gregladen | May 20, 2014You have probably already seen the cringworthy Youtube Video of the famous Wheel of Fortune Fail in which a college student makes three awful blunders and loses the game. Well, I'm here to tell you about another Wheel of Fortune Fail that is even worse. Pat Sajak, the famous host of the long running game show, turns out to be a rabid Climate Change Science Denialist.
Here's a recent tweet by Pat:
I now believe global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their own ends. Good night.
— Pat Sajak (@patsajak) May 20, 2014
Here's a screenshot of the same tweet…
gregladen | May 20, 2014A few days ago I noted that April 2014 was one of the warmest Aprils on record. This morning, NOAA has released its data showing that April was actually a bit warmer than I had suggested.
NOAA has already stated that "The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces was the fourth highest for March on record, at 0.71°C (1.28°F) above the 20th century average of 12.3°C (54.1°F)" and "The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–March period (year-to-date) was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 12.3°C (54.1°F), the seventh…
gregladen | May 20, 2014There is new research on this suggesting that it does. I've written it up here.
gregladen | May 20, 2014This Sunday morning, on Atheist Talk radio, I’ll interview Paul Douglas, America’s favorite meteorologists (at least when the weather is good).
When I first moved to Minnesota, which happened to be during a period of intense Spring and Summer storminess for a few years in a row (including this event which wiped out Amanda’s dorm long before I ever met her), I spent a bit of time while searching for a place to live watching the local news, to get a feel for the place. Coming from the Boston area, where the main local news stations aggressively compete with each other using their…
gregladen | May 19, 2014I have nothing against Chobani Yoghurt. In fact, I like it. Even more importantly, Huxley likes it.
But the image above annoys me. It says "Nature got us to 100 calories, not scientists. #howmatters"
This is in accord with their latest ad, here:
OK, I have three challenges for Chobani Yoghurt.
First, demonstrate how science is not related to your yoghurt production AT ALL. Chances are you use methods of ensuring that your product does not contain harmful bacteria, or that the bacteria is killed off or removed during the processing cycle. Almost all food manufacturers use various methods…
gregladen | May 19, 2014Curious George is called a "little monkey" in all of the Curious George literature, TV shows, and movies. But Curious George has no tail, and generally, that means you are an ape. But, there is one monkey with no tail, or at least one that is vestigial and not visible: The Barbary Macaque (Macaca sylvanus). For this reason, some have suggested that George is a monkey, specificaly, a Barbary Macaque or perhaps a close previously undiscovered species.
However, one of the main features distinguishing between monkeys and apes is the intermembral index. This is simply the relative proportion…
gregladen | May 17, 2014This is #UnsubscribeFromJunkMailWeekend. For each unwanted mass email you get, take a moment to unsubscribe. The entire Internet will breath a sigh of relief.
gregladen | May 17, 2014We saw it coming, the denialists denied, they were wrong, this is all pretty bad.
gregladen | May 15, 2014The Global Warming Policy Foundation is an organization of mainly economists dedicated to mucking up the development and advancement of good science-based policy related to climate change. It is a denialist "think" tank.
A couple of weeks ago, Swedish meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson joined the GWPF. This was a little surprising, but not totally surprising. It was surprising because Bengtsson is scientist and the foundation is anti-science and, as I noted, mostly economists. (Well, they are sort of like scientists too, but a different kind of science.) It was not surprising because…
gregladen | May 14, 2014The Dark Snow Project is staring up again, it being almost summer(ish) in Greenland.
The results in the study of the odd 2012 winter are now in. That year, there was a huge spike in melting on the surface of Greenland. (Discussed here.) One idea is that a good part of this melting was caused by extra soot from extensive wildfires in North America, which increased the amount of solar energy collected on the ice surface.
The results confirm this, and the Dark Snow team is returning this year to collect more information.
