Inauguration day 2005: 35 °F Mostly cloudy with some sunny breaks. Northwest wind 14 mph. Around 1″ of snow lay on the ground. More inauguration day weather history is available here
By Anthony Watts and Steven Goddard
There is much speculation about the weather on Tuesday, January 20th, which is the inauguration day of president Obama. Particularly it is being conjectured widely on the blogosphere that a colder than normal day might have some chilling effect on climate change thinking in Washington. After all, it is not unlike politicians to grasp onto ancillary topics and use them as the focal point for forming opinions.
For example, as reported here, The last time Dr. Roy Spencer testified before Congress, committee chair Barbara Boxer appeared more interested in discussing Rush Limbaugh than she did in discussing science. That is not necessarily a sensible way to weigh trillion dollar policy decisions.
Here is another example. When Dr. James Hansen testified before Congress in June, 1988, on the topic of global warming, Senator Timothy Wirth took several deliberate steps to make sure that the room was oppressively hot. This excerpt below is from a PBS Frontline interview:
TIMOTHY WIRTH: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it.DEBORAH AMOS: [on camera] Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day? TIMOTHY WIRTH: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.
That is going to be a lot tougher now, after two more decades of unprecedented global warming.
As of Saturday morning, NCEP is forecasting severe cold along the East Coast for the end of the month, and well below normal temperatures for the inauguration of president Obama. Perhaps the chill will freeze out some the early political rhetoric in Washington? Some prominent members of Congress now claim that they can legislate the climate, which requires that they also are able to control volcanoes, ocean circulation patterns, and solar activity.
Here is the NCEP CONUS temperature forecast for now to election day:
Click for a larger image
One wonders though, it the weather patterns were shifted west to east in the anomaly graph below, and we had a warmer than normal inauguration day in Washington, would it provide lawmakers with a personal confirmation bias much like that day in June, 1988?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Well, we should know fairly quickly how much of the 1 trillion package will be spent on infrastructure projects in traditional big employment sectors such as public works construction and how much he’s going to sink into Gore’s pocket via Kleiner Perkins backed clean-tech startups.
Jeff Alberts (12:29:08) :
Absolutely! God works in amazing ways. But “most of the time” is subjective only to those who recognize it to begin with. There is no begining and there is no end, for time is irrelevent in the highest of power.
Wow, that was scientific. NOT!
Jeff, could you perhaps denigrate the beliefs of others a bit less?
While I am somewhere on the agnostic / atheist spectrum, my spouse is very religious. We get along and it works for her. One thing I’ve come to appreciate out it all is that some of the best science has come from religious people. Einstein comes to mind as does Darwin. Yes, that Darwin. Read his book as originally published, it is in admiration of what he saw as God’s work.
While some dogmas make a wall between science and God, the Bible does not, nor do most other religions. (Last I looked; Shinto, Buddhist, & Muslim scientists existed, among others.)
The original (by RICH, I think), to which you responded, reminded me of a very interesting (especially from a science perspective) book:
http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Big-Bang-Discovery-Harmony/dp/0553354132
Is a fascinating book that manages to bring the Genesis story and our understanding of the science of the beginning of time and space into agreement. (He looks at times arrow from the beginning of the big bang before time dilation. Calibrated to that scale, the 6 days of Genesis have things happening on the same scale as our scientific understanding…)
Yes, time dilation and relativity. So maybe there is just a bit more ‘science’ in the notion of time being a relative thing and having less meaning viewed from the other end of times arrow than you were seeing…
I, as just one agnostic/atheist speaking, found the original posting gratifying and a reminder of the science of the beginning of time. However created.
E.M. Smith,
Thank you for your insight and recommendation, one that I will certainly consider.
As a former agnostic, I understand the difficulty one has in seeing the light that shines through the prism of God. Perhaps I deserved a bit of criticism, as I have recently been short to people with opposing points of view.
