Yellow Sky

We in Michigan and several northern tier states are experiencing yellow skies and poor air quality today, due to wildfires in Canada. It also smells as though everybody has a fire pit going. Not very pleasant.

I have no immediate idea what has caused these wildfires, so I should be careful about assessing blame. Yet neither should the global warming enthusiasts be quick to raise their banner.

Government policy can and has led to wildfires. For environmental reasons, in many western states electric companies aren't allowed to clear brush from the base of power line towers. That effectively allows kindling to develop. Add a bolt of lightning or a transmitter shorting out and sending sparks earthward...and you get a wildfire. A decidedly preventable one. 

I haven't even gotten to the old saw that sometimes things just happen. My overriding point is merely that few if any of us really know what causes problems on a case by case basis. So maybe we should treat them case by case unless and until an actual cause becomes demonstrable. 

In a world which thrives on hype I say, yeah. That'll happen.

Fear This

I'm going to run the risk this morning of being the cranky old guy that everyone avoids. It's my right as a cranky old guy. Anyway, my blog, my rules. I'll write what I want, and you can avoid it if you want.

I'm sick of the fearmongering in this world. I shouldn't be; it's nothing new under the sun. It's always been here and likely always will. Still, there are times it really grates on a guy.

When I was 14 and a freshman in high school (to save you the time figuring out when, it was 1974) I remember our science teacher giving us a handout which said we would be out of oil by 1985. Period, end of report, no doubt about it. Yet here we are today with a couple hundred years of known reserves. Right about the same time we were pummeled with tales of a nuclear winter which would freeze us all out before 1990. Now we're apparently growing too hot. I think I'm within my rights to ask, what the hell? Why do you want to scare kids like that? And why are you still doing it today?

Ronald Reagan was supposedly leading us into nuclear holocaust. When AIDS was first discovered I read an article which claimed that the United States Army alone would have a million cases by 1995 or so. Neither concern hit anywhere near the heights which were predicted. And need I even mention COVID as an example of what government inspired hysteria causes?

Just to show that this rant isn't driven only by my personal philosophy, the right does it too. Barack Obama was not a particularly good President so far as I'm concerned, but he wasn't His Satanic Majesty either. Trying to remove President Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal merely created a sideshow that wasted our time and energy. Few people out to gut the Second Amendment are fire breathing commies. Many of them are otherwise good people who simply disagree with you. We don't need to insult anyone, we should strive not to insult anyone, especially those we may actually convert to our line of reasoning if we're patient and civil.

It all becomes one big game of the boy who cried wolf. One of these days a true crisis may arise which actually threatens life, the universe, and everything. Yet a lot of folks (like me) are going to say humbug simply because we've heard it all before. We need to be better about seeing things as they are and acting from that rather than trying to play people, especially the young, like puppets. We need to begin speaking to others, or at least not merely speaking at them as though they're great stupid fools too ignorant to believe the 'obvious'. It's beneath our dignity as human beings, and I'm sick of the whole thing.

What the Future Brings

A week ago we weren't expecting any snow for this coming Friday in Detroit. This morning the local weather scientists are saying we should get 4 to 8 inches. Yesterday it was supposed to be 2 to 4. Who knows what tomorrow might bring.

I get it, I get it, I get it. Weather prediction isn't quite an exact science. Chuck Gaidica, a renowned weather reporter around these parts, once remarked that after 5 to 7 days all bets are off on forecasting. 

Makes sense to me. What is so irritating on the matter is that so many prognosticators (I don't think Gaidica is among them, to be fair) tell us that because of ever increasing global warming, a phenomena surely closely reliant on weather, we'll have a catastastroke in ten or twelve years. Never mind that the ten or twelve year countdown to doomsday seems to start over, oh, every 10 or 12 years.

If you can't tell me last Friday how much snow we'll have this Friday, I ain't got much confidence in what you assert for a decade from now. Period. End of report.

Detroit Snowmaggedon 2022

I wasn't going to say anything. I weren't. I was jes' gonna let it drop. But sometimes, y'know, a feller cain't help hisself.

Last week on February 2 were were supposed to have a blizzard for the generations here in the D. Accuweather was calling for 1 to 2 feet of snow as late as the wee hours of that Wednesday morning. And what did we get?

Not two foot of snow, that's fer sure. Not even one foot so far as I could tell.

