gregladen | March 7, 2016Climate Change: A Wicked Problem: Complexity and Uncertainty at the Intersection of Science, Economics, Politics, and Human Behavior, by Frank Incropera, is a textbook suitable for use in advanced high school or college classes, but also an excellent primer on the topic for anyone interested in it. Incropera spares little details in describing how the Earth's climate system works, and how human generated greenhouse gases, and other effects, change the energy balance of the planet to produce the phenomenon we call "global warming," and other effects.
Incropera addresses the panoply of causes…
gregladen | March 6, 2016Yesterday, the Democrats held three contests, in Louisiana, Nebraska and Kansas. I had predicted a Sanders win in Nebraska and Kansas, and a Clinton win in Louisiana, using my ever-evolving ethnicity-based projection model. Those predictions came to fruition. Like this:
Predicted on top, Actual on bottom.
Clinton did a bit better than projected in Louisiana, and Sanders did a bit better in Nebraska, but much better in Kansas than predicted.
I had projected the final delegate count to be 60:49 (Clinton:Sanders) for that day, and it turned out to be 55:49 (Clinton:Sanders). The difference…
gregladen | March 5, 2016This weekend there are Democratic Party primaries or caucuses in Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Maine and Puerto Rico. The model I developed for predicting primary and caucus outcomes indicates the following results as most likely:
Sanders is losing the primaries, so far, and Clinton is on the path to victory. However, Sanders has a fair amount of time to catch up. Perhaps he just needs his strategy to take hold. The idea was to have a revolution, which in this case, means a lot of people show up. A lot of people did show up, but not enough. Sanders needs to get the rest of them to show up…
gregladen | March 4, 2016I don't really want to write a blog post about Trump's junk. But I did feel a responsibility to get this image, the one at the top of this post, out there. If you want to know more about penis size, including the large vs. small hand as indicator of large vs. small penis idea, I've got you covered here.
And let's hope we can keep Trump covered as well. Hard to say where this is all going.
gregladen | March 4, 2016Wildlife of the Galápagos: Second Edition (Princeton Pocket Guides), by Julian Fitter, Daniel Fitter, and David Hosking is both a field guide and a travel guide, focusing on the Galapagos Islands. It includes basic information about each island and each town or tourist destination, and a comprehensive guide to how to visit, what to bring and not bring, and otherwise plan your trip to these amazing evolution-drenched islands.
The wildlife that is covered includes birds, other land vertebrates including the famous tortoises and lizards, offshore mammals, fish, insects, and plants. There is…
gregladen | March 3, 2016There wasn't a "pause" in global warming. The rate at which the plant's surface warms because of human greenhouse gas pollution varies over time. Sometimes the warming is quicker, sometimes it is slower.
There are multiple reasons for a temporary slowdown in the temerature curve, including the temperature curve being a little inaccurate, the ocean taking heat away from the surface, atmospheric dust varying over time in how much sunlight is reflected away, and so on. I recently wrote up a detailed discussion of the latest thinking on this interesting scientific problem, based mostly on a…
gregladen | March 3, 2016A lot of people don't like the Minnesota presidential "caucus" (which is really a somewhat dysfunctional primary, not a caucus). Here is a discussion of that problem and suggestions as to how to fix it, over at Minnesota Progressive Project where I sometimes blog (but not enough, I should do more, it is a great place).
gregladen | March 2, 2016As you know, I developed a simple model for projecting future primary outcomes in the Democratic party. This model is based on the ethnic mix in each state, among Democratic Party voters. The model attributes a likely voting choice to theoretical primary goers or causers based on previous behavior by ethnicity. Originally I made two models, one using numbers that the Clinton campaign was banking on, and one using numbers that the Sanders campaign was banking on.
The results of the Super Tuesday primaries demonstrated that the Sanders-favoring model does not predict primary outcomes.…
gregladen | March 1, 2016The Great San Francisco Earthquake(s)
On October 8th, 1865, the "Great San Francisco Earthquake" hit south of the city of San Francisco, magnitude 6.3.
On October 21st, 1868, the 'Great San Francisco Earthquake" hit near Haywards, east of the city, across the bay, magnitude 6.8.
On April 18th, 1906, the "Great San Francisco Earthquake" hit the Bay Area, magnitude 7.6.
The death tolls were unknown (but small), 30, and about 3,000, respectively.
Eighteen significant earthquakes happened after that (and five or so had happened between the first "great quakes") before February 9th, 1971, when…
gregladen | March 1, 2016Put your stuff in the comments!
Also being discussed on my Facebook page.
