Saturday Open Thread [5.4.2013]
This isn’t an accident, either:
A 3-year-old boy, identified by YPD as Darrien Nez, was transported to Yuma Regional Medical Center by emergency personnel and later pronounced dead.
Court records indicated that Spry had been staying at the residence to help her daughter pack for a move.
Spry owns a 9mm handgun, which was inside a backpack. She said she was packing the bathroom that morning and placed the backpack on top of a clothes dryer. Court records indicated that Spry said she saw her grandson come into the room but continued with her packing.
According to court records, Spry said she heard the gun go off about five minutes later and that when she looked over, she saw her grandson lying on the floor, bleeding from the nose. Court records did not indicate how the child got the gun.
Court records also indicated that Spry admitted to using methamphetamine the day before at about 11 p.m. and placed the pipe she used to smoke it in the same backpack as the gun.
She’s currently being held on $500,000 bail. Unlike the Kentucky parents who don’t look like they’ll face any charges. But let’s let Charlie Pierce have the last word on this madness:
[…]If your “way of life” involves handing deadly weapons to five-year olds, your way of life is completely screwed up and you should change it immediately because it is stupid and wrong. (And, again, also, too: goddammit, “learning to use and respect a gun” means at least knowing that the fking thing is loaded when it’s sitting in the corner of the parlor like it’s a damn umbrella stand or something, and we should talk about that part, too.) It is not in any way “normal” to hand a kindergartner a firearm. If a mother from the inner-city of, say, Philadelphia did that, and the kid subsequently shot his sister to death, Fox News never would stop yelling about the crisis in African American communities and the Culture Of Death, and rap music, too. If your culture is telling you that children who have only recently emerged from toddlerhood should have their own guns, then your culture is deadly and dangerous and that should concern you, too. If your culture demands that, in the face of a general national outrage over the killing of other children, your politics work to loosen the gun laws you have, as they apparently did in Kentucky, then your culture is making your politics stupid and wrong and you should change them, too.[…]
Seriously, let’s take a good, hard look at exactly who keeps pushing this Culture of Death and violence in communities.
And then there’s this (via The Bitchy Pundit):
What interests you today?
So I missed that the Kentucky Derby is today. Grantland reminded me of it when they posted Hunter S. Thompson’s great piece on the Derby from 1970 today: The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved
The world hasn’t warmed in sixteen years yet we still are being fleeced by companies like Fisker Automotive . There are suckers born every minute. Stay tuned for the Delaware sea level rise fleecing.
BTW, is the ocean level actually rising , or is the whole sea level rise thing based on projections of global warming? I say this because I have spent a hell of a lot of time in and on the water, and I haven’t seen any sea level rise at all in my lifetime. Natural Erosion , yes, sea level rise, no.
I guess it stands to reason though, that the ocean levels rise and fall over the millennia due to the fact that ice ages come and go, right?
I blame this whole thing on Obama and Biden. When they bailed out both General Motors and Chrysler since the VP of the United State’s lives in Delaware and due to the size of our economy state, one of the stipulations should have been to receive the funding that both of Delaware’s Auto Plants have to remain in operations. It would of save us the tax payer 21.5 million dollars on Fisker.
I say this because I have spent a hell of a lot of time in and on the water, and I haven’t seen any sea level rise at all in my lifetime.
🙄
I’m serious cassandra. I’ve sat on my surfboard at the end of these jetties for well over thirty years , and I can see no difference in height of the water on the jetties. The beach comes and goes but the level is still the same. Just saying. I don’t see the dire importance for the whole sea level rise initiative thing happening in Delaware right now.
How very scientific of you.
I don’t need someone else to tell me what I can see for myself day in day out.
World hasn’t warmed = record temperatures every year
Sea level has been steadily rising at a rate of 0.04 to 0.1 inches per year since 1900. Since 1992, satellite altimetry indicate a rate of rise of 0.12 inches per year. 30 times .12 = 3.6 inches. Would you have noticed that over a 30 year span? Short answer is no. No one would because the change is gradual (where did my flat stomach go? It was just here yesterday).
