A Dark and Stormy Season

US Storm Followers Disappointed

by Chance O'Litnin July 22 2017

Pundits and amateur storm watchers alike eagerly awaited this US hurricane season, but the past week has been disappointing.

The outlook offered many promises as tropical storm Don developed off the right coast of the Southern US. Watchers in Latin America were concerned that it would close off travel and cost Mexico a lot of money, but the effects turned out to be mostly wind. Its path potentially left the Virgin islands exposed, but unfavorable headwinds and internal turbulence slowed it down and left them dry and unmolested. Erratic wind shear and crosscurrents made the storm impossible to follow and it seemingly lost direction, so fears of a major health crisis were unfulfilled and the status quo prevailed. Yet it did succeed in stirring up deep and little-known waters and bringing strange things to the surface, so its aftereffects may be around for a long time.

Meanwhile tropical depression 8E was floundering around off the left coast of California. Fans of female-named storms eagerly expected it to progress into Hurricane Hillary and become a storm of historic proportions; their enthusiasm was not shared by the general public however. Some hoped it would deliver relief to the middle of the country, while others feared it would turn right and merely flood the upper elevations. Instead its only historical significance was its sudden and unexpected dissipation despite seemingly favorable conditions, leaving behind only memories of a depression.

So we wait and see what the rest of the season brings. Looking at the lists of possible future storms we can only wonder what will happen with Sara or Paul in 2018, not to mention Barry in 2019, Marco in 2020 or Rick in 2021.

So that's my thoroughly amateurish take on the current US season. Those with a more professional interest in the topic can find more info about Don at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Atlantic_hurricane_season#Tropical_Storm_Don
and 8E (the Hillary that wasn't) at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Pacific_hurricane_season#Tropical_Depression_Eight-E
NOAA has the lists of future names
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml

Rearranging the Pews: Pew Survey

The Pew Research Center[1] released a couple of interesting reports[2,3] with detailed survey data about current religious beliefs and affiliations in the USA. I've been playing with the numbers to try to get an overall picture of the changes and broad trends in retention and conversion. In other words: when kids grow up, do they keep their parents' faith (or lack thereof)? If not, then where do they go?

Conveniently, Pew asked people what group they were raised in and what they are a member of now[4]. The Pew table[4] give percentages of each group.  I used their reported group sizes to convert the numbers to percent of total population and grouped the smaller ones together, giving this transition chart:

Group membership transitions as a percent of total population

Where did you go?	Where Did You Come From?
	Catholic	Evangelical	Mainline	Hist. Black	Other	Unaffiliated
Catholic	18.7	0.6	0.6	0.2	0.2	0.4
Evangelical	3.3	15.5	3.6	0.8	0.5	1.8
Mainline	1.8	2.9	8.5	0.1	0.4	0.9
Hist. Black	0.3	0.4	0.1	5.1	0.1	0.4
Unaffiliated	6.4	3.6	4.8	0.9	2.3	4.8

For example, 18.7% of the US population were raised Catholic as a child and are still Catholic as adults, and 3.3% were raised Catholic and are now Evangelical Protestants.

Here's a more colorful and graphical way to see the data. For each pair of bars, the left bar answers the "Where did you go to?" question, and the right bar answers the "Where did you come from?" question. In other words, each left bar is a stacked plot of the corresponding table column and each right bar is a table row.  Some things that quickly pop out in this view:

• The Historically Black denominations are sort-of in a group by themselves. There's not a lot of flow either in or out of that category.
• About the only way people become Catholic is to be born Catholic. There's a lot of outflow (mostly to Un's and to Protestants), but very little inflow. That's not an encouraging situation for the long-term future of the Catholic church in the US. This set of data largely predates Pope Francis - it will be interesting to see how he influences these trends.
• Evangelical Protestants are the only religious group that's growing (a little). That's mainly the result of a large net inflow of Catholics, which more than makes up for the net outflow to Unaffiliated. That could become a long-term problem if society runs out of disaffected Catholics.
• There's a nearly-balanced flow between Evangelical and Mainline protestants.
• the Mainline groups show a net loss: unlike the Evangelicals, the Catholic inflow doesn't make up for the Unaffiliated outflow.
• The big winner is the Unaffiliated group: dramatic growth due to a net inflow from all groups.

So that's what's happening; the next question is "Why?" The Patheos[6] website has some good discussions from various perspectives and backgrounds, but little consensus on what's happening. I plan to weigh in after looking at some more numbers.

Links

1. www.pewforum.org
2. www.pewforum.org/files/2015/05/RLS-08-26-full-report.pdf
3. www.pewforum.org/files/2015/11/201.11.03_RLS_II_full_report.pdf
4. Table on p. 43 of [2], titled "Most 'nones' were raised in a religion"
5. A commonly-asked question in other situations as well: www.youtube.com/watch?v=liVyZ4IzRLM
6. www.patheos.com/Topics/Religion-in-America.html 

Sunrise at Waterloo

The title comes from a pithy quote by Peter Weber at theweek.com[1]:

dawn is breaking over waterloo

The article is about Donald Trump's victory in the Nevada caucus this week, and the seeming inability of the Republican establishment to dent his popularity. With a win approaching 50% and support among a wide range of demographics, the campaign seems to be going really well for Mr. Trump.

So -- like Napoleon waking up on the morning of June 18, 1815 -- the battle lines are set, and things aren't looking good for the establishment.

TheWeek.com is one of my frequently-visited websites I like the wide selection of views presented, competing perspectives,  and the generally thoughtful analysis. 

The article:

1. http://theweek.com/articles/608044/donald-trumps-victory-nevada-gop-establishments-waterloo

About this blog

I decided to set up a professional blog where I write about my work and goings-on in my field. This isn't it.

This blog is for anything else that catches my interest: humor, politics, whatever. We'll see how it goes.