WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE ABOUT THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT (Obamacare)?
Republican objections to the Affordable Health Care Act has been over the top. The GOP has waged an all-out war to trash or sabotage this legislation. Since it was put into effect on March 23, 2010 it has faced over fifty (50) Congressional attempts at repeal, two Supreme Court challenges, and sabotage from ar-right advocacy groups, a wall of money to support repeal from the Koch brothers and attempts to undermine the bill from Republican-controlled State houses. To this effect thirty-four (34) of the state legislatures chose NOT to set up local state health care exchanges, denying their citizenry the advantages of better health care.
Why do the Republicans hate it so much? Their objections have been difficult to tease out from their political posturing, but seem to be centered around a few ideas. Based on their stated and printed "talking points", these focus on the laws supposed "increase" in health care costs (untrue), its "higher" insurance premiums (untrue), and "decrease" in quality of health care (unlikely). And mostly, its supposed effects on taxes and the budget deficit. Not one of these objections have been verified or documented, or supported by facts. The buget deficit has been decreasing since the bill was signed into law and as for taxes...some increases may be expected but one must weigh the smmall cost against the benefits.
All the 16 (or more) Republican candidates have sworn their enmity against Obamacare. But none has been so vicious or persistent as Senator Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas.
Back in September 2013, Cruz, the freshman Republican Senator from Texas, a man who wants to portray himself as a "principled, conservative", and one who "will never back down", took to the Senate floor. There, with the nation's government stymied by funding problem, Cruz tried his hand at playing the Jimmy Stewart role from the movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". Cruz, a pale, shadow of the actor and American idol, came to the Senate floor to mount a filibuster, not like the "Smith" film character who spoke until he was hoarse to oppose corruption and malfeasance in Washington. Not Cruz, who filibustered to deny the nation's needy access to health care and harangue a near empty chamber with a diatribe against the Affordable Care Act. Cruz' grandstanding act did not stand up to the test of political honesty, veracity or even as cheap cinema.
Cruz compounded this divisiveness by tying a bill to defund Obamacare to an unrelated appropriations bill necessary to fund government operations in 2014. As a consequence, Cruz almost singlehandedly shut down the government for sixteen days, an event not occurring in the Senate for the last 17 years. The shutdown threatened the nation with default on its fiscal,obligations. As a consequence, eight hundred thousand federal workers were furloughed. Another 1.3 million were forced to work without pay. Cruz' actions stirred up negative criticism, against him, and dissension within in his own Party. In the end, the public largely blamed the GOP for the shutdown and its economic fallout. Cruz' shaky reputation suffered again when, soon after the bill passed, the Senator unbelievably proceeded to sign himself and his family up with a federal exchange to take advantage of the cheaper insurance available, an option he had worked so diligently to deny to his fellow Americans. Many on the left and right sneered at this particular Senator's blatant self-serving behavior and blaring"hypocrisy".
Since then, and up to more recent times, the unpredictable, shoot-from-the-hip young Senator, who made defunding or eliminating ACA his "badge of honor" and, though making use of its provisions, continued to call the ACA a "train wreck", classed it as"unconstitutional", and continued to make the untrue claim that the law "puts a bureaucrat between you and your doctor." In 2015, Senator Cruz, announced as a Presidential candidate, and continued (with the other GOP hopefuls) to promise to "end Obamacare."
Then on June 25, 2015, the ACA passed its most recent SCOTUS test. The Supreme Court voted 6-3 against the plaintiffs in the King Burwell case, upholding the right of the government to provide subsidies to the needy. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Roberts, agreed with the wording of the law. Interpreting the phrase "the 'state' would establish exchanges" to mean that the federal government in Washington was "the state" and was within its rights to provide the exchanges and provide the subsidies that made care affordable for the indigent. The Supreme Court gave the President a victory over those who would deny affordable care to millions of Americans.
Senator Cruz, called the decision..."judicial activism clear and simple" and characterized the justices as "robed Houdinis" who have "transmogrified 'a federal exchange' into an exchange "established by the State". Cruz termed their actions as "lawless".
So what is all the fuss about?
