psuhoffman

@SnowenOutThere WRT advice, first of all I have made so many mistakes in my life I don't know how valid any advice I give would be. But a few things I think I think now... 1) Invest your energy in people who deserve it 2) focus most of your attention on things you have a modus of control, don't waste energy on fights you have very little ability to affect change 3) if you are going to invest a lot of time and energy on external abstract fights...the one I think is most worth fighting right now is trying to change the landscape of the information infrastructure of our society. Long term I don't think the battles we are fighting are winnable in the current information ecosphere. We lost the editorial system that produced an objective reality and truth for society. There was plenty wrong with that system, but at least it stood to prevent society from being inundated with BS and falling victim to a reality where anyone can say anything and it all seems to hold equal value. I am not sure what the solution is. 30 years ago the solution was to never let us get to this point. To not allow companies like Fox to circumvent established regulations on news by registering themselves as "entertainment" while portraying themselves as "news". The left was asleep at the wheel while the right systemically attacked the sources of our information so they could win a long term framework argument with society. Destroying objective truth is very valuable to people who hold opinions contrary to all objective evidence. This then became amplified when the internet, which is largely unregulated, became the main source of information. How to put that back in the bag now? It will be very difficult but we need some kind of editorial regulation of what is acceptable as "news" or we are screwed because too many people are not smart enough to be reliable editors of their own information sources.

Chicken or egg. Society is an effect of human nature as much as it is a cause.

I sounded exactly like you 30 years ago so it would be hypocritical of me to criticize your view. All I’ll say is let’s see if you feel the same way after banging your head into the same wall for 30 more years! Also, living where I do (there are some wonderful things of where I live and some of the people are nice) for the last 20 years has been eye opening. I’ve sat in the room at town hall meetings with people who most definitely wanted to hurt people. They were 100% motivated by hate. When some in town kept changing local ordinances to harass the local Hispanic population it wasn’t out of love. When I got into a fight with some loser chud at Walmart who was calling the Muslim cashier a “sand Nger” you think that was because he just wanted to make the most of his one spin? The contractor working on my deck who told me the best part of living her is there are no black people. Sure that was out of love. These clowns talk to me like I am one of them because of where I live and what I look like. I know exactly how evil many of the people around me are because they openly tell me. Sorry 20 years of that’s changed my opinion of the goodness of humanity.

I love Taos but they just had their two worst winters ever back to back and it wasn't worth a trip. I hope this year to be able to get back out there. With a nino they should do very well. It's a great mountain (if you are an advanced skier) that avoids crowds and the town is really nice, art district, lots of farm to table restaurants, and there is the Native American sites nearby. Santa Fe is only an hour and is worth a visit also.

The Vikings are doing their part to make sure their fans get the most gut wrenching utterly emotionally devastating eviscerating experience possible by being as good as they can now to inspire hope only to have it crushed later in some kind of epic dumpster fire way. They did this in 2017 when they went 13-3 and marched right down the field to take a 7-0 lead in the championship game vs a team with a backup QB only to completely stop playing at that point and get demolished the rest of the game. The most Vikings thing ever would be if they are winning the super bowl and just need to kneel the ball to run out the clock and they fumble the snap and the other team returns it for the winning TD with no time left on the clock!

My thoughts on winter are probably in line with most people. The nino is likely to be the dominant player. Add in the fact the pacific basin is warm EVERYWHERE and it's likely the dominant airmass for winter is going to be pac puke. Add in the extreme east based nature of the current super nino and my fear is the north pacific low is going to be both on steroids' and banked up right against the pacific NW coast, similar to 1998. What all that means imo is likely a warm wet winter overall. A lot of STJ systems coming at us from the gulf but a lack of arctic air. I was in central PA for 1998 and we actually got above normal snowfall but it almost didn't feel like it because so many of the storms were a 4-5" mixed bag when it was frustrating because the track of the storm should have been a 12" plus snowstorm. And even when we did get a decent snow it was usually gone within 1-2 days because it was so mild. I expect something similar this winter. One caveat, the last 2 nina's we had (both during this current extreme hostile PDO cycle) the enso failed to couple fully with the mid latitude longwave patter. I saw various excuses for this. However, I've also seen some speculation, by people way smarter than me, that some of the long term changes in the pacific, the warming of the north pacific, the expansion of the hadley cell, the compression of the north pacific jet, and the changing SST profile in the IOD region have all combined to mute enso's impact on the longwave pattern. If this is true, then all bets are off, but the default pattern over the last 10 years has been awful for snow, so that is not necessarily a good thing.

