Since 2001 the amount of Arctic Sea ice that has melted during the summer has generally increased. There may have been a long term trend in melting of ice in the northern hemisphere generally, including mountain glaciers, the Greenland glaciers, and seasonally, Arctic Sea Ice. But the seasonal melting of Arctic Sea ice seems to represent a metastable shift unprecedented in available data. There is probably a tipping point followed by positive feedback. From 2001 onwards, the amount of sea ice melted each summer has gone up, and this has resulted in two related effects: 1) The total amount…

Hey, check this out: Dr. Donald R. Prothero recently retired from his professorship at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA after 27 years of teaching in order to concentrate on his writing and consulting. Dr. Prothero is an indefatigable advocate for geology and paleontology, which he combines with a passion for communicating science to the public. Notably, he has served as a consultant for Discovery Channel, History Channel and National Geographic specials. He frequently gives public talks and presentations to groups interested in Earth science, including presentations to the NYC Skeptics…

This is a guest post by David Kirtley. David originally posted this as a Google Doc, and I'm reproducing his work here with his permission. Just the other day I was speaking to a climate change skeptic who made mention of an old Time or Newsweek (he was not sure) article that talked about fears of a coming ice age. There were in fact a number of articles back in the 1970s that discussed the whole Ice Age problem, and I'm not sure what my friend was referring to. But here, David Kirtley places a recent meme that seems to be an attempt to diffuse concern about global warming because we…

Global Warming is the increase in the Earth's temperature owing to the greenhouse effects of the release of CO2 and other gasses into the atmosphere, mainly by humans burning fossil fuel, but also by the release of Methane from oil wells and melting of Arctic permafrost, natural gas from leaky pipes, and so on. This increase in temperature occurs in both the atmosphere and the oceans, as well as the land surface itself. During some periods of time most of the increase seems to happen in the atmosphere, while during other times it seems to occur more in the oceans. (As an aside: when you…

I think most people will agree that in North America (and other places) we've been having some bad weather. Some of the weather is not necessarily intrinsically bad ... so what if it is a little cooler or a little warmer than you expect. Aridity? Deserts are nice! Extra rainfall? Great for the plants. But actually that sort of thing has its down side since important systems like agriculture, the water supply, and Spring Break work reasonably well because of expectations that might not be met if the weather is different. Other weather is intrinsically bad. I'd mention tornadoes but at the…

UPDATE (March 2017): At the time that Samaras, his son, and his colleague, were crushed to death inside their tornado-chasing car, which was apparently rolled by the force of 200-300 mile an hour winds over a distance of a half mile or so, it was said by numerous news sources that this car had been trapped by a traffic jam caused by looky-loos who wanted to see the tornado and/or people sent out on the roads by a local weather reporter to "escape." So, that apparent fact was part of the underpinning of the original post (below). Later analysis of the situation indicates that there was…

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Tim Samaras, his son Paul Samaras and their colleague Carl Young were killed yesterday when their research vehicle was crushed almost beyond recognition by a Tornado they were "chasing" in Oklahoma. If you ever watched Storm Chasers, the show on Discovery Channel (it is on Netflix) you may know of these guys. Tim Samaras's team was "TWISTEX" ... they drove pickup trucks with extremely well engineered systems for deploying "probes" that would collect data from tornadoes passing overhead. Their methodology was to get in and out before the tornado came through, and to the extent that we can…

Breasts are interesting. For starters, people interested in behavioral biology make much of the fact that in many species males have elaborated or exaggerated traits. But they seem to ignore that other than size and a bit of redistribution of muscle mass, males in humans don't. Maybe facial hair is an elaborated trait, possibly a deeper voice, but both of these could be argued to be non-elaborated in males and, rather, altered in females. Meanwhile, human females have a whole bunch of elaborated traits. Breasts are among these traits. There is a good explanation for this we may touch on…

Cathie Adams, leader of the Texas Eagle Forum, of anti-woman Phyllis Schlafly fame, has proof. And, this relates to what is going to happen in certain important upcoming elections including Minnesota's 6th district. Let me 'splain.

