I'm appalled...

Ok, sure, I'm appalled at everything- but at the moment I'm most appalled at discovering that my last post here was in December....  Gad.  Sorry about that!

I have no intention of abandoning you, or this blog.  Life, however, has been consistently more difficult than seems strictly necessary for the past months, leaving us all, thee and me, both exhausted and without cheerful conversation material.

Apparently we will have to make do, conversation-wise, with non-cheerful material for a while.  Mostly.  So, girding my loins (and I recommend you gird yours also), here is some un-cheerful material from Japan today.  Japan, keep in mind, has one of the highest standards of living on the planet, ranked #5 "Best Country" in the world by this source; and scads of money, and people with time on their hands; judging from the abundance and complexity of their festivals.  But-

Nearly 5,000 people in shelters in western Japan

"More than 10 days after the catastrophic rain that hit mainly western Japan, NHK has learned that the death toll rose to 216 people, with 15 remaining missing, as of Wednesday. NHK reporters say that 4,669 people are still taking shelter at facilities in 15 prefectures.

"The health ministry says around 55,500 households in Hiroshima, Ehime and Okayama Prefectures were still without running water. Municipality staff and Self-Defense Force personnel are delivering water to communities.

"The authorities are starting to understand the damage to agriculture and forestry. The agriculture ministry officials say the financial cost to the industries has climbed to about 500 million dollars.

"Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Wednesday that Japan has received about 220,000 dollars in donations of from China, 180,000 dollars from Taiwan and 150,000 dollars from Thailand. He added other countries, regions and organizations have also expressed sympathy and offered support."

Japan needs a few hundred thousand dollars in donations from China, Taiwan, and Thailand?  They really don't.  And 5,000 people still living in school gymnasiums 10 days later?  Hm.  Pretty lame response, truly.  Other infrastructure damage: "Rail freight services have been suspended in wide areas of western Japan ... Japan Freight Railway Company President Koichi Shingai told reporters that full recovery will take more than one month. Shingai said the disaster severely damaged rail services... the disruption has affected supplies of agricultural commodities and paper products. The freight company last week began alternative services by truck and cargo ship that cover only about 13 to 14 percent of normal rail transport volume."

This has become a pattern; these rains were global-warming spawned record-breakers; nothing like them in their 3,000 year memories.  In 2016 Japan had serious earthquakes hit in similar circumstances; and the response from the central government was again, embarrassing.  Too little; too late, and still not helping much.  The outlying areas are sort of - on their own.  Not for lack of money, or resources - but lack of will.  Sounding familiar?

Following the floods - global warming heat wave: "The Fire and Disaster Management Agency says the soaring temperatures currently hitting Japan sent 9,956 people to hospital with heat stroke in the week ending last Sunday. Of them, 12 died...  The Meteorological Agency says that scorching heat will continue across Japan until the end of July..."

And- in case you were wondering - The Ice Wall Worketh Not; as I firmly predicted here, before it was built.  Physics, you know.  The "nuclear engineers" still have no idea, 7 years later, how they are going to clean up the leaked, melted, utterly lethal nuclear fuel - nor do they even know where it is.  The communities?  Gone.

The ancient observation that "Misery loves company" is not a good guiding principle.   But ignoring and forgetting misery, I think, is worse.

Hang in there.  Keep in mind - all your ancestors - were survivors. 

:-)

Now the REALLY Important News...

I was overjoyed today to run across this major news story, by a major news source, The Baltimore Sun: "Most Popular Dog Names In Baltimore In 2017"

And with cute puppy photos, too.

It just really resonated with me; this is the news we all crave, yes?  I was a bit appalled to find that two of my dogs have names in the top 10 here; and one of our horses has another...  Just goes to show... something.

Duke Ellington is attributed with saying "There are two kinds of music.  Good music, and the other kind."

We should adopt similar clarity for the news we consume, I think.  Puppy names, is good news.  We've all had our fill of the other kind.

Glasses Off

Hi, Folks.  It's not that I have nothing new to say about mass shootings.  It's that I've already said 90% of it; here, and here; and what little new I might say is not going to change anything,  I may say it, eventually, but if you're like me, the pain and embarrassment of belonging to our species is just a bit much to handle at the moment.

