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I’ll be updating for as long as Reliant Energy, Comcast, and the elements allow.

18:50 OK, then. Yeah, it rained some. Yeah, there’s some leaves on the ground, so we evidently had some wind while I napped this afternoon. Yeah, some neighborhoods lost power. Mostly, though, this was a practice exercise, a drill for emergency procedures. Good. Everybody has fresh batteries, fresh bottled water, well-stocked pantries. We’re ready if/when a real storm or other disaster hits.

Nothing, however, nothing to justify the intense news coverage.

10:45 Hm, the second band, now approaching, seems wider and heavier than the first, and is getting heavier.

10:37 Edouard continues to non-eventuate. There’s two main rainbands; I’m currently in the quiet zone between them. The first one was moderately heavy, light gusting winds.

I had to go out as the first one went over to, yes, clean my gutters. I have to have gutters to keep the water away from the house, particularly the back patio, but they clog repeatedly through the season. Yes, I should have cleaned them yesterday.

A year or two after mine went up, leaf-shedding covers became popular. My sister and parents have them; they seem to work. I’m looking at a retro-fit, because I’m tired of looking out my kitchen window and seeing a waterfall, and having to go out in the rain to clean them. It doesn’t help that I always forget that if I just wait half an hour, the rain will let up, as just happened.

09:00 Non-event so far. Light rain, no significant wind, no lightning. Current radar is yellow over my area, and the red bands fade out as they approach.

Here’s my favorite radar, which presents a synopsis of the storm’s history.

07:05 Eduoard makes landfall, per KHOU. We’re on the “dirty side”, which, oddly, is the west side.

06:45 I woke up at about 6:30. It has just started raining; the ground is just getting wet, and water hasn’t started coming out of the house gutters yet. It’s calm and muggy.

Damn you all who failed to follow Lord Obama’s advice to keep your tires properly inflated and thus avert global warming and Hurricane Edouard!

You sexist pigs, don’t you know women and children will be hardest hit? Particularly the ones with darker skins, you racist bastards?

Don’t you wish St. O was already in the Oval Office, pre-emptively sending necessary storm aid directly to your front door?

So, anyway, it’s probably gonna start blowin’ and rainin’ pretty darn hard sometime late tonight, or early tomorrow morning; center should make landfall early Tuesday afternoon. Unless something completely freakish happens, we’ll probably see 5-10″ of rain here.

Per Kim Du Toit, re a headline that came out just before Mr. E started to get himself organized:

Texas plagued by heat, drought, water parasite, wildfires

So… everything’s normal, then.

I guess we don’t have to worry about that now.

Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiania, seemed like a righteous man who might set his state back on the path to sanity and self reliance.

Unfortunately, he turns out to be a religious whacko, prepared to impose his superstitions on the children of his state.

Jindal ignored those calling for a veto and this week signed the law that will allow local school boards to approve supplemental materials for public school science classes as they discuss evolution, cloning and global warming.

The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will have the power to prohibit materials, though the bill does not spell out how state officials should go about policing local instructional practices.… Critics call it a back-door attempt to replay old battles about including biblical creationism or intelligent design in science curricula, a point defenders reject based on a clause that the law “shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine … or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.”

No good, Bobby. No good.

No VP slot for you, ever.

The orangutans are stepping up the evolutionary ladder:

From The Daily Mail, via The Drawn Cutlass, via Ace of Spades.

This chap is not using very good form–the article describes him as “flailing” with his stick, not jabbing or throwing it lengthwise–but it’s clear he’s on right path. Another 50 thousand years or so, and we’re going to have some serious competition.

(I’ll note that the Mail has a rather sensationalistic editorial policy, but the picture seems legit.)

Friend Chanda (Hi Chanda! Glad I finally found something that ticked you off enough to make you speak up!) rightfully upbraids me on a point that’s been nagging at me since I posted the Google Black story:

I mean, my god(s), it’d be nice to see the freaking Milky Way again no?

Darn betcha, and I should have followed my instincts and at least mentioned the Dark Sky movement, which I am wholly sympathetic to, and which has nothing to do with the Google Black / Earth Hour insanity.

Light pollution is a serious problem for all of us who see the sun as our nearest star, and the night sky as an ocean of suns.

