Sonny beat him to it, but the heathen unbelievers have their doubts. Would
this be a violation of ENMOD? Is Gov. Perry attempting to unlilaterally
affect the weather? What kind of governance procedures are needed to ensure
the proper use of prayer in weather modification? Should Congress and the
British Parliament (after THE wedding) hold hearings? Will $10 million be
enough to reduce the risk associated with faith-based geoengineering? The
sky's the limit. No kidding. It really is.
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-08-19/
In this week's eSkeptic, Gary J. Whittenberger investigates whether the
prayer of Georgia State Governor Sonny Perdue correlates to an increase in
precipitation and how likely it was to have actually caused the increase.
Gary Whittenberger is a free-lance writer and psychologist, living in
Tallahassee, Florida. He received his doctoral degree from Florida State
University after which he worked for 23 years as a psychologist in prisons.
He has published many articles on science, philosophy, psychology, and
religion, and their intersection.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Governor's Prayer for Rain
An Empirical Analysis of a Supernatural Claim
by Gary J. Whittenberger
On Tuesday, November 13, 2007, Sonny Perdue, the Governor of Georgia, led a
group of approximately 250 persons, including many state officials, in a
prayer for rain on the steps of the state capitol in Atlanta.1 Georgia had
been suffering an extreme drought, and the level of Lake Lanier, an
important water reservoir near Atlanta, had been decreasing dramatically
over several months. Governor Perdue believed that a divine intervention was
necessary and so he boldly asked God to bring rain. Fully expecting his
prayer to be effective, Perdue said "Hopefully we will be better
conservators of the blessings God's given us as he gives us more [rain]."1
At the time and place when the state's highest ranking officer pleaded to
the Almighty, it was cloudy, but it did not rain. However, sure enough, the
next day there was light rain in Atlanta and much rain came to the area over
the next couple of months. Many Georgians considered Perdue a hero and
thought that his prayer had influenced God to increase rainfall to the
drought stricken vicinity of Atlanta. But did it? Although there may have
been constitutional problems with the Governor's prayer,2 the purpose of
this investigation is to determine whether the prayer was correlated with an
increase in rain, and if so, how likely it was to have caused the increase.
Methodology
When asked by reporters what outcome he expected from his prayer, Governor
Perdue replied "God can make it rain tomorrow, he can make it rain next week
or next month."1 Although this is rather vague, I decided to give Perdue
some leeway and use his own words to help define a time period to be
assessed. The Governor presented his prayer on November 13, 2007, so "next
month" was December 2007. It seemed reasonable to examine the amount of
rainfall during the 48 days after the day of prayer, from November 14
through December 31, 2007, which I shall call the "post-prayer period." For
comparison, a "pre-prayer period" was defined as the 48 days from September
26 through November 12, 2007. The day of prayer itself was not included in
either of these pre- and post-periods since part of that day fell before the
prayer and part of it fell after the prayer, and only daily rainfall totals,
not hourly totals, were selected for use in this study. Because the Governor
presented his prayer on the steps of the capitol in Atlanta and he was
especially concerned with that city and the surrounding area, I decided to
use rainfall data from one site - the Atlanta Hartsfield International
Airport. Rain is collected and measured at numerous sites in and around
Atlanta, but I thought that the data from the airport site would be as good
or better than the data from the other sites since accurate weather
information is essential to the safety of airline traffic.
I obtained daily rainfall totals from a well-respected website, The Weather
Source,3 for a time period of a little more than ten years from August 30,
1997 through January 27, 2008. There were no missing data points for this
time period. The daily rain totals from the website are reported to the
nearest hundredth of an inch, and for some days a "T" is recorded to
indicate a "trace amount." In order to ensure that every day had a numerical
value, each "T" was converted to ".005" inches.
The total amount of rain during any 48-day period was calculated by simply
summing the daily totals for the time period. Thus, the amounts of rainfall
during the 48-day pre-prayer period (A) and during the 48-day post-prayer
period (B) were determined. From these two numbers, two change scores were
then calculated: (1) the amount of rain in the post-prayer period minus the
amount of rain in the pre-prayer period (B-A), and (2) the percent change in
the amount of rainfall from the pre-prayer to the post-prayer period (100
(B-A)/A).
