Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

OH, my God! The best thing FEMA or the Red Cross can do now is send a fleet of tour buses to get everybody and their pets out of the impact area. Those people must be wondering right now if the world really *is* coming to an end.

And, and a curse on builders who put up houses in tornado zones that don't have storm cellars!

I was just saying the secretary at our church, I guess we wouldn't have any problems finding a mission trip this year. All we have to do is just get in the car and drive just about any direction.

As far as storm cellars and basements go, there is reason why you don't see many in my part of the country. It has something to with the soil and the way it shifts all the time. If you build a basement or any kind of underground structure, it fills up with water in no time. So yeah, it makes it kind of scary for those of us living in the Dallas area. We all feel like deers in the highlights. We knew those storms were coming yesterday. The conversations I had with a few of my friends yesterday were basically centered around, "What the hell are going to do? Where can we go that's safe? We don't have a basement or an interior room."...We are all in the same boat down here. The only thing we can do is to try and shelter somewhere on the first floor of our houses, cover our heads and hope for the best.

Originally Posted by ASB65

I was just saying the secretary at our church, I guess we wouldn't have any problems finding a mission trip this year. All we have to do is just get in the car and drive just about any direction.

As far as storm cellars and basements go, there is reason why you don't see many in my part of the country. It has something to with the soil and the way it shifts all the time. If you build a basement or any kind of underground structure, it fills up with water in no time. So yeah, it makes it kind of scary for those of us living in the Dallas area. We all feel like deers in the highlights. We knew those storms were coming yesterday. The conversations I had with a few of my friends yesterday were basically centered around, "What the hell are going to do? Where can we go that's safe? We don't have a basement or an interior room."...We are all in the same boat down here. The only thing we can do is to try and shelter somewhere on the first floor of our houses, cover our heads and hope for the best.

Seems like this thread is connecting with the what if Natural disasters thread. That's actually freighting to one extent because now "my what if question" at the top of that other thread may be coming true.

I saw the earlier link here on how Japan is reconstructing their houses and making them energy efficient and I posted on the "Natural disasters thread" that the positive is we will have an excuse to reconstruct our houses and infrastructure to fit our green needs.

Now in reference to your post, Amy, I know some folks who are still worked up about the south east tornados and are planning to installs storm units near there houses. I'm not sure what the details are, but one if them is my co worker and I will find out.

FYI, we have been having tornado warnings usually 3 to 4 times a week now. Definitely every time we watch American Idol.

Originally Posted by ASB65

I was just saying the secretary at our church, I guess we wouldn't have any problems finding a mission trip this year. All we have to do is just get in the car and drive just about any direction.

As far as storm cellars and basements go, there is reason why you don't see many in my part of the country. It has something to with the soil and the way it shifts all the time. If you build a basement or any kind of underground structure, it fills up with water in no time. So yeah, it makes it kind of scary for those of us living in the Dallas area. We all feel like deers in the highlights. We knew those storms were coming yesterday. The conversations I had with a few of my friends yesterday were basically centered around, "What the hell are going to do? Where can we go that's safe? We don't have a basement or an interior room."...We are all in the same boat down here. The only thing we can do is to try and shelter somewhere on the first floor of our houses, cover our heads and hope for the best.

OH, dear - the soil won't support storm cellars? That IS a bummer! Maybe the way Florida deals with hurricane season would be helpful?

Pat in Albuquerque, where the problem isn't too MUCH rain, but too little.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

OH, dear - the soil won't support storm cellars? That IS a bummer! Maybe the way Florida deals with hurricane season would be helpful?

Pat in Albuquerque, where the problem isn't too MUCH rain, but too little.

P.S. I think Floridans have hurricane shutters. Would they protect against tornadoes? Might look into it? Meanwhile, the only advice I'd give any friends in those shoes is to load up the car, sling the go-bags into it, and get out of town FAST!

http://blogs.forbes.com/jamestaylor/...-its-deadline/

...global warming alarmists are similarly trying to wipe egg off their faces after real-world events spectacularly falsified their predictions of an imminent polar ice rapture.

This week, a 1979 Palm Beach Post article resurfaced in which Steven Schneider, who for the past 30 years was one of the most prominent global warming alarmists, claimed the west Antarctic ice sheet could melt before the year 2000 and inundate American coastlines with up to 25 feet of sea level rise. Obviously, the west Antarctic ice sheet was not raptured away last century, and New Yorkers can still drive rather than swim to work.

...spectacularly wrong global warming predictions, about polar ice and many other global warming-related issues, is par for the course for global warming alarmists.


Mark Serreze, a researcher with the federally funded National Snow and Ice Data Center, frightened the masses in June 2008 by claiming there was a 50-50 chance the North Pole would be ice-free in the upcoming summer. The media reported Serreze’s prediction with a frenzy rarely equaled even among media-created global warming scares. Adding fuel to the fire, global warming alarmists lined up in droves to add their John Hancock to Serreze’s claim... the alarmists are now claiming their failed North Pole predictions were essentially accurate, but merely a few years off regarding the timetable...

