Posted on January 3, 2013 by Anthony Watts
No, really, they must have been on crack when they came up with this one. I have no other explanation that works.
First a primer. What is “Space Weather”? Wikipedia (agreed not the best source but humor me, at least they understand the basics) says that it is:
Space weather is the concept of changing environmental conditions in near-Earth spaceor the space from the Sun’s atmosphere to the Earth’s atmosphere. It is distinct from the concept of weather within the Earth’s planetary atmosphere (troposphere and stratosphere).
You can see what that’s all about at NASA’s spaceweather.com
Note the “distinct from the concept of weather”.
Now, try to wrap your mind around that and this image below and figure out how they managed to get space weather to burn down the Empire State Building.
Yes that’s right, Space Weather. They ask the question “Ever thought about what would happen if Earth’s temperature reached 900 degrees like on Venus? Chances are it won’t be a good day! Buildings are reduced to dust in moments! Watch Deadliest Space Weather only on The Weather Channel, Thursdays at 9”
When I first saw this, I thought to myself “this has to be some sort of spoof”. Sadly, no. Here it is on TWC’s website:
But wait, there’s more! Space Weather causes acid rain and two-eyed cyclones too!
The descriptions:
- A bad day on Earth is nothing compared to a day on Venus! Winds create a massive cyclone with two eyes and rain that turns life forms into a pillar of carbon! Find out more on Deadliest Space Weather, only on The Weather Channel, Thursdays at 9pm!
- Imagine acid rain that can eat through solid steel! This isn’t the plot of a Hollywood disaster movie, it’s weather happening now in our solar system! See more extreme weather on Deadliest Space Weather, Thursdays at 9 on The Weather Channel!
Do they even hire science or meteorology majors at TWC anymore?
I’m just stunned. This has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.
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Among the many comments, one from my friend and TWC founder, John Coleman who I worked with as his first Director of Meteorology in 1982:
John Coleman says:
January 3, 2013 at 4:19 pm
As founder of The Weather Channel I am deeply saddened by what has become of my life’s work. I poured everything I had at the prime of my life into creating a basic channel that was focused on a mission to provide accurate and complete weather information for their location and the rest of our nation within a few minutes to everyone who tuned in. As televsion whiz kids have replaced adults and dedicated meteorologists the channel has been reduced to a hodge podge of silliness. Nothing against the many fine people who work there. But, a curse upon their leaders.
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Nothing surprises me when you run by the mental midgets from NBC (nothing but crap).
If it seemed like retiring EPA Chief Lisa Jackson carried out her job with a religious zeal, you’d be right.
Barack Obama’s pick as his first EPA administrator told a 2010 National Council of Churches conference in New Orleans that government and religious leaders must unite in their “moral obligation” to heal the planet and “build on the religious and moral reasons for being good stewards of our environment.”
“The question now is, ‘What we can do?’” the green-church devotee concluded, adding that her efforts were blessed by the White House’s Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership.
Her legion of Washington media disciples - who would have condemned such moral bravado by the Religious Right - ignored her rhetoric. But in punishing those she deems carbon sinners, Lisa Jackson has done enormous harm to American workers.
Today, thousands of coal miners are without work as her power plant regulations (backed by a president who embraced Jackson’s crusade, calling global warming “one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation") have bankrupted mining companies such as Patriot Coal and forced others such as OhioAmerica and Alpha Natural Resources to downsize. An oil opponent, Jackson successfully lobbied the president to reject the transcontinental Keystone Pipeline, costing the U.S. some 20,000 jobs. Her global warming zeal extended to autos when she took the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE) away from the Transportation Department - mandating that auto companies meet a pie-in-the-sky standard of 54.5 mpg by 2025 in an attempt to eliminate the internal combustion engine (the industry is spending millions on lobbying to water down the rules).
Jackson’s holy war created a rogue agency unanswerable to Congress. Her coal and CAFE edicts were done without the input of America’s elected representatives, creating a backlash that has led to endless hearings before Congressional Republicans. Despite the House revolt, Jackson’s agency churned on with its wave of rules. The resulting job consequences were illustrated in a dramatic photo-op with coal miners and Mitt Romney during the 2012 campaign at a Murray Energy facility in Ohio - an event met with a near blackout by national media.
