Domain: weather.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to weather.com.
Comments · 217
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Re:This really begs the question...
Fact: It's going to be 69 degrees in New York City before the second week in March. That's absurdly early for that kind of weather. And if I had the "scientific" mind of some of these critics, I'd look in the Almanac and see that the weather has spiked like this before in March. What I'd leave out is the FREQUENCY at which this is occurring. It's not isolated incidents or simple deviation from the average.
This is a mind-bogglingly ridiculous statement. A single forcast of a few warm days this week is evidence of global warming, and weather records showing that this has happened before are inadmissable? For the record, the warmest it's supposed to be this week is 64 degrees, which is 15 degrees above average. Saturday is expected to be 38, which is 12 degrees below the average. Last week it was much colder than that. Anecdotes of this sort are totally useless. Future weather forcasts are not fact. It's not before the second week of March, it's the end of the second week of March.... -
Re:The more the merrier?
I noticed that too. and since i'm not moderating, i will add to that.
i started using weather channel since i can't ride my new bike when it's raining.
Well, for the week i bothered looking at the forecast, they said that EVERY single day it was going to rain. I looked the 8h forecast. it was like, rain, rain, rain, mild rain, rain, rain. and then, we had sun all day, with a imperceptible rain for 10min. every day.
now, i just use their data and screw their interpretation.
I first look at here:
http://image.br.weather.com/web/maps/pt_BR/satelli te/regions/sbrazilsat_720x486.jpg
and then take a look outside. -
Re:The ReportFor fear that you were miss-informed rather than just stupid: the incident you are referring to was one weather person's blog referring to other weather people
Partially true:"If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns," Cullen wrote in her December 21 weblog on the Weather Channel Website. [Note: It is also worth taking a look at the comments section at the bottom of Cullen's blog, very entertaining.] See: http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html This latest call to silence skeptics of manmade global warming has been the subject of discussion at the annual American Meteorological Society's Annual conference in San Antonio Texas this week. See: http://www.ametsoc.org/meet/annual
But not limited to a single blog and not just decertification. Could this be considered a death threat?:Cullen's call for decertification of TV weathermen who do not agree with her global warming assessment follows a year (2006) in which the media, Hollywood and environmentalists tried their hardest to demonize scientific skeptics of manmade global warming. Scott Pelley, CBS News 60 Minutes correspondent, compared skeptics of global warming to "Holocaust deniers" and former Vice President turned foreign lobbyist Al Gore has repeatedly referred to skeptics as "global warming deniers." See: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction
And not just decertification:= PressRoom.Facts&ContentRecord_id=A4017645-DE27-43D 7-8C37-8FF923FD73F8 & http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction= PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=E58DFF04- 5A65-42A4-9F82-87381DE894CDCullen Featured Advocate of Nuremberg-Style Trials for Climate Skeptics
I realize Republicans have a real problem with the difference between weather and climate.
In addition, Cullen's December 17, 2006 episode of "The Climate Code" TV show, featured a columnist who openly called for Nuremberg-style Trials for climate skeptics. Cullen featured Grist Magazine's Dave Roberts as an eco-expert opining on energy issues, with no mention of his public call to institute what amounts to the death penalty for scientists who express skepticism about global warming. See: http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568
In the "court of public opinion", there is no difference.
While it may be fun to call me ignorant or stupid, you should really open your eyes to both sides to prevent yourself from being guilty of both. It's wrong for Exxon/Mobil to pay for scientific opinions, but it's perfectly OK for Universities to fire those that don't hold up the group think and for Virgin Air's Richard Branson to give a $3 billion donation to the global warming cause. The Sierra Club Foundation 2004 budget was $91 million and the Natural Resources Defense Council had a $57 million budget for the same year. Compare that to the often media derided Competitive Enterprise Institute's small $3.6 million annual budget.
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It goes both ways
http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html?cm_v
e n=one_deg_blog&cm_ite=one_deg_commentary&from=one_
Quote: If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval.
Sounds like muzzling one point of view to me. -
Re:Thoughtcrime
"You suggest that expressing skepticism is incompetence."
No, and that burning smell is your strawman going up in flames.
I suggest: Willfully expressing profound ignorance of a realted field of expertise and repeatedly passing it off to the public as an authorative scientific statement after being corrected by one's peers IS by definition incompetence, but you can assume mallice if you like.
And as I said from the very start this is not about censorship it's about misinformation. Ironically it now appears that TFA is actually a politicaly inspired character assasination. So far from defending science against "censorship" it would appear that you are unwittingly aiding a certain politician's personal crusade to "dismantle the scientific method".
