Comments on: Severe storms over U.S. seen from space

By: pastor david

pastor david — Fri, 20 May 2011 00:26:38 +0000

I encourage serious minded students of science to take haarp tech alot more seriously. Yes, alot of fringe types have muddied the waters of clear thought. That is the oldest trick in the book to block intelligent debate. Please do not dismiss the FACT that our govt. is not telling anyone the truth about anything – haarp is a patented reality & quite capable of creating serious weather anomylties.

By: Andrew EM Cameron

Andrew EM Cameron — Thu, 05 May 2011 11:11:48 +0000

Phil,

There is an add for Dr. Bernstein’s diet that keeps popping up on the video. I realize it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the linked site and some kind of add software from google. It’s just sad that woo has found a way to sneak through the cracks and wind up on a reputable skeptical blog like yours.

Great post! Informative, amusing, thank you.

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Mon, 02 May 2011 15:47:26 +0000

@Maria: It’s not the first time that the YouTube comments section has made me lose faith in humanity. Is there something about digitized video that stimulates some folks’ verbal diarrhea glands?

By: Maria

Maria — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:30:43 +0000

We do I torture myself and read youtube comments? It’s like driving by a car wreck and slowing down to see the carnage.

I can’t fathom mocking the situation just because it struck the south. The south is huge. It’s an ecologically and culturally diverse place and historically rich. Yes, it is full of stupid people. As if New York isn’t, or the mid west, or California, or hell anywhere else on this spinning rock. But there are also intelligent people. There are damned good people in the south, who fight for science, and fight for education. We are not all uneducated buffoons.

People died. Lots of people. The snide “where’s their god now?” and “serves them right for not supporting science!” type of comments are messed up. Meh. I’m done feeding trolls now.

By: Tanya McPositron

Tanya McPositron — Sun, 01 May 2011 23:06:38 +0000

Jupiter-esque!

By: jfb

jfb — Sun, 01 May 2011 21:50:02 +0000

There's a paper (PDF) available at the NOAA Storm Prediction Center that shows tornado activity has been pretty flat over the last 30 years, so it's very unlikely that these particular storms are GW-related.

By: Damon

Damon — Sun, 01 May 2011 20:12:22 +0000

I guess because hurricanes attacked the deep south for once God didn’t do it this time? How convenient.

By: MadScientist

MadScientist — Sun, 01 May 2011 07:38:07 +0000

“It’s unclear but unlikely this particular event was due to global warming, but many models indicate such storms will increase in number as the planet warms.”

Ah, models. The question is: can you trust those models? I don’t know if the IPCC still have that disclaimer up on their web pages: “It is difficult if not impossible to determine if storms are increasing in severity or frequency.” I pointed out years ago that it is not scientific to make claims that storms will increase in number and severity due to global warming unless you have a means of (a) measuring the number, (b) measuring the severity, (c) showing at least a correlation with increased warming (that’s the trivial part since CO2 is going up up up). Otherwise it’s a case of “well, I think the number and severity should go up, but I can’t test it so I’ll simply make a baseless claim.”

@oddTodd#11: That’s funny – way back then I understood ‘el Nino’ to be a somewhat regular if not predictable event. For fishermen on one part of the planet, if the fishing was good it must have been ‘el Nino’ – the Jesus baby – bringing them good fortune. I hate the ‘el Nina’ thing because, unlike ‘el Nino’, it has nothing to do with mythology; personally I think it should simply be an ‘el Nino’ spell or not.

By: Quiet Desperation

Quiet Desperation — Sun, 01 May 2011 06:16:41 +0000

@toasterhead – Thanks. Looks like someone taking the butterfly effect literally again.

Newton did not say “For every action there are infinitely incalculable amounts of reaction.”

You might as well claim that we could stop tornadoes with just the right small force applied in just the right spot and-

…

Hmm…

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 01 May 2011 00:31:20 +0000

Yesterday the Houston Chronicle print edition front page headline over photos of tornado damage in Birmingham read: “Death from the Skies.”