gregladen | January 19, 2015Just a note to celebrate the life and times of Hedy Lamarr, who died on this day, 2000, at the age of 85.
Lamarr had a very interesting career that involved major acting accomplishments, milestone acting events, and direct involvement in the invention of the technology that now forms the basis of WiFi, BlueTooth and other similar modes of communication between electronic devices.
The story of Lemarr's life is complicated and understanding that story is made even more difficult because of the way it has been told in the past, with multiple versions of multiple events told by biographers (…
gregladen | January 17, 2015Did you ever notice that you can smell rain? Usually, you smell it better after the rain, but if you are a highly trained naturalist, or Aragorn son of Arathorn, Elessar, the Elfstone, Dúnadain, the heir of Isildur Elendil's son of Gondor, or something, you can smell it before it rains. During the rain you are usually inside smelling other things.
It is called Petrichor. That word comes from ancient Greek for rock (obviously) and God Blood. That makes sense because with all the gods up in the sky, a certain amount of God Blood would fall to the earth when it rains.
Anyway, I came across…
gregladen | January 17, 2015The New York Times put the news of 2014 being the warmest year on their front page, in the precious space known as "Above The Fold." But, the venerable paper of record continues to give credence to science denialists by calling them "skeptics," and continues to imply that there really is a debate between consensus based science and politically motivated denial of science. To underscore this point I created the above graphic.
I would also like to congratulate the Washington Post for putting this piece by Joby Warrick and Chris Mooney on the front of section A1.
And, TIME has also placed…
gregladen | January 17, 2015I will assume you are paying some attention to the discussion of racism vis-a-vis Charlie Hebdo, Muslim bashing, obnoxious religious (in this case Islamic) rules of behavior, freedom of speech and expression, etc. If you were thinking that this situation is simple you better check your thought process, or your privilege, or something. Get an oil change. Take a class on race and racism. Something. Because it is not simple.
The following thought experiment is still an oversimplification but perhaps worthy of consideration, as a means of parsing out the very first level of complexity and…
gregladen | January 16, 2015NOAA will announce today that 2014 was the warmest year during the instrumental record, which begins in 1880. The announcement, which addresses findings of both NOAA and NASA, will be made today at 11:00 Eastern. Below is the press release from NOAA.
I talked about this and other climate matters in a radio interview at Green Divas:
Michael Mann has made the following statements regarding this news:
2014 Was Earth’s Warmest Year On Record
Three major climate organizations (JMA, NASA, and NOAA) have now released their official estimates for the 2014 Global Mean Surface Temperature. Both JMA…
gregladen | January 16, 2015A new documentary you'll want to see.
An eye-opening documentary exploring the tactics of climate change deniers.
An overwhelming majority of scientists agree that global warming caused by human activity is one of the most critical dangers our planet faces. But a well-organised band of professional spinners and obfuscators toil in the shadows to pretend there is a genuine debate on the subject. That's the argument put forward by this provocative new documentary from Robert Kenner, director of the Oscar nominated food industry expose, 'Food, Inc'. Adapted from the book of the same title by…
gregladen | January 15, 2015I just did an interview on Green Diva Radio, and talked about a lot of climate change science news. For those who want to see the sources, here is a quick summary:
On Friday, NASA and NOAA are expected to announce that 2014 was the hottest year on record. I had been planning to write an extensive blog post going into all sorts of details about how that works, how they calculate it, etc. But then the people at Climate Nexus wrote a post that would have blown mine out of the water with the detail and informtation provided in it. Go here to read this excellent post: 2014: Putting The Hottest…
gregladen | January 10, 2015This is serious. A highly regarded and widely recognized planetery physicist put together the most dangerous scientific ingredients that exist: skepticism of the established science, a comprehensive list of hypotheses that stood in opposition to that established science, a huge amount of data, a healthy amount of funding including a good chunk from energy companies that mainly sell fossil carbon based fuels, and a hand selected research team of others who were also skeptics.
In the end, he came up with an explanation for what people call Global Warming. Personally, I believe him. I think…
gregladen | January 9, 2015I did an interview on Green Diva, which you can tune into and enjoy HERE or here:
My part starts just after 30:40 into the show, but do feel free to listen to the whole thing!
gregladen | January 7, 2015I did a thing called the "Green Round Table" in which I addressed a number of questions about climate change and global warming.
