gregladen | October 16, 2014Atlantic Hurricane Gonzalo is a Major Hurricane, Category 3 at the moment, and it is heading towards Bermuda. The storm will weaken a little bit before getting there but it will still be major. This is a significant event. It is possible that a storm surge of about 10 feet could occur there. Gonzales will be very near Bermuda in by Friday Evening, and past it by Saturday morning.
Interestingly, Gonzalo is expected to remain a hurricane strength storm (though it may be called a "post-tropical cyclone" it will still have sustained winds at hurricane level) as it passes the Canadian…
gregladen | October 16, 2014Given the current and developing situation in Dallas, where two health workers have become infected with Ebola while caring for a patient, it is reasonable to ask if health workers might decide to call in sick for a few months until this whole highly infectious often fatal disease thing blows over. Daniel Barnett, of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has looked into health workers’ unwillingness to report to work when there is a potential for infectious-disease transmission to themselves and their family members.
The…
gregladen | October 16, 2014The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released its official prediction of what this winter is going to be like.
And yes, it is in ALL CAPS!!! I've pasted it below, but first a summary of the relevant points.
According to NOAA
El Nino
There will be a weak El Nino, late Autumn or Winter.
Or, there could be a moderate EL Nino.
Or, there could just be this thing that might someday be an El Nino but doesn't quite do that for an indefinate period of time.
November, December, January Temps
Warmer along the West and Northwest, all the Northern State and New England, and the…
gregladen | October 16, 2014Apply for an all-expenses-paid eight-day raft trip down the Grand Canyon with the National Center for Science Education! Winners will receive free airfare, lodging before and after the trip, and the trip of a lifetime, exploring the wonders of Grand Canyon with a team of scientists, educators, and science fans. The application form is at the bottom of the page, but please review this information on eligibility, requirements, and what to expect from the trip before submitting an application.
Apply here
gregladen | October 16, 2014Peter Sinclair has done some nice work to clarify the famous Methane Bomb thing.
Briefly, the Methane Bomb is where methane trapped on the floor of the Arctic ocean gets out in large quantities because it is warm. This makes more warming. So, more of this Methane comes out, causing it to get warmer, then this cycle keeps up for a while and in short order civilization collapses and we all die.
It turns out that the science DOES NOT SUPPORT A METHANE BOMB OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. It just doesn't. Unfortunately this has become a point of contention among people who are truly, seriously,…
gregladen | October 15, 2014Monday, the 20th, I'll be in Saint Cloud. More information here.
Details:
On October 20,2014 the Central Minnesota Freethinkers are proud to present a program by Greg Laden, noted writer about climate change, evolution, science education and more at National Geographic, Science Blogs and other venues. His presentation will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall in St. Cloud at 7:00. The admission is free and the program is open to all who wish to attend.
While trained as a biological anthropologist and archeologist and having research experience at many locations in the…
gregladen | October 15, 2014It is now known that the second infected health worker who had cared for Dallas Index Patient Duncan took a Monday air flight from Cleveland to Dallas-Forth Worth after she started to have a fever. It was a Frontier airline flight and it arrived in Dallas at 8:16 PM, was put to bet overnight, received normal cleaning, and resumed service Tuesday. There were more than 130 other people on that plane.
Chances are Ebola is not THAT contagious when it is just staring up. You really need those bodily fluids. There is almost ZERO chance that anyone was infected on that plane, or at the airport,…
gregladen | October 15, 2014UPDATE: The first health worker to have been affected with Ebola in Texas may not be moved to Maryland.
From NBC:
Nina Pham, one of the two nurses who contracted Ebola in Dallas, is expected to be moved to a National Institutes of Health isolation unit in Bethesda, Maryland, a federal official with direct knowledge of the plans told NBC News on Thursday.
The transfer could happen later Thursday, but the official cautioned that plans were evolving. Pham, 26, was diagnosed with the virus on Sunday after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, who contracted Ebola in Liberia, flew to Dallas and later died…
gregladen | October 14, 2014This is breaking news as of Tuesday PM. According to the nurses at the hospital, no, not initially. Anonymous nurses have claimed via their union:
-Patient Zero was left for several hours in a place with up to seven other patients, not in isolation. When a senior nurse attempted to insist he be moved to an isolation unit she was met with "hostile" responses.
-Blood samples were transported through the hospital tube system instead of hand carried.
-Nurses were not entirely covered with protective wear. The gear they had left their necks exposed. To remedy this they were told to wrap tape or…
gregladen | October 14, 2014I might.
This is a preliminary look, based just on the web site and some tweets with the developer, of the imp (all lower case), a small computer somewhere in technology and power, perhaps, between a Raspberry pi (which is mainly a hobbiest toy) and the Intel Nuk (which is sort of a non-Mac Mac Mini). It is called by its makers "The Open Source Computer: Made for consumers." It is a Linux-installed device, as is your smart phone and, well, the entire Internet. So the technology is well tested at that level.
