More Disasters

Posted on September 10, 2017 by Brian H. Gill

The good news is that folks on the Gulf Coast probably won’t be affected by Hurricane Irma. Not directly.

Cleanup and rebuilding there is taking a back seat to news of this weekend’s hurricane and Mexico’s major earthquake.

I’ll be talking about this week’s disasters, and how folks deal with them. Also faith, reasonable and otherwise, and a little science:

Before I get started, here’s a link to reality checks from FEMA, and NOAA’s National Hurricane Center:

American news services have been focusing on how folks in Florida are getting ready for Irma. Folks there will be experiencing the storm soon, and any nation’s news is likely to focus on that nation. The storm has already made a mess of places in the Caribbean.

I don’t know how many folks have died so far, either because of the storm or earthquake.

Known death tolls are still going up as survivors dig out and other folks search debris. It’s already bad news. Dozens died in the earthquake, and well over 20 when Irma went over.

We may learn that at least some folks would have survived if buildings had been sturdier, or they’d made different decisions.

I think reviewing what happened and why makes sense. That’s how we learn what we should keep doing, and what we should change.

Sometimes we learn that someone who should have known better acted badly. Truth and justice are important. The same goes for mercy and helping each other. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2447, 2472, 2475–2487)

Looking for someone to blame during a crisis? Not so much.


(From AFP, via BBC News; used w/o permission.)
(“The tremor was strong enough to bring down buildings near Mexico City”
(BBC News))


(From EPA, via BBC News; used w/o permission.)
(“A collapsed building in the town of Matias Romero in Oaxaca state”
(BBC News))

Blaming a superhuman entity for disasters isn’t new. What changes with time and fashion is who’s supposed to be in a divine snit, and what we presumably did to vex a surly spirit.

I’ve been noticing Mother Nature getting the credit for recent disasters.

Apparently the Earth goddess is peeved at folks who pollute. Or litter. Or maybe it’s how some voted. I’m not sure about details, and I’m pretty sure folks who play the blame game are mistaken.

It’s been a few years since a high-profile American Christian said something daft about natural disasters and sinners. I haven’t noticed it, anyway. I can’t say that I miss ‘the good old days.’

“Sin,” by the way, isn’t doing something that I don’t enjoy, can’t afford, or couldn’t do if I wanted to.

It’s what happens when I don’t love God and my neighbor — or don’t see everyone as my neighbor. No exceptions. (Matthew 5:43–44, 22:36–40, Mark 12:28–31; Luke 10:25–37; Catechism, 1706, 1776, 1825, 1849–1851, 1955)

It’s an offense against reason, truth, and God. (Catechism, 1849–1851)

That happens a lot more often than I like. But I’m working on it. (August 27, 2017; December 4, 2016)

Sinners in the Hands of an Uptight God?

Dipping a little deeper into the well of the past, folks in England were told that the Great Storm of 1703 was God’s way of smiting them for the sins of their nation.

English pastors were dredging that up in moralizing sermons into the 19th century.

Daniel Defoe opined that the English hadn’t sufficiently smited — smote? smitten? — Catholics in the War of the Spanish Succession.

On the ‘up’ side, Europe’s seemingly-interminable turf wars did eventually encourage a little clear thinking. Also, arguably, the French Revolution. Oh, well.

I like to think that we’re learning. A little. Slowly. (June 25, 2017; July 14, 2017; November 6, 2016; October 30, 2016)

Here’s a short list of wacky notions:

I’ll give Jennifer Lawrence the benefit of the doubt. Her attitude may be at least partly well-played publicity for her current movie. Show business seems to have its own rules.

Folks with a particular style of spirituality give cartoonists like Wiley Miller opportunities for humor. I might be offended if I thought his “Church of Danae” was attacking my faith. (August 27, 2017; August 23, 2017)

But I’m a Christian and a Catholic. I recognize the sort of faith Mr. Miller reflects in his “Church of Danae” gags.

It has little to do with mine.

“There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church — which is, of course, quite a different thing.”
(“Radio Replies Vol. 1,” Forward, page ix, Fulton J. Sheen (1938) via Wikiquote)

Venom-spitting apostles of anger are still with us. But I think the ‘Angry God’ brand of Christianity is less influential these days. Happily.

I don’t think any of this shows that Christianity is stupid, that environmental awareness causes craziness, or that movie makers are bad.

I do think that natural disasters happen, and that they’re just that: natural disasters.

When they happen, part of our job may be to clean up the mess and rebuild. Some of us may be able to help folks who are doing that.

No pressure, but the Red Cross isn’t the only organization that steps in with disaster relief. I think CRS, Catholic Relief Services, is worth mentioning.

As the name implies, they’re Catholic. They’ll help anyone who needs it.

Their mission statement says their job is “to assist people on the basis of need, not creed, race or nationality.”

About Mother Nature and all that, I take environmental concerns seriously. But I don’t assume that a contemporary remake of Gaia or Phra Mae Thorani deserves special attention. (Catechism, 337–344, 2112–2114, 2402, 2415–2418)

God’s God, everyone and everything else isn’t. Remembering that makes sense.

Disasters happen, but it’s not because God has anger management issues. Seeing God as irritable, or worse, is our problem: not God’s. We’ve had a warped image of God for a very long time. (Catechism, 399)

We also have trouble dealing ourselves, and with each other, and that’s another topic. (July 23, 2017; March 5, 2017; November 6, 2016)

Mexican Earthquake


(From AFP, via BBC News; used w/o permission.)
(“Soldiers stood guard after a hotel collapsed in the town of Matias Romero, Oaxaca state”
(BBC News))


(From BBC News, used w/o permission.)

“Mexico’s strongest quake in century strikes off southern coast”
BBC News (September 8, 2017)

“An earthquake described by Mexico’s president as the country’s strongest in a century has struck off the southern coast, killing at least 33 people.

“The quake, which President Enrique Peña Nieto said measured 8.2, struck in the Pacific, about 87km (54 miles) south-west of Pijijiapan.

“Severe damage has been reported in Oaxaca and Chiapas states.

“A tsunami warning was initially issued for Mexico and other nearby countries, but later lifted.

“The quake, which struck at 23:50 local time on Thursday (04:50 GMT Friday), was felt hundreds of miles away in Mexico City, with buildings swaying and people running into the street. The tremors there were reported to have lasted up to a minute….”

BBC News is better than most at letting reporters get facts — and publishing them, along with (generally) common-sense analysis. (September 1, 2017)

A quake the size of the one off Mexico’s coast isn’t unusual. It’s ‘news’ in America partly because it’s fairly close.

“…This is the biggest quake experienced anywhere in 2017. Going on the statistics, you would expect at least one magnitude 8 to occur somewhere on the planet each year.

“It occurred where the Pacific ocean floor is drawn under Mexico and Guatemala. A great slab of rock, known as the Cocos tectonic plate, is driving towards the coast at a rate of 75mm per year. As it jerks downwards into the Earth’s interior, about 200km offshore, large tremors are the inevitable outcome….”
(Jonathan Amos, BBC News (September 8, 2017))

I think we will probably learn to predict earthquakes about as well as we predict weather today, eventually.

Right now, we’re learning what causes them and where they’re most common. We’ve found some answers and uncovered new questions, which is par for the course.

Prediction is pretty much limited to knowing roughly how much time passes between quakes in any one spot: on average. (July 28, 2017)

Earthquake science may be about where we were with meteorology and weather forecasting about a century ago.

Until fairly recently, folks in North America’s Tornado Alley knew that a tornado might hit; but not when it would. Not until we saw spinning clouds with bits of buildings inside, that is.

The earliest recorded earthquake I know of is the Mount Tai earthquake, about four millennia back. We don’t hear much about the 62 Pompeii earthquake, maybe because it wasn’t as destructive as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79.

We know more about earthquakes that happened recently.

At first glance, it could look like earthquakes happen more often now than in the past.

Maybe someone’s plotted the numbers and said that Earth will explode at some point from all the shaking.

Calling that unlikely would be a world-class understatement. I haven’t researched and proven this, but I’m quite sure quakes have been happening at roughly the same rate, on average, for the last several millennia.

They’re recorded more often now because we’re getting better at making, keeping, and correlating records.

Knowing more about events like the 2001 Geiyo earthquake than the 464 BC Sparta earthquake isn’t surprising.

We’ve learned a bit over the last two dozen centuries. We know more about what to look for, and how to gather and record data.

