August 11, 2014
Please someone make this happen. Thank you very much.
August 11, 2014
A list of reviews of Nicholas Wade’s book “A Troublesome Inheritance,” mainly by anthropologists and others who have investigated issues surrounding the concept of “race” in humans.
Bethune, Brian: Inheritance battles
Daniels, Anthony: Genetic disorder
Dobbs, David: The Fault in Our DNA
Fuentes,…
August 7, 2014
Lots to talk about here:
Published on Aug 1, 2014
Arctic Emergency: Scientists Speak On Melting Ice and Global Impacts (1080p HD)
This film brings you the voices of climate scientists - in their own words.
Rising temperatures in the Arctic are contributing the melting sea ice, thawing permafrost,…
August 7, 2014
Three years after the disaster at Fukushima, science correspondent Miles O'Brien returned to the Daiichi nuclear plant for an exclusive look at the site. Follow Miles on a never-before-seen tour of Daiichi's sister site, Fukushima Daini, which narrowly avoided a meltdown during the Tohoku…
August 6, 2014
I don't like the messaging Holdren almost always seems to start with: "While we can't attribute a single bla bla bla to climate change" (it is not the right way to phrase what is happening, this is a good video just out:
August 6, 2014
It is probably safe to say that Nigeria now has an outbreak, as a handful of cases contracted in country seem to have been reported, though it is too early to be sure this will stick. Hopefully it won't.
There is also one suspected case, a death, in Saudi Arabia, of someone who would have caught…
August 5, 2014
The National Review is a political magazine, and Mark Steyn, I think, writes for them (I really don't keep track). A while back Steyn and/or the National Review made some seemingly very defamatory statements about Michael Mann, the climate scientist. Career-damaging really icky accusations of…
August 4, 2014
The WHO came out with a new report today with the latest figures on Ebola. These numbers take us to the end of July. There are two bits of bad news.
First, the number of new cases is high, as high as any prior report (but keep in mind that these reports cover uneven time periods). There are 163…
August 4, 2014
LATEST UPDATE HERE ... new numbers just in from WHO, and they are bad.
I had suspected this might be the case. Disease like Ebola are potentially easily cured using serum. Here's the idea. Someone gets the disease and survives, and their body now produces products that give them an immunity. So…
August 3, 2014
So, you accept the science of climate change and global warming as legit. But you often encounter people, at family gatherings, on your Facebook page, on Twitter, at social events, etc. who don't. Do you keep your mouth shut when someone says something clearly wrong that brings the science into…
August 2, 2014
LATEST UPDATE HERE
It is true that this particular outbreak of Ebola has taken health officials somewhat by surprise. It is impossible to know, but I suspect that if you had asked a few ebola experts, a year ago, if there could be an epidemic that would spread across three or four countries,…
July 31, 2014
The US Drought Monitor produces an assessment of drought conditions every week. The drought in California has taken a large jump over the last few days, with the highest category, "Exceptional," jumping from 36.49% to 58.41%. At the start of the calendar year, that category was represented in…
July 30, 2014
Mark Your Cosmic Calendar: 774/775
One wonders if anyone felt it. Did Charlemagne feel it as he led his forces across Pagan Saxon Westphalia, knocking down Irminsuls and making everyone pretend to be Christian or else? Did the people of Bagdad, just becoming the world’s largest city, notice…
July 28, 2014
But they did not call it that then.
This isn't actually the anniversary of the war, but it is the wedding anniversary plus one month of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, and the day the two of them were assassinated by Mlada Bosna. Today, one month later one hundred years ago, the first of…
July 27, 2014
LATEST UPDATE HERE
UPDATE: The latest numbers do not indicate a weakening of the outbreak. (See list of new cases below. Several graphs have been updated as well)
UPDATE: More detailed discussion of transmission of Ebola
UPDATE: I note with sadness the death of my neighbor (though I did not know…
July 25, 2014
The 2000 election was probably won by Al Gore. But George Bush was put into office anyway. Imagine what this world would be like had Gore been ensconced in the white house? The Tea Party would probably have emerged sooner and madder, but less organized; global climate change would have become a…
July 24, 2014
The ranger stood on the dirt road, facing south, and the rest of us, scattered about the parked safari truck, facing north and paying close attention to what she was saying. The sun was slipping quickly below the red sand dunes to our west, and the day’s warm breeze was rapidly changing to a chill…
July 24, 2014
The original hoser, I'm told by an unimpeachable source from way up in Canada, was the guy who went out to his front yard in the middle of the winter and hosed down the lawn in order to make some flat ice, so he and his friends could play hockey. A better way to get ice is to find a cove or…
July 23, 2014
We just experienced the warmest two months (May and June) on record, meaning, essentially, in well over 100 years. This is because of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Does this mean that 2014 will be the warmest year on record? Probably not, in part because February was pretty cold and that…
July 22, 2014
[Updated: Letter to the Editor, Worthington Daily Globe.]
This is a followup on my earlier post (see "How do you say “Surprise” in Norwegian? The word is “Entenza.” I am not making that up" also reposted here) on Matt Entenza’s bid for the DFL (Democratic Party) Primary candidacy for Minnesota…
July 22, 2014
One of the things climate change science deniers say, to throw you off, is that Antarctic sea ice is expanding. They even claim that the amount of expansion of Antarctic sea ice offsets the dramatic retreat of Arctic sea ice (see this for the latest on the Arctic). I've even seen it argued, in…
July 22, 2014
As it does every summer, the Arctic Sea ice is melting off. Over the last several years, the amount of sea ice that melts by the time it hits minimum in September has generally been increasing. So, how's it doing now?
The graph above shows the 1981-2010 average plus or minus two standard…
July 22, 2014
There is an old theory in psychology that characterizes humans as a bowl of Jell-O (Jelly for some of you). Life pokes at the Jell-O, the Jell-O jiggles. Eventually the jiggles begin to change the Jell-O, so certain kinds of pokes result in certain kinds of responses. The Jell-O gurgles, babbles,…
July 21, 2014
JW, protagonist, is a flawed hero. He is not exactly an anti-hero because he is not a bad guy, though one does become annoyed at where he places his values. As his character unfolds in the first several chapters of Shawn Otto's novel, Sins of Our Fathers, we like him, we are worried about him, we…
July 21, 2014
June 2014 was the hottest June on record, and records go back to 1880, by which time Global Warming may have started already but wasn't nearly as intense as the last half of the 20th century, according to data NOAA has released and highlighted. The previous month, May, was the hottest May on record…
July 21, 2014
Last month, listening to NPR, I learned that Sacramento, California is struggling with the installation of water meters on homes. There were two things I learned, both ungood: 1) Sacramento was installing water meters on homes, meaning, that they hadn't been there all along. I found that…
July 19, 2014
We are celebrating an anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon. Here, I simply post a memo from William Safire, speech writer, to H. R. Halderman, felon, providing text to be read by Richard Nixon, World's Worst President (of the 20th century), related to that Moon Landing:
July 18, 2014
AGW -> AA -> QR -> WW -> WF -> DS -> A- -> AGW
The great cycle of climate change. Anthropogenic Global Warming has resulted in a relatively increased warming of the poles, which changes the dynamic of jet streams forming thus causing quasi-ressonant (stuck in place) Rossby…
July 18, 2014
Governor Mark Dayton has called for the elimination of coal as a source of energy in Minnesota. Doing so is, clearly, essential. Having a governor call for it is a new thing; we are only seeing this sort of policy being developed recently.
From MPR News, Dayton said to a group of energy policy…
July 18, 2014
Cardboard, some velcro, a rubber band, a couple of magnets, some other stuff, and your smart phone:
