Ross Cooper’s blog

The non-adventures of Ross, Sally & Boo

How Many Solar Panels Would It Take to Power The Entire World?

How many solar panels would it take to power the entire world? The entire surface of Africa, maybe? Actually, it's surprisingly less. Just 496,905 square kilometers. That's really nothing compared to the total world area: Less than the surface of Spain (504,030 square kilometers) covered with solar panels, distributed across deserts and areas with almost 24/7 sun, all year around.

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One more storm update

Well, it turns out Sally & I really did get lucky during our big storm:
  • Our neighbor diagonally opposite us got flooded out during the storm and had to call the professionals in to pump the water out of his house.
  • We went shopping yesterday and several stores had small water pumps or heaters trying to dry out parts of their stores.
  • Half a block east of us a power pole got hit by lightning which literally sawed the pole in 2, leaving the pole lying on somebody's apartment.
  • Half a block north of us several trees in people's backyards had gone down. We saw one still lying in the street, forcing us to find an alternate route. The rest had been removed, but you could see their brand new wrought iron fences twisted & torn apart by the weight of the toppling trees!
  • Last night there were reports that almost 3,000 people still didn't have power back up. Ours came back on around 8am-ish.
Looks like we're in for more storms today, let's hope they are not as bad...

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Storm update

Just heard from Sally, her school has power but lots of flooding going on. They have 4 other schools kids showing up there today, because they don't have power at their own locations.

On her commute to school there where lots of traffic lights out, lots of palm trees down and blocking major streets, buildings missing their roofs, and power out everywhere.

And last night was the one night this weekend we weren't meant to get a storm! Could be a pretty nasty weekend coming up...

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Storm unleashes 75 mph winds, rain

http://ktar.com/?nid=6&sid=947641

Well, we had the worst lightning storm Ive ever been in in my life last night. The lightning just didn't stop. The sky was flashing red or green at times because there was so much lightning going on. I think I read over 5000 groundstrikes in 2 hours?

Then came the 100 mph winds, rain and hail. It hailed so hard the ground looked like it was covered in snow... on a 100+ degree day! Our power went out before we even realized there was a storm coming, and isn't back on yet this morning :-(

Coming this weekend: plagues of locusts!

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Red Sun!

In what must undoubtably be a sign of the upcoming apocalypse, the sun turned red tonight for a couple of hours before sunset!

Actually it was just obscured by a smokey looking haze that we've noticed the last couple of nights coming out of the south-west. I don't know if it's brush fires locally or all the way from California? Or maybe it's martians trying to turn our world red while we try and cover theirs with water :-) Whatever the cause, it was beautiful. Reminded me of the blood red moon we saw in Southern California when we were first driving to Phoenix 2 years ago...

Note: Aha, the smoke was from local brush fires.

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Sorry about the bad weather!

Sure there are days when its 118º and you haven't had a drink of water for 5 minutes and you think that it's a toss-up wether you die from skin cancer or dehydration. BUT, after seeing all the terrible weather that our friends are getting - rain and temps in the 50's ~ 60's, we thought a nice photo of some blue sky, a blue pool, and lots of green trees might help brighten your day a little bit. And if that's not enough, remember that thanks to W's policy of no industry regulation, there's a lot of empty houses out here, getting cheaper by the minute, should you ever decide to move for the sun ;-)

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Flu Season

When we moved to Phoenix, we figured there would be some things we'd be glad to leave behind: Rain, Colds and Flu being chiefly amongst them. And last winter it seemed like that utopian dream had come true, as we walked around in t-shirts, sandals and shades, occasionally remarking "It's January!!!" before laughing maniacally. Halcyon days indeed.

This winter has been different. It's been cold since December. It's now late February and it's still cold. Sure this is the relative cold of mid-60's, lows in the mid 40's, but for us that's freezing now. It's rained a lot too. Sure never for more than a day at a time before getting sunny again, but every time some massive weather system dumped 10ft of snow in Colorado or the mid-west or wherever else in the country, well it rained here that day too. I know that's kinda minor by comparison, but the dream was to live in a permanent summer, blissfully unaware of the passing of the seasons except for occasional jarring image: Bright orange medicine balls in the supermarket? Oh wait, they're pumpkins... is it Halloween already?

And then there's the colds and flu. I'm on my 8th straight day of being knocked sideways by the flu. Sally had a cold a few days before I got sick, and now she's got another one... in less than 2 weeks! Luckily she was well last weekend when her friend Alison came to visit for a couple of days, because all I managed was "Hetho Alithon" as I occasionally stumbled out of bed in search of some TheraFlu, or curled up in a blanket on a corner of the couch to watch the opening minute of some TV show before coughing, sneezing and falling asleep through the rest of it. I really effin hate the flu.

Our HOA guy Cliff caught flu back in December and ended up with pneumonia, all of which makes me think of Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies". Anyone even vaguely aware of European history, ripe with wave after wave of plague, influenza, T.B., etc can appreciate what an amazing bubble we've lived in for the last century as medicine momentarily outpaced mother nature. My one global warming concern is that if even a minor change in the environment is advantageous to some flu super-bug, then there might not be a lot of us left to worry about later issues like rising temperatures or rising sea levels, etc.

Well as you can tell, 8 straight days of flu doesn't do much for your sense of optimism :-) As she's the only healthy one right now, I think I'll put Mo the cat in charge of all blogging activities for the immediate future - Meow!

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Holy Frozen Car Batman!

I couldn't believe it this morning. I went out to my car, popped the trunk and there were frozen bits on the trunk. In fact the windsheild and drivers window were frozen too! Who knew I would ever wake up and have to defrost my car in Phoenix. Needless to say I was not happy about it. I had to pour all my water from my Nalgene bottle on my windsheld and window, and I had to crank my heat too.

When I got to work I was not the only one. Cathy Frogge, the teacher across the hall, had to scrape her car this morning. She said she thought it was going to snow last night because of the rain storm we had yesterday.

When I got to school, about 7:20am, I checked the weather and it was a freezing 35 degrees out. What is up with that? Global warming is screwing with my mild winters. At least it is supposed to be in the 70's on Saturday. And it better not get any colder again this year. I moved here for a reason--the warm weather. Okay, I moved here to teach too but....

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Yay, finally we drop below 100º

Well here we are in the middle of September, and it looks like we're finally going to have our first week that dips below 100º! The temperature had been hovering around 110º for months but now that winter is finally arriving, it's starting to cool down a bit. Best of all, my 7am jog should be a lot easier from now at mid-70's instead of high-90's :-) Yep we definitely moved here for the winters, not the summers...

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Mad Dogs & Englishmen...

According to Yahoo News we just broke a record here in Phoenix - 29 straight days of temperatures 110º or higher! The previous record of 28 days was set in 1970 and again in 2002. I was wondering why I'd had the AC on more then usual lately, and why jogging a few blocks in the mornings was killing me - now I know... I'm living on the surface of the sun :-)

At least I have one consolation. A friend of Sally's (a teacher she works with) has a daughter that just returned from the UK, and god bless her, she brought me back not one, but two bottles of HP sauce, yummmm! Nice & spicy, just what I needed to see me through these hot summer days!

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