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President Obama’s background in community activism has apparently set the standard for his administration’s behavior. Two months ago, cabinet level officials participated in a conference that promoted civil disobedience. It was yet another significant story that the media chose or neglected to cover in any great detail. American media, that is.

The BBC has a continuing series called “The Ethical Man,” featuring quirky reporter Justin Rowlatt. He is roaming around the United States, collecting views about climate change from the perspective of the common man. This week, BBC Newsnight aired an installment in the series in which Rowlatt attended the Power Shift ’09 conference in Washington February 27-March 2. Rowlatt elicited a level of candor about climate initiatives unlike anything revealed on newscasts in the US.

Power Shift is an organization which defines itself in a stated “demand“:

We want politicians to stand up to the dirty energy lobby and pass the energy and climate policies we truly need. We expect the politicians we elected in November to listen to what science is telling us and act immediately to reduce emissions, create jobs and re-engage globally to tackle the climate and economic crises.

The Power Shift ’09 conference received only passing coverage in the national media, except for the attention garnered with a post-conference protest at a power plant. But Rowlatt put more effort into it, and came away with an amazingly candid view of radical environmentalism now promoted to the mainstream thanks to the election of Barack Obama.

Rowlatt’s story can be viewed by following this link. The whole story runs more than 14 minutes, but you can fast forward to the 6:25 mark to start with the conference.

The administration’s level of support of the conference and its attendees (described by Rowlatt as “what many people would consider a rabble of green radicals and student activists”) played out. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar told the group, “You are the engines of change… I am here for Barack Obama, because he is the agent of change.” EPA administrator Lisa Jackson also spoke, after being introduced to the throng as “one of us.”

Powerful government officials showed up at that conference, lending the credibility and support of the administration, presumably helping to recruit environmental activists. Down the hall from the speeches a class on civil disobedience was taught, teaching protesters how to chant and link arms and resist arrest.

Rowlatt pointed out that if Congress fails to pass climate change legislation, the administration is planning an end run using the regulatory powers of the EPA to impose a carbon cap on the nation. Rowlatt confronted administrator Jackson on the subject, and she told him that the EPA had begun to “wake up its regulatory machine” and was there to “backstop the President.” After the conference, on April 17, the EPA declared carbon dioxide and five other gasses “pollutants that threaten public health and welfare” – subjecting them to government control.

The protest tactics taught to those who attended the conference were later employed in an attempt to shut down a nearby coal-fired power plant. Never mind that the plant operates legally under laws passed by our Congress. But neither the power plant nor the US Congress matters any more, because the federal government is now run by environmentalists who support mob mentality, and have the power to circumvent existing laws to impose their own agenda. No one can stop them.

Jay News, Weather

The weekly US Drought Monitor is out, and no part of the state of South Dakota is mentioned. In fact, no location in South Dakota is even at the threshold of “abnormally dry”. This is the first time South Dakota’s drought monitor map has been blank since July 31, 2001, according to state climatologist Dr. Dennis Todey. He did the math to reveal this is the first time in 7 years, 8 months, and 23 days that South Dakota has been sans parched earth.

For a state highly dependent on agriculture, this is a stunning reversal of aquatic events. Not long ago, South Dakota’s newscasts were filled with stories about persistent drought and the need for emergency farm subsidies, importation of livestock feed from other states, and extremely low water levels that threatened irrigation and recreation on the reservoirs, lakes, and rivers. But that has now changed 180 degrees, and South Dakota has gone from drought to surplus.

This spring, the Missouri River (or “Big Muddy”, as it was nicknamed many years ago), which cuts north to south through the center of South Dakota, has risen back to life. Lake Oahe, which had a spring level about 1607 feet above sea level in the Spring of 2000 and had shrunk to a level of 1574 feet in Spring, 2005 – has now grown back to a level of 1612 feet – nine feet above the historical average height of the reservoir. All of the Missouri’s boat ramps are back in operation, a change from recent years in which receding water levels rendered them useless.

There is so much water in eastern South Dakota that the James River remains above flood levels its entire length, from North Dakota to Nebraska – and projections are that flood conditions will continue at least through the end of the month. That is making life difficult along the James right now, but at least it will replenish ground water supplies.

Weather and climate are two different things, and South Dakota’s long term climate suggests it is certainly possible to dry out quickly. But in terms of water, the state’s climate has changed for the better after years of drought.

