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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (19192)	5/24/2017 12:09:34 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 355880

wired.com The United States bests most nations when it comes to exploring outer space, curing disease, and designing lighter, thinner smartphones. But when it comes to weather prediction, America lags behind a European prediction model that does a better job at telling us how warm or cold it will be three to 10 days out. A lack of computing power, scrimpy research budgets, and an overworked National Weather Service are the prime reasons for this forecast gap. And as the White House considers new leadership for the agency that manages the weather service—and slashing its budget—many scientists, weather experts, and meteorologists worry that this gap might widen. Nothing has been made public, but Barry Myers, the CEO of private weather firm AccuWeather, is leading the pack of potential nominees to lead NOAA, according to the Washington Post. Myers might be more likely to streamline the weather service and privatize some functions, but he might not be the best person to defend the science mission of both the NWS and NOAA, says Cliff Mass, a meteorologist at the University of Washington who has been a frequent critic of the weather service. Myers has a background in a science-facing business, but he’s not a scientist. “He doesn’t know much about climate or oceans,” Mass says. “That is going to be a problem. He doesn’t have scientific credibility.” Mass and others argue that cutting basic research into the oceans, atmosphere, and climate—the taxpayer-funded research done by NOAA and NWS—will lead to less reliable weather modeling by private firms like AccuWeather as well as federal models like the Global Forecast System.

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (19192)	5/24/2017 12:10:40 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 355880

And a fraction of a degree. Just get over this nonsense. Besides, at this rate, there will be no threatening emissions in the US in another 25 years to worry about. Go plant a couple trees & forget it. Or clean up the plastic out of the oceans. Do something useful.

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (19192)	6/21/2017 1:18:00 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 355880

You realize a single hail event in a three year period could have caused that result. Which the one fellow being interviewed made clear. You have to have statistical analyses to ascertain whether an increase is statistically significant over time. That will take into account not only the magnitude of the change, but the number of events over time and establish a true baseline for measurement. This article is meaningless. Here is a bit of an abstract from a paper that actually found a correlation, but they are commenting on the literature generally: "There is much uncertainty about the effects of anthropogenic climate change on the frequency and severity of extreme weather events like hailstorms, and subsequent economic losses, while this is also relevant information for the design of climate policy. Few studies conducted indicate that a strong positive relation exists between hailstorm activity and hailstorm damage, as predicted by minimum temperatures using simple correlations. " Climate change and hailstorm damage: Empirical evidence and implications for agriculture and insurance (PDF Download Available). Available from: researchgate.net [accessed Jun 21, 2017]. It is important to recognize that when there are more cars on the road, you're going to have more hail damage to cars. When crop yields have increased, you'll have more hail damage. You can't just look at gross insurance payments and get anything meaningful out of it. Other than the cost of an incident.