Re: from my "uneducated view"
Posted by Mike_Doran on 7/18/2009, 2:45 am
Thanks.

A few things worth stating.

In 1997-8 I was living in Los Angeles during the 500 year El Nino.  Rain came down one day so hard it sounded like a train and filled a 5 gallon wastebasket full of water.  Having grown up in Minnesota, I was amazed by this rain.  I have had a funnel cloud that eventually killed a few miles away go right over my head in Minnesota, so I know what severe weather and hard rain is.  But this rain was ridiculas.  I began researching and debating weather and climate.  I also started to debate on several climate change bbs.  I debated on an early CNN bb and the New York Times bb. On the NY Times bb I debated every day for five years with an operational meteorologist on the climate change thread.  Every day.  Until 2003 when I called a tropical storm 45 days out.  That's right, 45 days out.  He called it using a model 4 days out.  I began to taunt him that the score was 45-4 and he didn't like that.  Sometimes I cannot help being competitive.  This is when I was starting to use electrics and strike images.  You think the ideas are garbled now--in 2003 it was really bad.  I always could see the answer before I could write the math behind it--like that in college even taking 5000 level math courses.  I am no dummy--I was a National Merit Scholar in High School and I passed the hardest Bar Exam in the nation on my first try.  But this is not easy stuff to think about.  I also am very weird in that my father was a meteorologist in the USAF when I was born, and when my daughter was born and I was at home watching her (babies sleep alot), and the better half was at work, I would turn on the weather channel and literally stare for hours at cloud patterns that would come up on radar and see if I could 'see' patterns.  So I will admit I am a really weird person who finds that kind of thing interesting.

My views back when I first started debating climate change were very much like Mr. Williams here.  I was a warmer, taken in by what I had seen with my own eyes with the big El Nino.  Also I am a pretty good researcher, and the internet offered a lot of material to read up on in the climate change debate.  And also as I have pointed out, years ago when I was in the military my job involved electronics. So the electrics thing was always there, but it wasn't part of the debate at first.  At some point I could mouth the words of a 'skeptic' as well if not better than a skeptic could, and, of course, the warmers arguments had been mine.  From there, the electrics ideas began to formulate, and the did so with a mountain of research that was coming in from a number of directions.  Then the tools -- the strike data images in real time, like from lightningstorm.com started to come in.

So let me give you an example.  When I post here about the rising SOI index, and how it causes there to be a regional potential difference that supports a tropical storm or severe weather, I have seen with my own eyes lightning patterns rise in the CONUS from lightning storm dot com with that index moving. 

And so when I mentioned that Dolores probably was behind, generally, an increase in strikes in the CONUS, it was also in the context of the SOI index FALLING (and sure enough a WPAC storm starting to RI), so THAT wasn't the cause of all those strikes.  There is some complexity involved.

What I try to do is back up what my views are with links and data.  Everyone it seems has opinions, and I try not to disrespect other posters and there ideas and when I do debate, which I am not shy about, I like to back up my bs with some facts.  It doesn't bother me that Doug is a skeptic in the least, nor that Tom wants to ignore me.  I have had way worse things said about me and even my ideas.

It's okay.  A good idea is like butter in cream.  When you churn it around, like butter, it always comes to the top.
16
In this thread:
Near-Constant Lightning/Thunder - B-Lowcountry, 7/16/2009, 8:40 pm
< Return to the front page of the: message board | monthly archive this page is in
Post A Reply
This thread has been archived and can no longer receive replies.