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JustinRP37

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Posts posted by JustinRP37

  1. 1 hour ago, ineedsnow said:

    media gone wild if this were to happen 

     

    gfs_mslp_pcpn_atl_64.png

    Cuba looks like a crooked nose in between two crazy eyes. Too bad it couldn't be some dumb twin names like Hurricane Bert and Ernie. 

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  2. 32 minutes ago, Dark Star said:

    Unfortunately it is.  Although, as you might have guessed, I am far right, but I believe that the global warming is a result of the burning of fossil fuels.  I differ in the approach of how to solve it.  

    I hear you there. I don't think politics will solve it. It is a humanity issue. I don't care for politics one way or the other. I just want to live my life, study infectious disease and climate change, and keep my family happy. I would like to think that left, right, center, would all agree that we need to change but nobody will ever agree in the solution. Just like I mentioned bioheat must be a major part for our area.

    As for the weather, we are in the doldrums right now of boring weather. Wake up, smoke, go to bed, smoke, comfortable temperatures but this has been a tough week of weather. Hoping we push this $hit out of here. 

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  3. 1 hour ago, LibertyBell said:

    Even though the left (I wouldn't say it's most of the left, maybe a very small portion?) doesn't like nuclear fission, I find it understandable-- those people are stuck in the past of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and maybe even Fukushima.  Those concerns are reasonable even if they are wrong (just don't build a nuclear power plant near a fault line), I don't get the right's issue with renewables.  Are they aware that Texas has the highest renewable capacity of any state in the country?  It seems to me it's not the right that is opposed to renewables, it's the fossil fuel industry that feeds the right that is opposed to them.

     

    Nuclear will have to play and more important role as a bridge fuel to a sustainable future. 

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  4. 28 minutes ago, lee59 said:

    I believe one of the issues with wind and solar energy is that it is about 30 to 40  percent efficient at converting their energy to electricity. Oil and gas have much higher efficiency ratings. I'm sure we will continue to make progress in efficiency improvement for renewables as time goes by. In the mean time oil and gas will be number one if folks want to keep their standard of living the way it is. There are plenty of alternatives that I believe will some day take over and oil and gas will go by the way of the dinosaur. I have a hybrid pick up, great gas mileage and no worries about how far I have to travel. I think a good choice as we gradually go from oil to alternatives.

    Oil and gas are also in the 35-60% efficiency rate. Oil is lower than gas and coal is the worst at about 33%

  5. 1 hour ago, Sundog said:

    1. I see no evidence that we are trying to deplete all fossil fuel energy before switching over. And who are you referring to? Americans? The West? Asia? The whole world?

    2. 90% of the problem IS from outside the USA. The United States produces about 10% of global emissions annually. 

    3. The Earth doesn't CARE about per capita pollution. It doesn't care if 100 people or 10 billion people are producing the greenhouse gases. All it knows and feels is the total amount emitted. 

    4. China installed about 100GW of energy from coal in only ten years, which going by the average sized coal plant translates to roughly 250 new coal plants. It doesn't matter if they also increased their renewable energy. Remember the Earth doesn't care about that, it only cares about total emissions, and China built a record amount of literally the worst type of energy. 

    5. Since renewable technology took off and was working at scale, we have had a Democratic president for 12 of the last 16 years. 

    6. People are putting profits ahead of the environment all over the world, and especially the third world. 

    7. We are currently running a planetary scale geoengineering experiment RIGHT NOW. What else would you call altering the atmospheric composition of an entire planet? Letting this experiment run its course is simply not an option. 

    8. I don't think we'll get to 800ppm, most of the world except Africa has fallen below replacement rate. 

    9. I am glad that you acknowledge that fossil fuels brought about the modern technological age and vastly improved humanity's standard of living. 

    10. In my ideal world there is no fossil fuel use anywhere in the world. But I'm not holding out hope. 

    I think annual aerosol injections to bring temps down to 1C cooler than present will give humanity enough time to transition. I really think this is the only practical solution. 

    I was referring to the whole world. I don’t see anyone not wanting to deplete. 

    2) and 3) The USA is still responsible for 13-15% of global emissions, and per capita definitely does matter. It shows how efficient a society is or not. The USA alone is responsible for about 25% of global emissions since the start of the Industrial Revolution. It shows that we have made great strides in this area. 

    4) Yes, I’m aware, but China also manufactures the vast majority of products around the world. Move that elsewhere, and those coal plants are as badly needed.

    5) I don’t care much for politics or politicians. They are mostly the scum of the earth. Presidents typically don’t have much power, but Congress tends to set environmental policy and funding. 

    6 and 7 absolutely agree. That’s why I said we could consider what we are doing geoengineering. 

    8) I think we will get close. When I was born, we were under 350 ppm. Today, we are at 425. 

    My background is in sustainability, and it is also my favorite course to teach at the university level. I have honestly never faced the level of hostility in my career as we are facing now in higher education. We can hope for a better future, but with cancer rates rising, forever chemicals everywhere, and microplastics linked to infertility and cancer, it is bleak. 

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  6. Just now, LibertyBell said:

     Only economists know that growth is infinite on a finite planet. 

    This math really doesn't work, we are already consuming resources at twice the rate that the planet can replace them.  It's why this planet has a population ceiling of around 11 billion humans.

    And we really don't want to find out what first-hand what happens when populations overshoot their carrying capacity. Plenty of examples in the natural world shows it is pain and suffering and in some areas of the world, we are already seeing that. 

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  7. 2 hours ago, Sundog said:

    Don I'm interested only in solutions that have a possibility of working. 

    The USA going carbon neutral TOMORROW won't solve this problem. 

    The USA can geoengineer the solution on its own. Why do we need their permission?

