gregladen | June 30, 2014Maybe yes, maybe no. Good chance, yes.
It is too early to call, but the blob I mentioned the other day has turned into a spiral and is starting to get organized. Forecasters at NOAA think there is an 80% chance this low pressure phenomenon will be a tropical storm by the 4th of July. They are also, somewhat vaguely, saying that it will move south, then northward, then northwest, which puts the storm off the coast of the US Mid-Atlantic or Southeast somewhere. Given that the storm is not moving in a consistent direction steered by well defined one directional forces, this should be very…
gregladen | June 28, 2014The Root 100 2014 is seeking your nominations. DEADLINE IS MONDAY. They are
...just about ready to celebrate the innovators, the trailblazers and the influencers in the African-American community who have caught our attention in the past year. [They] will announce The Root 100 of 2014 and celebrate these 25-45-year-olds who are paving the way in politics, entertainment, business, the arts, social justice, science and sports. Right now, it’s your turn to submit nominations for those you think deserve this coveted honor.
There will be many well-known figures on the list, but, each year, The…
gregladen | June 28, 2014I propose that there are four five categories of TV series distinguished on the basis of how long they run and the quality, or lack thereof, of the show more or less objectively defined (to the extent that one can do that).
1: Shows that jumped the shark
These are shows that become redundant, lose their writing quality, or for some other reason reach a point where they get bad. That point is, of course, the "Jumping-the-Shark" moment. The phrase "Jump the shark" of course comes from an episode of Happy Days when Fonzie, water skiing, jumps over a shark. That was apparently a bad episode…
gregladen | June 28, 2014First let me check ... are all those denialists who have been claiming that wild fires have become rare done talking yet?
OK fine.
Yes, depending on where you go and what you look at we are having a problem with wild fires in the US and elsewhere (i.e., Australia). Part of this is probably due to weather whiplash. Periods of heavier than usual rain means more fuel grows, periods of dry make the fuel ready to burn, maybe even add some extra windy conditions, and the fires are worse than usual. This leads to landslide conditions being worse later on when the unusual rains occur.
Anyway,…
gregladen | June 28, 2014There is a stormy thing in the Atlantic that may become a Tropical Storm. It is really just a blob right now, but there is a roughly even chance that over the next two to five days it will form a tropical storm.
No matter what, this blob will menace the US east coast, though it is way too early to say if this will be a big deal or not. It is not entirely clear which direction it will be moving in over the medium term. We will be keeping and eye on it.
gregladen | June 28, 2014In a previous life (of mine) my father-in-law, an evolutionary biologist, kept an oil painting of a fish on the wall of the living room. At every chance he would point out, to visitors or to anyone else if there were no visitors, that he kept a portrait of his distant ancestor hanging in a prominent location, pointing to the oil painting. It was funny even the third or fourth time. It isn't really true, of course, that this was his ancestor. It was a bass, more recently evolved to its present form than humans, I suspect. But it is true that the last common ancestor of humans and fish was a…
gregladen | June 27, 2014Who are the founders of Greenpeace? Not Patrick Moore.
Patrick Moore is a Hippie for Hire. He makes the claim that he co-founded Greenpeace, and charges a fee to show up at conferences or other venues, or sit on boards, to provide a story that anti-environmentalists, global warming deniers, and others, like to hear. The part where he takes your money to lie, as far as I can tell, is true. The part about how he co-founded Greenpeace is apparently not true.
Here’s what Greenpeace has to say about Patrick Moore:
Patrick Moore. Did Patrick Moore found Greenpeace? Greenpeace says no. They…
gregladen | June 27, 2014Another Great Video from Greenman Peter Sinclair:
More details and links HERE.
gregladen | June 25, 2014We are breaking all sorts of records here in Minnesota this June, and not the records for drought (or, for once, cold). It has been raining and storming a lot, and not just in one place as happens now and then. The rains have been widespread and intensive. The flood levels of most rivers are not breaking records because those are set in the earlier Spring snow-melt driven flooding, but this time of year all the creeks, kills, and rivers should be receding not rising.
