That pic was from nearly 15 years ago... no clue where it is. Thanks for adling, though...
As for being a backup? I'd happily post your stuff to my farm site at www.laffing-horse.com
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk
GLASSMANOAK'S Contest Thread #125 for WINNERS and with MULTIPLE WINNERS !!
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That pic was from nearly 15 years ago... no clue where it is. Thanks for adling, though...
As for being a backup? I'd happily post your stuff to my farm site at www.laffing-horse.com
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk
1/8 #2
I have some vapemail out for delivery today.......That's enough to make me smile today........
I have some vapemail out for delivery today.......That's enough to make me smile today........
1/8 #2
Been busy this morning. Now I need to take a break and re-charge.
Been busy this morning. Now I need to take a break and re-charge.
1/8 #3
I just got up so I am recharged....but I think it's going to be a busy day also....I have to get some more Power Ball tickets either today or tomorrow.....I hate going out on the weekends so I am thinking today...but not till I get my mail.....
I just got up so I am recharged....but I think it's going to be a busy day also....I have to get some more Power Ball tickets either today or tomorrow.....I hate going out on the weekends so I am thinking today...but not till I get my mail.....
My home isp is down until Wednesday! 
On a brighter note, my office did a Powerball pool! 70 tix! Come on winning numbers!
@jpf880 - Continued prayers...
On a brighter note, my office did a Powerball pool! 70 tix! Come on winning numbers!
@jpf880 - Continued prayers...
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1/8 #5
Fingers crossed for you RR.........(and me)....
I just found some cool items....something I needed for other things besides my mods...
Micro USB Port Silicone Rubber Dust Cover
I was wondering why they don't have them everywhere....but them I remembered they want you to have to buy a new device each year.....
Fingers crossed for you RR.........(and me)....
I just found some cool items....something I needed for other things besides my mods...
Micro USB Port Silicone Rubber Dust Cover
I was wondering why they don't have them everywhere....but them I remembered they want you to have to buy a new device each year.....
1/8 #2
Well wishes to you and wifey @jpf880 hoping things turn around soon.
Can't wait to get today in and done. Looking forward to the weekend after too many long nights with the little one. I swear she doesn't like sleep. The wife is dragging worse than I am I think, but being 30 weeks pregnant and up all hours of the night would wear you out I would guess. Kinda scary to think how its gonna be with 2 little ones up and down all night....
Well wishes to you and wifey @jpf880 hoping things turn around soon.
Can't wait to get today in and done. Looking forward to the weekend after too many long nights with the little one. I swear she doesn't like sleep. The wife is dragging worse than I am I think, but being 30 weeks pregnant and up all hours of the night would wear you out I would guess. Kinda scary to think how its gonna be with 2 little ones up and down all night....
1/8 #6
Well Treefam it's about that time....I have some stuff to get done.....Have a great afternoon & I will check back in later on....
Well Treefam it's about that time....I have some stuff to get done.....Have a great afternoon & I will check back in later on....
#1
1/8/16
Running way behind here.
It's 3p and I've only got stuff done like it's 1Oa. Not fair.
Time should take a break once in awhile.
FT also has those plugs for phones.
Very sorry to hear about your wife. Ever consider an appeal?
I thought hosp had a consent, such that if you didn't agree you could continue the stay. I'd have to look it up. Maybe more complicated. I disagreed once. They kept me, insurance paid and I was groggy. Details are missing.
1/8/16
Running way behind here.
It's 3p and I've only got stuff done like it's 1Oa. Not fair.
Time should take a break once in awhile.
FT also has those plugs for phones.
Very sorry to hear about your wife. Ever consider an appeal?
I thought hosp had a consent, such that if you didn't agree you could continue the stay. I'd have to look it up. Maybe more complicated. I disagreed once. They kept me, insurance paid and I was groggy. Details are missing.
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#2
1/8/16
The blog here would be excellent. Or another website. Thing is with that then you'd have proof of authorship if it showed up elsewhere. To my knowledge, for as long as FB and Google and all those have had those agreements, there's never been an issue with them claiming ownership. A lot of the controversy they run into is different. Copyrights and patents are one of my pet peeves. I know too many artist's using those venues.
1/8 #2
This is a test of the emerging castbrodding system (er sommat like dat). OK, seriously, I was just over on the cow forum doing copy and paste of a bunch of the weather lessons and thought I'd throw out an "introduction" and see how you folks like it (or not).
AM I QUALIFIED TO TEACH THIS STUFF?
Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and I was enlisting in the good ole USAF, they made us take a test (some general aptitude testing battery) to figure out which career area to stuff you in. Given that I aced all four sections, they told me, "You can be anything you want to be." I said, "OK, I want to be a General." Not having a sense of humor, the recruiter put me in the "general" category, which means you could end up being an air policeman or a cook. During basic training, toward the end, we watched slides shows of the various occupations available in our chosen category and I saw one of a guy in an arctic parka holding a big red balloon and it was captioned, "Weatherman." I remembered how much fun I had had in high school investigating meteorology and climatology (even worse, paleo-climatology), so I chose that field.
They sent me off to Chanute School of Applied Aerospace Sciences to become a weather observer. In the USAF, unless you are an officer, you have to be an observer and attain the rank of at least staff sergeant before you can go back to school to become a forecaster. So I did 3 1/2 years in England watching clouds (the entire class before mine and after mine went to Vietnam - phew!). Then I rotated back to get more education.
But, back to the observer part. We had a weird work schedule: Midnight to 8 AM for two days (graveyard shift), 8AM to 4PM for two days (like civilian day shift), then 4PM to midnight for two days (swing shift), then four 24-hour periods off (quick, run out and discover England on your motorcycle!). There was rotation within that schedule too, because day 1 was in the tower (observing and transmitting reports on an ancient teletype that only read a piece of yellow paper tape punched full of coded holes by another ancient piece of black machinery), then the next day you worked in the base operations/command post building, posting those reports (from all over Europe) for the forecasters to use, plus plotting various kinds of weather maps/diagrams for the forecasters to mark up. We were the grunt that made the forecasters look good.
