Barky, we have all LOD traffic lights now too, but they put visors on them and tile them down to prevent the snow from settling in front of the lenses. Seems to work.
@the_same_mountainbike will reccomend visor to public works when issues occur again! Probably no snow this year as I bought a used airens 2 stage snowblower, self propelled at an eastate sale for $75, needs routine maintenance, I think that disposable lawnmower discussed previously is the way of the future. Seeing rusted plug, never been changed, people care not for maintenance, getting old and fighting with windrow from snowplow at the end of the drive with my 89 single stage toro getting old, like me!
A traffic light will lose a lot of LEDs.before its taken out of service,the Monochromatic Sodium Vapor lamps(which by the way contain a little Mercury) willcertainly wash some colors out,I hope every town or city in America switches to LED street lighting with “Hubble Shields”
ok,
I hardly consider my son an idiot on the climate issue. He holds a Bachelors and 2 advanced degrees in the climate field. His thesis in one field was the study of urban heating and so on.
Sorry, when someone mounts a thermometer under the eave of a building directly above the central A/C unit, in the sunlight on top of a building next to a commercial refrigeration unit, or on a tree next to a row of junked cars the stats are going to be skewed.
Nothing like putting up your own strawman to knock down. 
Ask your son to read the journal articles. In short, the global temperature rise is evident in both the rural and urban weather stations.
Citation: Wickham C, Rohde R, Muller RA, Wurtele J, Curry J, et al. (2013) Influence of Urban Heating on the Global Temperature Land Average using Rural
Sites Identified from MODIS Classifications. Geoinfor Geostat: An Overview 1:2.
I had a black 2004 TB and now own a white 2005 TB. The interiors are/were similar colors.
Didn’t own them at the same time so it’s all relative memory based (i.e. highly subjective and likely skewed) but I think the black one got a bit hotter inside under the same conditions.
If you had an IR thermometer, it might be interesting to sample the exterior surface (e.g. top of hood) and compare as well…
EDIT: just realized how late I am to the game. The chart reflects about what I recall…
One unmentioned factor re black vs white car in sun is the insulating R-factor of the materials between the black vs white paint and the interior.
The metal skin can probably be taken as R-0.
But the headliner, door and interior panels, air spaces do some insulating, maybe R-5 or so.
A plush sedan or SUV will have more, a basic econobox will have less.
Not to get non-automotive but my garage is currently where some years ago was covered completely by an ice glacier. Then global warming came, melted the glacier, and presto chango we have Minnesota. So we know this happens, the only issue is if we as humans are causing an acceleration of the rate of change. I dunno, go out in the middle of Nebraska sometime and see how vast the area is and how insignificant a human can be. I think the clustered city folks sometimes make the mistake that the whole world is like New York, London, Paris, etc.
“go out in the middle of Nebraska sometime and see how vast the area is and how insignificant a human can be.”
To the naked eye yes, but what’s in the air up in that big sky?
“go out in the middle of Nebraska sometime and see how vast the area is and how insignificant a human can be.”
I’m betting I’d see farmland - 100% human-made…
Yes, one human is insignificant.
Unfortunately, one billion humans driving cars and six billion humans consuming fossil fuels in other ways suddenly adds up, and car exhaust from China and New York ends up in the air over Nebraska, and vice versa.
The good news is no more ice ages in Minnesota in foreseeable future. 
@idiot666 I might ask if you’ve been schooled in the climate field? I have not. The only leg I have up on most people is an inside track to getting questions answered on the subject and by reading many publications not available to most people.
I assure you there’s more to the climate issue than what is being thrown out there by politicians, Hollywood celebrities, and television news. From TV and various internet blurbs one gets the impression that most scientists are on board with the man-made global warming theory. Not so.
I did not set my son up a “straw man” and my point about thermometer placement, etc has nothing to do with the urban heat island effect; which is real.
The thermometer comment was an add-on to illustrate how stats are being skewed.
One little known stat is the removal of hundreds of weather stations from one of the coldest populated places on Earth; Siberia. When the Soviet Union collapsed they shut down hundreds of them; ergo, no cold readings to add to the mix.
That’s like averaging the lower 48 state temperature, weeding out Montana to New England, and then having a redeux.
Guy yesterday from Rolling Stone talked about the ocean temp and it was repeating what happened 90,000 years ago or so when 90% of the species died. Maybe it is just a cyclical repeat and the question is if we as humans are accelerating it or not. Maybe we’re all doomed but I’m not going to stop making payments just yet.
I’m not a student of science but I am a student of organizations and the behavior of individuals in those organizations. And I know there are very many people that have staked their careers and life purpose in the pursuit of climate change which used to be global warming which used to be global cooling. Each time the terminology had to be changed to fit the new findings. So lots of people have lots of skin in the game to continue the issue. I’m not so sure either that some folks in some other countries are not happy with life in the US and would like to re-make us more in their sidewalk cafe image.
I guess I just don’t trust these people to get it right. Brought to you by the same folks that insist its Smokey Bear, not Smokey the Bear. Like his last name is Bear? So now its Cecil the Lion not Cecil Lion? Can’t have it both ways. Smokey was a bear and Cecil was a lion-that wasn’t their last names. Just saying if you repeat the same thing often enough and long enough people tend to believe it, right or wrong. Myself I don’t know but the air conditioning is on.
This experiment, if dome in the US, should have been donr on June 21 or 22 when the sunlight is the most direct, yhus the most capable of heating things.
" From TV and various internet blurbs one gets the impression that most scientists are on board with the man-made global warming theory. Not so."
