environment
esiegel | March 16, 2016"...as a scientist I was trained you always have to show the negative data, the data that disagrees with you, and then make the case that your case is stronger." -Richard Muller
Global temperatures have been on the rise not just for decades, but for as long as we've been measuring temperatures around the globe: for more than a century. Recently, however, the temperature has spiked to an unprecedented high, similar to what we saw in 1998.
Image credit: Japan Meteorological Association (JMA), of the monthly average temperatures in February, going back as far as temperature records do. Via the…
gregladen | February 22, 2016One of the Great Crises we face in today's world is the stability and security of the water supply. In America, most people don't have any problems getting water, to the extent that we tend to waste it, and few people even know where there water comes from. Every now and then there emerges a startling and troubling problem with water. A river catches fire, a plume of visible pollution observable from space spreads across a lake, or an entire city worth of children are poisoned with the contents of the city water supply.
Works Progress Studio has been engaged for a while in a project called…
jdupuis | January 28, 2016We have a Steacie Library Hackfest coming up and our there this year is Making a Difference with Data. And what better area to make a difference in than the environment and climate change?
I am far from an expert on this topic, so suggestions for additions (and deletions if I've added anything inappropriate) are welcome. In particular, deeper and more complete data sources for Canada would be nice to have. I would also very much like to improve coverage beyond the North American focus with a wider variety of targeted regional and national data sources.
This set of lists is not meant to be…
gregladen | January 14, 2016The Nevada state government has just ruined solar energy in their state. From here,
Although Nevada is one of the sunniest places in the world, there has recently been a dark cloud hovering over the rooftop solar industry in the state. Just before Christmas, Nevada’s public utility commission (PUC) gave the state’s only power company, NV Energy, permission to charge higher rates and fees to solar panel users – a move that immediately shattered the rooftop solar industry’s business model.
In addition to the new monthly fee, ... customers ... will get less back from the utility for energy…
gregladen | December 4, 2015The big complaint people have about renewable energy, or at least, the big complaint that has some merit, is that renewables, such as wind and solar, are intermittent and to varying degrees, unpredictably intermittent. This makes it hard to match demand for electricity to supply. Some aspects of this argument are overstated. For example, a steady supply (the same potential power all the time, every minute of the day) can be a bug as well as a feature. If every electron of electricity we used came from nuclear power plants, there would be a problem because our demand fluctuates and you can't…
jdupuis | November 29, 2015I think this post might signal the birth of a new all-consuming blogging obsession -- climate change in general and specifically how the realities of climate change play out in the Canadian context, especially as it relates to public policy.
With the COP21 climate talks coming up in Paris, this seems like as good a time as any to focus more carefully and closely on what is probably the most defining issue of our times.
Not that this is the first time I've blogged about climate change. I've kept track of the issues fairly closely over the years and that has spilled into the blog, mostly in the…
pharyngula | November 25, 2015I'm hearing occasional gasps of disbelief at the notion of a vegan Thanksgiving, so clearly I need to show you something to make you salivate.
Oh My Veggies
That's just an example -- we're having something different -- but honestly, you can have a tremendous variety of textures and flavors, all delicious, without killing an animal.
Also not shown: Lefse is vegetarian, don't you know.
gregladen | November 6, 2015According to sources, like this one, President Obama is about to nix the Keystone XL deal.
One of those "hastily called" press conference is set for just before noon Eastern.
Sorry about your stock values and stuff, TransCanada.
https://twitter.com/gregladen/status/662672566436257793
gregladen | October 30, 2015One of the problems we have in making a quick transition to clean energy in the US is the fact that energy production and distribution is typically regulated by states, and some states are not as smart as other states. Or, if they are smart, they are controlled by political forces intent on maintaining fossil carbon based fuels as our primary energy source, which of course, is a totally bone-headed policy.
When it comes to the transition to clean energy, we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. The easy way is to encourage the picking of low hanging fruit, such as solar…
pharyngula | October 28, 2015The NY Times has put together a lovely illustrated story about data collection on Greenland. The story is prettily terrifying, though. The ice is melting, and forming lakes of liquid water on the surface of the ice cap, which then drains away in fast-running rivers that cut deeper into the ice and then drain into holes that run even deeper into the glacier -- it's a dangerous place, and if you fall in, you'll be swept away and instantly dumped into a pit. It also means the ice sheet is porous and riddled with rot already.
In addition to the personal terror for the researchers, this work is…
pharyngula | September 23, 2015The tobacco industry knew that cigarettes were both addictive and carcinogenic. They sold them anyway, and hired professional obfuscators and lobbyists to bury the truth.