Our largest social units are bigger too, on average. (March 19, 2017)

I think that helps us cope with disasters. It may also help explain why we know so little about some ancient civilizations. (March 12, 2017; March 30, 2017)

Caribbean Hurricanes


(From Dutch military, via BBC News; used w/o permission.)
(“The Dutch military released aerial pictures showing the devastation on Sint-Maarten”
(BBC News))


(From AFP, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“Hurricane Irma has destroyed homes and businesses across the Caribbean. This is the scene on one street in Saint-Martin”
(BBC News))

“Hurricane Jose: ‘Barely habitable’ Barbuda residents flee”
BBC News (September 8, 2017)

“The entire population of Barbuda, the small Caribbean island devastated by Hurricane Irma, has been evacuated as a second powerful storm, Hurricane Jose, is expected to hit the region on Saturday.

“The Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, said Barbuda had been left ‘barely habitable’ with 95% of its building structures destroyed by Irma….”

Barbuda sounds a bit like Barbados or — sort of — Bermuda. All three are somewhat close to North America, with weather that’s not much like Minnesota’s.

About 1,600 or so folks live on Barbuda. The island is not particularly large. It’s mostly coral limestone, and mostly flat. The highest parts of the eastern highlands are 125 feet, 38 meters, above sea level.

Evacuating folks on Barbuda to Antigua seems to make sense, since another hurricane is coming.

Antigua is larger, higher, and — I hope — better equipped to shelter folks.

I don’t know how many folks living on Barbuda died during the storm.

One, a teenage surfer, was out riding waves stirred up by Irma. He died after falling off his board and hitting a reef. (BBC Newsbeat)

I’ve read of one other death on Barbuda, an infant. (BBC News)

Golfers of the Apocalypse?


(From David Simon (@AoDespair), Twitter, used w/o permission.)
(“In the pantheon of visual metaphors for America today, this is the money shot.”
(David Simon, journalist, on Twitter))

“Apocalyptic Thoughts Amid Nature’s Chaos? You Could Be Forgiven.”
Henry Fountain, The New York Times (September 8, 2017)

“Vicious hurricanes all in a row, one having swamped Houston and another about to buzz through Florida after ripping up the Caribbean.

“Wildfires bursting out all over the West after a season of scorching hot temperatures and years of dryness.

“And late Thursday night, off the coast of Mexico, a monster of an earthquake.

“You could be forgiven for thinking apocalyptic thoughts, like the science fiction writer John Scalzi ….

“…Or the street corner preacher in Harlem overheard earlier this week ranting about Harvey, Irma and Kim Jong Un, in no particular order.

“Or the tens of thousands who retweeted this image of golfers playing against a raging inferno of a wildfire in Oregon….”

That photo reminded me of a gag poster, or maybe bumper sticker, from a half-century back. It read “APATHY IS RAMPANT, BUT WHO CARES?”

I care plenty, but don’t see a point in hand-wringing angst.

Part of my job is contributing to the common good and getting involved as best I can. (Catechism, 1915, 2239)

I don’t see pessimism as piety, and the ‘gloominess is next to Godliness’ attitude seems silly. Or worse.

Decades of living with undiagnosed depression gave me little reason to imagine that melancholy was somehow admirable, and that’s yet another topic. (May 12, 2017; October 14, 2016)

Where was I? Storms, earthquakes, movies, comics, golfing through the Apocalypse. Right.

A bit after talking about golfers and an Oregon inferno, Henry Fountain mentions the recent eclipse and said that “all the recent ruin seems deeply, darkly not coincidental.”

I kept reading, and saw this bit of good sense: “…As any scientist will tell you, nature doesn’t work that way….”

He went on to talk about hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and history. Pretty much what I do, when explaining why I didn’t jump on the latest ‘end of the world’ bandwagon. (August 23, 2017; January 20, 2017)

I can see how someone in their teens or early adulthood might believe that End Times are nigh, or that the crisis du jour is but a prelude to humanity’s demise.

Wannabe prophets, spiritual and secular, can be quite persuasive. Appealing, at any rate. I think that’s partly due to imminent doom’s dramatic appeal. It’s the sort of thing that sells tickets to disaster movies.

Films like “Geostorm” and “2012” may be entertaining. But I think their science is about as reliable as the theology in “Hell Baby” and “The Seventh Sign.”

I see disasters like the ones making headlines this weekend as natural events. Doing what we can to prepare for them, within reason, makes sense. So does helping folks who are affected, when we can.

Fretting about whether End Times are Upon Us, or imagining that Mother Nature is vexed? That seems like a waste of time and effort. At least.

I can use suffering, joy, any experience, as a reason to pray and rejoice. (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18; Catechism, 2648)

But that doesn’t mean I should seek suffering, or try to get sick. That’s not being Saintly. That’s being daft. (August 18, 2017; July 21, 2017)

I think disasters, illness, any of the routine rough spots we experience, can be good reminders that I’m working out my salvation. (Philippians 2:12)

Also that I’ve got limited time, like everyone else. (August 27, 2017; April 9, 2017; December 4, 2016)

Weather Modification Experiments

We keep learning that technology isn’t foolproof safe. That doesn’t make tech, or us, bad.

It means that using our brains is important. (February 10, 2017; November 18, 2016)

I think the old ‘lords of creation’ and today’s ‘be very afraid’ attitudes are unreasonable. (August 11, 2017; July 14, 2017)

My guess is that many or most folks realize that humans aren’t all-powerful these days.

There’s some wisdom in seeing that we’re not all-powerful, and that doing whatever we want with this world occasionally has unpleasant results. Going to the other extreme? I’ll get back to that.

Suffering and illness can be a good reality check for hubris. They’re reminders that we’re limited, finite, powerless. (Catechism, 1500)

Compared to God, anyway. Forgetting that is a really bad idea. So, I think, is forgetting who and what we are. (July 23, 2017; November 13, 2016)

This is a big universe.

I think we’ll never run out of scientific puzzles to solve, or learn ‘too much.’ We do not and will not have infinite knowledge or power. (August 20, 2017; March 26, 2017)

On the other hand, I don’t think we’re utterly helpless.

I certainly don’t think we offended an irascible God by making lightning rods and eradicating smallpox. (October 16, 2016)

God gives us brains, a thirst for knowledge, and a knack for using what we learn to develop new tools. This is a good thing. Science and technology are part of being human. They’re what we’re supposed to be doing. (Catechism, 159, 214–217, 283, 294, 341, 2292–2295)

That makes sense, since part of our job is taking care of this world. We’re stewards, responsible for its maintenance. We can and should use its resources: wisely, keeping future generations in mind. (Catechism, 2415–2418, 2456)

We’ve been learning how weather works, including hurricanes.

Again, I don’t see this as a problem. ‘Blessed are the ignorant, for they shall remain clueless’ is not one of the Beatitudes.

We even know how to modify weather.

That’s hasn’t worked out as well as we hoped. Not yet.

Serious cloud seeding research was happening in the 1960s. By the early 1970s, weather control tech was being field tested. It looked like just a matter of time before we could decide when, where, and how much it rains.

Results of field testing were inconclusive.

That was a good thing for one team of scientists. A storm they modified grew, a lot, before reaching the Rapid City area.

The 1972 Black Hills flood caused 238 deaths and 3,057 injuries, and destroyed over a thousand homes. It didn’t take survivors long to learn who had been tweaking the storm a little earlier.

American courts eventually decided they didn’t have enough evidence to hold the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences liable for the death and destruction.

As I recall, public discussion of weather modification stopped rather abruptly after that. (May 26, 2017)

I think we’ll eventually know how to modify weather: safely. But I think today’s caution is probably a good idea.

In 1947, scientists seeded a hurricane east of Jacksonville, Florida. That may or may not be why the storm abruptly turned around and hit Georgia.

America’s government changed the rules after that, banning modification of storms with a 10% or better chance of reaching land in 48 hours.

Scientists tried quenching a hurricane again in 1969. They seeded Hurricane Debbie twice. Winds dropped each time: temporarily.

We’ve learned that hurricanes recycle their eyewalls fast. The 1947 and 1969 experiments may not have been as successful, or disastrous, as we thought.

That’s not terribly surprising. Tropical cyclones are huge storms. A hurricane releases roughly 70 times as much energy as we use: all seven-billion-plus of us.1

Learning how to control that, safely, will take more than we know today. Probably a lot more. But I don’t think it’s impossible, and am quite sure that we’ll figure out how. Eventually.

Other Catholic views of life, prayer, and making sense:

Dealing with disaster, my views:

1 What we’re learning, who we are:

Posted in Being Catholic | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Labor Day SETI

Posted on September 8, 2017 by Brian H. Gill

I nearly missed an interesting development in SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Interesting, and as newsworthy as most Stephen Hawking stories, but probably not significant.

Professor Hawking didn’t start chatting with aliens over the Labor Day weekend. That would be major news.

But an outfit he’s connected with will be listening to FRB 121102. I think it’s likely that they’ll collect useful data, and that this isn’t a prelude to ‘first contact.’

