gregladen | October 29, 2015The big loser in this debate was CNBC. The network chose to not let anyone who was not a subscriber see the debate live. Then, apparently, the moderators trivialized the debate and annoyed the debaters, who then attacked CNBC and the press in general. Then, today, when we look at the news stories about the debate, there are hardly any. Nobody seems to really care what happened last night.
Another loser was Ben Carson. I've come to think of the online unofficial polls as useful to indicate overall opinions, and to show how those opinions change (we can discuss another time why this is a…
gregladen | October 29, 2015A week or so ago, I got a couple of emails and tweets about a blog post on Medium.com, an internet thing of which I had never heard. Apparently Medium.com is a big giant blog that anybody can go and blog their big giant thoughts on: like tumblr, but more bloggy.
Anyway, some dude by the name of David Siegel, Web Page Designer, posted a really long blog post about climate change on medium.com.
Have you ever been poking around on the Intertoobs, when somebody comes along and says, "Hey, I never really thought about global warming/vaccination/evolution before, but suddenly and unexplainably I am…
gregladen | October 28, 2015Those zany researchers at MIT are up to their usual shenanigans. They have come up with a device, which they call "our device," that sees through walls. Here is a video of how it works, complete with background music to make you feel perfectly comfortable with it:
Here's their web site. Here is a LARGE FILE PDF with their paper describing the research.
This is not new, but has been under development for a few years. But the work is progressing. I'm hoping this will lead to the development of the ultimate stud finder. I the meantime, I'm sure other applications will be discovered.
gregladen | October 27, 2015There will be a third GOP debate on Wednesday night. If you don't have the right cable or satellite subscription, apparently, you are not welcome to attend. (Correct me if I'm wrong, in the comments section below.)
But who cares, really? It will be a low information event.
The debate will be split into two parts, lower and higher ranking candidates separately, but the debate involving the higher ranking candidates will include more of them, and only two have anything close to poll numbers that matter. Not that polls are everything, but if you are a candidate that has failed to break 10%…
gregladen | October 27, 2015See what I did there?
As you know, the UN WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer has listed Red Meat as Group 2A (probably carcinogenic to humans) and processed meat at Group 1 (causes cancer).
And everyone is upset. The most common reaction to these listings is to criticize WHO. The least common reaction to these listings is to learn what the listings are, what they mean, what they mean to you, to the meat industry, to cancer research, and all that. Here, I will try to provide some perspective on some of this.
WHO is probably more likely to list something as cancer causing
It is…
gregladen | October 26, 2015Here's a question for you: Historical records show that another pandemic will occur, but no one knows when. How do we create a mind shift among world leaders and people in general to start planning for the next one now?
This question is being posed in connection with the series premiere of National Geographic's "Fighting Pandemics" (November 1 at 9 pm ET on National Geographic Channel). The question is about pandemics, but the inspiration for the series, and the question, is the recent ebola pandemic in West Africa. I have a few thoughts, and I've been thinking about Ebola for a long time…
gregladen | October 24, 2015Samsung Galaxy S4
Looking at just the specs, the Samsung Galaxy S4 looks like a good phone. That's why we got one!
But there are a few things you need to know that may impact your decision. These problems lead me to not recommend this phone.
First, the Android Lollipop version that Samsung produces is a much modified version of the basic Android operating system. Nothing useful or interesting is provided, but the "miscellaneous" storage, which for most normal Android Lollipop phone takes up about 300 - 400 megabytes of space, takes up several gigabytes of space, in order to have these…
gregladen | October 23, 2015CNN is calling Hurricane Patricia "The Most Dangerous Hurricane in History." Another news outlet showed a picture of the hurricane and pointed out "The Enormous Size of Hurricane Patricia."
Both of these are wrong. Size matters with hurricanes. A category 5 hurricane that is twice as large as another category 5 hurricane is "more dangerous" all else being equal, and by "all else" I mean things like exactly where it hits, how fast it is moving, exactly how strong it is (category 5 includes a very wide range of wind speeds because it is the highest category). Hurricane Patricia is not huge.…
gregladen | October 23, 2015Update, Saturday AM:
On Twitter, people are shocked and amazed that Hurricane Patricia turned into a tropical storm. Some had prayed to god and now claim those prayers were answered. There is at least one claim of a death on Twitter, but The Twitter Lies, and this is probably someone's sick idea of a joke.