Still, so what? What’s a few inches over a lifetime? Again, a (relatively) short answer. A 1 foot rise in sea level can result in 150 feet of landward erosion. Dunes, beaches and wetlands are risk. As sea level rises, these features migrate inland. However, because we live and build on the coasts, development prevents this natural migration. Structures such as dikes keep new beaches or wetlands from forming behind them. As a result, the existing beaches and wetlands erode or become inundated with water (aka Prime Hook).
Is is really happening? There is no doubt. Is it a crisis? Nah. We’ll have beaches and jetties for some time to come. But it’s sort of like parachuting out of a plane. There is no need to pull the rip cord until the very last moment now is there? Or a more topical metaphor. Winter is coming. Some people think it’s time to chop wood for the fire. Others advocate waiting until the first snow. Personally, I’m not adverse to chopping a little wood. I’m not about to overboard but I’m also not about to stick my head in the sand.
Ruth Ann Minner used to wade/wallow into the water to see if she could see her feet. That’s how she judged the health of the bay. Now that’s real science…lol
I don’t need someone else to tell me what I can see for myself day in day out.
The best strategy here is to just roll your eyes at this fool. He took a weather class back in the day, you know, and he’s been trolling on it ever since.
🙄
“As a result, the existing beaches and wetlands erode or become inundated with water (aka Prime Hook).”
Inland bays and marshes have always fluctuated between fresh and salt water. They could be fresh water with lilly pads and bass, crappie and sun fish swimming around for hundreds of years until a storm breaches the barrier island/beach and creates and inlet for salt water. Then it reverts to a saltwater environment again.
I have no doubt that the sea level is rising at it’s natural rate. We are still trending out of the last ice age, are we not?
I’ve raked up indian artifacts in the middle of the bay on my buddies clam boat because the middle of the bay used to be dry land ten thousand years ago. After big storms you can sometimes see old tree stumps at the oceans edge. Land used to extend out to the continental shelf. Of course the ocean is rising, but It has absolutely nothing to do with man made global warming in my estimation.
Bwhahahaha! Seriously? I sat on a surfboard? You’re kidding… right?
I know you took an undergrad climate course at UD, but… what was your major? Was it climatology? No? Any science? Biology? Chemistry? Physics? Do you presently work in research? Are you in a lab? Or is the entire extent of your credentials composed of sitting on a surfboard?
I’m not kidding… what did you major in and what do you do for a living? Perhaps you work in research, and I’m being too hasty in mocking you.
“The best strategy here is to just roll your eyes at this fool. He took a weather class back in the day, you know, and he’s been trolling on it ever since.”
Yes cassandra, I took a “weather class” back in the day as part of a geography major. It’s called meteorology and climatology at the University of Delaware. My professor’s name was Dr. John R Mather. He was the Delaware state climatologist at the time, and one of the leading climatologists of his day. This was in 1985 before most people even heard of global warming, and he was already debunking it .
Yes. Because scientific inquiry never advances in 28 years. Hope you are insisting on getting penicillin and NOTHING NEWER THAN THAT from your doctor.
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Yes pandora. Sitting on my surfboard. There are reference points on the rocks that I’ve been familiar with for years, and I’m talking thousands of hours in front of them. You people are classic.
“I’m serious cassandra. I’ve sat on my surfboard at the end of these jetties for well over thirty years , and I can see no difference in height of the water on the jetties.”
What a load of crap. Every jetty that used to work as a surfbreak is now gone except for one.
Your professor debunked global warming in ’85? The facts show since ’85 the planet has, in fact, warmed.
There is a surveyors mark in coastal sussex that is now underwater that is used to measure sea level rise.
“What a load of crap. Every jetty that used to work as a surfbreak is now gone except for one.”
What do you mean the jettys are gone? The past couple of years the break sucked in Rehoboth do to the dredging, but it’s breaking again. The south side of the inlet is also breaking. North shores is also breaking.
My guess is that you are referring to herring point (ming town ) as the only jetty left ridable. You should keep telling your friends that.
Synthmerkin’s post moderated because he is posting under way too many names.
