Planet Earth
tfk | December 19, 2007In an arrogant and counterproductive move, the E.P.A. denied California's request for a permission to regulate vehicle greenhouse gas emission:
The Bush administration said Wednesday night that it would deny California's bid to set stricter vehicle emissions standards than federal law required as part of the state's efforts to fight climate change. Stephen L. Johnson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said he planned to deny the state's application for a waiver from federal law that the state had sought more than two years ago. "The Bush administration is moving…
omnibrain | November 13, 2007If you're a regular reader of this blog I'm sure you've realized by now that we never post on global warming. It's not because we don't care.. we do! I promise. It's just that I really don't know anything about the debate at all. Someone could tell me that we had an ice age 29 years ago and I would believe them (well maybe not believe them - but I couldn't refute their argument). I tend to support my fellow bloggers here at Sb's against the global warming denialists but that isn't because I know anything - I just trust their judgment. So when I saw a special report from BBC about the top…
grrlscientist | November 10, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, Tunguska event, Siberian explosion, Podkamennaya Tunguska River, Lake Cheko, planet earth, astronomy
Flattened trees cover vast areas of Northeastern Siberia
after the mysterious Tunguska explosion in June, 1908.
Image: TASS/Sovfoto (public domain?) [larger view].
As a kid, I was fascinated by the mysterious explosion that occurred over Siberia. Basically, in the morning of 30 June 1908, a few native peoples in Siberia reported seeing a blue light in the sky that was as bright as the sun and hearing a series of loud explosions, accompanied by fierce winds and…
grrlscientist | November 9, 2007tags: comet holmes, night sky, astronomy
Comet Holmes rises in the northeastern sky above Coyote Canyon in Anza Borrego Desert State Park, California. It's visible to the naked eye and better seen with binoculars. Discovered in the late 19th Century, Holmes has become dramatically brighter in the past 2 weeks.
Image: Don Bartletti (Los Angeles Times).
I just learned about the amazing Comet Homes, which has unexpectedly brightened more than one million times literally overnight, its appearance changing from that of a normal comet with a tail into a brilliant, tailless puffball in the night…
omnibrain | September 12, 2007Congratulations Russia on your great new bomb that is nicknamed the "dad of all bombs" and is four times more powerful than the U.S. "mother of all bombs."
"The tests have shown that the new air-delivered ordnance is comparable to a nuclear weapon in its efficiency and capability," said Col.-Gen. Alexander Rukshin, a deputy chief of the Russian military's General Staff, said in televised remarks.
However! This isn't the exciting part of this momentous discovery!
Unlike a nuclear weapon, the bomb doesn't hurt the environment
The Dad of all Bombs - now with less tree killing!
We here at Omni…
tfk | July 19, 2007Everyone admires hurricanes, however grudgingly. When I hear someone described as "a force of nature," I envision a hurricane's hundred mile winds and waves whipped to such a frenzy that they merge with the air. The calm at the eye of the storm, the destructive potential, and the courage of the brave pilots and scientists who fly right through the walls of rain and cloud are the stone from which legends are carved. Of course, when that implacable power reaches our shores, admiration is in short supply, replaced by Job-like anger and despair. In Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the…
omnibrain | June 11, 2007We all know, thanks to Dan Simons and Chris Chabris (unless you've been living under a rock), that if we're really paying attention to something we can miss something else entirely... like a gorilla walking into the middle of a room and banging on its chest. Check out the video here. (Clearly this won't work for you now since you know what to look for, but there are some other examples on Dan Simons'' site that you can check out as well.)
In any case ... on to the main story here which is really the complete opposite of Inattentional Blindness. This time the gorilla suit was meant to bring…
tfk | June 8, 2007
NASA reveals a new island off Greenland. Well, not necessarily new:
Long connected to Greenland’s coast by ice, the island escaped recognition for what it was for nearly a century.
As you can see from the Landsat images, the island was covered by ice 20 years ago, and an ice bridge connected it to the mainland only 5 years ago. The warming trend that humans have caused over the last half century removed those connections, driving the ice back 6 miles in 5 years, revealing an undescribed island to an intrepid pilot.
Because of our actions here in Kansas, maps of other countries will have to…
tfk | May 29, 2007The question of how to cut our production of carbon dioxide grows more urgent every day, and the focus tends to be on new sources of energy. Increased efficiency tends to get lost in the mix, even though it's the easiest and most readily implemented approach.
Improving the carbon efficiency of buildings by 25% would produce one of seven "wedges" of carbon reduction needed to let atmospheric carbon dioxide level off. Doubling fuel efficiency of cars from 30 to 60 miles per gallon would have the same effect.
Carbon efficiency can be boosted many ways, from simple steps like turning off…
tfk | May 7, 2007Within days of a tornado that destroyed 90% of Greensburg, KS, at least 7 people have been arrested for looting the town:
Four soldiers and a reserve police officer were arrested Sunday on suspicion of looting cigarettes and alcohol from a store in this tornado-ravaged town, state officials said.