Other scientists say they’ve spotted several planets orbiting Tau Ceti. Two of them may be just inside that star’s habitable zone.

Believing and Learning

I’ve never met anyone who told me Earth is flat. One earnest young Christian seemed convinced that our sun goes around Earth, not the other way around.

Given his assumptions about reality and the Bible, he had a point.

1 Samuel 2:8, Job 9:6 and Psalms 150:1 were written by folks living just west of Mesopotamia.

It’s hardly surprising that their poetic imagery includes bits of Mesopotamian cosmology. It would have been familiar to folks living in that part of the world.

I also see a hint of Pythagorean ideas reflected in Job 38:7.

Natural philosophers weren’t all that far off in thinking about music of the spheres. We started working out the math of orbital resonance about two centuries back, and that’s yet another topic.

I could be a Christian and believe that Earth is a flat plate between the upper and lower waters. (December 2, 2016)

But ignoring what we’ve learned over the last couple dozen centuries isn’t necessary.

I take the Bible seriously. That’s a ‘must’ for Catholics. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 101–133)

Believing and studying Sacred Scripture isn’t even close to trying to believe that Genesis, Psalms, Wisdom, Revelation and the rest were all written by someone with an American viewpoint. (May 19, 2017; December 13, 2016)

Then there’s the notion that thinking too much is bad for belief. I’m a Catholic, so faith and reason get along fine. Or should. It’s like St. John Paul II wrote:

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth….”
“Fides et Ratio,” Pope Saint John Paul II (September 14, 1998) (From vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.pdf (April 20, 2017))

Science and Religion

I don’t think science replaces God. That’d be as silly as looking for life’s meaning in Newton’s laws of motion.

I think I’m here to seek, love, serve, and know God as best I can. Putting anything or anyone else at the top of my priorities would be a bad idea. (Catechism, 1, 68, 2112–2114)

That doesn’t make science, family, parchisi, or anything else evil. They’re not problems unless I forget who and what I am, and where my primary focus belongs.

Large and In Charge

This is where I talk about science, God, and being human.

If you’ve read my stuff before, and know why reality doesn’t threaten my faith — feel free to skip ahead to FRB 121102 and Stephen Hawking in the News or SETI, Seriously.

Better yet, leave the Internet for a few minutes. Take a walk. Enjoy a cup of coffee. Read a book. Take a nap. Do whatever.

Some Catholics seem as passionately convinced as their choleric Calvinist counterparts that science is Satanic. Or at least utterly opposed to all that they hold dear.

I don’t hope or expect folks who regard evolution as the religion of the Antichrist, or who believe that thinking too much is sinful, to change their minds. It’s not likely that someone with that mindset would be reading this, anyway.

By the same token, I wouldn’t expect a born-again atheist to read this and start looking for the nearest RCIA program.

So how come I keep writing these posts? Partly because I enjoy having an excuse to read about what we’re learning and sharing what I find.

I also think there’s some point to being an example of a Christian who’s also interested in science. (March 31, 2017; January 29, 2017)

Folks who don’t like science, or see it as a threat, aren’t necessarily daft or dim. There’s been a great deal of nonsense published in the last century or so. Some of it, sadly, is still taken seriously.

Feeling menaced by new knowledge isn’t limited to Christianity’s fearful fringe. H. P. Lovecraft wrote that science threatens our “placid island of ignorance.” (March 31, 2017)

“…The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far….”
(“The Call of Cthulhu,” H. P. Lovecraft (1929); via WikiQuote)

I don’t see it that way. I don’t think knowledge can threaten an informed faith. But I know that sometimes knowledge encourages us to reconsider what we thought was true.

Since I think God creates the things of faith and the world we observe, I can’t reasonably fear what we learn. As Pope Leo XIII said, “truth cannot contradict truth.” (Catechism, 159, “Providentissimus Deus,” Pope Leo XIII (November 18, 1893))

My fascination with our growing knowledge of this universe isn’t the reason I am a Catholic and a Christian. But it doesn’t get in the way of my faith, either.

I think that God is large and in charge, and is creating everything we can observe. (Genesis 1:1–2:2; Catechism, 268–269, 279, 301)

Newly-discovered knowledge may mean taking another look at assumptions my great-grandparents made. The same goes for what scientists were pretty sure about when my high school textbooks were written.

As I keep saying, that’s not a problem. Scientific discoveries give us opportunities for “greater admiration” of God’s work. (Catechism, 283, 341)

Living in a Beautiful Universe

The notion that spiritual is good and material is bad predates Christianity. I’m not sure why it’s such a durable belief.

It doesn’t make sense to me, partly because I’ve got eyes and can see this world’s incredible beauty.

Some folks see the same beauty, and apparently decide that it’s a sinful snare, luring the unwary to their doom.

That doesn’t make sense to me, but the ‘gloominess is next to Godliness’ style of piety never did. Good grief, our Lord’s first miracle was getting drinks for a wedding. (John 2:1–10)

There’s more to it, and that’s yet again another topic. Topics. (Catechism, 528, 725, 1335, 1612–1617, 2618)

I think God creates everything, and that God doesn’t make junk. Ignoring God’s creation seems silly, at best. More to the point, we’re told that this world is good: basically. We got off to a regrettable start, and that’s still another topic. (Genesis 1:31, 3:1–19; Catechism, 299, 309–314, 385–406)

We’re also told that this universe isn’t just beautiful. It’s orderly, following knowable physical laws. We’re supposed to notice this beauty and order, and study it. If we do it right, it’ll lead us toward God. (Catechism, 31–35, 159, 279, 283, 289, 299, 337–349; “Gaudium et spes,” 5, 15, Second Vatican Council, Bl. Pope Paul VI (December 7, 1965))

Or we can decide that since an ordered creation exists, an orderly creator can’t. Or shouldn’t. We’re human, and can decide what we believe. (Catechism, 1730)

1. FRB 121102 and Stephen Hawking in the News


(From NASA, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(“A Stephen Hawking-led project has detected what could be signs of alien life from a galaxy 3 billion light years away from Earth.”
(New York Daily News))

“Stephen Hawking project detects possible signs of alien life from distant galaxy”
Megan Cerullo, New York Daily News (September 2, 2017)

“Stephen Hawking’s Breakthrough Listen project has detected mysterious signals that could be coming from intelligent alien life.

“Astronomers working to identify alien civilizations picked up 15 repeated fast radio bursts (FRBs) from a dwarf galaxy 3 billion light years away from Earth.

“It’s unclear if the signals, observed over a 30-minute period, emanate from black holes, rotating neutron stars, or if they represent signs of alien life….

“…The 15 signals came from FRB 121102. Astronomers had previously detected radio pulses coming from the same source….”

What’s new about this news is the Breakthrough Listen project’s interest. Stephen Hawking may not be as newsworthy as the current top pop media personality, but anything “Hawking” and science-related is news.

He’s associated with Breakthrough Initiatives, one of the more serious SETI outfits.1 (March 3, 2017; December 2, 2016)

I very nearly didn’t pay close attention to this piece. New York Daily News is among America’s more entertaining news resources.

They’re not quite in the “FBI CAPTURES BAT CHILD!” class.

But their FRB 121102 article included links to these ‘related’ pieces:

If you decide to follow those links, be aware that the New York Daily News website is a tad intrusive. They like to start videos while you’re reading, for one thing.

I was taking Labor Day weekend off, so I figured spending a few minutes reading about Professor Hawking and messages from space aliens might be fun.

Tesla, Martians, and FRB 121102

I don’t take journalistic efforts like the Great Moon Hoax and Nicola Tesla’s messages from Mars seriously.

More accurately, I do take them seriously: as entertainment, and as examples of what at least a few folks can be counted on mistaking for fact. (December 16, 2016)

Like I said, I was taking the weekend off, decided to see what Hawking was supposed to have been doing: and was pleasantly surprised.

Megan Cerullo’s article discussed something Project Listen might do, without implying that Hawking was talking shop with space aliens. She went into more detail than some, naming Breakthrough Initiatives’ founder Yuri Milner as well as Professor Hawking.

There’s a bit more than the usual information about this particular FRB, too: and the name of one of the scientists who reported its recent activity. That gave me enough to find Cerullo’s source.

It didn’t take long. Quite a few of the scientists working with Project Listen are with University of California, Berkeley.

Berkley News gave a nice summary; and linked to the original report:

“…These are the highest frequency and widest bandwidth detections of bursts from FRB 121102 obtained to-date….”
(“FRB 121102: Detection at 4 – 8 GHz band with Breakthrough Listen backend at Green Bank,” Vishal Gajjar et al., The Astronomer’s Telegram (August 29, 2017))

The Repeating FRB

Whatever FRB 121102 is, and whatever it’s been doing, it was quite active recently.