Now we know that the oil industry is the same way. Exxon knew how much carbon was buried in oil reserves. They knew how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere. They were able to calculate in 1979 what burning all that oil would do to the carbon dioxide concentration.
They knew. They didn't care what its effects were. They only cared about their bottom line.
You know, the future is going to look back on rabid capitalism…
pharyngula | August 31, 2015Oh, here's a good takedown of that shill for the petroleum industry, Bjorn Lomborg.
Lomborg’s message to the newspaper readers has thus nothing to do with a fair portrayal of how much sea-level rise the scientific community expects. Rather it is a distortion and blatant attempt at downplaying future sea-level rise. Looking at Lomborg’s many other Project Syndicate columns shows that this is not a singular case but a regular pattern in his columns. This is all the more irresponsible given that Project Syndicate opinion pieces are widely reprinted by newspapers in developing nations, where…
pharyngula | August 30, 2015Here's a treat: a congressman who has been in office since 1989, and is on the Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
https://twitter.com/DanaRohrabacher/status/638022999321538560
claiming Global Warming they create powerful Global gov. Claiming tooth decay they mandate chemical fluoride in our water
He's a Republican, of course.
Meanwhile, in a small town in Alaska…
In this town of 403 residents 83 miles above the Arctic Circle, beaches are disappearing, ice is melting, temperatures are rising, and the barrier reef Kivalina calls home gets smaller and smaller with every storm.
There…
esiegel | August 23, 2015“the way to create art is to burn and destroy
ordinary concepts and to substitute them
with new truths that run down from the top of the head
and out of the heart” -Charles Bukowski
When it comes to destructive forces that are also mesmerizing and impossible to look away from, it's hard to compete with fire. Have a listen to Josh Ritter sing about one of the most common, destructive types,
Wildfires,
but consider that there's often a beauty to the destruction that's rarely captures.
Image credit: Stuart Palley, from his instagram feed at https://instagram.com/stuartpalley/.
Photographer…
jdupuis | August 3, 2015It has begun.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called an election for October 19, 2015, kicking off a marathon 11 week election campaign. The longest campaign since the 1870s, believe it or not.
My patient readers may have noticed that over the last few years I've posted quite a bit about how science has fared under the current government. Readers will have gathered that I'm not too pleased about that state of affairs. This election signals an opportunity to (hopefully) change direction; if it's not completely possible to undo all the damage that Harper has done, we can at least…
esiegel | May 27, 2015“The crust, being so thin, must bend, if, over wide areas, it becomes loaded with glacial ice, ocean water or deposits of sand and mud. It must bend in the opposite sense if widely extended loads of such material be removed. This accounts for… the origin of chains of high mountains… and the rise of lava to the earth’s surface.” -Reginald Daly, 1932
When you think about volcanoes, you quite likely think about magma -- liquid rock -- accumulating and welling up beneath the Earth's surface. Every once in a while, this ultra-hot liquid seeps through the Earth's surface, resulting in a spectacular…
esiegel | May 21, 2015“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” -H. P. Lovecraft
When it comes to risk assessment, there's one type that humans are notoriously bad at: the very low-frequency but high-consequence risks and rewards. It's why so many of us are so eager to play the lottery, and simultaneously why we're catastrophically afraid of ebola and plane crashes, when we're far more likely to die from something mundane, like getting hit by a truck. One of the examples where science and this type of fear-based fallacy intersect is the…
gregladen | May 21, 2015Governor Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency for the Santa Barbara oil spill. Phyllis Grifman, associate director of the USC Sea Grant Program, is quoted i a a University of Southern California press release as saying, "Nothing worked – they found out about this because people camping nearby or living nearby smelled it. Nothing happened on the part of the infrastructure that could shut it down early." The spill, she notes, sits beteween two areas under protection for endangered marine wildlife. Taj Meshkati, also a USC professor (of engineering) asked, "Why did it take the…
jdupuis | May 19, 2015A bit unusually for me, I'm reviewing a novel as part of my Reading Diary series. Usually the closest I'll get to a novel is a fictionalized science graphic novel of some sort, kind of like the Survive! series or Lauren Ispsum.
But no, this ain't one of those. It's a good old fashioned novel.
OK, it's a climate change fiction novel that's kind of like an Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell romantic comedy but starring Seth Rogan and Jennifer Lawrence. Set on a community college campus, it has a bit of a feel of The Absent-Minded Professor or even The Nutty Professor for the cli-fi set.
So what have…