A potpourri of miscellany:
Human Caused Climate Change and the Oceans
It is great to see our local political non-print non-TV news agency, MNPost, covering an important climate change story with local connections. I’ll be writing John Abraham’s research up myself shortly.
An intriguing and important-sounding new research paper caught my eye on Sunday, with its finding that the world’s oceans have been warming at a much faster pace than is generally recognized.
Because seawater holds more than 90 percent of the excess heat that arrives from the sun but, thanks to greenhouse gases, isn’t promptly returned to space, that conclusion seemed to fall somewhere between stunning and alarming. Because it had been published in Science Advances, a journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, its credibility was clear.
Also, I can’t tell you what it is, but some very important new research is about to come out, also on climate change, that I’m chomping at the bit to write up. Probably within the next week or so.
Donald Trump
Did the Fed do something The Donald did not want it to do? If so, how will The Donald react? Oddly, there are no tweets about this to date. Perhaps Trump, Putin and Bannon are working out an executive order.
Some good news, maybe: Increasingly, Congressional Republicans are pushing back on the crazy, not letting Trump get away with being himself.
This too, wherein John McCain tears Rand “The Freedom” Paul a new one on the ground that Paul is in Putin’s pocket:
.@SenJohnMcCain on @RandPaul: "The Senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir #Putin." pic.twitter.com/2mWh8mpn89
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 15, 2017
Speaking of Trump, I had a bad experience with cat litter today. For the fourth time in a row, I went to our local Target to get “The World’s Best Cat Litter,” only to find they are out. While standing there, forelorn, in the Mother Ship, I checked on Amazon, and low and behold it is possible to get cat litter delivered to your door on a periodic basis, at a pretty good discount. (might need to have Amazon Prime)
Children interrupting or otherwise annoying very serious adults
What is the albedo of cat litter ?
0.7
But slippery when wet.
Here’s a question: what’s the albedo of a natural Trump skin?
‘Claggy’ is how I’d describe it, but could be a regional dialect thing (think Derbyshire Peak).
I don’t even want to think about it. La-la-la.
But could we skin a trump (any available one) could we reduce the positive feedback of ice loss by using their skin?