Radio astronomers using Green Bank’s C-band receiver picked up 15 bursts of radio energy during 10 30-minute scans. These observations started August 26.2

We’re still quite sure that this FRB is several billion light years away.

It may be in or near a dwarf galaxy that’s in the same direction as the radio bursts, and a couple billion light-years away. Roughly.

Seen from Earth, it’s in the constellation Auriga, between the stars Capella and Elnath. I don’t know if the galaxy is something amateur astronomers can detect, but if you want to try it’s at 05h 32m +33° 05′.

FRB 121102 probably isn’t an exploding black hole or colliding neutron stars. That sort of thing would only happen once. It’s hard to imagine how something could explode twice, or collide and merge more than once.

It is, so far, the only FRB that’s produced more than one burst of radio waves.

Interesting Times

FRB 121102 is probably a magnetar. Or it could be highly-magnetized pulsars going through one or more asteroid belts at irregular intervals. Or maybe it’s a neutron star-white dwarf binary, or something else.

At this point, “something else” seems reasonable. Scientists are having trouble trying to fit observed data into what we’ve learned about physics so far.

My guess is that we’re looking at something we haven’t noticed before.

It’s likely enough that FRB 121102 is a natural object.

But I think scientists who say that FRBs look a great deal like what we’d use to push starships may be on the right track. Fast radio bursts might, maybe, be artificial.

We can’t build anything on that scale. Not yet. But we know why we’d build a transmitter that powerful, and how it would work.

I’m a bit dubious about the “power beam” model: partly because we understand the physics involved. I’ll get back to that. Again. (December 16, 2016; September 16, 2016)

What’s stopping us from building starships at the moment are mainly technical and economic limitations. (March 3, 2017)

I suspect that today’s situation is like the 1880s and 1890s, when Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and others were working out the math and science of interplanetary navigation.

British balloons, Clément Ader’s steam-powered Eole, and Chuhachi Ninomiya’s model airplane were the most advanced aerospace tech at the time.3

A century later, we were discussing when we would go back to Earth’s moon.

I’d be surprised if we’re less than a century from ‘out and back’ travel to the stars. But there’s a remote chance that I’ll live long enough to see the first robotic probes launched. These are interesting times.

2. Worlds Around Tau Ceti, Maybe


(From F. Feng, University of Hertfordshire, UK; via Sky and Telescope, used w/o permission.)
(“This illustration compares the four planets detected around the nearby star Tau Ceti (top) and the inner planets of our solar system (bottom).”
(Sky and Telescope)

“Four Exoplanets Might Orbit Sun-like Star”
Monica Young, Sky and Telescope (August 15, 2017)

“When exoplanets were first being discovered by the handful in the 1990s, teams competed to measure the wobbles of nearby stars, induced by the gravitational tugs of orbiting planets. A star’s radial velocity (its motion toward or away from Earth) can be measured by its spectrum, where the Doppler effect will shift spectral lines as the star wobbles. The tinier the wobble, the tinier the shift — and the tinier the planet doing the tugging.

“Now astronomers are testing the limits of what this planet-finding method can achieve….

“…But if astronomers want to detect an Earth-size planet at an Earth-like distance from its star, they’ll need far more sensitive radial velocity measurements — around 0.1 m/s. And things get tricky when astronomers begin reaching below 1 m/s. It’s easy to confuse the motions on a star’s surface for the motion of the star itself or with internal signals generated by the instrument itself. A small planet’s signal can become lost in the noise….”

“Signal” in this case isn’t a message sent by someone. It’s “an indication of a situation,” as Oxford Dictionaries puts it.

Signal-to-noise ratio means slightly different things for engineers and scientists. It’s how much of whatever’s being measured is meaningful, compared to what’s not.

Doppler spectroscopy, the ‘wobble method,’ uses the Doppler effect. It’s the apparent change in wavelength as the observer and source move at different speeds relative to each other.

Maybe you’ve heard it at a railway crossing. A train’s horn will seem as if it’s at a higher pitch when the train approaches, then drop to a lower note as it passes.

Doppler spectroscopy isn’t the only way we find exoplanets. Astronomers found some, particularly big planets around nearby small stars, by measuring how much the star moves back and forth in our sky.

Some, like GJ 1132b and the TRAPPIST-1 planets, pass between their star and Earth during each orbit. We can “see” a few, like 51 Eridani b, whose stars are bright and nearby. (June 30, 2017; April 21, 2017; July 29, 2016)

The ‘wobble’ caused by planets like Earth isn’t much, as the article said. Folks studying gravity waves have similar challenges, sorting gravity wave effects out from background noise. (March 24, 2017)

Other Suns


(From Torsten Bronger, Kxx; via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(Cetus constellation map, Tau Ceti circled.)

Our star is unique in the sense that it’s the one our planet orbits. But we’ve found other stars that are very much like ours. One, HD 164595, is a bit over 94 light-years away. Others are closer, many aren’t.

Tau Ceti is more like the star Earth orbits than most, but isn’t a solar twin: more like a solar analog. It’s a bit cooler and dimmer, and less massive than our star. But not by much.

It’s also much less active. Astronomers have found little to no evidence of magnetic activity, so Tau Ceti probably doesn’t have sunspots and flares: not nearly as often as our star, anyway. Not now.

Maybe we’ve been observing it during something like the Maunder minimum, from around 1645 to 1715, when our star had almost no sunspots.

We were dealing with the Little Ice Age around that time, which may or may not have had anything to do with what our star was doing.

We’re currently observing more than the usual number of sunspots. But I haven’t noticed anyone saying that might have something to do with current climate changes.

Tau Ceti is also almost in our back yard: not as close as Alpha Centauri, but just under 12 light-years away.

Since it’s so much like our star, and so close, Tau Ceti was one of two stars observed by Project Ozma.

The Project Ozma SETI effort did detect evidence of intelligent life. On April 8, 1960, the Green Bank radio telescope detected a signal from the sky. It was from an aircraft built by humans, flying in Earth’s atmosphere.

Like Our Star, But Not Quite

Tau Ceti’s metallicity is lower than our star’s. To astronomers and cosmologists, metallicity is how much of a star isn’t hydrogen or helium.

Scientists still figure that stars with higher metallicity are more likely to have planets.

But we’re finding low-metallicity stars with planets, so it looks like there’s more to learn about that.

It’s likely enough that a we’ll find connections between a star’s metallicity and what sort of planets it has. Tau Ceti’s low metallicity may mean that its planets, if they’re actually there, may not be as rocky as the Solar System’s inner worlds.

These scientists have measured something. What we aren’t sure about is exactly what they’ve measured. Variations in radial velocity this small — about 0.2 meters per second — may be from something else. These changes could be “noise.”

Or Tau Ceti may have planets. This team seems to have done a good job of sorting out signal from background noise. We could very well be looking at another planetary system, close to home.4

Tau Ceti’s Dust

Assuming that Tau Ceti’s planets exist, they may not be a good place to look for life.

They’re not quite at what we consider a comfortable distance from their sun.

That’s probably not the biggest problem, though. Astronomers spotted dust circling Tau Ceti.

It’s in a belt around the star, concentrated about 55 AU, astronomical units, out.

They figure the dust comes from collisions in an analog to the Solar System’s Kuiper belt. Most of the Kuiper belt is between 30 and 55 AU away from our star.

To get the concentration of dust they found, there would have to be a lot of collisions. Tau Ceti’s Kuiper belt analog, if that’s what it is, has something like 10 times as many comet- and Pluto-size objects as the Solar System’s borderland.

Since we figure many comets come from the Kuiper belt, Tau Ceti’s inner planets would have roughly 10 times as many comets in their skies as Earth.

That would be scenic, but not necessarily good news for life. We’ve been learning that impact events like the one that made the Chicxulub crater happen at irregular intervals. (May 19, 2017)

The last big extinction event was probably helped along by the Chixulub impact.

Life on Earth recovered, but recovery takes time. It took about 30,000,000 years for a new ‘normal’ to happen after the Permian-Triassic extinction event.

Some critters survived each time, obviously. Some, like scorpions, lived before and after the dinosaurs. (December 23, 2016; September 30, 2016)

Maybe complex life wouldn’t have time to reset itself if extinction events happened ten times more frequently.

Then again, maybe folks living on one of Tau Ceti’s planets never considered the Solar System a likely place for complex life: because we didn’t get reset often enough.

And that brings me to our search for extraterrestrial intelligence, faith, science, and why I’m not worried about the universe being too old.

We’re Alone: Or Not

First, what I don’t think.

“Earth vs. the Flying Saucers,” “Invaders from Mars,” and “”Plan 9 from Outer Space” are entertainment.

