Fall \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Samhain Moon<\/p>\n
As Paul Douglas say, Minnesota is full of arm-chair meteorologists. \u00a0And I’m one of them. \u00a0My Davis weather system, now in its sixth year of operation, sends me information to a display that sits over the computer. \u00a0Right now we have a 2 mph wind from the NNW; it’s 34 degrees, with 76% humidity, a dewpoint of 28% and a rising barometer at 29.94 millibars. \u00a0We had .01 inches of rain overnight and the moon, waning, is half full.<\/p>\n
When, for a two year period, I wrote a weather column for the Star-Tribune as one of several state-wide volunteers, the weather was even more central to my day. \u00a0During the growing season, I watch it primarily for its effect on work plans. \u00a0The longer term trends like drought and the changing frost-free window that defines our productive time I follow occasionally, the latter more carefully as spring or fall approach.<\/p>\n
Weather is an example, and a fairly straight-forward one comparatively, of the complex systems not reducible to their individual atomic parts or their physics alone. \u00a0It’s fairly straight-forward because weather is not alive, though it can act that way at times. \u00a0It is, however, dynamic in the extreme, and the famous chaos effect example of a butterfly flapping its wings is a metaphor for the often far off events that impact our local weather.<\/p>\n
Who could have predicted at the beginning of the industrial revolution, sometime in the mid-18th century, that those churning, whirring, creaking, whooshing machines would someday alter the weather forever? \u00a0What’s starting right now that might have an equal impact? \u00a0I’d guess private space-exploration and the field of biotechnology.<\/p>\n
With complex systems the drivers are not easily discovered and are sometimes impossible to discover, at least early on, e.g. the industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fall \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Samhain Moon As Paul Douglas say, Minnesota is full of arm-chair meteorologists. \u00a0And I’m one of them. \u00a0My … Continue reading Arm-Chair Meteorologists<\/span>