...the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), claimed in its most recent report that global warming is likely to rapture away the Himalayan glaciers by 2035. When investigators discovered there was no scientific evidence to support the claim, and a good deal of scientific evidence countering the claim, the rapture prediction was canceled.

The media spent much of the past decade parroting alarmist claims that global warming was shutting down the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Ocean Conveyor Belt...

David Viner, a researcher at the University of East Anglia (UK) climatic research unit claimed in the year 2000 that within just a few years, “children just aren’t going to know what snow is” and snowfall will be “a very rare and exciting event.” Here on this side of the pond, prominent alarmist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said essentially the same thing in 2008...

Well.... Libya, Syria, Yemen; Bahrain; was it Liberia iirc... fortunately no war in Korea; yeah!

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

CNet reports that Japan eyes solar panels on all new buildings

With Japan's continuing problems with power supply resulting from the tsunami crippled nuclear complex, Japan is considering mandating renewables. This might qualify as a 4T style response to a catalyst?

Oh indeed so! Isn't it about time we followed suit, and started responding to our own 4T!

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

OH, my God! The best thing FEMA or the Red Cross can do now is send a fleet of tour buses to get everybody and their pets out of the impact area. Those people must be wondering right now if the world really *is* coming to an end.

And, and a curse on builders who put up houses in tornado zones that don't have storm cellars!

I heard one report that voters in Alabama haven't and still don't want to mandate this, because that's "government interfering in peoples' lives." The trickle-down theory causing deaths by tornado. Some trickle, eh?

It could be the impetus behind a lot of certain government theories is to leave them alone and let Darwin take its course. They'd never, ever go for that secular-socialist-bad-for-society notion of population limitation [voluntary, let me specify, and driven largely by what each individual couple can afford]. That's not God's or Nature's way!

God's or Nature's way is to do what the reptiles do and do the winnowing of those already born. And for those who don't make it, c'est la vie! We're not their parents!

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

P.S. I think Floridans have hurricane shutters. Would they protect against tornadoes? Might look into it? Meanwhile, the only advice I'd give any friends in those shoes is to load up the car, sling the go-bags into it, and get out of town FAST!

Floridians often take their vacations in hurricane season. It's a nice time to see the fall foliage in New England, Michigan, upstate New York... only a two-day drive to safety.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Oh indeed so! Isn't it about time we followed suit, and started responding to our own 4T!

Very often it is calamities that force dramatic changes in the ways in which people live. The great fire following the San Francisco Earthquake led to investigations of the conduct of government officials who had put up fire hydrants for show but never linked them to a water supply so that they could pocket the 'savings'. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire changed the way in which businesses were obligated to deal with fire safety -- and how fire departments react.

It took the catastrophe of World War II to force most Europeans to ditch the pathological nationalism that blinded people to what thuggish leaders were up to -- and to create more economic security so that military rearmament looked less benign.

Question: do we make the right choices? Or do we simply sell out to the entities that have the most adept campaign of public relations and most efficiently buy the electoral process?

[QUOTE=pbrower2a;373824]Very often it is calamities that force dramatic changes in the ways in which people live. The great fire following the San Francisco Earthquake led to investigations of the conduct of government officials who had put up fire hydrants for show but never linked them to a water supply so that they could pocket the 'savings'. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire changed the way in which businesses were obligated to deal with fire safety -- and how fire departments react.

It took the catastrophe of World War II to force most Europeans to ditch the pathological nationalism that blinded people to what thuggish leaders were up to -- and to create more economic security so that military rearmament looked less benign.

Question: do we make the right choices? Or do we simply sell out to the entities that have the most adept campaign of public relations and most efficiently buy the electoral process?[/QUOTE]

The answer to that, going by what happened last time, is "Yes." Sequentially. First the latter, and then the former.

Sign of the times.

We have a HVAC contractor down our way who is going green just in time for the summer heat season.
In his TV commercials he's offering to replace old HVAC systems with newer models that are at least partaiily run by solar panels.
This may or may not be new elsewhere but western SC, especially our business community, is a very conservative in many ways.
When HVAC contractors in not only talk green but start using green as their new color the idea(s) are gaining traction.

Kyoto Protocol loses four big nations.

I doubt they ever intended to follow it in the first place. If you ever want to be cynical about any chance for world government, you can always start with the Kyoto Protocol.

James50

Bad news about Kyoto. They need to make a new treaty. I hope they do at the conference late this year. People should tell their leaders to do this.

Good news today though: Germany announced it is ending nuclear power and going all out for renewable energy. Good for them; they are leaders. We could use a few leaders here in the USA.

book - copyright 2007

Storm World Hurricans, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming by Chris Mooney


Regarding the views of climatologists:

"...As one of them, Matthew Huber of Purdue University, put it to me, 'The good news is that the world may have a tropical thermostat that helps keep the planet cool. And the bad news is that that may be tropical cyclones running around all the time.'

