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Dark Star

Meteorologist
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Posts posted by Dark Star

  1. 7 hours ago, winterwx21 said:

    Seems very likely that the Euro is overdone. It has over an inch of rain for our area this weekend, but we know from the short range models that most of the rain is likely to stay north and west for the weekend. I'll be surprised if our area sees anything today ..... just a slight chance. 

    Looks like, with very localized exceptions, you are going to be right...

  2. 7 minutes ago, nycwinter said:

    it does not feel like a real summers day...

    It takes a while for the blacktop and buildings to heat up and absorb the sun's rays, attic spaces to fill with hot air, day in and day out.  So even though April temperatures may say summer, there is a lot of all around warming to occur, not to mention heat loss during the cool dry nights.  

  3. 3 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

    Sweden is too conservative.

    The other Nordic nations are far better, they don't allow crap chemicals in their food, they don't allow corporations to run their political system, they don't have a diabetes epidemic going on and they have far higher literacy rates and a longer life expectancy and best of all, they are science based not money based.

     

    I've lived in Europe and they are MUCH healthier and most of my digestive and other health issues disappeared when I lived there.

    Guess who the police state is now.... this country.

    This is what happens when crapitalism  becomes an oligarchy, for the rich and the rich alone. That makes the entirety of society suffer when they get away with literal murder.

    Mr. Moss was able to obtain documents that support this entire story. Michael Moss stated, “What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive.” Mr. Moss interviewed over 300 people who had been involved, or were still involved, with the food industry. In this article, he relays examples of how certain foods were formulated to make products irresistible to consumers. Foods that he mentioned in the magazine article were Dr. Pepper soft drink, Prego spaghetti sauce, Lunchables with dessert, the line extension for Lay’s potato chips, and several other major processed foods.


    https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/04/26/990821079/cheap-legal-and-everywhere-how-food-companies-get-us-hooked-on-junk
     

    Capitalism is not the problem, its corruption.  Don't think there is less corruption in socialist states.  

    • Like 1
  4. 13 hours ago, MANDA said:

    100% agree.  The planet is what about 4.5 billion years old, give or take a half billion.  Just when exactly was the climate not changing?

    To think we're going to change anything by driving around in plug in cars and silencing cow farts is absurd.  Experiments to dim sunlight?

    Yeah, that will end well.

    In case anybody hasn't figured out, I am a conservative.  However, a simple graph indicates an anomalous increase in temperatures coinciding with the industrialization.  Since we can't predict weather 5 days in advance, there is no one model that can ever tell us conclusively that the global warming is or isn't a result of the emission of greenhouse gases.  Before it became fashionable to climb aboard the global warming train, there were a few scientists as early as the 1970s, modeling and theorizing that this was occurring.  While we cannot in practical terms eliminate fossil fuels immediately, there needs to be a long term energy plan, even if that means we risk flooding out most major coastal cities (from melting ice caps) to the point of massive population relocation, which will be extremely costly, and in the meantime, many deaths from increased flooding.  It won't be my problem, since I'll be long gone.  As for the cows, silly extremists haven't done the math to compare pre-European North America with its massive buffalo population.  

  5. 11 hours ago, Sundog said:

    There is natural variation in climate and then there's human induced changes. 

    Just like you can die of natural causes or of a drug overdose. One was a natural death, the other self inflicted. 

    Right now humanity is a major drug addict lol

    We can never be free and all forced to abide by the same edicts.  We are humans and are bound by human nature.  We cannot ever have zero emissions or zero waste as long as we live in an industrialized world (or society(s) in general).  There is no turning back now.  The only chance is education.  Education helps keep the population under control (voluntarily). 

    • Like 1
  6. 16 hours ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

    I could see it happening by 2050, earlier if AI figures it out quicker. The greatest thing about fusion is one of its biggest inhibitors. The movie the Saint with my buddy Val did a good job explaining this all the way back in the 90s. Practically free, unlimited energy is inherently its own worst enemy in a capitalist society.

    I would think the opposite?  Not sure how anything can be free under strict regulations?

  7. 1 hour ago, Sundog said:

    Nuclear power is the best solution for producing clean baseline power, and power that can be spun up quickly when there is an energy demand spike. You can't have full renewable when a lot of that is just not producing energy at a steady rate 24/7. Winds die down, the Sun goes down. 

    I don't believe battery technology is close to where it needs to be to store solar/wind energy to the point where if those two aren't producing any energy, that batteries can pick up the slack. Again, it's the need for a steady, baseline level of energy and very quick spin up of additional energy in the event of an energy demand spike where nuclear comes into play.

    Nuclear is very safe. Fukushima is not a good example. It was a 50 year old plant, next to the ocean, and in a major earthquake zone. Those are very specific environmental and geological conditions/dangers that are hard to replicate in many places around the world. For example, none of the factors that casued Fukishima to get damaged exist in large swaths of the USA. 

    The Earth doesn't care who polluted and how much humans pollute per capita in different countries. All it knows is that its heating up and it's getting bad. This notion that countries should be given time to catch up in terms of pollution since they were slower to industrialize is completely insane and not a serious positition if someone truly cares about the Earth. The technology TODAY didn't exist when the USA was industrializing. There is no excuse for China to be building TODAY dozens of new coal power plants since now there are many other options that simply didn't exist in the past. 

    I also disagree regarding the aerosols. One can say that solar is a type of futuristic technology. Certainly solar is a true deviation from the traditional "turn water into steam to turn a turbine" method of energy generation. If we didn't give it a chance then it would have never flourished into such an important energy source. 

