Nixon spied on Earth Day participants

I'm reading a lot about the NSA surveillance program, whether on Facebook or on blogs like Elaine Meinel Supkis's Culture of Life News, who noted that domestic surveillance has been going on a long time.  As she wrote, "I exposed CIA/FBI spying on students in the sixties."  Mind you, she's doing this while ranting about the Bilderbergers, which suggests to me that she's losing it.  That doesn't mean that she's wrong about this point.

On Earth Day this year, Becky Oskin of OurAmazingPlanet recounted How President Nixon Spied on Earth Day.

The launch of Earth Day in 1970 raised suspicions in Washington, D.C., according to former Representative Pete McCloskey, one of the organizers of the first Earth Day.

The annual event was launched as a national teach-in on April 22, 1970, by former Senator Gaylord Nelson, McCloskey and others. Earth Day galvanized a political movement that led to some of the country's most significant environmental legislation, including the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act.

At a panel discussion on the Endangered Species Act and its future, held Jan. 31 at the Western Section of The Wildlife Society's annual meeting in Sacramento, Calif., McCloskey recalled the FBI's scrutiny of the event. According to McCloskey, President Richard Nixon ordered the FBI to observe college students across the country.

The FBI found nothing.  Just the same, while Elaine may have gone over the deep end, she's right about this one.  Environmentalists are being watched and have been since the beginning of the movement.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, I recommend Green is the new Red, which specializes in stories about domestic intelligence and police activity against enviromental and animal rights activists.  It so happens that they have a story related to the NSA as I write this: How the NSA Kept Us From Knowing About a Previous, Illegal Domestic Spy Program in 2006.  I suggest you read it.

Flooding bumped up the gas price rollercoaster

In April fools on lower prices as gas price rollercoaster shoots up, I described the sudden rise in prices to a level that I thought was overpriced considering the price of crude.  It turns out that the local weather is to blame, as the Detroit Free Press reports in Michigan gas prices rise after heavy rains.

Torrential rains last week led to higher gasoline prices in Michigan as flooding knocked out pipeline flow and refineries, but the prices could come down again as the problems are fixed, a petroleum analyst said.

Gasoline prices have risen about 24 cents during the past week to a statewide average of about $3.75 per gallon, but the average is about 9 cents per gallon less than last year at this time, according to AAA Michigan.
...
“Over the next week, we’ll see prices come back in line with changes in the national average,” said GasBuddy.com’s Senior Petroleum Analyst Patrick DeHaan in Chicago. “A lot of it is just weather related.”

The prices are already starting to drop.  The corner station has matched the rest of its competitors and is selling gas at $3.69, a drop from the $3.75 late last week.

The floods have caused other problems, as described in Major Flooding Continues From Missouri to Michigan from Accuweather republished in OurAmazingPlanet.

Torrential rain, concentrated in two days or less, has led to major flooding in parts of the Midwest. In some areas, flooding will continue beyond the weekend.

While the rain was exiting the region at increasing speed Friday, runoff from small streams into progressively larger rivers will continue the flooding risk through the weekend and beyond in some locations.

Levels in some of the tributaries of the upper Mississippi and Ohio rivers are projected to reach, surpass or remain major flood stage over the next several days.

That includes the Grand River here in Michigan.  Grand Rapids is experiencing record flooding, as described by the Detroit Free Press.

The National Weather Service said the river was 5.6 feet above flood stage Sunday morning at Comstock Park in Kent County’s Plainfield Township, just north of Grand Rapids.

Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell declared a state of emergency as the river drove residents from some low-lying areas. Several flood warnings and advisories are in effect in mid-Michigan.

The weather service said the river at Comstock Park is 0.2 feet below its all-time high and predicted that the level would crest above that record Sunday or today. Farther downstream, the Grand River was 3.8 feet over flood stage in Grand Rapids and 3.3 feet over at Ottawa County’s Robinson Township.

Record-breaking rainfall is to blame.

Meteorologist Evan Webb of the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids said so far in April, there has been 9.8 inches of rain in the Grand Rapids area. The average is about 2.3 inches. Daily totals have smashed records, including on April 18, when 3.3 inches fell on a day whose last record was set at 1.4 inches in 1939.

“That’s just an absurd amount of rain for a 24-hour period,” Webb said. “We’re way over normal.”

