Our favorite star, the sun, came alive over the weekend, spewing a massive, high-energy wave that is hurling toward the north end of planet Earth!
The result could mean some impact on power grids in the northern hemisphere as well as to navigation systems in airplanes. In fact, some airlines will be avoiding flying over the poles tonight and tomorrow for that very reason. CLICK HERE to read more.
All snowy systems thus far have been, as Dick Goddard would say, a nibbling of snow ducks, that is… no more than a few inches at a time with a couple of isolated exceptions. The next system arriving for Friday night and Saturday will offer up a swath of significant (4-7″) of snow across the northern third of the state. The green areas in this computer model indicates the 4-7″ region by Saturday noon.
Areas south of Canton and Bolivar may see the snow mix with rain or freezing rain for a while in the nighttime hours.
A former co-worker of mine, now retired, from FOX 8 sent me a link to an article that was truly eye opening. I’ve often wondered why we as a general people of the United States of America have lost the art of wonder. This quote from Elizabeth Scalia spoke volumes to me:
Does the fact that we can no longer see the stars have anything to do with our loss of wonder? These things, the stars, and all creation – they are more splendid, perfect, beautiful and lasting than anything man can create or even conceive.
It seems like when we were more aware of milky ways and horizons, it was easier to believe. Could Joan of Arc have led her army, could she even have thought to, could she have trusted enough, without having a sense of something greater, bigger than herself?
We have obliterated the stars with our artificial light – but perhaps we’ve blinded ourselves, too. Without the wonder, the greatness of the galaxies in our sight, we’ve lost the ability to believe in, or expect, miracles.
When you cannot see the glory of God’s creation, how can you wish to glorify the Lord? No longer seeing anything greater than ourselves, we turn inward, we worship our own thoughts, our invention, our desire.
Each generation–and perhaps my boomer generation more than any other–thinks of itself as the most enlightened, most informed, most aware, but how can that be?
We see the world through 19 inch computer screens, and 40 inch television screens. We melt the sand to create 36 inch windows, and we think that’s as big as the world gets.
We’ve narrowed our perspective – made it boxed sized and so have boxed ourselves in. And then we blame God for not giving us miracles anymore – and we blame religion for making us expect them.
What are your thoughts?
Article written by Joe Bastardi: (This article was originally published on FHW on December 11, 2011)
A Discourse on Global Warming, I mean Climate Change, oops I mean Climate Disruption.
If it changes to something else before you read this, just type it in.
Joe Bastardi co chief meteorologist, Weatherbell Analytics.
As many of you know, I am 1st Hand Weather Blogger Garrett Bastardi’s Father and like my father before me will do anything to fuel his childrens passion for what they are made to do. He appears to have the same kind of drive I had for this, and of course with my dad as a meteorologist, there is a genetic predisposition toward it.
Besides the title of Garrett’s Dad I am also the chief meteorologist, along with Joe D ALeo at Weatherbell Analytics and hope you will give our site a try as we post extensively and I seek to explain the why behind the what before hand. Most forecasters will tell you what will happen but most of the time you wont hear a why until they are explaining it after if something went wrong. I encourage you to give our site behind the paywall a test drive, it s 50 cents a day for two cups of Joe ( D Aleo and I) if after the test drive you decide to climb aboard. I post a couple of times a day and do some videos,but right or wrong, always lay out my case before hand. The weather is not a snapshot, its a movie, a relentless constantly changing opponent that to paraphrase Rocky Balboa, will beat you down and keep you there if you let it.. So you must fight back, and view it as challenge, forming an opinion based on what you see in the PHYSICAL reality of the pattern, not a virtual reality. Most of the time someone will see a model then start to post on it. The trick is not going to the model, but having the model come to you, because you have a working idea of what the atmosphere is doing. It is the reason that getting a degree in meteorology involves more than just being able to stand in front of Tv an look good. A someone who has done TV work, (I prefer to sit, and there is nothing I can do for my looks) t is interesting to note, right off the bat, that modeling that says it is going to get warmer is virtual, and the only objective temperature reality we truly have is since the start of the satellite era in the late 70s, at the end of the last cold PDO. We do know over the past couple of hundred years we have warmed, but that was out of the little ice age. If we had not warm, we probably would not have progressed to where we are today as a species.
Something you should read is here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/09/durban-what-the-media-are-not-telling-you/#more-52760
It’s alarming.
But here’s why am I so into this global warming fight.
1) Its a test of right and wrong, and I think on multiple levels. It should just be about the weather, no different than you and I forecasting a snow event and then see who is closer. However it has been turned into something much bigger, and the right or wrong on that idea involves a desire to curtail freedoms because of what some think is a ticking time bomb of co2.
2) It is a fight on a higher plane. I am not a very humble person in front of others, I have been told, but I am humble before the atmosphere and its creator. Arrogance abounds in many that think somehow they have the right idea on how to control the atmosphere, as if they can control something they did not create, nor have any influence over. They can however have influence over other people, by using distorted science to drive home their agenda.
3) I know my climate history, as I have been as fascinated with that as much as the forecast since i was young. I have a father who regaled me with stories about how bad the weather was when he was growing up, and unlike the tired rants of those saying this is the worst that has ever happen, he will tell you it was far worse , heat, hurricanes, drought etc in the 30s-50s, the last time of climatic hardship as now. And because I know that, I am simply seeing the same things happen now in front of me as he saw the last time the pdo/amo were in similar cycles, The difference is we now have the chance to objectively measure it.
4) One never knows when one is called to fight, but its how you respond. Over the years, the words of Edmund Burke have echoed louder in my ears over this. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” Imposing ones will upon someone is evil, and not allowing the answer to play out is simply not allowing a chance for the truth to come out, which is also evil. I am no saint, but I will avoid the sin of doing nothing when I see I can do something to make sure the truth, even if it means I am wrong, can come out.
5) The idea that by spending your life in research, and not in actually doing something that demands an answer that has to be right ( as in the private sector) or you get fired, runs counter to the idea that not only must you know how to do something, you must actually do it. Recreations of the past are a good tool to for a basis to forecast the future, but unless you are out in the real world, you have no idea what its like to apply virtual knowledge to a future event. In fact, the disdain that many with higher power degrees that look upon the “laborers” among us that actually have to forecast for a living, it matched only by our distrust of them. Its like someone sitting in a castle telling someone in the trenches taking bullets, how to fight.
If you go into a gym, who are you going to trust. an overweight trainer or the trainer that is in shape?
I respect the advanced degrees, for what they are, signs that the person persisted in their education. But it does not give them license for them to be an authority on something that have never practically applied! When I was in school there was a saying ( mind you at that time PSU was out and out the unchallenged number one meteorology department in the country, something I am well aware can not be said today as there are many great schools) among the meteorologists ( we were a cocky bunch) that if you can’t do the meteorology, you can be a climatologist. I still bust my brother on it, cause his degree is in climatology though HE IS VEHEMENTLY AGAINST AGW. But the point is the idea that a meteorologist cant weigh in on this debate when in reality a good forecaster has to know his clime is simply another way to try and silence dissent.
So there is more behind this than the tired old argument that people that resist this tide of agenda driven drivel are shills of the fossil fuel industry. its about allowing the light or truth to determine who is rig and who is wrong, and if there is going to be a benefit for society, it will only be that the truth wins the day.
Here is the crux of my argument.
Since the little ice age the earth has been warming up, but only since the late 1970s have we had the way to objectively measure it with the accuracy we have today . There is plenty of reason to believe that sunspot activity may have had something to do with the warm up, but also reason to believe, since there has been a drastic increase in industrialization that man may have had something to do with it. What is not known is if this warm up was simply a reversal back to where we should be, and is partly because we were so cold to start with, or is the doomsday clock ticking faster with each passing minute because we are pumping so much co2 into the air. A simple test will give us the answer. If co2 is the culprit, then temperatures should continue to rise. Unfortunately they are not rising as seen here.
Since someone can accuse me of “cherry picking” lets look a the relationship between co2 and temp over a longer period of time.
If we square the correlation, we have the strength of correlation. You can see there was very little correlation before 1980, and as we saw above, since the late there is little also. In the entire period, the correlation of co2 was only positive with the temperature for about 30 years!
Is there something has a stronger relationship.?
Actually yes, the PDO and AMO together!
Even more damming evidence against co2.. the direct relationship between the enso and the global temps with the overall rise correlated with the warm PDO and the spikes with warm enso episodes, the cooling with la nina or volcanic activity. You cant get much more cause and effect.
Meet the mimic octopus, the first octopus found that impersonates other animals.
Living in the tropical seas of Southeast Asia, it was not discovered officially until 1998, off the coast of Sulawesi. The octopus mimics the physical likeness and movements of more than 15 different species, including sea snakes, lionfish, flatfish, brittle stars, giant crabs, sea shells, stingrays, flounders, jellyfish, sea anemones, and mantis shrimp…
But wait, there’s now a super-recent video of a mimic fish (a Black Marble Jawfish) mimicking the mimic octopus who mimics fish. #meta
via National Geographic.
