gregladen | March 24, 2014If we, Western Civilization, had started out with electric cars, and a century later someone came along with the idea of exploding little dollops of gasoline mixed with air to propel them, that person would be thought insane.
Depending on price, the cost of energy to propel an electric car a given distance can be about 5% of the cost to propel a gas-explosion style car. The electricity to power the electric car can be produced in any number of ways, some icky some cleaner, but much more efficiently. Some of that energy can be generated where the car is parked, at home or work, under a…
gregladen | March 22, 2014WTF Frontiers in Psychology Journal? Scientists publish a peer reviewed paper in your journal, a bunch of cranks complain about it, and successfully bully you into taking the paper off your web site? Do you seriously want the rest of the scientific world to take you seriously, ever, from now on? I'm thinking that's not going to happen. We await a full and unmitigated apology to Stephan Lewandowsky, JohnCook, Klaus Oberauer and Michael Marriott, the authors of Recursive fury: conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation
In the mean time, since you…
gregladen | March 21, 2014Aside from its tragic nature and its apparent media value as a mystery greater than who will be the Next American Idol, the apparent disappearance of flight 370 has another meaning, I think, that has been entirely missed as far as I can tell.
The other day I was having a conversation with some colleagues, which led to someone quoting Stallman, which in turn led to noting that Stallman refuses to use a smart phone (or any cell phone, perhaps, can't remember) because of the danger of being constantly tracked by the authorities. I note that my "smart phone" is dumb as a brick. Whenever I need…
gregladen | March 18, 2014Well before mid century we will probably pass a threshold beyond which we'll really regret having not curtailed the release of fossil Carbon into the atmosphere in the form of Carbon Dioxide. The best case scenario for "business as usual" release of the greenhouse gas is that some of the carbon, or some of the heat (from sunlight) gets taken out of the main arena (the atmosphere and sea surface) and buried or reflected somewhere for a while, and this all happens on a slightly delayed time scale.
The reason we know this is a little thing called science. And, more exactly, physics. And…
gregladen | March 18, 2014A few days ago I made a prediction for this year's minimum Arctic Sea Ice extent. That's still valid. Or not. Either way, it's still my prediction.
But looking at the ice over the last few days, we see that for the first time in a while the extent of ice estimated by the NSICD has stopped hugging the -2SD line and is rising upwards like a chilly Phoenix rising out of slush ashes. In fact, one could even say that Arctic Sea Ice has recovered! Just look at the last eight days of data!
Think I'm cherry picking? It's possible, let's look at the larger picture, over a whole year's cycle:…
gregladen | March 18, 2014The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) was launched in January 2012 by Scott Mandia and Joshua Wolfe to provide valuable legal resources to our climate scientists who are in need. CSLDF needs your help.
CSLDF needs to raise $80,000. The great news is that philanthropist Charles Zeller has graciously offered to MATCH the first $40,000 that is raised and philanthropist Peter Cross has offered to put up the first $10,000. This means CSLDF already has the first $20,000 of the $80,000 goal. We need YOU to help CSLDF reach its goal.
For the previous two years, CSLDF has been managed by…
gregladen | March 16, 2014I'm not big on Saint Patrick's Day. And yes, that's because I'm Irish.
But I thought this was OK:
Not his best work. So I'll add this:
gregladen | March 16, 2014Our future is at risk. The science is settled, in the main, though there are many details to continue to work out and there are unknowns. But no one doubts that business as usual release of fossil carbon into the atmosphere mainly as the greenhouse gas Carbon Dioxide spells big trouble for humanity and the planet Earth, including eventual massive sea level rise and highly disruptive changes in the Earth’s climatology that will make a mess of many things including our food supply. Think failed state. Think Syria. Now, think failed planet, Syria over half the globe, the other half merely a mess…
gregladen | March 15, 2014Sounds like kind of a technical question.
In Irritable Bowl Disease, including Crohn's Disease, it may be the case that bad bacteria cause intestinal wall inflammation. Or, inflammation could allow bad bacteria to do better than good bacteria. And, that might be an oversimplification because there could be other factors as well, including genetic predispositions.
Many younger people who present with various abdominal symptoms are treated with antibiotics. These antibiotics could disproportionately favor bad bacteria.
