Crossed the equator several times while in the USN - One captain told us of the green flash, never saw it tho. Another "south of the equator" thing I was interested in was the "Southern Cross".
I'm calling total b.s. on this one. Chronic pot use since the 1960's and we have a new disease invented in 2004?
I'm certainly not advocating abuse of any recreational drugs. A few beer a few times a week? Most folk, no problem. Six shots of Jack Daniels at dawn every day? You've got a problem you need to work out. If you wakeup and fire up a bong, you need help.
I mean, have some oatmeal first, preferably go to work and earn a living. Do your drugs after work.... and 12 hours bottle to Throttle. ( airline pilot rule )
Yes, my experience is anecdotal and mostly second hand but I've Never heard of this "scrommiting" idiocy after a lifetime of knowing old hippies and doing volunteer first aid/responder at a Major Party that lasts longer than Burning Man. Alcohol poisoning? Every year for more than 22 years as staff. Sometimes bad enough to really scare me. I've even dealt with involuntary hallucinogen exposure. ( criminal. ) I hang out with Emergency room doctors and EMTs. No one mentioned the above crud. Psychological freak out? Sure. Been there, talked them down.
Opiates are a whole different story. We've lost a legion of talented artists and folk from every walk of life to heroin and other opiates.
Meth, bath salts, "synthetic" bull, those are killer mind wrecking drugs.
End of an era as China decides not to be our garbage dump.
Recycling will cost more. In taxes, & in higher disposal costs. Your bill to have your garbage taken away will only go up a bit. Your cost to buy stuff will too.
The Caravan is scheduled for snow tires Thursday at predawn. 8 inches in the driveway. The VW Sportwagen diesel has been sitting for the summer and yesterday I charged it, got it started, and pumped up the tires. Ironically the approval to return the VW came by email during the process. Drove the Sportwagen to Dr appt this morning since I had put the steel wheels with studded tires on this summer to trade it in. ( then got distracted with life )
Amazing that I had a slow but relatively low stress run into the city, about 25 miles, in the first real snow of the season. I usually am in some terror and the ditches are littered with spun out cars & SUVs. The radio was active with accident reports but no one did icecapade numbers in my path. Surprising. Usually the first snows have chaos as most folk have forgotten to drive with limited traction.
If the sun is burning out, we better kick global warming into high gear so we can retain as much heat as possible. Or maybe Trump's wall will look like George RR Martin's.
According to Boston.com, "Despite climate change, snowmobile season is off to a good start".
So despite claims that the sky is falling, winter is here and "temperatures are forecast to remain cold for the foreseeable future". When, in April, they will begin to rise again. No sh!t, Sherlock.
It's hard to dispute that the planet has been in a warming trend since the last Ice Age, and that we are many lifetimes from the next one. So... in that sense, Global Warming is Real.
The panic & massive power and money that come from it are almost certainly bogus.
I can't say that man doesn't mess up the ecology, that's obvious. Idiots like Rush that insist it is Hubris to say Man can harm the planet are wrong. But it's also Hubris to think we are wise enough to see all the answers.
Look at the forests ruined by acid rain in New York. ( from coal fired power plants in Ohio, that use very tall stacks to get the pollution away from the locals. ) But those plants don't produce acid rain any more. Real problem, real solutions, end of problem, and some clean up left to do. China & the ecological wreck left by the Soviets? Problems yet to be solved or properly addressed.
CO2 OTOH, isn't the threat it appears to be, but might be a real problem, long term. I say that based on the record that CO2 rises when the planet warms up, as it did BEFORE the trend of the 1990's. It, the CO2, is Not the Cause of the short term cooling trend that got this Con going in the 1970's. Or the warming trend of the 1990's where a loser politician went Evangelical and cashed in on an already existing false religion. ( That Religion's history as a weapon of the Soviets against Western Industry is well documented )
But, we haven't had this level of CO2 during the rise of civilization, and, who knows? It might be a problem in a thousand years. In any event burning the limited resources of fossil fuels is a practice we, as a species, MUST grow beyond. That's the "seed corn" of the planet, the Capital we must use to exploit the rest of the Solar System and produce new sources of energy and raw materials. We've been burning our "savings" and need to make investments in Better, cleaner, tech.
It's becoming clear that mega projects needed to harvest diffuse energy from wind and sun have ecological disadvantages, but that doesn't mean that solar roofs on our houses and Wind Farms next to the Kennedy Beach Property ( forbidden by the rich, their view is more important than yours ) aren't, in some cases, a good idea. Especially solar shingles. That's not land that is "ruined" by solar farms, that's double and practical use.
And, of course, Fusion is only 20 years away. ( as it has been my entire life. At times it seems like a perfect society, nice to think about but never real.... But there is hope ) Eventually, the oceans will recede as we burnt the hydrogen in our fusion plants, but I'm pretty sure by then we'll all be cyborgs, energy beings, or space faring. ( I prefer the last, get the eggs out of one basket )
I've long been an advocate of clean nuclear and space based solar, so I'll skip the pitch for now.
One thing I'm pretty darn sure of, is that the Authoritarian Would-Be Rulers that use Climate Change as an excuse to tax us and micromanage our lives, do not have our best interests, or the planet's at heart, but greed. And if they win, the dystopian future of "Ready Player One" will seem like a glorious one. "1984" with present tech...but worse.
Scientific Orthodoxy. Challenge the status quo and be branded a heretic.
There have been fakes and misinterpreted remains before. I understand the desire for proof beyond doubt.
But when humans lived in the Americas has become a fiercely disputed subject. The scholars get very angry when someone pushes the dates back.... like these are holy revelations not long argued evidence.
Physicists argue too. Theories are zealously protected. Reputations are at stake. Many still don't think the Higgs Boson has been actually discovered.
But the Human history sciences are an order of magnitude worse. Hard held positions and name calling and death threats.
My amateur position? Intriguing possibility that man was here long before the normally accepted dates. I have no dog in this fight. It wouldn't threaten my world view.
I have made stone tools. If you search YouTube you'll find many examples of amateur survival/archeology buffs who build huts and live for weeks starting with making a stone axe. My friends and I have laughed at the thought of a future archeological dig where we made these tools. It looked exactly like a site in Colorado where Plains Indians would trek to a flint deposit & set up shop. Make a load of tools, axe heads, spear points, arrow heads, leaving chips & broken failures by a camp fire. Then walk home with a pack frame loaded with completed tools. You don't haul home just raw rocks on your back. That's stupid.
Like our native predecessor we left rock shards and failures, a buried campfire, and an organic garbage pit. ( meal remnants ) Like modern responsible campers, we left no modern garbage behind. No foil food wrappers etc. As we left the only difference between our camp and the dig I mentioned was the lack of animal bones. We didn't have to trap & hunt to eat on our short stay. That ancient skilled craftsman was there for weeks.
IMHO people think prehistoric man were stupid. Nothing could be further from the truth. You didn't live if you were. They just had a smaller but hard won knowledge base.