Cool Weather

Watch a year of weather, with explanations of why the clouds appear as they do.

Westerlies, easterlies, the Coriolis effect spinning the storms, the changing of the seasons, the hurricanes and typhoons.

Fruit Trees

If you have a bit of earth, plant a fruit tree. Flowers in the spring. Fruit in the fall. And birds in the winter.

Sapsucker eating apples

I Told You So ...

Well, it seems like the media are finally realizing what your science teacher has been telling you for years:

Higher average temperatures means more water evaporating.  The energy that evaporated the water (latent heat) is released when the water condenses into clouds.   So warmer air = more water = more energy in the atmosphere.

As published this morning in the Hartford Courant, which is owned by the Tribune, which is hardly an unbiased source of information:

"As the climate gets warmer, you put more moisture into the atmosphere, and it just gets a little more violent," said Richard A. Houghton, president of the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Mass. ...

Extensive collections of scientific data have been the source documents for meta-analyses saying, in effect, that big changes are underway, disrupting a mostly stable climatological period of thousands of years. ...

Perhaps most worrisome is the greater likelihood of severe weather events, such as floods. ...

The Northeast could see 20 percent to 30 percent more winter precipitation, and more of that could be rain rather than snow.... Heavy downpours of rain have increased across the Northeast in recent decades, causing intense spring flooding in 2006, 2007 and 2010.

Cities that experience only a few 100-degree days each summer might average 20 such days per summer while others, including Hartford, would average nearly 30 days at 100 degrees or hotter.

Yes, kiddies, it is too late to avoid all of the side effects of climate change - but we can avoid the worst of it if we burn less, and get our electricity from wind and sun.  Coal and petroleum and natural gas are NOT your friends, no matter what the nice television ads tell you.

Sun!

As the Sun rises on a beautiful winter's day, here is a happy thought:

Since the shortest day of the year in Connecticut, December 21 (Winter Solstice / Mid-Winter's Day), with only 9 hours and 8 minutes of sunlight, we have gained 32 minutes of light!

We are now gaining daylight at a rate of 2 minutes per day.

By one month from now, February 21, we will have gained another 1 hour and 15 minutes! and will be gaining 3 minutes per day.

Snow!! Argh!! Panic!! Final Update.- Do Your Homework!

Hey!  What day is it?  Huh?  Huh?
SNOW day?  Nope.  The storm went away.

The storm is moving faster than originally thought.  It looks like (once again) the storm will be over by early morning. MIDNIGHT!

 I think that chances of a late opening Wednesday is about  40% at this time.  I think many schools will be opening late on Wednesday morning, but not all.  Most will be along the coast.  As for WHPS, my bet is lo longer on a late opening.

Do your homework!!

Sunny Day!

We've had several rainy, cold, damp, nasty days in the past week.  Days when the best thing to do is sit by the stove with a cup of tea and read a book.

Cleo thoughtfully cleaning the back

of the stove.  

But then, we've also had some perfect days like today, when staying indoors would be a crime.  Out to breathe fresh air and soak up some sunshine!

Prohibition Then And Now

My favorite history site, This Day In History, reminded me that on this date in 1919, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes," was ratified.  

To make sure that no one drank grain alcohol destined for other uses, the government required that all alcohol be poisoned.  That’s right:  Lovable old Uncle Sam poisoned his people.

Prohibition took effect in January 1919.   

Interestingly, I am currently reading about Prohibition in a fascinating book called The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.  The book discusses the various poisons and their uses at the turn of the last century, and the attempts of the fledgling Medical Examiner’s office to detect those poisons in the victims.

In the months leading up to January 1919, New York’s Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Charles Norris, joined other doctors around the country in denouncing prohibition.  

They knew that people would continue to drink.  They knew that poisoning the alcohol would not stop it.  They predicted, correctly, that after January 1919 deaths from wood alcohol poisoning (wood alcohol is deadly and was added to grain alcohol by government order) would multiply drastically.  No one really knows how many people died from drinking bad alcohol – certainly over 10,000 people, with countless more made blind or ill.

Alcohol was easy to get at a speakeasy.

Before prohibition, the sale of alcohol was making a lot of money for the government:  corporate taxes from manufacturing, sales taxes, income taxes from alcohol workers and sellers.  (In the first 6 months of 2013, the State of Connecticut took in $1,300,000 in liquor taxes.)  After prohibition, alcohol was no longer a money-maker for the government.  Instead, millions were spent on federal agents tracking down bootleggers and their clients.

Besides the dollar cost of enforcing prohibition and the human cost in poisonings and people shot down by rival gangs of bootleggers (think Al Capone and the Valentine’s Day Massacre, although the reality was that more small-time bootleggers were shot down every week in New York than were killed in that ‘Massacre”), prohibition also did more damage.

Prohibition created a new type of criminal

The court system was overloaded with citizens dragged in for illegal drinking, and often politicians were bought by the easy money available from the bootleggers.  Respect for the law was destroyed as people flocked to hidden bars to party.  In fact, it is estimated that drinking became more popular as a result of prohibition.

In other words, instead of making the country more moral, it increased every existing vice and created a few new ones.


As Abraham Lincoln is claimed to have said, ”Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes.”

In 1933, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was passed and ratified, repealing prohibition.

Now think of this:  For thousands of years a certain plant has been used to relieve pain, cure some diseases, and make fabric.  Then evangelizers proclaimed it to be evil, and this country prohibited the growth, possession and use of marijuana.  In the country that has a larger percentage of its population in jail than any other (We’re number one!  We’re number one!), murderers get short sentences because thousands of marijuana users are filling up jail cells and harmless people are turned into criminals.  In the meantime, people suffering from glaucoma, chronic pain, and the side-effects of cancer treatments are denied relief in most of the country.

As a child of the 60’s, I know first-hand how effective the prohibition against marijuana is.  As the college student told the visiting family, marijuana was no problem at all in the dorms.  The law was a joke, police were not respected, and rather than having their lives destroyed those smokers of the past are the lawyers, doctors, bankers, and politicians of today.

A recent report by Jon Gettman (Gettman, Jon. 2004. Crimes of Indiscretion: the Nature, Extent, and Costs of Marijuana Arrests in the United States.) estimated that national criminal justice expenditures for enforcing marijuana laws is $7.6 billion per year.  Apparently prohibition is not stopping the use of marijuana, 80 years after it was made illegal.  On the other hand, the State of Colorado estimates that the first year of legal sales will bring in approximately $67 million a year in taxes.

Here is another voice of reason on prohibition:  the cops at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a nonprofit organization of criminal justice professionals "who bear personal witness to the wasteful futility and harms of our current drug policies."

Because if he really said that, Abraham Lincoln was right.