gregladen | June 3, 2016... may or may not form over the next several days.
There is a disturbance that has a 60% chance of forming into a tropical storm some time between now and the middle of next week. This will head out to the wet and not menace the US mainland, as is typical (but not inevitable) for Eastern Pacific storms.
The main reason we watch Eastern Pacific storms is not that they are going to hit us (usually) but because they often do something interesting. And, they occasionally do hit something (remember Patricia?).
Here is the list of names for Eastern Pacific storm names for 2016:
Agatha
Blas…
gregladen | June 3, 2016Update Monday June 6 AM: TropicalStorm Colin is heading for Florida.
The disturbance first noted a few days ago east of the Yucatan has moved across the mainland, into the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and with the relatively warm sea surfaces there as a source of inspiration, turned into Colin, a tropical storm.
Colin is not expected to become a hurricane, but it will make landfall somewhere on the Florida coast between, roughly, between Tallahassee and Tampa, tonight (Monday). The center of the current forecast is somewhere near Fish Creek and Steinhatchee, but that may change and this will be…
gregladen | June 2, 2016UPSATE. The motion has been denied. Rather hilariously, bt the way.
Professor Michael Mann vs. Shock Jock Mark Steyn
You all know about the libel suit filed by Professor Michael Mann against Canadian right wing radio shock jock Mark Steyn. Steyn made apparently libelous comments linking Mann, who is widely regarded as the worlds top non-retired climate scientist, to the Jerry Sandusky scandal. (I don’t know what Steyn was implying but the only link is that both work(ed) at Penn State University!) There are other aspects of the libel suit as well, beyond the scope of this post.
The suit was…
gregladen | May 27, 2016Trending wetter with time: weather never moves in a straight line, but data from NOAA NCDC shows a steady increase in the percentage of the USA experiencing extreme 1-day rainfall amounts since the first half of the 20th century. Photograph: NOAA NCDC
My Apology to Paul Douglas
I admit that I do a lot of Republican bashing. I'm a Democrat, and more than that, I'm a partisan. I understand that a political party is a tool for grass roots influence on policy, if you care to use it. The Democratic party platform, at the state and national level, reflects my policy-related values reasonably…
gregladen | May 26, 2016This is a press release that just came across my desk that I thought would be of interest to you.
High-drama at low-key follow up to UN Climate Change Agreement in Paris
Bonn, Germany - United Nations climate change negotiations today concluded their first session since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in December last year, including the first session of a new body called the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA) tasked with carrying out activities related to the implementation of the Agreement. What was touted as a "housekeeping meeting" following the high-drama of COP21…
gregladen | May 26, 2016Friday, May 27, 11 AM cst
The probability of this disturbance turning into a tropical storm has been upgraded to 90%, and this transformation is expected to happen some time this evening or on Saturday.
Once that happens, the NWS will probably start issuing maps and probability information for where the storm will go and how strong it will be. For now, the NWS is indicating that "all interests along the southeast coast from Georgia through North Carolina should monitor the progress of this low."
There is not much to look at yet, but here is a moving GIF of the area. The low pressure system is…
gregladen | May 26, 2016With Hurricane Season starting in a few days, I thought I'd post a list of the names that will be used this year.
Alex
Bonnie
Colin
Danielle
Earl
Fiona
Gaston
Hermine
Ian
Julia
Karl
Lisa
Matthew
Nicole
Otto
Paula
Richard
Shary
Tobias
Virginie
Walter
Alex, of course, was already used as a name, since a hurricane formed after they had put the books away during the 2015 season. (See this.)
Also, even though Hurricane Season starts on June 1st, there is a storm brewing in the Atlantic now, that could be Bonnie. But not in a good way.
gregladen | May 26, 2016I want to tell you about a great new book that has one forgivable flaw, which I’ll mention at the end. But first, a word from Bizarro Land. This is about the Grand Canyon.
I would think that the Grand Canyon would be the last thing that creationists would point to as proof of a young earth (several thousands of years old). Just go look at the Grand Canyon. One of the top major layers, the Kaibab Formation, is around 300 to 400 feet thick and made mostly of limestone. That would take a long time to form. But wait, there's more. Within the Kaibab limestone there are also different sorts of…
gregladen | May 26, 2016I'm not anti-government. I'm pro civilization. But I'm also an anarchist, of a sort. I think institutions should be dissolved and reformed regularly. What really happens is that institutions add bits and pieces over time, in response to things that happen, as solutions to interim problems, until finally the bits and pieces take over and nobody can move.
Do you know the The Gormenghast trilogy?