    Does China ask us for permission to pollute the atmosphere? Did they ask permission to build roughly 250 coal plants over the last 10 years?

    Who's to say the aerosols caused the monsoon to fail? Why can't it be greenhouse gas induced climate change that did it?

    Nothing will get solved as long as 90% of the problem lies outside the USA's borders.  

    If they can pollute the atmosphere freely, then we can inject aerosols into it if we want to as well. 

     

    We do have plenty of options that WILL work. But the problem is the stakeholders that make massive amounts of money off fossil fuels don't want to change until the reserves they have purchased are fully depleted. 90% of the issues is NOT from outside the USA. The USA is still the second-biggest producer of greenhouse gasses with a relatively small population. Our per capita emission is around 14.2 tonnes per person, whereas China is 8.9, and India 1.9. Despite the fact that China is basically the manufacturer for the world (which does need to change). Yes, China has added more coal in the past decade, but it is also producing more and more renewables each year. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-more-records-with-massive-build-up-of-wind-and-solar-power). China is likely at its peak gasoline consumption now as it has massively electrified its vehicle fleet (https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-fuel-demand-may-have-passed-its-peak-iea-says-2025-02-13/). 

    Unfortunately for us, we have a president that does not want to build any wind power or any renewables. (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo) (https://ctmirror.org/2025/08/04/trump-administration-cancels-plans-to-develop-new-offshore-wind-projects/). And is also actively trying to destroy any research on greenhouse gasses (https://www.npr.org/2025/08/04/nx-s1-5453731/nasa-carbon-dioxide-satellite-mission-threatened). 

    The technology exists for us to decarbonize rapidly, and it will not all be from one area. Many say to ban all oil-fired boilers in homes, but the fastest way to decarbonize heat in the Northeast is not getting rid of oil burners but switching them to primarily biofuels. We have the technology, but just like people were wary of electricity back when it was being brought into the house, we are facing a highly anti-science environment right now. Sadly, our present-day life is really reminding me of Idiocracy. People will put profits above all else. Only economists know that growth is infinite on a finite planet. 

    Geoengineering is also highly risky. A miscalculation could be an extinction-level event, although the same can be said for the pathway we are on now. Once global CO2 levels hit 800 ppm, we are likely looking at a dead ocean. We could hit this by 2100 on our current track. 

    The other thing I always tell my students is to look around... All this human development is in the last 200 years for the most part. Our lives have drastically improved, but now it is time to make sure we still have a future. Literally go back just two human generations, and most families in the USA did not have a car for every driving-age person. They may have had 1 for the whole family. We are incredibly lucky to be alive today when, all things being equal, life has never been easier to live (obviously, there are still struggles, but we aren't hunting every day, building fires, salting our meat to keep it longer, etc.). We have refrigerators, HVAC, cars, trains, etc. Now we just need to encourage engineers and scientists to help us build a better, more sustainable future. 

     

  8. 2 hours ago, Wxoutlooksblog said:

    I'm going to partially disagree with a some things that have been said. Firstly, I think the onshore flow around the relatively cool HP is mostly this week. Then from what I'm looking at there is a fairly brief spell of warmer/hotter weather later in week #2 pending no significant tropical activity up our way. GFS thinks there will be some.  Then it appears a fresh Canadian air mass drops southeast bringing possibly a spell of well below normal temperatures by sometime during week #3. After that I speculate purely based on the pattern that we may see one last or the second to last spell of heat as the ridge builds around on the return flow of that air mass probably not long duration but we'll see. All in all, it looks like an average to slightly above average August temperature-wise.

    WX/PT

    I don’t see any of this “cool”. Even today was supposed to be below average by a few degrees, yet most of the area is at or above average by a few degrees for a high. The whole week was supposed to be average to below average and moderated warmer as it got closer. I do remember you calling for a cooler summer too back in April/May, and so far this has been an impressively hot/humid summer most of the summer. Sure, we had a slow start, but it hasn’t been a cool summer. 
     

    @BxEngineenjoy the cruise. If you are in the Getaway we will be on it next week. Now I expect a major hurricane to send us to Canada because that’s my luck! 

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  9. First Yankees game in 6 years for me. Good Lord, this team is garbage. And the stadium is 50/50 Yankees/Phillies fans. What has happened to this once-legendary team? Oh, wait, Hal isn’t George. How is Boone still managing this team? 

    It is hot in the sun, though. Thankfully, the humidity isn’t too crazy. There was a lot of smoke up in Patterson this morning. 

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  10. 4 minutes ago, dendrite said:

    12z gfs shows how easy it is for the cold shots to fail and the warmth to win out after early next week.

    Anything this time of year that projects slightly below average should almost always be bumped to ‘average’ unless the air mass is considerably below average and dry. The reason being is that overnight lows in the summer now are almost always above average because of humidity. It is very hard to get a below-average low lately, even if the daytime temps are right around or just slightly below average. 

  11. I am thoroughly impressed with the humidity this summer. At least the condensate lines won’t have as much trouble since they are flowing like a faucet! No chance for the water to stagnate! But our lab is still reporting very high tick activity. We should be getting out of peak nymph season before the larvae come out in August. The good thing about larvae is that they typically don’t carry disease since they haven’t fed on anything yet. 

     

    I used to consider winter and summer as tied for my favorite season, but I am starting to enjoy winter the most. I went outside to watch the fireflies last night for 5 minutes and received over 5 mosquito bites. Summer is great though when you don’t have to work and are in the water.

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  12. This week’s weather does not look as hot or prolonged as we originally thought. Looking like upper 70s low 80s for me by Thursday. Mid 90s Monday and Tuesday. That is if the models that didn’t get today right are right. Also looks like a quite cloudy week ahead. It does look humid though all week. 

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