So - here is an Autumn thing I'd been getting ready to write about for several days now.  I was reminded of this odd little quirk when I was inside sitting down and acquiring a bit more caffeine in the middle of the day; and I took my glasses off.  This is what I saw out my window:

Actually took quite a bit of work with the camera to get it blurred approximately right.  Last time I asked the optometrist what my uncorrected vision was nowadays, the answer was "Oh, around 20/230 at this point. "  That's beyond legally blind. I've had glasses since the 3rd grade; so, used to it.

In general when people see an image like this, the first impulse is to "fix it" - and put it back in focus.  But the world looks like this to me any time my glasses are off; so - I still look.  Is there something to see?  The impressionist blurred fall leaves out my window looked quite lovely to me.  A little more than the camera can capture, because there was always a little movement from light wind.  Very nice.

So of course I put my glasses back on, to see what it really looked like - and it looked like nothing at all; the gorgeous display vanished into some sharp separate bits that just did not have any impact.  At all.

Yeah, there's probably a metaphor floating around here somewhere...

I took the glasses back off, and just settled back and enjoyed the Monet/Van Gogh Autumn.  That view is lovely - highly evocative of the season, for me, and "enough", all by itself.  Coffee and - perspective; this is reality too.  Comfy.  Move around a little for a different view and - the whole woods is a landscape out of a museum.

This made me recall that I have long felt sorry for people with normal vision- because they can't take their glasses off, and see this way.  That first struck me when I was quite young, probably in the first year I had glasses.  We were putting up the Christmas tree; and I was given the job of crawling under it to adjust the stand a bit- and a wayward branch took my glasses off.

Looking up through the tree, the world opened up, and the magic expanded manyfold.  The tree lights changed into fantasy stars, with scintillating points; the ornaments now reflected the lights with about 50 times the shimmer.  I stayed under the tree; on my back, glasses off - until the family started to wonder if I was ok.  Then I did have the fun of telling my sister, also a glasses wearer, about the phenomenon.  She crawled under, after a lot of convincing; and had the same epiphany.  "Ohmylord.  It's so much more beautiful!"  My brothers - don't wear glasses, and could not understand.

I've climbed under every Christmas tree, every year, and repeated and recaptured.  It's a very durable joy.  Normally sighted people can kind of replicate it by squinting so that the eyelashes obscure most of the world - but the squinting part is an effort and intrusive.  Us legally blind folk are the lucky ones here.

Sometimes - the world looks better with your glasses off.  It's still the world, and reality - but maybe a little easier on us than all the hard edges.  I recommend it.


If you're in the mood for a little more escape- and a little more Autumn; these two posts have been popular for a good while -

The Turn Of The Year

Zen Firewood


The world still turns.

Another Iceberg Is Moving... Maybe...

Pushing on icebergs is my metaphor for continuing to work  - push - on causes that can seem hopeless.  The philosophy behind that choice can be complex, but sometimes the simplest reason to work is - there is nothing to lose by making the effort.  Why not keep trying?

One of the icebergs I push on is "public opinion".  Manifestly, public opinion changes, moves.  Witness womens' suffrage, prohibition, etc.  As well as the consistent swing in voters from one political party to the other.  One of the places public opinion brews is in the "newspapers" - though that world has spread widely.  But- people looking to express their own opinion, or understand others, very often "read the papers" and read the arguments.

So I do comment regularly in the New York Times, Washington Post, and a few other places.  And if you look around on this blog you will find several posts about my occasional successes, as judged by the number of "likes" my comments can receive.  Sometimes a lot of people like what I have to say.

And sometimes, I can really stick my neck out in these comments; with opinions and facts I know will not be happily received.  I just did that yesterday- and - got thoroughly surprised by the results.  Pleasantly.

We're up to our ears in hurricanes and hurricane news at the moment; when along comes the big Mexican earthquake; the strongest in 100 years.  So - I decided to go ahead and say publicly something I have avoided saying for years, because most folks would then certainly put me in the whackjob box.  Not good if you hope people may actually listen to you, a little.

Climate change is going to cause earthquakes.  Is; will; some of them bigger than we are used to.  Everything on the planet is connected- changing sea levels will change the forces working on faults, and some will be pushed over the edge into slipping.  Physics.  But boy- the few times I have raised the subject in conversations, the rejection was fierce.  From all directions.