Rumors abound that Jackson’s resignation is the result of controversy over secret e-mails that Jackson authored exposing her War on Coal. But her public actions are scandalous enough. Having forced the shutdown of dozens of coal plants, the EPA chief dropped one final bomb before Election Day - announcing carbon caps that effectively end new coal plant construction in the U.S.
“This agency (knows) no bounds,” said Chris Hamilton, senior V.P. of the West Virginia Coal Association after the new rules were announced. “Their actions don’t take into consideration people’s livelihoods, jobs, or the existing liability of energy companies.”
With more regulations in the pipeline covering everything from “environmental justice” (Jackson subscribes to the radical theory that the location of industrial plants discriminates against poor minorities) to natural gas fracking, the reign of Jackson cannot end soon enough.
By Joseph D’Aleo, Op Ed Contributor
In 2007, a divided Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency must treat carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as “pollutants,” and must therefore analyze whether the increasing concentrations in atmospheric carbon might reasonably be anticipated to endanger human health and welfare. The court may be on the verge of facing this issue once again.
To be clear, the court did not mandate regulation in 2007; rather, it mandated that the EPA go through what is known as an “Endangerment Finding” process. The EPA did so and on Dec. 15, 2009, issued its ruling that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases must be regulated. This EPA finding and associated rulings were immediately challenged in the federal D.C. Circuit Court, which initially ruled in favor of the EPA.
Given the two dissenting judges in the circuit’s en banc decision just before Christmas, the matter will very likely go to the Supreme Court.
If allowed to stand, the very existence of the EPA’s Endangerment Finding requires regulation that would significantly increase U.S. fossil fuel and electricity prices—negatively affecting job creation as well as energy, economic and national security.
To many scientists, this situation seems incredible, given the ample evidence that the EPA’s finding is flawed. In its finding, the EPA claimed with 90 to 99 percent certainty that observed warming in the latter half of the 20th century resulted from human activity. The EPA bases its finding upon three “lines of evidence,” none of which hews to the most credible empirical data available.
First, the EPA claims that the global average surface temperature has been rising in a dangerous fashion over the last 50 years, in large part due to human-caused increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. But “global warming” has not been global, nor has it even set records in the regions where warming has occurred. For example, over this time period, while the Arctic has warmed, the tropical oceans had a flat trend, and the Antarctic was cooling. The most significant warming during this period occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, north of the tropics. But over the last 130 years, the 1930s still has the most U.S. state high temperature records. Over the past 50 years, there were more new state record lows set than record highs. In fact, roughly 70 percent of the current state record highs were set before 1940.
Second, the EPA argues that in the tropics, the upper troposphere is warming faster than the lower troposphere, and the lower troposphere is warming faster than the surface, all due to rising carbon concentrations. This is totally at odds with multiple robust, consistent, independently derived empirical data sets, all showing no statistically significant positive (or negative) trend in temperature, and thus no difference in trend by altitude.
Third, the EPA relied upon climate models predicated on this theory. All of these models fail standard model validation and forecast reliability tests. The models all forecast rising temperatures beyond 2000, although the global average surface temperature has actually been flat. This is not surprising because the EPA never carried out any published forecast reliability tests.
The bottom line is that no scientist or team of scientists has come up with an empirically validated theory proving what the EPA claims it knows with 90 to 99 percent certainty. Moreover, if the EPA’s three lines of evidence are so easily refuted, then the EPA’s strong claim of causality, that higher carbon emissions affect sea levels and severe storm, flood and drought frequency, is on ever shakier ground. This is an inevitable problem when a person or agency tries to prove too much.
Joseph D’Aleo, Certified Consulting Meteorologist, Fellow of the American Meteorological Society
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A full op ed with 12 signatories now posted on WUWT. Jackson’s departure Details to follow. Jackson’s departure related to the fake email names and emails in which she promises to crucify energy providers had congressional testimony as a big part of her 2013. But the damage is done. They are issuing hundreds of regulations (as many as 95 in one day) that Obama said we can always review and remove but that requires the approval of both house and senate and signature by the President. Industry and energy will be facing a regulatory nightmare for years to come because of the radical environmentalism of Jackson.