WE find nothing but bitter irony in the situation that's unfolding 'down south.'   And when we say "irony" we mean it this form, as described in the Oxford English Dictionary:

A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things. (In French, ironie du sort.)

   The teachers' union and the Washington Supreme Court have got to stop using kids as pawns this way.  And all this is happening in the midst of the "McCleary Case." The irony is obvious; the tragedy is tangible; these educators are such ... tools!

In Washington State, Thousands of Kids Aren’t
Returning to School
The Daily Signal - EDUCATION NEWS
Kelsey Harkness / @kelseyjharkness / September 14, 2015 

As charter school teachers in Seattle are showing up to work despite a court’s ruling their schools unconstitutional, public school teachers in the city are on strike, leaving 53,000 students at home for the first few days of the 2015-16 school year.

“There’s a big irony here right now in Seattle,” said Liv Finne, director of Education for the Washington Policy Center, which advocates for charter schools in the state. “The teachers are on strike in the traditional schools—there’s nobody going to school. Yet, the three charter schools that are in Seattle are open for business.”

The Lawsuit Against Charter Schools

Funding for Washington’s nine charter schools was abruptly cut off on Sept. 4—just days before some schools were set to open—when the state’s Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional.

Siding with the teachers unions and other organizations bringing the suit, the justices found “charter schools are not common schools” because they are run by independent operators instead of locally elected school boards, as the state’s Constitution requires.

“It’s really disheartening,” Hong-nhi Do, a 27-year-old 5th and 6th grade learning specialist at Rainier Prep charter school told The Daily Signal. “I think people are choosing politics over kids and families.”

Despite the ruling—and the future of their jobs at stake—Do and her fellow charter educators arrived to school this week, opening their doors to the 1,300 students they serve. In order to do so, they secured a $14 million private donation that will get them through the school year.

“All of our teachers are showing up,” Do said. “Every single one of us is fighting so hard and wants to do whatever it takes to keep our school open.”

After funding for the 2014-15 school year runs out, no one knows what will happen. Charter school operators, along with state lawmakers, are scrambling to figure that out.

One school, Seattle’s Summit Sierra High School, got creative in order to stay open, and had its 120 students fill out forms for homeschooling, the Seattle Pi reported.

The Strike

The charter school ruling coincided with a strike that shut down schools for Seattle’s 53,000 public school students. The strike came after negotiations failed between the Seattle Educators Association and the Seattle School Board.

“Schools will be closed until further notice,” Seattle Public Schools states on its website.

Public school teachers have a variety of demands, including, a “substantial” pay raise, compensation for an additional 20 minutes of instructional time for students, “fair” evaluations and “workload relief.”

According to the non-profit education news site The Seventy Four, Seattle teachers’ median pay is $60,400, not including benefits, which exceeds the city’s median income of $43,200.

The Daily Signal reached out to the union for further explanation of its demands, but they did not reply.

The Conflict

The Seattle Educators Association feeds into the Washington Education Association, which was one of the organizations behind the charter school lawsuit. Ties between the union and the nine Supreme Court justices raised questions after the charter schools ruling came down.

“It’s the worst instance of machine-politics and kids have to be the causality of it,” Derrell Bradford, a Democrat who serves as executive director of NYCAN, told The Daily Signal.

You have a statewide referendum—it went to the voters and the voters said yes, you’ve got judges who are elected—who are bankrolled by the Washington Education Association, so they’re bought and paid for—who give a ruling based on local control and local elected governance that actually circumvents the local governance of the people because they had a statewide referendum.

Voters in Washington approved a charter school law in 2012, which allowed for the creation of up to 40 charter schools.

According to Finne, director of Education for the Washington Policy Center, four out of the nine Supreme Court justices received the maximum campaign contributions from the Washington Education Association union in 2014.

·         Justice Mary I. Yu – $1,900 from Washington Education Association Political Action Committee.

·         Justice Mary E. Fairhurst – $1,900 from Washington Education Association.

·         Justice Charles W. Johnson – $1,900 from Washington Education Association Political Action Committee.

·         Justice Debra L. Stephens – $1,900 from Washington Education Association Political Action Committee.

In 2012, the three remaining justices received maximum political contributions from the same union.

·         Justice Susan J. Owens – $1,800 from Washington Education Association.

·         Justice Stephen C. Gonzalez – $1,800 from Washington Education Association Political Action Committee.

·         Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud – $1,800 from Washington Education Association Political Action Committee.

In Washington, Supreme Court justices must run for office. Although they are prohibited from soliciting donations, their campaigns may receive them, so long as they abide by the guidelines.

 “This is just the natural result of the leadership we’ve had,” Finne said.

