With today marking the final day for peak tornado activity, USA Today reports that the death toll has fallen from 121 people this time last year to 21 in 2009.*
Now, tornado death tolls—like hurricane property damage—is largely a matter of chance, and depends on whether or not these storms hit populated areas or not. But the number of tornadoes is also down so far this year, with 690 tornadoes so far versus 770 on average at this point.
Is this the “good kind” of climate change?
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*Wait a second. How could there have been only 121 deaths from tornadoes last year, when 10,000 people in Kansas died in a single storm? Karl Rove must have covered those deaths up, somehow.
And this is why Disraeli stated that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics. Alarmists always compare to averages (average tornadoes per year, average hurricanes per season, average temperature for this date) because they know that most people will not think critically about what makes up the average. Of course the average is made up of years that had more tornadoes and some that had even fewer than this year. Now, if the alarmists could show me that the number is outside of one standard deviation and there is a definite trend, then I will become
worriedinterested.“And this is why Disraeli stated that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics.”
I thought it was Mark Twain.
Disraeli is credited with saying it first, Mark Twain popularized it. He even credits Disraeli in his writing, “Chapters from My Autobiography” where he uses the phrase.
Oh, thanks.
Sorry.
Silly rabbit, death and destruction are for Republicans. Now that we are living under the loving embrace of the One, there is no more suffering.
Not that I actually believe environmental change is going on, but realistically temperatures are as likely to go up as to go down, and they’ve done each 35 or so times in the last three million years. If temperatures are dropping, you’ll see fewer tornados and hurricanes, but you’ll also get longer winters, less rain, less plantlife, and hence fewer animals. Global Cooling is far, far worse for the planet than Global Warming (Which is actually pretty good for it)
Anyone who claims he or she can make any relevant, long-range prediction about global climate based on 10, 20 or 200 years of data doesn’t understand the first thing about weather or geography.
Yes, Rufus, there’s also the volcanic trump card. As in Krakayoa, et al.
…not to mention the fact that the earth’s axis wobbles slightly over time, and that the sun itself isn’t constantly kicking out the same ammount of heat. It gets hotter, it gets colder, it stays steady for a bit, then gets colder, then gets hotter again. There’s no predicting it. (They say average temperatures on Mars are going up, too, though I’m not sure I believe it – we’re dealing with a very small data set.)
Not to mention there’s the “Big rocks falling from space” card as well. Did you know that prior to the dinosaur killer 65 million years back, our sea level air pressure was about 30 PSI? Temperatures were much, much higher back then. The asteroid impact blew half our atmosphere in to space, lost forever!
Republibot 3.0,
Where did you get the information on the atmospheric pressure? I haven’t done any research, but I’ve had a theory that atmospheric pressure was lower (not higher), or oxygen content was higher in the time of the dinosaurs (and possibly for millions of years after) and that would explain how the large sauropods were able to circulate oxygenated blood through such immense circulatory systems.
Also, I don’t really understand the physics behind what you’re claiming. It seems a collision that would generate a shock wave powerful enough to accelerate half our atmosphere to or beyond escape velocity would require an object much larger than the one that hit our planet 65 million years ago.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just curious where I can read more about the science behind your statements. This isn’t an area I’ve very well-versed in.
You may also be interested in this piece on asteroids I did at Dirty Harry’s Place, http://dirtyharrysplace.com/?p=1742
Nice to see some of those old forgotten names in the comments there.
Troy, Stickwick Stapers, Blackhawk…
And it’s a funny thing, Rufus. You asked a question in that post that Republibot 3.0 recently answered.
He talks about the effects of a nuclear explosion in the vacuum of space.
Republibot 3.0,
You may be interested in this piece I did some time ago at Dirty Harry’s Place, http://dirtyharrysplace.com/?p=1742
Mike,
I agree. It was a nice and odd trip down memory lane signing back into DH’s Place this morning to dredge up that post. And I too miss some of those old commenters. Well, all except Troy. He was a real douche.
I thought it was Splash that was the douche.
That was an excellent piece by Republibot 3.0. Thanks for putting me onto it, Mike! Very well stated. Science, real, honest to goodness, live science is such interesting stuff I don’t understand why it can’t be taught better in our schools. That was a piece most all laypeople would find interesting, and comprehensible. Look at the success of a show like “Mythbusters.” We unwashed masses care about this stuff, and are interested in it, yet there is an incredible dearth of it in our culture and media.
When I took a couple of physics courses in high school, it was basically, “memorize these equations and apply them to these ideal examples.”
I was fine with that because I just liked being able to figure things out. I didn’t need to see how anything was relevant to get interested in a topic.
