“They Won’t be Around Much Longer”

Posted on September 24, 2017 by Muller

Chilled by president Trump’s first appearance at the UN General Assembly last week and his remarks on North Korea and Iran, the international press wondered how more measured lawmakers and politicians around the world would respond to his brazen threats of annihilating 25 million North Koreans in order to stop Kim Jong-un of firing more missiles.

But what would Iran’s and North Korean’s leaders say? Well, Iran fired a medium-range missile, and North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho repeats what most think (and some have already cautiously uttered). “A great threat to peace and international stability.” (Besides, Ho threatens to strike US mainland with their missiles, of course.)

Trump had apparently listened to Ho’s speech and immediately blasted, on Twitter,

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Hurricane Season

Posted on September 2, 2017 by Muller

Irma, 2-09

In my last post on the Great American Eclipse on 21 August, the impressive gif of the moon’s shadow crossing the entire United States, hurricane Harvey was already lurking approaching the Yucatán peninsula. The devastation in Texas might be a major blow for te American economy and a backlash of Donald Trump’s plans to make America great again. But, if even reported in American MSM properly, what is happening due to the annual monsoon in South Asia would probably be beyond imagination of the common people in the US. Harvey is not the “epic” storm or “historic” as president Trump as usually exaggerates with pride when he and his très chic wife Melania inspected the devastation on Tuesday.

For about twelve years the American coastline had been spared from the destruction hurricane landfalls may cause (while, during the same period of time archipelagos in the Pacific had been battered by several super-typhoons).

The reason for the current disaster in Texas is not man made in the first place. Of course, sea waters in the Gulf of Mexico have become warmer, so possible hurricanes, finding their way from Africa’s East coast to the Caribbean for centuries, contain much more steam water to be poured on vast areas after moving inland.

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The Great American Eclipse

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Muller

giphy__23_.0

And here’s how it looked from Space. See further clips in this article.

22 August 2017 @ 11:52 am

Last modified August 2017.

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When the Deep State Denied Climate Change Denial

Posted on August 21, 2017 by Muller

When a draft version of the recent National Climate Assessment had been published in a non-profit internet digital library in January, people did not pay too much attention. That changed when president Donald Trump pulled out from the Paris Climate Accord in June. Earlier this month, The New York Times re-published the leak, see PDF here.  Reportedly, scientist are concerned that Donald Trump would likely suppress the information.

Trump is a climate change denier, a species which is more common in the US than in other parts of the world. Why is that so? Well, climate change denial is desperately needed by the gas, oil and coal industries in the US. Green and sustainable energy has not been developed much in the previous decades in America. He knows that his promise, Make America Great Again, can never be achieved when having to compete with much more developed technologies in, say Europe.

Trump is also obsessed with fake news allegedly being spread in the mainstream media (MSM) not realizing that his preferred media outlets just produce fake news, not so much MSM. MSM do meet at least certain investigative journalistic standards. Not so biased outlets on the right side of the political spectrum. Trump probably knows why he has to smear the former when calling for attention to the latter.

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Celestial Bodies

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Muller

eclipse_animation

The upcoming total solar eclipse in the United States may be seen by millions of people. It’ll be a most memorable, once-in-a-lifetime experience, in a way almost mystical.

I remember the sad feelings I had when clouds prevented hundreds of thousands of Germans to closer watch the totality in August 1999. Weeks before, we had prepared ourselves with eye protection to watch SoFi, as it was called, without fearing eye damage. I was working at the German Armed Forces’ Hospital in Koblenz then, still living in Heidelberg. I had taken a day off. The northern margin of the totality zone was south of Heidelberg, not even 20 km. But in its center, we were promised more than 2 min of darkness.

Weather forecast for 11 August shortly after noon was uncertain. You may see the distribution of clouds at the time when the moon’s shadow crossed Europe on the animated GIF above. Last minute information was only 10% visibility in Karlsruhe, about 60 km south of Heidelberg, and 50% in Saarbrücken, 150 km to the east. I decided to start early and go west. But gosh, immediately when having turned to the highway, I noticed that probably hundreds of thousands had exactly the same idea. Believe it or not, there was an exactly 150 km long caravan of cars behind cars, stop and go. For some time I had actually little hope to even reach Saarbrücken in time. The totality there was expected at 12:30 pm.

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