As average U.S. temperatures warm between 3°F and more than 9°F by the end of the century, depending on how greenhouse gas emissions are curtailed or not in the coming years, the waves of extreme heat the country is likely to experience could bend and buckle rails into what experts call “sun kinks.” Intense heat expands the metal, curving and misaligning rails that become a danger to the trains gliding over them.
Climate Change Could Warp Rails With ‘Sun Kinks’ | Climate Central
The frequency of hot afternoons has plummeted in the US over the last 80 years. There is not one shred of real world data to support any of their claims.
“In the US, derailments have dropped dramatically since 1980 from over 3,000 annually (1980) to 1,000 or so in 1986, to about 500 in 2010[1][2]” – wikipedia
The dip$hits at Heidi Central think that tracks will heat up, kink, and trains will derail. The railroad owners will react to kinking tracks by letting trains derail. Reminds me of Malthus. Regardless of whether their scenario comes to pass, kinked tracks will lead to maintenance, not derailments. Additionally, based on the surprisingly large number of derailments that occur already, most are NOT megadisasters.
“When anything goes wrong on the rails, it’s big news even without the help of climate change.”
Not really. There are 1 or 2 derailments every day.
AHHHhhhh….
Another Great Theory done in by Reality. That Hurts!
BUT WAIT!
The sheeple have been so Dumbed Down they will now believe anything we tell them, so hope is not lost.
Three eco-zealous climophobe scientists were walking through the forest when they came upon a set of tracks.
The first said, “Those are deer tracks. Worse, it must be ill or dying, just look at the way it is dragging its feet. A sure sign of Global Warming damage to the ecosystem.”
The second said, “No, those are polar bear tracks. And it is much worse than anyone thought – polar bears should not even be this far south at all! This is a sure sign that the ice caps are melting and destroying their habitat.”
The third said, “You’re both wrong, those tracks are too straight to be anything but a couple of alligators dragging their long tails. It is way worse than we ever thought. Alligators have never been seen this far North! A sure sign we are all doomed!”
They were still arguing when the train hit them
No doubt they were City Folk venturing into the great outdoors for the first time in their lives despite the 200+ peer-reviewed papers they co-authored on eco-systems.
{:>D
LOL! Nice to start my day with a good laugh!
Good grief! The wacko round table brainstorming sessions are really getting ridiculous. Good thing we still allow engineering/technical degrees in the US. Cause it’s only the intelligent folks who won’t be fooled by this kind of alarmist garbage physics.
Engineering is the degree that the really smart people get. Physics and Chemistry are second choice and the also-rans get degrees in biology (now eco-science). Those who can not hack the math required for Bachelor of Science degrees are stuck with getting B.A.s and high school level teaching degrees.
At University they gave a talk to all that years class of students going for a teaching degree. There were about 2 or 3 physics majors, ~5 to 10 Chemistry and math majors ~100 biology majors and ~ 500 each English and History majors.
I was going for a BS in Chemistry with the added courses to allow me to teach. The Uni. had switched me, without my knowledge or permission, from Chem Engineering to Chemistry (Girls didn’t get engineering degrees back in pre-history days) and then added insult to injury by awarding me a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry which I promptly handed back demanding the Bachelor of Science that I earned with all those extra math and physics classes.
Me too. Vassar is a girls school so it doesn’t give BS so I settled for a BA. But I aced all the science courses just like they do in boys schools.
http://www.hyzercreek.com/vassar.htm
“also-rans get degrees in biology”
SHUT UP!
I got a BS in biology because I LIKE BIOLOGY. The world is not composed of people who have engineering degrees or wish they had.
I also liked biology and was planning to major in it but was warned by a friend NOT to get a degree in Bio because unless you have a PhD the jobs just are not there. So I got a degree in Chemistry became a lab manager and hired Bio majors as lab techs at just over minimum wage.
True about jobs. I got a job as a manufacturing supervisor and moved into IT.
I entered college looking to get a degree. I majored in what I liked.
Gamecock, I really do not like chemistry but it did provided a decent paying living. I much prefer biology or geology and regret not going for an advanced degree in geology when it was offered to me out of the blue – twice. Once here in the USA and once on an airplane by a seat mate who was a prof at Leeds Univ in the UK. I decided to marry instead – BAD DECISION {:>D
Nonsense about Biology degrees. Most pre-meds get biology degrees because that’s what medical schools want. Last time I was told, MD’s can expect more than minimum wage.
Morgan,
And how many of those BS/BA Biology majors get turned down from medical school or vet school?
Actually you are wrong the Med schools are flooded with Bio Majors. One friend got a degree in Chem Engineering and was accepted. Another got a degree in Pharmacy and at least had a decent career ahead of him.
