etudiant

Interesting, so it was still held during the Spanish Flu outbreak?

Ticks are the worst, but people love deer, which are their adult vector, so they flourish. I'd read that ticks will succumb to a very cold and dry climate, which unfortunately leaves out this winter. So avoid greenery and tall grass this year.

It may in fact be a lot easier. I expect travel to take a serious hit as people cocoon for the duration of the outbreak. So there will be more interest in storm news as well as fewer others on the road.

We've had flu vaccines for many years, but they work only partially, maybe 70% if we're lucky. I doubt the vaccine for this bug will perform much better. For people over 50, they should try really hard not to catch it. That is the best advice imho.

Flu vaccine is often not very effective, as there are many different flu variants. This virus may be equally unpredictable, just a lot more dangerous. Meanwhile, we are in the early stages of discovering the downside to a globalized economy, it busts all over rather than in pieces. The shortage of masks is just an early symptom, medicines and chips will soon follow. They all reflect the collapse of production in China.

No expert, but am struck how closely the recent Arctic ice area is tracking the 2012 values. See: https://cryospherecomputing.tk May just be coincidence, but perhaps an early indication of history repeating.

Even more illuminating than their current longer term forecasts presumably...

Actually, there has been good progress, with the performance of the devices improving by about a factor of 10 every decade since the 1950s. Based on that trend, we should have working prototypes in another decade or so, but the effort is desultory at best. The international centerpiece of fusion is the ITER reactor in France. It was supposed to be ready by 2010, now expected to be finished by 2025, with the first real fusion experiments around 2035 - 2040. Basically a UN managed research effort, makes herding cats look easy. The problem is that cheap gas and subsidized wind/solar drained any urgency from the search for more energy, so this is run as a hobby effort, no urgency at all. I've visited the ITER site, no weekend work, single shifts, a handful of workers, lots of visiting dignitaries and probably masses of administrators behind the scenes in Geneva and elsewhere.

Is there a drought issue, given a warmer than usual climate with a sub par snowpack?

Thank you, Isotherm, for bringing us all back to the facts! This is the kind of reality check that is often missing in these discussions.

Presume this is the IBM sponsored weather service. I'll certainly give it a try, there is surely a need for a detailed short term weather service.

Not a stance that I agree with. Pension money is inherently long term oriented, they are seriously interested in this issue. I think that a frank discussion in front of a bunch of no BS money managers would be enlightening and I'm sorry the field was left to the skeptics.

Honestly, at well over 10,000 feet, it does get colder, even in Hawaii. It does switch to extensive fog during the summer.

Nothing at all wrong with KIlbeggan Irish Oats, they are actually delicious. While they are not instant, they are organic. Can be had as Irish Oatmeal Cookies if instant convenience is essential. Guiness or Harp both go well with them.

Absolutely correct on the human impact, 74/75 was modest, the worst was in 2009, when 171 people died in Victoria.

A quick look at the record indicates that the 1974-75 fire season in Australia was by far the worst in terms of acreage, with over 100 million acres burned. No other year comes close. The burn to date for this season is about 15 million acres, still a huge area, but again not in the same league.

Thought the ice melt was accelerated that year by a significant storm, so it is actually somewhat a cautionary input. Combine such a storm with a really warm ocean influx, it would set dramatic new lows.

Suspect that here in the US, it won't be till Mar-a- Lago is flooded, not sure what a comparable event would be in China, but perhaps Hong Kong might serve,,,

Arson seems very far fetched, who by and for what purpose are obvious questions, plus this is a nation wide problem, too big for a bunch of fire bugs imho. What does however seem plausible is that poor range management is a major factor. Afaik, the aborigines used fire as a control tool, preventing the kind of fuel load buildup thatsupports massive fires. More recent policy has been to prevent fires more aggressively, so the vegetation has not been thinned as before. This seems quite similar to the recent California fires, likewise made more intense by the abundance of fuel resulting from an extended period without fires. That unchecked growth combined with a super hot summer is a recipe for disaster, as is now apparent.

Why blame the model? The weather has been very volatile the past couple of months, so I think it is not unreasonable if the models behave similarly.

The forecast map suggests a warmer than usual Alaska, which was indeed the case until recently. However, there appears to have been a shift towards much colder since about the start of winter on Dec 22, with much below normal temperatures. So perhaps there will be some revision in the near future..

Careful about that, that was in 2015. The Arctic ice is in continuous flux, rotating around the pole with the older ice getting dumped down the Fram Strait between Greenland and Iceland. Very little Arctic ice is permanently fixed to the shores, mainly it gradually circulates around the pole. That is why the north coast of Iceland is littered with driftwood originating in Siberia. Afaik, there is nothing like the really old (100,000 to 2,000,000 years old) ice found in Antarctica in the north polar ice. That ice is all sea ice, totally vulnerable to a warm summer melt and it is not very useful to focus on the bits that are 3-5 years old, they just reflect whether the last few summers have been warmer or colder than usual.

While that is a forecast for Jan 1-6 of 2020, not of the temperatures now, it is pretty chilly already, with Fairbanks around 25 below zero F. Quite a swing from earlier.

I think we're basically in violent agreement, but really all you need to do is to fly over the western US. The landscape is blighted as far as the eye can see from 35000 feet by 1000 foot diameter irrigated fields, cooling the atmosphere and draining the aquifers to produce crops no one wants. I cannot see that as a natural process, no matter how hard I try.

Perhaps it would be easier if we accept that humans are in fact geoengineering right now. That may help put the risk of deliberate geoengineering into perspective.