From Astronomy Magazine’s article on the International Dark-Sky Association:

Without question, lights help us feel secure. Whether in our houses, our cars, or on our sidewalks, we bask in the protective glow of lights. The IDA does not seek to eliminate such useful and necessary forms of lighting. Instead, it just hopes to modify the current excessive lighting practices. Following through with such efforts can conserve energy, reduce harmful glare on the road, and of course, allow for a purer view of the night sky. The IDA, though, is trying to convince local and state governments to light intelligently and, coincidentally, economically.

For this reason, I am not likely to, say, install a “six-bar of 1kw PAR-64’s” as a permanent protest fixture.

Of course, simple thrift dictates turning out unused lights, and being as efficient as possible. I’ve even installed a few CFL’s, although I have some problems with that particular solution to the insane wastefulness of ordinary incandescents. I eagerly await good-looking LED lamps, or even something more exotic.

What I do have a problem with is people wanting to turning out their lights to, in my view, protest civilization. Instapunk eloquently rebuts that trend:

Think about it. Your idea of progress is watching the lights go out on civilization? It’s never occurred to you that the beginning of the self-absorbed obsession you have with yourselves occurred in the torchlight of the aged twenty-somethings who finally had the post-sunset leisure time to invent social criticism (i.e., art) in the Lascaux caves 15,000 years ago?

But you’ve used your so-called rationalism to turn everything 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Your ancestors equated light with life. You’ve tricked yourselves into equating light with death.

Read the whole damning thing. That’s what ‘Punk, Beck, Tremayne, the Grouch, and I and many others were railing about yesterday.

Gah. ‘Punk’s Rand quote is too good to leave out:
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John Tierney points to an interesting minority report put out by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which attempts to debunk fears that man-made global climate change is driving polar bears to extinction.

It’s notable for the link to this study critiquing the forecasting methods used by researchers predicting the polar bear demise. The forecasting critique comes from the Forecasting Principles website. I didn’t know that anyone had studied forecasting itself as a discipline. This chapter from the website authors’ book on forecasting looks like a useful introduction.

Yesterday afternoon at about 16:30 CDT I saw what I believe to have been a sundog–over Cypress, Texas, which is just north of Houston. These things are due to high-altitude hexagonal ice prisms, although it was a very pleasant day; I was comfortable in shirt-sleeves.

It looked like a little patch of rainbow, but instead of the sun being behind my back, this was with the sun in front of me. If it was not a dog, it was at least a portion of a 22-degree solar halo. It was in the right place for a sundog, to the right of the sun, but the clouds were rather ragged right there, and it may simply have been that the clouds were coincidentally right in that spot.

Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me. I wanted to try with my cellphone, but in the time it took me to park, it faded enough that the phone cam couldn’t pick it up.

It was much more easily visible through my polaroid sunglasses than without, but rotating the glasses didn’t change its appearance, so there was no polarized component.

OK, notice anything a bit odd about this scene? OK, OK, apart from the rainbow appearing against a black sky, its non-circular arc, and the perspective that puts one pillar amongst the foreground trees and the other on a distant hill?
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OK, I made this cool volcano with baking soda and food coloring, but for some reason, the judges gave first prize to this chick, who just looked at some clouds and stuff, and who says Al Gore is wrong on global warming. As if. I mean, she’s a girl! What does she know about science? And Al Gore would be President, except the Bushitler cheated! So obviously he’s right!

OK, but it is so wrong boring and wrong I haven’t even tried to read it, but here’s some guy who gives the short version.

OK, I gotta go ask Mom if it’s OK for me to drive the hummer to the clean air rally Saturday.

OK, so, bye now.

Excellent summary from The Reference Frame of the evidence for links between solar activity and global warming.

Here’s another article from the same source examining global warming on every other planet in the solar system.

Both articles have numerous links to other sources.

Is there a human component to global warming? Probably. Is it strong enough to imply that we should stop burning carbon? We probably should cut back as much as we can, for a variety of reasons, but I don’t think it’s going to make a big difference in global warming.

Brick Muppet talks about evidence for a current episode of global warming, including a great photo of Niagra Falls, frozen, but also points out there are greater threats.

And talks here about some real energy alternatives–and why, as often as not, they won’t can’t work.

[31 May 07: Edit to add links and clarify my English.]