Gitmo. Nor did he order the immediate withdrawal of US troops deployed around the world (notably those deployed fighting "Bush's Wars"). Nor has he moved to undo the PATRIOT Act.
None of the "evil" things Bush/Cheney were doing, that the left complained about so vocally, that Obama *ran* on...he's done zipnuts anything about.
To do these things would dismantle some of the Power, and I don't see Mr Obma as one who would let go of any aspect of power, especially Government Power that he controls.
When under some future Republican President some Government efforts to spy on the American people in uncovered, we'll expect you to be here saying "We will continue to maintain a big, powerful government, because we prefer a stronger government, instead of a weaker one."
You know, when a bio-chip implant is required in all people, simplifying Government's ability to track the whereabouts of everyone, all the time, let's say...in an effort to prevent crime, facilitate healthcare (tied to your medical records), provide irrefutable positive voter ID.
I'm sure the big, powerful, stronger rather than weaker Government will be glad to count on your support.
And the language defining that particular offense essentially excluded people in public places. Someone nude or partially nude in a public place, well, that's their choice and they will probably be looked at and it should not constitute a peeping tom violation on my part if I stare at them. And fully clothed people are even less protected in public.
The law will need to be carefully crafted so that it prevents upskirts without preventing casual photos in public places, etc. But that's the problem with a law. If you try to make a law that allows innocuous behavior while punishing "deviant" behavior, you will be unable to define all the "deviant" behavior without infringing on perfectly innocent behaviors.
buy a new car as soon as they get that first job. A mid-level car costs about $23K (Toyota Camry starts at $22,495) but they won't bat an eye about the car payment while they moan about the student loan.
Go to a state school, live on campus, buy used textbooks, apply for any financial aid available beyond student loans. It is possible to graduate without massive debt. Oh, and get a degree in something more useful than Social Work or Ethnic Studies. There's just not that many jobs for French Literature grads or Art History majors.
Thanks government for making student loans "affordable". All the easy money in student loans did was drive the prices higher; we had inflation in college costs because of an oversupply of easy money.
If all the ice covering Antarctica, Greenland, and all the glaciers around the world were to melt, sea level would rise about 70 meters (230 feet). I've seen numbers in this range from several different sources, e.g. Nat Geo says 216 ft.
Bad, sure. But 500m is not even in the bounds of reality.
How? At 3PM I saw an ambulance driving on the sidewalk and through yards to get around the packed in cars.
You'd have had to have a buttload of vehicles that started pre-treating all the surface roads and the interstates before the snow started falling. Once roads like Powers Ferry and Johnson's Ferry and Northside Drive clogged, which was within the first hour or two, there was no way to get heavy equipment without removing stuck cars one at a time. Once those clogged, there was little hope of getting more cars off the interstate.
Maybe farther north around 92 it wasn't so bad. My friend who took 4.5 hours to get from our office to my house (4+ miles, and he left 15 minutes after I did) did manage to make it to his house in Cumming around midnight and said it got better the farther north he went.
Metro Atlanta area is about 5M people living in about 2 dozen different cities and unincorporated county sections. The City of Atlanta can no more tell the City of Smyrna what to do than NYC mayor can tell Connecticut and New Jersey what to do, even though many commuters in the City are from there.
Extraneous use of cat, plus it doesn't work. It's not quite a no-op, but it changes the first Bush to Obama on each line, then changes the first Obama to Bush. Migght be a no-op, or might result in odd constructs.
[user@localhost ~]$ cat foo President Bush could not be reached for comment on Mr. Obama's comment: "I blame Presidnet Bush." [user@localhost ~]$ cat foo | sed -e s/Bush/Obama/ -e s/Obama/Bush/ President Bush could not be reached for comment on Mr. Obama's comment: "I blame Presidnet Bush."
[user@localhost ~]$ cat bar President Obama said "I blame President Bush." Former President Bush could not be reached for comment on Mr. Obama's comment. [user@localhost ~]$ cat bar | sed -e s/Bush/Obama/ -e s/Obama/Bush/ President Bush said "I blame President Obama." Former President Bush could not be reached for comment on Mr. Obama's comment.