“Of course the ocean is rising, but It has absolutely nothing to do with man made global warming in my estimation.”
So what? I could care less whether man is the culprit or plants or the black helicopters.
The question is, what can and should we do about it? This nonsense that we aren’t to blame so we shouldn’t do anything is kinda silly. We will be affected by it and will have to deal with the impacts regardless. And those impacts (and costs) will be significant.
‘The question is, what can and should we do about it?’
In the end we can’t do anything about it. Short term I guess we can keep dredging the beach and building dunes. My guess though is that it will result in a carbon tax.
Yes, all natural. So much easier to blame nature. So convenient. How nice it must be to believe only what you want to be true.
Or we could try this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_Barrier_Resources_Act
FBH There are reference points on the rocks that I’ve been familiar with for years, and I’m talking thousands of hours in front of them.
What a bunch of nonsense I’ve fished the north jetty at Indian River Inlet for close to forty years. Whatever the cause it is much lower now.
If you want to prove me wrong, let’s see you go to the end on a high tide. By the first break the world will be a better place without you in it.
“What do you mean the jettys are gone?”
No, the jetty surf breaks are gone. North Dewey, Henlopen Hotel, Gordons Pond. Gone. Those are just the jetty breaks. North Shores poles, tower road, key box. All not breaking. Mostly due to dredging. Why so much dredging? Sea level rise causes increased flooding and erosion.
Trying to judge things by eye while sitting on your surfboard is hardly scientific. Measuring from a set point over the course of 100 years, however, is.
@Tom mckenney: I really shouldn’t even respond to you because you are just a plain rude A hole, but since you are unfamiliar with the situation on the north side jetty, i’ll clue you in. The rocks on the end of that jetty have been falling in for years due to wave action and the tide going in and out of the inlet . The middle part of the jetty has water actually running underneath it into the inlet DNREC says. They have been trying to keep up with it by pumping sand from the south side, but they still keep losing sand.
The northside jetty has also been sinking.
@ FBH Your argument against sea level rise was you knew the rocks as reference points. When challenged you admit that was BS. I admitted I did not know why the rocks were lower. I suspect there several reasons. Is it rude to challenge you when you make a blatantly false statement?
Atmospheric Carbon reaches 400ppm – but as long as we keep telling ourselves it’s natural, we’ll never have to change, right?
Tom what’s “rude” is this: If you want to prove me wrong, let’s see you go to the end on a high tide. By the first break the world will be a better place without you in it.
“Rude” was polite, that’s pretty much a total dickwad comment on your part. Dickwad.
Why are people responding to a person who is arguing facts based on his own personal anecdotal experience instead of what the overwhelming consensus in science says? Whether the Earth is warming, and whether humans are responsible, are no longer debatable issues—the affirmative conclusions are supported by nearly every shred of evidence that comes from legitimate (peer-reviewed) sources. To engage with someone so ridiculous as fightingbluehen only suggests that he is worth engaging, and he is not, because he is wrong, and simply a troll.
What is happening to sea level is one set of facts. The relationship (or not) to CO2 levels is debatable. The ability to “reverse” the impact through human intervention is similarly debatable.
Not debatable is the stupidity of humans living near the coast and expecting stability.
SU Spense. Everything is debatable. That time is past, Now is the time to nationalize big oil. (lol, just kidding, that sort of wrote itself) but who knows, that must might be what is necessary to save the planet? Get money completely out of the global warming equation and put real people in charge….
@ anon I don’t hide who I am. So go ahead and snipe with childish insult, if you had a backbone you would not hide behind “anon”. The world would be a better place without people who have to lie to sell their agenda. If you recall that is what got us into a war in Iraq.
I agree with John above ^….
Not believing in the science because it doesn’t jive with personal anecdotal information …………….
Is kinda like the religious right not believing in evolution because chimpanzees are not currently evolving into humans….
just sayin” 🙂
FBH’s methods are how man first proved the sun revolves around the earth.
Good one, puck!
The “consensus” was that the sun revolved around the earth, right. puck?
Why would anyone think that the level of the ocean is static?