Lovely weather we’re having

i was explaining the ‘polar vortex’ to the wife last night, noting that it was something like 30 in Nome. when frigid arctic air dips down due to a wonky jet stream, things up north warm up a bit.

and the jet stream has been wonky as a motherfucker these last few years.

OT: I knew something was fishy with the Schiavo family foundation getting involved with Jahi’s family but it’s worse than that. Hardcore rightwing nutjob Catholic reality deniers turning one family’s pain into a three-ring circus (and forcing pediatric medical professionals to care for a corpse for weeks):

http://docbastard.blogspot.com.....ation.html

Paul Byrne.

Dude uses some freaky rhetoric, which I have been seeing repeated by others in web comments. These are people who object to organ donation for religious reasons but have to find some other excuse to push this agenda. Probably the same people pushing the “story” (it’s a “witness” if you’ve ever been around evangelicals, complete with lying for Jesus) of Zack Dunlap, who “woke up” from brain death. It’s very, very clear that the story is missing some parts, like the fact that he was probably taken off respirator as part of a routine test for brain function, which he passed, and that if their “witness” were really true, the family would be suing the hospital for malpractice, not celebrating a “miraculous” recovery.

re-certified MSM conservative intellectual and (possible) leader of civilizing forces Newton Leroy Gingrich says climate change is no big deal cause it was hot and wet for the dinosaurs, so our agriculture and coastal and sun-belt cities will be fine.

also, too, do MSMers talking about the cold vortex mention it’s having no apparent effect on the three year and counting drought in California, the place most of our food comes from?

We’re coming off two years of below-normal precipitation,” says Allan Haynes, a hydrologist with the California and Nevada River Forecast Center. “We’ve had an exceptionally dry past 12 months. In fact, one of the driest calendar years on record in lots of locations.”
Haynes says the lack of snow in Northern California affects the entire state.
Los Angeles saw a dramatic boom in growth after the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. The system delivers water from the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains to the city.
“It’s a very complicated picture as far as how people get water,” he says. “But typically, in most cases, it’s irrigation — water that comes from somewhere other than locally.”
Much of California gets its water from the Sierra Nevada snowpacks. Those snowpacks, though, are only at 20 percent of average levels.
California’s water woes might soon begin to affect the entire country; because California is America’s No. 1 food and agricultural producer. A drought could push up food prices.

and Australia’s on fire again

Yea but it snowed at wr0ng way Coles place and his dogs feet got cold so Climate Change is a lie.

Clearly, every suburban/exurban paper shoving, melanin-deprived resident of Phoenix, San Diego, Orange County, Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Houston, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Orlando, Ocala, Ft Myers, Tampa and West Palm Beach needs an 8000 square foot house and an H3 to carry him back and forth on his perilous commute.

Anything less would be un-American.

We depend more than most people realize on predictable weather. We can probably survive warmer summers but our agriculture system depends on knowing little things like whether they will have the water to plant crops next year

This is a niggling point, but ‘predictable weather’ will not help us much in knowing about next year’s water for crops.

Few people understand phase transitions in all their Complexity. Conservatives have an additional problem in that if they don’t understand it, it doesn’t exist.

Newt’s a dinosaur, so of course he thinks he’d be fine under those conditions. Add to that those that think the baby jebus rode a dinosaur, they’ll be pushing the meme that climate change science and meteorology in general is a liberal plot to prevent the second coming and subvert the will of the Lord. If He makes it rain, how dare you poke an open umbrella in his Face!

Don’t forget the ceiling on photosynthesis!

Photosynthesis only happens when temperatures are below about 105F, and pretty piss poor in the temperatures leading up to it. So those hotter summers mean plants don’t grow so good, regardless of hydration.

@Gorgon Zola:

This is a niggling point, but ‘predictable weather’ will not help us much in knowing about next year’s water for crops.

Yea, actually rainfall/snowfall and weather are pretty closely related, so if we can’t depend on a pattern of rainfall, I would say that’s probably the #1 observable, fungible factor in farming.

See, when I grew up in Denver, we knew that not much snowfall in one year meant water rationing the next.

Edited to add a kick in at Newt Gingrich’s STUPID face, because when did he ever know jack shit about science? Answer: NEVER, asshole, just shut your dumb pampered 1%-er’s mouth now and let the smart people do all the talking, thanks.

@slippytoad: Yes but a “pattern of rainfall” or snowfall is more of an expression of climate, not weather. (And I’m not sure you mean “fungible” either …)

Also, the fact that global temperatures have been exceptionally consistent for the last 10,000 years or so might have helped us, you know, to settle down and create civilization in the first place…

@Botsplainer:

Anything less would be un-American

Indeed. The last time I was in Florida, in three days I saw more H3’s driving around than in 20 years in Upstate NY.

Crazy.

@C.V. Danes: Good point. Saw something about ice cores that showed that weather was quite a bit more variable 15,0000 or 20,000 years ago.

Hey, I work in communications for the P&C insurance industry (that’s Property and Casualty; we don’t mess with medical), and the gist of a webinar I participated in earlier today was some C-Level guy from a leading reinsurer (the businesses that underwrite the insurance businesses, or words to that effect) talking about the effects of climate change on insurance as an industry.

Only he didn’t use the words “climate change”; he called it “Global Warming.” James Inhofe be damned, but if reinsurance underwriters are treating global warming as an actual fact, then you can be sure that the consensus is holding serve in this match.

@Amir Khalid: Yes, it’s the woman’s blood relatives but they do business as the Terri Schiavo Family Foundation. And it is indeed confusing.

So convenient for them to slander someone else’s surname.

@C.V. Danes: Also from WNY, and on a trip to Seattle, we saw at least 3 Teslas, plus we drove past a showroom. Same ridiculous conspicuous consumption, but better mileage, for sure. And I bet the H3s are not as comfortable.

This:

whether they will have the water to plant crops next year.

Also, in addition to “whether,” when.

This winter, we are paying through the nose for hay and fresh produce. Why? Because climate change has completely screwed up our weather patterns, and therefore our planting cycle, in such a way that it is virtually impossible to plan for what will occur.

Last year, the monsoon season started 2+ months early, and was unusually severe. It drowned our grass hay, meaning we only got the equivalent of one full cut out of it instead of the usual-sized three. This is bad, because one of our rescue horses is foundered and can have only very limited amounts of alfalfa without risking her life.

It drowned our cornfield completely. Not one single solitary ear of corn did we get – and we normally have a full garden’s worth (we usually plant three to four gardens, at a minimum, containing various things – one all corn, one all beans, one squash and other vegetables, one herbs, and sometimes an additional one for whatever miscellaneous stuff we need right then). It drowned our squash – we got a couple of acorn squash and two plants’ worth of zucchini; nothing else. A very, very few stunted baby carrots. Some spinach. And half the beans rotted on the vine before we could harvest them, a combination of a much-too-early freeze followed by flooding rains.

Every time a denialist opens his (or her) yap about “But it’s freezing somewhere!” I feel the urge to do something unspeakable.