LibertyBell

I concur that the Great Filter may be ahead of us and that's why we haven't found any sentient intelligence in the universe. To be fair though, our detection methods are very limited and we have no idea what to look for. Life could even exist in interstellar space and if it were advanced enough, it would be indistinguishable from natural processes. I say this because we've already found advanced organic compounds in interstellar space. And life need not even be organic (or made of matter.) There are lots of possibilities......

There is much less pollution from using green technologies, especially in and near big cities. Reducing asthma rates is a big deal. I've looked at prices of EVs and generally find they cost much less than fossil fuel powered vehicles, and now have much longer ranges before they need to be recharged and can be charged much more quickly now too. The technology is developing very rapidly.

It reminds me of what happens on the world stage sometimes- like for example, the Saudis' war crimes in Yemen of starving and killing children didn't get the outcry that killing one journalist caused. When something terrible happens to thousands or millions of people I think it's harder to elicit sympathy from the general public than one terrible act against one human being. The human brain has its limitations unless one is trained to understand those limitations and find ways around them. And about harmful things like fossil fuels, our minds seem to put things on the proverbial back burner if we think the consequences are years down the road, and find it difficult to comprehend changes occurring more rapidly- which is exactly what's going on now. Our minds are prisoners of the moment. I believe politicians know and take advantage of how the human mind works to assert their own agendas. It's why thousands of scientific studies can be ignored by the general public in favor of some insignificant political diatribe that feeds into the public's distrust of authority.

I dont know if we can make general statements like that about all of humanity- I do think the average person has problems dealing with large issues and likes to break things down into simpler/smaller samples. Something that takes relatively large time scales or large distances in space is something the average person has problems with comprehending, but those who work in these fields and those who avidly read about them are better at handling them. The complications come in when monetary interests step in and muddy the waters and make it even harder on the average person and confuse them with outright lies.

Well, on October 2nd we made a new weather memory that superseded the one in 1983.

I find air pollution also steadily getting worse, with higher humidity and asthma rates going up and many more "bad air quality" days then before. I also found this: Air pollution linked to increases in violent criminal behavior More information: Jesse Burkhardt et al. The effect of pollution on crime: Evidence from data on particulate matter and ozone, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2019.102267 Jesse Burkhardt et al. The relationship between monthly air pollution and violent crime across the United States, Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy (2019). DOI: 10.1080/21606544.2019.1630014 Jesse D. Berman et al. Acute Air Pollution Exposure and the Risk of Violent Behavior in the United States, Epidemiology (2019). DOI: 10.1097/EDE.0000000000001085 Journal information: Epidemiology Provided by Colorado State University https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-09-air-pollution-linked-violent-criminal.html https://phys.org/news/2019-10-exposure-air-pollution-violent-crime.html

The latest 95 and 100 HI I have ever experienced here!

I saw Kerry on Face the Nation recently talk about how the Paris accord doesn't go far enough. We need to have two thirds lower emissions by 2030 and achieve net carbon zero by 2050. Car makers are starting to do their part by shifting their production lines to electric and hybrid vehicles but the current administration, which is basically a puppet of the fossil fuel industry is trying to punish them for moving away from fossil fuels.

the subsidization of the fossil fuel industry needs to come to an end and (in a larger issue that also covers the chemical industry and the dangerous additives and pesticides we are exposed to and in our food that are banned by the EU), we need to get dark money out of politics altogether.