According to Click On Detroit from Detroit's Channel 4, no one anywhere near Detroit had anything like a foot of powder. Most of the City and suburbs were between 3 and 6 inches. You have to go to Flint, hardly in the Detroit area, to even sniff at a foot of accumulation. where there was an 11 inch snowfall. Yet all the way up until the morning of Wednesday, February 2, we were supposed to be absolutely slammed.

I say again, for the umpteenth time, and so much so that even I'm becoming sick of it, this is another reason why I don't automatically trust 'experts'. It is why I cannot trust science because it's science or government because it's government (for from where did most weather projections come from but The scientfic-governmental complex?). They can't tell me, within scant hours of the snow arriving, how much to expect. But that Miami will be underwater in 2100 due to bizarre weather or climate change or global warming or whatever the damn concept is labeled these days is to be taken as an absolute fact.

I don't believe you. Until you can be closer to the truth closer to home, I cannot believe you. You can't tell me what to expect in modern times, when the event is right around the corner. Don't tell me you are certain of things 78 years off. That's not being a scientist. But it might be a charlatan.

Talk About the Weather

I've decried this before. I certainly will again. But this morning offers yet another example of the primary reason I cannot give credence to the climate change fears which someone's bizarre science insists we accept.

Ten days ago we were not forecast to have significant snow overnight January 1 - 2. Then about three days ago the weather boys and girls said to expect 1 to 3 inches...which became 3 to 6 inches by Saturday morning (which was being revised down to 2-4 inches around Midnight). Any way you slice it, I will soon be shovelling the not that long ago unexpected snow, and then cleaning off the cars. Bear in mind too that I haven't even mentioned the temperature anomalies among the ever changing forecasts during this same time period.

They can't predict the weather a week and a half or two weeks ahead of time, but the Earth is ten years from irreparable doom.

I. Don't. Believe. It.

Postscript: where I am, we actually got about an inch. More fuel to the fire so far as my position.

Be Careful Jumping to Conclusions

Chuck Gaidica was a local weatherman in Detroit for years. I always liked him; he seemed sincere and honest about forecasting. One thing I recall him saying in an interview about ten years ago was that after 5 to 7 days, all bets were off about the weather. We simply couldn't know with any certainty what would happen after that. 

That sounds about right to me. Generally, the forecasters can't go very far into the future, and we've all known times where they were wrong about the next 24 hours, let alone next week. Even with science, we can't predict the future, especially the far future, with any reliability. And that's one of the main reasons I'm skeptical of the value, and the inherent fear involved, with issues of climate change.

We don't know how much snow we're going to get next Monday but we know Miami will be underwater in the year 2100. Bah and humbug. Yes, we might be able to take decent guesses about the coming days, weeks, or even months. But knowing for sure, with anywhere near complete accuracy? Color me skeptical. Especially considering that so many models, so much 'science' is based on mere human thought and action. It is after all human beings making up the various catastrophic scenarios for our future based on the data they feed into the algorithm they have chosen and developed. Human thought being human thought, that means guesswork will enter in the equation. Bias will too, even if unintentional. I can't help wonder how many scientists (many of whom are directly or indirectly paid by a government somewhere) are actually superimposing their belief on the endeavor. And I haven't even addressed the issue of presumption: they claim that simply because one thing has happened one way it will continue to act in exactly that way into eternity. That's an assertion fraught with peril, particularly when you're asking for trillions of dollars which will keep you, erstwhile scientist, in the driver's seat about my life, and the lives of millions of others, born and yet to be born.

I'm not saying that future climactic catastrophe isn't in the cards. But knowing that nature is resilient and men fallible, I simply don't believe the crisis all that foreboding.

Ask the right questions

There are many things which no one seems to oppose. We're all for peace, correct? Education? The environment? Observing the Golden Rule, perhaps, if such references are not too religious? Yet so often these claims ring hollow. They must, you see: for peace and education are just words. By themselves, they really mean nothing.

It is critically important that we bring up and discuss the important questions which must follow these words if our actions are to mean anything; indeed, if the words themselves are at some point to be of value, of good use. WE must ask: peace under what circumstances? Peace for whom? Because of course peace in the sense of a lack of war was very useful for Hitler and Stalin yet was a rather poor mantra for Austria or the Communist Bloc.

Simply put, the next time someone asks you if you are for peace, or education, or the environment, ask them relevant questions before you answer. Ask them peace under what conditions? Education to what purpose and in what manner? The environment for whom and how? Before these issues are addressed we have nothing but a shallow and insipid pool of vacuous semi-thought. Yet afterwards, we may actually accomplish things.

