342 That's, like, twelve years. So if you are 28 years old or younger, you've never experienced a cooler than average month. If you live on Earth. Paul Douglas has the skinny:

This is about Obama Care: Here's Obama on the defunding effort: If you can't see that second video, it is HERE.

Recently, formerly respected writer Matt Ridley has been making a fool of himself with absurd and scientifically unsupported commentary on climate change. Recently he wrote something for the Wall Street Journal, "Dialing Back the Alarm on Climate Change," that serves as an example of this. Professor John Abraham has also provided an item for the Wall Street Journal that addresses Ridley's goof. As Abraham puts it, "Matt Ridley states that a forthcoming major climate change report will lower the expected temperature rise we will experience in the future ("A Reprieve From Climate Doom,"…

Hat tip Miss Cellania: I would like to add this. Some devices that are meant to replace a knife may save you time when you chop the food item but then, can't be put in the dishwasher and have to be cleaned with a tiny toothbrush or something which takes way longer than the time you saved.

No. First, let me tell you that the Journal of Cosmology has a very checkered history and anything published in it can not be trusted in the same way one might trust counter-intuitive results, provisionally at least, in a legit journal. An article in the journal indicates that British scientists found stuff way high up at the edge of the out space-atmosphere boundary that must be from comets. They give the argument that it must be from a comet because they did their sampling of it during a time when comet dust would be likely found in the region (because a comet's remains,a meteor swarm,…

There is a strong argument to be made that the recent flooding in Colorado is the result of global warming. Here are three things one could say about the flooding. Think of these as alternative hypotheses to explain that event: 1) Weather has extremes. Sometimes, instead of raining just a bit, it rains a hella lot and you get a big giant flood. 2) Weather has extremes etc. etc. but global warming tends to make some of the extremes more extremes, so instead of getting just a big flood, you get a big giant flood. 3) The storm that brought well over a foot of rain to one mountainous area was…

Maggie Koerth-Baker has an amazing story at Boing Boing. The link is HERE. You just have to go read it. It is about what happened to the body of Addie Mae Colins, one of the people killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing by the KKK. Just go read it.

The big, current, story in the Atlantic is, of course, hurrican/tropical storm (there is some confusion on the status of the storm over the last 12 hours) Ingrid. Regardless of how it is classified, Ingrid is going to cause major flooding in Mexico. But over the next several days a second and potentially very interesting but less threatening story is going to develop. The first hurricane of the season, almost breaking the record for the latest first Atlantic hurricane that we've observed, was Humberto. Humberto degraded into an unnamed storm, a bloby stormy thing, moving roughly north way…

Fukushima Update #70: If you can't measure it, you can't analyze it. by Analiese Miller and Greg Laden It has been suggested, by various commenters on the internet, that the problem with Fukushima is not that there is a dangerous radioactive mess there, but rather, that the authorities in charge have decided that exposure to radiation is dangerous, when it really isn’t. The argument has been made that the evacuation of the region around Fukushima at the time of the meltdowns and explosions was unnecessary. This presumably also means that the exclusion zones, where people are not allowed to…

The EPA is providing free climate change related content material for middle school kids. You can get the material HERE. In my opinion, even though this material is aimed at middle school audiences, it is all potentially useful in high school as well depending on the class you are running. For instance, if you have a climate change related module in your 10th grade biology class, some of this material will make excellent handouts. I would like to recommend an exercise, perhaps for extra credit. FOX News went apoplectic about the idea that a federal agency full of expertise on climate and…

Ingrid is serious and is going to hit something. (UPDATE: Ingrid is the second hurricane of the Atlantic Season.) A tropical disturbance of one form or another has been hanging around since around the beginning of the hurricane season in or near the southern Gulf of Mexico, and the latest instance of this phenomenon has finally made use of very warm surface water and sup itself up into a real live tropical storm that is doing to turn into a hurricane by the end of the weekend, and hit the east coast of Mexico. This will not be a real strong hurricane but it will be VERY wet and thus…