A Fight for Control

The dueling situations, Bradford said, “really show you what these people want. And it’s not local control—it’s their control and their control only.” He added:

On one hand, [the unions] are saying, ‘We need elected school boards, we’ve got to have elected governance, and charter schools circumvent that.’ On the other hand, when they can’t get the deal they want from the elected governance they have, they strike and leave 53,000 kids in the lurch. They don’t want elected governance, they want their governance and when they can kill the competition, the next thing they do is jack up the price. That just hasn’t been, can’t be, and won’t be the best thing for every kid. It’s okay for some kids, but it’s not the best thing for every kid.

A spokesperson for Washington’s Supreme Court declined to comment on allegations surrounding union influence on the nine justices. On Friday, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced his plans to ask the court to reconsider its decision. The ruling, he said, “also unnecessarily calls into question the constitutionality of a wide range of other state educational programs.”

Programs like Running Start and Washington State Skills Centers provide career and technical education to high school students via state funds, but aren’t controlled by locally elected school boards. For this reason, critics feel the justices targeted charter schools for political purposes.

For some Do, a teacher at Rainier Prep, the situation hits close to home. Do grew up in the same town her charter school is located, and says she “knows what the public schools were like.”

“I have a lot of friends in the area who are now incarcerated or wish they got more out of their education here,” she said. “To see us not be able to accept something that is new and innovative is really disheartening.”

     Whatcom Excavator is hooked on truth and science.  Real science.  Rigorous science.  The kind that involves, well ... you know ... actual evidence.

     Recently, on August 27, the Bellingham Herald ran a panicky climate change story  that featured photos of Oliver Grah who works for the Nooksack Tribe and others poking at Mt. Baker's glaciers.  The article included dire predictions, like:  “At the rate it’s losing mass, it won’t make it 50 years,” said Pelto, a glaciologist who returned this month for the 32nd year to study glaciers in the North Cascades range.  This is a dying glacier,” he said." 

     WE just learned that on September 8 the Seattle Times ran a story heavily tied to this same tale (Grah and Pelto), citing them and expanding the theme.  Maybe you can see the Seattle Times article here for yourself.

     The public is being fed dramatic stories by these newspapers, loaded with hyperbole but no evidence. Check out the evidence.  (Editors at the Herald and Times - WE ask, 'Do you fact-check your "science stories" at all?')

Mt. Baker glaciers disappearing? A response to the Seattle Times
by Don J. Easterbrook
at Watts Up With That?   September 13, 2015

The headline of the September 8, 2015 Seattle Times states:

‘Disastrous’: Low snow, heat eat away at Northwest glaciers

“Glaciers across the North Cascades could lose 5 to 10 percent of their volume this year, accelerating decades of steady decline. One scientist estimates the region’s glaciers are smaller than they have been in at least 4,000 years.” “The best word for it is disastrous,” said Pelto”

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/science/disastrous-low-snow-heat-eat-away-at-northwest-glaciers/

This was a multi-page story with numerous photographs and many predictions that glaciers in the North Cascade Mts. will be gone in 50 years. Having just finished a major analysis of Mt. Baker’s glaciers dating back thousands of years, I thought, what kind of nonsense is this? So I put together some of the data on Mt. Baker glaciers that will soon be published.

Photos and maps from a large collection dating back to 1909 document exactly what Mt. Baker glaciers have done in the past. What these photos and maps clearly show is the Mt. Baker glaciers reached their maximum extent of the past century in 1915 at the end of the 1880 to 1915 cold period. The glaciers then melted back strongly during the 1915 to 1950 warm period. The climate then turned cool again, and Mt. Baker glaciers advanced strongly for 30 years. In 1977, the climate turned warm again and since about 1980, glaciers have been retreating again. However, photos and maps prove that all Mt. Baker glaciers are more extensive today than they were in 1950. Here are a few examples.

Roosevelt and Coleman glaciers

Comparison of the position of the terminus of the Roosevelt glacier on USGS topographic maps of 2014 (blue line) and 1952 (green line) (Fig. 1). Both the Coleman and Roosevelt glaciers are more extensive now than they were in 1952. Figure 2 shows the advance and retreat of the two glaciers measured from vertical air photographs.

Figure 3. Comparision of photographs of the Roosevelt glacier in 2015 (left) and 1947 (right). Note that the glacier is more extensive now than it was in 1947.

Deming glacier

Comparison of the position of the terminus of the Deming glacier on USGS topographic maps of 2014 (blue line) and 1952 (green line) (Fig. 4) show that the glacier was more extensive in 2014 than it was in 1952. The right side of the figure shows that rates of advance and retreat of the Deming glacier from 1940 to 1990 (plotted from data in Harper, 1992).