I could care less if the weatherman says "everyone knows the moon is made of cheese", since it's obvious he is joking. Nor do I object if he presents his personal opinions as personal and as opinions. And if you dig a bit deeper you will find that the scientist is not suggesting skeptsism be censored from science, she is suggesting AMS members be held to proffessional standards of behaviour and ethics.
Disclaimer: "Why is it so?" is a question that has stuck with me since watching the originals in the 60's. Here is my definition of skepticisim that also has an excellent rundown on the scientific method. Here are some fresh fruits from the dedicated and large scale application of those principles. I have held a BSC since 1990, I do not belong to any proffesional or political organisations, nor do I intentionally speak for anyone else. -
Re:Why is it ok to...The point of the article was about removing the certification of meteorologists who continue to hold that global warming is not man made (or at least predominately man made). How would that not be considered silencing the minority? Well, because (1) nobody was advocating removing the certification of meteorologists, what Cullen actually said was that broadcast meteorologists shouldn't be certified if they're not educated about the science of climate change, and (2) even if TV meteorologists weren't allowed to talk about global warming, that has nothing to do with what scientists can or can't say about global warming in the scientific literature, or otherwise stifling the debate among scientists.
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Re:Thoughtcrime
A weather presenter has every right to an opposing view but whilst a member of that organisation s/he should be clear their view is personal and unpublished.
Thanks you, very well put. This AMS has published a statement in support of anthropogenic influence climate change, and many meteorologist speak in direct contradiction to that statement. In that vein, if you read the post on Dr. Cullen's blog, she's got a different message. She's saying that meteorologists are not bothering to understand what scientific organizations, including their own are saying about climate change, and instead are speculating based on what they hear elsewhere (and hence end up repeating assertions that are not scientifically sound). That's an issue of basic credibility - every scientist making claims about the state of scientific understanding of an issue needs to be well grounded in the literature and consensus of the community. Meteorologists are not doing this, yet they are assuming the mantle of climate scientists. That's deeply irresponsible, and if it occurred in another field would indeed be subject to sanction, much like you analogy of a surgeon not washing his or her hands. Really, read her post - she's put it much better than me, and it's not aimed as censorship at all.
As for how the loaded word censorship got introduced here, note that this press release is really from James Inhofe's office (Morano is Inhofe's communications director).
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marc_Mo rano
Inhofe has consistently misrepresented the evidence for climate change and included testimony from non-experts. So whatever the merits of whether and how meteorologists should be permitted to publicly disagree with the science endorsed by their organizations, this press release (and its histrionics about censorship) does not originate from the climate science community - it originates from a Senator with a track record of scientific disinformation. Know thy sources and their modus operandi. -
Re:Thoughtcrime
A weather presenter has every right to an opposing view but whilst a member of that organisation s/he should be clear their view is personal and unpublished.
Thanks you, very well put. This AMS has published a statement in support of anthropogenic influence climate change, and many meteorologist speak in direct contradiction to that statement. In that vein, if you read the post on Dr. Cullen's blog, she's got a different message. She's saying that meteorologists are not bothering to understand what scientific organizations, including their own are saying about climate change, and instead are speculating based on what they hear elsewhere (and hence end up repeating assertions that are not scientifically sound). That's an issue of basic credibility - every scientist making claims about the state of scientific understanding of an issue needs to be well grounded in the literature and consensus of the community. Meteorologists are not doing this, yet they are assuming the mantle of climate scientists. That's deeply irresponsible, and if it occurred in another field would indeed be subject to sanction, much like you analogy of a surgeon not washing his or her hands. Really, read her post - she's put it much better than me, and it's not aimed as censorship at all.
As for how the loaded word censorship got introduced here, note that this press release is really from James Inhofe's office (Morano is Inhofe's communications director).
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marc_Mo rano
Inhofe has consistently misrepresented the evidence for climate change and included testimony from non-experts. So whatever the merits of whether and how meteorologists should be permitted to publicly disagree with the science endorsed by their organizations, this press release (and its histrionics about censorship) does not originate from the climate science community - it originates from a Senator with a track record of scientific disinformation. Know thy sources and their modus operandi. -
TFA is bullshit -Expert asks to decertify ignorant
If you read the "Expert's" blog in question http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html , she suggests that a meteorologist who is quoted as saying "I try to read up on the subject to have a better understanding, but [its] complex..." should perhaps loose his certification. Not because he's skeptical of global warning, but because he's not taking the time to study up on it.
