MORFORD: Kneel Before The Meteorologist

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 9/28/5 | Mark Morford

[SmithL]

At last, one scientist BushCo will definitely -- albeit resentfully -- listen to. Sometimes.

So now we know. This is what it takes. This is how far the nation has to crumble and this is how many people have to die and this is how many tens of billions it has to cost and this is how far his dirt-low poll numbers have to fall before Bush will finally come out and say he agrees with one of those godforsaken gul-dang book-learned scientist types.

You know the ones. Those informed and well-educated data-crunchers he normally despises like a kid hates broccoli and whom he normally thinks are lower 'n a snake's belly to a mud puddle and whom the GOP normally treats the way a cockroach treats a dunghill. Which is to say, not very well at all.

It takes a hurricane. Check that: It takes two hurricanes of such lethal and undeniable force that even the Bush administration is forced to kneel in abject deference before the great altar of the professional "forecaster," a.k.a. the trained meteorologist, a.k.a. the atmospheric scientist, those smart nerdy button-down types most of whom work for the nonpartisan National Weather Service and who put out all those dire warnings about imminent storms and deadly heat waves and massive floods and who actually are, sorry Dubya, well-trained scientists with genuine university degrees and who can do all that complex math and research and other stuff Bush loathes the way Paris Hilton hates polysyllabic words.

And now, whenever these damnable weather dudes march into the Oval with bad news of some damnable upcoming lethal storm readying itself to smash into the nation, well, Bush has to wake up from the hammock and take notice...

[SmithL]

Morfordite Alert

You've been warned!

[KarlInOhio]

Kneel Before The Meteorologist

Ick!

[HiTech RedNeck]

Vitriol squared?

[HiTech RedNeck]

Shoot, call all the evos, they'll love this guy.

[Paradox]

I dunno, but I listen to Dr. Gray (who makes the famous yearly hurricane predictions) and Max Mayfield, of the National Hurricane Center. Both of them say global warming isn't responsible for the upswing in hurricanes.

[Piquaboy]

I will not kneel before Hose Nose Strisand. She must be a trained one since whe is always running off at the mouth about global warming.

[dirtboy]

Check that: It takes two hurricanes of such lethal and undeniable force that even the Bush administration is forced to kneel in abject deference before the great altar of the professional "forecaster," a.k.a. the trained meteorologist, a.k.a. the atmospheric scientist, those smart nerdy button-down types most of whom work for the nonpartisan National Weather Service and who put out all those dire warnings about imminent storms and deadly heat waves and massive floods and who actually are, sorry Dubya, well-trained scientists with genuine university degrees and who can do all that complex math and research and other stuff Bush loathes the way Paris Hilton hates polysyllabic words.

I'd like to buy a period or two, Pat...

And beyond writing the mother of all run-on sentences (and Miss Morford knows a thing or two about run-ons), if Morford bothered researching those who forecast hurricanes for a living, they would, to a man, tell Moffie that this is a natural cycle.

But Moffie isn't into what comes naturally anyway.

[Moose4]

Well, Miss Morford is an expert on kneeling before men. And bending over for them, and lying on his stomach in front of them, and...

}:-)4

[6SJ7]

What I would pay if once, just once, some reporter would ask, "Ms. Strisand, can you name a so-called 'greenhouse gas'?"

[Piquaboy]

You or I will not hold our breath until this happens.

[SmithL]

I'd like to buy a period or two, Pat...

Not just yet, . . .

[buffyt]

But Babs Streisand says it IS gloBULL warming that is causing them.... The brilliant high school drop out Babs. She forgets that there were several cat. 5 storms back when she was growing up.

[buffyt]

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

GOOD ONE!!!!

[hombre_sincero]

Have you noticed - during the clintoon years, ALL the so-called "meteorologists" spouted the same party line about the global warming and El Nino - La Nina - over and over and over until the sheeples responded eyes-glazed over --- "Yes, massa!"

When Bush was elected, we actually went back to, at least for a while, weather forecasts on the boob tube.

Lately, there has been this more subtle attempt at brainwashing with all the emphasis on "record high temperature ... averages" Emphasizing possible record highs ,and never mentioning the temps never made it that far - but if they did ...!!!

The "meteorologists" are back to their leftist techniques again using the power of "statistics" to create averages that will reflect whatever they want. As long as it reflects BAD on this country.

Example - Here where I live, a semi-rain forest region (Hot Springs, Arkansas) it averages 50-60+ inches of rain and the temperature range (actual) is from -10 to 110 - not always and not often. The local weather is always crying about the "drought conditions" and the "record avg heat" we are experiencing ... Funny part is - I have only watered my lawn 2 or 3 times this year, and I think the temperature actually broke 100 only once or twice. this year ---- very nice and mild year. BUT it did average higher overall since the winter also was a bit warmer average (after record cold!) and the average highs went up from the lack of cold fronts that occasionally make it down this far in summer.

Anyway -- ramble on here .....

The new leftist propaganda tool in America --- your neighborhood "meteorologist"!

Pay attention to what and HOW they say the weather! Especially the HOW!

[buffyt]

author's email mmorford@sfgate.com

[Sam Cree]

A truly uninformed article. It attempts to make a point about the irony of a president who doesn't take global warming seriesly having to listen to hurricane scientists. But, as you point out, somehow the author isn't clued in to the fact that the most prominent hurricane scientists, Gray and Mayfield, are not in the global warming camp, at least so far as hurricanes are concerned. Gray isn't in it at all.

OTOH, I believe that it is documented that Bush is, in fact, in the global warming camp.

There's lots more ignorance in the article, like the complaint about the deforestation of the US, which is false, the opposite has occurred. In fact there is a study out claiming that the US as a country removes more carbon from the air than it emits, due to reforestation.

[Old Professer]

The most insidious thing the press has managed is changing average to normal; by that simple technique, any variation can be made a cause for alarm.

[Old Professer]

A new study concludes that heat-stressed trees are net out-gassers.

[Theophilus]

I dunno, but I listen to Dr. Gray (who makes the famous yearly hurricane predictions) and Max Mayfield, of the National Hurricane Center. Both of them say global warming isn't responsible for the upswing in hurricanes.

I think that the only honest answer to notion of global warming causing hurricanes is "I don't know" because we don't know whether the globe is warming, because we don't know what the temperature of the globe is, because we don't know how to take the temperature of the globe. The epistemology on the subject is thiner than the top layer of molecules of the ocean, which, BTW, are believed to play a huge role in the function and formation of waves and the weather.

I think that every student should be taught epistemology before science and that every subsequent science course should be prefaced by at least a weeks refresher on epistemology. Every article and op-ed piece on a science subject should also be accompanied by at least a sentence or two on the epistemology of the science being considered.

The closest I ever got to this was the discussion of "significant figures" in chemistry class: the accuracy of the final answer can be no greater than the least accurate measurement.

[Theophilus]

it's evident that this homo? makes science a religion but it's probably not his first religion which is probably himself.