I appreciate your point and 10 or 20 years ago I would have agreed and I've even written things very similar. I have a sociology degree so I can even confirm everything you say is clinically correct. However, I have become jaded, and my definition of stupid now includes people who are unable to get their heads out of their own arse and realize when they are being manipulated. And yes I realize that definition of stupid means about 50% of the human population is stupid. I grew up in a conservative Christian family. I was forced to attend Sunday school, until they asked me to stop because I would point out God was a terrorist monster for killing all the Egyptian first born children over a political agenda when he could have just snapped his fingers and got what he wanted. Apparently that wasn't the message they wanted me to get from the passover lesson. But my point is I was subjected to the same attempts at programming and propaganda that every other conservative was. And I will admit it took me a while to overcome it. When I was 15 I did something horrible. A boy who was clearly gay tried to be my friend and I avoided him because of how the other students were teasing me over being nice to him. I was a coward. I am ashamed that I was too weak at that age to tell the rest of them to go F themselves for how they were treating that boy. But I eventually did grow up, realized what utter BS conservatives were selling, and overcame the programming. So I have absolutely no sympathy for the people who choose to remain in that place mentally. Lastly for the record I am no longer trying to change anyone's mind. I spend 20 years doing that and it's useless. I am living my life and telling those people what I think of them, and they can go F themselves. I no longer care enough to try to save them from themselves. They can keep voting for policies that F them over for all I care. F around and find out! I do feel bad for the good people who get hurt by them but I've realized I can only do what I can do on an individual personal level. I donate my time and money to organizations that make a difference. I make sure day to day to be kind and generous to people. I coach. I teach. I make sure my children will NEVER by like those people. But unfortunately I think that no matter what there are too many stupid people who will always be easy to manipulate by powerful people with nefarious motives and that struggle is inevitable .

Thanks. I think everyone who only views the forum on their phones doesn't get why I took issue. He has a HUGE signature ranting about climate change which you have to see every time he makes a post, and then complains when someone responds to it with the passive aggressive "we're not supposed to talk about that here" BS. This is also a tactic not confined to this specific case. I've brought this up before and taken issue with it. That side of the argument is deploying a passive aggressive and very deliberate tactic taking advantage of our forum rules about politics. They find a way to say what they want to say, push it as far as it can go. blur the lines... then when you respond back directly they deploy the "were not supposed to talk about it" and the whole conversation gets shut down. They got to make their point and then the discourse is over. If the mods what to have a no climate change discussion rule I am all for it, but then any reference at all to climate denial (including in a signature) should be deleted immediately. The members who continue to try to circumvent or be cute with these rules should get warned and eventually banned the same way I would get banned if I continue to respond to them. This isn't just an Americanwx issue...I've observed this same exact tactic from the same political ideology across the internet in other online communities.

You're right, we don't want to clutter this thread up with climate change nonsense 52 degrees along the Mason-Dixon line this morning.

Source for this claim or is this another trust me bro argument?

100! That's my fear if we have a total fail...that's probably how.

You're right, we shouldn't discuss this in here, it's the wrong place

Save us the sanctimonious passive aggressive narrative. You have a giant quote that shows up under every single one of your posts like a billboard.

Ya think lol

@ChescoWx "When you hear claims that “the science is settled,” remember that the science is built on data that has been repeatedly altered. But if the proof relies on manipulated data, then the case collapses." So produce the data that refutes it in a reputable study using scientific methodology, have it stand up to peer review and scientific scrutiny, and publish the results. Nothing is stopping anyone from doing this. But without producing such studies you are doing exactly what you are accusing the scientific community of doing. Worse, you aren't even doing the work, you're just "saying stuff" on the internet. Anyone can say absolutely anything. Objective evidence is what is needed for a claim to be taken seriously. Currently there are no credible scientific studies that prove humans are not contributing to climate change. NASA https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/scientific-consensus/ Reports or articles arguing against human-caused climate change typically originate from advocacy groups, political think tanks, or non-peer-reviewed blogs (such as the Heartland Institute or CLINTEL) rather than accredited scientific research institutions. https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/mythbusters