Toward Macon and the areas NWS predicted would be hardest hit. ATL was not supposed to get much of anything, just the southern edges. Northern suburbs not supposed to get anything at all. By the time NWS changed their official reports (about 3AM) equipment was in the wrong place.
Plus, see my other posting about how plows would not have helped!
I left within about 1/2 hour after the snow noticeably started falling. On a normal snow day, I plan to leave around 3PM because the icing doesn't start normally start until it gets dark and temps drop. I left at 12:45PM. I normally do not have to drive on the interstate and take about 4 miles on fairly leisurely 4-lane feeder roads (45MPH limit), then about 1.5 miles on 2-lane surface streets (35MPH limit) to get home.
The first mile I drove was easy and took about 5 minutes. When I hit the second stoplight I realized the timing was still set for mid-day traffic and not rush hour. But the road I was on was still flat and not iced over yet. Exhaust heat from cars idling at the stop lights and enough traffic was moving to keep things from freezing at first. But that didn't last long. After 40 minutes or so to go the next mile, still mostly due to traffic lights, I made it close enough to my normal exit to see that no cars were able to turn onto it any more. Several cycles of lights turned and only 1 or two cars had made the turn.
I realized then that the bridge at the bottom of the hill was probably iced over and preventing any one from getting through. I was able to u-turn and go back a 1/2 mile or so and use a alternate route. That was better for awhile, then I hit that route's bridge over the same creek and it was impossible. I reversed course and went through several interconnected neighborhoods (15MPH limits). Was able to cross the creek on one of their roads using momentum and good tires in low gear, after avoiding two other areas I didn't think I could make it through. I eventually came out on my normal road about 1/2 mile from my house and since the jam was behind me at the bridge I was able to get home easily from there.
The road running past my house has quite a bit of normal traffic as a secondary feeder road. We could tell from time to time when the bridge backed up because no traffic was there. After hours of having cars stuck outside my house, we started getting people ringing our bell begging to use the bathroom. Then I looked out and there were no cars. I walked down toward the bridge and a UPS truck was sideways--made it partway up the hill and slid back down sideways and was blocking traffic in both directions.
I still have cars abandoned in the street outside my house.
About 3.5 miles of the route would be safe enough. But even on a nice sunny day, the first mile I would have had to walk would be a very dangerous one with no sidewalks along a major 4-lane feeder road.
Fortunately, I was dressed appropriately, able and fully prepared to walk home should I have come to some point were I was stuck. I also had a fully-charged non-cellphone GPS that has pedestrian mode. Just in case.
Any snowplow that might have been sent out would have quickly become mired in the traffic jam that coincided with the first few flakes.
By the time there was anything to plow, the main roads were already deadlocked because the surface streets (which would have been plowed last anyway) were jammed due to traffic lights timed for mid-day rather than rush-hour operations and many many many iced-over low-lying areas that created car traps. Bridges over every minor creek sit at the bottom a tiny valley (it's up hill both ways!). These iced over almost immediately making it very difficult if not impossible to get through.
Many people abandoned their cars in the middle of the road. By morning the next day, there were still miles of interstate with bumper-to-bumper semi trailers interspersed with a few cars.
1000 plows would have done nothing. It was over (traffic wise) almost as soon as the first flakes of snow hit the ground. The hilly terrain combined with the below average temps for several days meant that roads, especially the various "feeder" surface roads, iced over almost immediately at least in the low-lying areas. Once a few cars failed to make it up some iced-over hill, that road was jammed. It took about 1 hour from the first few flakes before the traffic jam on surface streets backed up onto the interstates.
Realizing that the bridges would be a chokepoint, I managed to get home by plotting the flattest route with fewest bridges I could think of using interconnecting neighborhood streets. Once I got off the feeder roads and the main arteries, I was only facing snow and ice and not 100's of jammed-up cars. Still, it took me 2.5 hours to drive less than 5 miles. I still ended up reversing a hundred yards or so when I came out of one neighborhood and could not cross the feeder road due to traffic. Was able to get to a different outlet and get across. I also parked once (in a church parking lot) and scouted ahead on foot.
