JFK and IKE
Inauguration Day 1961 and a black shiny limousine is heading to the ceremony with two American Presidents in the back seat; one ending his second term, the other just beginning his first. It was also the first time one veteran of World War II handed off the presidency to another.
The outgoing commander in chief, Dwight Eisenhower, had served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary force. The other, John F. Kennedy, had been a junior officer in the Pacific, at one point given up for dead after a Japanese destroyer had sliced his boat in half.
The two men had a frosty relationship. But now the younger man asked a question, not as a politician but as one veteran to another. What, he wanted to know, had given the Allies the edge over the German forces on D-Day? Perhaps JFK expected the great general to mention an intelligence triumph, or brilliant strategic planning, or a newly developed piece of military equipment. Ike looked at the former lieutenant sitting next to him and said, “We had better meteorologists.”
The Allies knew that to win they would have to conduct an amphibious landing. Two scientists, geophysicist Walter Munk and meteorologist Harald Sverdrup, refused to accept the conventional wisdom that ocean swells could not be measured. They worked for two years and figured out how to measure waves days or even weeks in advance. They tracked every possible weather factor across thousands of miles and finally they developed a formula to predict ocean conditions in advance.
It worked.
The landing was scheduled for June 5th but after consulting with his meteorologists, Eisenhower postponed the invasion to June 6th when calmer seas were forecast. They were able to land 133,000 men ashore in 24 hours. For Nazi Germany, it was the beginning of the end.
Today, the fight of our lifetime is slowly creeping up on us. Fires, storms, drought and unrelenting heat are beginning to take an ever increasing toll. Like the folks who said the ocean could not be measured, deniers today continue to say we are powerless over our new climate patterns. As I write this it is 115 degrees in Phoenix, 112 in Las Vegas, floods are ravaging the Midwest and last week we had six days in a row well into the 90s across Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Hugh amounts of money are being spent to make us believe we are powerless and that it is not really happening, just like the cigarette companies tried to make us believe filters would prevent cancer and the chemical companies denied their products were causing thousands of deaths.
We are being told there is not much we can do about our new weather; but there is, and slowly the world will see what is possible, and just like the meteorologists who helped us bring an end to the war in the 1940s, if we listen they will guide us through the current battle.
Much can and will be done since each extreme weather event that causes misery and devastation also makes for new believers that something is truly going on that needs our attention. Let’s listen to the meteorologists!
(Information for this article from the book, Cheaper Faster Better by Tom Steyer former Republican candidate for President)