The "Expert" even goes on to write "I agree with every meteorologist who says the topic of global warming has gotten too political". Doesn't sound like someone wanting to silence skeptics. Sounds like someone who wants to stress informed open scientific debate. -
Grain of Salt
All isn't always as it seems. And if something seems too preposterous to be true, then it probably is. Before believing chicken little that the sky is falling, we should first look up and see for ourselves. So, to my mind, the weakest link in this chain of "the sky is falling, we are being censored" is the posting.
I would suggest that before any of us pile on to the discussion with knee-jerk agreement or disagreement, that we first do a little bit of cross-validation to see if the poster (and/or respondents) have given us enough information to respond intelligently. Most of us are saying perfectly reasonable things under one scenario or other. But here, there is only one scenario, the one that elicited the post. So let's restrict our comments only to what actually has happened and forget the rest. Let's break it down:
Here are the main claims:
- Headline: Expert wants to decertify global warming skeptics
- "Skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming" was specifically targeted for censorship.
- A scientist in the senate is taking action to silence skeptics
Now let's dissect each claim:
- Let's actually look at the post and read a bit:
The Weather Channel's most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.
That sounds dire indeed, and if true IS inflamatory! So, what certification would they lose? If we click through to one more line to the original comments by Dr. Cullen that elicited the accusation of censorship, we will find a link to the AMS certifcation page.
After reading from these two links, we learn from by Dr. Cullen on her blog that this is her opinion about certain meteorologists:
If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval.
Furthermore by looking reading the AMS link we learn that their certification is only a positive affirmation of their qualifications. There is no indication at all that lacking a "Seal of Approval" will legally interfere with the abilities of anyone (you or me, for example) from broadcasting the weather on any station who will have them (or us!). So, right out of the gate, the headline is disingenuous.
- Does this amount to censorship?
I see no evidence that lacking a seal of approval will effectively silence anyone. But that's beside the point. This was merely an opinion by Dr. Cullen as to what standards the AMA should have. Notably, Dr. Cullen is not the AMA. Again, this implication (noted prominently with the censored icon) is dubious at the very least. Who is being censored and how will they be censored? Reading the source links provides no evidence whatsoever to answer either question. - But this is serious! Isn't the senate taking action to censor debate?
This implication is more than merely disingenuous. It is at best hastily posted and poorly considered and at worst an outright lie. But by now, we already know that. Since we read the original post, we know that this is merely the comments made on a blog on a senate.gov server
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Grain of Salt
All isn't always as it seems. And if something seems too preposterous to be true, then it probably is. Before believing chicken little that the sky is falling, we should first look up and see for ourselves. So, to my mind, the weakest link in this chain of "the sky is falling, we are being censored" is the posting.
I would suggest that before any of us pile on to the discussion with knee-jerk agreement or disagreement, that we first do a little bit of cross-validation to see if the poster (and/or respondents) have given us enough information to respond intelligently. Most of us are saying perfectly reasonable things under one scenario or other. But here, there is only one scenario, the one that elicited the post. So let's restrict our comments only to what actually has happened and forget the rest. Let's break it down:
Here are the main claims:
- Headline: Expert wants to decertify global warming skeptics
- "Skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming" was specifically targeted for censorship.
- A scientist in the senate is taking action to silence skeptics
Now let's dissect each claim:
- Let's actually look at the post and read a bit:
The Weather Channel's most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.
That sounds dire indeed, and if true IS inflamatory! So, what certification would they lose? If we click through to one more line to the original comments by Dr. Cullen that elicited the accusation of censorship, we will find a link to the AMS certifcation page.
After reading from these two links, we learn from by Dr. Cullen on her blog that this is her opinion about certain meteorologists:
If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval.
Furthermore by looking reading the AMS link we learn that their certification is only a positive affirmation of their qualifications. There is no indication at all that lacking a "Seal of Approval" will legally interfere with the abilities of anyone (you or me, for example) from broadcasting the weather on any station who will have them (or us!). So, right out of the gate, the headline is disingenuous.
- Does this amount to censorship?
I see no evidence that lacking a seal of approval will effectively silence anyone. But that's beside the point. This was merely an opinion by Dr. Cullen as to what standards the AMA should have. Notably, Dr. Cullen is not the AMA. Again, this implication (noted prominently with the censored icon) is dubious at the very least. Who is being censored and how will they be censored? Reading the source links provides no evidence whatsoever to answer either question. - But this is serious! Isn't the senate taking action to censor debate?
This implication is more than merely disingenuous. It is at best hastily posted and poorly considered and at worst an outright lie. But by now, we already know that. Since we read the original post, we know that this is merely the comments made on a blog on a senate.gov server
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Re:Oh, Heidi...I love you babe. But seriously, have a sandwich or something; body fat above 2% is a good thing, you know? Was such an ad hominem absolutely relevant to your point? I'd suggest you re-evaluate what constitutes a perfectly healthy individual and stop trying to play the snarky nutritionist. Heidi Cullen is in great shape and neither needs to eat more nor less.