What's not to like about the Affordable Care Act...or "Obamacare" or now called "Scotuscare" or possibly "Robertscare"?
Not one Republican has clearly stated what they object to. Neither have they put forth some "better" plan. What do they dislike about it? Their complaints seem to be only political posturing and pandering to their ultra right base.
Here are some of my thoughts:
What is wrong with giving tax credits to small businesses to buy health insurance? The ACA does that.
What is wrong with closing the Medicare drug benefit "doughnut hole" so that needy seniors do not have huge out-of-pocket outlays for their medicines? That is a provision of the ACA.
Why should I not like the fact that the ACA will permit me to extend coverage to my dependent child up to the age of 26 years? The ACA provides this benefit.
Why should I object to the law's provision to extend Medicaid to the needy? The ACA does.
And one of its best provisions is that the ACA bans insurers from "cherry picking" though the client base to choose only young healthy subjects. They are also prohibited from excluding patients based on preexisting conditions. Why should we object to that?
And for those, like my brother-in-law, who have been "mandated" to get a health insurance plan. I say, "good deal". He has ignored our pleas to protect himself, his wife and child with a health insurance plan. He boasts of his own health and vitality and claims he would rather "take his chances". But if some chronic illness or infectious disease struck him, he would leave his wife and child destitute. He and his family are well served with the mandate.
Finally, in these times of mass world travel when a single passenger with a life threatening contagious disease can act as a vector to his or her fellow travelers in a stuffy plane, a crowded train, or a bus, is it sound public-health policy to have a large segment of the population without access to ready medical care? Is it wise to have large numbers of citizens who, to avoid the cost, may put off seeing their physician because they have no health insurance?
So when the field of sixteen or more Republicans, with Ted Cruz among them, continue to claim that the fight against Obamacare after this most recent Supreme Court ruling..'is not over"...Please ask them what they find so objectionable.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
WEALTH INEQUALITY, NOT GOOD FOR OUR NATION
Forbes magazine, (Forbes, March 2, 2015) recently gushed in its "29th Annual World Billionaires Issue" that the world has as of 2015 almost two thousand individuals who are multi-billionaires. The editors of Forbes estimate that these "magnificent two thousand" have a combined wealth of somewhat over $ 7 trillion dollars. The average world billionaire in the group this year had a net worth of about $4 billion dollars. Bill Gates, with about $80 billion, was still number one on the list, as he has been for the last sixteen years. Sagacious, curmudgeonly investor Warren Buffett with $73 billion ranked third.
The USA, center of world banking and investment, big military hardware, energy exploitation and technology has the most billionaires, 536 of them. The cumulative wealth of the 500 plus USA billionaires is estimated to be a bit over $2 trillion dollars. That amount is about 1/8 of the total U.S. 2015 GDP. It is astounding that just 500 or so individuals have skimmed off about 12.5% of all the money made or earned in our nation.
These individuals do not put much of their lucre into circulation. How could they? There are so few of them. Even if they went on a crazy spending binge the 536 American billionaires just could not realistically pump a significant amount of their accumulated wealth into the general economy. Furthermore, such activities would be the most unlikely thoughts in their minds. Their main concern, their laser like focus, is not wealth redistribution, far from it...it is further accumulation of wealth. They have more than anyone but only want more of the stuff. They care little on how their money circulates.
The "magnificent 536" have, thus, in effect, sequestered their "geld" outside of the general economy. The question of where their funds lie and how they are invested is not the focus of this essay. Sufficient to say, that the vast sums they control are mostly out of general circulation. They do not buy cars and trucks in the millions, refrigerators, clothes, shoes and all the vast array of products and services our nation provides. Hey they are only a few mostly men who you could gather in a small school auditorium. Their wealth is mostly hidden away in off shore accounts, foreign investments, exotic holdings, "priceless" artwork, vast real estate, enormous yachts, rare antiques and antiquities, etc. etc. (Some like the generous Bill Gates do make an effort at doing good deeds and he also promises to give it all away when he dies.)
