I recall looking up the long term weather forecast on the Environment Canada website. That was decades ago. As I recall, it said spring that year would be mild and that their forecasts were right 51% of the time. I thought that was a joke, like this: if you want to know the weather, flip a coin. Maybe they were bragging, because groundhogs are right only 40% of the time. Environment Canada was 11% more reliable than groundhogs, and a whole 1% better than a coin toss.
With improvements in data collection and modelling, this year the prediction for March to May is that the Toronto temperatures will be above average 77% of the time, below average 19% and normal 4%. The prediction is a comparison to data from 1991 to 2020. They expect that prediction to be moderately accurate, reporting a skill of 57%.
Conclusion: if you want to continue using groundhogs you should buy a new swim suit and carry an emergency snow shovel. Also allow $10 a month for groundhog feed. They are less reliable when hungry. (That's a joke.)
Environment Canada budgeted $2 billion in 2020-2021. That's $117,647,058.82 for each percentage that meteorologists estimate better than groundhogs. They threw in a daily weather report as a bonus. You're going to need a swim suit. (That's not a joke.)
The atmosphere is a chaotic system. When science gets involved with a chaotic system, the conclusion is reported as a range of probabilities. If you have noticed me saying anything different, it is poetry rather than science, and I have said it to motivate rather than inform.
For example, I have invoked the butterfly effect to assert that individuals are not powerless to make things better even if there are billions of others making things worse. We have a solar array on the roof not because that would save the world from climate disaster, but because we want to be part of the growing wave of concern that has a hope of making things better. And even if that wave does not save the world, we choose to do what we can rather than participate thoughtlessly in making things worse. You see, the butterfly effect is not about the science of weather. It's about free will and responsible choices making a difference.
Of course collective action by governments and corporations is absolutely necessary, but that will not happen until enough individuals choose to put the future of the planet ahead of their personal wealth, comfort and safety.
Life is a chaotic system.
So, join the conversation,
pick a project.
Get it done.
Enjoy success.
Learn from failure.
Then do it all again.
Be a butterfly.
Had an interesting conversation this week with an acquaintance after noticing his new car, I asked where his Tesla was as he always sung the praises of it. He said "it died, wouldn't take a charge and said a new battery was $30,000.00". So on a $120,000+ car after 7 years he traded it in for $5.500.00. I commented that I didn't think I was ready for an electric car. Not sure he saved the planet much with the cost of manufacturing and now safely disposing of what's left over.
ReplyDeleteFor sure, new technology comes with new problems. Balancing costs and benefits is part of making thoughtful choices. We bought a Bolt in 2019. There was a battery issue that was fixed on recall at no charge, and we got an extra year of warranty out of it. Of course, the EV is well on the way to replacing ICE transportation, just like ICE replaced horses a century ago. There are going to be problems and they will be solved. The alternative is the rising cost of climate disruption. I'm not going to be around for the worst of that, but, you know, we have made it happen, and we shouldn't drag our feet on fixing it.
DeleteGood article, and I agree. Unfortunately, in a capitalist society like ours, we, as individual consumers, are programmed to make decisions based on cost effectiveness. And our focus on promoting business and free market leads to the cost of non-renewable energy being the cost of production (plus profits) but not necessarily including the cost of fixing what we do to the environment in the long term. This is where government policy must fill the gap, i.e. a carbon tax that will hopefully be used for the longer term fixes to the damage we are causing.
ReplyDeleteGood analysis. A carbon price is an incentive to change the way we do things. From the business perspective, the profit motive will drive the transition. New technologies can be profitable as well as cleaner and cheaper. I have added above a link to a video about energy storage using liquid air.
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