How long will meteorologists keep using "hectopascals"? What's
wrong with using the SI unit of kilopascals? Surely everybody
knows that they are only using hectopascals because they can
pretend that they are the old-timey "millibars". If they want
to use millibars, then use them. Don't slap a different label
on them and pretend that you are SI-compliant when you're not.

NO MORE HECTOPASCALS!

--
No, YOU'RE A CRACKPOT, which is why you think I'm a crackpot...
because all crackpots like you think everybody else is a moron
not them. -- George Hammond
http://beable.com

On 04 Jul 2003 18:35:28 +1000, Beable van Polasm
wrote:


How long will meteorologists keep using "hectopascals"? What's
wrong with using the SI unit of kilopascals? Surely everybody
knows that they are only using hectopascals because they can
pretend that they are the old-timey "millibars". If they want
to use millibars, then use them. Don't slap a different label
on them and pretend that you are SI-compliant when you're not.

NO MORE HECTOPASCALS!

Silly Beable. Everyone knows that the hectopascal is a unit of area, equal
to 100 meters squared.


--
Hong Ooi | "There is no Bondi Beach
| in Nova Scotia."
http://www.zip.com.au/~hong | -- BBC
Sydney, Australia |

"Beable van Polasm" wrote in
message
How long will meteorologists keep using "hectopascals"? What's
wrong with using the SI unit of kilopascals? Surely everybody
knows that they are only using hectopascals because they can
pretend that they are the old-timey "millibars". If they want
to use millibars, then use them. Don't slap a different label
on them and pretend that you are SI-compliant when you're not.

NO MORE HECTOPASCALS

While we're at it, who says we have to measure snow depth vertically?
Why can't we measure tangentially to the surface - just think of the
records that will be broken! Or we could measure snow depth in units of
area - "I had over an acre of snow on the back porch this morning, with
drifts of three hectares against the back door! I had to shovel a
square cubit just to get the car out of the garage..."

Heck, just the other day at the ballfield, I saw a fellow with a
baseball as big as a hailstone!

DEATH TO MILLIBARS!

On Fri, 04 Jul 2003 13:20:39 GMT, "Bob Harrington"
wrote:



"Beable van Polasm" wrote in
message
How long will meteorologists keep using "hectopascals"? What's
wrong with using the SI unit of kilopascals? Surely everybody
knows that they are only using hectopascals because they can
pretend that they are the old-timey "millibars". If they want
to use millibars, then use them. Don't slap a different label
on them and pretend that you are SI-compliant when you're not.

NO MORE HECTOPASCALS

While we're at it, who says we have to measure snow depth vertically?
Why can't we measure tangentially to the surface - just think of the
records that will be broken! Or we could measure snow depth in units of
area - "I had over an acre of snow on the back porch this morning, with
drifts of three hectares against the back door! I had to shovel a
square cubit just to get the car out of the garage..."

Some do measure rainfall in liters per square meter, an acceptable
unit for this purpose.

Heck, just the other day at the ballfield, I saw a fellow with a
baseball as big as a hailstone!

DEATH TO MILLIBARS!

Naturally. Those obsolete units didn't even fit in with the cgs
predecessors of SI, the modern metric system, the International System
of Units which was introduced 43 years ago. The cgs unit of pressure
was the barye (a millibar is a kilobarye, or 1000 dyn cm/s²).

There has, of course, been considerable pressure to get rid of those
obsolete millibars. If it weren't for that, we wouldn't have the
problem that the OP is complaining about. Unfortunately, those
applying the pressure to get rid of millibars as pressure unit weren't
smart enough to explain what the proper SI units would be (i.e., the
units used by Canada in their public weather reports, the units I hear
used on Canadian TV and radio: kilopascals). This left the door open
for this screwball scheme to hang onto millibars by disguising them
under a pseudo-SI name.

Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...d/hectopas.htm
Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/

Gene Nygaard writes:

On Fri, 04 Jul 2003 13:20:39 GMT, "Bob Harrington"
wrote:

While we're at it, who says we have to measure snow depth vertically?
Why can't we measure tangentially to the surface - just think of the
records that will be broken! Or we could measure snow depth in units of
area - "I had over an acre of snow on the back porch this morning, with
drifts of three hectares against the back door! I had to shovel a
square cubit just to get the car out of the garage..."

Some do measure rainfall in liters per square meter, an acceptable
unit for this purpose.

