Just as no amount of flat temperature data would dissuade the climate cult, so no amount of flat (or even negative!) data on mask effectiveness will shake the faith of the Church of Covid. Beautiful Theories cannot be disproven by mere information.

I worked late into the night on Election Day 2016. I remember the shocking news of Trump's victory reaching Clinton campaign headquarters, her supporters howling in anguish and sobbing. Many of those images have been sarcastically memed over the years since that night.

For most of my lifetime, people on the Left focused on the perils of Big Business while ignoring, or actively embracing, the menace of Big Government. A great deal of the Right did the reverse. Both Bigs are perilous, especially when they fuse into a combined threat to liberty.

The growth of both government and corporate titans was inevitable, especially after a century of industrial and technological revolutions. Technology makes it possible to have larger endeavors, both public and private. Economies of scale bring enormous benefits.

Industrial advancements meant government had to get bigger to handle even its most basic responsibilities, like national defense. The World Wars erased the model of a tiny central government handling a few key elements of defense. Every war became a clash of industrial titans.

After the wars, people - not just voracious political opportunists, but many average voters and nearly all of the intelligentsia - fell in love with the notion of using the power of industrialized warfare to address domestic issues. Every crisis became "equivalent" to war.

People expected more of government, so it grew - and then it exploded. Meanwhile, Big Business was growing too, and it delivers tangible benefits that would be impossible to achieve with only small, decentralized local companies. There is an inescapable logic to corporate growth.

Every crisis becomes a religion if it lasts long enough.

One factor in that transformation is the Beautiful Theory phenomenon: the power elite insists its remedies are logical and politically correct so they MUST work, even if the actual evidence shows they obviously don't.

One reason the Left hates Rush so much is that he was so effective at skewering their pretensions to moral and intellectual superiority. He made it okay to laugh at them, to judge the failure of their policies without ritually celebrating their alleged good intentions.

Thread on very strong inbound CA storm. A cold & clear morning will quickly give way to increasing clouds, NorCal valley rain & snow down to 1,500-2,000 ft (locally lower) later this PM. Current satellite imagery shows this strengthening system off the coast. (1/10) #CAwx

Tonight, a rapidly intensifying cold front will sweep across NorCal. This front will be unusually well defined, for a CA winter storm, and will replace an already cold airmass with...another cold airmass! (2/10) #CAwx

The cold frontal passage is expected to be quite dramatic across NorCal in the overnight hours. A convective "narrow cold frontal rainband" (NCFR) will likely develop, which could bring a period of torrential rain or snow to many areas, as well as possible lightning. (3/10) #CAwx

Extremely heavy precipitation is possible for a 30-60+ minute period when this NCFR feature moves ashore. Over an inch of rain could fall per hour in some spots. This portion of the event poses a high threat of debris flows in/near recently burned areas. (4/10) #CAwx

In addition to torrential rainfall, the cold front/NCFR will be accompanied by very strong wind gusts across much of NorCal. In fact, high-res models are suggesting potential for gusts of 60-70 mph even in lower elevation places. Widespread power outages possible. (5/10) #CAwx

Long thread here... from Keith, on tree guards:

I really don’t want to spread 120,000 plastic tree guards across the side of our lovely hill, the hill where I grew up and now farm, on the eastern edge of the Black Mountains. So, I’ve taken a good look at the pros,... 1/25

the cons and the alternatives, to try and decide rationally, which is the best approach for our plant on the Bryn Arw.

It has become the accepted norm in the UK that to plant a tree, you need to put your sapling in the ground and then wrap a plastic tree guard around it.

This is simply ‘how it’s done’ now. This practice uses a huge amount of plastic; worse still, it disperses plastic extremely efficiently around the countryside. In some rural places, un-retrieved tree guards are by far the biggest source of plastic pollution.

And yet the first commercial plastic tree guards only came on the market 38 years ago. There are many perfectly healthy woodlands and trees that are older than this, and which became established without plastic – which begs the question: do we really need guards?

Plastic tree guards have several uses, some of which did revolutionise tree planting when they first came out. In particular, they:
•protect your saplings from things that want to eat them;
•provide a microclimate, which enhances tree growth, according to the manufacturers;

It's #FigureFriday, so let's chat about my favorite subject: color palettes 🎨 for climate science visualization! (1/12)

First, why is it important? Put simply: a beautiful figure can communicate your results more effectively than text. It can make a figure more understandable to a public audience. So it is worth it to put care into your figure design. (2/12)

First, if you're plotting up climate model data, especially anomalies, I highly recommend Cynthia Brewer's palettes on ColorBrewer. BrBG is my go-to for precip anomalies, and RdBu is a natural for temperature. (3/12)

The sequential palettes are also great if you've got data going in one direction. Here's the Brewer "blues" at work for a figure showing LGM T change. (4/12)

But what about line graphs? If you are paleoclimatologist like me, you are probably plotting a bunch of squiggly lines. For this, I suggest designing a palette for your *entire paper* ahead on time, and then plot stuff in this palette in every figure. (5/12)

Comparing two environmental regulation

Preventing emissions vs improving water quality,

Which one better?

https://t.co/zLrVNWIPXm

What is the Difference?
We certainly often hear the term better to prevent than cure. Of course, we all agree on that. But what about improving quality, is that better than preventing?

A researcher named Dan Pan tries to compare 2 different regulations on environmental impacts.

One of the regulations is based on environmental quality limits. the other is based on the market, but we will call it improving water quality because it gives reward and punishment on environmental performance.

Preventing Emissions:

• Restrictions or closings of companies that violate environmental quality standards

• Restricted areas must protect their water

• Implementing comprehensive water conservation

• Strengthens water recovery and protection

Improving water quality

Give awards to mayors whose evaluation scores are good, and adequate, whose evaluations are bad. There are several parameters defined in determining water quality such as: COD intensity, water quality, and industrial wastewater standards