Al Franken's daughter just had a baby, so congratulations to them! Joseph Bryson Greenwald, 6 lbs 11 oz. We are awaiting word on the baby's length.

Jim Graves, the candidate who almost beat Michele Bachmann in her bid for re-election to Congress last year, has suspended his campaign. I do hope he re-enters the race when Bachmann changes her mind and decides to run again! Here's the letter from Graves: This is the most difficult message I’ve ever had to write. A year ago, we set out on a mission: To restore civility, functionality and honesty to Washington by removing Michele Bachmann from office. Her hateful rhetoric and dangerous policies fueled an extremist movement unlike anything we’d seen in a long time. The tone it created was a…

A friend of mine, Gareth Renowden, wrote a novel called The Aviator (The Burning World). It is a post-climate change story, set in the future, and it is a good one. I highly recommend it. Gareth is also an activist who puts considerable effort into climate change. Some time in the last few hours, the Facebook page Gareth had created to promote his novel was taken down by Facebook. From Gareth's blog post on the matter: Yesterday The Aviator‘s Facebook page disappeared. When I logged in to check the page I was greeted by a message that said the page was being removed because it had been…

As you know, Michele Bachmann, Congressperson for Minnesota's Sixth District, has announced that she will not seek re-election to her seat in Washington DC. Bachmann almost lost her re-election to challenger Jim Graves last year. I'm convinced that had the election been held a few weeks later, Graves would have won. Recently, internal polling data from within Bachmann's campaign became known, and showed that as of a couple of weeks ago Bachmann was actually behind Graves. Bachmann's response to this polling was an ad buy; the Bachmann campaign started up early with local ads, clearly…

Elizabeth Chin has written an excellent scholarly takedown, in the form of a "letter from your thesis reader," of Jason Richwine's 2009 Harvard PhD dissertation, " IQ and Immigration." I've not read Richwine's thesis, though I probably will at some point. And you probably haven't either. But, you'll still find Chin's post informative and compelling. It is here: What Jason Richwine Should Have Heard from his PhD Committee While you are on the subject have a look at this: Harvard Students Demand Investigation Into Jason Richwine's Thesis On Hispanic IQ Hat tip: Jennifer Raff.

Typically, snails coil as they grow. The exact shape and characteristics of the coil are known to be a combination of genetic and environmental factors, depending on the snail. There is an interesting story involving snails and the young Jean Piaget. Piaget is famous for his work in psychology, but before that, when he was quite young, he worked with birds and mollusks. His work was published and otherwise disseminated and experts in these areas, unaware that he was a teenager, assumed he was an adult expert on natural history. Anyway, Piaget studied, among other things, a group of snail…

Michele Bachmann is currently serving her last term and will not seek re-election. She claims to have suddenly grown the opinion that there should be term limits on Representatives in the House, but that is not very likely the reason. It could be that she is behind in the polls, and it could have something to do with the impending criminal and ethics investigations. If it the latter, perhaps we should be expecting some news in the near future regarding these investigations. Either way, Maybe she plans to run for Senator against Al Franken? OH please, please, please, let it be so!…

Secular Woman is an organization I'm proud to be a member of. SW has released a statement responding to the latest dust up in the Secular-Atheist-Skeptical Community in which CFI leader Ron Lindsay somehow got assigned the job of giving the welcoming/opening talk to the second Women in Secularism Conference, and made a big mess of it. Here's the first part of the statement, click through to read the rest: The Secular Woman Board of Directors, in consultation with our most active members and supporters, regrets having to express our organization’s deep concern over recent public statements…

This guide covers most of the commonly heard vocalizations of American Teenagers. The text accompnaying the audio-video guide is here.

There are bacteria that use Iron (and other elements) to make tiny magnets that they carry around so they don't get lost. (I anthropomorphize slightly.) There are isotopes of Iron that are not of the Earth, but are found only elsewhere in the universe. Suppose an event happened elsewhere and spewed some of that cosmic Iron isotope, say Fe-60, onto the earth, and the bacteria who were busy making their tiny compasses at that time used some of it. Then the bacteria died and were trapped inlayers in seafloor sediment and later examined by scientists looking for ... well, looking for…