This is a message that I posted to the CompuServe Weather Channel Forum on February 8, 2000, in response to “hairandcars”, who had stated that weather forecasters weren’t needed because nature was unpredictable.
Subj: Why a Surprise? Section: Winter Storm Update
To: Hairandcars, hairandcars
Tuesday, February 08, 2000 23:27:00
From: Wayne Farmer, 72377,134 #206959
> No we dont need the weather
forcasters because they really dont know until it comes. This is nature we are
dealing with <
If you believe that
"nature" is unpredictable, then you have missed out on the last 2,000
years of learning. You're back with the
Romans, who two thousand years ago looked into the bowels of a dead owl to see
what the future would bring, and who sacrificed animals to stone gods in order
to make the future better.
Since your nickname is
"hairandcars", how do you think an automobile engine works? Did we just find one under a rock? NO - scientists over the last 300 years
studied nature and learned how to build an automobile engine, an aircraft
engine, a jet airplane. Your stereo,
your TV, and your computer are only possible because generations of those
scientists and engineers didn't throw up their hands and say "this is
nature we are dealing with" - they took time to understand it.
Weather forecasters are no
different. Just as an automobile
engineer tries to understand how gasoline and air will mix in the cylinder of
an automobile engine, and what will happen to them when they are ignited by a
spark, so do weather forecasters try to understand how moisture and air mix in
our atmosphere, and what happens to them when they are warmed by the sun and
nudged by the earth's rotation. It's a
harder problem to solve because the atmosphere is so much bigger, and we don't
yet have enough weather buoys and measurements to know what the exact moisture,
air, or temperature is right now at every place on the earth's surface and in
the earth's atmosphere. But we're much
better at predicting weather events than we were 50 years ago. Back then, hundreds of people died when
hurricanes came ashore, because they had no warning. Now we suffer the same property damage, but people are given
warning to evacuate in time to save their lives. You have to admit that that's a worthwhile advance.
Next time you take a ride in a car,
eat food that you didn't grow yourself, or hear a weather forecast, stop and think
that these things are yours for the taking only because people stopped to
think, learn, and understand nature.
Those people actually found nature interesting enough to spend years
studying it, and they enjoyed doing that, too.
They're called scientists and engineers today. You can call them geeks and nerds if you like, but without them
you'd be sitting in a smoky log cabin in the dirt, with no electricity, no
radio, no TV, no CD's, no video games, and no computer. Think you'd enjoy that? Try camping out in a tent for a month with
no supplies, and then come back and tell me how it was.
Wayne Farmer