Every six weeks, we did one week TDY (temporary duty) at RAF Holbeach, which was a tiny base (a mess hall, one tiny office, and 10 bedrooms - down the dike was the weather tower and farther down was the ATC tower on "The Wash" (a piece of swamp land facing the North Sea) that the Brits and USAF used as a bombing range (mostly just machine guns and dummy bombs trying to hit old parachutes hung out in the marsh).
One of the jobs we had to do while at Holbeach was, you guessed it, fill 1-meter red balloons with helium, launch them, and track azimuth and elevation angles with an antique theodolite to calculate and plot wind speed and direction at various altitudes for those pilots doing their practice runs. The shed that had the balloons and helium was often a source of great amusement for bored young airmen, who always seemed to use more helium than was required by the balloon, and usually came out singing M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-UUUU-S-E and sounding for all the world like A-net-full-a-jello (say that fast and you will get the name of the young girl on the Mickey Mouse Club TV show, which just shows how ancient I really am, huh?).
Then I went on to forecasting school, then... well, more on that later if it becomes necessary or you request more trivia.
Many years later, I learned that one of the huge problems that professional meteorologists have is the "assumption factor"; the belief that the viewer knows what the heck the weather dude is talking about. About a zillion years ago, when I was a technical writer and computer instructor (CAD/CAM), I was taking night classes at Portland State University to become an industrial instructor (the certificate says I can teach in any business, professional seminars, or community colleges). Based on what I already knew about people's ability to understand (or not) the written word, I was trying to fold that into the classroom teaching aspect. On this forum, it is likely to be a combination of the two.
There might be a few of you who actually want to know what makes clouds form, but I suspect the reality is that the majority who read this thread really only want to look at the sky as it is right now and decide whether or not to take the laundry off the clothesline or get the cow inside because large hail is coming.
But first, I'd like to dispel a huge myth, one that you probably saw at the movies. on TV, or even read in some doomsday book.
On the forum that all this stuff was originally posted to, a member asked a question about a movie he watched that weekend, called, The Day After Tomorrow. He wants to know, due to this thread being about weather and Hurricane Irene just having done some damage to the east coast, whether or not this disaster movie could really happen. The coincidences? 1) Lannie and I just happen to be watching that same DVD that weekend too (I enjoy the drama, but am constantly muttering about the bad science), and 2) a couple science-minded friends back in Orygun asked me to review the book from which that movie was made, which I did back in 2006 (and which one of them forwarded to some national magazine, but I never heard whether or not I got published), so perhaps I can kill two birds here by just posting that book/movie review.
Bear in mind that all the movie and book errors have one cause: desire for profit rather than respect for science. It is Hollywood (and the book publishers' desires for maximum profit) that throw truth out the window in favor of making movies (or printing books) that ignore reality in favor of action and drama. I mean, really... Indiana Jones is about as far from a real archaeologist as you can get, but will anyone pay to watch a movie of some old guy sifting sand for 20 years to find a single shard of pottery? No, they want to see him find the biggest treasure possible and fight off a whole army of the world's worst bad guys all by himself and win - and don't forget, he also has to get the girl too. Sorry to say, it is the same for The Day After Tomorrow.
This movie refers to these super storms as giant hurricanes that start over land and... well, how many of you have seen this movie? and how many of you believe it? Let's cut to the chase and I will tear the book/movie apart, which should tell you why the entire thing is phony.
Book Report: The Coming Global Superstorm
by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber © 1999, 2001, 2004
The only thing original about the book are the alternating chapters (in italics) where they imagine what the actual effects of halting the oceanic conveyors would be. Those chapters, and, unfortunately, some of the pseudo-science from the other chapters, became the basis of the movie The Day After Tomorrow (© 2004). To quote an environmental activist named George Monbiot, “a great movie and lousy science.”
Here are my criticisms of the science:
* The initial idea that an increase in freshwater could cause a slowdown or stop the thermohaline circulation (oceanic conveyors) has some probability. However, simulations generally show a gradual slowdown over a timescale of centuries rather than days and, overall, the temperature continues to warm.
* The plot-feasibility condition that descending stratospheric air would be super cold, because it was apparently descending too fast to warm up, is incorrect. The potential temperature of stratospheric air is higher, not lower, than the temperature of the surface air. Rapidly descending, rarefied air would also have relatively little thermal mass, and would be compressed to sea level pressure as it descended, heating it greatly and having little effect on sea level temperature.
* Hurricanes can only form over very large bodies of seasonably warm water, such as a tropical ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, or in some rare cases the Mediterranean Sea. No weather condition has ever existed (that we know of), that would allow them to form over land.
* Hurricanes are generally assumed to be unable to produce frozen precipitation (it takes hot air and high humidity to make the storm) such as was shown in the movie. The water vapor in hurricanes rises too swiftly to allow for sufficient cooling, and any frozen precipitation that falls must go through a very warm region of air (thereby assuring that it will melt). However, extremely rare documented cases of snow associated with tropical cyclones do exist, notably involving Hurricane Bonnie in 1998 (too close to press time on this book to have been the basis for their claims).
* The size of the super storms is not realistic (computer models have tried and this size storm cannot sustain itself more than a few hours).
* The buildup of massive snow piles and glaciers, such as in an ice age, would again take thousands of years, not days or even weeks as the movie suggests.
