Isn't it interesting when experts make grand predictions and then turn out to be wrong? For all of the rhetoric used by the drive-by legacy media, you'd think they'd be apologizing this year for doing so.... What am I talking about?
Read the article in the link above. The first paragraph states:
The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season is the busiest on record and extends the active hurricane cycle that began in 1995—a trend likely to continue for years to come. The season included 28 named storms, including 15 hurricanes in which seven were major (Category 3 or higher).
I just want to point out that there were ZERO hurricanes to hit the U.S. this hurricane season (2006). At least you'd think they might change this article on the NOAA website so they don't look so silly....
Because it goes on!
Another funny statement:
said retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “I’d like to foretell that next year will be calmer, but I can’t. Historical trends say the atmosphere patterns and water temperatures are likely to force another active season upon us.”
And another one:
Because we are in an active hurricane era, it's important to recognize that with a greater number of hurricanes comes increasing odds of one striking land," said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. David L. Johnson, director of the NOAA National Weather Service.
Oh well. I know these are distinguished gentlemen so I shouldn't kid. I have more of an issue with the drive-by legacy media doing so many hit and run pieces on Republicans/conservatives/Bush last year.
Of course everyone cares about weather, global warming, the future of our planet, and more. Just like the last post where liberals act like they "care" more, and bash conservatives and Republicans as not caring, I plead with you readers to not be persuaded by that kind of rhetoric. Let's just say that 99% of people "care".
Where do we differ? We differ on how we discuss things, the detail and facts we point to and the solutions that we'd like to implement. While conservatives point to the fact that the Senate voted 95-0 against the Kyoto Treaty, the drive-by legacy media blasts Bush for not pushing for the Kyoto Treaty. While liberals would like to see drastic steps taken now (that would harm the economy and hurt our ability to solve our way out of the problem because priorities would shift towards helping needy people), conservatives understand that the stronger our economy is the better chance we have at having technological breakthroughs. There are teams of people all over the place working on all sorts of technologies that would help us with transportation, home energy needs, and efficiency improvements of all sorts.
One of the things I just watched on the science channel (I love energy and technology so I was mesmerized) was buoys that through their up and down movement because of the ocean waves created energy. Mechanical and kinetic energy is easy to convert to electricity. It's done with windmill farms. However with the ocean buoys more energy is present and able to be captured per acre than windmill farms. Renewable energy!!! And cheap !!! And clean !!! The estimates were that 100 square miles of these buoys in the ocean (that's 10 miles by 10 miles) would provide enough energy needs for California. Me being the skeptic, I'd want to see how much one buoy could create and do the math myself because that seems like an awfully high estimate. California uses a whole LOT of energy. But, if the estimate was off by 67% that would mean that a 300 square mile area could serve California (30 mile by 10 mile area). That isn't half bad.
That's renewable energy that is cheaper by a factor of 100 than solar energy, and more constant than wind AND solar and not harmful to species that need our rivers (like damns). The more electricity that could be created the more we solve a bunch of other problems. Currently as I wrote about in a post about Hydrogen last week, 95% of hydrogen is separated in a way that puts out a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Electricity could separate hydrogen from oxygen but it is quite expensive to do because electricity prices are fairly high and it costs more in electricity than the amount of hydrogen's energy would give back. The cost benefit isn't there.
Too bad somebody couldn't just start investing in ocean property. We have to somehow get past ocean usage issues....