The economic effect of their accumulation of excessive wealth is that their piles of currency are out of circulation, leaving all the rest of us, poor folk, workers, brick layers, plumbers, ordinary millionaires, the filthy rich, the exceedingly affluent, the simply affluent, movie moguls, Presidents, CEOs, bankers, Supreme Court judges, physicians, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers with only 9/10 of the nation's wealth to compete for. Aside from the 500, the other three-hundred plus million citizens of the USA scramble to access only 90 cents on every dollar...that makes life ten percent harder on us all. Now if only the government would tax these 500 a bit more........
So all you just filthy rich, exceedingly rich, those of you rolling in it, and the just plain wealthy folk, and others of your ilk, don't feel so smug when the conversation turns to wealth inequality. The five hundred "magnificent billionaires" have reached into your pockets too and removed ten cents on every dollar that jingle in there for their own (perhaps not so good) purposes. That is the impact of wealth inequality....that is money you too can not access.
For those of the middle class the picture is even more bleak. The topic of wealth inequality is not thought of much in this group. But it should be. Not only have the magnificent 500 picked your pockets for ten cents on every dollar, but the top 20% have picked off another 70 cents on every dollar. So that you middle class workers, bricklayers, plumbers, carpenters, truck drivers, machine operators, teachers,factory workers and others are competing for only twenty cents on every dollar. The top one fifth of the wealthy have siphoned off 80 cents on every dollar, leaving only 20 cents on each dollar for the lower 80 percent of the population to compete for. Perhaps that is why life has become so much more difficult for the American worker.
That does not seem like the American Dream, does it? Nor is it very likely...no it is unlikely, that either you in the lower 80% of wealth distribution or your children or your children's children would ever move up into the top rungs of wealth. Those places are all sewed up for the progeny of the elites. That is because wealth brings with it both priveledge, economic power, and political power. The wealthy control the politicians and the policies of this nation.
The sad fact is that the sequestering of wealth in the hands of the few is not good for our economy. Wealth inequality is a form of austerity, which limits the amount of money in the hands of the people. It is analogous to stuffing a hank of cloth into the carburetor air intake of a gasoline engine, it stalls the engine, it staunches economic growth. For that reason it is not good for our nation, and its people, rich and poor, or for a flourishing economy.
The USA, center of world banking and investment, big military hardware, energy exploitation and technology has the most billionaires, 536 of them. The cumulative wealth of the 500 plus USA billionaires is estimated to be a bit over $2 trillion dollars. That amount is about 1/8 of the total U.S. 2015 GDP. It is astounding that just 500 or so individuals have skimmed off about 12.5% of all the money made or earned in our nation.
These individuals do not put much of their lucre into circulation. How could they? There are so few of them. Even if they went on a crazy spending binge the 536 American billionaires just could not realistically pump a significant amount of their accumulated wealth into the general economy. Furthermore, such activities would be the most unlikely thoughts in their minds. Their main concern, their laser like focus, is not wealth redistribution, far from it...it is further accumulation of wealth. They have more than anyone but only want more of the stuff. They care little on how their money circulates.
The "magnificent 536" have, thus, in effect, sequestered their "geld" outside of the general economy. The question of where their funds lie and how they are invested is not the focus of this essay. Sufficient to say, that the vast sums they control are mostly out of general circulation. They do not buy cars and trucks in the millions, refrigerators, clothes, shoes and all the vast array of products and services our nation provides. Hey they are only a few mostly men who you could gather in a small school auditorium. Their wealth is mostly hidden away in off shore accounts, foreign investments, exotic holdings, "priceless" artwork, vast real estate, enormous yachts, rare antiques and antiquities, etc. etc. (Some like the generous Bill Gates do make an effort at doing good deeds and he also promises to give it all away when he dies.)
The economic effect of their accumulation of excessive wealth is that their piles of currency are out of circulation, leaving all the rest of us, poor folk, workers, brick layers, plumbers, ordinary millionaires, the filthy rich, the exceedingly affluent, the simply affluent, movie moguls, Presidents, CEOs, bankers, Supreme Court judges, physicians, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers with only 9/10 of the nation's wealth to compete for. Aside from the 500, the other three-hundred plus million citizens of the USA scramble to access only 90 cents on every dollar...that makes life ten percent harder on us all. Now if only the government would tax these 500 a bit more........