* The closest thing to a “snow-driven hurricane,” in reality, is a polar low: very small, short-lived low-pressure systems found in the high latitudes. Most of these storms are not capable of leaving the polar regions and causing serious damage, although when they do reach land they are capable of bringing large amounts of snow in a short time span, but then they dissipate rapidly.
* There is a scene in which the rate of temperature drop would imply that it would shortly reach absolute zero (totally impossible within an atmosphere like ours). The exact rate stated was 10 degrees per second, presumably in Fahrenheit.
There were also numerous bad things in the movie that cannot be directly related to this book (e.g., The wave that overtakes Manhattan comes from the east out of Queens, but the Atlantic Ocean is located south of Manhattan. The closest body of open ocean from Manhattan heading east is 120 miles away at the end of Long Island.), so we won’t dwell on that stuff.
Now, as to the obvious errors in the rest of their text (book related stuff below and not directly weather related, but presented to show that the book that spawned the movie is chock full of errors - if the movie is your only concern, stop here):
Page xii, para.1: The use of phrases like “has never been observed” might be valid, but they use the phrase “never in human history” (which they use several times in this book), which is a totally unsupported guess. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been to the north pole to even look at it until the last 60-70 years, and even if the Chinese or Vikings had walked to the north pole and found water in ancient times, do you suppose that would have made it into any history book? This whole book is chock full of such misleading fabrications.
Page 19, para.4: The planet earth is considered to be 4.5 billion years old since it first formed from a cloud of space dust. By my reckoning, 4.5 is equal to “a few.” These authors suggest that we need to go back, all the way back to the first few billion years of Earth’s existence. Gee, I have sympathy for their idiocy, but we are still in the first few billion years of Earth’s existence.
Page 21, para.1: Total BS. There is no scientific evidence that having a moon this size slows down the overall planetary wind system. Look at Mars, whose two moons are only big boulders. While Mars does occasionally have very high winds, they are about the same magnitude as our hurricanes. If science truly believes no life (“not even a lichen,” they said) could evolve without a large moon, why are we spending billions of dollars seeking life on other planets? In paragraph 2, they claim that if Earth’s orbit were only 50,000 mile closer to the sun than it is, we would be outside the envelope of livability. Major BS! Between summer and winter, the Earth’s orbit varies by more than a million miles. Astrophysicists have declared that the zone of livability for our solar system (for life as we know it) is anywhere between the orbit of Venus to just beyond the orbit of Mars. I find this entire page to be wild claims and silly conjecture with no scientific evidence to back up their claims.
Page 22, para.2: “most galaxies appear to be… gamma ray bursters.” These guys overuse the word “most” throughout the entire book. By definition, “most” means anything greater than 50%. Current astrophysical observation does not support their claim.
Page 23, para.1: These guys have extremely poor math skills. Either that, or their ability to communicate is so lousy that they mess up every time they mention a number. If “as many as 75%” died, then for every 1,000 animals, at least 250 lived – not 10 as they say, which would be a 99% extinction rate. Another extinction, 200 million years before, is claimed to have taken 95%. Paragraph 4: What, exactly is this “Jupiter Effect”? They never explain it, so are we supposed to have read one of his other books before this? Now, I just happen to know that this is supposedly a gravitational effect caused by all the planets being lined up in a single row (which has happened within your lifetime and it did nothing at all disastrous), but the average reader would not be aware of this.
Page 24, para.2: Carl Sagan never said “billions and billions.” That phrase was coined by Johnny Carson spoofing Carl Sagan. Also, given that Carl Sagan was a real astronomer, don’t you suppose he might have understood a bit more about orbital mechanics than these two bozos?
Page 44, para.2 and page 45, para.3: I am really surprised, given the fame of these authors, how inconsistent they are about numbers. One place they suggest it was 150,000 years ago when humans had their first complex thoughts, yet another place uses 100,000 years and another suggests 800,000. Current anthropological consensus (yes, I do study almost everything) suggest abstract thought as having reached a point where it developed into the species-wide use of icons (e.g., cave art, inscriptions on tools, etc.) approximately 50,000 years ago, although there is some evidence this happened as long ago (in select individuals anyway) as 190,000 years. They should do a little reading on their subject matter before making ridiculous statements.
Page 54, para.1: “The first signs of human habitation in Micronesia appear about 1500 BC” The previous page (53) claims the pottery shards from that culture are 2,000 years old (i.e, 1 BC as of their first date). If you add 1500 BC plus 1,999 years (to date of their publication), that makes it 3,499 years ago, yet here they claim the shards are older than the civilization. Can’t these guys add at all?
Page 82, para.2: The use of the zodiac and precession of the equinoxes as a dating system should be reserved for those wackos who think astrology is real. One should note that zodiac constellations are visible on the plane of the ecliptic and are measured as a passage through an arc to true north. Most of them cannot be seen in northern latitudes, even at night. Did these ancients have a way of seeing them in daylight or did they go to the tropics to make these observations? Also, the precession is 25,920 years, not 24,000 as he says here (they do use the valid number on page 102, para.3 – they need a real editor before they go to press because they did a terrible job of this). If you so desire, I can prove to you (with diagrams, etc.) how no zodiac sign exists for more than a few thousand years, so this precession as a dating system is totally bogus.
Page 83, para.2: The storm explanation for these events does not explain at all how the sun and moon “fell from the sky.” To have this observed by someone on the ground would require a polar shift (lithospheric slippage) to cause any celestial objects to go down so quickly as to be perceived as “falling.” That magnitude of shift likely would have also knocked every living creature on their butts, if not killed them outright. Then again, if you read Velikovsky, there might be more to it than this (e.g., Venus as a comet before it became a planet), but that is outside the realm of these authors' claims.
