Just When You’ve Mastered “The Electric Slide”, Get Ready For “The Global Shift”

We knew this but it  is now being published… and so it is in the news.

The world is getting warmer… and we can now predict our climate by looking at map at 300 miles south and guessing what our weather will be from that…

Just as plate tectonics and  Darwin’s origin of the species were able to lay the groundwork of reason  for explaining puzzling observations, this simplifies what to expect from global warming rather startlingly.

Texas is now  what we alway thought of when we considered the weather of Mexico; Oklahoma is now West Texas; Kansas is now Oklahoma; Nebraska is now Kansas; South Dakota is now Nebraska, North Dakota is now South Dakota: Southern Manitoba is now North Dakota…..

If  West Texas had 3 days of rain, now Oklahoma is getting 3 days of rain;  If it snowed 12  times in South Dakota, it is now doing the same in North Dakota… and so on.

So, to predict our heat, rain, winters, etc, our guide would be North Carolina.  Longer growing seasons,  some winters with no snow, hot summers…

However due to Global warming, the East Coast has a caveat.  An anomaly so to speak  and actually some relief from the North Carolina summer heat we would normally expect….

With the unprecedented melting of the Arctic and Greenland icecaps dumping its excess into the Labrador Current, that cold water drops South hugging the East Coast shoreline all the way down to North Carolina’s Outer Banks where it finally becomes neutralized…   Therefore even though we have hotter air masses, the colder ocean temperatures creates a buffer against Global warming off the entire northeastern US.

Europe, Japan, and Alaska all experience  the same mitigating effect, although with both Greenland and the Arctic Icecaps melting into the Labrador, the US East Coast gets a stronger volume of cold water.  Call it our icy shower effect….

Once melting stops and the currents dry up, we return to the North Carolina scenario of the twentieth century….

Chart Courtesy of NOAA

So, we in Delaware really get the best climate on the East Coast.    Warm winters, little or no snow, and cool breezy summers….. as well as a longer growing period, and… less dependence on fossil fuels for winter heating.

Gee, global warming isn’t so bad for Delaware after all….  Oh, the rising seas?  There you go again… Why did you have to spoil the rosy picture I was painting?

 

Sandy Disposition…..

A lot of words have expressed on this blog, just how bankrupt the Republican philosophy is. Let everyone fend for themselves; government should help no one. We have tried to make a distinction between those Republicans who are decent people and who have just hang onto the name because they don’t want to bear the difficulty of re-registering, and those others, a slim sliver of public opinion who actually believe the philosophy upon which their billionaire donors insist:

Money is only for rich people and should never, never be wasted on anyone not in the 1%….

Republicans from Hurricane Sandy’s path are finding that out today. The $60 billion relief package already passed by the Senate, which would have passed the House this past session, WAS PURPOSEFULLY NOT BROUGHT TO THE FLOOR FOR A VOTE…

Peter King, formerly a harsh critic of President Obama before the election, is rumored to be switching parties. He did call upon all New Yorkers never to donate to Republican House of Representatives. Republican Governor Chris Christie, who may now run for the Democratic Presidential nomination, lambasted the Republican Party…. Loosely translated this is what he said… ” They are fuckin’ assholes who this morning forgot to eat their shit for breakfast.”

My, don’t Republicans always bring out the best of people… We just love having them around…..

Of Course Mother Nature Hates Republicans!

Many of the areas hit by the storm had also been hit by Irene. In New Jersey’s Hamilton Township, Tom Jacobsen also recalled heavy spring flooding and a particularly heavy winter before that.

“I’m starting to think we really ticked off Mother Nature somehow, because we’ve been getting spanked by her for about a year now,” he said while grabbing some coffee at a convenience store…..

OF COURSE YOU DID, DUMMY. YOU VOTED FOR REPUBLICANS!

Post Irene…..

“These folks weren’t here, because our governor (Jack Markell in a baseball cap)..said ‘either stay home, or if you live along the coast, go someplace else…’ And a lot of other places, Florida, the Carolina’s, the Gulf Coast, governors say that all the time, and people stay right there, stay hunkered down, and say ‘we’ll ride this one out’ In the state of Delaware, almost everybody, not everybody but almost everybody, listened to what this guy had to say….. Some of the unspoken heroes out there, are the ones who heeded the governors and lieutenant governors request, to stay out of harms way, and leave the coast, and go somewhere where you could be safe…: Senator Tom Carper.

One factor as to why Floridians, Carolinians, and Gulf Coasters do not heed their governors is that they know better… They have a lot more hurricanes than do we….