Almost everything in the bible is exaggerated, including the floods. So when we have a flood that IS exaggerated (as a weather event) it is natural to call it biblical. The National Weather Service is calling this flood BIBLICAL (They always use all caps). Paul Douglas is calling it biblical (see below). I sent my friend the National Weather Service bulletin mentioning the biblical nature of the flood. She read my email on her cell phone while gazing at the wreckage of part of the back of her house down stream in a large river that was never there before and used to be the road, trapped at…

I just heard about this: University of Manitoba climatologist among three killed in fatal crash in Arctic Ocean A Manitoba researcher is dead after a helicopter crashed into the Arctic Ocean Monday evening. The University of Manitoba climatologist, Klaus Hochheim, was among three people who died in the crash, which happened around 7 p.m. CST in the McClure Straight in the Northwest Territories. The helicopter was on a routine mission to check ice conditions at the time it crashed and was travelling with the CCGS Amundsen, a coast-guard ice breaker. Marc Thibault, the commanding officer of the…

Black NRA from Sarah Silverman

Learning is easy. Getting it right is harder. Expunging falsehoods is hardest, but most rewarding. There is a "meme" (using the definition of a meme as something most people in a certain community think whether it is true or not) that to produce one gallon of Ethanol for fuel you have to use some larger number (I've heard two, and I've heard five) gallons of gasoline. In an ideal world there would be farms with giant solar collectors and wind generators. These devices would produce electricity to run distilling machines and hybrid tractors and such. On the farm would be grown GMO plants…

From Paul Douglas: Much of the Upper Midwest could use a good soaking. Hard to believe when we started July, most of the Midwest was drought free. WeatherNation Chief Meteorologist Paul Douglas says in 35 years in the weather business, he's never seen such sudden changes. Hence the term: "Flash Drought"

This just in to the newsroom... FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: ZACK KOPPLIN FILES PUBLIC RECORDS LAWSUIT AGAINST SUPERINTENDENT JOHN WHITE September 10, 2013 Re: Zachary S. (“Zack”) Kopplin, Citizen versus John White, in his Official Capacity as Superintendent of the Department of Education, a Department of the Executive Branch of the State of Louisiana Baton Rouge, Louisiana—On Monday, September 9, 2013, education activist Zack Kopplin filed suit against Louisiana Superintendent John White and the Department of Education in order to compel White to release a series of public records concerning the…

As you know, if Tropical Storm Humberto, which is out in the eastern Atlantic at the moment, turns into a hurricane AFTER noon tomorrow, September 11th, it will break the record for latest first hurricane in the Atlantic hurricane season for the period of good records. Everyone was expecting Humberto to ramp up hurricane intensity today, but strengthening of the storm has stalled a bit, and Humberto is not as organized as expected. Officially, the National Weather Service predicts that Humberto will be a hurricane later today. But it is possible that this won't happen. We will be watching…

What if you went to drive to work one day and the highway on ramp was closed, and a big sign across it said "Highway is closed. Sorry for the inconvenience." Well, you would find your way to a different highway entrance. But say that one was closed as well.Then, you check around and find out that all the highways in your state are closed because the state decided to close them. No more highways for you. Or, one day you go to check the mail and there is a single post card, and nothing else, in your mail box. The post card reads "The United States Postal Service has permanently suspended…

Pacific Island Nations Tell The World ‘Climate Change Has Arrived’ “Climate change has arrived,” and the world must act. That’s the message from fifteen nations in the southwestern Pacific, who signed a statement yesterday calling on other countries to join them in “the urgent reduction and phase down of greenhouse gas pollution.” With Climate Journalism Like This, Who Needs Fiction? (Just go read the post) U.S. Navy Triples Clean Energy Startup Funding In Hawaii A clean energy seed money startup program in Hawai’i will now have triple its existing budget courtesy of the U.S. Navy’s Office of…