You are better off ASKING then assuming the Med schools or vet schools you are targeting want Bio degrees and as my two friends above did, planning ahead for when you do not make the cut.
Since I work with kids a lot this is a question I often have to answer. If you want in vet or med school you darn well better have straight A’s from a top school and you STILL may not make the cut.
And if you don’t get into vet school, you can get a job in the National Wildlife Service, and help animals by harassing hunters and fishermen.
My physics prof insisted physics was the strongest major for med school. Maybe they figure if you can tolerate that much misery, you’re good to go.
I began in physics, but have worked as an engineer most of my life. Now switching into IT. I wish I could do it all over. I would get multiple Phd’s.
Gail, you’re right on about people shying away from math. When I see the skills of my classmates today, It’s no wonder the fortune 500s want a bachelor’s minimum. There are a lot of them in upper division who don’t even understand algebra. They aren’t doing very well.
I don’t care what degree people get. I care if they can think.
Agreed, but unfortunately the Sheeple in HR do not agree. No Degree no job. All HR is looking for is the correct buzz words, no employment gaps, and under 35 – 40 years of age. Last company I worked for made a high school diploma mandatory for ALL jobs even for the guy cleaning the latrine.
The most knowledgeable guy I knew in statistics was a J.W. with a high school degree, BTW
True but it is what gets you good paying jobs unfortunately. I learned pretty early on not to take professors seriously. I was very much interested in Nutrition but as it turned out, the nutrition program was crap no matter where you go (Registered dietitian). I learned everything on my own and was shocked to see how different it was in classrooms. The professors didn’t seem to like that I was challenging them on several things. 15 years ago, everything I said I thought they were wrong turned out to be correct. Lol. Funny how that turned out.
There is more ignorance in nutrition than any other field. Everybody is an expert on the food he is selling.
“High fructose corn syrup contains fructose which is poison. It’s much better to get your sugar from fruit”
That sort of thing.
Morgan,
Fructose is like alcohol… consume too much, you get fatty liver disease… Fruits do not contain that much fructose compared to processed drinks/food.
Saturated fat turned out to be much less harmful.
Avoiding sun at all costs turned out to be a disaster as we need vitamin D for so many things.
High consumption of wheat flour based is very dangerous for some people (diabetes and heart disease) – See Wheat Belly Diet/ Heart Scan Blog by Dr. Mike Davis.
It just goes on and on.
Fructose is just sugar. It’s the healthiest of all sugars because it’s the sweetest per unit of measure so you don’t need to use as much. Sucrose breaks down into invert sugar which is 50% fructose. Honey is 50% fructose already because it’s already inverted by the bee. Maple syrup is supposed to be healthy, it’s 50% fructose. All the negative propaganda about fructose was started by the ignorant people who work at health food stores who don’t know anything. What is the point of saying “consume too much fructose and you get fatty liver disease” when that applies to all sugars? What is the point of singling out fructose as being similar to alcohol? All sugars are similar to alcohol.
It’s the same sort of dishonesty we get all the time from global warming nuts. You should just say “fructose is sugar and pure sugar is bad for you.” Why single out fructose? It’s actually the least harmful of all sugars, because it’s sweeter and you need less of it to sweeten things. The only reason they add fructose to corn syrup is to make it as sweet as sucrose. High fructose corn syrup is better for you than regular corn syrup because you need to use more. (Regular corn syrup is pure glucose which isn’t as sweet)
Please don’t argue with me, I don’t want to hear it.
Saturated fat is much less harmful than fructose? That is insane.
Nobody said anything about avoiding the sun at all costs. Everybody knows about vitamin D. We don’t need it for “so many things” we just need it. Overexposure to the sun is not needed, and causes cancer.
Fruit contains just as much sugar as “processed foods” if not more. Why do you think fruit is sweet? God made fruit sweet so animals will eat the seeds and distribute them. God chose fructose for fruit because it’s the sweetest and will attract more animals. Fruit is loaded with fructose. That WHY it’s called FRUCTose.
Wheat is bad for you now? Wheat is the number one food crop in the western world.
Talking to you is like talking to an AGW nut, the deceptive way to argue things.
Wow, didn’t realize I started a fight about food and vitamin D … LOL. I just think it’s hilarious that Heidi Central thinks half a degree temp change in 70 years can make trains crash.
As for saturated fat, I can’t do algebra at all anymore but I know statistics…and I can’t find any evidence that eating lots of Sat Fat will make you die sooner. The whole saturated fat/ heart disease thing reminds me of the global warming debate. Incredible hype and fear but very little actual evidence of actual real world harm.
