Science and (culture, politics, policy, media)
Kevin Vranes has a phud in Physical Ocean- ography and Cli- matology. He now studies sci- ence policy and politics at the CSTPR. (More in the about.)
email: kevin {/at/} nosenada.org
Comments policy
(listed in semi-random order)
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August 31, 2006
Category: Climate change
Today's question is specifically for you climate scientists and/or climate change GHG regulation advocates. Each time you fly to a conference you are emitting huge amounts of CO2 for your travel activities. (Here's a company trying to sell products that...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 12:00 PM • 3 Comments
August 30, 2006
Category: Energy
If even half of Matt Savinar's dire predictions about the consequences of Peak Oil come true, we're in for a world of hurt. These are the sorts of things that bring down over-extended civilizations. Whether or not our civilization is...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 12:00 PM • 5 Comments
August 29, 2006
Category: Landscape • Wilderness
After strongly pushing all larger wild mammals out of cities and suburbs over the past century, some mammals are starting to come back. Deer are the obvious visitors, but coyotes, fox, elk, bears (just to name the animals I've personally...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 12:00 PM • 6 Comments
August 28, 2006
Category: Technology
Q1. As described in this story (and countless others), the U.S. government, in the name of anti-terrorism intelligence gathering, wants access to traveler data from private airlines. This desire is obviously extends throughout the economic universe, wherever data is collected...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 12:00 PM • 0 Comments
August 25, 2006
Category: Water
I've been putting together scheduled posts for next week while I'll be in the mountains. Each day a new post will appear on something substantive, concluded by photos of where we anticipate being in the eastern Sierra (west of Bishop,...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 4:14 PM • 2 Comments
Category: Friday Politics
For the next week and a half I'll be traversing the alpine beauty of the granodioritic central Sierra Nevada. Starting from Lake Sabrina, hitting Echo Lake in the Evolution Basin, eventually hitting the metamorphic-dominated Ionian Basin and doing a bunch...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 12:00 PM • 2 Comments
August 23, 2006
Category: Annoucements
The news is here. Marie apparently died today at Nyack Hospital. In brief, Marie Tharp was central to 1940's and 1950's era discoveries of mid-ocean ridges and explanations of plate tectonics. I'll leave the fuller descriptions of Marie's work and...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 6:03 PM • 2 Comments
Category: Climate change • Science+culture
The Springer journal Climatic Change is often a forum for a mix of climate change and climate change policy articles. But with multiple articles, the July/August issue delves into something that those of us who think and write about climate...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 12:46 PM • 1 Comments
Category: Books • Climate change • Energy • Landscape • Water • Weather
The lessons for this region that West illustrates are as valid now as they were in the second half of the 19th Century. Ever since I moved to the Front Range I've had a subtle, mostly latent, uneasy feeling about life here. After reading West's book I know why.
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 12:25 PM • 0 Comments
August 21, 2006
Category: Natural hazards/disasters
Some of you will already know that Roger Pielke, Jr. and Judy Curry have been having a little back-and-forth over on Prometheus about hurricanes and global warming. The latest tête-à-tête started because of this ridiculous WaPo op-ed. Roger skewered the...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 2:50 PM • 15 Comments
August 17, 2006
Category: Journalism
This was the scene at 6th and Canyon in Boulder, Colorado today as hordes of swarming televangelijournalists converged on the Boulder County Courthouse. (I hope you don't need me to tell you why, but if you do, check this link...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 6:05 PM • 7 Comments
August 15, 2006
Category: Natural hazards/disasters
This pretty much sums up what I've been working on for the past six months. (From Dan Wright of the Palm Beach Post -- this appeared last Friday.) Hurricanes are currently the natural hazard of focus, so of course I've...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 11:03 AM •
August 14, 2006
Category: Technology
Ego surfing is as old as search engines, but the release of all that AOL data takes it up a notch. [If you don't know what I'm talking about, a few days ago AOL released the searches of over a...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 6:59 PM • 2 Comments
Category: Natural hazards/disasters
I'd like to say yes. Since DHS updated the National Response Plan as well as designated five teams of coordinators from FEMA and USCG in advance of the hurricane season, I would have said they are being appropriately responsive to...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 4:07 PM • 0 Comments
Category: Water
Eloise Kendy and John Bredehoeft (both private hydrology consultants) have a nifty new paper in Water Resources Research titled Transient effects of groundwater pumping and surface-water-irrigation returns on streamflow. Eloise is a former Congressional fellow (making this the second time...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 10:00 AM • 3 Comments
August 11, 2006
Category: Science money
It's an issue I bring out from time to time, most recently in yesterday's Lieberman science support post. To wit: science R&D backers and grant supplicants like to whine about getting screwed by The Man in budget season. The endless...
Posted by Kevin Vranes at 12:12 PM • 4 Comments
YES! Send me a free issue of Seed.
If I like what I see, I'll receive 5 more issues (6 in all) for just $14.95. That's 50% off the cover price! If I'm not completely satisfied, I'll simply write "cancel" on the invoice and owe nothing. The free issue is mine to keep. (Non-U.S. subscribers, click here.)
