WLUC staffers are still trying to digest the implications of the resignation of their news director on Friday.
Regena Robinson, who'd held the position for two and a half years, unexpectedly announced that she'd be leaving the job within two weeks. Later that morning, she told some employees that, in fact, she was leaving that very day. She cleared out her office on Saturday and she's now gone.
What happened? She'd only say that she resigned and she was moving on. To where, she wouldn't say, nor would she say whether she was staying in the TV news business.
The truth was, her tenure at WLUC had been marked by some dissension and a major rift in the newsroom. That's not all that uncommon in the TV news business, but Robinson's journalistic skills and management style never won her full respect among the veterans in the newsroom.
Who's going to be the next news director? Good question. Anchor Steve Asplund, who once held the ND job, would be a likely and welcome in-house candidate, but station CEO Rob Jamros and the new owners, Sinclair Broadcasting, may have other ideas.
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We're enjoying a respite from the frightful cold of the polar vortex of just a week ago but TV6 weather guru Karl Bohnak says don't put away your thermal underwear and knit caps just yet.
Things are setting up, he says, for a stretch of similarly frigid weather later this month or in early February.
How cold was last month here in the UP? The coldest December in a quarter century, a full seven degrees below average.
Long range forecasters are strongly suggesting that we could have a series of delayed springs in the years ahead--ie winters will last longer.
Bohnak says, yeah, there's a lot of winter left.
How about global warming? Does it figure into this at all? Bohnak doesn't buy it. He claims there's been no significant warming of the earth for the last two decades
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So what's happening with the old Delft Theater in downtown, the one that's been vacant for a couple of years?
Tom Vear, who owns the building along with Donckers next door as well as other properties in town, has a plan.
For a dinner theater. With 250 seats, some in the balcony. Also a bar.
The idea would be to show movies--old classics, maybe new classics--on a huge screen while patrons are enjoying a first class meal and drinks.
Sounds a little off-the-wall, but off-the-wall can be good sometimes.
Vear, who's applied to the state for grant money, expects to present his plans to the City Commission later this month.
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A little bit of a hiccup at Sol Azteca, the new Mexican restaurant overlooking the Lower Harbor.
The restaurant doesn't have its liquor license yet and apparently some patrons were trying to take matters into their own hands. Literally.
They were arriving at the restaurant with their own alcohol and telling staff that it was fine--the patrons would provide their own liquor and the restaurant would provide the tacos, enchiladas and burritos. Hey, everybody does it here! A great deal all around.
Except, of course, for the fact that it's illegal.
The restaurant manager, who's from out of state, made a call to the city and got the true story.
Next thing you know, Sol Azteca posts a sign instructing customers to leave their booze at home.
Crowds are still big there, by the way. Is it just the honeymoon phase or is this the real deal?
You got news? Email me at briancabell@gmail.com
"Bohnak doesn't buy it. He claims there's been no significant warming of the earth for the last two decades"
ReplyDeleteIn reality, the actual data says otherwise.
We know the planet is warming from surface temperature stations and satellites measuring the temperature of the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere. We also have various tools which have measured the warming of the Earth's oceans. Satellites have measured an energy imbalance at the top of the Earth's atmosphere. Glaciers, sea ice, and ice sheets are all receding. Sea levels are rising. Spring is arriving sooner each year. There's simply no doubt - the planet is warming.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator_2012_1024.gif
Looking at just the increasing heat content of our oceans, 93% of our planet's surface, we can measure that our climate has accumulated 2,055,405,655 Hiroshima atomic bombs of heat since 1998 alone (Levitus et al 2012).
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL051106/abstract
Further, we know from the radiative physics of our increasing CO2 levels that the world warms, that warming is due to our fossil fuel usages, and that warming will continue for decades-to-centuries to come.