Some form of payback I suppose? Anyway, I would like to share my thoughts on, dare I say, God, logic, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news.
What a great website.
Be GREEN all… but do not emit GREENhouse gas. Doesn’t this seem strange to anyone? IMHO, I find this completely illogical.
And speaking of Einstein…
“I know not with what weapons world war III will be fought, but world war IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
Any quotes from the discoverer of quantum mechanics on the ‘dangers’ of carbon dioxide?
Not when they’re just spouted out for no good reason. Sure, my statement added nothing to the discussion, but neither did the one I responded to.
Sorry, I found to to be bunk. So I said so.
After hearing all the alarmism about CO2 and reading about the “green ball ” at the inauguration yesterday I think I will have for lunch today the “global warming” special. That is lots of hot fried baloney, with refried beans in hot sauce served on a bed of chilled finely chopped iceberg lettuce and for dessert, melting watermelon sherbet as in “red on the inside,green on the outside. All serve on recycleable dinnerware and flat, cheap imitation Champagne for a beverage.
Alberts,
Whenever you are ready, please feel free to debunk…
“There is no begining and there is no end”
Good luck.
I’m kind of amazed this thread isn’t the hot potato du jour. The western world looks to Capt America for a beacon of light in the darkness, a cool hand to mop the fevered brow of the overheated world, and our american contributors have almost no comment on BO’s words.
That’s because we hear all the rhetoric every election, from all the politicians, and really they do very little of what they promise. I’m sure most of the time they mean well, but very rarely deliver. And from my perspective, I don’t think he can “fix” the things he says he wants to.
Tallbloke, Re President Obama’s inaugural address and administration’s new tone.
I am purely speculating here, but we know that President Obama has received highly classified briefings in the past few weeks that, I suspect, have caused a certain CHANGE in his thinking. I certainly HOPE so.
One such briefing is underway even as I write this, with the top military advisors. I look for certain softening of his stance following this meeting, too.
It is this way with all new Presidents, especially if they were not previously a vice-President. The information is just too classified, there is no way as a U.S. Senator he would know. Using Truman as an example, “We have an atomic bomb that can do WHAT?????”
As I frequently debate with my friends and colleagues, President is not a popularity contest. Many of my liberal friends believe the President (Bush in particular) should make/(have made) more popular decisions, those that would garner accolades from the U.S. population and from around the world. I remind them that Roman emperors went down that road, and look where it took them!
The fact is, that none of those groups have access to the information the President has, so his decisions based on that information may very well be for the best, yet not be pleasing to those groups.
And that, IMHO, is why a President should be elected based on attributes like character, judgment, crisis-management, clear-thinking, and not just rhetoric or star appeal. A rare President has good attributes and star appeal, and the older I get, the more it appears that John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were the only two in my lifetime. One democrat, one republican.
In today’s headlines, Obama has declared:
“In an attempt to deliver on pledges of a transparent government, Obama said he would change the way the federal government interprets the Freedom of Information Act. He said he was directing agencies that vet requests for information to err on the side of making information public — not to look for reasons to legally withhold it — an alteration to the traditional standard of evaluation.”
Does this mean that Mann will finally be forced to reveal his source code for his infamous work? Does anyone in our camp intend to test The One on his proclamation anytime soon?
Roger Sowell,
I have long thought the same of British Prime Ministers. They get taken on one side by ‘Sir Humphrey’ the day they arrive at Downing St for a briefing and emerge with less idealistic principles. I do like Obama’s tone and apparant character. Time will tell.
All hail the new ObamaNation!
You may be interested in this story from the excellent Harmless Sky about how the BBC’s Newsnight manipulated Obama’s speech to make it sound far closer to their climate change agenda than it really was:
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=147
I know from personal experience that the BBC’s sound engineers are very skilled at playing around with a recording to make what is said fit their story. Humble people have to learn to live with it. But the US President – that’s serious!
The comments at the end of the article are of interest.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7837791.stm