UPDATE, 4/23/09: Video from Lake Oahe is available at this link from KELO-TV.

admin Weather drought, flooding, Lake Oahe, South Dakota

I am neither as old as Methuselah nor as wise as Solomon. But occasionally I do get asked for advice by college students, mostly those studying meteorology or broadcast journalism. For what it’s worth, here is what I tell them:

 

• Diversify your brain power. In the olde days it was called being a Renaissance Man. Try to learn and become as proficient as you can about a variety of things. Specialists in the work world become endangered if there are changes in technology, or the economy, or simply ways of doing business. Metaphorically think about the case of a professional athlete. While he or she may play one specific sport, they keep their bodies in tune by cross-training. Do the same for your brain.
• Keep a clean driving record.  When you are hired for a new job, one of the first things the employer does is collect your driver’s license number. The company’s insurance company then looks over your record. If it decides you are a risky driver, they won’t insure you and your new company probably won’t keep you. I know someone who won a job and lost it in just such a fashion. We’re not talking DWI’s here – a stack of speeding tickets in your younger years can cost you a job as an adult.
• Be wary of shutter bugs.  Cameras are everywhere, photographs are simple to take, and the finished product can easily be distributed electronically. So before you are observed in a photo doing something stupid (or illegal), consider the consequences of that “moment in time” being captured forever. One of my colleagues got a tip from a professional athlete, who is happy to pose for pictures with anyone – as long as they move any adult beverage they may be holding out of camera view. Not a bad idea.
• Social networking can result in anti-social outcomes. Assume the entire world is reading every single thing you read – because they might be. Sitting alone at a computer gives you a false feeling of anonymity, while the words you send to the internet are no different then the permanence of publishing them in a book or newspaper. Before hitting the send button, think about the harm those poorlly-conceived tweets and not-so-friendly status updates could cause if they were seen by your best friend or worst enemy. And before you say anything crazy, remember that future business associates can also retrieve those words from the archives of the world wide web – even if you later go back and hit the delete key.
• Maximize down time with the spoken word. Music is great for relaxation or mood improvement, but those earphones can also be used to generate creative thought and self improvement. Libraries have books on CD and tape, which are great to listen to on long drives and plane rides – and all it requres is a library card and player. If you own an iPod, the iTunes program/website is a collection point for podcasts covering thousands of subjects – most of them downloadable at no cost. Many podcasts are now done by experts in their fields, and the production quality rivals professional radio programs. There is a lot to learn out there, and in most cases the price is right.
• Travel the world while young. If possible, enroll in a study abroad program offered by many colleges and universities. You will develop memories that will last a lifetime, and stop viewing world news as a mere spectator. Young travelers are physically able to explore and sightsee better than older travelers, and they can do it cheaper, too. Besides, I know a lot of people who planned to vacation in other countries later in life – but those “somedays” turned into “never dids”.
• Don’t burn bridges. This is important in college and in life. It is a small world, and the “six degrees of separation” paradigm really applies. If you treat someone poorly, the chances are somewhere down the road that person will remember you when they meet someone else with whom you are acquainted. I have a co-worker who asked, during his interview, if he should provide references. I told him not to bother, because mine is a small industry and I certainly know people who know people with whom he had worked in the past. Along that same vein, if you lose or leave a job, don’t vent when you fill out your exit papers. A future employer may call looking for a reference, or sometime down the line, who knows… you might need to work for that company again.
• Try to avoid panic during initial job search. The first job is always the toughest one to get. Every succeeding job you have in your life will be a little easier, because you will gain experience and acquire more lines on the resume. As you get older, the people above you on the employment food chain get older, leave, or die. Just plain hanging around boosts your value as an employee.
• Continue to invest in education. The world keeps advancing, so if you aren’t getting smarter then you are getting stupider – relatively speaking. Even after gaining that diploma, continue to take internet or night school classes. They don’t have to be graduate classes, or even aimed at any degree – simply a course that will improve your skill set. One thing that you will find is that college courses are a lot more enjoyable to take post-graduation, because you actually chose to be there in the classroom. The younger undergrads may be taking the class just to fulfill their major requirements.

Those are my suggestions. If you have any others, please let me know and I will be sure to pass them on to the youth of America!

Jay Television industry, Weather advice, college, Facebook, meteorology, Travel, Twitter, university

Whenever a chunk of Antarctic ice breaks off, the national newscasts cover it. Whenever the ice in the Arctic thins out (especially if there is video of a forlorn polar bear), the national newscasts cover it. But when a fundamental part of the climate system that affects our weather and climate on a daily basis changes: crickets.

On April 1, NASA announced that – contrary to predictions – 2008′s “deep solar minimum” has continued into 2009. 344 of the past 456 days have been sunspot-free, which sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center calls it the “quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century.” Sunspots are created by magnetism on the sun’s surface, and seem to peak and decrease in cycles lasting approximately eleven years. While invisible to the naked eye, they are considered an indicator of solar activity. At the same time as announcing the continuation of the solar minimum, NASA also pointed out that during 2008 the earth received a 12 year low in solar irradiance; the sun’s brightness dropped by two one-hundredths of one percent at visible wavelengths since a previous solar minimum in 1996.

