One of the most shocking stories to come out of the Oklahoma tornado this week is this one. The mind reels that in the middle of tornado alley, in a place where a previous F5 tornado devastated the town in 1999, no safe room existed in the school.
Full story: http://houston.cbslocal.com/2013/05/22/school-where-7-students-died-lacked-tornado-safe-room/
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. puts the issue into perspective with our QOTW:
http://twitter.com/RogerAPielkeSr/status/337023601314234368
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izen says:
May 22, 2013 at 11:51 pm
Interesting that you claim that. See, there are almost no tornadoes in the rest of the world: the wind patterns, local storm patterns, and cold air passing in a front over hot, moist air simply doesn’t happen other places in the world. Most particularly, there are virtually no tornadoes in European weather patterns nor European history.
So, why, pray tell, would the Europeans fund expensive regional climate/weather models that would be able to predict tornadoes?
(33 millions were recently sent to that city for school upgrades and modernization. Please let me know how much of it was wasted (er, spent) on “climate change” protocols and teachings and zen-climate studies and government-demanded climate feel-good sessions and classes? 33 million alone wasted in increased school bus fuel costs, lighting changes, reduced taxes from a bad economy for 6 years BECAUSE of your CAGW themes, loss of tax base and loss of home investments and home worth CAUSED BY your CAGW government practices ……
Oh. The US government’s Doppler radars and Doppler radar warning systems ARE world class: The coverage WAS actually seen on screen and warnings ACTUALLY sent some 45 minutes BEFORE the tornadoes swarm struck.
Computer models, on the other hand, WOULD NOT HAVE DONE ANYTHING. (They would, however, have predicted other computer simulations that would have predicted many thousand false warnings of non-existent future tornadoes.
izen says:
May 22, 2013 at 11:51 pm
Unfortunately it appears that ideological stances by politicians are against government funding effective computer prediction AND school shelters.
============
Nonsense. Governments don’t fund anything. It is Taxpayers that pay the price. Governments by and large simply piss the money away because it isn’t their money. No amount of tornado prediction is going to help if you don’t have a safe place to ride it out. No amount of flood or hurricane prediction is going to help if the roads are clogged with traffic trying to escape.
Common sense tells you that buildings need to be built strong enough to withstand natural disasters. Building built in flood zones should be built on stilts and buildings built in tornado alley should be built with tornado shelters. Common sense also tells you that the function of government is to make sure that buildings are built in this manner.
However, what we have is politicians running around after that fact, trying to blame natural disasters on the public for driving cars to make a living and producing CO2 in the process. The failure lies squarely with the governments for not mandating common sense building standards in areas prone to natural disasters.
No matter how much we cut CO2, we are not going to prevent tornadoes or hurricanes. They have been around much longer than humans have been burning fossil fuels. The time has come for politicians to stop pointing fingers at other people and start point the finger at themselves.
“The US is behind e rest of the developed world in funding computer models that can predict these sort of storms. It is very likely that the early warning of this event was made possible by the European mid range weather forecasting model.”
Are You joking? Since I live in ECMWF-land I know it can’t even reliably forecast major storms a few days ahead, much less small-scale events like tornados.
@- DirkH
“Izen, the mystery man. It is really below you to give us a link or tell us the name of said model, I understand.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/second-rate-us-numerical-weather-prediction-why-you-should-care/2013/02/26/d63dc4fc-7f80-11e2-a350-49866afab584_blog.html
Good local prediction requires very high speed and size computers to calculate multiple senarios to give good probalistic forcast, the only type possible when the forecast exceeds the simply deterministic and extends a few days ahead into the chaotic regime.
But the big mistake in this quote is to think there is any kind of either/or choice. Governments have to invest in basic research, it is not done by business. They also have to invest in communal protection.
Liz says:
May 22, 2013 at 10:08 pm
“A few observations from an Oklahoma resident…
Every area has challenges but I’ll take the tornadoes. Don’t like the earthquakes and constant wildfires of CA, tropical storms and flash floods of the east, snow/ice storms of the north…oh wait – I have experienced all of those in Oklahoma. At least, I don’t think I have to worry about a tsumani.”
____________________
Some have asked “What’s next, volcanoes?”
“Governments have to invest in basic research, it is not done by business.”
[Izen, 5/23/13, 8:08AM]
These two businesses do:
AER
“Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) scientists are the weather experts that government weather experts around the world rely on – and have been for more than 30 years. Government agencies, including NOAA, NASA, and the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy depend on AER to solve weather- and climate-related problems … .”
[http://www.aer.com/weather-risk-management/weather-risk-government]
IBM
“IBM has developed new technology for weather prediction that forecasts the behavior of rivers and is coupled with advanced weather simulation models.”
[http://www.pcworld.com/article/239061/ibm_develops_new_weather_prediction_software.html]
***********************************************************
Izen, I have produced enough evidence to shift the burden of proof to you.
Prove by clear and convincing evidence… meh, I’ll even give you the lowest standard of proof of all, by a preponderance of the evidence, that private industry does not invest substantially in basic research.
@- Janice Moore
You set me an easy task….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/26/the-coming-rd-crash/
But even simpler, the two programs you mention, AER and the IBM climate couter systems are both recipients of significant GOVERNMENT funding.