Page 83, para.4: They claim the tropics used to extend farther north and south than they do today. Not possible, by definition; the only way the tropics could be larger is if the tilt of this planet were significantly larger. Today, the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are at 23.5 degrees north and south of the equator because the tilt of the planet is 23.5 degrees. To make the tropics at 45 degrees, the tilt would have to be 45 degrees. There is no evidence that this was ever the case for this planet. Now, if they simply meant that the entire planet was warmer than today (e.g., a greenhouse effect), then that would screw up his coming ice age theory because there would be no polar ice caps if the locations they specify were tropical. Again, some of the things they suggest would have been possible with lithospheric slip (the crust moved so as to put the poles on a different land mass than they are today).
Page 87, para.3: He talks about the U.S. Air Force during World War II … get your %$@# straight buttheads! The USAF did not exist during WWII; that was the US Army Air Corps. The USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 and by then WWII was over.
Page. 103, para.5: They claim the constellation Leo as the reason for the Sphinx. I seriously doubt this and I suggest it shows the authors’ short-sightedness. Leo is not an Egyptian concept for a zodiac symbol, so why put it there? All cultures on this planet have different names for the constellations and asterisms visible in the sky, few of which come even close to each other. The zodiac names used in current astrology are purely European. Also, current archaeological theory suggests, due to proportions of the Sphinx, it did not originally have a human head; this was carved out from whatever was originally there at a much later date.
Page 104, para.1: As I suggested above, astronomically, there is no significance to any of this zodiac stuff – star positions are never the same and what you see today looked nothing like that 10,000 years ago, A simple way to note this is that our north pole points at Polaris today, but in 10,000 years, it will point at Vega. These authors would claim that as a proof of precession (it is), but it is not proof of zodiacal dating because all the stars in our galaxy rotate around the galaxy at different rates (we are not fixed like spokes). Given that the stars seen as part of any given constellation are not on the same plane with each other, those stars continually change position relative to each other. That is, if you can see a bunny in the sky tonight, in 10,000 years, it will probably look like a turtle due to the shifting positions of those same stars.
Page 106, para.1: “…earliest beginnings of transmitted memory…” What? These authors have already admitted to communication via cave paintings, carvings, and cutting symbols in the ground. They are using grand-standing techniques throughout the book to convince us that something is very important when it is actually barely significant (if at all). In this same paragraph, they talk about the Epic of Gilgamesh. They need to actually read that rather than take some other author’s interpretation of it. I have read it. A global flood is not the reason why Gilgamesh was on a raft at all. He was searching for his friend and sailed south in what is today called the Persian Gulf.
Page 109, para.2: What logic are they using to connect “historical events” to the zodiac? There is no relationship at all, unless you are a dyed-in-the-wool astrology wacko! So man changes every few thousand years. That is called progress (or sociological evolution, depending on which discipline you are reading) and the position of the stars in relation to the Earth has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Page 110, para.1: Bronze age (Taurus to Aries) – Again, totally irrelevant! A group of stars is only a bull if someone says it is. Someone else might say it looks like the Energizer Bunny, but where are the bunny worshippers? Taurus is not a bull; it is simply a group of stars that can be imagined to be whatever you like.
Page 116, para.3: All these “records” don’t mean much when you consider that weather “records,” on a global scale, have only been kept for a couple hundred years, and only accurately for the past 80-90 (if you can even call what we do today as accurate. Anything prior to that was merely hearsay and legend, not fact.
Page 121, para.3: “…ice ages only occur when the Earth is farther from the sun during the northern winter.” What a load of clap trap! They really need to study some general science (at the grade school level). For all of written history, the Earth is closest to the sun during the northern winter. Is this, then, speculation that it has been otherwise? No scientist on this planet will agree with them.
Page 148, para.2: Are these idiots really trying to link rabies and mad cow disease to UV exposure? It has been proven that mad cow disease is a direct result of cows being fed other cow parts in their feed. While UV is dangerous, these guys are groping for something to make the situation worse.
Page 173, para.3: These bozos need to learn fractions and quit making math errors. Here they tell us that “2/3 of all species went extinct, which was not as bad as the Permian, but worse than the Cretaceous.” Back on page 170, they claim the Cretaceous extinction was responsible for the loss of 75% of all species. Is 66.666...% (2/3) really more than 75%? If they are talking about raw numbers rather than percentages (besides not stating that), then I’d like them to show me the census figures and the list of the auditors who gathered the individuals’ data (head count) from 65 million years ago.
Page 175, para.1: “…quick little apes that have become human beings of today.” What idiots! Nowhere in Darwinian evolutionary theory does it say that man is descended from apes! Hollywood had it wrong and the religious nut cases had it wrong. Some of these people should actually read Darwin. It says we have a common ancestor, but we did not come from apes. I think he is getting his info here from bad movies.
Page 176, para.1: He talks about where pollution comes from, claiming wrongly that today it all comes from chemical factories and the burning of fossil fuels. This is the great mistake of the global warming fanatics. We still have hundreds of active volcanoes (any one of which will pump out more CO2 in one day than all 6+ billion people on this planet do in a whole year) spewing massive amounts of ash into the atmosphere. Large forest fires also contribute and there are hundreds of those burning out of control on this planet at any given time (most started by natural causes, like lightning). Even living trees themselves spew methane in the air. Yes, man has contributed to the greenhouse gasses, but factories and fossil fuels are not the primary cause, which even the authors stated a couple pages back from this statement. They really need to get their story straight.
Page 193, para.2: All allusions to this “proto-civilization” in this book are veiled references to Atlantis (which both these UFO nuts believe in, as evidenced from their other writings).
Page 207, para.4: They cannot possibly think that any reader with any brains at all believes the sun bounced around the sky. It is far more likely that this event was lithospheric slippage (i.e., Earth's crustal movement gave any observer the impression the sun was moving erratically).
