Somebody just sent me a letter giving the good news:
Yearly Archives: 2011
Urban Heat Islands as Explanation for Hockey Stick Global Warming Curve
Urban areas can be warmer than surrounding non-urban areas because there is a lot of combustion, pavement and other structure can collect solar heat and retain it for a while, and other factors. It is not uncommon to look at a weather map where conditions for precipitation are marginal, and everywhere but the urban zone, or only the urban zone and nothing else, is showing a weather phenomenon. Because people and airports (where weather is very important) are located in or very near urban areas, it stands to reason that a lot of the data used to estimate global temperatures would be affected by any urban effects, and if urban areas are a) warmer than surrounding areas and b) increasingly warm over time then “global warming” may well be an artifact of the urban heat island effect. That wouldn’t necessarily make it a hoax, but it would make it wrong. We would then have to revise our understanding of certain aspects of physics because we expect global warming to occur in CO2 levels go up, but physics has been revised before. Kepler was wrong, Newton was wrong, maybe the climate change scientists are wrong too.
Some time ago a study was funded by a number of organizations and individuals, including some who are famously skeptical of global warming (such as the Charles G. Koch foundation) in order to see if urban heat island effects could explain the famous “Hockey Stick” curve. The study was supposed to be non-biased, and it may well be, but if there are any biases they would likely be in favor off anti-Global Warming thinking, or perhaps “pro-denialist” or “anti-warmist” … pick your term.
Well, just moments ago, the study was released and the findings are quite interesting. I have to admit, I was not expecting these findings at all, and they have caused me to change my mind about certain things. Which is fine, because that is how science works, but still, I was rather shocked.
Continue reading Urban Heat Islands as Explanation for Hockey Stick Global Warming Curve
Do Urban Heat Islands Explain the Global Warming Hockey Stick Curve?
Urban areas can be warmer than surrounding non-urban areas because there is a lot of combustion, pavement and other structure can collect solar heat and retain it for a while, and other factors. It is not uncommon to look at a weather map where conditions for precipitation are marginal, and everywhere but the urban zone, or only the urban zone and nothing else, is showing a weather phenomenon. Because people and airports (where weather is very important) are located in or very near urban areas, it stands to reason that a lot of the data used to estimate global temperatures would be affected by any urban effects, and if urban areas are a) warmer than surrounding areas and b) increasingly warm over time then “global warming” may well be an artifact of the urban heat island effect. That wouldn’t necessarily make it a hoax, but it would make it wrong. We would then have to revise our understanding of certain aspects of physics because we expect global warming to occur in CO2 levels go up, but physics has been revised before. Kepler was wrong, Newton was wrong, maybe the climate change scientists are wrong too….
Our Conversations Are Like a Cold Fruit Salad on a Dusty, Hot, Summer Day
I am having a conversation with my friend, Pat. We are talking about the way we talk when we have a chance to spend some time, or the way our emails seem to go.
“I tire of being asked what I think about something only to have the conversation derailed at the first ‘bump’ in my logic, at the first self-contradiction,” Pat says, of life in general.
My response: “I savor your contradictions. It is my desire to explore them with you and to experience the change that happens when you wrestle with them.”
“Yes, I think you get it. How refreshing.”
As you can see, Pat and I have a deeply meaningful relationship. Enviable, in fact. It is based on not knowing things that we want to know, and how to fix that. There is also an element of bringing unformed or poorly formed thoughts to the table, cutting them up like a fruit salad, and enjoying them. Our conversations are like a cold fruit salad on a dusty hot summer day. Yes, very, very refreshing.
But not everybody has the opportunity to interact that way. This is because all utterances are questionable, if you want them to be. All communications are subject to measurement against a standard that one can easily justify as “Teh Standard,” even though one has merely pulled it out of one orifice or another. In fact, there is a place where that kind of communication is favored, revered, honed and practiced, and imposed by force of will and repetition on those who do not come to the table oppositional in affect and armed with snark.
That place is known…as the blogosphere.
But, dear reader, that is a feature of the blogosphere that I generally don’t like, even though it can be amusing, it can be productive, and it can bring lots of page views to my hit-counter. I don’t like it even though I am as capable as the next person of doing damage with printed word, baiting the most wary of trolls, and turning and churning the most innocent of conversation until it becomes vile like ogre piss. I don’t like it because I find it inhumane. I find it not the way I want to interact, not the way I want to understand. It is bitter roots and rotten offal. It is not a refreshing fruit salad on a dusty, hot, summer day.