Fortunately, I was dressed appropriately, able and fully prepared to walk home should I have come to some point were I was stuck. I also had a fully-charged non-cellphone GPS that has pedestrian mode. Just in case.
Not like people I saw walking later. One woman was still trying to walk in stiletto heels. Men in dress shoes could barely stand upright. One woman had shopping bags over her shoes to protect them I guess, but this of course made everything very slippery (seriously plastic bag on snow?).
All the surface street traffic lights were still running their normal midday cycles and not the rush-hour cycles that vastly favor moving vehicles in one direction. So every stoplight had 100 vehicles behind it even before the roads became impassible with ice.
Saw many people helping push stuck vehicles at least to get them off the road if nothing else. Saw just as many people screwing over the pushers by driving around the vehicle being pushed and then getting stuck themselves now in front of the original vehicle. So the pushers have to move forward to help this asshole before they can help the original person. And the process repeats!
After I managed to make it home (2.5 hrs to go 4.6 miles), I went outside and started try to help. I had some bags of sand left in my garden from a previous project and hauled those out to the road by my house as people were spinning their wheels there. I spread the sand over the closest patches of ice where I saw people stuck. Almost everyone rolled down their windows and said thank you, even though it meant they could move only about 20 yards further up the road. But one guy, who had to see me spreading sand in front of and under the 4 or 5 cars in front of him, as soon as I got done with the car in front of him and it pulled forward he immediately pulled forward and nearly clipped me *as* *I* *was* *spreading* *sand* to help him!
Out of sand, I started helping neighbors and other drivers push some vehicles. One lady was practically crying as she rolled down her window "Thank you thank you thank you". Most people a smart enough to roll down their window and take the advice we're giving them --"Cut you wheels over here toward the curb, there's some traction there." One guy *stayed* *on* *his* *phone* the entire time we were trying to help him and didn't do anything we asked him to do. Idiot.
stone dust. Usually pre-spread over bridges, overpasses, where freezing is most likely.
Atlanta is a very hilly region with many small bridges over creeks. Lots of interstate overpasses create artificial hills. In this case the several days of low temps meant that the road surfaces were already very low, so almost immediately all the bridges and overpassed iced over. Any low-lying area in shade iced over. Pretty much any hill or sloped road section quickly because impossible to drive up, trapping cars at the bottom and closing that artery. Pretty soon every possible way around town became clogged due to jams at the bottom of some hill that was too iced over for minivans and Hyundais to get up. People with 4-wheel drive trucks did OK *if* they could squeeze by the packs of cars (many empty and abandoned in the middle of the road).
Several things seemed to make this event different from similar snowfall events that I've seen here in the last 20 years or so.
When snowfall occurs here it is usually a passing cold front event in an otherwise seasonable temperature period with daytime temps in the 40's or high 30's. So when snow falls, it pretty much melts in the streets until after 5PM or so when the temps start to drop. This time, we had several days of very cold weather preceding the snowfall and it was as if the streets' thermal mass had already been depleted. Snow hitting the streets initially melted but started to freeze into ice sheets quickly, more quickly than usual. By about 1PM many streets, especially surface streets with plenty of shade, were already covered with a thick ice sheet.
Atlanta has lots of creeks and small rivers with bridges. Atlanta is also quite a hilly place. Bridges ice before the main road, and bridges here are often at the bottom of a hill in both directions. So all the bridges and all the low-lying areas at the bottom of hills froze first. Many cars could not make it up the icy slope. Even minor slopes on surface streets especially became impassible due to the ice. Again, all this happened much earlier in the day than people have come to expect.