So all you just filthy rich, exceedingly rich, those of you rolling in it, and the just plain wealthy folk, and others of your ilk, don't feel so smug when the conversation turns to wealth inequality. The five hundred "magnificent billionaires" have reached into your pockets too and removed ten cents on every dollar that jingle in there for their own (perhaps not so good) purposes. That is the impact of wealth inequality....that is money you too can not access.
For those of the middle class the picture is even more bleak. The topic of wealth inequality is not thought of much in this group. But it should be. Not only have the magnificent 500 picked your pockets for ten cents on every dollar, but the top 20% have picked off another 70 cents on every dollar. So that you middle class workers, bricklayers, plumbers, carpenters, truck drivers, machine operators, teachers,factory workers and others are competing for only twenty cents on every dollar. The top one fifth of the wealthy have siphoned off 80 cents on every dollar, leaving only 20 cents on each dollar for the lower 80 percent of the population to compete for. Perhaps that is why life has become so much more difficult for the American worker.
That does not seem like the American Dream, does it? Nor is it very likely...no it is unlikely, that either you in the lower 80% of wealth distribution or your children or your children's children would ever move up into the top rungs of wealth. Those places are all sewed up for the progeny of the elites. That is because wealth brings with it both priveledge, economic power, and political power. The wealthy control the politicians and the policies of this nation.
The sad fact is that the sequestering of wealth in the hands of the few is not good for our economy. Wealth inequality is a form of austerity, which limits the amount of money in the hands of the people. It is analogous to stuffing a hank of cloth into the carburetor air intake of a gasoline engine, it stalls the engine, it staunches economic growth. For that reason it is not good for our nation, and its people, rich and poor, or for a flourishing economy.
Sunday, June 7, 2015
NOT GLOBAL WARMING --"WEATHER INTENSIFICATION"
NOT "GLOBAL WARMING",
LET'S CALL IT "WEATHER INTENSIFICATION"
HUMAN INDUCED GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION OR "HIGWI"
My mother-in-law is a Fox News addict. That "news" station is her primary portal to the world from her isolated perch on the lower flanks of Bromley Mountain, here in Peru Vermont. A secondary portal is the view from her kitchen window. Down below she can see Stratton Mountain, the valley and Route 11 snaking across the countryside with its seasonal traffic. She also keeps a keen eye on her woodpile, located just beyond her kitchen door. This last winter has been called an "old-time Vermont winter" by the locals. In the Greens past events are often obscured by mists of both the meteorological and mental kind. The "old days" are often the only yardstick by which the present is gauged. But by any measure this winter was truly unusual. The snows came heavy and often, and Momma Schmidt's neatly stacked woodpile came perilously close to being used up well before the spring thaws and warm weather arrived.
The weather is a common topic up here. But one must keep mum about global warming. Whenever I use that phrase to explain the underlying cause of my mother-in-law's winter discomfort, this feisty elder woman responds with a harangue about university types "who don't know what's going on in the "real world" and have their "bald" pointy heads buried in arcane data "which don't mean a thing". I find a lot of similarity in tone and key phrases between her responses and the talking points dialog on Fox News. But the facts of a cold and snowy season are hard to dispute when she clasps my ear between her bony thumb and forefinger and drags me over to the window to view that empty place in the snow where her woodpile used to be. "Where's the warming, huh sonny?" she would cackle in my ear. With the mercury hovering just above zero, it is a difficult task explaining global warming to a cranky old lady. After all my efforts she could not or would not understand the term "global warming". Her "pals" on Hannity and Fox News were no help in this matter either.
One day riding down the bumpy, potholed dirt road from her place,after a visit to mend a frozen pipe, I thought about her and the host of other U.S. citizens who can not or will not understand the grave climate threat we face. One jarring bump in the road rattled the ancient frame of my pickup and must have had a similar effect on a bundle of cranial neurons because the word "intensification" suddenly popped into my head. I thought, global "warming" is a terrible misnomer which leads some people to an erroneous concept---. We should rather be talking about 'global weather intensification',I mumbled to myself. So I coined a new term. I have abandoned global warming and now refer only to "Human Induced Global Weather INTENSIFICATION". My hope is people like Mamma Schmidt might grasp the concept better.