I laid it out in the New York Times first coverage of this earthquake.  To my astonishment - it was quickly a "New York Times Pick", one of only 9, out of 319 comments so far.  The Times staff who do the picking will always pick a few comments running against the trend, so long as they are articulate, so the fact that I was picked doesn't mean the NYT agrees with me.  But!  To my increasing astonishment - a lot of people DO.  My comment is currently ranked #7 out of 200 some, with 195 "recommendations."  And; boy; did my comment get a lot of "replies".  Mostly of the "shut up you ignorant ass" variety, but not all.

Here is the comment:

"Greenpa Minnesota 1 day ago

"Ok. Are you listening? Yes, on Planet Earth, EVERYTHING is connected.

"Earth's crust is made up of enormous blocks of rock- and where the continental "plates" meet, they rub up against each other, and move. How far do they move? They move until all the forces affecting them are "in balance". When those forces change- they will move again. That's called an earthquake. Over geological eons, they move a very great deal; we now know from many kinds of evidence that Africa and South America really did once fit together into one land mass. The 6,000 miles now separating them happened - one earthquake at a time.

"Most continental plate boundaries are under the oceans. What happens when a fault zone, in balance- now has just a little more ocean on top of it? "Balance" means exactly that- and adding one feather to the other side of a balance can make it shift; no vast application of force is required; just a tiny push over the balance point; and it will move.

"Is it possible that Hurricane Katia; now pushing storm surge water onto the other side of the Mexican land mass - triggered these earth quakes?

"It is. Just a feather, to shift balance. Will the rising sea levels around the world shift more plate balances? They will.

"No professional geologist will stick their necks out and say that. Yet. But if you've ever played with any kind of balanced system - you know. Just a feather will do it. Yes, climate change will cause earthquakes. More, as it gets worse."

------------------------------------------

Pretty blunt, huh?   And - an effective push on the iceberg of getting earthquakes into the climate change conversation.  Why?  Because now, at least 195 people will have it in their heads that "It was in the New York Times" - and they agree - and they will now feel much readier to bring the idea up in friendly conversations.  Public opinion.

So that's fun.  And, for the inevitable readers who will vote on the "shut up you ignorant ass" side; here is a quote from Wikipedia, on continental drift (now known and utterly accepted as "plate tectonics" - i.e. really big earthquakes.)  "David Attenborough, who attended university in the second half of the 1940s, recounted an incident illustrating its lack of acceptance then: 'I once asked one of my lecturers why he was not talking to us about continental drift and I was told, sneeringly, that if I could prove there was a force that could move continents, then he might think about it. The idea was moonshine, I was informed.' "

Experts and professors, historically, can be just a much ignorant asses as the rest of us.

If you have the interest, reading the replies to me is kind of fun, too.  Change is messy!  To see the replies, you have to find my original place; look under "oldest first", should be in the first page.

And - if you enjoy stirring the climate change pot - you should share that comment widely out onto the social media.  I guarantee reactions.

The Ice Wall Update-eth

Another bit of PR from the ice wall people; they've been coming about one a day for several days now.

This one has a nice video, which I hope you will be able to access for some time; NHK has recently added the ability to share their news posts with several social media.  I'm hoping that means their links will last more than one day.

The video has good diagrams, and even real footage of the ice wall apparatus; good to help understand.  Take a look-

Typically for NHK, the printed text is almost exactly the same as what the newsreader presents, quoted below, then I have a couple comments on the hydraulics/physics after that:
-------------------------------------------------------------------

"Fukushima ice wall's last section being frozen

Final procedures have begun to complete an ice wall to prevent groundwater from entering the contaminated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.  Tokyo Electric Power Company workers started the process to freeze the remaining 7-meter section of the ice wall on Tuesday.  They opened 11 valves to allow coolant at a temperature of minus 30 degrees Celsius to circulate in the underground pipes.

TEPCO began freezing the 1.5 kilometer long wall in March of last year. The last section on the mountain side of the facility had been left unfrozen as officials said the move could cause a sudden drop in groundwater levels around the reactor buildings.  But the Nuclear Regulation Authority said safety measures were in place and gave permission for the procedure earlier this month.

TEPCO says it could take longer than the 2 months projected based on past records for the section to freeze, because the groundwater is flowing at a rapid rate.

They say once the wall is completed, the volume of groundwater flowing into the reactor buildings will be reduced to less than 100 tons a day, from the current 140 tons.  The nuclear regulators say they will carefully monitor the effectiveness of the wall.
----------------------------------------------------------

In good PR fashion, they are setting the stage for it to - not work.  "It could take longer..."