I’d like to think that most folks realize their ‘science’ is very fictional.

Some folks “believe in” extraterrestrial intelligence. I don’t. Not like folks in the Aetherius Society.

UFO religions are a bad idea, although not often as obviously lethal as Heaven’s Gate. (August 13, 2017)

We don’t know if we have neighbors in this universe: free-willed creatures with physical bodies, like us; but not human.

I think we have neighbors: or not. Either way, it’s not up to me. God’s God, I’m not; and I’m quite content with that situation.

Part of my job is appreciating God’s work: not telling God what should or shouldn’t be real. (April 16, 2017; December 9, 2016; December 2, 2016)

SETI, Seriously

Scientists who take SETI seriously are not the screwball ‘flying saucer’ enthusiasts of the 1950s.

But I think many make overly-big assumptions about non-human intelligence.

Or maybe they’ve thought this through, and don’t want to risk spooking folks who sign checks for their research grants.

That may help explain why some of the clearest thinking I’ve seen about SETI comes from folks like XKCD’s Randall Munroe.

I’m not on the same page, philosophically, as H. P. Lovecraft. But I give him credit for realizing that people who aren’t human — may not be human. Not even close.

Obvious as that seems, the assumption that everybody will be pretty much like us apparently runs through our efforts to locate extraterrestrial intelligence.

The Fermi paradox, Drake equation, and Kardashev scale may indicate that we’re doomed.

I agree that we’re not selling trinkets to alien tourists and up to our hips in the Galactic Conglomerate’s equivalent of six-pack rings and empty oil drums.

But this may not show that intelligence leads to smog, nuclear winter, climate change, and death. I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t, actually.

I could be wrong about this.

Maybe people must be highly social. And maybe everybody uses technology we started developing about 98 years back, based on science that’s a few decades older. And maybe we’re the smartest, most advanced folks that ever were and ever can be.

Or maybe we’re the oddballs, and very young. Maybe our neighbors are hoping that we’ll soon get around to transmitting less radio noise. Imagine an unruly college fraternity in a senior living community, and you’ll see what I mean.

Even assuming that our neighbors are exactly like us, psychologically, I’m not convinced that slit gongs, wireless telegraphy and wavelength-division multiplexing are the ultimate communication technologies.

A million years is a long time, or a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ interval: depending on what scale you use. (December 16, 2016)

My guess is that if we do have neighbors, we’ll learn that humanity’s diversity barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. And I’m quite certain that we have a very great deal left to learn.

A Matter of Scale


(From Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

We don’t know whether this universe is actually infinite, but it is really, really big.

Scientists like Fermi understood how big the universe is, but folks like Thomas Paine maybe didn’t.

That may explain why Paine thought that if other worlds exist, God doesn’t.

I can understand an engineer living in the 18th century having an imperfect understanding of infinity.

A scientist writing in the 21st century making the same basic assumption — not so much. (August 20, 2017; April 14, 2017; September 16, 2016)

We’ve known the universe we live in is big and old for a long time.

“Terrible and awesome are you, stronger than the ancient mountains.”
(Psalms 76:5)

“Raise your eyes to the heavens,
look at the earth below;
Though the heavens vanish like smoke,
the earth wear out like a garment
and its inhabitants die like flies,
My salvation shall remain forever
and my victory shall always be firm.”
(Isaiah 52:6)

“Indeed, before you the whole universe is as a grain from a balance, or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth.”
(Wisdom 11:22)

All that’s been happening in the last few centuries is how much we know about this universe. That might disturb someone who imagines God as merely someone who is a little bigger, smarter and stronger than we are.

I figure that God is — God. Infinite, ineffable, eternal, beyond anything we can understand. (Catechism, 202, 206–209)

And I’m okay with that.

More; mostly about life, the universe, and being human:

1 Serious SETI:

2 Fast radio bursts, still a puzzle:

  • Wikipedia
    • Fast radio burst
    • “A direct localization of a fast radio burst and its host”
      S. Chatterjee, C. J. Law, R. S. Wharton, S. Burke-Spolaor, J. W. T. Hessels, G. C. Bower, J. M. Cordes, S. P. Tendulkar, C. G. Bassa, P. Demorest, B. J. Butler, A. Seymour, P. Scholz, M. W. Abruzzo, S. Bogdanov, V. M. Kaspi, A. Keimpema, T. J. W. Lazio, B. Marcote, M. A. McLaughlin, Z. Paragi, S. M. Ransom, M. Rupen, L. G. Spitler & H. J. van Langevelde; Nature (Received November 1, 2016; Accepted November 16, 2016; Published online January 4, 2017)
    • “The Host Galaxy and Redshift of the Repeating Fast Radio Burst FRB 121102”
      Shriharsh P. Tendulkar, Cees Bassa, James M. Cordes, Geoffery C. Bower, Casey J. Law, Shamibrata Chatterjee, Elizabeth A. K. Adams, Slavko Bogdanov, Sarah Burke-Spolaor, Bryan J. Butler, Paul Demorest, Jason W. T. Hessels , Victoria M. Kaspi, T. Joseph W. Lazio, Natasha Maddox, Benito Marcote, Maura A. McLaughlin, Zsolt Paragi, Scott M. Ransom, Paul Scholz, Andrew Seymour, Laura G. Spitler, Huib J. van Langevelde, Robert S. Wharton; The Astrophysical Journal Letters (Submitted on 4 Jan 2017 (v1), last revised 5 Jan 2017 (this version, v2)) via arXiv.org

3 Aerospace tech in the 1890s:

4 A nearby planetary system, maybe:

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Love, Hard and Dreadful

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Deacon L. N. Kaas

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2017:

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2017

By Deacon Lawrence N. Kaas September 3, 2017

One of the first books about Dorothy Day’s Catholic worker movement was entitled, “A Harsh and Dreadful Love.” The title refers to an episode in which a pious woman tells a holy man that she dreams of serving the poor as a Sister of Mercy. The wistful thought brings tears to her eyes, but the romance fades when she considers that the really poor may be ungrateful for her sacrifices. The holy man replies, “love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to the love that we dream.” This seems to sum up the message of today’s liturgy.

Today we see Jeremiah at his best while bordering on the blasphemous. He accuses God of seducing him into a life that brought him nothing but hardship and rejection. He never wanted to be a prophet, but he was enticed by God who spoke tenderly, saying “I formed you in the womb.” Then God promised: “I am with you to deliver you…I will put my words in your mouth.”

Jeremiah fell for it. He allowed God to work through him, and the people rejected him for proclaiming God’s word. Jeremiah was miserable because he shared God’s fate.

Jesus of all people could understand Jeremiah’s plight. As God’s beloved, He not only spoke God’s word, He lived and breathed the Father’s care. He gave of Himself as bread for the hungry and moved through life as God’s hand outstretched to the rejected and the needy. History and His own experience of being criticized, rejected and threatened assured him that the powerful would seek a way to do Him in.

We can assume that when Jesus talked about his impending suffering and death it was not to impress His disciples with His ability to tell the future. He was sharing His heart. He wanted them to know and understand what He had discerned about God’s will for Him.

When He said He must go to Jerusalem, he was saying that was the only way to be true to His vocation. The disciples were savvy enough that they weren’t surprised that going to Jerusalem would bring suffering to Jesus. What they didn’t understand, however, was why He would do it in the first place.

That was what Jesus had to teach them, He tried again and again. His primary way of teaching was through action – only after acting did He explain what he was doing.

Jesus had to go to Jerusalem because to avoid confronting the powers aligned against Him He would have to admit to the impotence of His own message. So, in essence, He said, “they’re going to unleash everything in their arsenal against me, and it is going to take my life. But, God will not let that be the end of the story.” He puts all His cards on the table: “If you believe in me, if you want to follow me, this is where the road is leading.” Jesus’ faith, at that moment, was greater than anything the disciples could imagine.

Jesus wasn’t courting death. He wasn’t even baiting His opponents. He was simply teaching His disciples that His integrity demanded that He not hide from danger. He had to decide between being true to His father’s message and saving His skin. He decided to leave the matter to God, trusting that His Father would also give Him the grace and strength to accomplish His will.

Unlike some of our brothers and sisters in places like Africa and the Middle East, few of us in the United States will ever have to face anything like the persecution Jesus and his disciples were confronted with. To those of us who don’t have to walk the road toward martyrdom, Paul offers a different and no less costly challenge. He’s not saying “run to the Coliseum to volunteer for a lion fight.” That is too easy, as a once and for all solution, a romantic hero’s role that we choose for ourselves. Paul calls us, instead, into a daily struggle for faithfulness: “do not conform yourselves to this age.”