Ah, but how do they measure the square metres? Compare these two
ASKY ART diagrams:

-------------- \ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
--

Does the level ground or the sloping ground have greater surface area?
What about for measuring rainfall purposes?

Heck, just the other day at the ballfield, I saw a fellow with a
baseball as big as a hailstone!

DEATH TO MILLIBARS!

Naturally. Those obsolete units didn't even fit in with the cgs
predecessors of SI, the modern metric system, the International System
of Units which was introduced 43 years ago. The cgs unit of pressure
was the barye (a millibar is a kilobarye, or 1000 dyn cm/s²).

There has, of course, been considerable pressure to get rid of those
obsolete millibars. If it weren't for that, we wouldn't have the
problem that the OP is complaining about.

What annoys me is that everybody knows that air pressure is about 15
psi, right? And I know that I want my truck tyres to be inflated to
about 30psi front, and 45psi rear. So I go to the service station, and
the air hose meter is calibrated in kPa. I think about the weather
report, and they say that atmospheric pressure is 996 hPa, so then I
double and triple it to get about 2000 hPa and 3000 hPa, and then I
look at the air hose meter and it's kPa, and I have to convert the
pressures so that I can pump up my tyres! Because unless my tyres are
EXACTLY two atmospheres' pressure front and three atmospheres'
pressure rear, then MAYBE my truck's handling will be adversely
affected! That's why I always let some air out of my tyres if there's
a cyclone coming, and put a bit more in for fine weather! ALWAYS DEFLATE
YOUR TYRES IF IT'S RAINING!

Some people will tell you that you should also deflate your tyres if
you are crossing a sandy creek or gully, but that's just silly. You'll
just have to pump them up again on the other side. You're better off
just winching across.

Unfortunately, those applying the pressure to get rid of millibars
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^
HAW HAW! THAT'S FUNNY!

as pressure unit weren't smart enough to explain what the proper SI
units would be (i.e., the units used by Canada in their public
weather reports, the units I hear used on Canadian TV and radio:
kilopascals). This left the door open for this screwball scheme to
hang onto millibars by disguising them under a pseudo-SI name.

If I ever meet a real live meteorologist, first of all I'm going to
ask her how many meteors she's actually seen, then I'm going to use
wacky units to measure everything. "Yes I was driving my truck along
at 167024.24 furlongs/fortnight, when suddenly a kangaroo jumped out in
front! This kangaroo was at least 216 barleycorns high! So I did the
only safe thing and ran into it. At least I salvaged 750 hectograms of
meat for the dog out of this sad incident".

cheers
Beable
--
No, YOU'RE A CRACKPOT, which is why you think I'm a crackpot...
because all crackpots like you think everybody else is a moron
not them. -- George Hammond
http://beable.com

Beable van Polasm writes:

If I ever meet a real live meteorologist, first of all I'm going to
ask her how many meteors she's actually seen, then I'm going to use
wacky units to measure everything. "Yes I was driving my truck along
at 167024.24 furlongs/fortnight, when suddenly a kangaroo jumped out in
front! This kangaroo was at least 216 barleycorns high! So I did the
only safe thing and ran into it. At least I salvaged 750 hectograms of
meat for the dog out of this sad incident".


How many cubits per hogshead does your truck get?

--
Joe Bay Impeach Ford Reagan Bush Clinton Bush
Cancer Biology Twelve Galaxies
Stanford University Guiltied to a Zegnatronic
Stanford, California Rocket Society

(Joseph Michael Bay) writes:

Beable van Polasm writes:

If I ever meet a real live meteorologist, first of all I'm going to
ask her how many meteors she's actually seen, then I'm going to use
wacky units to measure everything. "Yes I was driving my truck along
at 167024.24 furlongs/fortnight, when suddenly a kangaroo jumped out in
front! This kangaroo was at least 216 barleycorns high! So I did the
only safe thing and ran into it. At least I salvaged 750 hectograms of
meat for the dog out of this sad incident".

How many cubits per hogshead does your truck get?

Assuming that you are using 864 shoeiron cubits, about 6638696.4
cubits/hogshead of diesel.

--
No, YOU'RE A CRACKPOT, which is why you think I'm a crackpot...
because all crackpots like you think everybody else is a moron
not them. -- George Hammond
http://beable.com

On 06 Jul 2003 09:30:56 +1000, Beable van Polasm
wrote:

Some people will tell you that you should also deflate your tyres if
you are crossing a sandy creek or gully, but that's just silly. You'll
just have to pump them up again on the other side. You're better off
just winching across.