"...fundamental observation that hurricanes are a powerful mechanism for extracting the ocean's warmth and transporting it many miles into the air, using some of that energy to drive winds in the process. In short, hurricanes do a great deal to transport heat out of the tropics, where especially during the summertime, energy from the beating sun accumulates in the oceans. That heat cannot simply radiate back up to space due to the strong greenhouse effect of water vapor over the oceans. This makes convection - in the form of both tropical thunderstorms and hurricanes - a critical mechanism for keeping the system in balance.

"Compared to individual thunderstorms, however, hurricanes do a far more efficient job of pumping heat above the lower parts of the atmosphere and cooling down the oceans. So the climate scientists reasoned that hurricanes might in some sense be a 'release valve,' a way of ventilating the tropical oceans and redistributing heat...If so, that could have a very large bearing on how hurricanes might change as the climate changes. Indeed, it suggested that they would have to change, perhaps quite dramatically, to keep pace with a warming world.

"...Hurricanes might be having a nontrivial impact on the global climate system, and this effect had not previously been taken into account, especially in climate models."

Storm World

"This kind of thinking, in turn, seemed to finally promise a way of solving a great mystery: Why are there about 80 or 90 tropical cyclones per year, as opposed to 8 or 9, as opposed to 800 or 900? The climate scientists suspected this general regularity existed because, in some sense, that was the right number of storms to perform a particular 'job' within the present climate. In the context of a changing climate, nowever, there was no guarantee these numbers would remain the same...."

That makes me wonder what the behavior of tropical cyclones was like when the Earth was in hot-house phases like the Eocene or Triassic.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Very often it is calamities that force dramatic changes in the ways in which people live.

I was hoping the BP oil spill would be this last year.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Very often it is calamities that force dramatic changes in the ways in which people live.

Originally Posted by Rose1992

I was hoping the BP oil spill would be this last year.

I think what has been missing from T4T theory is an awareness of just how obvious and inevitable a problem has to get before dramatic life style changes are actually possible. Cultural inertia and the ability for the establishment to block change can dominate. While past American crises might suggest an inevitable march of progress as societies adapt to technology while expanding rights and equality, there hasn't been sufficient attention paid to how bad things have to get before serious transformation occurs.

Isolationism was still a dominant philosophy until the London Blitz. The government had no role in regulating the economy until the Great Depression. National (and unnatural) disasters won't be a significant factor in changing policy until life styles of the People become seriously and personally threatened. The modern notion that CO2 causes warming might be compared to the radical Civil War era assumption that black men are created equal to white. If an idea threatens the life style to which one has become accustomed, the idea will be rejected.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

National (and unnatural) disasters won't be a significant factor in changing policy until life styles of the People become seriously and personally threatened. The modern notion that CO2 causes warming might be compared to the radical Civil War era assumption that black men are created equal to white. If an idea threatens the life style to which one has become accustomed, the idea will be rejected.

For decisive action, we may have to wait for hurricane season in Los Angeles.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Doonesbury is running a string of comics centered on Apocalypse, with a christian claiming that between Judgement Day (Saturday) and the End of Time (October) we are due for earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, droughts, eruptions, mudslides, hurricanes, floods and fires. It seems time to observe...

1. No single Apocalyptic event can be taken as a sign of the Apocalypse.
2. Not every Apocalyptic event can be directly attributed to global warming and Big Oil.

OK. Yes. I know. No one single weather event can be attributed to either global warming or the four horsemen. Especially not an outbreak of tornadoes on the great plains. Old news.

But just so y'all know, we're having a small tornado outbreak in Massachusetts. Looks like the heavy stuff is going north of me. Does this imply no need for immediate action?

Yes, Massachusetts now; maybe LA tomorrow. What can be done about tornadoes, except maybe save your life if you have a shelter? Pretty scary stuff, them twisters!

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Yes, Massachusetts now; maybe LA tomorrow. What can be done about tornadoes, except maybe save your life if you have a shelter? Pretty scary stuff, them twisters!

Yes, it is. Even us seasoned people living in tornado alley are scared these days. This is no ordinary tornado season.

Originally Posted by ASB65

Yes, it is. Even us seasoned people living in tornado alley are scared these days. This is no ordinary tornado season.

For some perspective, here are the deadliest tornado years in US recorded history:


Year / Fatalities
1925 - 794
1936 - 552
1917 - 551
1927 - 540
1896 - 537
1953 - 519
2011 - 512 (132 in Joplin)
1920 - 499
1908 - 477
1909 - 404
1932 - 394
1942 - 384
1924 - 376
1974 - 366
1933 - 362


Note that in the worst year (1925), the vast majority of deaths came from a single F5 tornado that left a 291 mile path across 3 states. Also note that the vast majority of us reading these forums have only been alive for 2 of the years on this list. Deaths from tornadoes tend to be pretty random. They either hit populated areas or they don't.

Frequency of tornadoes however is very high this year and will likely be a record. Note that a "record year" is only a sample of tornado records since 1950 and that improved technology means we are better able to locate tornado formation in unpopulated areas which would not necessarily have been reported in previous years.

More information can be found here:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/2011_to...formation.html