September 1, 2015
I've got a press release from the University of Southern California that seems important, but I don't have time today to read the study. So, you can look at the press release and tell me what you think of it.
Climate Change Will Irreversibly Force Key Ocean Bacteria into Overdrive
Scientists…
September 1, 2015
The Citi Global Perspectives and Solutions thingie, part of Citibank, has done a study that you can read here. It says that addressing global warming makes economic sense. So, when those science deniers are out there denying climate change they are also denying arithmetic. Shame on them.
Dana…
September 1, 2015
Not the book (which is good) but the thing. The storms, really.
I may have mentioned the pilot whales I saw in San Diego the other day. You've heard about changes in shark distributions, and odd fish being caught in unusual places, etc. This is all about changes in the Pacific as increased global…
September 1, 2015
Two items of interest.
1) A new poll looks at conservative and liberal views of science. The findings are not especially unexpected, but the details are interesting. The image above is from this infographic, and the details are given here.
Yes, the detail are quite interesting.
2) If you care,…
September 1, 2015
Alaska is being called the poster child (state?) for climate change because things have been so strange there lately. One reason for this is the extreme warm conditions in the North Pacific and associated (probably) changes in the jet stream, as well as overall warming, which has caused coastal…
September 1, 2015
Be prepared!
Did you now that September is, in the US, National Preparedness Month? The idea is to pay attention to natural threats and how to deal with them. This is a project of the USGS. Good idea to give it some thought on this tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
The USGS recommends a…
September 1, 2015
Human caused climate change is changing the size and location of major climate zones, according to a new study.
Climate is complex, and a classic, widely used effort to wrangle that complexity into a sensible form is the Köppen classification system (and variants). We need not speak of the details…
August 31, 2015
John Abraham is a scientist at St Thomas University in the Twin Cities. John is famous for doing battle with a famous science denialist (that's what the meme above refers to), for his blog at the Guardian, for his research in several areas such as ocean heat, and for keeping track of month by month…
August 31, 2015
I don't care that the director or CEO of an advocacy organization concerned with poverty is an active academic. Indeed, my view of active academics is that many are largely incompetent in areas of life other than their specialized field. If that. So really, if you told me there is this great…
August 29, 2015
Skylab came up in conversation the other day. And then I ran into Amy Shira Teitel's video. So, naturally, a quick blog post.
Skylab was brought down, ultimately, by interaction with the upper reaches of the atmosphere, which was in turn made more likely by solar activity. But, both the nature…
August 28, 2015
Just a few pointers to some of today's interesting climate stories.
First, this is the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. After ten years, the costs of that hurricane are still being paid. See this overview. Also, astonishingly, or perhaps totally expectedly, one third of Louisiana blame a…
August 27, 2015
The Republican Party and its handlers, including the right wing talk radio jocks such as Rush Limbaugh, and the bought-and-paid-for media such as FOX news, did not create the Tea Party. Michele Bachmann and a few others did that.* But once the Tea Party got going, mainstream conservative…
August 27, 2015
We're gonna run out of food. When, why (not what you think), can we put it off, and if so, how? And GMOs, what about them?
I interviewed food supply expert Emily Cassidy on Atheist Talk Radio, Mike Huabrich hosting. You can CLICK HERE and listen to the interview. Additional background and some…
August 26, 2015
Saturday Mid Day UPDATE:
Erika is now an ex-tropical storm. A real hurricane has an eye. Erika is a cartoon dead eye (see graphic above).
When the Hurricane Prediction Center woke up this morning, they found Erika, ripped asunder by the rugged terrain of Hispaniola, to have "... degenerated into…
August 25, 2015
This Sunday, August 30th, at 9:00 AM, I'll be on the radio with John Abraham, climate scientist. This will be an edition of Minnesota Atheist Talk Radio hosted by Mike Haubrich.
The discussion of climate change will be interesting and important and you should listen live or listen to the podcast…
August 25, 2015
A new paper examines what is behind the ~2% of climate change related peer reviewed research that run contrary to widely accepted scientific consensus on climate change to see why those papers are wrong.
There is a scientific consensus that increasing greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere…
August 25, 2015
The terrorists have defeated the railroads, and by extension, the people. Well, not totally defeated, but they won a small but important battle.
We have a problem with the wholesale removal of petroleum from the Bakken oil fields, and the shipping of that relatively dangerous liquid mainly to the…
August 24, 2015
What's worse than months or years without rain? Rain, after months or years, at least under some circumstances.
For instance ... it gets try, plants become vulnerable to fire. Fires happen denuding the dry landscape. Then it rains, and you get more severe floods together with landslides. You know…
August 24, 2015
The authors of a new paper note that "one of the principal ways in which we interact using our faces is kissing." This reminds me of an old National Lampoon joke on how the French were famous for inventing sex acts with the face. But I digress.
This paper looks at neural imaging responses of…
August 24, 2015
We need to act urgently to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas pollution we humans create in order to slow down and eventually stop climate change. In the mean time we see case after case of something happening that seems unusual and that seems linked to global warming. We need not wait for the…
August 24, 2015
This is a repost from here. John is a friend and a great guy and I hope you can do as he asks. Thanks.
Please help Tessa and Marlowe
This is a plea to save my ex from a financial death spiral. The short, short, short version is that she needs about $3500 by the end of next week or she loses both…
August 20, 2015
How do you explain a person seemingly legitimately trained in science drifting off and becoming more and more of a science denier?
In the case of Judith Curry I was unwilling to think of her as a full on science denier for a long time because her transition into denierhood seemed to be going very…
August 20, 2015
The academic world and its detractors are all a-tizzy about this recent news reported here:
Springer, a major science and medical publisher, recently announced the retraction of 64 articles from 10 of its journals. The articles were retracted after editors found the authors had faked the peer-…
August 19, 2015
When I studied the Efe Pygmies of the Congo, I discovered (and yes, it was me who discovered this amazing fact everyone now knows) that the Efe organize their space in elongated linear trails. They knew all about everything along those specific trails, and their knowledge of other trails was often…
August 13, 2015
This is F@k1n' brilliant.
Cherry-pickin’ a bit of temperature data
And tryin’ to claim that climate change is in hiatus
It’s not, the trends are still going straight up
But they ain’t tryin’ to change their minds once they’re made up
In 1992 my mama’s thesis
Was about CO2 and Svante Arrhenius
So…
August 12, 2015
Climate Models Accurately Predict Warming
Climate models employ piles of data and sophisticated computational techniques to predict what will happen in the future. Sometimes they predict what happened in the past as well. That is important to test the models (because we might know what happened in…
August 11, 2015
Bill Maher and Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann discuss the “settled science” of climate change and the lack of public engagement on the issue. Dr. Mann is the co-author of "Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change.”
August 11, 2015
A couple of days ago I assimilated data from a bunch of on line polls where people could informally and unscientifically express their opinion about who won the GOP debate (the big boy debate only, with ten candidates). I suggested a series of hypotheses to isolate the idea that this sort of on…
August 9, 2015
I have a few thoughts I want to float on the recent #BLM activism that involved, as of this writing, two takeovers of public events. One takeover was at a Netroots Nation event that included Bernie Sanders, the other at a Sanders rally.
First, I think it has to be understood that disruptive…
August 8, 2015
Select one and only one. Or two if you like.
--- see down below for update ---
Megyn Kelly of FOX news went after Donald Trump, the apparent winner of the FOX-GOP Fauxbate. Donald Trump at first declared that he has no time to be politically correct. Later he proved that he does have time to…