Global Climate Nuclear what?

Last Friday, May 29, 2015, the Detroit metro area was told to expect torrential rains on the following Sunday, May 31.

On Saturday afternoon May 30, Detroiters were told to expect one to three inches of rain on Sunday.

Early on Sunday morning the weather forecast cast called for a lot of rain starting around Noon, to the tune of 'about an inch'.

By 10 AM, the dire warning had been downgraded to one half an inch. By Noon, we were told to expect a quarter inch of rainfall that day.

But hardly 24 hours before that, Detroit was said to look for several inches of rain. With all the bright new weather technology, how could the forecast change so dramatically in not quite two days? And this is not the first time that the weather casters have been so far off in so short of a time, as the many people who follow weather issues can surely attest. And then - you knew this was coming, we're equally sure - what does this say about the global warming question? How can we trust the predications of those claiming that the weather will change so profoundly over the next, oh, 50 to 100 years if we can't get reliable forecasts for the next two days?

We're not talking here about a subtle change. We're talking about a change of several inches of precipitation within a short time. Yet were's supposed to believe in catastrophic changes to play out over decades.

Call us simplistic, but it is precisely these mistakes, likely enough honestly made under changing conditions, which cause us to question the whole idea of widespread and horrific global warming, climate change, nuclear winter, or whatever it is the doomsayers of today insist will happen in the relatively far off future. Pshaw, we say, to their chicken little clucking.

Three Things for a Tuesday

Is global warming/nuclear winter/climate change generally accepted among the scientific community? According to the Obama Administration, yes. But not according to the scientific community itself. An excellent article in the Wall Street Journal, found here: http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303480304579578462813553136?mobile=y&mod=trending_now_2 effectively debunks the science agrees on global warming/nuclear winter/climate change. Yet how many people will actually examine the issue for themselves? Not the Democrats. That's for sure.

John Conyers is back on the ballot in Michigan, and many think this is a good thing. Some believe it for valid Constitutional reasons, and that's okay. Some believe it because they think Conyers merits a spot in history (he would become the longest tenured Congressman ever if reelected); that's not so okay. Longevity means little to real public service, and Conyers has been such a leftist radical as to leave no significant legacy other than time of service. Having said that, it's not okay to want Conyers off the ballot simply because he's long been off the deep end. You're not likely to get anyone better anyway, and revenge however modest just ain't pretty. Let Mr. Conyers and his minions have their day in the sun. It's all they've really got.

Anyone who favors raising the minimum wage doesn't understand basic economics. It's not about what the worker wants but about the value of the work. That's why there's no talk about a minimum wage for doctors: there are fewer of them and the jobs they do tend to be highly specialized and high risk. They get paid in light of that. Yet anybody can sweep a floor. This isn't to disparage floor sweepers but, let's face it, the skill set is lower. The chore doesn't merit much pay. If you raise the minimum wage for floor sweepers you'll just get more bosses sweeping floors. Why pay someone else to do what you can go ahead and do yourself, and much more cheaply, depending on the exact wage requirements of the job.

There's a quick three hits for your consideration this Tuesday. Whether we've struck out or tripled in two runs is up to you.

Things Change, and It's Scary

We ask you, what is not to love about the global warming (we're so sorry, climate change) partisans and their most astute allies in the media? Nuclear winters, ozone depletion, and frets about, yes, global warming, simply zoom right onto the sweet spots of their bats. It's a hit every time!

Now those weather experts who swing at every pitch are saying - just sayin', ya know - that a recent lull in solar activity might mean we're heading into a Little Ice Age. Just ask the folks at Huffpost Science: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/24/solar-lull-little-ice-age-sun-scientists_n_4645248.html?utm_hp_ref=science#305888150icid=maing-grid7main5dl10sec1_lnk2pLid=434634

erhaps that article ought to be filed under, if you'll pardon a somewhat obscure reference to comedian (and accordionist, which shows Weird Al isn't alone) Judy Tenuta, "Shut up! It could happen." Because this stuff happens all the time: both the media and the scare mongers of climate warming or global change or whomever latch onto a naturally occurring phenomenon in nature and run head on into full Chicken Little mode.

This and things similar are designed to grab headlines and get people to look. Yes, we fully realize this means that it made us look too. But if your definition of success is to attract those who'll ridicule you and your point, well, wow. You're not aiming very high.