I see we are looking at this from a much different perspective. Only a true believer would use "Skeptical Science (SS)" as a credible source of Global Warming, oops, Climate Change information. The reality is, SS does not deal in reality, temperatures have been flat for a decade and a half and all the computer models created by "the Teams" climate scientists have failed miserably:
Deletehttp://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/
Lastly, let's examine the general question of are the climate models, in fact, untestable? Are they unable to make valid predictions?
DeleteLet's review the record. Global Climate Models have successfully predicted:
• That the globe would warm, and about how fast, and about how much.
• That the troposphere would warm and the stratosphere would cool.
• That nighttime temperatures would increase more than daytime temperatures.
• That winter temperatures would increase more than summer temperatures.
• Polar amplification (greater temperature increase as you move toward the poles).
• That the Arctic would warm faster than the Antarctic.
• The magnitude (0.3 K) and duration (two years) of the cooling from the Mt. Pinatubo eruption.
• They made a retrodiction for Last Glacial Maximum sea surface temperatures which was inconsistent with the paleo evidence, and better paleo evidence showed the models were right.
• They predicted a trend significantly different and differently signed from UAH satellite temperatures, and then a bug was found in the satellite data.
• The amount of water vapor feedback due to ENSO.
• The response of southern ocean winds to the ozone hole.
• The expansion of the Hadley cells.
• The poleward movement of storm tracks.
• The rising of the tropopause and the effective radiating altitude.
• The clear sky super greenhouse effect from increased water vapor in the tropics.
• The near constancy of relative humidity on global average.
• That coastal upwelling of ocean water would increase.
Seventeen correct predictions? Looks like a pretty good track record to me.
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm
Had an issue with the Captcha verification system; this comment got eaten by the system:
Delete"Only a true believer would use "Skeptical Science (SS)" as a credible source of Global Warming, oops, Climate Change information."
Please refrain from using logical fallacies, such as your Poisoning-the-Well fallacy above. I'm sure that you'll agree that what matters is the evidence, not opinion.
http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/141-poisoning-the-well
In reality, the citations, plaudits and accolades from the science community towards Skeptical Science number in the thousands. Its resources are used in classes all over the world, daily. Science institutions link to it from their websites. Scientists volunteer to write guest posts and rebuttals appearing on the site.
"temperatures have been flat for a decade and a half"
In actuality, global surface warming since 1997 has happened more than twice as fast as previously estimated. Cowtan and Way, published in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society in November 2013, fills in the gaps in the UK Met Office HadCRUT4 surface temperature data set, and finds that the global surface warming since 1997 has happened more than twice as fast as the HadCRUT4 estimate.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/abstract
"all the computer models created by "the Teams" climate scientists have failed miserably"
Karl, Christy and Spencer made their case by comparing the outputs of 73 climate models to satellite temperature measurements, and showing that the models seemed to predict more warming than has been observed. But the comparison was not of surface temperatures, or of the lowermost layer of the atmosphere, or even any measurement global average temperatures. They specifically looked at measurements of the temperature of the middle troposphere (TMT) in the tropics.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/5-stages-climate-denial-on-display.html
There's certainly nothing wrong with examining this particular subset of temperature data, but it's a bit of an odd choice on its face. The real problem lies in the fact that satellite measurements of TMT are highly uncertain. In fact, estimates of the TMT trend by different scientific groups vary wildly, despite using the same raw satellite data.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/uah-misrepresentation-anniversary-part1.html
However, in mainstream media interviews and editorials, Christy and Spencer always fail to mention the possibility that the problem could lie more in the measurements than the models, which frankly is intellectually dishonest. Additionally, climate models have done very well in projecting long-term global surface temperature changes.
http://skepticalscience.com/comparing-global-temperature-predictions.html
(-crickets-)
DeleteGot it. The world warms, that warming is due to our fossil fuel usages, and that warming will continue for decades-to-centuries to come.
Sorry, I did not read all that verbosity.
ReplyDeleteCould someone please just tell me when I will be able to grow bananas and pineapples around here.
Thanks