The imp team describes it this way:
imp is a small, yet powerful computer designed…
gregladen | October 14, 2014This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
Climate Hawks Vote is delighted to endorse in four California Congressional elections, joining our prior endorsement of Scott Peters (CA-52, San Diego). In order purely alphabetical, they're Lois Capps, Heidi Hall, Mike Honda, and Ted Lieu.
Lois Capps (CA-24, Santa Barbara) has earned our endorsement by being a tireless advocate for action on climate. She has the second-highest score among all Democrats in the House of Representatives on our scorecard measuring leadership. Her climate resilience ideas, in particular, have been…
gregladen | October 14, 2014Live blogging.
Dr. Tom Frieden talking.
Don't say "hand in glove!"
What the are doing in Dallas:
1) Site manager on the site in Dallas every hour of the day, checking protective gear use.
2) Enhanced training, including by experienced nurses with Ebola experience.
3) Limit number of care staff so they can be more expert.
Have been hearing concern from health care workers everywhere, working to minimize concerns.
Working to prepare all nurses and docs in all ER's to ID Ebola, asking "where have you been in the past month/21 days"
Infections more likely to spread from someone not…
gregladen | October 13, 2014We have been having a run of very warm months, and according to the GISS database, updated yesterday, September was the warmest on record, and the records go back to the late 19th century. This is global average temperature of the surface.
I'll have more about this later, as other databases are updated. Sometimes one data set shows slightly different results than others, so it is good to look at them all as a group. Also, NOAA has not updated its climate watcher thingie yet.
If October, November and December turn out to be very warm as well, 2014 will end up being one of the top three or…
gregladen | October 12, 2014Science Online was an amazing annual unconference that started a few years back and grew and became part of the reshaping of public communication about science. This year, the people running the conference started out with the plan to move the conference to a new venue, Atlanta, and last week abruptly announced that the conference would not happen and the ScienceOnline organization would be shut down. Those who paid the registration fee would be refunded.
A few science writers and bloggers are writing about how great ScienceOnline was and how much it will be missed, and some are providing a…
gregladen | October 12, 2014This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
Climate Hawks Vote is delighted to endorse Scott Peters in California’s 52d Congressional District of San Diego for his strong climate leadership and for taking first place in our August 2014 survey. And his approach just may break partisan gridlock in Congress.
Scott Peters has a reputation as a problem solver. Climate hawks tend to fly on the left wing of the Democratic Party, but Peters has demonstrated that climate transcends political partisanship. He’s spoken out onsuper-pollutants, national security, and resiliency, all…
gregladen | October 12, 2014The first person ever to catch Ebola in the United States is now in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
Don't panic, even if you live in Dallas. But also, don't fall into the hyperskeptical trap of assuming that because scientific authorities tell you everything is fine that concern is irrational. There are very rational reasons to be concerned. But you need to be smart about what to be concerned about.
A couple of weeks ago, as you know, a man came to Dallas with pre-symptomatic Ebola, and became symptomatic there. This was the first case of a person being diagnosed with…
gregladen | October 11, 2014According to those intimately involved in the response to the West African Ebola outbreak, NewLink Genetics owns the rights to a piece of the puzzle needed to quickly test and deploy one of two likely Ebola vaccines and they are holding up the entire process because they are not entirely sure they are going to get rich on it. Other suggest it is incompetence. NewLink seems to be claiming it is just a lot of paperwork. In the end, tough, none of these excuses is convincing. This is one of those cases that gives Big Pharm a bad reputation.
From as story in Science:
Stephan Becker is tired…
gregladen | October 11, 2014Last June (and May and July and part of August) we had a lot of precipitation in Minnesota. This caused lake levels to rise modestly. One lake, which is large enough to have meaningful waves, has older settlement along it so lots of cabins, boat houses, and such are right on the shoreline. With the lake level up, waves threatened the material possessions of rich white people, so naturally something had to be done. A No-Wake Rule was put into effect.
A No-Wake Rule means the oversized fishing boats and smallish cabin cruisers that normally ply this large exurban lake need to all go at 5 m…
gregladen | October 10, 2014This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
Climate Hawks Vote announces endorsements of two Michigan Democrats: Paul Clements for Congress in Michigan’s Sixth District, and Gary Peters for Senate, because the Koch brothers and Big Oil need to stop using Michigan’s shores as a dumping ground for their pollution and Michigan’s politicians for their agenda.
Paul Clements is challenging none other than Fred Upton, chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee - these days, the House Big Oil Lackey Committee. As the face of Big Oil, Upton was named the number one enemy of…
gregladen | October 9, 2014Did you ever leave your freezer door slightly open on a humid day only to find chunks of new ice formed at the gap? When that happens, did you conclude "Oh, my freezer is colder than usual, I wonder how that happened?" No. You concluded that you had left the door slightly open, some cold got out, and vapor froze on your gasket.
Sea ice is hard to make. The sea is salt water, so it has a lower freezing point than fresh water. The sea has potentially large waves and lots of currents. This is just not a situation where ice can easily form. Yet, it does form on the oceans near the Earth's…