August 7, 2015
Trump went into the GOP debate last night with a roughly 20% poll standing. Everyone will tell you to ignore polls early in this race, they never predict the outcome of a primary or a general election. That, however, is a non sequitur. We do not look at early polls to predict the distant future.…
August 7, 2015
First the bad news. Taiwan is going to get slammed with Typhoon Soudelor over the next day (landfall at about 8:00 AM local time). Soudelor was one of the strongest typhoons earlier during its development but weakened to a Category 1. However, very warm seas, lack of wind shear, and other factors…
August 4, 2015
A guest post by Robet Hollander, Winemaker
2redWinery, makers of the award-winning Ziniphany© Zinfandel and #2red is 38% towards goal on Indiegogo with all proceeds supporting prostate cancer research through the Robert and Susan Hollander Foundation, an IRS approved 501c3 organization. Campaign…
August 4, 2015
There are two new scientific research papers looking at variation over the last century or so in global warming. One paper looks at the march of annual estimates of global surface temperature (air over the land plus sea surface, not ocean), and applies a well established statistical technique to…
August 3, 2015
Men and women are different, on average, in a number of ways. It all probably starts with who has the physiology to have babies and who doesn't, and the differences spread out from there, affecting both the body and the mind. Decades of research show us that many of the body differences (but not…
August 2, 2015
I did an interview with JD Goodwin at at Blue Streak Science. It is here. Great science podcast, check out their other items.
Here is the interview on iTunes.
July 27, 2015
What is not new
Ultimately sea levels will rise several feet, given the present levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. We already knew this by examining paleo data, and finding periods in the past with similar surface temperatures and/or similar atmospheric CO2 levels as today.
I put a graphic from a…
July 21, 2015
The tl:dr... don't sleep late.
July 20, 2015
Every month NASA GISS comes out with the new data for the prior month's global surface temperature, and I generally grab that data set and make a graph or two. In a way this is a futile effort because the actual global surface temperature month by month is not as important as the long term trend.…
July 13, 2015
Short answer: Pluto has only two of the three necessary characteristics to be called a planet. Pluto has not cleared its neighborhood, or orbit. But, of course, there are additional details.
The simplest reason that Pluto is not a planet is that planet experts say so, and this is their job. But…
July 12, 2015
But first a word bout Chan-Hom. That typhoon messed with China but not as badly as originally feared, because the storm turned to the east a bit. Now, Chan-Hom is heading for North Korea where it will come ashore as a wet tropical storm. I would not be surprised if more bad stuff happened there…
July 9, 2015
UPDATE: There are significant changes (as of Friday mid day Middle America Time) in the track and strength of the storm, mostly good news for china. See here for updates.
A large typhoon (hurricane) is heading for China and is expected to make landfall in the vicinity of Shanghai. The image…
July 9, 2015
Problems with the Apple Magic Mouse
I had been using the stock Apple Magic Mouse on an iMac. The right click often didn’t work properly. Also, selecting and dragging files in Finder, or the Finder replacement I use (PathFinder) often failed. I figured the former was related to the mouse but assumed…
July 8, 2015
A new paper has just been published. This paper is going to cause an uproar in the science denialist community. Mud will be thrown. Tin hats will be donned. Somebody better check the oil pressure.
Conspiracies everywhere
I see conspiracies everywhere. It's true.
Look at any internet site that…
July 7, 2015
Focusing on Earth, but also a few tidbits on wind, fire, and ice, some current news and observations about global warming.
Earth
As humans release greenhouse gas pollutants (mainly CO2) into the atmosphere, the surface of the Earth, and the top 2000 meters of the ocean, heat up. But some of the…
July 7, 2015
A Guest Review by John Abraham
Wow! I just put down the best science fiction book I’ve read in a long time, and certainly the best Star Wars book I’ve ever read. Just like Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones have made fantasy stories hip, the rebooted Star Wars franchise is making science…
July 6, 2015
I think most people who have read Galileo's Middle Finger by Alice Dreger feel at some point a bit annoyed at the title, and especially, at the way the book is marketed by the publisher. You could take Galileo and his finger entirely out of the book and you would still have the same book.
Alice…
July 5, 2015
As part of the current discussion of the use of the Concrete Flag to express one's Free Asshatitute, in particular in relation to a volunteer firefighter who stuck one of the flags on the fire truck turing the Independence Day Parade in a small community in Outstate Minnesota, I saw someone state…
July 4, 2015
I love field guides. One should own a lot of field guides, not just to things you might go out in the field to see and identified, but just to browse through.
David Ebert, Sarah Fowler and Marc Dando have produced A Pocket Guide to Sharks of the World It is put out by Princeton, which does…
July 2, 2015
Unbranded is the story of four guys and a small herd of mustangs who traveled three thousand miles across the American west. From author Ben Masters web site:
Ben Masters is the “mastermind” of Unbranded. In 2010, he and two friends completed a 2,000-mile ride along the Continental Divide. They…
July 1, 2015
Humans have been releasing greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere for a long time now, and this has heated up the surface of the planet. This, in turn, has caused a number of alarming changes in weather. Several current weather events exemplify the effects of climate change.
Record High…
July 1, 2015
I want to quickly mention two interesting items that crossed my desk. First is a study in Nature that looks at changes in extreme weather patterns between 1979 and very recently, the other is a study of how media has been addressing climate science denial among presidential candidates.
Evidence…
June 23, 2015
Gemini is what got me into space, science, all of it. Amy Shira Teitel can bring you up to speed.
Gemini worked out almost everything that had to be worked out to go to the moon. Not the part with the big fire cracker under the tin can to take off from the moon, but most of the rest of it.…
June 23, 2015
See below for update.
Andrew Revkin has a new kind of fan. These are fans that agree with much of what Revkin says, or at least feel comfortable in his community of commenters. These fans feel their views are substantiated by what they read in Revkin's New York Times column, Dot Earth. They seem…
June 18, 2015
Michael Mann was interviewed by Michael Smerconish about the Pope's recent letter on climate change:
Here's the NYT piece by Justin Gillis mentioned by Mann.
The graphic at the top is form here.
June 18, 2015
The US Treasury Department has announced that the $10 bill will have a depiction of a woman, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which allowed women to vote.
And now, apparently, everyone can vote on who that woman will be. Or, at least, make a suggestion…
June 18, 2015
NOAA has released the data for average global surface temperature for the month of May. The number is 0.87 degrees C (1.57 degrees F) above the 20th century average for their data set. This is the highest value seen for the month of May since 1880, which is the earliest year in the database. The…
June 15, 2015
This is a press release from the Center for Inquiry:
Skeptics Dare Heartland Institute to Take Up $25,000 Climate Challenge
A leading science advocacy group is throwing down the gauntlet to the Heartland Institute, a group that claims that global warming stopped in 1998, with a stark, simple…
June 15, 2015
Human released greenhouse gas pollution continues to warm the surface of the planet. May was thought to be likely a very very warm month but it turns out to be merely very warm (only one "very") according to data released this morning.
Shockingly, May turned out to be, in the NASA GISS data set,…