2008 also marked a 50 year low in solar wind pressure and a 55 year low in solar radio emissions.

What does the lack of sunspots and solar acvitiy mean to our weather and climate? It depends on who you talk to, and on which side of the climate change debate they stand. For the record, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has dismissed solar activity as a significant contributor to global temperature change. But IPCC opponents can show convincing graphs matching sunspots numbers and global temperature cycles. A conclusive causal link evades both sides.

Regardless, it would seem NASA’s announcement of unusually diminished sun should at least make network news on the internet. But since such information does not fit with the news divisions’ “runaway climate change” drumbeat, they haven’t posted the story on the websites at CBS, NBC, or ABC. And you certainly won’t see it on the evening television newscasts – unless they can work in a polar bear.

Jay News, Television industry, Weather ABC, arctic ice, CBS, climate change, IPCC, NBC, solar activity, sunspot

Shortly after the conclusion of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s speech to the US Congress, the afternoon newspapers hit the stands in his home country. The front page of the London Evening Standard screamed, “Brown tells US: Save our Planet.” As if merely rescuing the world’s economy isn’t a tough enough task.

It seems curious that as the American people believe the president is focused like a laser beam on financial issues, other nations are seizing on President Obama’s climate change initiatives. They see what the American media has largely ignored – the president’s stimulus and spending bills include easter eggs in the form of climate change legislation.

For example, President Obama claims, despite the current “throw money at everything” approach, that he will simultaneously reduce a suddenly enormous federal deficit to $600 billion by 2012. Part of the way he plans to do it is by charging a huge new tax on people and industries that produce anything. It is called “cap and trade,” and will force everyone who emits any carbon dioxide into the air to purchase – at auction – the right to do so. Obama says this tax will bring $79 billion into government coffers in its first year, and $646 Billion by 2019. The same companies that are supposed to find money to pay workers must also find money to pay this confiscatory new environmental tax.

President Obama’s pronouncements have emboldened Green movements in other countries. The idea of a carbon tax has been bouncing around Europe for some time. But the newspaper, Les Echos, recently reported that, “L’idee de taxe carbone fait son chemin”, or “The idea of a carbon tax is gaining” in France. The article starts out by saying the concept is welcomed by Greens, and is a “reflection of Barack Obama.”

Twelve years after the US Senate passed a resolution opposing the Kyoto Treaty 95-0, there is now international expection that President Obama will not only concede to the wishes of other nations, but actually lead efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. An article in the South China Morning Post expects that a global climate change treaty will be settled in Copenhagen by the end of the year. Even China, which was largely exempt from Kyoto because it was considered an underdeveloped nation, seems willing sign a treaty to reduce its carbon emissions. But according to the Morning Post article, “the US, in Beijing’s view, has a moral obligation to make much deeper cuts, much sooner, than China.”

Right now, you would have to say President Obama appears inclined to do just that.

UPDATE 3/6/09: The following was printed in an analysis piece by a reporter based in England and printed in the The Standard and several other newspapers throughout Canada on 3/6/09:

A U.S.-China deal must include … much stronger emission curbs in the U.S. than in China in the early stages, technological help and largescale American investment in clean Chinese energy sources, and probably a carbon-trading deal as well. But if it can be done, it will provide the template on which other industrialized and industrializing countries can join up to a global deal for steep emissions cuts in Copenhagen.

Jay News, Weather China, global warming

Temperature data is recorded at ten thousand locations across the earth. But actual measurements of carbon dioxide – the key component in global warming theory – are only collected at about three hundred land-based locations around the globe. There are some existing satellites capable of monitoring carbon dioxide levels from space, but their coverage area and effectiveness are limited.

The lack of reliable, real-time carbon dioxide measurements is one of the bones of contention in the reliability or believability (depending on you who talk to) of our global climate models. Because CO2 is not sufficiently measured, the CO2 numbers input into the models must be parameterized, or estimated based upon other equations. How accurate those numbers are is contested within the climate change community.

That is why the recent launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was so highly anticipated. The satellite was designed not only to measure CO2 over land and oceans, but measure how the earth’s oceans and landmasses capture and store some portion of that CO2.

Significant amounts of CO2 are absorbed by vegetation, which is why graphs of CO2 measurements look like “jagged teeth” (the red line on the Mauna Loa graph) over time. During the growing season, CO2 is absorbed by vegetation and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is at a minimum. In winter, when vegetation is dormant, photosynthesis is minimized and CO2 levels are at their highest.

Everyone in the scientific community was publicly disappointed that the rocket failed shortly after launch, and the $280 million satellite was destroyed. But let’s be honest – the launch failure actually benefits some of the scientists and politicians involved in the climate debate.