I live 4.5 miles from work, normally an 8-12 minute commute. I left my office at 12:45PM and it took me 2.5 hours and I had to use multiple alternative routes as I encountered several places where bridges and low-lying areas were impossible to get through. Luckily I know multiple routes home and was able to mentally plot the flattest route home and wind my way through interconnected neighborhoods. Even still, I used the GPS to avoid the dead ends that are common in neighborhoods. A co-worker left 15 minutes after I did, and 4.5 hours later made it as far as my house--he stopped for a bathroom break and made it home a full 12 hours after he left. My brother-in law left downtown at 2:30PM, two hours later managed to pick up his wife who works 1 mile away from where he works. At 8:30PM we used the computer traffic reports and google maps to get them off the interstate through neighborhoods, and by 1:30AM they had made it to our house. We figure it was another 8 hours to their house. Good thing he had taken his 4-wheel drive "hunting pickup" to work that morning.
Everyone started leaving offices after about 12PM-3PM, which normally would have been plenty soon but by then it was already too late on too many surface streets, so even the main roads which had been pre-treated and the interstates which have enough traffic to provide hot exhaust and tire friction heat to keep lanes open backed up--people exiting onto surface streets had no where to go.
Businesses and schools took a chance, given that the forecast had called for the snowfall to be south of the city. With much of the population in metro-ATL actually being north of the city, to forecast made many people in north metro-ATL figure there would be no real problem.
Schools in particular did everyone a disservice by staying open, then announcing early dismissals at 12:30PM or so. So tens of thousands of overwrought mommies and daddies jumped on the roads at the same time to make sure their precious offspring didn't have to risk a bus ride.
Also, the cell phone system was overloaded. So many people stuck in their cars for so long panicking chewed up all the bandwidth.
Stupid hate crime laws assume intent even where there is no evidence that race, religion, gender or orientation played any role in the crime. Mug someone who happens to be Jewish or gay or..., then you may be facing a federal hate crime charge too.
And I don't disagree with what you say about the math. But many more models are not open, nor is the data to run them available.
Phys.org
"Computer models are used to inform policy decisions about energy, but existing models are generally "black boxes" that don't show how they work, making it impossible for anyone to replicate their findings. Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new open-source model and are sharing the data they put into it, to allow anyone to check their work – an important advance given the environmental and economic impact of energy policy decisions.
"Most models show you the math behind how they work, but don't share the source code that is supposed to implement that math – so you can't tell how faithful the model is to the mathematics," says Dr. Joseph DeCarolis, an assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the new model. "And the people utilizing existing models often don't share the data they use. So, in effect, you can't check their work.
"That's a problem, because the results of those models are informing policy decisions with billions of dollars on the line."
Because that's what you postulated "why are all the world's glaciers and reservoirs of permanent ice on the planet shrinking at ever increasing rates simultaneously?"
Not "some" or most or even "nearly all". A single counter-example falsifies your assumption, let alone the "ever increasing rate" which is also easily falsifiable.
Most East Antarctic glaciers are growing. A number of glaciers around the world saw growth in 2013. Even the 2011 report "GLACIER MASS BALANCE BULLETIN" showed several glaciers growing, and several others that had some periods of growth and loss (i.e., not shrinking at *ever increasing* rates").
It is undoubtedly true that the overall glacial mass is shrinking due to the overall warming trend, which is almost certainly exacerbated by human activities. But when you make the sort of absolutist statements you made, you come off as nothing so much as a shrill alarmist.
Let's assume that some miracle occurs and humans can reverse the greenhouse gas pollution back to prehistoric levels and eliminate human effects on the overall climate? What then? At some point the Earth will either heat up some more or cool off some more on its own, as it has many times in the pre-human past. What will your response be to an impending "ice-ball Earth" or Jurassic conditions that are not human-related?
“If, in fact, I could solve all these problems without passing them through Congress, I would do so,” President Obama responded. “But we’re also a nation of laws.”
"Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, “No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.”
Slashdot Mirror
co-workers who are willing to go beyond the strict 9-5 will get all the brownie points and the bigger raise and the better office.
Or perhaps they will just continue to be abused.
Depends on the individual circumstance.
Gitmo. Nor did he order the immediate withdrawal of US troops deployed around the world (notably those deployed fighting "Bush's Wars"). Nor has he moved to undo the PATRIOT Act.