Similar calculations were made for "control days," which were defined as
days within about the last ten years on which Mr. Perdue had not delivered
an official public prayer at the capitol for rain to come to the Atlanta
area. These control days were the 3,631 days from October 17, 1997 through
September 25, 2007. Thus, for each of these days, the amounts of rainfall
during the 48 days before (X) and 48 days after the control day (Y) were
calculated by summing the daily totals for the respective time periods. For
each of the control days, two change scores were then calculated: (1) the
amount of rain in the 48-day post-control period minus the amount of rain in
the 48-day precontrol period (Y-X), and (2) the percent change in the amount
of rainfall from the pre-control to the post-control period (100 (Y-X)/X).
Two special samples of control days were examined. One was the sample of all
control days occurring in the months of November from 1997 through 2006.
Another was the sample of all control days with 48-day pre-control periods
having low rainfall. These particular "low rainfall" pre-control periods had
rainfall at the same level as, or at a lower level than, the actual 48-day
pre-prayer period.
Results
The intuitions of many Atlanta residents were correct. There was an increase
in rainfall from the 48-day preprayer period to the 48-day post-prayer
period. The amount of rain in the former period was 2.485 inches and the
amount in the latter was 5.765 inches, an increase of 132%! So, the Governor's
prayer was correlated with an increase in rain, an apparently large one.
Although upon first reflection, this 132% increase in rainfall seems
impressive, it seems less so after comparing it to changes in rainfall for
the non-prayer or control days. For the 3,631 control days, the change in
rainfall from pre-control period to postcontrol period was a decrease for
49.8% of the control days, no change for .2% of the days, and an increase
for 50% of those days. Thus, if any nonprayer (control) day were selected at
random, we could expect this day to be followed half of the time by an
increase in rain from the pre- to postperiod. So, any increase in rain after
a prayer cannot be considered extraordinary at all.
For the 3,631 control days, there was an increase in rainfall of 132% or
more from pre- to post-period in 10.8% of the cases. So, although increases
of 132% in rainfall are somewhat infrequent, they are not rare. Any increase
in rainfall after a nonprayer day is likely to be as great or greater than
the increase after the Perdue prayer day 21.6% of the time. Stated another
way, the amount of rainfall increase following the Governor's prayer is
similar to what we would find about a fifth of the time for increases
following days of no prayer from Georgia's highest official.
To control for time of the year or season and its role in the frequency of
increases in rainfall, I examined a subset of all control days, i.e., the
set of nonprayer days occurring only in the month of November from 1997
through 2006. Of the 300 days which fell in this November subset, 17% were
associated with increases in rainfall of 132% or greater from pre- to
post-control periods. So, time of the year or season did play some role.
Compared to all nonprayer days, it was about 1.5 times more likely for an
increase in rainfall of at least 132% to occur after November nonprayer days
(17% vs. 10.8%).
To control for the tendency for the amount of change in rainfall after a
control day to be related to the amount of rainfall in the pre-control
period, I noted that the total rainfall in the 48-day pre-prayer period was
only 2.485 inches. Of the 3,631 nonprayer or control days, only 297 (8.2%)
had pre-control periods with 2.485 inches of rain or less. Thus, the 48-day
preprayer period could be considered even by a layman to be one of
"drought." So how likely was a large increase in rain - an increase of at
least 132% - to occur following a nonprayer day preceded by a 48-day period
of low rainfall, in which 2.485 inches of rain or less fell? Such large
increases in rainfall followed 48-day periods of low rainfall in 49.8% of
the relevant control days! For purposes of comparison, the 297 of the 3,631
control days (8.2%) with the highest rainfall in the pre-control periods
were also examined. Of these, not a single one was followed by an increase
in rainfall of 132% or more! Thus, a rather large increase in rainfall
(?132%) is likely to follow a low rain period about half the time, and to
follow a high rain period none of the time when a governor's prayer is not
involved.