There are huge dollars being spent by both sides (though hardly in equal amounts) of the manmade global warming issue. Some scientists regularly quoted by the media are little more than activists in lab coats. Prolonging the debate serves their personal interests, as it keeps them in the spotlight.

The OCO could have provided answers – definitive answers – to some of the questions currently at the crux of the global warming debate. For those who make money from the climate change debate – and for a few who have become rich in the process – the loss of a satellite that could settle some of the disputed numbers has an unintended beneficial side effect: job security.

Because of the satellite’s destruction, climate modelers will continue to parameterize carbon dioxide numbers and effects, and climate debaters will continue to debate their accuracy. The climate change rhetoric will continue at shrill levels because a key question – how much carbon dioxide is in the air at any given time and what happens to it – is just another issue for debate.

UPDATE 3/2/09: One of those activists in a lab coat is NASA’s James Hansen, who urged “mass civil disobedience” during remarks to protesters who barricaded gates at a coal-fueled power plant. Hansen’s former boss wonders “why he has not been fired.”

Jay Weather carbon dioxide, global warming

The word warning used to mean something: caution, alert, alarm. Like the robot in the old TV series Lost in Space that droned, “Danger, Will Robinson.” If you recall, the robot’s warnings always verified.

The other day, as I drove past the Walgreens store at 57th and Cliff, I couldn’t help but notice large, red words on their electronic sign that screamed, “FLOOD WARNING.” I immediately felt cautioned, alerted, alarmed – and confused, since there was no rain in the forecast on this February day. Then I thought about the sign and figured out what was going on. The store is located on the southeast corner of 57th and Cliff, meaning that it is 50 feet inside the Lincoln County border. Had the store been on the northeast corner of the same intersection, there would have been no warning at all, because no warnings were in effect for Minnehaha County.

The warning itself was posted because of the potential for lowland flooding of farmland along the Big Sioux River on the opposite end of Lincoln County, many miles from where that sign was warning passing motorists. I’m not criticizing Walgreens, because the sign was displaying a valid warning for the county in which it was located; nor am I criticizing the National Weather Service, which issued a perfectly valid, by-the-book, weather alert.

Here is the problem: every motorist who saw that sign probably imagined it was bogus, or at least another exaggeration of a perceived threat to their person or property. In weather, just as in every daily newspaper and newscast, we have so needlessly over-used the word warning that it is largely ignored. Just within the past few hours, there have been warnings published about the financial markets, oil supplies, North Korea, Twitter, and tenant cannabis farms. Who can stand the stress and anxiety of all these warnings? I mean, we can be alarmed about only so many things before warning fatigue sets in.

As we head into the warm season, we will soon be warned about everything from penny-size hail to violent tornadoes. Regardless of the severity of the threat, the weather and broadcast industries will be working hard to make sure that every weather warning receives thorough coverage on every electronic medium.

Yet people have become so de-sensitized to the incessant warnings they receive each day that the question asked after most of these storms will be not whether it came without warning, but rather whether anybody paid attention.

Jay Weather flooding, weather warning

In theory, it sounds good: Combining wind speed and air temperature into one number, intended to indicate the rate a body cools on a chilly, windy day. But wind chill has become so misused and misunderstood as to render it meaningless as a legitimate meteorological value.

Wind chill was created in 1939 by Antarctic explorer Paul Siple, who measured the temperature effects that wind had on containers of water. Those results were later transformed into a complicated formula called the Siple-Passel equation, and the wind chill was born.

Siple’s equation was used until 2000, when it was discontinued because it was found to dramatically overestimate the chill caused by strong winds in a cold environment. The National Weather Service, which officially recognized wind chill in the 1970s, performed some tests on the skin of real human beings in simulated wind to come up with a new wind chill formula. In it, the conditions which used to create a wind chill of -40 now result in a wind chill of only -20. Wind chill values just don’t sound as ferocious as they used to.

The whole wind chill idea is flawed. The public (and some broadcasters) say the wind chill is what it “feels like” outside. But wind chill is aimed at determining the effects of wind on bare skin on a stationary person facing into the wind. To say that a wind chill “feels like” -20 assumes that a real person won’t turn their back on the wind, put a hand over their face, or wear a scarf. I assure you that those of us who live in a colder climate do those things (except for teenagers, who don’t let wind and cold interfere with attitude and fashion).

Another issue is that wind chill is generally calculated at the nearest airport. Since there are few trees or tall buildings on air fields, measured wind speeds are higher than in neighborhoods and business districts where people live and work. Again, we don’t “feel like” the wind chill says we do.

But people still love to refer to the wind chill. I guess it makes us all “feel like” we can stand up to the best that winter weather can bring our way. Or give us something to brag about the next time someone says, “Sure is cold this winter…”

Jay Weather wind chill, windchill