Weather, or Not category archive

Daffodils. February. Really.

Warning: Language.

Today it’s 79 Fahrenheits according to the electronic sending unit on my deck.

Saturday it was 27 Fahrenheits.

Robert I. Field reminds us that there is no reason to be surprised by Hurricane Sandy:

Back in 1994, a physicist looked far into the future and predicted that the first signs of climate change would look like this:

“[T]he slow rise in sea level will start to affect cities like New York during big storms. One year, high waves will wash up on the roads bordering the harbor, forcing the police to close them for a day or two. As time passes, this will get to be a more common phenomenon, and the strength of the storm needed to trigger it will become less.” (See James Trefil, A Scientist in the City, Anchor Books, 1994, p.247-248)

Then, we’ll get the big wake-up call:

“[P]erhaps during one of those hurricanes that occasionally make their way up the East Coast, a big storm surge will send water into the streets of lower Manhattan. It will be a big news item, of course, but it will take some time before people realize that there’s a problem to be dealt with.”

Read the rest to see how other portions of Trefil’s prediction are coming true.

In the third segment of this episode of the Cathy Lewis Show, Cathy interviews one of the Coast Guard officers involved in rescuing the crew of the H. M. S. Bounty, which foundered during Sandy. (The first part of the show is about the effects of and reaction to Sandy in these here parts.)

If you listen with the “On Demand” feature at the website, the interview starts about 45 minutes in. If you download and listen to the *.mp3, it starts about 40 minutes in (the *.mp3 does not include the “news at the top of the hour”).

Second son worked on this ship last winter:

The crew of the Bounty abandoned ship about 90 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras early Monday morning, several hours after first reporting that the ship was in distress, Fredrick said. They donned cold water suits and life jackets and boarded the life rafts, the Coast Guard said.

The 180-foot, three-mast tall ship had lost propulsion and was taking on water. Postings on the Facebook page of the HMS Bounty reported the ship was sinking.

As the storm approaches Philly, Field observes:

All you republicans who hate the government, I sure hope that you will not be needing the services of FEMA or any other government agency. Ask the folks at Bain Capital to give you a low interest loan to fix up your home.

Afterthought:

The hypocrisy of “small government” conservatives is not that they want small government.

It’s that they want big government that benefits them, and only them and no one else, and, by God, they want it for free.

PoliticalProf:

Isn’t it interesting that every storm that goes through the US media center of New York City is the biggest, most important, most compelling news event ever?

Via Contradict Me.

The Chincoteague ponies actually live on Assateague Island, just east of Chincoteague. Assateague, though, does not have a chamber of commerce. All it has is ponies, a glorious beach, deer, and bunnies.

(It used to have human residents, too, but not for many years; my father’s mother taught school there back in the 1910s before she married my grandfather.)

But soon no more:

A new report on climate change posits that Assateague Island National Seashore — and several other National Parks on the East Coast — could be underwater in the next 100 years, unless actions are taken to curb pollution and greenhouse gases causing glaciers to melt and seas to rise.

“The biggest threat, ultimately, to these seashores is that they will be largely or even entirely covered by the ocean,” said Stephen Saunders, president of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and an author of the report, “Atlantic National Seashores In Peril.”

But, hey! there’s no such thing as global warming.

H/T Susan for alerting me to this story.