This is the call to live with Christ-like integrity, to stand up for the values of the reign of God, no matter the cost. Ellie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize laureate who survived the Holocaust, is quoted as saying: “we must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor… Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Our road to Jerusalem offers us glimpses of religious persecution, of refugees turning away from their shelters, and billboards advertising a philosophy that proclaims that we will make a better world by putting ourselves first. Disciples of Jesus do not remain silent. Such realities demand of us a gospel response.

Gospel love is indeed hard and dreadful. It can cost us everything. But, is there anything worth living for without it?

So you all be Good, be Holy preach the Gospel always and if necessary use words.

(‘Thank you’ to Deacon Kaas, for letting me post his reflection here — Brian H. Gill.)

Related posts:

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Firebase Earth

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Brian H. Gill

We are involved in a war which was raging when the current event, which we call the universe, began its existence. This war’s origins are in a place where space and time are not, and many of its soldiers are beings whose nature and mode of existence we can only infer from their dealings with us.

When the first humans walked Earth, they quickly became involved in this war. On the wrong side.

As a result, Earth is now on the front lines, and only one or two human beings have been born who were not scarred by it.

As I grew, I became aware of the war. First, noticing its effects, then slowly developing a dim understanding of why death and deception, malice and greed, were so much a part of life here.

Unlike most wars, this one has a distinct “right” and “wrong” side: assuming that one regards the agonizing death of humanity as “wrong.”

Quite recently there was a major turning point in the war. About twenty centuries ago, the leader of the side which does not seek humanity’s destruction intervened, personally.

Through a process we may never understand, a portion of the leader became fully human and walked among us. The crux of his mission here was an act which broke the enemy’s power over humanity.

He also set up a sort of command center. It maintains his presence, and protects and guides humanity in what appear to be the final phases of this conflict.

I had known about this command center for decades before understanding what it was. When I found out, I joined its ranks.

I am a Catholic.

© 2006, Brian H. Gill. I posted this story in 2009, when this blog was on Blogger.

More of how I see angels, Jesus, and being human:

Posted in Being Catholic, Series, Stories | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Floods, Harvey, and Climate

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Brian H. Gill

Harvey is currently centered over Louisiana. It’s a big storm, so part of it is still over Texas. When Harvey was a hurricane, wind was a problem. Now it’s water.

At least 33 folks have died. Many drowned. (NPR, BBC News (August 30, 2017))

I’ll take a look at one of those deaths, a refreshingly non-hysterical Harvey-related “climate change” piece, and why some folks most likely couldn’t have evacuated. Not on their own.

Names and Suits

Folks have given tropical cyclones names for a long time. Centuries. The storms were often named after places they affected, like the Great Galveston Hurricane in 1900.

Clement Wragge systematically named hurricanes toward the end of the 19th century. We re-invented his system. Eventually.

I think it’s a good idea. Partly because folks remember names better than catalog numbers. Most of us, that is.

Wragge was a Queensland Government Meteorologist. From 1887 to 1907, he took names from letters of the Greek alphabet and Greco-Roman female names. Then the Australian government didn’t set up a federal weather bureau with him as director.

After that he named cyclones after politicos. He retired in 1907 and folks stopped using his system. I’d have to know more about the personalities, language, and cultures involved to be sure: but I think at least some folks didn’t like the idea of naming storms.

Sir Napier Shaw said Wragge’s system was like a “child naming waves” in his “Manual of Meteorology.”

Folks, including newspaper editors, didn’t forget Wragge’s system. Some said it was a good idea, and we should use it.

I’m inclined to agree. Making data easy to understand and remember is a good idea.

Naming storms systematically started, again, in the mid-20th century. But not willingly. Suits at the United States Weather Bureau said giving storms names was “not appropriate” when warning the American public about storms.

Maybe they thought it was more important to avoid panicking the public, by not using scary words like “hurricane” and “tornado.” (August 27, 2017)

Thousands of unnecessary deaths later, we learned what had been going on. That was in 1953. The policy changed a few weeks later. (August 11, 2017)

So did the Weather Bureau.

What we now call the Storm Prediction Center got moved from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1954.

I gather that a lot of Americans were thoroughly fed up at that point. We get that way, occasionally, and that’s another topic.

Maybe a bit of ‘not invented here’ was behind the Weather Bureau’s refusal to name hurricanes. U.S. Army Air Forces forecasters had started naming typhoons after their wives and girlfriends in 1944.

The forecasters noticed that giving the storms names was a good way to reduce confusion while discussing maps. The U.S. Armed Services officially adopted a list of women’s names for Pacific typhoons in 1945.

Starting in 1947, the Miami Air Force Hurricane Office started using the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet to name significant tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Beecher, Michigan. June 9, 1953, following the June 8 tornado. From NOAA, used w/o permissionMaking sense to fellow-forecasters is one thing. Giving the public useful information is, perhaps, something else.

I’ll get back to that.

The Hurricane Office didn’t use those readily-remembered names in public bulletins, though. As I said, we were ‘protected’ by the feds until 1953.

My language has several names for the sort of storm that went through the Caribbean on its way to the American Gulf Coast.

When winds around their center are above 74 miles an hour, 119 kilometers an hour, they’re hurricanes.

Or cyclonic storms with an adjective, if they’re over parts of the Indian Ocean. Other places, they’re tropical cyclones or typhoons.1

When the winds fall below various values, they’re tropical depressions, deep depressions, or tropical disturbances.They’re all the same sort of storm. Wind, location, and history account for their names.

We may, eventually, develop a standardized system for the whole planet. Meanwhile, I’m glad that we live in an era when we often get told that one’s coming.

Still Learning


(From NOAA Central Library, Silver Spring, Maryland; via Wikimedia Commons; used w/o permission.)
(Surface weather, 1935 Labor Day hurricane.)

I think, hope, that government officials in the ‘good old days’ meant well.

There may even have been a time when “yeoman farmers,” “planters,” and the “plain folk” really were prone to panic and couldn’t handle scary words.

I appreciate the motives of folks who supported Jeffersonian democracy and others who recognized that people who aren’t wealthy matter, too.

But many of my ancestors were hewers of water and drawers of wood; or, rather, the other way around.

I don’t think we were any more delicate than the lords and ladies we worked for.

I’ll grant that my forebears had the get-up-and-go to get up and leave the old country. But that’s true of nearly all Americans, except for folks like some of my extended family.

America’s really old families started as immigrants, too.

They arrived on foot, back when the Bering Strait was land. I still think it’s hilarious, sort of, that many folks who fuss about newcomers are descendants of other immigrants. (February 27, 2017; January 22, 2017)

Some official reluctance to say “hurricane” may have come from uncertainty.

Natural philosophers had studied weather long before 1835.

Forecasting started being possible when The electric telegraph let them share weather data, fast, across a continent.

And, eventually, across the globe. Ocean floor mapping for transatlantic cables indirectly helped scientists learn about plate tectonics, and that’s yet another topic. (August 11, 2017; February 17, 2017)

Today’s tech helps meteorologists make increasingly accurate forecasts.

And ‘the weather forecast was wrong’ jokes are still around. As I keep saying, we’re learning: and have much more left to learn.

A Little Science


(From Kelvinsong, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(“Diagram of a Northern hemisphere hurricane”
(Wikipedia))


(From From Jannev, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(“Tropical cyclones exhibit an overturning circulation where air inflows at low levels near the surface, rises in thunderstorm clouds, and outflows at high levels….”
(Wikipedia))

No matter what they’re called, tropical storms all work the same way.2 Sunlight shining on Earth’s ocean heats the water.

Water near the equator gets particularly warm. Earth’s poles are tilted, so water north of the equator heats up more in that hemisphere’s summer, and the process repeats during southern hemisphere summers.

When the water’s warm enough, tropical storms form and occasionally become hurricanes, typhoons, or whatever.

Hurricanes don’t form over the equator. Folks there get thunderstorms and the occasional tornado or waterspout. But hurricanes need what’s called Coriolis force — an inertial effect, actually, not a force. (July 14, 2017)

Hurricanes form in the northern and southern tropics. Our planet isn’t perfectly symmetrical, so they’re more common north of the equator.

Americans mostly hear about tropical storms in the Atlantic, but they’re in the Pacific, too. The biggest ones generally form near Asia.

One called Sanvu is now a typhoon. It’ll likely affect folks living in Japan.

Bangladesh, Nepal, and India have had heavy weather recently, too.

Being Prepared, Helping Each Other


(From Reuters, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“The coastguard has been among the rescuers working to help stranded residents.”
(BBC News))

Earlier this week, someone noted that although Minnesota’s weather is a little extreme, our storms don’t have names. That, he said, was something to be thankful for.

