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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! November 22, 2009 Bad Weather (Part Two)By GreyhawkContinuing a tale begun here. So, what did I get for having attended the National Hurricane Conference? I got something any military member dreads - I became the dreaded SME. Subject Matter Expert on all things hurricanic. Thus designated I found myself at an American Meteorological Society conference, a meeting of utmost and obvious importance to meteorologists but which had little attraction for me. But I follow orders, and if ordered to "go forth and see if this is worthwhile" then I go. So once again I found myself wandering about exhibits and in and out of sessions and through poster presentations and having a wonderful time. Two things stand out in my memory of the event. The first was a guy begging in the streets claiming to be a Vietnam veteran, at least, that was his story when I passed by him in uniform. I remember this because the exact thing happened at the Hurricane Conference - a guy saw me in uniform in the street outside and began hitting me up for spare change because he was a Vietnam veteran. Both were lying - they weren't old enough. But the second was an unusual response to a presentation. A young guy - probably a grad student, but my memory isn't keen on that point - explained the results of his study on new sensing equipment used by the National Weather Service. A bit of background here. During this time period the National Weather Service was undergoing Modernization and Restructuring, which was a nifty term applied to replacing humans with computers. This was a time when Doppler radars were being installed nationwide, and new, high resolution weather satellites were about to be launched. These were very expensive toys, and the Weather Service made a small deal to acquire them. They closed several offices and consolidated operations into larger offices with greatly increased geographical areas of responsibility. At most of the locations that were closed, automated Weather Observing systems were installed. Now this young whippersnapper was standing before the assembled lions of meteorology and telling them that according to his research, the new sensors were reading temperatures warmer than the systems they replaced.
Something you must understand about these sorts of presentations: given the amount of time allotted, it's virtually impossible to provide all possible support for your hypothesis, so some benefit of doubt is generally accorded the presenter. Usually, that is. But this hapless young man was ripped and shredded and sent packing. I had never seen anything like it. In fact, I can recall neither this man's name or the title of the paper he was presenting; at the time the only thing I found notable about it was the ferocity of the response. Much later it would become clear to me why. In those days global warming fever had yet to grip the nation, and I did not realize that this man was seen as a threat to the goose that was expected to lay a lot of golden eggs. Recall my flash of insight I explained in our last episode; there is a small pie of federal money available to fund research of any sort, and meteorologists compete for their slices with professionals from a lot of other fields of study. This global warming business was going to give them a leg up - if we don't get this money, people will die! It was only later (perhaps on hearing that the hottest days ever in the history of the world had occurred in the 1990s!) that I realized the full picture of what I'd witnessed that day. Don't get me wrong - global warming is something deserving study - but here's the point that can't be avoided: any study that indicates that global warming isn't really a problem is a threat to further funding of global warming studies. (And thus a threat to the livelihoods of those who were responding to that presentation those many years ago.) An important distinction must be made here. AS in many other fields, meteorologists are divided into two camps - research and operational. The vast majority of those who attend Conferences of this sort are from the research side of the house, and they we're threatened. There's no other explanation for the response, Galileo couldn't have been treated more poorly when he proclaimed that the earth revolved around the sun. I have no idea whether the guy's study was valid or not, at the time it didn't seem that important anyway. But what is undeniable is the response was one that refused to accept any possibility that his results were anything but flawed, and that didn't jive with my notion of what science was supposedly all about. But next time you're attending a conference somewhere and some guy comes up begging for quarters, if he looks too young to be a Vietnam veteran he just might be the guy I saw talking about variations between different temperature sensors that day. Give him a dollar or two for me. More to come. 2005-02-03 16:50:44 Posted by Greyhawk / November 22, 2009 10:55 AM | Permalink 3 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
Greyhawk,
As posited by an article in The New Republic magazine: (http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=1f7YopMoGv4%2FNF%2F3mpMntB%3D%3D)
"The first thing to understand about disasters is that they have indeed been rapidly increasing worldwide over the past century, in both number and severity, and that the causes of this increase are well understood--and have nothing to do with global warming."
"The reason is not an increase in the frequency or severity of storms, earthquakes, or similar events, but an increase in vulnerability because of growing populations, expanding economies, rapid urbanization, and migrations to coasts and other exposed regions."
Funding for disater preparedness and relief is finite. The sensible course of action would be to maximize the results for this limited resource. The real debate should be where to invest this money most effectively. What returns the biggest bang for the buck.
I see the debate over global warming as a straw-man, which can't yet be proved or disproved. A recent blog thread regarding global warming offered other explanations from the growing population of the world heating their homes (how many BTUs are released every winter season?) to the growth of urban areas located around what were once rural weather stations, thus skewing their temperature readings.
So called progressives will often rally to a cause not with the end result being the motivation, rather, they do it for a sense of self worth. One example I've seen cited is the group of inauguration protesters who flew to washington and stood in the cold just so they could turn their backs on the President and his motorcade when they passed by. Who besides the protesters own psyche, was helped?
If our leaders really want to mitigate damages from natural disasters we need to focus our efforts on activities that make a verifiable difference.
If you can remember which specific year it might be possible to track down the name and title of that presenter and presentation.
I'm a chemical engineer and will second the opinion on how this type of speech proceeds. It is very rare to have anyone doggedly attempt to denounce the speaker, let alone everyone. (I have seen 'professional enemies' though, that always showed up to the other's speeches in order to ask obnoxious questions. But even then it doesn't turn the mood of the crowd - and it is clear that there's personal animus present.)
The fundamental question of Global Warming is "Is it happening?". So why is the vast majority of the funding going to projects that _can_not_ help answer that question? It goes to projects with questions like this "If Global Warming is happening, how much change can we expect in crop yield?" (Replace crop yield with hundreds of other things.).
Interesting. Makes me think of John Keegan, in "Intelligence and War", describing how outsiders usually think of scientists as open-minded in pursuit of new knowledge, and retorting:
"In fact, scientists can be as prejudiced as any theologian, particularly when one of their pet theories is challenged,"