Exibit A: Body shot
Exibit B: Head and shoulders
Exibit C: Portrait
While a troll might smugly quip about the probability that you need to lay off the sandwiches, I am more interested in enlightening you that just because she's no tubby blob who never gets outdoors does not mean she's anywhere close to a Coulteresque skeletal emaciation.
Heidi Cullen is quite healthy and normal, by any studied assessment, with a trim figure most women her age would kill for. And any of this has absolutely zero to do with her meteorology skills or the main topic of the insipid political attack levied against her by a known bullshit artist. -
Re:A troll basically .. or a political smear campa
Q: Did those experts cited really propose to end scientific discussion by silencing those who oppose the idea of a man-made impact on global warning?
A: No! (see the original blog by Heidi Cullen at http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html )
Are you sure about that?
From the TFA:
Meteorologists are among the few people trained in the sciences who are permitted regular access to our living rooms. And in that sense, they owe it to their audience to distinguish between solid, peer-reviewed science and junk political controversy. If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns. It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It's not a political statement...it's just an incorrect statement.
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Re:WeatherchannelFor that matter, what is this "certification" that is being talked about?
I thought "real" scientists just get Ph.D's, do research, and gain credibility as their body of work accumulates. Scientists don't get "certified" as real or not based on simple, dogmatic, guidelines.
No, certifications are given out by certain special interest groups who desire to impose limits to its membership. If this certain group is some kind of professional guild society for, say, TV meteorologists, then that sucks for TV meteorologists who don't agree with the guild (if the guild has complete control of the industry).
But real scientists don't work as one huge homogeneous guild. Thus, there is no threat of "suppressing scientific dissent" by revoking "certifications", because "certifications" don't mean anything to science. (In theory) Well, Dr. Heidi Cullen "was a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO. She has done research in the U.S. Southwest, the Middle East (Syria and Turkey), publishing on domestic and international climate topics. She is a member of the World Climate Research Program's Climate Variability (CLIVAR) Scientific Steering Group, an international project aimed at identifying, understanding, and predicting types of variability within the Earth's complex climate system.She is talking about local TV meteorologists who have an American Meteorological Society (AMS) "Seal of Approval" ("a way to recognize on-air meteorologists for their sound delivery of weather information to the general public"). She suggests that those who have it "have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming".
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Re:WeatherchannelFor that matter, what is this "certification" that is being talked about?
I thought "real" scientists just get Ph.D's, do research, and gain credibility as their body of work accumulates. Scientists don't get "certified" as real or not based on simple, dogmatic, guidelines.
No, certifications are given out by certain special interest groups who desire to impose limits to its membership. If this certain group is some kind of professional guild society for, say, TV meteorologists, then that sucks for TV meteorologists who don't agree with the guild (if the guild has complete control of the industry).
But real scientists don't work as one huge homogeneous guild. Thus, there is no threat of "suppressing scientific dissent" by revoking "certifications", because "certifications" don't mean anything to science. (In theory) Well, Dr. Heidi Cullen "was a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO. She has done research in the U.S. Southwest, the Middle East (Syria and Turkey), publishing on domestic and international climate topics. She is a member of the World Climate Research Program's Climate Variability (CLIVAR) Scientific Steering Group, an international project aimed at identifying, understanding, and predicting types of variability within the Earth's complex climate system.She is talking about local TV meteorologists who have an American Meteorological Society (AMS) "Seal of Approval" ("a way to recognize on-air meteorologists for their sound delivery of weather information to the general public"). She suggests that those who have it "have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming".
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Re:Global warminOT: I cannot believe a scientist would advocate censorship of opposing ideas, rather than refute them with logic. Unsound means without even a mitigating end. Your AMS card pulled if you express *doubt* about global warming or its cause? Come on fellows, we're smarter than this, aren't we? = ( No reason to do so, just because some PR pro pretending to be a concerned citizen claims that's the case. Just look what the scientist actually wrote.
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A troll basically .. or a political smear campaignOf course not
... and I don't need to be told. In addition, real scientists aren't in the habit of advocating gag orders on opponents. Ever. So what's up?It seems that somebody (opposed to the idea of a man-made impacy on climate) seems to have worked out how to evoke a popular (knee-jerk) response from Slashdot.
