Above: a man digs his truck out yesterday amidst neighbors who have mostly left well enough alone.
In recent days the Chicago Area has received a remarkable amount of snowfall. If that sounds like an exaggeration consider who chose that adjective: WGN’s long-time weather man Tom Skilling.
According to Skilling more snow has fallen at Midway Airport in just the past two weeks – 41.5 inches – than typically falls in an entire snow season (36 inches).
Nationally, we have a record 73.2% of the Lower Forty-Eight States beneath a cover of snow. Of the eighteen years of highly detailed snowfall analysis the National Weather Service has produced, this is the highest level of snow coverage on the books. The previous high, according to Skilling’s WGN colleague Steve Kahn, occurred in 2011.
There were 26 inches of snow on the ground Tuesday morning at Midway Airport. The record for most snow on the ground there is 29 inches in the 1978-79 season – the same season that produced the Jane Bryne/Michael Bilandic blizzard in January of 1979.
Those who were in Chicago for that monster blizzard will recall that at the time scientists were discussing the possibility of new a new Ice Age.
A few years later the narrative had shifted: burning the Amazon Rain Forest was going to destroy enough plant life to wreck the World’s ecosystem.
Then there was a hole in the Ozone Layer that was going to get bigger and cause us to use sunblock to protect us from lethal cosmic rays.
Next came global warming. Use of fossil fuels was causing temperatures to go up. In the near future our coastal cities would all be under water.
Then activists wised up. The notion of “Climate Change” was adopted. Now fossil fuel usage was creating “Climate Change.” If temperatures go up? Blame fossil fuels. If temperatures go down? Blame fossil fuels. Any time there is a violent or unusual weather phenomenon? Blame fossil fuels.
It might be a brilliant strategy were it not such a colossal waste of time.
Anyone who has attended a big research University, like our U. of I. in Champaign, knows that such places are full of graduate students researching one thing or another.
You learn quickly never to ask a graduate student about his research. If you do he will thank you for asking and launch into a detailed description. It could be thirty minutes before you get away.
The point is that the academic and research types use their research as a means to acquire wealth and power. If they can get people to buy into what they are studying, and accept them as a figurehead, it can lead to great personal success.
You never hear this mentioned when people say we are supposed to trust science. Scientists are just as human as anyone else.
That means they are just as corruptible.
So when the left wing refers to academia as if they are some unassailable source of information it is laughable.
For all their decades of talking about one environmental doomsday scenario after another, we find ourselves back in the same place we were in 1979.
Everyone has a vested interest in improving things like air and water quality. Doing that will increase our health and life expectancy.
But, for all the time spent pontificating in front of cameras, an awful lot of energy seems to be wasted on concepts that make academics famous and do nothing for us.
© 2021 practicalchicago.com
References:
https://wgntv.com/weather/skilling-snowfall-totals-remarkable/