None of the "evil" things Bush/Cheney were doing, that the left complained about so vocally, that Obama *ran* on...he's done zipnuts anything about.
To do these things would dismantle some of the Power, and I don't see Mr Obma as one who would let go of any aspect of power, especially Government Power that he controls.
When under some future Republican President some Government efforts to spy on the American people in uncovered, we'll expect you to be here saying "We will continue to maintain a big, powerful government, because we prefer a stronger government, instead of a weaker one."
You know, when a bio-chip implant is required in all people, simplifying Government's ability to track the whereabouts of everyone, all the time, let's say...in an effort to prevent crime, facilitate healthcare (tied to your medical records), provide irrefutable positive voter ID.
I'm sure the big, powerful, stronger rather than weaker Government will be glad to count on your support.
Arg. Not "charges was".
And the language defining that particular offense essentially excluded people in public places. Someone nude or partially nude in a public place, well, that's their choice and they will probably be looked at and it should not constitute a peeping tom violation on my part if I stare at them. And fully clothed people are even less protected in public.
The law will need to be carefully crafted so that it prevents upskirts without preventing casual photos in public places, etc. But that's the problem with a law. If you try to make a law that allows innocuous behavior while punishing "deviant" behavior, you will be unable to define all the "deviant" behavior without infringing on perfectly innocent behaviors.
buy a new car as soon as they get that first job. A mid-level car costs about $23K (Toyota Camry starts at $22,495) but they won't bat an eye about the car payment while they moan about the student loan.
Go to a state school, live on campus, buy used textbooks, apply for any financial aid available beyond student loans. It is possible to graduate without massive debt. Oh, and get a degree in something more useful than Social Work or Ethnic Studies. There's just not that many jobs for French Literature grads or Art History majors.
Thanks government for making student loans "affordable". All the easy money in student loans did was drive the prices higher; we had inflation in college costs because of an oversupply of easy money.
Which is why people think that Glass wearers are little more than advertising the fact that they are giant douches.
If all the ice covering Antarctica, Greenland, and all the glaciers around the world were to melt, sea level would rise about 70 meters (230 feet). I've seen numbers in this range from several different sources, e.g. Nat Geo says 216 ft.
Bad, sure. But 500m is not even in the bounds of reality.
How? At 3PM I saw an ambulance driving on the sidewalk and through yards to get around the packed in cars.
You'd have had to have a buttload of vehicles that started pre-treating all the surface roads and the interstates before the snow started falling. Once roads like Powers Ferry and Johnson's Ferry and Northside Drive clogged, which was within the first hour or two, there was no way to get heavy equipment without removing stuck cars one at a time. Once those clogged, there was little hope of getting more cars off the interstate.
Maybe farther north around 92 it wasn't so bad. My friend who took 4.5 hours to get from our office to my house (4+ miles, and he left 15 minutes after I did) did manage to make it to his house in Cumming around midnight and said it got better the farther north he went.
out their grid because it's 85 degrees and 50% humidity.
ATL folks can say "Call us when it's 95 and 95, and shut up until then.:
yours. Here in east Cobb and coming home from downtown.
Power's Ferry. Lower Roswell. Old Canton. Robinson. Piedmont. Johnson's Ferry. Riverside. Northside Drive. I-75. 285.
All iced over at bridges and low areas. Bumper to bumper by 1PM. Car's that could not make it up even gentle slopes.
Metro Atlanta area is about 5M people living in about 2 dozen different cities and unincorporated county sections. The City of Atlanta can no more tell the City of Smyrna what to do than NYC mayor can tell Connecticut and New Jersey what to do, even though many commuters in the City are from there.
Extraneous use of cat, plus it doesn't work. It's not quite a no-op, but it changes the first Bush to Obama on each line, then changes the first Obama to Bush. Migght be a no-op, or might result in odd constructs.
[user@localhost ~]$ cat foo
President Bush could not be reached for comment on Mr. Obama's comment: "I blame Presidnet Bush."