The secret is that
... most slashdotters simply don't read the article referred to, let alone the articles referred to by that article. They take the position that they can rely on whoever wrote the slashdot newsflash to do that for them. Instead they are happy to comment on the post and the previous comments (much more fun, and less work). So ... if you can insert any statement to excite slashdotters in your newsflash, you can pretty much lead them to endorse (or condemn) whatever orginal article you like.So
... what is actually going on?Q: Did those experts cited really propose to end scientific discussion by silencing those who oppose the idea of a man-made impact on global warning?
A: No! (see the original blog by Heidi Cullen at http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html )
Q: So if that wasn't the case, then where did the idea come from?
A: The idea came from a certain Marc Morano (marc_morano@epw.senate.gov) who's blog was cited by slashdot. See the blog referenced by the slashdot newsflash at http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction
= PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=32abc0b0-802a-23a d-440a-88824bb8e528)Q: So if there was no question of the experts proposing to stifle discussion by de-certifying opponents then where does all the hoopla come from?
A
:I think we are witnessing a rant by Marc Morano which received disproportionate attention by it's referral on slashdot. In case this referral was deliberate, we are witnessing a political mear campaign. Live and in colour -
Editors, RTFAWTF does "Apparently in the Senate, at least one scientist wants to put a permanent stop.." mean? The scientist isn't in the Senate. It looks like the blog linked is by a Senator. How about linking to the actual person who made the suggestion, and not this inflammatory shit?
No one suggested a "permanent stop to any arguments over Global Warming" as the summary says.
The original article is JUNK CONTROVERSY NOT JUNK SCIENCE, posted a month ago actually.
If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming. (One good resource if you don't have a lot of time is the Pew Center's Climate Change 101.) Meteorologists are among the few people trained in the sciences who are permitted regular access to our living rooms. And in that sense, they owe it to their audience to distinguish between solid, peer-reviewed science and junk political controversy. If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns. It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It's not a political statement...it's just an incorrect statement.
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I'm from Seattle and I'd say we have 2 seasons ...
We have actual seasons, as opposed to many cities that seem to only have two, with a range of decently hot weather, to not-too-cool winters.
Umm, really? I grew up in the Northern Virginia area (suburbs of DC), and we truly had four seasons there. After living in Seattle for the past few years (now working at MS, go figure), I'd have to say it's Seattle that has two seasons:
1) Rainy/wet season (Late fall, winter, early spring)
2) Awesome non-humid, always-sunny, summer season
The first season does admittedly suck. It actually doesn't rain heavily, it just drizzles ... constantly. In the winter, it never gets cold enough to snow (and beware Seattle-ites when it DOES snow), so I can't say there's really a "winter" in Seattle. HOWEVER, the mountains nearby usually get plenty of the white stuff, which makes the skiing and snowboarding pretty awesome (at least compared to East Coast slopes).
The second season, many people don't know about. The Seattle area can go for weeks without a drop of rain, during the summer. Don't believe me? Check out the climate chart. It doesn't get overly hot or humid either, with highs only in the 70s most of the time. While much of the country was boiling in heat waves this summer, it was often clear skies with a high of 75 around here. -
Re:Serious questions ...
Pheonix has an average daily humidity of about 55% IIRC
You don't RC, it's more like 3%. Its 20% right now and they're predicting rain, which they usually don't get a whole lot of.
The humidity is so low they don't use standard air conditioners there; they have "swamp coolers" which work by evaporating a stream of water. Very cheap and efficient where there's practically no humidity at all. At 50% humidity one wouldn't work. -
Re:Finally
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Re:April Fools?
Yes, hell is freezing over today.
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Re:I predicted this years ago
"I was talking to a woman in the store and she was saying global warming, there has never been so many hurricanes, which at that point in the season was not true. I told her that in 1921 they nearly ran out of names for storms and if the global warming people are right it should have been much cooler back then. "
First.. They didn't start naming storms until the 50's.. So they couldn't have run out of names back in 20's..
Second.. The last peak was in 1933 and that record stood at 21 cyclones.. until 2005 came along and GW cooked up 27 cyclones, three of them Cat-5's (another record) and one of those being the lowest central pressure (strongest) ever recorded in the Atlantic basin.
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Re:Datacenter Location
Well I was thinking more along the lines of Anchorage, AK whose average temperatures never go above 65 degrees. Even a city like Mineapolis, MN would be better in terms of power cost than Atlanta.
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Meet the LOVE BUG -- for those that dont know..
Bring LOTS of water. Its still summertime down here regardless of it being October already. we hit a high of 99 this week(i am in Hattiesburg,MS which is 1 hour north of Gulfport and was hit hard by Katrina. we had a 99 degree record high on Tuesday and thats not counting the 90-95% humidity. So the heat index was about 105 or so.
