Hello Jeri,
You ask an extremely tough question. Allow me to start with Art's show lastnight with Linda Howe. I heard Art and Linda say they did not want to get into the political aspects or implications of what, perhaps, science is doing or not doing. I also heard a shaken Whitley Streiber reduce most of his writings attributable to "fiction". It was sad to hear Whitley so shaken up, yet, he has no idea what he and Art had fallen on to. (not referring to the alien abduction).
Before I get to the crux of your question I wanted to note that Art, in his humanistic honesty and humility atated that he "had a feeling, like alarm bells going off" <or somthing to that effect> concerning the Quickening and current sudden weather changes. HE spent almost five minutes trying to identify with a real feeling of impending catastrophy, that, probably to his amazement, is soundly based.
Now, for the government. In 1971 Richard Nixon commenced the WESCENT Celebrations and commited that he would provide funding for "long range forecasting" so that farmers and buisnesses could have a fair veiw of the weather to come. The WESCENT celebrations was the Centennial Celebration of the US Weather Bureau which was enacted by Ullyses S. Grant in 1870.
Government *has* tried to warn persons in a very sutle way but, main-stream media is slow to move. The main problem is the proverbial "egg on the face". No forecaster wants to look foolish whith a failed forecast. ie Like Hurricane Floyd. FIMA and the National Hurricane Center suggested mandatory evacuations only to have the hurricane move eastward and miss the Florida Pennisual. It took alot of effort, but, lets say that it was a successful trial run for the real thing.
I think that the consumer has to take some responsibility also. This is not a sales pitch, but, Gov. John Engler of MICH. has declared the week of Feb 4th to Feb. 10th NOAA Weather week. NOAA provides a service of warnings over radios of severe and iminent weather warnings over speacial frequencies, somewhat alike to the C. Crane Radio Art is always talking about. It would not hurt to have one because most of the transmitters and repeaters are vaulted and have emergency 24/7 back up power generation in the event of a violent weather anonoly, or , a standard weather warning. Also the led flashlight is a smart idea.
It is beyond question that many in the State of California only wished they had not considered Art and Whitley , crackpots in lieu of the recent and ongoing rolling blackouts and etc.... so that was not the governments fault, nor was it the peoples fault.
I think the fault lies in the presentation of the facts. Consumers are very cynical and skeptical and (even myself) they will fail to do anything or take any action until they have an F5 tornado practically on their doorstep.
I will also say that the government is responsible, somewhat for possibly trying to squelch the mainstream media so as to quell possible panic and resultant civil disobedience in the event that the storm organizes as projected. PErhaps there is always a window and a five day window could cause panic, or even long term effects on the stock market, hence accusing global stormologists of being crackpots seems to be the effective cure to the problem at the moment. This is only short term.
I was also frustrated that Art took into the Global Warming thread and indicated that many in science and media are dort of turning a deaf ear. Not true in all cases. The only thing that gets to me is that when a climatologist or a layman makes a reference to global warming they should be fair to include everything up to the ionosphere and not just terra firma. Also, I didn;t hear much about our solar disk last night either other than 10 million year projections. It does not deal with where we are at, now.
I hope this helps, and believe me, your questions are extremely thought provoking , courageous and inspiring.
dale