The problem is unregulated capitalism which results in oligarchs. The fossil fuel industry is a cartel run by oligarchs. This excellent book by Rachel Maddow outlines the connections between Putin and the fossil fuel industry. You might find this book interesting in how it ties everything together. I'm considering making it the subject of a future podcast. An eye-opening book (Blow Out) was written by Rachel Maddow which shows some of these connections as well as the connection between Russia and the fossil fuel industry. It all makes sense when you consider how lenient Trump has been with the fossil fuel industry and his cozy relationship with Trump. It also makes sense when you think of Russian interference and how Facebook looked the other way when they were being paid in rubles for ads on their site. Companies like Facebook and Google greatly contribute to the problems of dark money in politics- that's why they are allowed to get away with so much invasive behavior (for which they get fined for in the billions by the EU.) https://www.npr.org/2019/10/02/766374077/it-all-ties-rachel-maddow-says-of-oil-and-gas-russia-and-democracy-in-blowout https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/magazine/rachel-maddow-trump.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-root-of-all-evils-the-fossil-fuel-industry-says-rachel-maddow/2019/10/03/14273cd6-de1a-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html And since this ties in with Russian oligarchs, this is a worthy read too. https://bulletin.represent.us/u-s-oligarchy-explain-research/ https://bulletin.represent.us/american-government-isnt-democracy/

well astronauts can definitely see the effects of climate change, Mark Kelly talked about how he's seen the planet turning brown because of deforestation, and where is all that burning carbon going? the sky

MSNBC has a great series on the climate catastrophe. They interviewed a scientist who used to work for the USDA, who has since left to work for Columbia university because the administration wouldn't let him publish his research. He showed that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere actually changes plant metabolism and makes our crops less nutritious, with lower levels of zinc and iron. They also sent people down to Guatemala to show how climate change is causing the mass migration of people from Central America, because they cant grow their crops down there anymore and are starving. The administration's own people told them this a year ago but they chose not to disclose it.

sounds like what a fossil fuel industry person would say. I can guarantee you that other industries, including the automobile industry, see the light and are getting out of the dirty fossil fuel business. The fossil fuel industry has cost us trillions of dollars and killed millions of people.

exactly- we're seeing the rise of tropical diseases already as well as much higher asthma rates and air pollution from fossil fuel emissions. The central of the country is getting hit with much more flooding and loses numbering billions of dollars per year and trillions per decade. corporations are now divesting themselves from the fossil fuel industry- they all know the cost of not doing anything is far greater.

Even John Kerry said that the Paris accord didn't go far enough- we need to reach net Carbon zero by 2050. I think the car companies may get there, they are making far more electric vehicles now and may well reach the goal of two thirds by 2030. The red states are suffering from climate change too, with farms in the nations heartland underwater. We've ceased all new gas and oil installations in NY and I see they've done the same in FL, which is a red state.

Dec 1992 caused a lot more damage because it lasted for 3 days. March 2010 had stronger winds here, but was of much shorter duration.

and we haven't since, that thing lasted for 3 days!

On this solemn day, one of my early weather memories was the extreme heat on 9/11/83..... I think JFK hit 100 that day? Was that their latest 100 on record? NYC hit 99, and I think that was their latest 99?

JFK's only 90 degree day in August- and the last for the year? That doesn't even begin to cover how humid it's been and the humidity is definitely way worse than the heat!

Got to 100 here on the south shore, might not happen again this year

99 here on the south shore too! Going for 100 today and think we'll make it with a downslope wind! BTW MJX hit 100 yesterday I think we should start measuring total heat using the heat index, since our humidity has been on the rise, total heat content needs to factor that in. A "hot" day should be a day with a HI of 90, an extremely hot day a day with a HI of 110. Tony is there any way to find out how many days we've had with a HI that high so far?

Glad we hit 90, 89 degree days are really annoying, if it's going to be hot it might as well hit 90

JFK must have felt a lot hotter than either LGA or the Park since the DP was near 80 there!

Thanks, it makes me wonder how many storms and canes we actually had in 1933, the record which was overtaken by 2005. It's possible that 1933 had more if the records from back then are that incomplete! About the AMO, I wonder if that cycle is of variable length, it seems like the earlier periods of the warm phase were somewhat dissimilar from each other (1950s-1960s), (1990s-2000s), etc.

Very interesting, so there hasn't been some sort of cyclic or pattern change that would cause this! How far back would you say that the HURDAT2 list is reasonably accurate, both on quantity and intensity?