Also if you have never heard of love bugs and you are driving here in your own car you might want to bring plenty of cleaning stuff for your car or plan to buy some when you get down here. to find out why and more you can find out more about them(love bugs) here , here , here , and here its hard to get them off short of pure muscle and car washes. when i am driving to work on the interstate you can see them in black clouds.. sorta like a black plague. -
Re:The alphabet according to google suggest
It is also interesting to see the most popular web sites. Start by typing www. into google suggest. The top 10 are:
- www.yahoo.com - Search/Directory
- www.hotmail.com - Email
- www.google.com - Search
- www.ebay.com - Shopping
- www.msn.com - Portal
- www.aol.com - Portal
- www.ebay.co.uk - Shopping
- www.irs.gov - Government
- www.mapquest.com - Maps
- www.amazon.com - Shopping
Typing one more letter shows you the top sites for that letter. Here is the top for each letter:
- a is for www.aol.com - Portal
- b is for www.bbc.co.uk - News
- c is for www.cnn.com - News
- d is for www.dictionary.com - Reference
- e is for www.ebay.com - Shopping
- f is for www.food.gov.uk - Government
- g is for www.google.com - Search
- h is for www.hotmail.com - Email
- i is for www.irs.gov - Government
- j is for www.juno.com - Internet service provider
- k is for www.kbb.com - Consumer information
- l is for www.lyrics.com - Music
- m is for www.msn.com - Portal
- n is for www.nick.com - Kids
- o is for www.orbitz.com - Travel
- p is for www.pogo.com - Games
- q is for www.qvc.com - Shopping
- r is for www.rotten.com - Information
- s is for www.sears.com - Shopping (sorry slashdot)
- t is for www.target.com - Shopping
- u is for www.usps.com - Government
- v is for www.verizon.com - Telephone service
- w is for www.weather.com - Weather
- x is for www.xanga.com - Blogs
- y is for www.yahoo.com - Portal
- z is for www.zappos.com - Shopping
This is some random commentary to make sure that my post has enough characters per line on average to get by the lameness filter. Just a few more words should do it. Then I will be over the limit. Maybe you would like to hear a bit about my projects: Attesoro - A internationalization editor for Java programs. Coinmill - A currency conversion website with many currencies, and features such as abilty to parse English sentences asking for currency conversion. Java Utilities - Utilities for common task in the Java programming language such as parsing CSV files and string manipulation.
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Re:Global Impact"They are near the ocean, sure, but still aren't vulnerable like a southern city. Storms that hit from North Carolina and farther north are usually moving along the coast and hit at an angle. While this actually sounds like the storm would maintain its strength and devastate the entire coast, the opposite is true. The same forces that pull storms to the north cause a pretty good amount of shear that weaken the storm or simply won't allow it past a certain strength. Furthermore, the cold waters of the North Atlantic also dampen any storm's strength near DC or NY."
Yes, it is less likely that a strong hurricane will hit a northern coastal city than a southern coastal city. No one is disputing that, in fact I even stated that in my last post. What I was arguing was that the ggp was incorrect in stating that the fact that hurricanes lose power when going over land makes cities like Washington and New York safe.
" Flooding is still a concern due to rainfall in these cities, but any city within a few hundred miles of the coast is vulnerable from that. Fortunately these cities are above sea level and will drain eventually. Any loss of life would be tragic, but nothing like Katrina."
Most coastal cities, north or south, are above sea level. There are very few cities which are nearly as vulernable to a hurricane as New Orleans, but one of those that is happens to be Long Island up in New York. And it has been hit in the past, for instance by the Long Island Express in '38 which killed hundreds.
"In my mind there is no reason whatsoever to fear that a massive Cat 5 could do this amount of destruction anywhere but the Gulf Coast, Florida, and maybe the Georgia/SC area of the SE Coast."
Well Katrina Katrina was only a Cat 4 when it made landfall and since it didn't hit the city directly, its effects on New Orleans are closer to those of a Cat 3. And those can hit as far north as New York, see the above mentioned one that hit Long Island. And Cat 4s such as Hazel can make it up to North Carolina.
In short, devestating storms can and have hit cities like Washington and New York.
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another "prescient" study
weather.com also had a pre-disaster report that turns out to be quite accurate: http://www.weather.com/newscenter/specialreports/
h urricanes/vulnerablecities/neworleans.html -
Re:US Constitution vs. Censorship
It's only 90 degrees over in Gitmo.