After Irene, evacuations may become an issue here too…

Irene was a hyped up storm. Creating a lot of firsts.. First NYC shutdown. First time SEPTA closed. First time in 25 years Philadelphia created a state of emergency. First time Delaware City and Old New Castle were under mandatory evacuation.

And what happened? One tornado in Lewes. 45 mile an hour gusts, and a lot of rain… What happened in Isabel back in 2003? One tornado, 45 mile and hour gusts, and a lot of rain. What happened during Floyd back in 99… No tornado, 45 mile and hour gusts, and a lot of rain…….

Obviously begging the comparison… If we hyped Irene, why didn’t we hype the previous three that impacted Delaware in the same capacity?

My theory? … The threat of a killer hurricane was used by the administration, it was used by every local official, governor on down, and it was used by every member of the media to boost their advertising revenue…

Yes, these ARE desperate times. And everyone needing to look good, latched onto Irene as the vehicle to get them up to that spot where they wanted to go…

And so, had a lot of hype, which didn’t go unnoticed overseas….

The Daily Telegraph…..

“There you see the surf,” The red emblossomed
CNN reproter gushed out breathlessly. “That tells a story right there.” Stumbling and apparently buffeted by ferocious gusts, he took shelter next to a building. “This is our protection from the wind,” he shouted into the microphone. “It’s been truly remarkable to watch the power of the ocean here.”

The surf may have told a story but so too did the sight behind the reporter of people chatting and ambling along the sea front and just goofing around. There was a man in a t-shirt, a woman waving her arms and then walking backwards. Then someone on a bicycle glided past.

Across the screen, the “Breaking News: Irene Batters Long Island” caption was replaced by stern advice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA): “Stay inside, stay safe.”

All this Sunday morning, despite the fact that we knew on Friday, that this storm was a dud…..

The demise of Irene has already begun. There is no visible eye. The storm intensity is down to 99 mph. This would be a low-end category 2 or a strong category 1 storm, while 36 hours ago some predicted a catastrophic category 4 storm. Air Force Reserve aircraft have found that Irene’s eyewall has collapsed, and the central pressure has risen — rising pressure means a weakening storm.

So we knew……..

But carried the charade right up to Sunday morning, even up to New York, that this was a killer storm, the storm of a century, a storm requiring unprecedented actions on behalf of government to combat it’s power, even up to the point of performing a farce for the camera, while in the background was a man in a t-shirt, a woman waving her arms and then walking backwards. Then someone on a bicycle glided past.”

Hurricane Floyd 1999 — Still a large tropical cyclone when it hit the Mid Atlantic states, Floyd produced a strong storm surge, peaking at 2.8 ft (0.85 m) with a storm tide of 9.34 ft (2.85 m) in Philadelphia with effects felt in parts of northern Pennsylvania including the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton metro area. Some 1,260,000 citizens across the three states lost power because of the storm, and flooding left many in Pennsylvania homeless.

Hurricane Isabel 2003 — The effects of the hurricane in Delaware were compounded by flooding caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Henri days before.[37] Moderate winds of up to 62 mph (100 km/h) in Lewes[38] downed numerous trees, tree limbs, and power lines across the state,[39] leaving at least 15,300 without power.[40] Numerous low-lying areas were flooded due to high surf, strong storm surge, or run-off from flooding further inland.[39] The passage of Hurricane Isabel resulted in $40 million in damage (2003 USD, $47.8 million 2011 USD) and no casualties in the state.

Hurricane Ivan 2004 — The Delaware River and its tributaries crested just below their all-time records set by Hurricane Diane in 1955. While crossing over the Mid-Atlantic states, Ivan’s remnants spawned 117 tornadoes across the eastern United States, with the 40 tornadoes spawned in Virginia on September 17 setting a daily record for the commonwealth…Ivan broke several hydrological records; it is credited with possibly causing the largest ocean wave ever recorded, a 91 foot (27 meter) wave that may have been as high as 131 ft (40 m)…

Loss of Delawareans: Floyd.. 2, Isabella.. 0, and Ivan 0… Unfortunately 2 lost their lives in this storm… Our hearts go out to their families…..

So when Senator Tom Carper wonders aloud why other states people don’t heed their governors advice, it just might be because they have experience… Experience with the failed credibility of government officials….

Remember it is not that we didn’t know that this Hurricane was going to be a dud… We did. It is that we did know it, and continued the farce anyways… right up to the point of acting like one is bravely facing Hurricanes ferocious onslaught, will people lazily goof off in the camera shot’s background …

The next time they tell me to evacuate…. well, I’m not going to believe them either…… I’ll wear a tee shirt, walk backwards, and ride my bike on the boardwalk….

After seeing such a blatant attempt at fabricating a crises, can anyone believe CNN anymore?