Reaching the well-maintained, smooth asphalt surface of Route 11, I began to think more clearly about how I could expand on my pothole induced brain storm and win over Momma Schmidt (or if not her, some of the other die hard climate deniers in this part of the nation).
So here it is. To understand this we need a few facts. Let's establish first that there is little question about the underlying climate data. Greenhouse gases have been,since the industrial revolution, increasing steadily in the atmosphere and as they accumulate atmospheric temperatures have been rising almost steadily. No question about it. The atmosphere is getting hotter. But how do you relate that fact to the doubters when we experience more snow, cold snaps and other weather phenomena which do not seem to be relatable to higher temperatures?
"Understand first that the earth is a sphere. Oh well not exactly a sphere but close enough anyway (a slightly flattened (or oblate) sphere-like body (or oblate spheroid)). When heated by the sun, it is the earth's equatorial belt which gets the most direct radiation and therefore becomes hotter than the sloping mid latitudes and the polar regions. This unequal heat is transferred to the overlying atmosphere and causes the fluid atmosphere to respond by moving to disperse the heat to achieve a more equitable distribution. This process of spreading heat from the equator over the globe's atmosphere is the phenomena we call weather. Weather is the means by which the excess heat of the equatorial zones is spread both north and south. The atmosphere's cloudy vortices or mid-latitude storms and tropical storms are the manifestation of this process. It is the unequal heat distribution which cause masses of air to have different temperatures, and pressures. The wind, clouds, rain, snow, hail sleet, etcetera, etcetera are only different ways of disseminating the excess heat from the equator. (The effects of these weather phenomena over longer periods are termed "climate". ) The more excess heat, the more of these weather phenomena we should expect and the more intense they should be. What we are saying is that it is the poorly distributed heat which causes weather...rain, snow, wind etc., thus more heat, a hotter globe will produce more of these phenomena, more rain, more snow, more weather. A hotter planet will generate more weather and more intense weather.
To transfer heat, the atmosphere moves air from warmer places to cooler places, just as air may circulate in your home. In the atmosphere we call these movements wind. But even more significantly this same atmosphere can also move heat around by evaporating and condensing water. Water is found on earth as a liquid, solid and gas and as it changes from one phase to another it can carry heat from the hotter equator to the cooler poles. Enormous amounts of heat are absorbed when equatorial sea water at the ocean surface is evaporated. That heat enters the atmosphere as a gas. That solar derived heat is carried by gaseous water molecules in the circulating atmosphere into the northern and southern hemispheres where the air cools and condenses into droplets to form clouds. As the water vapor changes from a gas into a liquid it releases heat it had stored over the tropics. The droplets form clouds which are warmer than the surrounding air as a result of the released heat. Clouds when cooled further can produce snow sleet and hail and in changing to ice release even more heat. So the weather phenomena that we see each day are simply the earth's means of transferring heat energy from the equator toward the poles. More heat, from a hotter earth would mean a greater need for heat transfer, and result in more rain, snow, sleet, hail and winds. A hotter earth will have more "weather" more rain, snow, more hot days, more windy days, more tornadoes, more droughts, more flooda, more hurricanes, more snow up up in the Greens and everywhere more intense weather.
Yes Momma Schmidt, what the scientists call "global warming" and I am here now calling GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION can and may cause more snow, cold snaps, deeper drifts, stronger winds, more rain, more flooding, more frequent and more intense tropical storms, more and stronger tornadoes, or simply put..MORE INTENSE WEATHER . So please let's abandon the term "global warming" and use "global weather intensification" it's much more descriptive and valid.