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstrav eler/local/CUXX0016
Bon voyage! :)
P.S. That's 7 degrees cooler than where I am right now. :) -
Re:If anyone can do it...With how easy it is to get the best info from the best places, why put up with someone trying to be a jack of all trades when they will never be the master of them all?
GMail is great for email, but it's address book is a POS, and there is no calendering whatsoever. Meanwhile, over at Y!, I have a calender that not only shows me the weather forecast for the week embedded into it, but it also issues me reminder notices via Y! IM for important dates.
Thank god they don't have all that crap cluttering up the screen. I wouldn't mind seeing a seperate calender.google.com but thank you google for not trying to force the enmeshment of all your services.
Sure there is the personalized homepage option, but that completely opt in.
If I want weather, I have a http://www.weather.com/activities/travel/businesst raveler/weather/tenday.html?locid=20002 10day quick bookmarked.
If I want radar, http://wunderground.com/ has nexrad which blows everything else away (storm tracking, angle adjustments, configurable maps)
If I want webmail, gmail is the best I've seen by far.
If I want good directions, I think mapquest still wins in my area (DC), but if I want easy to explore maps for checking out an area, http://maps.google.com/ is the place to go
If I want news, RSS is the only way to roll.Give me the page I request, nothing more please. No added adds, no extra info about the weather or some moviestars latest romance. There will always be better info on a specialized site for that.
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The risk of ice falling has been reduced!
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Re:E-mail for emergencies?
Some of us work in functional caves, and only get to see the outside world a few times a day. My office, the server room, is like this. I'm in here pretty much all day. Sometimes the drive-home weather is a surprise..
Fair enough. Still I must ask why one would rely on a medium as unreliable as email, when a trip to http://www.weather.com/ would work even better? -
Re:I use the Weather Channel every day
Why, sure. But using Forecast Fox is not even close to using like weather.com as a web page, is it? It's more properly described as scraping weather.com to glean the few non-useless bits of information that it does contain.
I scrape weather.com on occassion, as well, if I'm sitting on the couch listening to music with XBMC and feel like checking the forecast. I'm in no way annoyed by this, and it does work rather well.
But you're absolutely kidding yourself if you really think that either of these methods in any way enable you to experience all that is useless about weather.com. For that, you need a web browser, like God intended, and a LINK TO THE PAGE. CLICK HERE NOW! FREE WEATHER INFORMATION. Check out the new 2006 Buick lineup! CONSUME! OBEY!
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Re:What about the weather?
Yea but as long as you know your zipcode you can hop right to it: http://www.weather.com/weather/local/63303 And it has changed in the past 5 years, just to bring more ads and popups tho. Nowadays I just check the weather reports on one of my local tv station's websites. http://www.ksdk.com/
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Re:Weatherbug?
Desktop Weather http://www.weather.com/desktop
The Weather Channel provides a free version and a paid version of Desktop Weather (disclosure: I do work for the company). All the alerts, maps, all the weather for 100,000 locations worldwide. No adware, spyware, etc.
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Gigli-osity?
[That Will Smith boosts the quality of any film he's in] is the "Principle of Jiggy-osity".
As opposed to the principle of Gigli-osity, which involves a duck, a meteorologist, and possibly even Pokémon #039?
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d~ Gi-gli-puff, gi-gliiiii-puff d~
Have Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, and the other Jennifer Lopez do voice acting in a Gigli/Pokemon crossover sequel. Call it Giglipuff: The Weather Balloon Pokémon. Launch it at the asteroid and watch the sparks fly.
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Re:Think about the electric bill
Yes, it's been a nice joke, everyone thought it was not for real. I've lived around there and I remember that it was under construction somewhere around 1992!
One word: Sunlight.
Yes, remember that some people, when the word Brazil comes up, think of sunshine. But... Curitiba is a place around 900 meters above sea, with a really bad climate, IMHO.Well, see for yourself (don't forget it's almost summer here) Forecast
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weather.com been doing this for a whileI set up a little script a long time ago to get weather data from an XML feed from the weather channel for our office webcam. It's free and was really easy to use...
