So much data, so little understanding

Big Data, Meta Data?  Just consider the thousands of weather monitors working daily around the world, the thousands  more locations monitored by satellite.  Pile this onto archaeological records of CO2, temperature, rainfall, ocean saline and acidity, pollen.  From ice 800,000 years old, from hair and teeth a hundred thousand years old, from amber, from shells, from the mud under glaciers, the data pours in.  All this indicates a trend that says we are warming, acidifying the ocean, polluting and killing.  Yet, every week if you prowl the environmental sites some prediction or trend is changed.  But in virtually every example the rate of harm we are doing is set steeper, sooner, more dire.  Deniers grab each modification to the data as proof of uncertainty and lies, when it is in fact a refinement, proving over and over the evidence and models are on the right track.

My son has a friend, a professor of "big data".  We have so much of it, a new science is developing just to organize it, and see into it, locate trends that are not apparent due to the massive amount of it.  As you might know, the NSA and NASA are pretty good at it already.  Some retailers are trying to get good at it (not so happy about that). Most every field of science has so much data scattered in labs,  libraries, computers and publications around the world, getting a handle on this is what big data is going to do, and fast.  The overwhelming certainty of some issues are going to be tough to put off with "doubt" or "faith" in the next few years.  Can't turn back progress, so I hope for the best.  As the data out there becomes more organized and more firm in it's trends it's going to fall hard on the Luddites of climate denial and some religious/political issues.

state employees can refuse to serve gay couples

Kansas legislature has been spending it's time wisely.  Passing bills like one that affirm the states support for Christian services and prayers on military bases.  Wow, good thing that's fixed, I didn't even know we had to do that.  WTF?  In case you don't know, that's been an internet rumor for 5 years, even a niece sent me a right wing scare-mail that the prez made it illegal to pray on base.  Her father was in the Army, I wrote back and said run to the church on base, run to the chaplain, ask if he will pray with you?   How can you believe this crap when you have it at your fingertips?   Last email I ever got from her, I am now the crazy uncle, the one who throws facts at your stupidity.

But I digress.  The very very important thing they are working on now has a lovely name something about religious freedom to judo faggots or something like that.  It will allow employees of state/local governments to refuse to serve gay couples, cause they might ruin your marriage while your selling them a car tag.  It goes like this, the clerk that does marriage licenses can claim her religious freedom is infringed if she has to sell queers a ticket to matrimony.  But, it covers everything else, and legislators say it's being written in a way businesses can use it as well.   So if two men show up for a marriage licenses it's going to be a pretty sure guess.  But two women at the gay hating Chick-file or Hobby Lobby and the clerk says nope I don't serve gay couples, how can the clerk be sure, the book by the cover rule applies.  What about two men go into the registrar of deeds or city planning office to research future plans and property lines for an investment, clerk decides (right or wrong) this is a gay couple and refuses to serve them.

This may end up causing the state lots of trouble, create a population that can be denied by anyone within the system, state sanctioned discrimination, I see law suits, red ink.  Thanks GOP.

Tough few days for the GOP

It's been a tough few days for old white guys in the USA.  First that damn Coke commercial, with all those accents and foreign sound making brown people and Frenchmen ruining our holy music.  Then, a few of them, not many cause Fox didn't report it much, a few learned "America the Beautiful" was writ by a lesbian, crap, another blow.   But at least she writ it in the language of the Bible, English.  Now they find out Coke is going to use it during the Olympics, so every few days, the attack on true amerkins holy music will continue.  So boycott Coke some say, but Pepsi has come out against discrimination of gays.  Damn!  All the sugar drinks are run by anti-amerikan marriage haters.  Gonna have to drink water.

Then up in WARshington the white (R) guys been trying to show the future majority that they want their votes, so they set out to do some bills on immigration, well that rug got yanked.  Another scheme that was fix deadbeat nation, by letting long term unemployment benefits die all those deadbeats would just go back to work, just get a job, sha-zam, well that don't work either, fewer than normal were added to the rolls of the employed in Jan.  Probably they aren't hungry enough yet.  Or.....maybe you can't get a job just because you want one, if there are no jobs, wanting one don't get one.

Maybe the worst is the national debt, and Obama Care.  The debt is falling fast, much of it due to the small increases in tax on the rich and the slowly but ever increasing economic growth rate, and most corporations profits are up.  Sign-ups for Obama Care continue to grow and the main cause of bankruptcy, catastrophic health events, is going to be whittled down to a very small number.