Page 236, para.1: They claim there was no internet in 1985. That statement is an outright lie, even if they don’t know it. Gee, what was it I was writing on in 1981? True, it was text only and it certainly was not the world wide web, but we definitely had computer contact with other companies and universities from Tektronix back in the early ‘80s. While Tek had an intranet (through connected Vaxes and the Cyber mainframe), that network was connected outside the company to other companies, which is called an internet.
The above comments are only for those things that jumped out and bit me while reading this book. I could produce a whole book just denouncing their book, so I am sure someone who wanted to go through it with a fine-toothed comb would come up with lots of other errors that I haven't mentioned here.
As you might guess, I give this book an F. By the way, I have read many of the books they claim as their source material (e.g., Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock), and most of them also get an F for logic and factual presentation (some only got a C or D). Most of them use the same wild speculation with unfounded claims as this book does.
Their entire fabricated scenario for this Super Storm is totally unfounded. It just can’t happen that way, so yes, the entire movie is BS based on even worse BS from the book.
Now, my question, friends, is: Do you want to learn about weather in a simple everyday language that does not contain all the above BS and lies?
This is a test of the emerging castbrodding system (er sommat like dat). OK, seriously, I was just over on the cow forum doing copy and paste of a bunch of the weather lessons and thought I'd throw out an "introduction" and see how you folks like it (or not).
AM I QUALIFIED TO TEACH THIS STUFF?
Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and I was enlisting in the good ole USAF, they made us take a test (some general aptitude testing battery) to figure out which career area to stuff you in. Given that I aced all four sections, they told me, "You can be anything you want to be." I said, "OK, I want to be a General." Not having a sense of humor, the recruiter put me in the "general" category, which means you could end up being an air policeman or a cook. During basic training, toward the end, we watched slides shows of the various occupations available in our chosen category and I saw one of a guy in an arctic parka holding a big red balloon and it was captioned, "Weatherman." I remembered how much fun I had had in high school investigating meteorology and climatology (even worse, paleo-climatology), so I chose that field.
They sent me off to Chanute School of Applied Aerospace Sciences to become a weather observer. In the USAF, unless you are an officer, you have to be an observer and attain the rank of at least staff sergeant before you can go back to school to become a forecaster. So I did 3 1/2 years in England watching clouds (the entire class before mine and after mine went to Vietnam - phew!). Then I rotated back to get more education.
But, back to the observer part. We had a weird work schedule: Midnight to 8 AM for two days (graveyard shift), 8AM to 4PM for two days (like civilian day shift), then 4PM to midnight for two days (swing shift), then four 24-hour periods off (quick, run out and discover England on your motorcycle!). There was rotation within that schedule too, because day 1 was in the tower (observing and transmitting reports on an ancient teletype that only read a piece of yellow paper tape punched full of coded holes by another ancient piece of black machinery), then the next day you worked in the base operations/command post building, posting those reports (from all over Europe) for the forecasters to use, plus plotting various kinds of weather maps/diagrams for the forecasters to mark up. We were the grunt that made the forecasters look good.
Every six weeks, we did one week TDY (temporary duty) at RAF Holbeach, which was a tiny base (a mess hall, one tiny office, and 10 bedrooms - down the dike was the weather tower and farther down was the ATC tower on "The Wash" (a piece of swamp land facing the North Sea) that the Brits and USAF used as a bombing range (mostly just machine guns and dummy bombs trying to hit old parachutes hung out in the marsh).
One of the jobs we had to do while at Holbeach was, you guessed it, fill 1-meter red balloons with helium, launch them, and track azimuth and elevation angles with an antique theodolite to calculate and plot wind speed and direction at various altitudes for those pilots doing their practice runs. The shed that had the balloons and helium was often a source of great amusement for bored young airmen, who always seemed to use more helium than was required by the balloon, and usually came out singing M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-UUUU-S-E and sounding for all the world like A-net-full-a-jello (say that fast and you will get the name of the young girl on the Mickey Mouse Club TV show, which just shows how ancient I really am, huh?).
Then I went on to forecasting school, then... well, more on that later if it becomes necessary or you request more trivia.
Many years later, I learned that one of the huge problems that professional meteorologists have is the "assumption factor"; the belief that the viewer knows what the heck the weather dude is talking about. About a zillion years ago, when I was a technical writer and computer instructor (CAD/CAM), I was taking night classes at Portland State University to become an industrial instructor (the certificate says I can teach in any business, professional seminars, or community colleges). Based on what I already knew about people's ability to understand (or not) the written word, I was trying to fold that into the classroom teaching aspect. On this forum, it is likely to be a combination of the two.
There might be a few of you who actually want to know what makes clouds form, but I suspect the reality is that the majority who read this thread really only want to look at the sky as it is right now and decide whether or not to take the laundry off the clothesline or get the cow inside because large hail is coming.
But first, I'd like to dispel a huge myth, one that you probably saw at the movies. on TV, or even read in some doomsday book.
On the forum that all this stuff was originally posted to, a member asked a question about a movie he watched that weekend, called, The Day After Tomorrow. He wants to know, due to this thread being about weather and Hurricane Irene just having done some damage to the east coast, whether or not this disaster movie could really happen. The coincidences? 1) Lannie and I just happen to be watching that same DVD that weekend too (I enjoy the drama, but am constantly muttering about the bad science), and 2) a couple science-minded friends back in Orygun asked me to review the book from which that movie was made, which I did back in 2006 (and which one of them forwarded to some national magazine, but I never heard whether or not I got published), so perhaps I can kill two birds here by just posting that book/movie review.