http://www.weather.com/services/xmloap.html?#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
require LWP::UserAgent;
use XML::DOM;
use CGI qw(:standard);
# first, get the XML feed
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(env_proxy => 1, keep_alive => 1, timeout => 30);
my $base_url="http://xoap.weather.com/weather/local/6 0143?cc=*&prod=xoap";
my $par="&par=[removed]";
my $key="&key=[sign up to get one]";
$response = $ua->get("$base_url$par$key");
die "Error while getting ", $response->request->uri,
" -- ", $response->status_line, "\nAborting"
unless $response->is_success;
my %weather = %$response;
# then, parse out the crap we want
my $parser = XML::DOM::Parser->new();
foreach(keys %weather){
$xmldoc = $parser->parse($weather{$_}) if(/content/);
}
foreach my $cur_cond ($xmldoc->getElementsByTagName('cc')){
$curr_cond{'lastup'} = $cur_cond->
getElementsByTagName('lsup')->item(0)->
getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
$curr_cond{'obsvst'} = $cur_cond->
getElementsByTagName('obst')->item(0)->
getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
$curr_cond{'temp'} = cur_cond->
getElementsByTagName('tmp')->item(0)->
&nb s p; getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
$curr_cond{'chill'} = $cur_cond->
getElementsByTagName('flik')->item(0)->
getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
$curr_cond{'text'} = $cur_cond->
getElementsByTagName('t')->item(0)->
getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
$curr_cond{'icon'} = cur_cond->
getElementsByTagName('icon')->item(0)->
getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
}
print header;
print start_html("nice little cgi page to display the time/weather");
print <<EOF;
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p >
<p><font size="-1">WebCam is located on 9th floor in Itasca<br />
pointed out southeast window overlooking Thorndale</font></p>
<form name="clock" onSubmit="0">
<input type="button" name="face" size=13 value="">
</form>
EOF
print end_html;
sorry about the atrocious formating - slashcode made me take out whitespace (what is the fricking point of an ecode tag supported if you can't post a small snippet like this without removing all the whitespace!?) -
Re:strictly non-smoking
it does get cool, though. In July, the average low is six degrees celsius: climatology graph. OK, freezing won't be a concern in Sydney, but they do require a sensible amount of insulation and heating.
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Re:free weatherbug?
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Re:Netscape is ruining the purpose of FireFox.
According to TWC, it's Schenectady, NY.
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Snow in Texas today
Guys, this does *NOT* bode well:
weather.com map, snow in western Texas!
It's SNOWING in Amarillo and Lubbock, and Roswell, NM! This is CRAZY! First the Red Sox, now THIS?! Are we doomed? Does this mean it's snowing in hell, for real? Holy crap this is insane...
It's like Y2K-panic all over again... -
Re:the 3 days it takes?
Where do you see Weather.Com charging for 5 day forcasts? I RTFA, and then went to Weather.com and managed to get a 10 day forcast in a matter of 2 clicks.. for free. Seems like a silly business model. Charge for 5 day, give them 10 for free?
:)
Just plug in your zip code -
It might last till next week
When ivan strikes.
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Re:Huh?
This is supposedly the... Worst Hurricane Ever
Are you sure about that? Hurricane Camille had sustained winds between 190-210 mph and absolutely leveled south Mississippi. According to last check at the Weather Channel, Frances has sustained winds of 145 mph. It's not even a category 5 hurricane, yet.Granted, the monetary costs will probably exceed Camille, simply because south Florida is more densely populated than south Mississippi. However, when one considers the pure destructive force, it's hard to compare to Camille. Just ask anyone from Mississippi or Alabama who was of reasonable age to remember August 17-18, 1969.
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How hard can it be to "cool" Toronto...
when the average hi in July is 77 degrees farenheit(25 C).
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Re:Should we have to pay twice to get weather foredon't understand how anyone is paying "twice". Please explain?
The National Weather Service, a part of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), is funded by taxes. It's already been paid for. The need for accurate weather information is extremely important for the military. Because it's almost as important for civilian use, the information is made available to the public.
Pilots, farmers, businesses and municipalities need this weather information, and in the U.S., weather is almost an obsession (Weather Channel, anyone?) There is no national or continental weather service in Europe; private pilots have to pay for information, usually in the form of two daily faxes. This means that European pilots have to know even more about weather than their American counterparts because they must be able to predict conditions, whereas U.S. pilots can get up-to-the-minute information.
In a nutshell, the Private Weather Sector want to be a middleman, themselves continuing to get the information for free and then charging others for what they (the public) have already paid for.
- Pay government (taxes) for weather information.
- Only one private group has access to this information
- Pay private group to give you this information
If you still don't see it, imagine "EduCorp". EduCorp cuts a deal with the local government to provide schooling for children. The locality stil pays for everything, but EduCorp acts as a middleman. Only EduCorp subscribers can send their kids to these public schools. You pay taxes for schools and then pay EuCorp for th right to send your kids there. All clear?
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Copy the Weather Channel's Music Selection
The Weather Channel always has pretty good (and widely appealing) music on. They have a list of what they play on their website. For instance, here's the November 2003 song list.
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Re:Getting it over with- Seattle jokesBite me
If only it were mid-June all year.