Forecasting the Future

I don’t understand why people get upset when the weather people are wrong.  Some folks—some of my students and other people I overhear—seem to get pissed when the weather people are wrong.  Maybe they were planning something and got rained out.  But hell that’s not the weather person’s fault.  But these people seem to feel the weather people caused the rain.  I think this has something to do with the authoritarian personality.

These people lack ambiguity tolerance or maybe they don’t know enough to know things are ambiguous.  And in any case I think the weather people are mostly more right than wrong.  Sure they get off a few degrees, but hell predicting the future is far from an exact science.
 

Indeed I was surprised to find that recently other weather persons have revised the ultimate forecast.  I had thought the earth had about 3 billion years to go before the sun goes nova.  In my head, I imagine this great blast, and the earth goes all black, and then glows like a charcoal briquette and then, you know, like a charcoal briquette turns to dust and sort of blows away in the solar atmosphere.

 

 

But, hey, new computer modeling and calculations suggest a different forecast. First, the sun will not go nova—it’s a middling star and not big enough for that.  Instead it will enter an extended stage.  Expand.  But while Venus and Mercury will indeed be turned into briquettes, the earth will be sort of pushed away from the sun.  This will occur maybe in roughly five billion years give or take a couple of billion years.

So no briquette for old Terra.  Instead, it seems Sol is warming up so about a billion years from now give or take a few million years, all the water will evaporate from the earth, and that will be that.  So I must contradict myself and say The Future Is the Greatest Story that has been told, to the extent that weather people can predict the weather.  Give or take a few degrees or hundreds of millions of years.

In any case, I won’t be around to complain if they are inaccurate.

__________________________________________________________________________________

And, oh, Brother Steve recently sent along a link to pictures of his abode at the Lake Walford Resort. 

 

One Reply to “Forecasting the Future”

  1. Loved the pix from Steve’s little corner of heaven. I found that he does indeed have a shot of a great blue heron! I appreciate folks who appreciate the sheer and simple beauty of nature – yet another reason I tremendously enjoy “our” walks to Elwood. Thanks for sharing.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*