Discussion
The results of this study show that Governor Perdue's official public prayer
for rain on November 13, 2007 was followed by a 132% increase in rainfall
from the 48-day period prior to his day of prayer to the 48-day period after
his day of prayer. However, no evidence was found for a causal relationship
between the prayer and the increase in rain. The Governor did not produce
the increase, despite the claims of many that he did! This is clear from
comparing the outcome of his day of prayer to the outcomes of nonprayer
days. Nonprayer days were likely to be followed by rainfall increases equal
to or greater than what followed the Governor's prayer day approximately 11%
of the time for all nonprayer days, 17% of the time for nonprayer days in
November, and 50% of the time for nonprayer days preceded by periods of low
rainfall. Any belief that the Governor produced an increase in rain by his
prayer on November 13, 2007 can be considered to be wishful thinking.
What would it take to reject the null hypothesis that prayer does not cause
rain (and therefore conclude that it does)? If the rainfall increase after
the prayer had been greater than any increase seen after any nonprayer day
in the previous ten years, would that evidence have been sufficient to
reject the null hypothesis? An increase of more than 1400% would have been
required since this increase actually occurred from pre- to post-control
periods for the date of September 13, 2002. This is an increase more than
ten times greater than the increase occurring after Perdue's prayer. But
even then, just because a record would have been broken, would that have
necessarily meant that the prayer was the cause of the rainfall increase?
Suppose that the increase in rainfall after the prayer day had been twice
the greatest increase ever observed after a nonprayer day in the last ten
years, i.e., an increase of 2800%? Would we consider that evidence enough to
reject the null hypothesis? It is hard to say. Extraordinary claims
regarding the magnitude of changes which occur naturally are quite different
from extraordinary claims regarding events which have base rates of zero
(e.g., a resurrection, virgin birth, a man passing through a wall, etc.).
Perhaps a single blockbuster recordbreaking increase in rain after a prayer
will never be enough, nor should be enough, to justify the inference that
the prayer caused the increase. Perhaps replication is needed. If Governor
Perdue were asked to deliver several prayers for rain, not on a schedule of
his own choosing, but on a random schedule, and each time his prayer was
followed by a record-breaking increase in rain, then we might have the
extraordinary evidence required to believe this extraordinary claim. Until
then, we should remain skeptical.
References
1.. Salzer, James and Jim Galloway. 2007. "Perdue Asks Crowd to 'Pray Up a
Storm': Drought is Message from God to Conserve Better, Governor Says."
Atlanta Journal and Constitution, November 13. Available at
www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/11/13/rainprayer_1114.html
2.. Youthment, Steve. 2007. "AFS Protests Governor Perdue's Prayer
Meeting." Atlanta Freethought News, 13(12): 3.
3.. The Weather Source. 2008. Available at www.weather-source.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hawkins, Dave" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 7:56
Subject: [geo] Plan C?
Our first neo-Mayan governor
Gov. Perry Issues Proclamation for Days of Prayer for Rain in TexasThursday,
April 21, 2011Austin, TexasProclamation
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME:
WHEREAS, the state of Texas is in the midst of an exceptional drought, with
some parts of the state receiving no significant rainfall for almost three
months, matching rainfall deficit records dating back to the 1930s; and
WHEREAS, a combination of higher than normal temperatures, low precipitation
and low relative humidity has caused an extreme fire danger over most of the
State, sparking more than 8,000 wildfires which have cost several lives,
engulfed more than 1.8 million acres of land and destroyed almost 400 homes,
causing me to issue an ongoing disaster declaration since December of last
year; and
WHEREAS, these dire conditions have caused agricultural crops to fail, lake
and reservoir levels to fall and cattle and livestock to struggle under
intense stress, imposing a tremendous financial and emotional toll on our
land and our people; and
WHEREAS, throughout our history, both as a state and as individuals, Texans
have been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer; it seems right
and fitting that the people of Texas should join together in prayer to
humbly seek an end to this devastating drought and these dangerous
wildfires;
NOW,THEREFORE, I,RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested
in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby
proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April
24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of
all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of
our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our
normal way of life.
IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto signed my name and have officially
caused the Seal of State to be affixed at my Office in the City of Austin,
Texas, this the 21st day of April, 2011.
RICK PERRY
Governor of Texas
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