What I think I would do if I were to teach a physics class now, though, is to use Mythbusters and real-world examples of the concepts I’d want to teach.
Forget perfectly elastic collisions, no air resistance, spherical billiard balls and ideal springs. For example, show a tape of a skydiver plummeting to earth, have the students time his free-fall and come up with his speed when he pulls the ripcord. Yes, mention air resistance, but don’t set up problems that just can’t happen in the real world.
You have good suggestions, Mike, and I do know some decent High School Physics teachers that have fun with the subject. I think the reason they focus on ideals and vacuums is because your skydiver question is actually extremely complex. However, one could get within a few significant digits of accuracy using somewhat simple math. That could easily be managed with a few, simple stipulations (assume 0 friction, use a static figure for gravitational pull at the Earth’s surface…).
It bothers me that we do not, in general, do a better job of teaching Science and Economics to our kids. No matter what career a kid eventually matriculates to an understanding of economics and science will always be helpful. I don’t think I ever had a teacher that was much good at teaching Economics, and I’ve taken a lot of Economics courses. Most non-Economics teachers I’ve had were woefully, tragically ignorant of the subject when it overlapped into their disciplines. I heard the head of all the public schools in New York City on television shouting about the evils of capitalism in an amazingly ignorant and uninformed way.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Global Warming southern Nevada style: Temp. here today-105F. Not comfortable but comforting.
Stats. from Channel 8, CBS affiliate:
Las Vegas Climate Data: July 1, 2009
Average High: 104°
Record High: 114° (1933)
Average Low: 67°
Record Low: 57° (1916)
Average Precip: 0.004″
Record Precip: 0.18″ (1932)
Fritz*–
Why do I have to keep approving your comments?
*I accidentally typed “Frotz” first, which was weird for an Infocom fan.
Beats me, Mike. I usually have at least one a day that waits for mod. Today it’s been two. No swearing, porno or the like. Thanks
-fritz-
Rufus,
To be honest, I can’t remember the sources off the top of my head. A couple of them were things I learned in lecutres in college way back in the 20th century when it was fairly cutting edge, the rest I’ve picked up here and there. I’ll see what I can dig up by way of specific references, though.
As to loosing a lot of our atmosphere, here’s a vastly oversimplified example: You’ve got a bucket of water filled to the brim. You hurl a brick in to it. Lots of water sloshes out, and when things settle down, the bucket is less full than it was before. Our atmosphere is down here at the bottom of our gravity well along with us. If there’s a big enough impact, however, it can ’splash’ substantial portions of the atmosphere high enough that it essentially escapes the gravity well and dissapates in the vaccuum of space. Presumably, atmosphere that is tossed out with insufficient velocity to escape the gravity well would eventually fall back to the earth.
To be honest, I don’t pretend to understand how one asteroid could do that, but one interesting possiblity that probably accounts for some of it is that you’ve got a global shockwave spreading out from the point of impact and eventually converging on the point exaclty opposite the point of impact. So the air there would be increasingly super-compressed, and may well have geysered off in to space, some of it, anyway. I expect the results of a planet-wide firestorm would probably up the energy level, too, but I don’t know any of that for sure.
I totally agree that it was the denser atmosphere that allowed for massive, jumbo-sized animals and huge insects lacking lungs. I’ve wondered about that m’self.
Republibot 3.0, I still don’t understand how that much atmosphere leaves the Earth. I can’t begin to understand what “geysered off in to space” means? If memory serves, escape velocity is something like 24,000 mph. I guess a shock-wave with greater velocity could throw some air molecules off the planet, and I guess an object could hit the planet at that rate of speed, or faster, but half the atmosphere?
Again, I’m not saying it’s incorrect, I’d just love to read the source because I can’t comprehend how that would happen. Are you sure the atmosphere didn’t get trapped or converted into some other material on the planet, and that’s what happened to it? For example, plants stored a bunch of carbon, and dinosaurs ate the plants and the carbon got trapped underground, becoming oil. If we humans weren’t pumping the stuff up and burning it the carbon would have been lost to the ages. Could the oxygen and nitrogen in the air at the time of the dinosaurs have been ignited in this asteroid strike, and end up being stored at the bottom of the sea, or something?
I just don’t see how you get half the atmosphere to jettison into space without a relatively huge object hitting the planet. One that is 20% or more Earth masses.
Isn’t that high escape velocity figure only for objects that start out on Earth’s surface? And if not, do the molecules really need to achieve escape velocity? The moon hasn’t escaped Earth’s gravity, but any atmospheric particles that far out can be considered “gone” as far as atmospheric pressure.
(I would like to see the source, too, because I’ve never heard this theory.)