June 15, 2015
It begins with a garden or two. Once you have gardens, you have a resource that has the two most important characteristics anything can have with respect to human society. First, you can eat it. Second, your enemies can destroy it.
If you have just a few gardens and get your food somewhere else,…
June 14, 2015
There is an 80% chance that a disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico will become a tropical cyclone, a named storm, over the next couple of days. If that happens it will be called Bill.
Possible Bill is not well defined and is poorly organized. The disturbance is currently near the Yucatan, and will…
June 14, 2015
As planned, I interviewed Sheril this morning on MN Atheist Talk Radio about the Science Debate Dot Org project. Mike Haubrich was host. I think it was a great interview, please give it a listen.
The interview is available here.
I also interviewed Sheril about this important topic on paper here…
June 11, 2015
We hear this all the time. Pig physiology is like people physiology. Pigs and humans have the same immune system, same digestive system, get the same diseases. Pigs are smart like people are smart. Pigs are smarter than dogs. And so on. Ask a faunal expert in archaeology or a human…
June 8, 2015
There is a poorly secured railroad crossing in Saint Paul Park (south of Saint Paul, Minnesota) where a small industrial road crosses a BNSF track. The crossing has warning lights but no barriers. Yesterday (June 7, 2015) a semi crossing the tracks was hit by a Bakken oil train coming down the BNSF…
June 7, 2015
The Problem with terminology
There is some confusion about the way we talk about global warming. Most of this confusion arises during the communication of science to the public or to policy makers. Part of this confusion rests within the science itself; There is no meaningful confusion about the…
June 4, 2015
There is no such thing as a "pause" or "hiatus" in global warming.
There is, however, variation as the earth's surface temperature steadily rises as the result of the human release of greenhouse gas pollution. Every now and then that variation results in a period of several years when the rise in…
June 4, 2015
Android Lollipop is the new Android OS, and it is a good one. If you want to get a new Android phone, you will probably be happier choosing a one with Lollipop already installed.
This is not to say that phones with the older Android OS, KitKat, won't or can't be upgraded to Lollipop. Nor do I…
June 3, 2015
Joe and Mary built a house.
They built it on an old flood plain of a small river, though there'd not been a flood in years. This was a 500-year flood plain. Not a very floody flood plain at all.
The local zoning code required that for a new house at their location the bottom of the basement…
June 2, 2015
In 2008, I was visiting the Nobel Conference held annually at Gustavus Adolphus college in Minnestoa. The conference was on Human Evolution. The college provided space in a large room for people to have their lunch, and while I was having lunch on the first day, I noticed a table off to the side…
June 2, 2015
Blanca is the second named tropical storm in the Eastern Pacific. I'm pretty sure Blanca was originally a disturbance with a low probability of becoming a named storm, but I may have missed something. Blanca is intensifying rapidly and will reach hurricane status shortly if it has not already, and…
June 2, 2015
Recently, a paper published in a Chinese journal of science by Monckton, Soon and Legates attracted a small amount of attention by claiming that climate science models "run hot" and therefore overrepresent the level of global warming caused by human greenhouse gas pollution. The way they…
June 1, 2015
Bernie Sanders' famous essay is below. I will reserve comment but I'd like your opinion on it. I will say that the press is handling this rather badly, at least at present, taking quotes with zero context, not addressing the meaning of the essay as a whole. Sanders says it was poorly written. Is…
May 26, 2015
Did you ever wonder? And if you did wonder, did you Google it? And if you did google it, did you get the results shown above? And if you did, did you click "feedback" and do something like the following?
No? Do so now, please.
This is important. Why? Because we have been hearing rumors lately…
May 26, 2015
The Earth is warming because of what humans have been doing to the atmosphere. Global Warming has a lot of effects many of which we've discussed here, but the most obvious one is, well, it gets warmer. At present, India is experiencing record breaking heat and people are dying.
It is very…
May 26, 2015
The surface ice in the Arctic has been melting to historic low levels every year for the last several years. The graph above shows the first ten years in the National Snow & Ice Data Center records, meant to indicate what Arctic Sea Ice "normally" does as it melts off during the northern warm…
May 26, 2015
See below for update.
You may not have even noticed it, but hurricane season has officially started in the Eastern Pacific. That is because the official date of the start of season is May 15th, though the actual hurricanes rarely get the memo and start whenever they want, but usually after that…
May 26, 2015
I've written about The Recompense here, and that writeup includes interviews with the creative team putting the film together. This is just a quick note to remind you that The Recompense has a kick starter project with one week left. So, now, you have to go there and kick in a few bucks!
The…
May 22, 2015
Human released greenhouse gas pollution changes the climatic system through a variety of mechanisms. Trade winds and jet streams change their patterns of movement, and the distribution of moisture in the air changes, with precipitation either lacking more than usual or being more abundant than…
May 21, 2015
A large portion of the glacial mass in Antarctic, previously thought to be relatively stable, is now understood to be destablizing. This is new research just out in Science. The abstract is pretty clear:
Growing evidence has demonstrated the importance of ice shelf buttressing on the inland…
May 21, 2015
Governor Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency for the Santa Barbara oil spill. Phyllis Grifman, associate director of the USC Sea Grant Program, is quoted i a a University of Southern California press release as saying, "Nothing worked – they found out about this because people camping…
May 21, 2015
A new paper is just out in The Lancet that examines the mortality risk of high and low ambient temperatures. The basic idea is that if it is either to hot or too cold, mortality may increase, possibly with the weather being a factor to augment the effects of other health problems, or as a direct…
May 21, 2015
It is a fiction that the right wing, and the Republican party, and their primary philosophical guru (Rush Limbaugh) and mouthpiece (FOX News) are more American, more security-savvy, and more patriotic than Liberals, Progressives, and Democrats. This fiction is part of a common bully tactic you…
May 20, 2015
The White House has issued a press release noting that President Obama will address climate change as a national security threat in a speech later today in Connecticut. Here is the press release.
White House Report: The National Security Implications of a Changing Climate
Today, President Obama…
May 19, 2015
... because it is Paleo!
Paleo data, models, expectations, observations, about the past and to some extent the future. The Little Ice Age. The Hockey Stick. And, what people get wrong about it all.
Denial101x Making Sense of Climate Science Denial goes paleo (and Medieval) this week. Here is a…
May 19, 2015
Just a pointer to my latest post on 10,000 Birds exploring recent research in which scientists created a GMO chicken with the normal bird beak replaced with the terrible face of the ancient thunder lizards! Well, not exactly, but sort of. Click here to read all about it!
May 19, 2015
Bounty hunter Jahdo Kyn intends to start a new life, but in order to leave his troubled past behind he has to buy himself a new future. He has a plan, but as his plan develops he discovers a dilemma, one that requires him to make choices he is not well-prepared to make. This is what happens when…
May 18, 2015
A few notes from Week 3 of Denial 101x: Making Sense of Climate Science Denial. These notes are mainly about the science and not the denialism part (unlike my last post, which addressed the central theme of the course, denialism, more.)
The Carbon Cycle
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have gone up…
May 15, 2015
The title of this post is also the title of a new peer reviewed paper by Stephan Lewandowsky, Naomi Orskes, James Risbey, Ben Newell and Michael Smithson, published in Global Environmental Change. The article is Open Access, available here. Stephan Lewandosky has a blog post on it, in which he…
May 14, 2015
Oil train derailments are becoming more common, mainly because of the very large number of oil trains, often with over 100 tank cars, taking oil out of the Bakken fields and bringing it to coastal refineries or storage facilities.
You are certainly aware of the recent Amtrak derailment in…