“Most scientists” quoted by some people on this issue are, conveniently, not actually climate scientists. What matters is the scientific consensus among climate scientists. And in the over 12,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1991 and 2011, of those that took a position on the effect of human activity, over 97% of those papers argued that humans are in fact causing global warming.
The claim that there is not an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists on this question is a fiction.
Unless you know Smokey and Cecil’s last names, you have no basis to say they aren’t Bear and Lion. There are lots of real humans with these actual last names and Smokey and Cecil are fictional characters. Their last names are whatever their creators say they are.
But that’s irrelevant. You are absolutely correct that the science of the issue is highly corrupted by countless people with “skin in the game”, and that has made sorting out the truth extremely difficult. One side of the argument begins with the assumption that the environment would be stable without human activity. It absolutely would not. It’s the exact opposite, it’s extremely dynamic. It’s also affected by countless far more powerful forces than humans; solar activity, its own magnetic field, its own rotation, asteroids, its tilt and orbit, centrepedal forces, and countless other forces. It’s highly dynamic and highly complex.
My personal belief is that the Earth is far, far more resilient than those with ulterior motives present it to be, but I also believe that the pollution dumped freely into our waters, air, and land before the Clean Air and Water Act were rapidly ruining the environment for humankind. Oddly, many of the same tree huggers that fought pollution also advocated nuclear power, the waste of which renders parts of the Earth unlivable for thousands of years, and the generating sites of which must be isolated and controlled for thousands of years even after decommissioning. I’ll be kind and not mention the results of natural disasters and human-made disasters, such as Chernobyl and Fukishima. And I thank God no nuclear plant has yet been bombed.
But none of this is relevant to the interior temperature of cars. Black interiors retain more of the sun’s energy than white interiors. Two cars of the same make and model, one with black and the other with white, both sitting side by side in the sun with the windows closed and a thermometer in them, will show a dramatic difference in a very short period of time. This test has been done and the results published numerous times by numerous safety-advocating organizations. Typically the data is published with the goal of protecting helpless babies and pets. Either light or dark colors will quickly become potentially fatal, but dark colors are by far the worst.
As a matter of fact, the difference in energy absorption is enough to spin a radiometer. You might be interested in this toy
http://www.officeplayground.com/Solar-Powered-Radiometer-Toy-P1991.aspx
If you know anyone who denies that there’s a difference, buy him/her one of these. The difference will become undeniable.
"One side of the argument begins with the assumption that the environment would be stable without human activity. "
@TSM, climate scientists don’t assume that at all. They know that Earth’s climate has varied considerably before humans became so plentiful. Yes, the variables are complicated, and no mathematical climate model is perfect. However, climate science is now good enough that it’s clear human activity (ie fossil fuel combustion) is a major factor on top of natural factors.
As far as ulterior motives, I know you’re not referring to me specifically. I’m an engineer by training and was taught to apply the scientific method in the search for truth, even if the truth runs counter to my fondest wishes. And I truly wish that the 100,000+ miles I’ve driven so far and the thousands of gallons of gasoline I’ve burned weren’t helping to melt glaciers and warm the atmosphere faster than would otherwise occur naturally. Unfortunately, reading the climate science as objectively as I can, I cannot in good conscience come to that conclusion.
“Unless you know Smokey and Cecil’s last names, you have no basis to say they aren’t Bear and Lion. There are lots of real humans with these actual last names and Smokey and Cecil are fictional characters.”
Um no they are not fictional characters and they have no last names. Way back in the 40’s or 50’s there was a forest fire and when it was done the Rangers found a lone cub bear that had survived the fire and they named him Smokey and used him as a mascot to educate people on preventing forest fires. Then these idiots in DC decide that he’s not a bear but his last name is bear and spend umteen thousands trying to convince us all that his last name is Bear. As a kid I loved Yellowstone and kind of identified with the whole thing until the Washington loonies took over.
Then of course Cecil was the lion that was killed in Zimbabwe that is ending a poor dentist’s career. He is indeed a lion and was real, but his last name is not Lion.
This is important stuff must have something to do with cars.
Has a lot to do with cars,think back into the 50’s when the “Ethyl corporation” said" drive more,it gets cheaper by the mile"
But I have to take exception,to the threat of nuclear power,there are natural places much more radioactive then most of “Chernobyl”(Hey religous people,Chernobyl means “Wormwood” in Russian)A lot of people have moved back to Chernobyl,with so far(knock on Wormwood) little effect(not to say their babies wont be born ,naked or bald)Get the documentary" Pandoras promise " and watch and find out how common sense has made some people,wake and start to love the"nuke"Please dont eat any radioactive bananas in the meantime or fly in the stratosphere
When my daughter was getting her BS in Chemistry at MIT…she actually did some field work with a couple of professors who are Climatologists. They’ve never met a climatologist who doesn’t believe in global warming. The biggest argument these days is predicting the effect. That’s where the politics come into play. Many take the data and papers from the climatologists and start making their own predictions.
The earths climate is a chaotic system. It’s easy to predict the weather…but climate is much more difficult to predict.
What is funny is the vast amount of money poured into research on the climate. The vast majority in this country is from companies like Exxon or the coal industry. Many climatologists refuse the money because the money talking tells them to PROVE there isn’t global warming…that’s NOT science. True scientists don’t care what the outcome is…only that it’s the as truthful as it can be based on the science and evidence at the time.
More on the study quoted above:
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-announcement-jul-29-12.pdf
“Some of the scientists on the Berkeley Earth team admit surprise that the new analysis has shown such clear agreement between global land-temperature rise and human-caused greenhouse gases.”
“I was not expecting this,” says Richard Muller, “but as a scientist, I feel it is my duty to let the evidence change my mind.”