And; the physics: so, the ground water is flowing - IN - at a rapid rate?  That does mean - it has to be also flowing OUT - somewhere, somehow - at a rapid rate.  Which means if/when you shut the flow off, there WILL be increased pressure on the 'up' side - and decreased pressure on the 'down' side; which means the pressure gradient will be increased.

The pressure on the upside is the easiest to understand, but actually the entire gradient is a better predictor of the likelihood of new leaks.  Think of it as more "incentive" for the water to find a new way to move.

Other Japanese news sources include more definite doubts:

"But some experts have cast doubt on the ice wall, and the country's Nuclear Regulation Authority said it has not yet done an independent analysis.

" 'We doubt the ice wall is going to be as effective as TEPCO claims it will be," said an NRA official who spoke on condition of anonymity. 'We're going to monitor its progress after it is finished to check the impact. ' "

"In June, the NRA's acting chief Toyoshi Fuketa publicly accused TEPCO of lying about the wall's effectiveness."

Ice wall cost so far admitted to: ~ $320 million; paid by the "government"; i.e. Japanese taxpayers.

The Ice Wall Leaketh

Back in March, 2016, I put up this post about the proposed "ice wall" to prevent water movement in bad places around the nuclear reactor melt-down site at Fukushima, Japan.

It won't work, I said.  By one sensible measure, I can claim to have been correct already; in the news release cited there the "authorities" stated "The wall is expected to start restricting the inflow of groundwater about 45 days after the freezing starts."  And be finished in 4 months.

Here we are, not 45 days but 17 months after they started freezing - and - the wall is not closed.  It still leaks 140 tons of water a day.

The whole episode is a fabulous lesson in how to spin information for public consumption.  Today's press release, that they are "about to start the final phase of the freezing process" - states that "a 7 meter section has been left unfrozen" - implying that they intended to leave it unfrozen, for various arcane, scientific, and benevolent reasons.  That is not the case.  They were unable to freeze it.  Which is just what I predicted from my modest understanding of hydrology and fluid dynamics (I thought that any good ecologist should be familiar with environmental forces; like rivers, ocean currents, jet streams; so, I studied them.)

Reality back there was they were very unhappy and embarrassed that some of the wall refused to freeze, and they had to "study" to determine "why"; eventually coming up with the obvious- the water in those areas was flowing so fast it never got cold enough to freeze; and the high flow rate kept re-warming the soil.

Most of us have personal experience with this principle of hydraulics; water under pressure, when forced to flow through a smaller channel, will flow faster.  And it's very powerful.  Ever have a running garden hose in your hand? Ever put your thumb over the open end- maybe to make it squirt your little brother, who thought he was a safe distance away from you?  It'll really squirt.  Because when you restrict it, the pressure in the immediate area of the constriction- goes way up; and the smaller stream flows much faster.

And- when you tried to totally shut off the flow, using just your thumb; you couldn't do it.  The pressure simply builds higher, until it finds a way through your block.  Powerful stuff, water.

So they've had well over a year to figure out how to freeze the high flow area.  It's not impossible they may have figured out a way to shut off what has to be an enormous stream of ground water, with potentially very high pressure and flow.  It can probably be done.  They could make the refrigerant there much, much colder.  Or, they could build an arc of more refrigeration upstream of the leak, so the water reaching the leak is just about to freeze when it gets there.

And if they succeed in shutting that 7 meter leak- what will happen?

100% - other places in the wall; not currently leaking; will start to leak.  As a little leak starts, it will warm the area from the warmth in the water, and it will become a BIG leak; since the local pressure there is now higher than when it wasn't leaking.  Shut that leak?  Another will start.

Check my prediction; in another year.  I'm betting - 100%.  And ANY physics professor should have been able to tell them this.  So why do it?  They have to appear to be doing something - and they have no clue what might actually be useful.  None.  But they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars - so it has to be worthwhile, right?  It is for the contractors, I guarantee.

Below is the text from the NHK press release.  If you search this blog for "ice wall" there are multiple additional posts on this debacle, with more facts.

"Work to finish ice wall at crippled plant to begin

"The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will begin the final phase of creating an underground ice wall on Tuesday. Tokyo Electric Power Company started the work 17 months ago, with the aim of preventing groundwater from entering reactor buildings and getting contaminated with radioactive substances.