    Aerosol usage is better than hoping the world does the right thing one day. I don't see why it would discourage the reductiuon of fossil fuels. If anything it may actually give the world time to organically shift over to renewables all while keeping the Earth from burning up in the meantime. 

    Perfectly thought out.  There is theory, then, there is reality.  I wouldn't say nuclear energy is totally safe.  Human nature insures that.  My biggest problem with nuclear energy is that we haven't solved the permanent storage of the waste.  Right now, it is stored at the production sites.  Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but one of the suspected reasons for the drone sightings was that they were looking for missing radioactive material.  

    • Like 1
  8. 6 minutes ago, eduggs said:

    Technically no energy source is completely renewable. Most of what we call renewable is directly or indirectly driven by the sun, which is very slowly exhausting its hydrogen fuel. Tidal energy is harnessed at the expense of a very minor deviation in the orbit of the moon. Eventually even these sources will be completely depleted.

    Obviously for our purposes they are infinitely renewable. A combination of solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and wave/ocean energy is entirely sufficient to fuel our energy needs. The huge expense associated with fully transitioning is the remaining obstacle. Continued advances in battery storage technology and transmission lines from isolated sources is needed in improve the economic viability of new projects. But we have long passed the time where the technological viability of 100% renewable is already there.

    Nuclear power can be a part of this solution/transition/process, but it's not needed. Fukushima Daiichi showed us once again that no technology is completely safe, and the consequences of a nuclear accident might be too severe to warrant the risk in some places or circumstances, particularly if other less dangerous energy sources are viable.

    China is the leading emitter of CO2 currently, but not per capita. And if you look back at the cumulative history of CO2 emissions, the US is far and away responsible for the most CO2 emissions. India is a growing emitter, but still lower down on the list, particularly per capita. Sure it's more effective to get all countries to work together, but certainly the US has a big responsibility to lead on this issue.

    The prudent thing to do is to implement everything at once - reduce GHG emissions, transition to renewable energy sources AND investigate strategies to reduce surface heating. The danger is that if we rely on unproven, futuristic technology to save us, that might lessen the urgency to transition away from fossil fuels. Venting a life-essential molecule out to space BTW is a terrible idea.

    You hit on the key, global cooperation.  However, the key to any economy is the cost of energy.  Those who choose to invest and rely on alternative sources of energy will not only lose out economically, but could in fact create a huge disparity in military readiness.  That is where we stand.  If you can get China and Russia to buy in, then full speed ahead.  

  9. 59 minutes ago, jm1220 said:

    Way beyond any of our lifetimes obviously, but in a couple hundred million years the Sun will heat up to an extent that our oceans will evaporate away. Our magnetic field will keep the water vapor from being leached out into space so our planet will be a gigantic pressurized teakettle pretty much. It’ll be hot like Venus but even more pressurized because of the water vapor. Fun! 

    Of course the immediate problem is CO2 and methane which will kill us a lot sooner if we don’t get it under control. 

    CO2 and Methane will not directly have an effect on human health.  It is a matter of time when the warming effect will melt the ice caps enough to begin flooding coastal areas, permanently.  Sorry, but I won't be around to see it...

    • Like 1
  10. 11 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

    we're going to have to learn how to pump that shit into outer space.

    They did a whole thing on ABC today for Earth Day about a certain kind of sand that absorbs CO2.  If sand can absorb CO2 and remove it from the air, then we can also pump excess water vapor into outer space.  Get rid of two greenhouse gases at once.

     

    Dunno.  The theory is that the oceans were absorbing the CO2 for a while, which would explain the brief cooldown during the early 1980's?  Recently, NJ wanted to install a sequestration operation where they would take CO2 from nearby plants in Linden, and pipe into the underground sea caverns in the Atlantic.  What would have prevented the gas from dislodging and percolating back to the surface?  Christie nixed the idea (probably a good thing?)

  11. 48 minutes ago, TWCCraig said:

    AI can only be so good as the data and observations that go into it. Less input data, more inaccuracy.

    Clouds are holding back temps a bit here. Need them to thin out to get into the 70's here and 80's inland.

    Media will always hire meteorologists to report the weather.  The field, as I found out, is VERY small, so I don't think people go into it necessarily think they can land a decent job (at least they shouldn't).  My one professor, Dr. Brotak even told us that back circa 1980.  By that time, it was too late to declare a minor in something else.  Dr. Brotak was let go a short time later.  We thought it was for being brutally honest, that there weren't many jobs in the field.

    • Like 3
  12. 11 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

    This was not any kind of advisory event.  We had like 2 hours of occasionally gusty winds and they died down before sunset.

    I think the winds gusted like once every 10 minutes for 2 hours.  Not even 50 mph here, maybe 40, but even that's pushing it.

    Very unique, at least from my observation.  The wind seemed stronger along the tree tops, but did not translate the same way down to the surface?

    • Like 1
  13. On 4/14/2025 at 7:39 AM, donsutherland1 said:

    Since 4/13 18z, Caribou picked up 2.6" of snow. The next event  of the two systems will bring very little snow and mainly rain/mixed precipitation. In contrast, the 4/13 18z GFS had shown the following amounts for snowfall during the period during which 2.6" fell: 10:1 ratio: 10.9"; Kuchera: 8.4"; and Snow Depth Change: 3.1".

    I have finally thrown in the towel for any more chances of snow this season.  It did look promising through February...

    • Like 1
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