Bear in mind that all the movie and book errors have one cause: desire for profit rather than respect for science. It is Hollywood (and the book publishers' desires for maximum profit) that throw truth out the window in favor of making movies (or printing books) that ignore reality in favor of action and drama. I mean, really... Indiana Jones is about as far from a real archaeologist as you can get, but will anyone pay to watch a movie of some old guy sifting sand for 20 years to find a single shard of pottery? No, they want to see him find the biggest treasure possible and fight off a whole army of the world's worst bad guys all by himself and win - and don't forget, he also has to get the girl too. Sorry to say, it is the same for The Day After Tomorrow.
This movie refers to these super storms as giant hurricanes that start over land and... well, how many of you have seen this movie? and how many of you believe it? Let's cut to the chase and I will tear the book/movie apart, which should tell you why the entire thing is phony.
Book Report: The Coming Global Superstorm
by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber © 1999, 2001, 2004
The only thing original about the book are the alternating chapters (in italics) where they imagine what the actual effects of halting the oceanic conveyors would be. Those chapters, and, unfortunately, some of the pseudo-science from the other chapters, became the basis of the movie The Day After Tomorrow (© 2004). To quote an environmental activist named George Monbiot, “a great movie and lousy science.”
Here are my criticisms of the science:
* The initial idea that an increase in freshwater could cause a slowdown or stop the thermohaline circulation (oceanic conveyors) has some probability. However, simulations generally show a gradual slowdown over a timescale of centuries rather than days and, overall, the temperature continues to warm.
* The plot-feasibility condition that descending stratospheric air would be super cold, because it was apparently descending too fast to warm up, is incorrect. The potential temperature of stratospheric air is higher, not lower, than the temperature of the surface air. Rapidly descending, rarefied air would also have relatively little thermal mass, and would be compressed to sea level pressure as it descended, heating it greatly and having little effect on sea level temperature.
* Hurricanes can only form over very large bodies of seasonably warm water, such as a tropical ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, or in some rare cases the Mediterranean Sea. No weather condition has ever existed (that we know of), that would allow them to form over land.
* Hurricanes are generally assumed to be unable to produce frozen precipitation (it takes hot air and high humidity to make the storm) such as was shown in the movie. The water vapor in hurricanes rises too swiftly to allow for sufficient cooling, and any frozen precipitation that falls must go through a very warm region of air (thereby assuring that it will melt). However, extremely rare documented cases of snow associated with tropical cyclones do exist, notably involving Hurricane Bonnie in 1998 (too close to press time on this book to have been the basis for their claims).
* The size of the super storms is not realistic (computer models have tried and this size storm cannot sustain itself more than a few hours).
* The buildup of massive snow piles and glaciers, such as in an ice age, would again take thousands of years, not days or even weeks as the movie suggests.
* The closest thing to a “snow-driven hurricane,” in reality, is a polar low: very small, short-lived low-pressure systems found in the high latitudes. Most of these storms are not capable of leaving the polar regions and causing serious damage, although when they do reach land they are capable of bringing large amounts of snow in a short time span, but then they dissipate rapidly.
* There is a scene in which the rate of temperature drop would imply that it would shortly reach absolute zero (totally impossible within an atmosphere like ours). The exact rate stated was 10 degrees per second, presumably in Fahrenheit.
There were also numerous bad things in the movie that cannot be directly related to this book (e.g., The wave that overtakes Manhattan comes from the east out of Queens, but the Atlantic Ocean is located south of Manhattan. The closest body of open ocean from Manhattan heading east is 120 miles away at the end of Long Island.), so we won’t dwell on that stuff.
Now, as to the obvious errors in the rest of their text (book related stuff below and not directly weather related, but presented to show that the book that spawned the movie is chock full of errors - if the movie is your only concern, stop here):
Page xii, para.1: The use of phrases like “has never been observed” might be valid, but they use the phrase “never in human history” (which they use several times in this book), which is a totally unsupported guess. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been to the north pole to even look at it until the last 60-70 years, and even if the Chinese or Vikings had walked to the north pole and found water in ancient times, do you suppose that would have made it into any history book? This whole book is chock full of such misleading fabrications.
Page 19, para.4: The planet earth is considered to be 4.5 billion years old since it first formed from a cloud of space dust. By my reckoning, 4.5 is equal to “a few.” These authors suggest that we need to go back, all the way back to the first few billion years of Earth’s existence. Gee, I have sympathy for their idiocy, but we are still in the first few billion years of Earth’s existence.
Page 21, para.1: Total BS. There is no scientific evidence that having a moon this size slows down the overall planetary wind system. Look at Mars, whose two moons are only big boulders. While Mars does occasionally have very high winds, they are about the same magnitude as our hurricanes. If science truly believes no life (“not even a lichen,” they said) could evolve without a large moon, why are we spending billions of dollars seeking life on other planets? In paragraph 2, they claim that if Earth’s orbit were only 50,000 mile closer to the sun than it is, we would be outside the envelope of livability. Major BS! Between summer and winter, the Earth’s orbit varies by more than a million miles. Astrophysicists have declared that the zone of livability for our solar system (for life as we know it) is anywhere between the orbit of Venus to just beyond the orbit of Mars. I find this entire page to be wild claims and silly conjecture with no scientific evidence to back up their claims.
Page 22, para.2: “most galaxies appear to be… gamma ray bursters.” These guys overuse the word “most” throughout the entire book. By definition, “most” means anything greater than 50%. Current astrophysical observation does not support their claim.
Page 23, para.1: These guys have extremely poor math skills. Either that, or their ability to communicate is so lousy that they mess up every time they mention a number. If “as many as 75%” died, then for every 1,000 animals, at least 250 lived – not 10 as they say, which would be a 99% extinction rate. Another extinction, 200 million years before, is claimed to have taken 95%. Paragraph 4: What, exactly is this “Jupiter Effect”? They never explain it, so are we supposed to have read one of his other books before this? Now, I just happen to know that this is supposedly a gravitational effect caused by all the planets being lined up in a single row (which has happened within your lifetime and it did nothing at all disastrous), but the average reader would not be aware of this.