To all my republican neighbors, and all my neighbors are republicans, even the one with a gay son is (R) as they come, suck it up, you'll feel better this fall, through voter suppression you may take back the Senate and I know you will make gains in state houses everywhere, the Kochs will pay for that.

Green Tea, it's not all that bitter, cures ALEC

The tea party and green groups in several states have learned they can make green tea, and it satisfies both groups.
In Arizona the utility and ALEC just lost one fight to tax solar panels out of the market, however with connections in the legislature they are back after a month with another try.  The push was for a $150 a month tax on home owners with solar panels, it settled at $5.  But immediately industry reintroduced another fight.  Part of the publics push back comes from a quickly formed group "TUSK", Tell Utilities Solar won't be Killed.  Excellent at raising tea party members to the fight with statements like this from Tom Morrissey, “Conservatives who support school choice and healthcare choice should join me in supporting energy choice. As conservatives, we are morally obligated to fight new tax proposals. Monopoly utilities request to end net metering amounts to a tax on solar savings. It also seeks to line the pockets of a regulated monopoly through government intervention. I am proud to join Barry Goldwater Jr. in leading the charge towards more energy competition and private investment."

In the Dakota's Green Tea has also had success against attempts to cripple net metering.  This net metering fight normally takes the following course; limiting how much energy the utility will pay for, setting the price at wholesale or more often far far below, often not paying for it or crediting it for 1 year after it's produced, in some cases a complex set of monthly averages and limits means the homeowner could get nothing at all for feeding the grid.  The goal of the monopoly is to strangle competition and increase not reduce cost to the user.  The goal of Green Tea groups is to label these attacks as; a tax on sunshine, attack on personal choice, government siding against the citizen.

In Georgia a Green Tea coalition succeeded in turning back a law that would outlaw solar panels being owned by someone other than the property owner.  In other words private citizens would have to pay for the solar system in full up front, outlawing leasing, renting, or financing of solar systems.  Mandating it a cash only product, maybe the only one in the state.
The head of the Tea Party considered the law an attack on freedom of choice and a way to perpetuate subsidies and profits to coal and gas.  The baggers and the tree huggers don't agree on anything else, but they worked on this together, an unholy alliance some in both groups protested with disgust, but they did it anyhow and it satisfied both.

Elsewhere around the country green tea convinced one utility board to allow customers to indicate if they want to buy green or conventional energy.   This means if more customers ask for green energy the utility must buy green energy or green energy credits to offset pollution of gas and coal.

Homeowners turn roof into money maker

Variations due to: local electric rates, net metering rules/rates, state or local incentives, competitiveness of distributors/installers.  The last item is interesting if we compare the US home solar market to Germany where wages are much higher for installers, but install crews complete jobs much faster and charge less, also markups by distributors are less in Germany.  It seems dealers charge us more and pay workers less.  Hmmm, sound familiar?  Well still, the payoff is worth it anywhere in the nation, but KANSAS where I live is the worst, finishing dead fuckin last, ain't the only list we hold down last on.  Home solar is worth it from an investment standpoint, and from the "it's the right thing to do" standpoint.  Now, my house is completely shaded by a row of 100' cottonwoods 40' away, maybe I put it on the next house.

constitutional scholars in red states agree

birth defects and gas wells

 "....children born to mothers living in areas that had more than 125 natural gas wells per mile had a 30 percent greater prevalence of congenital heart defects. The kids were also twice as likely to have had a neural tube defect than children born to mothers who lived with no wells within 10 miles of their homes."
Examining thousands of Colorado babies, the results are above.  (125 wells per mile, wow)  
"OH OH OH but that proves nothing, more studies are needed"  is response form fossil fuel and their PR firms schooled in Tobacco Industry's decades of one more test tactics.
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The GOP says people can make more on welfare so why would they work, well then raise minimum wage higher, human nature will drive those freeloaders off the couch.  And really there are a lot of peope working that make so little they qualify for welfare, this would lift a few of them off that as well.  And another thing, the GOP is working overtime to cut birthcontrol at the same time they want women off welfare, make up your mind then to support a pro-natalist policies for mothers with leave for birth and they still have the job to come back to.