Figure 4. Comparison of the position of the Deming glacier terminus in 2015 and 1952 taken directly from USGS topographic maps (left). Graph on the right shows rates of advance and retreat of the glacier from 1940 to 1990.

Photographs of the Deming glacier 2011-2015 confirm that the glacier is more extensive now than it was in 1950-52. In the photos below the X is a point of reference and the yellow diamond is the terminus. The 2011-2015 terminus is far downvalley (see map) from it’s 1950-52 position.

Figure 5. Deming glacier, 1950 (left) and 2011 (right).The yellow X is a point of reference and the diamond shape is the position of the terminus in 1950 and 2011. These photos show that the Deming glacier is more extensive now than it was in 1950 and confirm the positions of the terminus shown in Fig. 4.

Boulder glacier

Comparison of the position of the terminus of the Boulder glacier on USGS topographic maps of 2015 (blue line) and 1952 (green line) (Fig. 6) show that the glacier is more extensive now than it was in 1952.

Figure 7. Photos of the Boulder glacier in 1950 (left) and 2014 (right). The yellow X is a common point of reference and the yellow diamond marks the glacier terminus.

Photographs of the Boulder glacier 2014 confirm that the glacier is more extensive now than it was in 1950-52. The present is far downvalley (see map) from its 1950-52 position.

All of Mt. Baker’s other glaciers show the same thing. They are all more extensive now than they were in 1952 and nothing unusual is happening to them—they have been where they are now many times before. Data similar to that shown here for the Coleman, Roosevelt, Deming, and Boulder glaciers is also available for the Easton, Squak, Talum, Park, Rainbow, and Mazama glaciers.

The Seattle Times states that “Riedel estimates the region’s glaciers are smaller than they have been in at least 4,000 years.” However, the photos and maps of the Sholes glacier, the featured in the Times article, below prove that these claims are totally false˗˗the Sholes glacier has not changed at all in the past 70 years.

Figure 8. The Sholes glacier in 1947 (left) and 2011 (right) are virtually identical.

These photos prove that the Sholes glacier today is identical to what it was in 1947. In addition, comparison of the glacier terminus on USGS topographic maps of 1952 and 2014 (below) show that the Sholes glacier has not changed since 1952.

     As site regulars know, WE take science very seriously.  No rigor?  Not science.  (Take a quick hop to the Vator "Best Available Science" page if you haven't seen that before.)

    UW Atmospheric Sciences Professor Cliff Mass seems to be taking a reasonable tack lately on the impacts of climate change in the Pacific Northwest (check out this 2014 video on YouTube).  Dig this observation-based piece at his blog.   Laissez la science prospérer!

at Cliff Mass Weather Blog
September 2, 2015

Environmental monster match-ups are familiar to many of you.

For example, who could forget Godzilla versus Hedorah, The Smog Monster?

Then there is the BLOB, the name affectionately given to an area of warm warm over the northeast Pacific.  There is strong evidence that the BLOB has warmed surface temperatures over the Northwest by 2-4C over the past year, contributing to our record high temperatures and lack of snow.

Together, will they destroy Northwest snow and normal weather?  Bring another torrid winter in our region?   Terminate our ski industry?

I suspect I know what will happen. 

They will NOT combine forces.  They will fight,  and one will win.

Godzilla   

Just like in the movies,  Godzilla will become our ally.  And it makes sense that the mighty Godzilla will prevail.

Let me tell you why.

The BLOB, as documented in a nice paper by State Climatologist Nick Bond and colleagues was the stepchild of a huge area of high pressure along and east of the West Coast of the U.S.  High pressure resulted in less wind and mixing of the upper ocean layers, leading to reducing mixing of cooler sub-surface water to the surface.  Thus, the ocean surface was warmer than normal.  

The anomalous high pressure also resulted in less movement of cooler Pacific waters from the north.  Weaker cold advection in technical terms.

Here is an example of the sea surface temperature (actually the difference from normal, or the anomaly) associated with the BLOB.  BLOB is warm.

We are already seeing evidence of these changes.  The water in the central Pacific is cooling.  The ridge of high pressure over us has weakened and high pressure has established itself over the central Pacific.  Precipitation is increasing over our area.

And there are other signs in the sky that suggest my hypothesis is correct....

The BLOB is vulnerable.  And I believe that Godzilla El Nino will destroy it. Nature is cruel.

What does that mean for our weather?  A strong  El Nino bring modestly warmer than normal temperatures, with a snowpack about 20% below normal.  Much better than last winter.  The correlation with Northwest precipitation is weak.  Less lowland snow and fewer major storms.  Enhanced precipitation over southern/central California.

In short, far more normal conditions than the weird weather we have experienced during the last year.  Our region should rejoice in Godzilla El Nino's strength.  But deep down we will be sad for the vanquished BLOB.