Continue reading Our Conversations Are Like a Cold Fruit Salad on a Dusty, Hot, Summer Day
Mayor Cory Booker’s Urgent Message to Congress: Sensible Gun Laws
How To Raise Your Child Right
Hat Tip Steve
If You Get Sick, It’s Your Own Fault
A person recently told me that a lot of people die from the flu. She told me that a lot of people don’t realize that the flu can be deadly. She told me that a lot of people do not do what they should do to prepare for the flu.
She was saying this in sight of a nurse giving out free flu shots. Which was funny, because she also said that she would never get a flu shot because all you need to do to not die from the flu is to “eat healthy” and take lots of vitamins. If you eat healthy and take lots of vitamins and get the flu, your lymph nodes will swell up a little but that’s all.
I think I get it.
NASA Completes 52-Year Mission To Find, Kill God
WASHINGTON—After more than five decades of tireless work, brave exploration, and technological innovation aimed at a single objective, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced Wednesday that it had finally completed its mission to find and kill God.
…
“One of our lunar rovers captured an image of God at approximately 2100 hours last night, and we immediately launched a vessel manned by our best assassins,” said Richard Egan, Mission Control Chief at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “After exiting the lunar lander, the astronauts approached God under the false pretense of peace, but He must have sensed something was amiss and fled. Our men gave chase in a moon buggy, finally overtaking Him in a crater where He was subdued after several minutes of violent hand-to-hand combat.”
Egan told reporters that it took as many as five highly trained astronauts to fully restrain the Supreme Being….
Science is always nonpartisan, but it is always political: Fool Me Twice
Shawn gave a talk at the release party, but since he is held in such high esteem, there was a problem deciding how he would be introduced. A book as important as “Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America” which examines the increasingly insignificant role science plays in the policy making process, written by the much beloved Shaw Otto would require an equally important and beloved personage to make the introduction. And, if such a person were to go on stage to introduce Shawn, there would have to be a fairly significant and widely respected person to introduce that person as well. And so on and so forth. I hear there were several meetings about this, and the UN was called in briefly to settle the evening’s program, and a solution was worked out that was more than acceptable.
Continue reading Science is always nonpartisan, but it is always political: Fool Me Twice
LeRoy Bell Makes It!
Below the fold…
Continue reading LeRoy Bell Makes It!
Fool Me Twice
Fool Me Twice is a book that was just released, last night, by Shawn Otto. I attended the release party and wrote it up for your reading pleasure.
Quantum Levitation
My sister won the science fair with a “frictionless puck” using CO2, two jars, and two hockey pucks. This is not that:
How many people live near the ocean?
The real question is, if sea levels rose due to melting glacial ice, what percentage of the word’s population would get their feet wet? There are several problems with addressing this question, including the fact that it depends on how high sea levels rose. Most studies or calculations are based on what most people consider to be a large rise in sea level of about 10 meters/30 feet. Given this sort of consideration, the number of people living in the global food zone is significant. Here are a few tidbits from the Intertubes:
- Three-quarters of the world’s mega-cities are by the sea.*
- By 2010, 80 per cent of people will live within 60 miles of the coast.*
- …by 2010 some 80 percent of people will live within 62 miles of the coast, with about 40 percent living within 37 miles of a coastline.*
- “For a while, it was said, ‘Oh, two-thirds of all the population lives within 100 kilometers of a coastline,” … The numbers showed that low-elevation areas (under 10 meters/30 feet) are home to 634 million people….”Roughly one in 10 persons in the world lives in this low-elevation coastal zone,” Balk says.*
Current estimates for the absolute maximum sea level rise, if the glaciers at both polls melted, range from 225 to 365 feet, with the latter being more likely accurate. If sea levels rose that much, coastal lands would be depressed several meters and transgressive erosion would also occur. So, for instance, even though Long Island has many points that are above 300 feet or so, none of it would survive the transgressive erosion because it is all glacial till. It is hard to extrapolate from the numbers above to a 100+ meter rise, and improper to do so, but consider that if the human population is concentrated near the seas, and 10% live below the 10 meter line, then it is probably true that well more than half live below the 100 meter line, and many more within the area that would be claimed by the sea through erosion and depression.
I’ve only done a cursory check for sources. If you have better information, please send it my way and I’ll update the post.
Why isn’t there a malaria vaccine, and could there be one soon?
There are several reasons why there is no vaccine for malaria, but the thing you might want to know is that malaria is not a virus, and it is not even a bacterium. It’s a protist. Generally speaking, there are not really vaccines for such organisms. One metastudy that looked specifically at Malaria had this to report:
Continue reading Why isn’t there a malaria vaccine, and could there be one soon?
Dr Who Regeneration … All of them.
Below the fold, of course …
Continue reading Dr Who Regeneration … All of them.