Page 24, para.2: Carl Sagan never said “billions and billions.” That phrase was coined by Johnny Carson spoofing Carl Sagan. Also, given that Carl Sagan was a real astronomer, don’t you suppose he might have understood a bit more about orbital mechanics than these two bozos?
Page 44, para.2 and page 45, para.3: I am really surprised, given the fame of these authors, how inconsistent they are about numbers. One place they suggest it was 150,000 years ago when humans had their first complex thoughts, yet another place uses 100,000 years and another suggests 800,000. Current anthropological consensus (yes, I do study almost everything) suggest abstract thought as having reached a point where it developed into the species-wide use of icons (e.g., cave art, inscriptions on tools, etc.) approximately 50,000 years ago, although there is some evidence this happened as long ago (in select individuals anyway) as 190,000 years. They should do a little reading on their subject matter before making ridiculous statements.
Page 54, para.1: “The first signs of human habitation in Micronesia appear about 1500 BC” The previous page (53) claims the pottery shards from that culture are 2,000 years old (i.e, 1 BC as of their first date). If you add 1500 BC plus 1,999 years (to date of their publication), that makes it 3,499 years ago, yet here they claim the shards are older than the civilization. Can’t these guys add at all?
Page 82, para.2: The use of the zodiac and precession of the equinoxes as a dating system should be reserved for those wackos who think astrology is real. One should note that zodiac constellations are visible on the plane of the ecliptic and are measured as a passage through an arc to true north. Most of them cannot be seen in northern latitudes, even at night. Did these ancients have a way of seeing them in daylight or did they go to the tropics to make these observations? Also, the precession is 25,920 years, not 24,000 as he says here (they do use the valid number on page 102, para.3 – they need a real editor before they go to press because they did a terrible job of this). If you so desire, I can prove to you (with diagrams, etc.) how no zodiac sign exists for more than a few thousand years, so this precession as a dating system is totally bogus.
Page 83, para.2: The storm explanation for these events does not explain at all how the sun and moon “fell from the sky.” To have this observed by someone on the ground would require a polar shift (lithospheric slippage) to cause any celestial objects to go down so quickly as to be perceived as “falling.” That magnitude of shift likely would have also knocked every living creature on their butts, if not killed them outright. Then again, if you read Velikovsky, there might be more to it than this (e.g., Venus as a comet before it became a planet), but that is outside the realm of these authors' claims.
Page 83, para.4: They claim the tropics used to extend farther north and south than they do today. Not possible, by definition; the only way the tropics could be larger is if the tilt of this planet were significantly larger. Today, the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are at 23.5 degrees north and south of the equator because the tilt of the planet is 23.5 degrees. To make the tropics at 45 degrees, the tilt would have to be 45 degrees. There is no evidence that this was ever the case for this planet. Now, if they simply meant that the entire planet was warmer than today (e.g., a greenhouse effect), then that would screw up his coming ice age theory because there would be no polar ice caps if the locations they specify were tropical. Again, some of the things they suggest would have been possible with lithospheric slip (the crust moved so as to put the poles on a different land mass than they are today).
Page 87, para.3: He talks about the U.S. Air Force during World War II … get your %$@# straight buttheads! The USAF did not exist during WWII; that was the US Army Air Corps. The USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 and by then WWII was over.
Page. 103, para.5: They claim the constellation Leo as the reason for the Sphinx. I seriously doubt this and I suggest it shows the authors’ short-sightedness. Leo is not an Egyptian concept for a zodiac symbol, so why put it there? All cultures on this planet have different names for the constellations and asterisms visible in the sky, few of which come even close to each other. The zodiac names used in current astrology are purely European. Also, current archaeological theory suggests, due to proportions of the Sphinx, it did not originally have a human head; this was carved out from whatever was originally there at a much later date.
Page 104, para.1: As I suggested above, astronomically, there is no significance to any of this zodiac stuff – star positions are never the same and what you see today looked nothing like that 10,000 years ago, A simple way to note this is that our north pole points at Polaris today, but in 10,000 years, it will point at Vega. These authors would claim that as a proof of precession (it is), but it is not proof of zodiacal dating because all the stars in our galaxy rotate around the galaxy at different rates (we are not fixed like spokes). Given that the stars seen as part of any given constellation are not on the same plane with each other, those stars continually change position relative to each other. That is, if you can see a bunny in the sky tonight, in 10,000 years, it will probably look like a turtle due to the shifting positions of those same stars.
Page 106, para.1: “…earliest beginnings of transmitted memory…” What? These authors have already admitted to communication via cave paintings, carvings, and cutting symbols in the ground. They are using grand-standing techniques throughout the book to convince us that something is very important when it is actually barely significant (if at all). In this same paragraph, they talk about the Epic of Gilgamesh. They need to actually read that rather than take some other author’s interpretation of it. I have read it. A global flood is not the reason why Gilgamesh was on a raft at all. He was searching for his friend and sailed south in what is today called the Persian Gulf.
Page 109, para.2: What logic are they using to connect “historical events” to the zodiac? There is no relationship at all, unless you are a dyed-in-the-wool astrology wacko! So man changes every few thousand years. That is called progress (or sociological evolution, depending on which discipline you are reading) and the position of the stars in relation to the Earth has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Page 110, para.1: Bronze age (Taurus to Aries) – Again, totally irrelevant! A group of stars is only a bull if someone says it is. Someone else might say it looks like the Energizer Bunny, but where are the bunny worshippers? Taurus is not a bull; it is simply a group of stars that can be imagined to be whatever you like.
Page 116, para.3: All these “records” don’t mean much when you consider that weather “records,” on a global scale, have only been kept for a couple hundred years, and only accurately for the past 80-90 (if you can even call what we do today as accurate. Anything prior to that was merely hearsay and legend, not fact.