HAVE A LOOK
gregladen | January 4, 2015The following is a letter from John Irving, posted originally on his Facebook page and reprinted here as a guest post:
NOTE: JOHN NOW HAS HIS OWN WEB SITE AND HAS POSTED HIS LETTER THERE. So do note that there are comments, including by John, below, but also go and visit his site!
John Irving
Dear Industrial Capitalists and members of the %0.01,
I feel obliged to inform you that you’ve made a huge strategic blunder and things aren’t probably going to work out very well for you soon.
You recall that way back in 1965 - 50 years ago this year - President Lyndon B. Johnson was warned about…
gregladen | January 1, 2015I was a citizen of New York when Mario Cuomo became governor. I've written before about the ethnic angle of that event, how Cuomo, who was Italian, was the highest ranking ethnic Italian in New York, Italian immigrants still being repressed and seen as lesser folk by many even at that late date. When he became Governor, as I recall, people stopped telling certain jokes. He may have been one of the best governors ever, anywhere.
He got a lot done as governor. It was almost like he could be in two places at once. And, actually, he did that once. Let me tell you the story.
When my father…
gregladen | January 1, 2015People, usually people of color, more often than not Native Americans and African Americans (according the the available statistics) suffer regular repression by the police. Day to day, the most common form of repression is about the small stuff. Jay walking, being out after curfew, walking around in a shopping mall, driving while black, and similar imagined (or at worst, very minor) offenses bring the police into contact with individuals, making day to day existence harder and for many building up a list of arrests, charges, and convictions that form an ever-growing albatross around those…
gregladen | December 22, 2014With what may be the warmest year in centuries about to close, I thought it would be fun to have a graphic comparing the march of global average temperature over several years about a century ago with the present state of affairs. This graphic is based on NASA's data, using John Abraham's estimate for the 2014 temperature (it might end up being a tiny bit different). There is more information about those sources here.
[click on the graphic to get to a larger version]
Just to be clear on how to read the graph ... the red dot is not anywhere in particular on the horizontal scale. The X and…
gregladen | December 22, 2014Joe Cocker is (was?) one of my favorite musical artists. Having said that I quickly add that while his work is well represented on my list of favorites, I also really don't like a bunch of his other work. But the stuff that's good is great.
He died today at the age of 70.
One of the best "albums" you can get if you like rock and roll is Mad Dogs and Englishmen. It's Joe Cocker and a bunch of other great musicians of the day, live, double album. On that album you will find Feeling Alright. Great song. I remember Amanda being very disappointed when she learned that the relevant statement…
gregladen | December 20, 2014Enough! That's Peter Doran's opinion on the "debate" about a scientific consensus on climate change. There clearly is one -- a strong one. So why do the public and the politicians think otherwise? Why the big disconnect between what the vast majority of scientists know to be fact, and what the public thinks. Dr. Doran blames the way media reports on science, and he blames a few of the loud voices on the right. He presents an idea to change a lot of the minds of people who deny the scientific consensus on climate change which will hopefully lead politicians to action. Peter Doran is a…
gregladen | December 17, 2014A new study has recently been published that looks at the ecology of bristlecone pine growth at Sheep Mountain, and the tree ring signal those trees produce, at high altitudes in the Southwestern US. This is important because tree rings are an often used proxyindicator for reconstructing past climates. Those who keep track of the paleoclimate research will recall, for example, that tree rings were one of the proxyindicators used by Michael Mann and his team in constructing the famous "Hockey Stick" graph showing a dramatic increase in the Earth's temperature since the onset of industrial…
gregladen | December 17, 2014In early December I wrote a post called "2014 will not be the warmest year on record, but global warming is still real." The very first thing I said in that post is that I was going out on a limb. I also discussed whether or not one year mattered, and I discussed the nature of the phrase "X is the Yth warmest year on record," going into details on what "the record" is and how we measure this.
I want to reiterate something very important that I mentioned then. Here, we are talking about a combination of measurements from the sea surface and the air just over the land (about where your head…
gregladen | December 15, 2014Are you done with your Thanksgiving leftovers yet? You might think so, but not quite. We have one more helping of Turkey for you.
This is "Another Helping of Turkey," the second of two installments of Eat This Podcast with Jeremy Cherfas:
The domestication of the turkey probably first took place around 2000 years ago in south central Mexico, possibly for their feathers and ritual value rather than their meat. Their rise to the top of the American festive table came much later, not with the Pilgrims but with Charles Wampler, whose efforts to promote turkey raising started Rockingham County,…