Though she claims she doesn't know it or will not admit it, Momma Schmidt IS doing her part to reduce Human Induced Global Weather Intensification, or HIGWI. It is well known that she still burns only local wood in her Big Bear wood stove to heat her place. She is not adding any fossil CO2 to the atmosphere for heating. Back in 2005 she had solar panels installed on her roof to lower her electricity bill and those panels work fine. She uses very little gasoline since she hardly drives that 1998 caddy Coupe D'ville kept in her dilapidated garage. She carefully covers the front hood with a tarp on real cold winter days. I tried to explain to her that it has no effect...but you go try and tell her. The caddy goes to Manchester a few times a month and back! that's all. So that's how it goes up here in Vermont. Some progress being made.
Now if we could only get some of the dunderheads up here to rethink the excellent plan (sadly rejected a few years ago by the townsfolk) to put a string of electric generating wind turbines along the ridge of Gleib Mountain. Believe it or not they objected to the "visual impact". What further damage could be done to old Gleib, I don't know. It is a mountain horribly scarred and carved up by ski trails and ski lift structures. I guess no one up here sees those features as ugly anymore. People would soon get to look fondly on wind mill turbines too. The lowered electric bills would make folks forget any visual impact and put a broad smile on any Vermonter's face.
LET'S CALL IT "WEATHER INTENSIFICATION"
HUMAN INDUCED GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION OR "HIGWI"
My mother-in-law is a Fox News addict. That "news" station is her primary portal to the world from her isolated perch on the lower flanks of Bromley Mountain, here in Peru Vermont. A secondary portal is the view from her kitchen window. Down below she can see Stratton Mountain, the valley and Route 11 snaking across the countryside with its seasonal traffic. She also keeps a keen eye on her woodpile, located just beyond her kitchen door. This last winter has been called an "old-time Vermont winter" by the locals. In the Greens past events are often obscured by mists of both the meteorological and mental kind. The "old days" are often the only yardstick by which the present is gauged. But by any measure this winter was truly unusual. The snows came heavy and often, and Momma Schmidt's neatly stacked woodpile came perilously close to being used up well before the spring thaws and warm weather arrived.
The weather is a common topic up here. But one must keep mum about global warming. Whenever I use that phrase to explain the underlying cause of my mother-in-law's winter discomfort, this feisty elder woman responds with a harangue about university types "who don't know what's going on in the "real world" and have their "bald" pointy heads buried in arcane data "which don't mean a thing". I find a lot of similarity in tone and key phrases between her responses and the talking points dialog on Fox News. But the facts of a cold and snowy season are hard to dispute when she clasps my ear between her bony thumb and forefinger and drags me over to the window to view that empty place in the snow where her woodpile used to be. "Where's the warming, huh sonny?" she would cackle in my ear. With the mercury hovering just above zero, it is a difficult task explaining global warming to a cranky old lady. After all my efforts she could not or would not understand the term "global warming". Her "pals" on Hannity and Fox News were no help in this matter either.
One day riding down the bumpy, potholed dirt road from her place,after a visit to mend a frozen pipe, I thought about her and the host of other U.S. citizens who can not or will not understand the grave climate threat we face. One jarring bump in the road rattled the ancient frame of my pickup and must have had a similar effect on a bundle of cranial neurons because the word "intensification" suddenly popped into my head. I thought, global "warming" is a terrible misnomer which leads some people to an erroneous concept---. We should rather be talking about 'global weather intensification',I mumbled to myself. So I coined a new term. I have abandoned global warming and now refer only to "Human Induced Global Weather INTENSIFICATION". My hope is people like Mamma Schmidt might grasp the concept better.
Reaching the well-maintained, smooth asphalt surface of Route 11, I began to think more clearly about how I could expand on my pothole induced brain storm and win over Momma Schmidt (or if not her, some of the other die hard climate deniers in this part of the nation).
So here it is. To understand this we need a few facts. Let's establish first that there is little question about the underlying climate data. Greenhouse gases have been,since the industrial revolution, increasing steadily in the atmosphere and as they accumulate atmospheric temperatures have been rising almost steadily. No question about it. The atmosphere is getting hotter. But how do you relate that fact to the doubters when we experience more snow, cold snaps and other weather phenomena which do not seem to be relatable to higher temperatures?