[user@localhost ~]$ cat foo | sed -e s/Bush/Obama/ -e s/Obama/Bush/
President Bush could not be reached for comment on Mr. Obama's comment: "I blame Presidnet Bush."
[user@localhost ~]$ cat bar
President Obama said "I blame President Bush." Former President Bush could not be reached for comment on Mr. Obama's comment.
[user@localhost ~]$ cat bar | sed -e s/Bush/Obama/ -e s/Obama/Bush/
President Bush said "I blame President Obama." Former President Bush could not be reached for comment on Mr. Obama's comment.
Toward Macon and the areas NWS predicted would be hardest hit. ATL was not supposed to get much of anything, just the southern edges. Northern suburbs not supposed to get anything at all. By the time NWS changed their official reports (about 3AM) equipment was in the wrong place.
Plus, see my other posting about how plows would not have helped!
I left within about 1/2 hour after the snow noticeably started falling. On a normal snow day, I plan to leave around 3PM because the icing doesn't start normally start until it gets dark and temps drop. I left at 12:45PM. I normally do not have to drive on the interstate and take about 4 miles on fairly leisurely 4-lane feeder roads (45MPH limit), then about 1.5 miles on 2-lane surface streets (35MPH limit) to get home.
The first mile I drove was easy and took about 5 minutes. When I hit the second stoplight I realized the timing was still set for mid-day traffic and not rush hour. But the road I was on was still flat and not iced over yet. Exhaust heat from cars idling at the stop lights and enough traffic was moving to keep things from freezing at first. But that didn't last long. After 40 minutes or so to go the next mile, still mostly due to traffic lights, I made it close enough to my normal exit to see that no cars were able to turn onto it any more. Several cycles of lights turned and only 1 or two cars had made the turn.
I realized then that the bridge at the bottom of the hill was probably iced over and preventing any one from getting through. I was able to u-turn and go back a 1/2 mile or so and use a alternate route. That was better for awhile, then I hit that route's bridge over the same creek and it was impossible. I reversed course and went through several interconnected neighborhoods (15MPH limits). Was able to cross the creek on one of their roads using momentum and good tires in low gear, after avoiding two other areas I didn't think I could make it through. I eventually came out on my normal road about 1/2 mile from my house and since the jam was behind me at the bridge I was able to get home easily from there.
The road running past my house has quite a bit of normal traffic as a secondary feeder road. We could tell from time to time when the bridge backed up because no traffic was there. After hours of having cars stuck outside my house, we started getting people ringing our bell begging to use the bathroom. Then I looked out and there were no cars. I walked down toward the bridge and a UPS truck was sideways--made it partway up the hill and slid back down sideways and was blocking traffic in both directions.
I still have cars abandoned in the street outside my house.
About 3.5 miles of the route would be safe enough. But even on a nice sunny day, the first mile I would have had to walk would be a very dangerous one with no sidewalks along a major 4-lane feeder road.
Fortunately, I was dressed appropriately, able and fully prepared to walk home should I have come to some point were I was stuck. I also had a fully-charged non-cellphone GPS that has pedestrian mode. Just in case.
Any snowplow that might have been sent out would have quickly become mired in the traffic jam that coincided with the first few flakes.
By the time there was anything to plow, the main roads were already deadlocked because the surface streets (which would have been plowed last anyway) were jammed due to traffic lights timed for mid-day rather than rush-hour operations and many many many iced-over low-lying areas that created car traps. Bridges over every minor creek sit at the bottom a tiny valley (it's up hill both ways!). These iced over almost immediately making it very difficult if not impossible to get through.
Many people abandoned their cars in the middle of the road. By morning the next day, there were still miles of interstate with bumper-to-bumper semi trailers interspersed with a few cars.
1000 plows would have done nothing. It was over (traffic wise) almost as soon as the first flakes of snow hit the ground. The hilly terrain combined with the below average temps for several days meant that roads, especially the various "feeder" surface roads, iced over almost immediately at least in the low-lying areas. Once a few cars failed to make it up some iced-over hill, that road was jammed. It took about 1 hour from the first few flakes before the traffic jam on surface streets backed up onto the interstates.