Whether from inflammation, genes, or use of antibiotics, it does…
gregladen | March 14, 2014Warning, rapey themes and strong language, go away if you can't handle that.
Which is worse, rape threats or lightening up about rape threats? Since I hardly ever get rape threats and the ones I get are absurd, it is not really for me to say. The question here, is what does a woman who is active on line and gets numerous and scary rape (and other) threats feel about those threats vs. advice from allies(ish) who say "don't worry about it, just leave that behind."
This is tricky stuff, because the overt strategy one takes can vary depending on circumstances and there are a lot of valid…
gregladen | March 13, 2014Peter Sinclair has tackled this difficult topic with an excellent video and informative blog post. The blog post is here, and I've pasted the video below.
This is a complicated issue. The water problem in California is obviously made worse by increased demands from population growth and expansion of agriculture. Under "normal" (natural) conditions, California and the American Southwest is fairly dry and can undergo extra dry periods. But climate change seems to be playing a role here as well. It appears that recent lack of rain in the region is the result of changes in atmospheric…
gregladen | March 12, 2014We are reaching the point where Arctic Sea ice tends to max out, in terms of extent (I will not be talking about volume here, though that is vitally important). Using data provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, I ran an informal "Science by Spreadsheet" analysis and came up with a prediction for the minimum extent of sea ice this year, which would be some time in September.
This is mostly a seat of the pants analysis and don't take it too seriously, but feel free to put your bets in the comments section.
The data over the last few decades shows a generally declining extent of…
gregladen | March 12, 2014Daphne Wysham and Daniel Weiss interviewed on Real News about the event of two nights ago.
gregladen | March 11, 2014On March 11th, 2011, a large earthquake caused a large tsunami in Japan, and the two historic events wrecked the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The power plant had six boiling water reactors of the kind used around the world in many nuclear power plants. Three of the six reactors suffered a meltdown, and containment structures meant to contain a meltdown were also breached. This is regarded as one of the worst nuclear disasters to ever happen, possibly the worst of all, though comparing major nuclear disasters to each other is hard for a number of reasons.
As you know if you are a…
gregladen | March 11, 2014This is nice.
Karl Eccleston and Fiona Pepper are amazingly good actors. The writing is excellent as is the directing. The subtext. THE SUBTEXT IS BRILLIANT.
When I was living with the Efe Pygmies in the Ituri Forest, they would imitate French and English speakers while ranting about specific people who had annoyed or amused them. It was easy to tell which they were doing ... French vs. English. But it only sounded like people imitating people, it didn't sound like the real thing. I remember Sid Caesar doing this as part of his regular routine in several languages, and talking about…
gregladen | March 10, 2014A bunch (maybe 30 or more) of US Senators are going to talk all night tonight about climate change. This will happen on the Senate floor. So far all or most of them are Democrats. Here is a list of who is doing it, with their twitter handle. Also on the list is who is not doing it. And, there are phone numbers too.
Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to tweet or call those who are doing it and thank them, and tweet or call those who are not and tell them that they should.
I'm pretty sure this list, at Dail Kos, will be updated dynamically throughout the process.
Go.
gregladen | March 10, 2014If you missed the first (or later any) episode of Cosmos 2014, you can get it on Amazon Prime streaming (for a fee). It's worth it. Here are a few comments I jotted down (then lightly edited) while watching the first episode.
Neil does have his own spaceship, like Carl did. That's important because it lets him fly to interesting places. It is one of those spaceships of the imagination. Everybody should have one.
The visuals are amazing and informative and seem to be scientifically accurate to the extent possible. There is quite a bit of attention to scale, and how perspective shifts with…
gregladen | March 10, 2014Neil DeGrasse Tyson on CNN:
And while we are on the topic, Carl Sagan, of the original Cosmos, on climate change:
See also this from Chris Mooney at Mother Jones.
And just for the heck of it, here's my interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson from 2011.
gregladen | March 7, 2014Washington, DC - During a press conference today, Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), announced the members of a newly formed Senate Climate Action Task Force and discussed their plans to take action on climate change.
Click here to watch the video of today's press conference.
The members of the task force are listed below:
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD)
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)…