The situation is so interesting and important that our local public TV political weekly put the weather on top of the show…
gregladen | June 21, 2014In 2009 someone wrote a blog post about climate change that made all the usual science denialist claims. Hurricanes have reduced therefore global warming is not real. In this case, hurricanes are one of the main threats of climate change (a straw man) and since they are not as common these days in the Atlantic as alarmists claimed the would be (cherry picking) global warming is not a concern. There were stronger storms in the past. Katrina wasn't really all that bad. Etc. etc.
The Ice Caps (he called sea ice "Ice Caps") are not really melting that bad and besides we don't really know what…
gregladen | June 18, 2014The United States Patent Office has decided that "Redskins" is a term offensive to Native Americans and can not be trademarked. Details here.
Will the team challenge this, and if so, on what basis? Free speech? Freedom to be offensive?
Maybe this video had an effect.
gregladen | June 18, 2014I woke up this morning to find about a dozen reports on my iPad Damage app indicating trees down and hail damage in many communities from Mankato to Edina, south of the Twin Cities. More of the same. We have been having severe weather for about a month now, or a bit less. One day in late May, Julia and I were taking pictures of people driving too fast through the lake that formed in front of our house form a major downpour. Early in that storm we witnessed a ground strike not too far away. A short while after that an ambulance came screaming by our house, coming from the direction of the…
gregladen | June 18, 2014THIS IS BRILLIANT! BRILLIANT, I SAY!
Andy Revkin, time to sell your guitar!
Oh, and this one too:
(Hat tip Get Energy Smart)
gregladen | June 17, 2014There has been a glitch in the data processing process at NASA and the word was sent out that they may be revising the May data. Stay tuned.
Please note May 2014 GISTEMP LOTI numbers preliminary due to a glitch with Chinese CLIMAT data. Update to follow pic.twitter.com/1hRF4iJA55
— NASA GISS (@NASAGISS) June 17, 2014
Thanks Chris Mooney for pointing this out.
For the period of the instrumental record, going back to 1881, May 2014 was the hottest May on record. See this post for more details.
gregladen | June 17, 2014I first heard about Wade's book when a colleague started talking about bits and pieces of it. He was reading it pursuant to a writing a review. I asked the publisher for a review copy, which they kindly supplied, and started tracking the pre-publication reactions. After reading the first couple of chapters, I realized that I needed to write a review of this book, but I wanted to do something a bit more than a blog post. So, I contacted American Scientist. I had reviewed two books for them earlier. American Scientist is actually my very favorite science magazine (among magazines that are…
gregladen | June 14, 2014The tl;dr: maybe a little but for benign reasons. If fertility is important to you and you are a man, don’t put hot things in your pockets. This may fall into the category of switching from tidy whities to boxer briefs.
A study came out in September suggesting that it does. It is a meta-analysis by Jessica Adams et all, published in Environmental International, called “Effect of mobile telephones on sperm quality: A systematic review and meta-analysis.”
The study considered the effects of radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMR) on sperm motility (movement), viability, and…
gregladen | June 12, 2014Around the world, productivity of businesses, service, all things related to the progress of civilization, and pretty much everything else will be delayed and repeatedly interrupted from today on through some time in July as the quadrennial event known as World Cup Soccer is played out. This is just like the Olympics but much much longer and there is only one sport. Plus, there are only a few countries involved. And, of those, most are sacrificial lambs -- only a few of the countries that play ever win.
Every one in the world can watch World Cup Soccer for free by just turning on the TV or…
gregladen | June 11, 2014From WaPo:
When sports fans tuned into the NBA finals Tuesday night to see the San Antonio Spurs take on the Miami Heat, they got a look into another fierce standoff.
A California tribe paid for the anti-Redskins advertisement “Proud to Be” to run in seven major cities during halftime. The airing marked the first time the ad, which initially appeared online in time for the Super Bowl, had run before such a wide television audience.
gregladen | June 10, 2014According to the NOAA GISS global instrumental record for temperatures (1880 to the present), since 2000 (inclusively) we have had
2002 and 2003 ties for first and second warmest January. Januray 2014 was the fourth warmest, 2005 the fifth warmest.
February 2010 was the third warmest Feburary, and 2002 had the fourth warmest February.
March 2002 was the warmest, 2012 was the second warmest. March 2014 was the fourth warmest.
April 2010 was the warmest on record, April 2014 the second warmest.
We are still waiting for the data on May 2014, but during this time the warmest May on record…