Realizing that the bridges would be a chokepoint, I managed to get home by plotting the flattest route with fewest bridges I could think of using interconnecting neighborhood streets. Once I got off the feeder roads and the main arteries, I was only facing snow and ice and not 100's of jammed-up cars. Still, it took me 2.5 hours to drive less than 5 miles. I still ended up reversing a hundred yards or so when I came out of one neighborhood and could not cross the feeder road due to traffic. Was able to get to a different outlet and get across. I also parked once (in a church parking lot) and scouted ahead on foot.
Fortunately, I was dressed appropriately, able and fully prepared to walk home should I have come to some point were I was stuck. I also had a fully-charged non-cellphone GPS that has pedestrian mode. Just in case.
Not like people I saw walking later. One woman was still trying to walk in stiletto heels. Men in dress shoes could barely stand upright. One woman had shopping bags over her shoes to protect them I guess, but this of course made everything very slippery (seriously plastic bag on snow?).
All the surface street traffic lights were still running their normal midday cycles and not the rush-hour cycles that vastly favor moving vehicles in one direction. So every stoplight had 100 vehicles behind it even before the roads became impassible with ice.
Saw many people helping push stuck vehicles at least to get them off the road if nothing else. Saw just as many people screwing over the pushers by driving around the vehicle being pushed and then getting stuck themselves now in front of the original vehicle. So the pushers have to move forward to help this asshole before they can help the original person. And the process repeats!
After I managed to make it home (2.5 hrs to go 4.6 miles), I went outside and started try to help. I had some bags of sand left in my garden from a previous project and hauled those out to the road by my house as people were spinning their wheels there. I spread the sand over the closest patches of ice where I saw people stuck. Almost everyone rolled down their windows and said thank you, even though it meant they could move only about 20 yards further up the road. But one guy, who had to see me spreading sand in front of and under the 4 or 5 cars in front of him, as soon as I got done with the car in front of him and it pulled forward he immediately pulled forward and nearly clipped me *as* *I* *was* *spreading* *sand* to help him!
Out of sand, I started helping neighbors and other drivers push some vehicles. One lady was practically crying as she rolled down her window "Thank you thank you thank you". Most people a smart enough to roll down their window and take the advice we're giving them --"Cut you wheels over here toward the curb, there's some traction there." One guy *stayed* *on* *his* *phone* the entire time we were trying to help him and didn't do anything we asked him to do. Idiot.
stone dust. Usually pre-spread over bridges, overpasses, where freezing is most likely.
Atlanta is a very hilly region with many small bridges over creeks. Lots of interstate overpasses create artificial hills. In this case the several days of low temps meant that the road surfaces were already very low, so almost immediately all the bridges and overpassed iced over. Any low-lying area in shade iced over. Pretty much any hill or sloped road section quickly because impossible to drive up, trapping cars at the bottom and closing that artery. Pretty soon every possible way around town became clogged due to jams at the bottom of some hill that was too iced over for minivans and Hyundais to get up. People with 4-wheel drive trucks did OK *if* they could squeeze by the packs of cars (many empty and abandoned in the middle of the road).
Several things seemed to make this event different from similar snowfall events that I've seen here in the last 20 years or so.
When snowfall occurs here it is usually a passing cold front event in an otherwise seasonable temperature period with daytime temps in the 40's or high 30's. So when snow falls, it pretty much melts in the streets until after 5PM or so when the temps start to drop. This time, we had several days of very cold weather preceding the snowfall and it was as if the streets' thermal mass had already been depleted. Snow hitting the streets initially melted but started to freeze into ice sheets quickly, more quickly than usual. By about 1PM many streets, especially surface streets with plenty of shade, were already covered with a thick ice sheet.
Atlanta has lots of creeks and small rivers with bridges. Atlanta is also quite a hilly place. Bridges ice before the main road, and bridges here are often at the bottom of a hill in both directions. So all the bridges and all the low-lying areas at the bottom of hills froze first. Many cars could not make it up the icy slope. Even minor slopes on surface streets especially became impassible due to the ice. Again, all this happened much earlier in the day than people have come to expect.