In this amazing story by Mervyn Peake ...
... a doomed lord, a scheming underling, an ancient royal family plagued by madness and intrigue - these are the denizens of ancient, sprawling, tumbledown…
gregladen | May 25, 2016There is a new technology that can convert both solar and wind energy into electricity in such a way that it is suitable for use on urban rooftops.
Here's the abstract from the paper describing this work:
To realize the sustainable energy supply in a smart city, it is essential to maximize energy scavenging from the city environments for achieving the self-powered functions of some intelligent devices and sensors. Although the solar energy can be well harvested by using existing technologies, the large amounts of wasted wind energy in the city cannot be effectively utilized since…
gregladen | May 23, 2016The Democratic National Convention Committee has announced who will be on the all important Platform Drafting Committee. The committee will include an impressive mix of Clinton and Sanders supporters, as well as a key member associated with climate change activism.
The committee is assembled by the CND Chair, who this time around is Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The members that will represent the presidential campaigns (75% of the members) were chosen to proportionately represent the candidates according to the current vote tally from the primaries.
The platform committee will include, as…
gregladen | May 21, 2016As you know, I’ve been running a model to predict the outcomes of upcoming Democratic Primary contests. The model has change over time, as described below, but has always been pretty accurate. Here, I present the final, last, ultimate version of the model, covering the final contests coming up in June.
Why predict primaries and caucuses?
Predicting primaries and caucuses is annoying to some people. Why not just let people vote? Polls predict primaries and caucuses, and people get annoyed at polls.
But there are good reasons to make these predictions. Campaign managers might want to have…
gregladen | May 19, 2016Sea levels are going to rise
The amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere directly and indirectly determines the sea level. The more CO2 the higher the sea level. The details matter, the mechanism is complex, and as CO2 levels change, it takes an unknown amount of time for the sea level to catch up.
The present day level of CO2 is just over 400ppm (parts per million). For thousands of years prior to humans having a large effect on this number, the level of atmospheric CO2 was closer to 250. Human release of CO2 into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuel, and other human…
gregladen | May 17, 2016I've got a new post up at 10,000 Birds on a study looking at changing populations of several hundred common species of birds in Europe and North America (mainly the US).
The two subcontinents exhibit dramatically different patterns, as shown in the enigmatic graph above.
Go to the post to unravel this intriguing mystery!
gregladen | May 17, 2016As Rachel points out, the first one is pretty conventional. The second one is a killer. Have a look:
gregladen | May 17, 2016I have not updated my model for predicting primary outcomes in the Democratic contest, but since the last few predictions were very accurate, I don't feel the need to do so. However, I will before the California primary, just in case.
Meanwhile, my model suggests the following for today's primaries.
Kentucky should be nearly a tie, though my model suggests that Sanders will get one more delegate than Clinton (Clinton: 27, Sanders: 28).
The model also suggests that Sanders will win in Oregon, Clinton: 24 and Sanders: 37.
There is very little polling in Kentucky, but the latest poll from…
gregladen | May 17, 2016The story goes that if you do, it will stay in your digestive track for seven years. Is this true?
According to the Mayo Clinic,
Although chewing gum is designed to be chewed and not swallowed, it generally isn't harmful if swallowed. Folklore suggests that swallowed gum sits in your stomach for seven years before it can be digested. But this isn't true. If you swallow gum, it's true that your body can't digest it. But the gum doesn't stay in your stomach. It moves relatively intact through your digestive system and is excreted in your stool.
On rare occasions, large amounts of swallowed gum…
gregladen | May 17, 2016Remember that big wild fire that threatened, and damaged, Fort MacMurray, causing major evacuation in the oil sands mining region of Canada?
Well, the fire never went out and has now changed directions to threaten settlements again.
__________
Update (mid day Tuesday): The fire is now actually burning some homes/buildings in Ft. McMurray. One of them may have actually exploded. Maybe two.
On the other hand, the oil sands camps to the north seem to be less threatened, or not threatened. The area around these sites are clear of major vegetation, and there are "industrial firefighters" on the…
gregladen | May 16, 2016First, Sanders lost Nevada because Hillary Clinton won the caucus.
Then, the Sanders campaign put their ground game into effect, in an effort to overtake Clinton during the nearly-unique-to-Nevada process that allows for changes in pledged delegates at later caucuses. But he didn't get enough delegates to achieve that. The Sanders campaign does get credit for getting more delegates than they had before, of course.
Then, at the State Convention, Sanders had enough delegates in place to gain a couple of more delegates and possibly tie with Clinton in the end. But the organizers for the Sanders…