In a separate incident, two people wearing Red Cross jackets who were not members of the relief agency were arrested Sunday on suspicion of looting, said Sharon Watson, a spokeswoman for the adjutant general's office.
I'm sure that the same people who thought we should deny aid to New Orleans because…
tfk | May 5, 2007Last night, a tornado ranging between one and two miles wide swept through Greensburg, Kansas, destroying 90% of the town.
The town is most famous for the World's Largest Hand-Dug Well. That tourist attraction, as well as a 1,000 meteorite displayed nearby, is the envy of neighboring towns, as readers may recall from last year's discussion of the meteorite festival in neighboring Haviland. The giant meteorite, and other record-breaking pallasite meteorites were found around Haviland, which is now hosting people whose homes were destroyed, like Job's, by a voice from the whirlwind.
Google…
tfk | May 2, 2007Greenberg Quinlan Rosner polled 1000 Americans and got some encouraging results. Three in ten respondents chose stopping global warming by reducing dependence on fossil fuels as the most important threat, above student performance, business competitiveness and retirement security. Only reducing healthcare costs did better, pulling only three percentage points more support.
Majorities of Americans feel we're lagging the world in developing "clean, alternative energy" (13% think we've fallen behind, 40% think we're falling behind), and 64% of the public thinks we need to "immediately" move…
tfk | April 30, 2007Afarensis points out that Malaysia and the Philippines are making it harder to make accurate maps. The goal there is to block indigenous groups from using GPS and GIS to map their historic lands and defend their lands from developers.
A few years back there was a student here at KU who grew up in the Soviet Union. On birding trips, he'd check a map, then ask where features really were. Soviet maps would always put roads and bridges in the wrong place, whether to confuse invading capitalist pigs or internal dissent I couldn't say. What I do know is that governments which prevent their…
tfk | April 22, 2007Laurie David ponders Karl Rove:
How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow?
This after Sheryl Crow tried to touch his arm in a conversation about global warming during the White House Correspondents Dinner.
Crow has been traveling the nation discussing the issue, so those of you not hardened and removed from reality missed a shot at getting touched by her if you didn't attend a nearby event.
tfk | April 22, 2007
In 1969, after Michael Collins brought Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin back from the moon, all three were asked to address Congress. Collins said:
During the flight of Apollo 11, in the constant sunlight between the earth and the moon, it was necessary for us to control the temperature of our spacecraft by a slow rotation not unlike that of a chicken on a barbecue spit. As we turned, the earth and the moon alternately appeared in our windows. We had our choice. We could look toward the Moon, toward Mars, toward our future in space—toward the new Indies—or we could look back toward the Earth…
tfk | April 15, 2007Space on Earth: Saving Our World by Seeking Others by Charles S. Cockell: A fascinating argument, and a book I find myself constantly thinking about. Cockell is the Chair of Microbiology at the UK's Open University, and the creator of the Earth and Space Foundation. The book argues that "the lack of communication between environmentalists and space explorers has been damaging." On a range of issues from biodiversity research to technological innovation, there are useful ties to be forged between "green" groups, and what he calls "velvet" groups, those devoted to space.
The ties between…
tfk | April 8, 2007State water board alters priorities:
A state water board on Wednesday unexpectedly pushed reducing groundwater consumption in western Kansas toward the top of a priority list of the Kansas Water Office's new five-year strategic plan.
This is partly a response to the added strain on the declining aquifer that additional ethanol plants would use, and the additional irrigation needed to grow more corn – needed to supply those ethanol plants.
The Ogallala aquifer which supplies groundwater for agriculture, homes and industry in western Kansas, is running low. I don't need to repeat the points I…
tfk | April 4, 2007
The New York Times summarizes the challenges facing much of the Western US:
Preparing for worst-case outcomes, the seven states that draw water from the Colorado River — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico in the upper basin and California, Arizona and Nevada in the lower basin — and the United States Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the river, are considering plans that lay out what to do if the river cannot meet the demand for water, a prospect that some experts predict will occur in about five years.
Wallace Stegner has written that "it is not the arbitrary 98th meridian that marks…
tfk | April 2, 2007SCOTUSblog explains:
Ruling 5-4, the Supreme Court on Monday found that the federal government had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases that may contribute to global warming, and must examine anew the scientific evidence of a link between those gases contained in the exhausts of new cars and trucks and climate change. In the most important environmental ruling in years, the Court rebuffed the Environmental Protection Agency's claim that regulating those gases was beyond its authority, and the agency's claim that it need not take action even if it did have the power to do so. Justice…
tfk | March 15, 2007The Journal World reports that warm weather is bringing unusual birds to town. Remember that before you call climate change deniers "bird brains." Birds are smarter.