"Understand first that the earth is a sphere. Oh well not exactly a sphere but close enough anyway (a slightly flattened (or oblate) sphere-like body (or oblate spheroid)). When heated by the sun, it is the earth's equatorial belt which gets the most direct radiation and therefore becomes hotter than the sloping mid latitudes and the polar regions. This unequal heat is transferred to the overlying atmosphere and causes the fluid atmosphere to respond by moving to disperse the heat to achieve a more equitable distribution. This process of spreading heat from the equator over the globe's atmosphere is the phenomena we call weather. Weather is the means by which the excess heat of the equatorial zones is spread both north and south. The atmosphere's cloudy vortices or mid-latitude storms and tropical storms are the manifestation of this process. It is the unequal heat distribution which cause masses of air to have different temperatures, and pressures. The wind, clouds, rain, snow, hail sleet, etcetera, etcetera are only different ways of disseminating the excess heat from the equator. (The effects of these weather phenomena over longer periods are termed "climate". ) The more excess heat, the more of these weather phenomena we should expect and the more intense they should be. What we are saying is that it is the poorly distributed heat which causes weather...rain, snow, wind etc., thus more heat, a hotter globe will produce more of these phenomena, more rain, more snow, more weather. A hotter planet will generate more weather and more intense weather.
To transfer heat, the atmosphere moves air from warmer places to cooler places, just as air may circulate in your home. In the atmosphere we call these movements wind. But even more significantly this same atmosphere can also move heat around by evaporating and condensing water. Water is found on earth as a liquid, solid and gas and as it changes from one phase to another it can carry heat from the hotter equator to the cooler poles. Enormous amounts of heat are absorbed when equatorial sea water at the ocean surface is evaporated. That heat enters the atmosphere as a gas. That solar derived heat is carried by gaseous water molecules in the circulating atmosphere into the northern and southern hemispheres where the air cools and condenses into droplets to form clouds. As the water vapor changes from a gas into a liquid it releases heat it had stored over the tropics. The droplets form clouds which are warmer than the surrounding air as a result of the released heat. Clouds when cooled further can produce snow sleet and hail and in changing to ice release even more heat. So the weather phenomena that we see each day are simply the earth's means of transferring heat energy from the equator toward the poles. More heat, from a hotter earth would mean a greater need for heat transfer, and result in more rain, snow, sleet, hail and winds. A hotter earth will have more "weather" more rain, snow, more hot days, more windy days, more tornadoes, more droughts, more flooda, more hurricanes, more snow up up in the Greens and everywhere more intense weather.
Yes Momma Schmidt, what the scientists call "global warming" and I am here now calling GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION can and may cause more snow, cold snaps, deeper drifts, stronger winds, more rain, more flooding, more frequent and more intense tropical storms, more and stronger tornadoes, or simply put..MORE INTENSE WEATHER . So please let's abandon the term "global warming" and use "global weather intensification" it's much more descriptive and valid.
Though she claims she doesn't know it or will not admit it, Momma Schmidt IS doing her part to reduce Human Induced Global Weather Intensification, or HIGWI. It is well known that she still burns only local wood in her Big Bear wood stove to heat her place. She is not adding any fossil CO2 to the atmosphere for heating. Back in 2005 she had solar panels installed on her roof to lower her electricity bill and those panels work fine. She uses very little gasoline since she hardly drives that 1998 caddy Coupe D'ville kept in her dilapidated garage. She carefully covers the front hood with a tarp on real cold winter days. I tried to explain to her that it has no effect...but you go try and tell her. The caddy goes to Manchester a few times a month and back! that's all. So that's how it goes up here in Vermont. Some progress being made.
Now if we could only get some of the dunderheads up here to rethink the excellent plan (sadly rejected a few years ago by the townsfolk) to put a string of electric generating wind turbines along the ridge of Gleib Mountain. Believe it or not they objected to the "visual impact". What further damage could be done to old Gleib, I don't know. It is a mountain horribly scarred and carved up by ski trails and ski lift structures. I guess no one up here sees those features as ugly anymore. People would soon get to look fondly on wind mill turbines too. The lowered electric bills would make folks forget any visual impact and put a broad smile on any Vermonter's face.
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