Page 121, para.3: “…ice ages only occur when the Earth is farther from the sun during the northern winter.” What a load of clap trap! They really need to study some general science (at the grade school level). For all of written history, the Earth is closest to the sun during the northern winter. Is this, then, speculation that it has been otherwise? No scientist on this planet will agree with them.
Page 148, para.2: Are these idiots really trying to link rabies and mad cow disease to UV exposure? It has been proven that mad cow disease is a direct result of cows being fed other cow parts in their feed. While UV is dangerous, these guys are groping for something to make the situation worse.
Page 173, para.3: These bozos need to learn fractions and quit making math errors. Here they tell us that “2/3 of all species went extinct, which was not as bad as the Permian, but worse than the Cretaceous.” Back on page 170, they claim the Cretaceous extinction was responsible for the loss of 75% of all species. Is 66.666...% (2/3) really more than 75%? If they are talking about raw numbers rather than percentages (besides not stating that), then I’d like them to show me the census figures and the list of the auditors who gathered the individuals’ data (head count) from 65 million years ago.
Page 175, para.1: “…quick little apes that have become human beings of today.” What idiots! Nowhere in Darwinian evolutionary theory does it say that man is descended from apes! Hollywood had it wrong and the religious nut cases had it wrong. Some of these people should actually read Darwin. It says we have a common ancestor, but we did not come from apes. I think he is getting his info here from bad movies.
Page 176, para.1: He talks about where pollution comes from, claiming wrongly that today it all comes from chemical factories and the burning of fossil fuels. This is the great mistake of the global warming fanatics. We still have hundreds of active volcanoes (any one of which will pump out more CO2 in one day than all 6+ billion people on this planet do in a whole year) spewing massive amounts of ash into the atmosphere. Large forest fires also contribute and there are hundreds of those burning out of control on this planet at any given time (most started by natural causes, like lightning). Even living trees themselves spew methane in the air. Yes, man has contributed to the greenhouse gasses, but factories and fossil fuels are not the primary cause, which even the authors stated a couple pages back from this statement. They really need to get their story straight.
Page 193, para.2: All allusions to this “proto-civilization” in this book are veiled references to Atlantis (which both these UFO nuts believe in, as evidenced from their other writings).
Page 207, para.4: They cannot possibly think that any reader with any brains at all believes the sun bounced around the sky. It is far more likely that this event was lithospheric slippage (i.e., Earth's crustal movement gave any observer the impression the sun was moving erratically).
Page 236, para.1: They claim there was no internet in 1985. That statement is an outright lie, even if they don’t know it. Gee, what was it I was writing on in 1981? True, it was text only and it certainly was not the world wide web, but we definitely had computer contact with other companies and universities from Tektronix back in the early ‘80s. While Tek had an intranet (through connected Vaxes and the Cyber mainframe), that network was connected outside the company to other companies, which is called an internet.
The above comments are only for those things that jumped out and bit me while reading this book. I could produce a whole book just denouncing their book, so I am sure someone who wanted to go through it with a fine-toothed comb would come up with lots of other errors that I haven't mentioned here.
As you might guess, I give this book an F. By the way, I have read many of the books they claim as their source material (e.g., Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock), and most of them also get an F for logic and factual presentation (some only got a C or D). Most of them use the same wild speculation with unfounded claims as this book does.
Their entire fabricated scenario for this Super Storm is totally unfounded. It just can’t happen that way, so yes, the entire movie is BS based on even worse BS from the book.
Now, my question, friends, is: Do you want to learn about weather in a simple everyday language that does not contain all the above BS and lies?
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#3
1/8/16
This is one of the photographers I've been following. He offers classes in storm chasing. You can go right into Monsoon II which is this yr's video. It shows a few more mountains, but even he's cautious about going into the canyons and mtn's during monsoons.
This is his channel and he's got other websites. Mike Olbinski
My internet's about to go out too.
1/8/16
This is one of the photographers I've been following. He offers classes in storm chasing. You can go right into Monsoon II which is this yr's video. It shows a few more mountains, but even he's cautious about going into the canyons and mtn's during monsoons.
This is his channel and he's got other websites. Mike Olbinski
My internet's about to go out too.
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Ditto! I also bought 2 tickets with numbers I picked and 1 quick pick for myself.
I'm going to meet some friends after work.
Have a Fabulous evening, everyone!
1/8 #2
It's been a busy day, but now I can kick back......
It's been a busy day, but now I can kick back......
1/8 #4
Just searched through a bunch of photos for my daughter's class assignment: Every week, one student in the class has to do a presentation of themselves, including writing a short description of who they are, interests, etc. This presentation is to also include a poster showing some of these things--so we went digging for photos she could use. There are more pictures of our cats than there are of mom and dad.
Just searched through a bunch of photos for my daughter's class assignment: Every week, one student in the class has to do a presentation of themselves, including writing a short description of who they are, interests, etc. This presentation is to also include a poster showing some of these things--so we went digging for photos she could use. There are more pictures of our cats than there are of mom and dad.
1/8 - 2: Finally back family and let the weekend begin!
@Fuzzy Thunderbear You absolutely have my support, I have to admit I might have to go back and read that again.
@rangerrobin
I got a few more as well, thanks again @liblue1
@Fuzzy Thunderbear You absolutely have my support, I have to admit I might have to go back and read that again.
@rangerrobin
I got a few more as well, thanks again @liblue1
1/8 - 3:
Wow, just heard that with a day to go in sales the jackpot is $700,000,000.@Fuzzy Thunderbear Thunderhead
Looking forward to your paper
My! .. we have such talented people here
....There's prob not much we can't do when we put our heads and our hands together
Now that's more like what I always imagined Real Community to be like
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