I could quote more, but why bother with text when I can show you.  Here's WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids on the banks of the Grand River.

Grand River breaks crest in 2 cities

The Grand River crested at record levels in two West Michigan cities Sunday night.

The legacy of Sandy and other climate news

Time for an update of the climate news since Weather and climate as March went out like a lion.  First, two stories about how Hurricane Sandy has changed the policies of the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.

Accuweather via OurAmazingPlanet: Post Sandy: The Jersey Shore's Susceptibility to Major Storms
by Jillian MacMath, AccuWeather.com
Apr 05, 2013 10:38 AM ET

Before Superstorm Sandy made landfall on the Jersey coast on Oct. 29, 2012, few realized the intensity of the storm that headed in their direction.

The National Hurricane Center opted not to issue hurricane warnings north of North Carolina, and instead handed the reins to regional National Weather Service offices.

Local governments warned the public of the approaching threat, and issued evacuation orders to many towns. While some residents agreed to leave, others resisted, believing that people were 'crying wolf' about the storm.

Accuweather via OurAmazingPlanet: Weather Service Broadens Hurricane Warning Definition
by Accuweather.com
Apr 04, 2013 03:09 PM ET

The National Weather Service announced today that, starting June 1, the definitions of hurricane and tropical storm watches and warnings will be broadened.

The new changes will allow watches and warnings to be issued or remain in effect after a tropical cyclone becomes post-tropical, when such a storm poses a significant threat to life and property.

In addition, the National Hurricane Center will be permitted to issue advisories during the post-tropical stage.

Follow over the jump for more climate-related news from Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (BRAIN Initiative) on Daily Kos.

Weather and climate as March went out like a lion

In response to Climate change: Risks and responses, a reader over on Facebook pointed out how cold the end of March was in the U.S. I promised him that news later. It's later, so here it is.

OurAmazingPlanet: Spring Image: Snow in Nearly Half of US
Douglas Main, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer
Mar 26, 2013 06:54 PM ET

Springtime: the time for flowers, newborn animals … and snow. Nearly half of the United States is currently covered in snow, including most of Canada, as can be seen in this image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That's the largest extent of snow cover at this point in the season in at least 10 years, according to NOAA....

Currently, 44 of 50 states have some snow on the ground. The only states without any of the fluffy stuff are Alabama, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi and Rhode Island.

Most of the blame can be laid at the feet of a storm that passed through at the end of the month, as OurAmazingPlanet republished on Space.com reported: How a Storm Became Big Enough to Span the Atlantic by Douglas Main, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer on Date: 29 March 2013 Time: 02:00 PM ET.

There is currently a massive storm churning over the Atlantic that spans the entire ocean basin, stretching all the way from Canada to Europe, and from Greenland to the Caribbean.

It's the same weather system that brought a massive spring blizzard to much of the United States and Canada earlier this week (on Tuesday (March 26), 44 of 50 states had some snow on the ground), and which has now ballooned in size, according to Jason Samenow, chief meteorologist with the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang.

Robert Oszajca, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service's Ocean Prediction Center, explained that the storm got this big by merging with several low-pressure systems that were hanging out over the Atlantic Ocean. The merging weather systems gave it more power, which was accentuated by a gradient between warm moisture from the southeast, delivered by the Gulf Stream, and frigid air from the north. This intensified the storm, causing it to spin, elongate and grow in size, Oszajca told OurAmazingPlanet.

It turns out there is a climate-based reason for the late cold weather, as OurAmazingPlanet describes in Arctic Sea Ice Hits Yearly Max, But Still Dwindling by Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer on Mar 27, 2013 07:29 PM ET.

It may be time to retire the groundhog and start tracking Arctic sea ice for a better prediction of late-winter weather.

On March 15, the Arctic sea ice reached its maximum extent -- the most ice the frigid North would see this year, according to the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo. Changes in Arctic ice, and its total extent, may be affecting weather further south, scientists think.

The ice covered 5.84 million square miles (15.13 million square kilometers), the sixth-lowest area on record since 1979. Most of the ice was young, first-year ice, freshly frozen. The Arctic also has multiyear ice, frozen year-round, which is stiffer and thicker, and contains much less brine than first-year ice does. However, its slice of the total ice pie has been shrinking in recent years.

Just because the weather is erratic, as it always is, doesn't mean that the climatic trend has been disturbed.

Follow over the jump for more climate stories.