He’s got a point. I’ve lived in the upper Midwest most of my life, and we’ve never had to evacuate a city.

We’ve been learning that building in flood plains is a bad idea, but getting folks out of low-lying areas hasn’t been a major issue.

Like I said Wednesday, Our lively weather pretty much guarantees that folks who make it through their first year develop situational awareness. (August 30, 2017)

At least one professor at a regional university didn’t last that long. He arrived in autumn, learned about winter, and left.

I like it here, but I grew up near the Minnesota-North Dakota border. San Francisco weather was nice but — boring.

Folks living on the Gulf Coast don’t have our advantages. Any one spot in that part of the world may go years, decades, without a major hurricane. My guess is that it’s hard to remember that ‘not recently’ doesn’t mean ‘never.’

For whatever reason, buildings near the Gulf Coast don’t seem to be designed around maximum stress levels.

That’s no problem most years. Then a hurricane comes along, and places like Rockport are in national news.

Ideally, everything we need for emergencies would be on hand and ready for use. We don’t live in an ideal world. The good news is that many folks help each other.

Urban Evacuation: Getting the Job Done


(From Texas National Guard, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(Someone getting help from the Texas National Guard near Houston. (August 27, 2017))


(From Nick Oxford/Reuters, used w/o permission.)
(“Evacuees are transported to the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston.”
(Reuters))

Americans are also able to count on outfits like the National Guard to help. Again, it’s not a perfect system. But I think we do a pretty good job.

We’re also able, with varying degrees of competence, to improvise. I think the truck taking Houstonians to the George R. Brown Convention Center hauls garbage on most days. I haven’t confirmed that.

This photograph, with a caption that identified the truck’s everyday use, was removed from a BBC News article a few hours after it appeared.

Maybe someone complained, or was offended that Houston used a truck instead of providing limousine service. If I’d been in the back of that truck, I hope I’d have the sense to be glad I was alive, above water, and heading for a shelter.

Self-respect is okay,3 but being picky during an urban evacuation doesn’t make sense.

More of my take on Harvey:

1. The Child Lives


(From Angela Jacobs/KBMT, via 9news.com, used w/o permission.)

“Beaumont mom dies saving her infant daughter during Harvey flooding”
Mary Bowerman, 9news.com, USA Today/KBMT (August 30, 2017)

“A Texas mom died Tuesday while saving her infant daughter during Hurricane Harvey flooding in Beaumont, Texas, according to authorities….”

“Houston floods: Toddler found clinging to mother’s body”
BBC News (August 30, 2017)

“A toddler is in stable condition in Texas after she was found clinging to her drowned mother’s body in a flooded canal during Tropical Storm Harvey.

“The mother was seen trying to save her 18-month-old from a flooded parking lot when they were swept away into a ditch, a Beaumont fire-rescue official said.

“A police and fire-rescue team in a boat found the pair about half a mile downstream….”

The woman and infant hadn’t been publicly identified the last time I checked.

Authorities in Beaumont know who she is. They’re waiting until the child’s father gets back home. He’s in for a rough patch in his life.

A BBC News article fills in a few gaps in earlier accounts. Someone had seen the woman give up trying to drive along a flooded traffic lane, and turn into a parking lot: also flooded. From there, she tried walking out, carrying her daughter. That did not end well.

I don’t know the circumstances, other that what I’ve read.

With 20-20 hindsight, I could say that she shouldn’t have been driving in the first place.

Maybe if she’d stayed with her vehicle, someone would have been able to reach her and the infant before the flood killed them. Or maybe not. I prefer focusing on what she was doing: trying to get her daughter out of a dangerous place.

I’ll assume that she had a good reason for being out, didn’t realize that she and her daughter had been spotted and might be rescued, and thought their chances were better if she tried walking out.

As it turned out, that may not have been her best option. Life, and sometimes death, includes decisions that seemed reasonable at the time. We often survive these ‘had I but known’ situations. Sometimes we don’t.

Family is important, and parents have obligations. One of them is recognizing that each child is a person, due the respect and care we owe anyone. Particularly those who depend on us. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 366, 1931, 2208, 2221-2231, 2273)

Knowing that she died trying — successfully — to save their child may be cold comfort to the surviving parent. When we lost our children, my wife survived. Barely, in one case. (October 9, 2016)

This man lacks that considerable comfort. I wish him well.

2. The Inevitable ‘Climate’ Angle


(From Getty Images, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“The intensity of rain in the Houston area is being linked to rising global temperatures”
(BBC News))

“Hurricane Harvey: The link to climate change”
Matt McGrath, BBC News (August 29, 2017)

“When it comes to the causes of Hurricane Harvey, climate change is not a smoking gun.

“However, there are a few spent cartridge cases marked global warming in the immediate vicinity.

“Hurricanes are complex, naturally occurring beasts – extremely difficult to predict, with or without the backdrop of rising global temperatures.

“The scientific reality of attributing a role to climate change in worsening the impact of hurricanes is also hard to tease out simply because these are fairly rare events and there is not a huge amount of historical data….”

I read BBC ‘science’ news regularly. I like the range of topics they cover.

I’m not overly thrilled about their assumption that humans make Earth’s climate change, and that “climate change” causes bad storms. But I’m not surprised.

That assumption in a news service’s outlook is as unexpected as an ultra-right-wing group in 1950s America saying that communism is a menace.

On the other hand, I appreciate seeing phrases like “hard to tease out,” “fairly rare,” and “not a huge amount of historical data.” Someone at BBC News is thinking. That’s nice.

BBC News editors have their own viewpoints and assumptions, like anyone else.

But they also, to a remarkable extent, understand differences between fact, assertion, and opinion.

I also see evidence that someone on the staff knows how to use Google. Just as important, whoever it is takes a little time to fact-check assertions and opinions.

They do a good job of distinguishing between facts and opinions. But I don’t assume that everything on BBC News is therefore absolutely reliable.

They’ve got a discernible viewpoint. But someone there apparently realizes that ‘I feel that this is true’ isn’t necessarily the same as ‘this is true.’

Matt McGrath probably believes that global warming should be called “climate change” now, and that humans cause both.

As a writer, I appreciate his use of “smoking gun” and “a few spent cartridge cases.” That’s a good use of metaphor.

About hurricanes and “climate change,” I think he’s right. To an extent.

Science and Sense


(From Dragons flight, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

Let’s assume that Earth’s climate is changing. I think that’s a reasonable assumption.

Over the last few centuries, we’ve learned quite a bit about our planet. Some folks are still unwilling to believe that Earth is billions of years old.

I don’t “believe in” science. Not as an answer to questions like ‘why do we exist.’ But I’m willing to accept that facts and reality exist, and can be studied. I think using our brains is a good idea. (October 28, 2016; August 28, 2016; July 31, 2016)

More recently, we’ve been learning that Earth’s climate has changed. It’s changed a great deal. It would be astounding if it somehow stopped changing at this particular instant.

Folks who are fervently opposed to the notion that Earth is more than a few thousand years old apparently don’t like science. That’s understandable.

I could expect them to also assume that Earth is pretty much the same now as it was when it was new, and should stay that way. Some probably do.

Others acknowledge change, and have shown considerable imagination in making up stories that merge their assumptions about science and the Bible.

How well they manage the job depends, I think, on whether you view their work as fiction or scholarship.

I might enjoy less-verbose inheritors of the Thomas Hawkins tradition more, if painfully-religious folks accepted their alternative reality as fiction.

My appreciation of Hawkin’s florid prose may help explain my enjoyment of Lovecraft’s tales, even though I don’t share his apparent assumptions about science. (May 5, 2017; December 16, 2016)

Oddly enough, ‘Bible thumpers’ don’t seem to be going ballistic over climate change.

Folks who take the newspaper-headline version of science seriously apparently believe that Earth’s climate was exactly right at some point in the very recent past.

Maybe they’re thinking of the time between the years 400 and 600 AD. Or 1400 to 1600.

If ‘Sunday supplement science’ folks are going to be consistent, they could blame feudalism for the Medieval Warm Period. I suppose the Little Ice Age could be blamed on the Portugal’s ‘imperial oppression’ of Brazil. (May 26, 2017; January 20, 2017)

I don’t think either claim would make much sense.

But, like I said, I do think Earth’s climate is still changing.

We’re experiencing, at the moment, warmer weather — on average — than anything since the Medieval Warm Period.

What we should do with this knowledge is something I’ll talk about in another post.

Pursuing Knowledge

I’ll give ‘climate activists’ credit for taking their convictions seriously.

It’s hard to miss their fervent cries that Earth’s climate should remain even as it was before, and ever more should be forever and ever.

So sayeth the experts, may they ever remain anonymous and omniscient, even unto the end of the age, amen.