Here's a video giving an overview of the project, from Peter Sinclair'…
gregladen | May 14, 2014NASA's instrumental data set for their Land-Ocean Temperature Index, which goes back to 1880, has updated for April, and it appears that this year's April is the second hottest on record. Also, we had one of the warmest winters on record, despite appearances to the contrary for those who live under the Polar Vortex. Paul Douglas posted the graphic above showing anomalies relative to a 1981-2010 base period for the months of December through February. Note that there is general warmth across the globe with a few cool spots, including a VERY cold region over North America.
If we do have an…
gregladen | May 11, 2014Probably.
I want to start out by welcoming all you bee experts who think it is not the neonicotinoids, or that it is not so simple, to make your case in the comments. There is a great deal of controversy over what is causing bees to die off. That controversy even impinges on how we describe the thing we are talking about. Notice that I've not used the term "colony collapse disorder" because that is a term that may have been misused, or at least, that people who know stuff have noted has been used incorrectly thus mucking up the discussion.
Here's the thing. There is a bee crisis.…
gregladen | May 8, 2014The weatherologists have more or less stopped saying there might be an El Niño this year. Now they are saying there will be an El Niño, and they are starting to consider how strong it will be. Well, actually, they've stopped doing that too and are now talking about whether it will be a mondo-El Niño or a mondo-mondo-El Niño.
Here is a newly released video by Peter Sinclair and the Yale Climate Forum about the coming El Niño:
I have a prediction to make. First a bit of background.
You know about the so-called "hiatus" in global warming, because every Tea Partier with a mouth is yammering…
gregladen | May 7, 2014I'm thinking it will be the food you eat that gets you. Here's why.
Humans eat a wide variety of foods; as a species, the diversity of species we eat is greater than any other animal by a very large margin, with the only quirky exception being the animals that we take along with us, the commensals such as rats and cockroaches. Most primates eat a high diversity of foods, but about two million years ago or a bit less, according to the “Cooking Hypothesis” (which a lot of people think is correct) we took an already diverse primate diet and added to it anything we might encounter in the…
gregladen | May 6, 2014As you know, the National Climate Change Assessment report is out. I'm actually rather overwhelmed with it all. It is a turning point by way of full acknowledgment of the importance of climate change and the need to act. Good for you, government of the United States!
One small item has crossed my desk this morning tangential to the assessment but so deliciously hilarious that I did not want to let it pass without comment.
Part of the roll out of the assessment will involve President Obama speaking with meteorologists across the country. Friend of mine made the remark that Fox News wanted…
gregladen | May 5, 2014Every one of these is a topic I'd like to write an entire blog post about but I don't have time right now. So, YOU write the blog post!
In Michigan there is an emerging debate and discussion about using the Vast Forests in that state to provide energy. This is a good idea because it does not involve the release of fossil Carbon from fossil fuels. It is a bad idea because it involves the release of Carbon currently trapped in a medium term and important Carbon sink. It is interesting because it highlights a key feature of the whole energy and climate change thing. Sun makes burnable stuff…
gregladen | May 5, 2014Miri has posted an excellent “…Review of the White House’s Report on Campus Sexual Violence which is a must read for anyone interested in sexual assault on campuses, and everyone should be concerned about this issue.
I would like to address one aspect of the problem here, briefly: the use of and concern over the term “rape culture.”
When I first encountered the term “rape culture” I was put off by it. I’ve lived in and directly studied, and indirectly studied through the literature, a wide range of cultures around the world, and there is a great range of variation in prevalence of and…
gregladen | May 3, 2014I refuse to live in fear. I am not a bleeding heart liberal. I have a civic duty. I have to do it. Burglars are not human, they are vermin. I try to be a good person, to do what I should, be a good citizen.
Those are among the words uttered by Byron Smith shortly after he murdered two teenagers in his home last Thanksgiving. There had been numerous break-ins in Smith’s neighborhood near Little Falls, Minnesota. Byron set a trap, making his home look vulnerable and unoccupied. If the burglars were to break into his home, they would come in a certain way, and end up descending the stairs into…