"The 1.5-kilometer ice barrier is deemed a key step to curb the buildup of tainted water at the plant.

"The soil is frozen by sending liquid at minus 30 degrees Celsius into pipes buried around the buildings. But the utility has left a 7-meter section unfrozen, fearing the sudden fall in groundwater levels around the buildings. There were concerns that the difference of water levels in and outside the reactor buildings would cause tainted water inside to leak out.

"But last Tuesday, the Nuclear Regulation Authority said safety measures are ready and gave its approval to freeze of the final section.  Officials of the utility say they will carefully monitor the freezing process of the remaining section.

"They say it may take longer to fully freeze than other areas, because the flow of groundwater has been concentrated in that section.

"The officials expect that the wall, when completed, will reduce the inflow of groundwater to the buildings from 140 tons a day to less than 100 tons."

This is getting monotonous-

Sitting here in the Little House waiting for yet another "1.000 year flood" - as prepared as we CAN be; but- that's never really enough-  At the moment it looks like the heaviest core in THIS storm is going to miss us; but there are already flash flood warnings both straight west and south-

And the thing is, we're forecast, very reliably; to have flooding storms pass over repeatedly - until tomorrow morning.  This is just #1.

If it does turn out to be a "1000 year" event, it will make the 4th one for us in the past 6 or 7 years; 2 so far had us in officially designated "Federal Disaster Areas".  {FEMA, I can tell you from personal experience- is, um, how shall I put this; Not as useful as they might be.)

The huge industrial agriculture farms will not suffer financially- they will get Federal aid somehow.  Smaller farmers, and ones with non-standard crops - are almost never insured.  Back in Flood Disaster #1; we got financial help from  the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, which happens to have a main office in Minneapolis.  Is flood relief on their list of aims?  Nope.  They just saw an urgent need; many small farmers about to get wiped out, organic ones in particular; so they organized a fundraising effort, very successfully, and got money to people who needed it.

We bought a machine.  FEMA's response? "Well, we know all your harvest machinery was destroyed, but you don't actually live in the flood plain."  Um, no, but our machines were there, at the mechanic shop, being readied for harvest.  About $10,000 worth of specialized mowers.  "Sorry!  You just don't fit our guidelines.  Good luck."

They actually said "Good luck".

Well.  So far; this rain is hitting us gently, falling slow and steady.  That would help.  We dodged the bullet 2 days ago- when folks 50 mile away got 8".  They're going to get this storm, and the next ones today, too.

Good luck, to us all.

I'll end with a more cheerful story, from my childhood.  This would have been in the 1950's.  My family was moving; across the country; and my parents loved to "see the country".  Understand- most of the West had only acquired 2-lane paved US highways in the previous 15 years- it was a new thing to be able to drive in many places.

They decided to see the SW desert.  Arizona, I think; heading to California.  Back then - no one knew about "highway hypnosis" yet; so the 2 lanes could go absolutely straight in front, and behind, as far as you could see (they put kinks in roads now to prevent it).  And out in the middle of this desert- there really was nothing to see- besides the telephone lines next to the road.  Fences sometimes.  No billboards.  Not even any Burma Shaves, which we loved, of course.  Not enough traffic on this road to warrant anything.

Speed- about 50 mph; very fast for the time.  A long, long, long road; absolutely flat, in every way.

Then- in the distance- a speck.  Is it a speck?  Took a while for my siblings to agree; it's a speck.  It's getting bigger; not very fast.   Eventually we can see- it's actually going to be a big billboard; commercial size.

It's white.  Can't see anything ON it, and here we were hoping for scantily clad cowgirls advertising casinos...   Nope.  Wait- there's a speck - in the middle of the billboard...

We had to get to within about 50 feet of the sign in order to be able to read the very small black print.

"Monotonous, ain't it?"

We laughed for miles and miles.  Whoever put that sign up - I still love you.

And it says something nice about humans, too.

-----------------------------------------------

Update July 22 - we lucked out.  The storm split, and went around us, mostly.  We got about an inch, but after the bulk of the storm had moved on, we had flash flood warnings north, west, and south of us- and only about 20 miles away.  Some of those folks got 3-6 inches.

So; besides getting more frequent and more violent- is our weather also getting more -  whimsical?