History shows that in fully developed totalitarian systems the technical disciplines withstand the longest but in the end they get corrupted as well. Since things don’t work if they are done the prescribed way, engineers are forced to break the law to make them work.
I never figured out if the totalitarians plan it that way or if it is just a consequence of the maturing of their system but they learn fast how to make it work for them:
Knowing that everyone—including engineers—has to break the law to do a job simplifies the work of the police and the prosecution. If they decide to charge someone they don’t need to investigate. They can default to the routine activities in the workplace and find the crime.
We see that in play here in the USA. EVERY ADULT is a law breaker whether they know it or not.
This was the first Article of Mark’s I ever read and he nailed a problem many of us are completely unaware of. It is one of the reasons I write about the trashing of our Jury Trial System, (second link) our only real defense against stupid laws and regulations.
It is one area where we, as citizens, can really push to have the US return to the Constitution as written.
Jury nullification, which is a right, in spite of what judges might say.
Let’s not forget that modern tracks are laid hot with the sections welded together. When they cool to ambient temperatures, even high ambient, they are always in tension so they can’t buckle.
Technology can’t overcome Catastrophic Global Warming™, so they can’t possibly be doing that.
Curt, with all due respect; they lay the rails at the ambient temperature, it’s just not practical to heat miles of rail to “hot” temperatures. They try to do this when the ambient temperature is about average for the area they are installing the rails in. The goal is to lay the rails during a mid-point temperature so the tension and compression is about the same when temperatures reach the extremes (summer/winter).
The rail varies between being in compression (summer) and tension (winter) so the “spikes” can keep it attached to the “ties”. If the rail was in tension all the time the bolted joints (at electrical breaks for signalling purposes and at the “turnouts” where the trains change to different tracks) would fail (a “pull-apart”).
A rail in tension around a curve can fail “inwards” (i.e. pull itself in towards the center of the curve), likewise a rail in compression can fail “outwards” (i.e. buckle away from the center of the curve).
The folks that engineer these systems for a living have it well under control. When extreme temperatures occur (hot/cold) they keep a careful watch for buckles/pull-aparts and issue “speed limits” so trains can see a problem in time to stop safely.
If the temperature actually went up by 5 degrees in the next hundred years these folks would just adjust the tables/calculations they use to ensure a safe system. This is just another case of “climate scientists” believing they know more than folks that actually run trains for a living.
Kevin.
The axe has now fallen, the Jesus paper of nuclear-level AGW hypothesis falsification:
“Tiny warming of residual anthropogenic CO2”
Abstract: “The residual fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions which has not been captured by carbon sinks and remains in the atmosphere, is estimated by two independent experimental methods which support each other: the 13C/12C ratio and the temperature-independent fraction of d(CO2)/dt on a yearly scale after subtraction of annual fluctuations the amplitude ratio of which reaches a factor as large as 7. The anthropogenic fraction is then used to evaluate the additional warming by analysis of its spectral contribution to the outgoing long-wavelength radiation (OLR) measured by infrared spectrometers embarked in satellites looking down. The anthropogenic CO2 additional warming extrapolated in 2100 is found lower than 0.1°C in the absence of feedbacks. The global temperature data are fitted with an oscillation of period 60 years added to a linear contribution. The data which support the 60-year cycle are summarized, in particular sea surface temperatures and sea level rise measured either by tide gauge or by satellite altimetry. The tiny anthropogenic warming appears consistent with the absence of any detectable change of slope of the 130-year-long linear contribution to the temperature data before and after the onset of large CO2 emissions.”
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217979214500957
How the heck did THAT paper make it through pal-review?
They are going to take the editors out behind the barn and Draw and Quarter them!
It’s a hard physics journal, and real scientists barely know there even is a climate debate any more than they know there’s such a thing as voting or television.
Nice to know there are some left…. thanks for the link.
I second that Send Al,
Thanks for the pointer Nik.
Great posts everyone. You guys are like my daily morning newspaper
Good graph, but it needs to come with a link to the actual data source or I can’t use this article in my arguments with global warming enthusiasts.
It is right there on the graph.
Percentage of Afternoon temperatures over 100F at ALL HCN Stations.
HCN = The United States Historical Climatology Network
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ushcn.html
Sounds like an academic or two has been reading Steve’s claims that Arctic ice is dominated by wind patterns:
“Our results, which are based on concurrent observations at multiple locations, establish that large waves break sea ice much farther from the ice edge than would be predicted by the commonly assumed exponential decay. We observed the wave height decay to be almost linear for large waves—those with a significant wave height greater than three metres—and to be exponential only for small waves. This implies a more prominent role for large ocean waves in sea-ice breakup and retreat than previously thought.”
http://phys.org/news/2014-05-large-bigger-role-polar-sea.html#jCp