Oi. If this keeps up, I wonder how many folks will take religion or science seriously a generation from now.

I sympathize a bit with folks who assume that science deals with facts and logic, and that religious folks fear both. But I don’t agree. (May 7, 2017; March 31, 2017)

Sympathizing with folks who believe that science and technology will kill us all? I see their point, almost. But I think they’re also wrong. (May 26, 2017; October 30, 2016)

I’m a Catholic. I take God and faith very seriously.

I take science seriously, too. Real science, not political propaganda with allegedly-scientific trimmings or the weirdness called “creation science.”

Politics hasn’t had the same reputation since Machiavelli’s book hit the best-seller list, the Thirty Years’ War did no one any favors, and that’s yet again another topic. Topics. (July 14, 2017; August 4, 2017; October 28, 2016)

I’d probably be fascinated by science even if I’d never heard of Jesus. I love truth, and learning: including what we are learning about this universe.

I see the virtuous pagans in Thomas More’s Utopia as possible, if hypothetical, examples of what humanity can achieve.

Since I am a Christian, a Catholic, I see faith as a reasoned and conscious embrace of truth. All truth. (Catechism, 142-150, 283, 341)

Pursuing truth will lead me to God, if I’m doing it honestly. (Catechism, 27, 31-35, 74)

Given what I believe, fearing truth or the systematic pursuit of knowledge would be illogical. (May 7, 2017; October 28, 2016)

3. Reality and Options


(From BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“Judie McRae did not have the means to flee before the storm struck”
(BBC News))

“Harvey: Too poor to flee the hurricane”
James Cook, BBC News (August 27, 2017)

“In the detritus of Hurricane Harvey a splash of red, white and blue catches the eye.

“It is a rain-sodden American flag, half-hidden under the green leaves of fallen trees.

“A few paces away Judie McRae, 44, is inspecting the damage to her trailer home.

“Judie has lived more than half of her life here but she says this is her first hurricane. She spent it hunkered down in bed, unable to sleep.

“She does not want to see another one….”

This is a BBC News piece that I thought might not have been adequately fact-checked.

I remember the ‘good old days,’ when American culture was shifting from older “poor but honest” assumptions to the current ‘oppressed poor’ notion. I think old and new knee-jerk responses both fall short of reality.

About “poor but honest,” let’s think about it.

Why wouldn’t someone who is poor be more, or less, honest than someone who is rich?

I suspect that someone from an impoverished background would have excuses for dishonesty that didn’t match those of a person born into an affluent family. But they’d both have the same reasons for honoring truth. (Catechism, 2465-2492)

Whether an individual is aware of the underlying reasons for ethical standards is — still another topic.

I don’t have a problem with folks having, or not having, stuff. What matters, I think, is what we do with what we’ve got. (September 25, 2016)

Having lived on both sides of the 50th percentile probably helps.

In any case, money isn’t the problem. It’s love of money. Poverty isn’t a virtue. Detachment is. (1 Timothy 6:10; Hebrews 13:5; Catechism, 2540, 2544)

Where was I? Science, death, Lovecraft, history, truth. Right.

I didn’t dismiss the possibility that folks in this woman’s situation would have trouble evacuating. But I wasn’t going to accept a reporter’s assertion that it was not possible. There were enough facts in the article to get me started.

Comparisons


(From Google Maps, used w/o permission.)

Rockport, Texas, is about twice the size of the town where I live. It’s not a major city, but folks there have access to roads and a marina. It’s not exactly isolated.

Folks in Judie McRae’s neighborhood remind me of folks here. While the reporter was talking to her, someone stopped by. He was checking on one of her neighbors. The man hadn’t, apparently, heard from the neighbor since the storm: and was concerned.

Judie’s neighbor, happily, wasn’t under what was left of his home. Where he was, and whether he survived, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure that folks who know him have either found out by now, or are still searching. Humans can be persistent, if we see a need.

Rockport’s major land connections are paved roads: US-181 S and TX-35 N. The closest town is Taft. It’s a tad smaller than Sauk Centre. Nobody in Taft died when Harvey’s eye went by, but quite a few houses were severely damaged.

Let’s say, though, that someone in Judie’s neighborhood, with her resources, decided that evacuating to Taft was a good idea.

There’s a hurricane coming. If her neighbor has car, motorcycle, or even a bicycle, driving or riding to Taft wouldn’t be hard. During good weather. Taft is about 27.3 miles, 43.9 kilometers. By car, that’s a nice 29 minute trip.

Travel and Weather


(From AFP, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“Rockport has not been destroyed by the storm but it is in bad shape”
(BBC News))

With a hurricane’s outer storm systems in operation, the trip might not be so nice. But it might be possible. In a car or truck.

On a motorcycle? Someone who was sufficiently young, male, and/or risk-loving might think it was worth a shot.

I think the trip would be exhilarating, while it lasted.

On a bicycle? I’m not sure how crazy or desperate someone would have to be.

Quite a bit of the Rockport-to-Taft route is through open country. It’s flat, with nothing but a few road signs to stop the wind.

Climate and proximity to the sea aside, it reminds me of the Red River of the North, where I grew up: good farmland, but breezy.

My guess is that on that sort of road, during a hurricane — being somewhere else would be the best option.

Someone at azcentral.com figured that someone in reasonably good health could walk 26 miles in six to 13 hours. In good weather.

Young and Crazy: But Not That Crazy

Rockport-to-Taft, at the ‘azcentral.com’ rate, would take around six hours and 20 minutes to 16 hours and 50 minutes. Again, in good weather.

That’s a lot of walking, but doable.

During a storm that may become a hurricane before I reach Taft? It’s still doable. Barely. For most folks. Not me. I’m in my mid-60s, with health issues.

Someone in good condition, with life-or-death motivation, and “death” as the most likely result of staying in Rockport, might start walking.

But even at the peak of my ‘young, male, and crazy’ youth, I might have thought taking a 27-mile stroll through open country — in weather that tosses SUVs around and shreds buildings — would be imprudent.

With no vehicle, and Harvey coming, I might think my odds were better in a trailer hunkered under something. Not good, but better.

Doing What We Can

This op-ed, in Monday’s Fortune magazine, made another point about ‘evacuate or stay’ decisions:

“…To evacuate, you also need to have a place to stay. People who do not have family or friends nearby with the space to shelter them and the disposable income to feed them will need to stay in a hotel or live in their cars. They will also need to buy and find a way to cook food, or pay to eat out for an indeterminate length of time….

“…Studies and surveys persistently show that almost half of Americans have not saved enough to cover a $1,000 unplanned emergency such as a hurricane evacuation. Only about 20% could use a credit card to pay for the emergency, and approximately 10% could borrow from friends or family….”
(A. Mechele Dickerson, Fortune (August 28, 2017))

I don’t know how valid the $1,000 cost for self-funded evacuation is. But the basic idea makes sense. Going someplace else takes money. Another factor is employment.

Some of my bosses were reasonable, some weren’t, and some simply couldn’t have kept my job open if I took an unscheduled trip. It’s not a matter of being “fair.” Employers have expenses, needs, and limitations too.

My household has a vehicle with a half-full fuel tank at the moment. We might be able to evacuate if we had to. Provided that our vehicle didn’t end up under a tree.

Someone in or near Rockport has a ton or so of scrap metal that had been a truck before Harvey.

I’ve had times when I was in Judie McRae’s situation:

“…’I had some problems getting out of town, a little broke and stuff, so I had to come home and, you know, tough it out,’ she says. ‘We’re all the working class people.

“‘We’re the ones who go to the restaurants and wait on you and pick up your trash and do all that work. We don’t have a lot of money.’…”
(James Cook, BBC News)

Some Americans have resources that let us build storm-hardened houses. Some of us don’t. Like Rockport and most if not all of America, trailer parks are part of many towns and cities here in Minnesota.

We may be a bit ahead of the game here, thanks in part to our lively weather. We’ve never had a hurricane, but there’s interesting weather in most years.

That encourages a certain situational awareness, and makes planning ahead a more obvious priority. Sometimes legislators get the memo, and do something sensible.

327C – 2016 Minnesota Statutes says, among other things, that trailer parks must have an evacuation plan or shelter. Just as important, the statute says that residents must receive a written copy of the evacuation or shelter procedures.

It’s not a perfect solution, but like I keep saying: this isn’t a perfect world. Not yet.

But we’re working on it. And that’s — another topic:

1 A storm by any other name:

2 Rotating tropical storms:

3 Make that healthy self-respect, the sort of humility that recognizes a person’s own dignity, and humanity’s transcendent dignity. (Catechism, 1700, 1730, 1780, 1929, 2407, 2559, 2546)

Some of my take on humility, dignity, and getting a grip:

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