No, you need to inflate your tires to the point that the entire
vehicle will float, wait for a downpour, then simply row across.

HTH. HAND.

--
I don't know why you people seem to think this is magic,
it's just this little chromium switch here... Ah you people
are SO superstitious...

"Gene Nygaard" wrote in message
...

Naturally. Those obsolete units didn't even fit in with the cgs
predecessors of SI, the modern metric system, the International System
of Units which was introduced 43 years ago. The cgs unit of pressure
was the barye (a millibar is a kilobarye, or 1000 dyn cm/s²).

There has, of course, been considerable pressure to get rid of those
obsolete millibars. If it weren't for that, we wouldn't have the
problem that the OP is complaining about. Unfortunately, those
applying the pressure to get rid of millibars as pressure unit weren't
smart enough to explain what the proper SI units would be (i.e., the
units used by Canada in their public weather reports, the units I hear
used on Canadian TV and radio: kilopascals). This left the door open
for this screwball scheme to hang onto millibars by disguising them
under a pseudo-SI name.


If the barye is an official cgs unit, then what makes the BAR, 1,000,000
dynes per square cm, any less official.
and a 1,000th of a bar is a millibar, and hence just as official as the
barye.

The kilopascal came to be the unit of media "choice" in Canada, only because
the bureaucrats liked their numbers to be in the range 0 to 999. Since
"normal" atmospheric pressure at sea level is approximately 101.2
kilopascals, they loved it and decreed the kP to be "official". 1,012 was
just too large a number for a them.

However, to represent meteorological change, the kilopascal is useless: for
example, the change from 101 to 104 kilopascals is HUGE, meteorologically
speaking, but the measly 3 units (numerically) does not show that
adequately.

Therefore hectopascals will continue to be the unit of choice for
meteorologists, I am sure, in order to show significant change as a
significant numerical difference.

....and of course they probably WOULD rather just call them millibars as
they have for a few hundred years... but all you correctness police have
foisted the PASCAL upon them and so they now have to prevent any further
public confusion by at least using the same base unit, albeit with a
different sub-multiple.

Hectopascals, forever!

I think the reason why some people "disapprove" of the hPa unit is because
the prefixes which are powers of 1000 (10^-6=micro, 10^-3=milli, 1,
1000=kilo, 10^3=mega, 10^9=giga etc) are generally preferred.


On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, Icebound wrote:


"Gene Nygaard" wrote in message
...

Naturally. Those obsolete units didn't even fit in with the cgs
predecessors of SI, the modern metric system, the International System
of Units which was introduced 43 years ago. The cgs unit of pressure
was the barye (a millibar is a kilobarye, or 1000 dyn cm/s²).

There has, of course, been considerable pressure to get rid of those
obsolete millibars. If it weren't for that, we wouldn't have the
problem that the OP is complaining about. Unfortunately, those
applying the pressure to get rid of millibars as pressure unit weren't
smart enough to explain what the proper SI units would be (i.e., the
units used by Canada in their public weather reports, the units I hear
used on Canadian TV and radio: kilopascals). This left the door open
for this screwball scheme to hang onto millibars by disguising them
under a pseudo-SI name.


If the barye is an official cgs unit, then what makes the BAR, 1,000,000
dynes per square cm, any less official.
and a 1,000th of a bar is a millibar, and hence just as official as the
barye.

The kilopascal came to be the unit of media "choice" in Canada, only because
the bureaucrats liked their numbers to be in the range 0 to 999. Since
"normal" atmospheric pressure at sea level is approximately 101.2
kilopascals, they loved it and decreed the kP to be "official". 1,012 was
just too large a number for a them.

However, to represent meteorological change, the kilopascal is useless: for
example, the change from 101 to 104 kilopascals is HUGE, meteorologically
speaking, but the measly 3 units (numerically) does not show that
adequately.

Therefore hectopascals will continue to be the unit of choice for
meteorologists, I am sure, in order to show significant change as a
significant numerical difference.

...and of course they probably WOULD rather just call them millibars as
they have for a few hundred years... but all you correctness police have
foisted the PASCAL upon them and so they now have to prevent any further
public confusion by at least using the same base unit, albeit with a
different sub-multiple.

Hectopascals, forever!