Planet Earth:
Category: Planet Earth
Joel Mathis asks: Anybody know the actual mathematical odds of experiencing a hurricane and an earthquake in the same week?Not really, but I can take a pass at it. For simplicity, I'll assume we're talking about an earthquake of magnitude 5 or more (since quakes below that magnitude are often not that noticeable). According to the USGS, there are an average of 1469 earthquakes of magnitude 5+ per year, globally. We'll call it 1500 to make the math easy. According to the University of Colorado's NCAR, there have been an average of 8 hurricanes per year in the last decade...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:41 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Planet Earth
The New York Times reports: E.P.A. Chief Stands Firm as Tough Rules Loom: In the next weeks and months, Lisa P. Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, is scheduled to establish regulations on smog, mercury, carbon dioxide, mining waste and vehicle emissions that will affect every corner of the economy. She is working under intense pressure from opponents in Congress, from powerful industries, from impatient environmentalists and from the Supreme Court, which just affirmed the agency’s duty to address global warming emissions, a project that carries profound economic implications. The new rules will roll out just as President Obama’s re-election...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:20 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Planet Earth
The National Center for Science Education is hiring a Climate Change Programs and Policy Director: NCSE seeks candidates for our Climate Change Programs and Policy Director. The Climate Change Programs and Policy Director's duties will include: * counseling teachers, administrators, parents, and other concerned citizens facing challenges to climate change education; * providing information on climate change, climate literacy, and related issues to the general public, the press, and allied educational, scientific, and environmental organizations; * developing materials pertaining to climate change education for print and web; * speaking to the press and general public * representing NCSE to the...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:19 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
From Denial Depot, Jaws: A movie review: A group of so-called government funded "experts" whip up alarmist fears of a killer shark off the coast of Amity, a sea side town. Their goal is to destroy the local tourist industry, send Amity back to the dark ages and thus achieve their underlying socialist agenda of wealth redistribution. The heroes of this tale are the local major and business leaders who lead a successful audit of the alarmist claims and by doing so manage to delay action long enough that the beach remains open. In the end it turns out a...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:12 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Planet Earth
Via Southern Fried Scientist, the Galapagos-based Charles Darwin Foundation reports: In the aftermath of the tidal surges induced by the March 11th Japan earthquake and tsunami, a team of more than 20 staff and volunteers worked shoulder to shoulder to clear debris, retrieve equipment and clean laboratories, offices and storage buildings at the Marine Sciences complex of the Galapagos-based Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) and Research Station on Santa Cruz Island. The powerful surf hit Santa Cruz with waves up to 1.77m /5.8 feet above normal…. The waves also coincided with the local high tide, sending the first wall of water...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:49 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
@Dave Ewing: The headline you won't be reading: "Millions saved in Japan by good engineering and government building codes". But it's the truth.My heart goes out to all the people affected the earthquake in Japan, and by the resulting tsunamis which have hit much of the Pacific basin. Heck, we even saw tsunami surge in the San Francisco Bay. The damage and deaths are still being tallied, but it's worth noting that the 5th largest earthquake on record hit near the densely populated coast of Japan, and so far there are a mere 400 deaths reported. The earthquake in Haiti...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:41 AM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Planet Earth
The Wonkroom's Brad Johnson takes on USA Today's Dan Vergano over geoengineering. Geoengineering is the idea that we could combat global warming by pumping sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, thus blocking some solar radiation and keeping things cooler. Vergano is a sharp science writer and his take is hardly boosterish, but Johnson dings him for having: failed to accurately interpret the scientific literature. The only risks he has depicted — ones that involve the potential deaths of millions if not billions of people — are the “known” ones, the ones easily modeled by imperfect simulations of experiments never conducted...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 7:14 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
HB 549, introduced by Rep. Joe Reed, has been referred to the state legislature's Natural Resources comittee: A BILL FOR AN ACT ENTITLED: "AN ACT STATING MONTANA'S POSITION ON GLOBAL WARMING; AND PROVIDING AN IMMEDIATE EFFECTIVE DATE." BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MONTANA: NEW SECTION. Section 1. Public policy concerning global warming. (1) The legislature finds that to ensure economic development in Montana and the appropriate management of Montana's natural resources it is necessary to adopt a public policy regarding global warming. (2) The legislature finds: (a) global warming is beneficial to the welfare and...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 4:37 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Academia
This week's Nature has a great report on efforts to get scientists more active in policy discussions. It starts with an ecologist who got some media training, which gave her the courage to go on the Colbert Report and defend a paper she co-authored about the dangers of mountaintop removal. From there, we get a survey of recent attacks on science, and efforts to push back. Nancy Baron quotes the late and lamented Stephen Schneider, "Staying out of the fray is not taking the 'high ground'; it is just passing the buck," and she adds this useful trick for dealing...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:52 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Wonk Room reports that Wichita-based Koch Industries is suing. Someone sent out a spoof press release in Koch's name, claiming they were going to stop funding climate change denial groups, and now: Pollution machine Koch Industries is taking to court to defend its reputation as a cesspool of global warming denial. The right-wing carbon industry giant, owned by Tea Party billionaires David and Charles Koch, has filed a lawsuit in Utah to punish anonymous pranksters who claimed on the company’s behalf that it was discontinuing funding to climate denial front groups. According to Koch’s lawyers, as a result of the...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:28 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