I live 4.5 miles from work, normally an 8-12 minute commute. I left my office at 12:45PM and it took me 2.5 hours and I had to use multiple alternative routes as I encountered several places where bridges and low-lying areas were impossible to get through. Luckily I know multiple routes home and was able to mentally plot the flattest route home and wind my way through interconnected neighborhoods. Even still, I used the GPS to avoid the dead ends that are common in neighborhoods. A co-worker left 15 minutes after I did, and 4.5 hours later made it as far as my house--he stopped for a bathroom break and made it home a full 12 hours after he left. My brother-in law left downtown at 2:30PM, two hours later managed to pick up his wife who works 1 mile away from where he works. At 8:30PM we used the computer traffic reports and google maps to get them off the interstate through neighborhoods, and by 1:30AM they had made it to our house. We figure it was another 8 hours to their house. Good thing he had taken his 4-wheel drive "hunting pickup" to work that morning.
Everyone started leaving offices after about 12PM-3PM, which normally would have been plenty soon but by then it was already too late on too many surface streets, so even the main roads which had been pre-treated and the interstates which have enough traffic to provide hot exhaust and tire friction heat to keep lanes open backed up--people exiting onto surface streets had no where to go.
Businesses and schools took a chance, given that the forecast had called for the snowfall to be south of the city. With much of the population in metro-ATL actually being north of the city, to forecast made many people in north metro-ATL figure there would be no real problem.
Schools in particular did everyone a disservice by staying open, then announcing early dismissals at 12:30PM or so. So tens of thousands of overwrought mommies and daddies jumped on the roads at the same time to make sure their precious offspring didn't have to risk a bus ride.
Also, the cell phone system was overloaded. So many people stuck in their cars for so long panicking chewed up all the bandwidth.
Stupid hate crime laws assume intent even where there is no evidence that race, religion, gender or orientation played any role in the crime. Mug someone who happens to be Jewish or gay or ..., then you may be facing a federal hate crime charge too.
And I don't disagree with what you say about the math. But many more models are not open, nor is the data to run them available.
Phys.org
"Computer models are used to inform policy decisions about energy, but existing models are generally "black boxes" that don't show how they work, making it impossible for anyone to replicate their findings. Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new open-source model and are sharing the data they put into it, to allow anyone to check their work – an important advance given the environmental and economic impact of energy policy decisions.
"Most models show you the math behind how they work, but don't share the source code that is supposed to implement that math – so you can't tell how faithful the model is to the mathematics," says Dr. Joseph DeCarolis, an assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the new model. "And the people utilizing existing models often don't share the data they use. So, in effect, you can't check their work.
"That's a problem, because the results of those models are informing policy decisions with billions of dollars on the line."
Really?
Because that's what you postulated "why are all the world's glaciers and reservoirs of permanent ice on the planet shrinking at ever increasing rates simultaneously?"
Not "some" or most or even "nearly all". A single counter-example falsifies your assumption, let alone the "ever increasing rate" which is also easily falsifiable.
Most East Antarctic glaciers are growing. A number of glaciers around the world saw growth in 2013. Even the 2011 report "GLACIER MASS BALANCE BULLETIN" showed several glaciers growing, and several others that had some periods of growth and loss (i.e., not shrinking at *ever increasing* rates").
It is undoubtedly true that the overall glacial mass is shrinking due to the overall warming trend, which is almost certainly exacerbated by human activities. But when you make the sort of absolutist statements you made, you come off as nothing so much as a shrill alarmist.
Let's assume that some miracle occurs and humans can reverse the greenhouse gas pollution back to prehistoric levels and eliminate human effects on the overall climate? What then? At some point the Earth will either heat up some more or cool off some more on its own, as it has many times in the pre-human past. What will your response be to an impending "ice-ball Earth" or Jurassic conditions that are not human-related?
“If, in fact, I could solve all these problems without passing them through Congress, I would do so,” President Obama responded. “But we’re also a nation of laws.”
"Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, “No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.”