gregladen | July 30, 2013WeatherNationTV Chief Meteorologist Paul Douglas looks at how climate change leads to rising sea levels and what coastal cities can expect to see by 2040. Also, more on torrential downpours and record setting rainfalls.
gregladen | July 30, 2013OK, so supposedly a fresh water lake has appeared at the North Pole and it is ENORMOUS and Santa Claus has been missing since and is presumed dead. OK, not really. The Giant Lake is really just a "pond" of meltwater on top of the polar sea ice, on the North Pole. But wait, actually, it is not really at the North Pole, it was photographed by some scientists who hang around the North Pole but this pond, which is small but was photographed with a wide angle lens, isn't really exactly at the North Pole anyway, and these ponds form there all the time in the summer.
But really, even though they…
gregladen | July 30, 2013... which would be really funny because ... well, you clearly see why this is funny.
Christian groups and sects are often opposed to the use of biological tissue that would otherwise be discarded in research and therapy including "stem cell research." This is because they think some of that biological tissue could be future parishioners, or because they watched too many Disney movies involving fairies. Or something. Anyway, there is this one kind of stem cell that exists among regular cells that can be extracted from the body of a living, breathing already signed up parishioners and the…
gregladen | July 30, 2013This is a very important political ad because it involves climate change and climate change denialism in the political process. This (involvement) needs to happen in every single campaign from now on, for every single office. This is a start. A slow start, but at least a start.
There is important context for this ad that you can get HERE from Peter Sinclair.
gregladen | July 29, 2013... well, actually, you can start by shutting up.
Then, while you are sitting there quietly read this: Why Teaching Is Harder Than It Looks.
Then, add your advice about how we can fix our system of education to the comments below. But each suggestion must be paid for (with money) and fit into the schedule (by paying someone to do what you suggest instead of what they are at present required to do).
Which means, ultimately, there is one fundamental answer to improving our system of education: Throw money at it. For starters, stop taking money away from it. The, put more in.
Discuss.…
gregladen | July 28, 2013This is a site in the vicinity of Meroe in the Sudan, and seem to date to a period of transition between foraging and farming. From The Telegraph:
In a graveyard in Al-Kadada, north of Khartoum, the archaeologists have dug up the tomb of a man and a woman facing each other in a ditch, with bodies of two women, two goats and a dog buried nearby.
The discovery of the group "confirms" excavations last year which found traces of the oldest human sacrifice ever identified in Africa, Jacques Reinold, a researcher for the French section of the Sudanese antiquities department, said.
What do you…
gregladen | July 28, 2013UPDATE: Mass Coal Plant Protest Happening Now FOLLOW: @oharjo #summerheat #coalisstupid #CloseBraytonPt @350Mass @efeghali for updates.
UPDATE Brayton Point Coal Plant Protest Live Streaming HERE.
This morning, Sunday, July 28th, there is an action happening in Southeastern Massachusetts. A group of climate activists are going to shut down a coal plant and replace it with solar panels and wind generators.
Obviously the solar panels and wind generators will be mainly symbolic because you can't build a lot of large infrastructure while the police are bearing down on you. Indeed, local…
gregladen | July 25, 2013OK, watch this and answer a question for me. The question is, does our American love for free speech translate into ignoring this man's behavior, or does our (seemingly less important) American love for freedom for all require that a person who behaves this way NOT be the chief of police of any governmental unit of any size, ever, anywhere?
(NOT WORK SAFE)
If I lived in Gilberton, Pennsylvania, I'd probably start carrying around a gun to protect myself from the police chief. I wouldn't do that because I love guns or really want to carry one around. I would do so because I consider…
gregladen | July 25, 2013Dorian is a tropical storm that formed in the eastern tropical Atlantic ago. Dorian is probably going to head almost straight west-northwest and menace the vicinity north of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas. This is going to take some time. By the end of the weekend, Dorian will be encountering islands in the northeastern Caribbean as a topical storm, most likely. The chance of Dorian remaining as a storm (as opposed to regressing to a depression) or strengthening from storm to hurricane is not at all large. But, unlike some others storms we've seen lately, Dorian seems to gain a little…
gregladen | July 24, 2013With J. Drake Hamilton, Shawn Otto, Greg Laden, and moderated by Desiree Schell.
The sound is messed up in the beginning, but gets much better after a while:
A full transcript, graciously and painstakingly produced by Avery Thompson, and other information about the panel, is HERE at Skepchick.
Please feel free to add comments or questions below, and I'll be monitoring comments at Skepchcick.org as well.
gregladen | July 23, 2013Most of the current models of glacial ice melting (and contribution to sea level rise) focus on ice melting and less than they need to on the process of glaciers falling apart in larger chunks such as ice bergs. Also, current understanding of glacial ice melting due to global warming indicates that the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is more vulnerable to melting over coming decades or centuries than is the Eastern Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS). New research from two different teams seems to provide a major corrective to these assumptions.
First, about how glaciers turn into ocean water.…
gregladen | July 23, 2013The National Academies Press of the United States has recently released a report that will be of interest to those of you concerned with climate change (which better be every one of you dammit!). The report talks about increasing floods due to weather whiplash and sea level rise due to glacial melting (and subsidence), mainly in relation to the levees program and insurance, but also more generally. Here's a small excerpt to give you a flavor:
Community flood risk scenarios will continue to evolve as change occurs. Climate change will have a variety of regional impacts, and the geographic…
gregladen | July 23, 2013James Hansen, the famous climate scientist and author of Storms of my Grandchildren, talks about the possible role of nuclear power in addressing climate change, and in particular, reducing the release of fossil carbon into the atmosphere.
I think he is far to pessimistic on the use of solar and wind energy than he needs to be and notice that he, and no one else ever, seems to mention geothermal, which could reduce our release of carbon by double digit percentages using existing technology in a few years. Having said that, there is probably no way to solve our energy problem without…
gregladen | July 23, 2013From The Australian
THE Gandalf of science, archeologist Mike Morwood, who helped find a new species of tiny humans dubbed the Hobbit, died yesterday after a year-long battle with cancer.
Professor Morwood's legacy will be linked to the Indonesian island of Flores, where in 2003 he was part of a team that discovered Homo floresiensis, which rewrote the history books and changed our understanding of human evolution....
gregladen | July 23, 2013 Does this picture of Hitler make you like him?
I dislike Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's, that dislike contingent on his guilt yet to be proven (but very likely, it seems). His picture on the cover of Rolling Stone makes a point that struck me during the mayhem in Boston, and it is a good point. Those who reacted to this photograph negatively are seeing this situation in the first order, missing the point, missing the nuance. They are operating at the bodice-ripping romance novel level of thinking, not even the semi-complex Hercule Poirot level, of thinking. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts cop…
gregladen | July 22, 2013When the Royal Baby is born, any time now, it will be a girl, according to about 67% of some 50 psychics recently surveyed. If the psychics were guessing randomly, we would assume that about half of them would say "girl" and the other half would say "boy" but with a full 2/3rds saying one thing, we have to assume they are on to something. And, the lead psychic apparently said that one of the girl's names will be Diana. At least one of her names. So possibly two of her names. She might be Diana Diana Diana Windsor. Apparently, this is a possibili...
...wait, what? The baby has already…
