Lighthouse of the Week, January 5 - 11, 2025: Sturgeon Bay North Pierhead Light, Wisconsin, USA

 

As I promised in last week's Lighthouse of the Week post, I'm again featuring the Sturgeon Bay North Pierhead Lighthouse in Wisconsin, notably one of the Door County lighthouses. However, I only provided one picture.

Now I'm giving it the full treatment, with location, description and more pictures.

First of all, here's the location. Google Maps calls it the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal Pierhead Front Lighthouse. I like the Lighthouse Directory, so I'm still calling it what that resource calls it. In my selected location and zoom setting, you can see all of Door County, Green Bay, Peshtigo, and Marinette, Michigan, among other places.

Now, speaking of the Lighthouse Directory, here is the excerpted information.

"1903 (station established 1882). Active; focal plane 40 ft (12 m); red flash every 2.5 s. 39 ft (12 m) round cylindrical cast iron tower with lantern and gallery, attached to 1-1/2 story steel fog signal building. The 6th order Fresnel lens (1881) was recently replaced by a modern 300 mm lens. The entire lighthouse is painted bright red. Fog horn (2 blasts every 30 s) on demand. ... Built in the 1880s, the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal connects the main part of Lake Michigan to Green Bay, cutting through the narrowest part of the Door Peninsula. The lighthouse became available for transfer under NHLPA in 2010, and when no qualified recipients were found it went on auction sale in July 2014. It was sold in September for $48,500 to Gordon Krist of Paris, Kentucky."

Which brings up one obvious question: what is he doing with it?

Anyhow, below are pictures and a short video. One picture shows it can get icy at times. The first one shows both canal lighthouses, the other one with the designation "Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal Lighthouse", which is still a working Coast Guard station lighthouse.

This is not a perfect response

 

I eavesdrop on Townhall.com occasionally.  Most of the writers there are, to put it mildly, nuts. This post there caught my eye. 

JD Vance Had the Perfect Response to Bolton's Criticism of Kash Patel

Let's set the context:

So, Vance basically sidesteps the criticism, and just says Bolton has been wrong (in his opinion). So it doesn't address the potential of Patel to turn the FBI into Trump's secret police.

Also, Bolton, despite being quite a hawk, is actually a pretty good analyst and commentator. After all, Trump picked him to be his national security adviser, and somehow lasted in that position over a year. And Trump fired him, actually a good sign. 

However, Bolton is not wrong about Donald Trump.  This just got published on January 5.

John Bolton: Presidents Expect Loyalty. Trump Demands Fealty

Mr. Bolton was the longest-serving national security adviser in the first Trump administration and an assistant attorney general for the civil division at the Justice Department in the Reagan administration. He is the author of “The Room Where It Happened.”

"In the current transition, potential Trump appointees say they have been asked whether they believe the 2020 election was stolen (to which there is only one right answer, one contrary to fact) and how they view the events of Jan. 6, 2021. (When Mr. Trump finally leaves the political scene, it will be interesting to see how many nominees claim they never believed he won in 2020 or that Jan. 6 was an innocent walk in the park, not an unlawful riot.) Kissing Mr. Trump’s ring to gain the highest government ranks is one thing, but the real crunch for the new appointees, especially those without prior government experience, will come after they actually begin work. That is one reason the Constitution checks the president’s appointment power."

Bolton is quite astute. He also echoes and reaffirms the statements of many others about the dangers of Kash Patel. Will Congress somehow not let this loose cannon get confirmed?  We'll find out soon.

 

Fossil fuels on the way out

 

Looking into the future with the Yale Climate Connection.

He’ll try, but Trump can’t stop the clean energy revolution

"Beyond being more efficient, green tech is simply cheaper to adopt. Consider Texas, which long ago divorced its electrical grid from the national grid so it could skirt federal regulation. The Lone Star State is the nation’s biggest oil and gas producer, but it gets 40 percent of its total energy from carbon-free sources. “Texas has the most solar and wind of any state, not because Republicans in Texas love renewables, but because it’s the cheapest form of electricity there,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, a climate research nonprofit. The next top three states for producing wind power — Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas — are red, too."

(And don't forget about parking lots!)

Not on the shelf

 

I saw this image while perusing YouTube, and tracked it down to its source, which is 

https://x.com/CherryLing31358 .

If you can get past the ears, she's really cute, but I have no idea of the reproductive physiology of elves is anything like that of humans.  But hey, Cro-Magnons mated with Neanderthals (as described here), so it might be worth a shot.   Possible pick-up lines:

"Hey, how about you and me take a trip to Rivendell for the weekend?"

"I'm not one to drop names, but I've met Galadriel."

"I guess I'm in a fantasy, because you sure look fantastic."

"You're the best thing I've seen in Alfheim."

 

The year's over, so ...

 

When all the December data comes in, we'll find out if this article was on the mark. I'm pretty sure it was.

World on track for hottest year ever as carbon pollution hits record levels

Highlights, if you want to call them that:

"As opposed to being focused in one region or another, the record heat was unusually widespread. About 12.2% of the world’s surface experienced record heat, beating the previous October record extent set in 2015 of 8.4%."

"For the year to date, the January-to-October global surface temperature ranked warmest in NOAA’s 175-year record. According to NOAA/NCEI’s statistical analysis, there is a greater than 99% chance that 2024 will rank as the warmest year on record, which would give the planet two consecutive warmest years on record. It appears unlikely Earth will again see a year in the 20th-century temperature range for many years to come, unless there is major volcanic cooling, a major geoengineering push, and/or a sustained, worldwide effort to reduce fossil-fuel emissions."

"The inflation-adjusted tally of U.S. billion-dollar weather disasters so far in 2024 has been 24. These include 17 severe storm events, four hurricanes, one wildfire, and two winter storms. Drought costs thus far in the U.S. amount to $1.7-$2 billion (according to Gallagher Re and Aon), so NOAA will likely be adding another billion-dollar disaster from drought. The average number of billion-dollar disasters for a full year for the most recent five years (2019–2023) is 20.4; the record was 28, set in 2023."

And a disturbing data plot: