Global Warming and History

What I would like to talk about tonight during this lull in tropical activity which is climatologically normal for this time of year..... is simply this.. I am tired of Global Warming being used to explain away every weather event and used as some sort of litmus test for scientists to get the Al Gore Seal of Approval or be bullied and booed by people as being out of step with the seriousness of Global Warming.

It degrades the whole discussion on the concept of Global Warming and the different discussions from The Greenhouse Effect to Conserving Water and the dangers to our environment of Pollution to scream "The Sky is Falling" every time some big, huge weather event happens. It is wrong. It scares people who are going through hard times
because of our over dependence on foreign oil and the high cost of commuting which has no affected everything from the price of gas to toilet paper to the cost of a can of tuna that had to be shipped to your local grocery store.

I have spoken to people in banks, in grocery stores and in restaurants who look up with hollow eyes and a fatalistic sense of fear on the future because everything they read in the MEDIA leads them to believe we are headed towards some end of days when hell will freeze over and the part of the world that is still warm enough to produce hurricanes will wipe their town off the map with a Category 7 Hurricane or a F6 Twister. They are scared and misinformed. Not about the dangers of the earth's climate constantly changing as it has done since the poles flipped and the inland ocean that covered Oklahoma dried up into a beautiful, tall grass prairie land. This is a natural event which we have no doubt made worse just as we made the dust bowls of the Dirty Thirties when hundreds of dust storms hit Guymon, Oklahoma on a daily basis for months.. years until we realized we destroyed the beautiful prairie with poor farming methods. I would imagine if they had happened now they would be further proof of Global Warming.

http://www.weru.ksu.edu/new_weru/multimedia/dustbowl/dustbowlpics.html




We are not being solution oriented but starting a witch hunt in the scientific community where scientists engaged in the scientific process must agree with reporters or politicians such as Al Gore and others or they are branded as heretics who deny the obvious end of the world as we know it. Crucifixion at 11!

I am a historian who loves weather and has made weather the focus of history and the evolution of political and economic events in a specific area. And, those who do not study history are forced to repeat it sadly. Knowledge is power. History is a guide to learn from so as not to repeat our mistakes.

In the 1950s people were afraid of the Red Menace and there were Senate Hearings that were basically Witch Trials where if you didn't name someone you knew as a communist then you would be accused of being a communist too! We have raised McCarthyism to a new level in the meteorological community if a scientist does not agree with some reporter that a tornado outbreak was influenced by global warming he is branded a heretic. This is pathetic and as dangerous to scientific process of discovery as it was to creativity by writers and directors in Hollywood.



In the 1950s and 1960s people in America were building bomb shelters to protect against the day some Red country would drop a bomb on us and if we were lucky enough to be at home and not school with our head down in the proper position we could survive nuclear destruction by hiding in a bomb shelter. The fear of nuclear war was so real this commercial was attributed to helping LBJ win the White House. We won the battle against nuclear war it seems and lost the war on involvement in Vietnam..




In 1997 when I first enjoyed playing online with a few of my weather friends the story of El Nino was all the rage. It was called "the Mother of All El Ninos" by some news article and it was written that because of Global Warming we would see many other El Ninos such as that one that came on suddenly and showed up as a tongue of red colors on sat imagery all the way from Mexico west almost to Australia. It was a bad, bad El Nino but since that one we have yet to have one that came on as strong or as fast with such devastating results on a global level ... yet in 1997 it was said to be the first and forerunner to many more influenced by Global Warming.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,987825,00.html
http://www.newsweek.com/id/97102?tid=relatedcl

Before that was the Super Storm of 1993 called by some as The Storm of the Century:



Before that there was the time snow fell in Miami in January of 1977!
And, the avalanche of snow that buried Chicago that same winter underneath record snow falls.

But that wasn't the only time we had a record snow fall... here is a list of the some of the record makers

http://nsidc.org/snow/blizzard/storms.html
(great list)

And, before this century by just a year was a wild, blizzard that buried Wall Street.

If the Long Island Express happened this year it would be blamed on Global Warming.

Global Warming is real as is Global Climate Change but what is causing it and what do we do about it is a real question that begs a real solution... not witch hunts nor Media Headlines proclaiming the end of the world as we know it happening in a few years if we don't wake up and smell the coffee now. Mind you that coffee I love is brought here from all parts of the world.

Easy to scream Global Warming yet I don't see many people taking the bus or buying smaller cars or doing their part to not pollute out beaches by walking all the way over 20 feet to a good old wire garbage basket instead of throwing their beer cans and cigarette butts away properly instead of onto our beautiful beaches. People may start taking the bus but it will only be because of the high price of gas and not because they are really worried on Global Warming.

I am worried yet I believe in the power of the human mind to find the solution to problems when the process of scientific discovery is not thrown out with the proverbial baby and the bathtub. A closed mind is unable to learn new things and discover solutions to our problems.

As for the tropics..they are sort of quiet tonight. A west bound wave is moving through the Caribbean on its way to possibly moving into the Pacific and forming into something there.. maybe.. or maybe not. A new wave rolled off of Africa and there is rain in the Gulf of Mexico. It is the quiet time of waiting for the real season to kick in and start in a few weeks.

So there isn't much to talk about of a Tropical nature tonight other than Post Game Analysis on why the forecast was so badly blown on Typhoon Fengshen and there is a lot to say but the jury is out on that one. They kept insisting it would re-curve at the last minute much as they did with Floyd in Miami when it did in fact keep going past Miami ... some last minute Hurricane David sort of turn just off shore which so often plays out but this time not only did it not re-curve but it slammed into the Philippines and kept going all the way to China.

Who says what happens in China does not affect our world? It does... all those butterflies being blown apart by Typhoon Fengshen or as I like to call it Bad Fengshui will have big repercussions in our world if a hurricane threatens an area and all the models seem to agree yet forecasters see otherwise. They may think twice this year going with a forecast based on a models that might not be all right. Garbage in.. garbage out is the old adage and it only after the fact that we figure out why the models did such a bad job with such a devastating loss of life and an unfolding tragedy.

You can't always believe models as we saw in Hurricane Debby... that didn't do Miami but so often the models are right on the money and we are lucky and blessed they are right more often than not.