What do the liberals say so much, when they're trying to get us to alter our conservative ways and attitudes? Oh yes; things change. Yet it seems that things change in science too. Then they change back, in a somewhat natural and predictable rhythm as well.

No wonder science confuses the left. They're busy marching forward so blindly and so certainly that they don't have the time to see the clarity of scientific truth. It's a wonder they see anything at all.

Detroit Illustrates Global Warming fears Unjustified

Yesterday, Metro Detroit was hit by a series of showers and thundershowers. None were severe, and there was no damage other than a bit of localized and minor flooding. It was not a particularly newsworthy event. Detroit experienced little more than a normal late summer day, except for one thing.

There wasn't supposed to be thundershowers. It was supposed to be a pleasant, sunny day. At least, that was the forecast as of Sunday, a mere 48 hours earlier.

That still does not qualify as as news. Or does it? Seen against the bigger picture, it may well be of note. When the specter of global warming is considered, where we are expected to believe in things which will not be for 50 to 100 years, or well into the future (Orwell?), there is something to give one thought. Seeing as weather predictions are based on computer models and that global warming forecasts are based on such things too, how can we trust the cry of global warming? If our presumed experts can't get a 48 hour weather projection right, how can we trust them to be correct over things they assure us will happen over an entire century?

To be sure, we'll be told that anomalies will occur. Certainly an anomaly of some sort happened between this past Sunday and yesterday afternoon's inclement weather which changed things significantly. Things do happen; no one disputes that. Yet it really only adds to the trouble. If what surely were minor glitches happened which changed our predicted weather in just two days so considerably, how many glitches might happen over one hundred years which would alter the likelihood of global warming as currently predicted? Indeed, how can we trust that science can accurately predict what will happen over the whole world over many decades when it can't necessarily predict what will happen in one small part of that same world over two days?

To be fair, our weather forecasts are generally accurate. They call for a series of sunny and warm days now in Detroit, and we will almost surely get them. Still, it seems that the inaccuracy of yesterday's forecast ought to be a serving of humble pie, not merely for our local weathercasters, but for their friends higher up the scientific food chain as well. If we can't be right in the short term when being right ought to be relatively easy, we must then predict the far future with greater reserve, a and quiet calm.

Rogue Canadians?

We would have never expected a day on which Canada would been snarled at on the world scene. But as our northern neighbours have rejected the Kyoto Protocols on climate change, well, one would then suppose that the environmentalist left would not take it gracefully.

Canada has been regarded as an 'international climate scofflaw' and is now an 'insignificant' player over climate change. Thus speaketh one Alden Meyer of an allegedly scientific group, bemoaning Canada's rejection of Kyoto.

The first question which comes to mind is, if Canada is all that you say, Mr. Meyer, why is its reversal on Kyoto an issue? It would seem that criticism is not relevant if Canadian actions so unimportant. Still, Meyer further disparaged Canada's action by saying it is an aberration, implying that the international fight against global warming (for that's what it's really about anyway; climate change is merely a sanitized call as its advocates try to sound less shrill) is advancing just fine.

Perhaps that point will help us to understand the true issue at hand. In speaking as a demagogue, Meyer might be actually be demonstrating his fear over the question. He may fear, the whole radical environmentalist left indeed may secretly be panicking, that it is not an aberration. What Canada has done in pulling out of the Kyoto agreements may in truth signal that the world is slowing awakening to the idea that global warming and climate change, outside of natural rhythms in our weather, is a non-issue.

If that is the case, then we commend Canada for the move. It would then strike us as Canadian world leadership rather than any shirking of responsibility. To be sure, there may be political issues within that country which have powered Ottawa to alter its stance. We are not expert enough on Canadian politics to address that point. But as climate change questions are ultimately political anyways, we are not concerned over what exactly led to Canada's decision.

We must look with skepticism upon any call for any worldwide laws and ordinances on any issue. Especially when it comes to any given nation handing over some its powers to anyone else. Particularly when the evidence is scant (there is no radical climate change happening, folks) a calm ear needs to hear questions on the issue and a calm mind consider them. Anytime someone says that something must be done NOW, as the rabid environmentalists do, we cannot take their position seriously. If as such Canada has gone rogue, she deserves nothing but praise.

Science and Religion

No good Christian would have any issue with good science. Indeed Christianity and science go rather well together, as better thinkers than myself have said in better ways than I for years. Yet there is a breed of science which will have no quarter with any ideals save its own. It is the realm of pop science, and its followers are legion.

