Environment
Category archives for Environment
Hydraulic Drilling at AAAS: Fracking Annoying
Posted by Chad Orzel on February 22, 2011 I grew up in Broome County, NY, down by the PA border, and my parents still live in scenic Whitney Point. Broome County is one of the areas affected by a huge environmental controversy, because it sits on top of the northern bit of the Marcellus Shale formation, which contains huge amounts of natural gas.…
The Status of Simulations
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 29, 2010 Most of what would ordinarily be blogging time this morning got used up writing a response to a question at the Physics Stack Exchange. But having put all that effort in over there, I might as well put it to use here, too… The question comes from a person who did a poster on terminology…
The Unexpected Leaping Ability of Bovines
Posted by Chad Orzel on November 4, 2010 I’m spending the day trying to get some work done on the book-in-progress, so I’m avoiding both work- and blog-related stuff. I don’t want to leave the site completely quiet, though, so here’s a question to ponder, relating to SteelyKid’s continuing fascination with Goodnight Moon: How does a cow jump over the moon? The father…
Media Skills for Scientists
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 19, 2010 Everybody’s favorite science-and-politics blogger has posted a video clip showing part of what’s wrong in science communication. It’s a clip from the BBC from last December, featuring one of those head-to-head quasi-debates about “Climategate” between Prof. Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia and political consultant Marc Morano, who has made himself a nice…
1491 by Charles C. Mann
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 18, 2010 We picked up a used copy of Charles Mann’s pop-archeology book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus a while back. I didn’t read it at the time, because I was a little afraid that it would be rather polemical in what I think of as the Neil Young mode– wildly overstating the awesomeness…
Not Everything Is About CO_2
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 24, 2010 Climate change is a major crisis, don’t get me wrong, and it’s something that needs to be discussed extensively in both scientific and policy circles. We’re pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at rather too high a rate, and getting something done about that is a key priority. It’s possible, though, to take the obsession…
Insults Are Easy, Community Is Hard
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 28, 2010 Josh Rosenau makes an excellent and important point regarding prayer meetings and the Gulf oil spill: that the point is not so much that God will stop the oil gushing into the Gulf, but that religious groups are a key community organization point for getting people together to work on the problem. He puts this…
Summertime Thermodynamics: Car Windows Open or Closed?
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 3, 2010 This may be a job for the MythBusters, but I’ll throw this out as a puzzle for interested blog readers. I don’t know the answer to this (though it wouldn’t be all that hard to determine experimentally), I just think it’s sort of interesting. There’s a poll at the bottom of this post, but it…
Amazing Laser Application 9: Fusion!
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 19, 2010 What’s the application? The goal of laser ignition fusion experiments is to heat and compress a target to the point where the nuclei of the atoms making up the sample fuse together to form a new, heavier nucleus, releasing energy in the process. Nuclear fusion is, of course, what powers stars, and creating fusion in…
What’s Eating Our House?
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 15, 2010 A neighbor pointed out to me yesterday that there’s a big hole in our clapboard siding that was made by some sort of bird. This morning, I got a picture of the culprit: I’m not quite certain why the animal kingdom has decided to trash my stuff this year– insane jealousy of Emmy?– but I…
