting behaviors we indulge to be sure we're correct in that regard. Parents have always tended to hate the grandkids, I suppose, and here's an example of how we can take punitive measures against them, and their grandkids, before they ever have a chance not to be born.

Cut'em off at the pass!

Jack
Avatar four4me -
#6
The scientist now exactly what the over population growths effect will have on the planet. They continuously study the effects of overpopulation on the environment and its infrastructure. Our planet has increased it's population dramatically in the last 200 yrs. Some believe that if we continue at this rate we will eventually wear out the planet and it will become un- inhabitable. Hence we search the universe for a hospitable planet for future generations to live.

My point about gas engines is while they were state of the art in their hay day they are among the most least effective engines at their job. Gas engines spend their whole lives beating themselves to death. A revolving mass of steel and aluminum destine to eventually fail. Our engineers and designers have developed millions of devices for every day living but have failed in the automotive area as to making the gas engine evolve into another design. It has remained virtually unchanged in it's inner workings since its inception with the exception of modernizing it's materials and adding electronic apparatus to monitor it's functions and cause the average Joe to have to take it to modern automotive repair shops.

Don't get me wrong I have used them since my youth and enjoyed the sounds and everything that go with them from tinkering to rebuilding them. However I always imagined the day when they would create an engine that was improved more self sufficient and reliable and ran on something other than fossil fuel.

During Rita can you envision how many cars sat in one place running for hours on end spewing green house gases forth. Now imagine the whole planet's worth of automotive engines doing that day in day out year in year out for the next hundred years. Is the amount of gasses expelled equal to one, two, three or 40 volcanoes going off at one time does the earth absorb that much pollution without reciprocity. The scientist think mother nature will fight back if we continue to mess with her.
Avatar Rip Snorter -
#7
Four4me:
Thanks for the comment.

I'm not sure what scientists agree on, and what they disagree on where the environment's concerned, and the place of man within it. I definitely know the track record for scientists seeing cause/effect relationships for their own activities isn't one they'd care to advertise.

I'd agree with you that man, as a species is going to be around for a long time, though there'll probably be a lot fewer of him. And those few will have a more severe struggle to improve their lives than men of the past have had to improve theirs, if the population reduction results in a breakdown in societal structure, which seems likely.

Human beings would have an awfully difficult time coming back along the routes they've come after catastropies in the past without easily available fossil fuels. Particularly coal, copper and iron.

But the Americas are covered with the ruins of peoples who achieved a relatively high level of material well-being without any energy source besides wood, and no metal tools. Humans can thrive with a lot less than they enjoy today, though in smaller numbers.

For that matter, the planet does a middling job of recovering quickly, as well. A few hundred years and there'll be grass growing through chunks of concrete, some middling good roads and a lot of metal to salvage. But a blacksmith needs coal.

I used to do a lot of thinking about this sort of thing, but I don't anymore. As I see it, there's nothing I can do about it, and is therefore, not my affair.

To be honest, the only thing that got me thinking about it recently was the increase in gasoline prices and all that implies. But I do still find it mildly provoking when I encounter smug dismissals of the entire concept.

I'm rambling here. I don't know whether greenhouse gasses will be the cause, or something else. But human history gives us every reason to believe something will, and when it happens it will probably turn out to be something humans could have anticipated if they'd been able to digest the concept of cause and effect.

Cause and effect have always been an insurmountable puzzle for the human mind.

Jack
Avatar four4me -
#8
Ah!!!! Rip I get some of my news from watching the discovery channel, the learning channel and the history and science channel. If I didn't see these shows I couldn't make an assessment on what's going on with the planet. However I have had gut feelings about our demise when I hear that the worlds population is growing at a rate faster then in the last 2000 yrs.

The scientists are scouring the universe for a planet capable of sustaining human life forms. It has been discovered the DNA of all living things most likely is spread through the universe. Problem with moving to another planet is getting there we haven't solved that problem. Another thing and this is just a guess on my part in the event that our planet does suffer greatly from green house gasses is the scientist will alter our genetic makeup for future generations so they can live and breath in the ever changing environment.

Who knows of course we won't be around to see any of this happen but I have thought about it because I have children whose children might have children and their children might have some too and so on. In the next 60 yrs or so scientist will have developed unimaginable products to prolong life and create many products so the people of earth will be able to tolerate it's effects on us. One piece of disturbing news is some scientist think the world might reverse it's magnetic poles at some point and that event will be as catastrophic as a huge meteor strike. Except that event will rip the world to pieces altering every land mass on the planet. They say it happened before so it might happen again. WOW.

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