Naturally, what happened is Patricia made landfall as a very compact hurricane in a region with very few people, but as a strong category five hurricane. It had the highest sustained winds, and the lowest pressure ever observed for a hurricane, but again, Patricia was a small hurricane,…
gregladen | October 22, 2015We're gonna need a bigger boat. Well, actually we're gonna need a bigger y-Axis. This has been happening for a while.
NOAA has just published September's global surface temperature, which turns out to be 0.90C above their baseline (20th century average). According to NOAA, this is the highest value for September on record, 0.19C higher than last year, which was also a record. The graph above shows the year to date average, though September, for NOAA's entire data set.
Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, recently tweeted a graph he produced to show global surface…
gregladen | October 21, 2015The University of Texas Energy Poll tracks Americans' opinions on energy and climate change related issues. You can see the results of the latest iteration of the poll here.
Opinions are changing.
Respondents are stressing less about energy prices and instead are worried more about environmental costs. Almost half are willing to pay higher prices to protect the environment — nine points higher than in the last poll. Thirty-four percent are unwilling.
Most striking are their attitudes on global climate change. It’s occurring, say 76 percent — a surge of 6 points in six months and 11 points…
gregladen | October 19, 2015A few days ago, NASA released it's GISS TEMP global surface temperature data showing that in that data set September was warm, with the same value as August (which was also warm). At least one science denier has told me that the fact that August and September were the same means that global warming was not real. What an idiot.
Anyway, it does depend on what data set you look at. If you look at ALL the data sets together on the same graph and stand back even a short distance you will see that they are all about the same. Global warming is real no matter how you measure it. But when we look at…
gregladen | October 15, 2015Top candidates only, non-partisan polls only, likely voters only, graphic updated October 15th, most recent polls October 12.
gregladen | October 15, 2015Clinton vs. Sanders, Likely Voters, Non-Partisan Polls only. Graphic last updated October 15th, shows polls through October 12th only.
gregladen | October 14, 2015Lincoln Chafee, Hillary Clinton, Martin O'Malley, Bernie Sanders, and Jim Webb faced off in the Facebook-CNN sponsored debate. Who won?
The individual who "won" is the individual whose poll numbers went up the most, and we don't know that yet. But there are other ways to win, and other ways to talk about winning.
Winners
Barack Obama I am pleased to note that the candidates running for the Democratic nomination were not running away from the President. That proved to be a bad strategy for House and Senate Democrats during the last election, and we are not seeing it today. One of the…
gregladen | October 14, 2015Here, without comment, is a handful of screen grabs showing the results (at the time I grabbed them, Wed AM) of several on line polls asking who won last night's Democratic Party presidential debate in Las Vegas.
Note: For most polls, I needed to vote first to see the results. I voted alternately for Sanders and Clinton in doing so.
gregladen | October 13, 2015It is debate season for the US presidential race. As usual, science is being viewed as a debating point very differently by the two parties, at least so far. The Democratic candidates, yet to actually debate, are currently engaged in dealing policy statements about important scientific issues such as climate change. In previous election cycles, science was brought into Republican primary debates to see which candidate could make the most anti-science statements. This year it is a bit different, with climate science in particular, and one's ability to say something intelligent-sounding about…
gregladen | October 12, 2015The NASA GISS global surface measurement for September is out. I don't know off hand if there are corrections for earlier months. The data for September show the month as the same as the earlier month, 0.81 degrees C anomaly.
The current best estimate of the warming of the Earth's surface from anthropogenic global warming, using the NASA data and a 12 month running mean, looks like this:
Looking at just the first months of the year (for each year) to estimate the position of the present year as a record breaker (or not) we get this:
Word on the street is that the present month, October,…
gregladen | October 9, 2015South Carolina Floods
I haven't said much about this partly because there is so much good coverage, but South Carolina's floods, still ongoing, are going to get on the list of worst weather events of 2015. Since these floods are amounting to a one in 1,000 year event, they are actually on the list of worst weather events since Vladimir the Great died, Cnut the Great invaded Enlgand (unrelated event), Eric Haakonsson outlaws berzerkers in Norway, and Olaf Haraldson declared himself King of Norway.
And yes, that event was climate change enhanced in at least two ways, maybe three. With global…
gregladen | October 8, 2015This just out from NOAA:
As record ocean temperatures cause widespread coral bleaching across Hawaii, NOAA scientists confirm the same stressful conditions are expanding to the Caribbean and may last into the new year, prompting the declaration of the third global coral bleaching event ever on record.
Waters are warming in the Caribbean, threatening coral in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, NOAA scientists said. Coral bleaching began in the Florida Keys and South Florida in August, but now scientists expect bleaching conditions there to diminish.
“The coral bleaching and disease,…