Pop science is most noticeable in the area of global warming, but exists in many other forms. Environmentalists who see the Earth as better off without human beings and those who insist on evolution as the only acceptable theory on the origin of people and things are two other examples. We should of course be concerned with meteorological cycles and I will admit that we have not always used our resources wisely; further, we must allow that evolution may well be fact. All of this is, to one degree or another, open to reasoned debate. But what is truly galling about pop science is how it so readily dismisses religious belief when it is so nearly a religion itself.

You don’t think so? If not, why the presumption (for that is all it is; who out there has observed a world without US in order to rationally make such a judgment?) the earth would be better without humans? Science is the area of fact and observation; value judgments are beyond its scope. Likewise the assumption that short term warming is bad, or that all the matter in the Universe was once compacted into an object the size of a basketball which just happened to be around (while the possibility of God just being around is deemed fantasy). What do these beliefs sound like? What do they appear based upon?

The answer is obvious: faith. The pop culture, of which pop science is a part, believes what it believes simply on the faith that it's true. They believe because it is what their conclusions lead them to think. Which is not to say that, on a case by case basis, there may be no reason for their faith. It purely illustrates that their ideas emanate from what the religious readily admit about theirs: knowledge is ultimately built upon axioms, starting points which are simply accepted as true. We believe in God because without an uncreated Creator nothing makes sense. They believe in the big bang basketball because, well, matter had to start from somewhere.

So you see, much of today’s science and religion share an approach to their creeds. It is not unfair to say, in a very real sense, that science is religion.

Let’s see if the evolutionists can handle the rebound.

A Question on Global Warming

There are concerns being expressed by weather watchers that April could find many areas of the nation looking at recorded snowfalls. This isn't all that unusual; it was only about 6 years ago that Detroit had around 7 inches of snow on April 7th, and as we had up until late yesterday a winter storm watch for our neck of the woods. Indeed, snow flurries have occurred in the Motor City recently as late as the 22nd of April. Late snow just isn't big news around here.

Until you factor in that hobgoblin, global warming. If we are warming up too much, why are temperatures staying so low so far into the spring? To be sure, that is not the easiest question to address, as there are myriad factors involved in what creates our weather. But to hear the global warming crowd, there is only the one factor: us.

We recognize that there are rarely any nicely gradual changes in our climate, and that even presuming global warming to be true cannot mean that changes in our weather will occur on a steady, sliding scale. But again, that seems to be more of an argument against rather than for any kind of spectacular climate change. Why ought we assume that something on a scale almost unimaginable will happen when all credible evidence suggests that nature moves slowly, and sort of back and forth? It rocks, but doesn't roll.

Yes, there are convoluted explanations by the scare mongers which assert that these cold spells in fact support their point. Yet until we can see something straightforward and easily explainable, our money will be against them. It's the safe bet in light of their shrill tone.

Global Warming?

February 2011 was the third snowiest month in Detroit weather history. We all know what that means: global warming, your Grandma's blue hair.

To be sure, there's probably some pseudo-scientific explanation which will attempt to explain the fact away. Pop science is not a force which does not give up easily on its far out presumptions. This is, we might be assured, an anomaly. Global warming is really, truly happening.

Tell that your heat bill.

Earth Hour

The lights went out in Georgia, and in many other paces too yesterday. Lights were extinguished for the sake of Earth Hour, to emphacize the supposed threat of global climate change.

I can feel the difference already. No, really, I can. The arrogance level has risen dramatically among the intelligentsia who know so much more than we do.

I agree that we ought to turn out lights, and anything else which uses energy for that matter, when they are not in use. That's simply common sense in saving yourself money and your appliances wear and tear. But to make it a worldwide crusade, especially for such a suspect notion as climate change, is grandstanding and effrontery. It's an insult to our intelligence and should be treated that way.

Have you noticed by the way how the catchphrase has changed from 'global warming' to 'climate change'? From something specific to something general? Why would they do that?

I suggest it is to give the purveyors of such nonsense greater leeway. The less they have to define precisely the more loosey goosey they can be with the facts. They can more easily hide their agenda when they cannot be pinned down. To go from a specific problem to a widespread and pervasive trauma makes the scare tactics so much more effective. It's not merely temperatures but the entire climate at stake. Don't you realize what that means?

I sure do, It means I have to watch you more closely.