The strangest thing about growing up in a terrorist family is how normal it all seems at the time. As a child, I had no idea my father was involved with the Irish Republican Army. We spent a couple of weird vacations in Northern Ireland, during which we would hike around the perimeter of military bases, while he took pictures of the radar installations "for some friends."
But until I was nearly 16, I was blissfully unaware that while I was doing science fair projects and building radios and listening to rock music that had not yet become classic rock, my dad was actively involved in what was euphemistically called "the movement." I knew he supported the IRA, but I thought his support mostly found expression in lamenting, over the morning paper, the latest British Army atrocity.
My epiphany came on Halloween, 1973. Earlier that day, in one of their more dashing exploits, the IRA had hijacked a helicopter and flown it into the prison yard of Mountjoy Jail in Dublin, during exercise period. The guards assumed this was a visit from a high mucky-muck, probably a government minister. They lined up the prisoners neatly at attention, so when "the boys" jumped out of the helicopter brandishing ArmaLites, the three IRA leaders they wanted were ready to be whisked off.
"We thought you were the Minister of Defense," said one of the shocked guards.
"Actually, we're here to pick up OUR Minister of Defense," said the IRA man.
The escape helicopter landed at a horse-racing track about a mile from my house. When I came home from college that evening, too old to go out trick-or-treating, my family, including a couple of visiting cousins, one of them a Dominican priest, shared the news of the escape with great relish.
About 8 p.m., there was a loud knock at the door. I answered it and three very large plainclothes policemen barged past me, shouting "Special Branch, we're searching the house." The Special Branch were the Irish political police and didn't need a warrant. My parents and cousins, sipping whiskey in the front living room, reacted with equanimity, though my cousin the priest indulged himself in some gentle humor at the expense of the "Branch Men." You can get away with that in Ireland if you're wearing a clerical collar.
They found nothing of any interest. My father explained to me later that police raids aren't the sort of thing a family can just ignore as if nothing happened, that all the while they were having a little fun with the cops, my father and cousins were each wearing two sets of clothes. They were about to leave to pick up the escapees, give them a change out of prison uniforms and bring them back to what I thought was my home, but was apparently a "safe-house." Had the Branch come an hour later, he crowed, they would have caught all three red-handed.
In my dad's defense, dressing up in funny clothes is traditional on Halloween.
Once the cat was out of the bag, my father explained some other mysteries. On our way to Mass on Sunday evening, he pointed out the Special Branch car that always pulled out of an intersection and stayed behind us all the way to church. And there was the enigmatic visitor, with the Northern accent, who turned up one evening at 10 p.m., while my parents were out. My sister and I invited him in, because that's what you did in Ireland. We made him tea and toast. Speculating that he might be some sort of dangerous lunatic, she and I discussed lacing his tea with some of my mother's Valium — we didn't want to kill the man, we were just going to add a couple of pills to prevent any violent outbursts — but when my parents finally arrived, they seemed delighted to see him.
My father asked me later if I had recognized our visitor. I hadn't. He was, my father said, the chief of staff of the IRA who was, as always, on the run. I felt a bit foolish, but, after all, one key to success on the run is to not look like your mug shot. So, in effect, my sister and I had discussed drugging the Irish version of Osama bin Laden.
What can I say? It all seemed pretty ordinary at the time.
My dad never told me more than was necessary, and I didn't want to know more. I never got involved in the "movement," and I don't think he wanted me to be. I hadn't, after all, grown up with the sort of discrimination and violence he'd experienced as the seventh child of a poor Catholic widow in a country where Catholics were treated by the Protestant majority similar to the way African Americans were treated by whites in the South. It wasn't my fight.
is a member of the 
68 comments
But does Mother Nature really look like a gal with a plan? You know what she is? She’s a dog chasing cars. She wouldn't know what to do with one if she caught it. You know, she just... does things. The Left has plans; the Right has plans; Al Gore’s got plans. You know, they're schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds. Mother Nature is not a schemer. She tries to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.
Your rational doesn't work. I think by now the other five or six foaming at the mouth raving loonies are wishing they could dump you down a well.
Your idiocy is so embarrassing to them.
And so humorous to the rest of us.
www.gfdl.noaa.gov/isaac-held-homepage
lists no papers at all published in 2010. You got the date wrong. It happens, Dr. Habrison; not even you are immune from making mistakes. The question is whether you'll ever have the maturity to admit them. It's really a minor point, I can't imagine why you're so intent on it. Regardless, it's clear from the research that a warming trend in the Atlantic tropics (which, per Santer et al, can only be explained by anthropogenic climate change) is associated with an increase in tropical storm activity in every model that doesn't make indefensible assumptions about tropical storms (for instance, per the Knutson paper, that the beginning and end of hurricane season is static over time). That's the consensus science. But, hey, if you don't believe me - why don't you call over to your colleagues in the Applied Climate Science department? You've accused me of not bothering to look up a paper (actually I've looked up at least four today.) Maybe you can explain why you can't be bothered to even pick up a phone?