Here's my predictions, by the way:
Tuesday evening, 10:45 central:
gregladen | February 29, 2016They even have a short list of candidates. Unfortunately, the only available copy of the secret internal report on running a third party candidate has the list blacked out (see above).
According to Scott Bland at Politico:
Conservative donors have engaged a major GOP consulting firm in Florida to research the feasibility of mounting a late, independent run for president amid growing fears that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination.
...
“All this research has to happen before March 16, when inevitably Trump is the nominee, so that we have a plan in place," a source familiar with…
gregladen | February 28, 2016You may be asking yourself the same question, especially if, like me, you vote on Tuesday, March 1st.
For some of us, a related question is which of the two is likely to win the nomination.
If one of the two is highly likely to win the nomination, then it may be smart to vote for that candidate in order to add to the momentum effect and, frankly, to end the internecine fighting and eating of young within the party sooner. If, however, one of the two is only somewhat likely to win the nomination, and your preference is for the one slightly more likely to lose, then you better vote for the…
gregladen | February 26, 2016The latest episode of Ikonokast, the science podcast Mike Haubrich and I do, is now up. This is an interview with Pacific Institute's Peter Gleick. We talk about the California drought (past, present, and future), Syria, virtual water, El Nino and climate science denialism.
You can hear the podcast here: WHAT ABOUT WATER? DR. PETER GLEICK OF THE PACIFIC INSTITUTE.
gregladen | February 24, 2016The Arctic Sea freezes over. The Arctic Sea melts. This happens every year. The average date for the maximum extent of Arctic Sea ice, based on a period of 1981-2010, is March 12. The minimum extent is reached, on average, about September 15h.
Every year for the last several years, the minimum ice has been much lower than average in extent, and many years in a row have seen record minima. This is considered to be the result of global surface warming caused by human release of greenhouse gas pollution.
It is said that we can't use the maximum ice cover to predict the minimum ice cover…
gregladen | February 24, 2016Texas has adopted a law that allows students to bring a handgun to class, or to meetings with professors.
As a response to this policy, the president of the Faculty Senate, Jonathan Snow, gathered a group of faculty and gave a powerpoint presentation that included the slide at the top of the post.
Snow's presentation was not any sort of official university statement, but the slide does a good job of demonstrating the likely effect on faculty student relationships under the conditions where students are more likely to pull out a handgun and plug the professor.
The situation, and the context…
gregladen | February 24, 2016I recently developed a model of how the primary race will play out between Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
That model made certain assumptions, and allowed me to produce two projections (well, many, but I picked two) depending on how each candidate actually fairs with different ethnic groups (White, Back, Hispanic, since those are the groupings typically used).
The two different versions of this model were designed to favor each candidate differently. The Clinton-favored model started with the basic assumption that among white Democratic Party voters,…
gregladen | February 24, 2016A new paper (commentary) on the so-called "pause in global warming" puts it all together.
First let's establish this as a starting point. When climate science contrarians refer to a "pause" or "hiatus" in global warming, they usually mean that the process of warming of the Earth's surface caused by the human release of greenhouse gas is not a thing. They are usually implying, or overtly claiming, that the link between CO2 and other greenhouse gas pollutants and surface warming was never there to begin with, and previous warming, warming before "the pause," was natural variation. Many even…
gregladen | February 23, 2016Human caused greenhouse gas pollution has locked us into a situation where the global sea level will rise, at an unknown rate, high enough to inundate most major coastal cities and vast areas of agricultural land in low lying countries, and wipe out thousands of islands. Entire countries (small, low lying ones, and pacific ocean nations) will either disappear entirely or be made very small. Even as we head towards a likely limit in global food production in relation to increasing demand, large productive agricultural areas will be destroyed. As far as I can tell, there is nothing to stop this…
gregladen | February 22, 2016It is all about the honest conversation. And the dishonest conversation.
Corporate Funding of the Research Endeavor: Good
Corporations have an interest in research. They use this research for profit or to minimize liability. Some corporations have their own researchers, some provide grants to scientists to conduct research, and some fund activities that might not be thought of as research, but really are. For example, the publication fees for peer reviewed journals, funds to pay for scientists to attend conferences, and funds to support a scientific conference are paying for an important…
gregladen | February 22, 2016One of the Great Crises we face in today's world is the stability and security of the water supply. In America, most people don't have any problems getting water, to the extent that we tend to waste it, and few people even know where there water comes from. Every now and then there emerges a startling and troubling problem with water. A river catches fire, a plume of visible pollution observable from space spreads across a lake, or an entire city worth of children are poisoned with the contents of the city water supply.
Works Progress Studio has been engaged for a while in a project called…