October 8, 2014
This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
We’re working our way through scoring Senate Democrats on climate leadership, using the same lodestar that we’ve used on House Democrats: who’s leading on climate by engaging the public? It’s slow going - results might not be final…
October 8, 2014
This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
We’re endorsing climate hawk Shenna Bellows to be the next Senator from Maine because business as usual is no longer good enough in the face of a local and worldwide crisis. Long-time incumbent Susan Collins admits the existence of a…
October 8, 2014
UPDATE: They killed the dog.
UPDATE: I'm adding this here because it is my current post on Ebola. Thomas Eric Duncan, the person who became symptomatic with Ebola in Dallas, had died at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital (according to news alerts).
A nurse's assistant in Spain caring for…
October 7, 2014
What is the role of the ocean's abyss in global warming?1
I’ve already posted on a study published in Nature Climate change that shows that the amount of extra global warming related heat in the Southern Oceans is greater than previously thought. There is another paper in the same journal by Llovel…
October 7, 2014
Last Sunday, I interviewed climate scientist Michael Mann on Atheist Talk Radio. I do occasional interviews there on science related topics (see this list of previous shows).
You can listen to the interview here:
Play Now
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Minnesota Atheists for giving me…
October 7, 2014
This video is supposed to be some kind of funny parody but it looks just like my life so I don't get it!
October 6, 2014
The sun warms the Earth's surface. Additional greenhouse gases and associated positive feedbacks (like, additional additional greenhouse gasses) increase that effect. So, it gets warmer, and by "it" we mean the "surface" of the Earth. This is usually measured as the temperature near the surface…
October 5, 2014
We really only know things work when we test them to the limit and see what it takes to make them fail, or nearly fail. All those air planes and space ships and regular shops and nice cars that usually don't fail have a pedigree of prototypes or prototypes of parts that were pushed until they broke…
October 4, 2014
I used Google N-gram Viewer to inspect the occurrence of the word "Ebola" in the Google-indexed literature. A few instances of Ebola came up earlier than the disease being known, so I figured they were references to the place name in Zaire/Congo, after which the disease is named. And that was in…
October 4, 2014
The Ubuntu 14.10 Release October 23, 2014
Ubuntu 14.10 will be released shortly and I know you are chomping at the bit and want to know all about it.
There is some important news, for some, and there is some exciting news for others, and there is some boring news, and frankly, some bad news.…
October 3, 2014
The American Meteorological Society, in it’s Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), has released a report called “Explaining Extreme Events of 2013 from a Climate Perspective.” Three studies looked at excessive heat in Australia, three at drought or dry conditions in California,…
October 2, 2014
According to popular literature (some fiction, some not) and movies, Ebola can cause havoc, infecting thousands of people, killing over half of them, and threatening an entire nation if it were to become airborne. Turns out that's not true. Ebola can do all those things without becoming airborne…
October 2, 2014
First, let’s look at the situation in West Africa, because that is way more important than anything going on in the US right now. The WHO has said two things about this. First, if there is not a full intervention, there may be hundreds of thousands or even millions of cases of Ebola several months…
September 30, 2014
I'm not going to talk about Mark Steyn, other than to say that if you know who Rush Limbaugh is, Mark Steyn is a bit to the right and a tad more obnoxious, but not as smart.
You can find out more by clicking here, using the Climate Change Science Search Engine.
I'm also not going to say much…
September 30, 2014
This discussion has been going on for some time, and a handful of recent events have prompted me to jump into it (beyond a simple comment or two). First, I saw a bunch of yammering among various biology teachers about this topic. Then Michael Osterholm wrote a well intentioned but seemingly deeply…
September 29, 2014
As you know, I do the occasional science-related interview on Minnesota Atheist Talk Radio, on Radio AM 950. (See this for a list of all, or at least most, of the work I've done with that show.)
On Sunday October 5th at the ungodly hour of 9:00 AM Central Time, I'll be interviewing Michael Mann,…
September 29, 2014
Learn more at this classic post by Don Prothero.
September 29, 2014
This is about the law suit filed by Michael Mann against the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the National Review, Mark Steyn, and Rand Simberg because of accusations they made that were actionable. Michael Halpern summarized:
Competitive Enterprise Institute’s space technology and policy analyst…
September 28, 2014
The Arctic Sea is covered with ice during the winter, and some of it melts off every summer. Over recent years the amount of melt has been increasing. This is the time of year we may want to look at Arctic Sea ice because by late September it has reached its annual minimum and is starting to…
September 27, 2014
I want to put a solar panel on my roof so that I am releasing less greenhouse gas into the environment. But then I hear that manufacturing solar panels causes the release of greenhouse gasses, so I have to subtract that from the good I think I'm doing. But then I realize that the people who are…
September 24, 2014
I heard yesterday that my friend and former advisor Irven DeVore died. He was important, amazing, charming, difficult, harsh, brilliant, fun, annoying. My relationship to him as an advisee and a friend was complex, important to me for many years, and formative. For those who don't know he was…
September 22, 2014
Just do this:
Then go get stoned!
September 22, 2014
I recently reviewed Climate Smart and Energy Wise by Mark McCaffrey. The National Center for Science Education is giving away a free chapter, as a PDF, of this book. CLICK HERE TO GET IT.
Also, there is an event coming up. CLEAN Call: Climate Smart & Energy Wise Book Preview with Mark…
September 22, 2014
Who is Steve McIntyre? From DeSmogBlog.com:
Stephen McIntyre has been a long-time mining industry executive, mostly working on the “stock market side” of mining exploration deals. He published a blog called Climate Audit where he attempts to analyse in sometimes long and extensive detail the work…
September 21, 2014
I am going to try to keep all the climate science ice bucket challenges here as they occur. At present there are quite a few individuals who have not yet answered the challenge. I'm sure they will. Some of them, in the Northern Hemisphere, may be waiting for it to get colder so the act becomes…
September 21, 2014
Watch it 'till the end!
September 20, 2014
Not really a fully fledged blog post, just a quick link pointing you to something interesting.
More than 100%? Sounds funny, doesn't it? Let me rephrase. Humans have caused so much climate change that some of the climate change changed some of the climate back.
Still sounds kinda funny.
OK, try…
September 20, 2014
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Steven Koonin, former Department of Energy Undersecretary and BP scientist makes the case that global warming is caused by humans, important, that we must do something about it, and that further research on key topics is necessary to help guide policy.
He…