"The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.
“Has Dr. Harbison not repeated over and over again that, if tropical storms are driven by heat they should form in the Sahara? But isn't it the case that in 2003 a Sarahan dust storm formed that was so powerful it deposited Saharan sand along America's eastern seaboard?”
No Justin
A tropical cyclone is a storm system characterized by a large low-presure center and numerous thunderstorms that produce strong winds and heavy rain. Tropical cyclones feed on heat released when moist air rises, resulting in condensation of water vapor contained in the moist air. They are fueled by a different heat mechanism than other cyclonic windstorms such as nor’easters, European windstorms, , and polar lows,, leading to their classification as "warm core" storm systems. Tropical cyclones originate in the doldroms near the equator, about 10° away from it.
I think Justin’s is that Harbison was making fun of his assine notion that man-made global warming caused an increase in tropical storms. Since he has no sense of humor (or sense for that matter) Harbison’s ridicule was totally lost on him.
Justin:"" What in the same letter where you praised his description of his father you called him a liar. "
In the same letter? No, I did not.” Oh Really?
“Look, my opposition to Dr. Harbison's repeated attempts to flaunt journalistic integrity and the DN's fact-checking process via the opinion page "loophole" remains undiminished. But that doesn't mean I have to kick sand in his face at every opportunity. I found this article interesting and well-written. It certainly explains why there's a little bit of the counter-culture revolutionary about Dr. Harbison.
I enjoyed this piece. I don't think it undermines the substantial criticism of his phony science that I've made in the past to say so. “ posted in this same comment section on February 11, 2010 13:01
You state that Harbison is flaunting Journalistic integrity and the DN’s fact checking process.
In case you don’t know Integrity means: adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.
You called him a liar and once more you are lying about it. Proving you are a liar.
In the same letter? No, I did not.” Oh Really?
“Look, my opposition to Dr. Harbison's repeated attempts to flaunt journalistic integrity and the DN's fact-checking process via the opinion page "loophole" remains undiminished. But that doesn't mean I have to kick sand in his face at every opportunity. I found this article interesting and well-written. It certainly explains why there's a little bit of the counter-culture revolutionary about Dr. Harbison.
I enjoyed this piece. I don't think it undermines the substantial criticism of his phony science that I've made in the past to say so. “ February 11, 2010 13:01
Some compliment questioning a man’s integrity. Isn’t that like calling him dishonest. Perhaps a liar?
As for the storm thing that's pretty dishonest trying to twist words to suit you.
I replied "Trenberth didn't say I misrepresented him. He didn't mention me at all"
Justin: "I didn't ever say that he did, Dr. Harbison.""Those are indeed my words, which I have never denied. Do you understand, yet, how Dr. Trenberth could be referring to those who would use his email in support of positions he rejects, and how that would include you even though you weren't mentioned specifically?If I said that chemistry professors from Ireland are always dishonest idiots, do you understand how I could be talking about you, even if we had never met? Even if I had no idea who you are? Perhaps English is not your first language? That would certainly explain how you've completely failed to take my meaning.You're really digging with this. Obviously Dr. Trenberth did not mention you specifically, and I never claimed he had. Nonetheless it's quite obvious that he's talking about you, and others like you, who have attempted to misuse comments he's made in private emails taken completely out of context."" What in the same letter where you praised his description of his father you called him a liar. "In the same letter? No, I did not.""Why don't you explain to us how tropical storms are supposed to form in the middle of deserts?" He never did you idiot."But he has, several times. " If that were true, they'd develop at the equator, and not 20 degrees north and south of it, or better yet, in the center of the Sahara." What a ridiculous and absurd idea. There's no water in the Sahara! I would expect even a chemist from Ireland to know that. If storms are driven by ocean temperatures, then we would expect storms to form over warm water, become more powerful as they moved over warm water and less powerful as they moved over land, we would expect more or more powerful storms during the months of warmest oceans, and we would expect periodic warming factors like El Nino to be associated with more, or more powerful, storms.And what a surprise! All of those things are exactly what we do see. The fact that El Nino (a more or less five-year cycle of warming and cooling ocean surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific) is associated with more rainfall and more storm activity isn't under any scientific dispute. If a natural, seasonal warming of the oceans can produce more storms - since storms are driven by heat - there's no reason that oceanic warming due to global warming wouldn't, as well.No, tropical storms don't form in the Sahaha desert - deserts have no water, a fact even an Irish chemist must be aware of. (I mean I've only told him about four times, now.) But, of course, massive dust storms do form in the Sahara, driven by heat; one so large it actually reached the US a few years ago. And the Saharan coast on the Atlantic is the source of a large number of Europe's major storms. The coast, after all, is where all the water is.