I’m not big on Saint Patrick’s Day. And yes, that’s because I’m Irish.
But I thought this was OK:
Not his best work. So I’ll add this:
Category Archives: Uncategorized
What is causing the California drought?
Peter Sinclair has tackled this difficult topic with an excellent video and informative blog post. The blog post is here, and I’ve pasted the video below.
This is a complicated issue. The water problem in California is obviously made worse by increased demands from population growth and expansion of agriculture. Under “normal” (natural) conditions, California and the American Southwest is fairly dry and can undergo extra dry periods. But climate change seems to be playing a role here as well. It appears that recent lack of rain in the region is the result of changes in atmospheric circulation that can be linked to anthropogenic global warming. Warm air also increases evaporation and decreases snow pack. When rain falls it tends more often to be in the form of heavy downpours, and thus, more runoff (not to mention landslides).
Peter also talks about Jacob Sewall’s model, ten years ago, that predicted the current situation as an outcome of reduced ice cover in the Arctic. Over at Significant Figures, Peter Gleick also talks about the California drought: Clarifying the Discussion about California Drought and Climate Change.
Photo Credit: Fikret Onal via Compfight cc
Other posts of interest:
- How to get rid of spiders in your house
- Why is your poop green?
- How many cells are there in the human body?
- Is there really a plot hole in Harry Potter Goblet of Fire?
- How long is a human generation?
- Is blog ever really blue?
- How to not get caught plagiarizing
- The origin of the domestic chicken
- What are the three necessary and sufficient conditions of Natural Selection?
- How do I get rid of foot fungus?
- Which is better, Tap Water or Bottled Water?
- Has Global Warming stopped?
Also of interest: In Search of Sungudogo: A novel of adventure and mystery, which is also an alternative history of the Skeptics Movement.
How much will the Arctic Sea ice melt this year?
We are reaching the point where Arctic Sea ice tends to max out, in terms of extent (I will not be talking about volume here, though that is vitally important). Using data provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, I ran an informal “Science by Spreadsheet” analysis and came up with a prediction for the minimum extent of sea ice this year, which would be some time in September.
This is mostly a seat of the pants analysis and don’t take it too seriously, but feel free to put your bets in the comments section.
The data over the last few decades shows a generally declining extent of sea ice, especially at the minimum in September. But the maximum extent (where we are now, typically) seems uncorrelated to the minimum extent. Different processes are involved at different times of the year. Also, the shape of those data indicate to me a shift form a slower annual decline to a faster annual decline, happening some time around 1995 or 1996. So, I used September data only from 1996 to last year. I ran a simple regression analysis and from the model it produced I calculate that the AVERAGE September value of sea ice (an odd number that no one ever uses, but I have it anyway) will be 4.1 million square kilometers.
Using the minima for September for this range of years, the MINIMUM sea ice extent for 2014 is predicted to be 3.9458 million square kilometers.
This places this year’s minimum above the extraordinary year of 2012, which to cherry picking denialists will mean a “recovery” (though it isn’t) but below any prior year. The value will be somewhere in the crudely drawn box on this chart:
We’ll see.
The other thing going on right now, obviously, is the shift from adding ice to removing ice that happens as the seasons shift. It looks like the ice may be starting its seasonal decline now, but in previous years, the squiggly line representing sea ice extent has continued to squiggle up and down for a few more days. In a week or so I think we’ll have a better idea. But it is quite possible that the highest value was reached over the last few days. Again, we’ll see.
Will Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos be a turning point in science denialism?
Neil DeGrasse Tyson on CNN:
And while we are on the topic, Carl Sagan, of the original Cosmos, on climate change:
See also this from Chris Mooney at Mother Jones.
And just for the heck of it, here’s my interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson from 2011.
Harry Reid Remarks On Billionaire Koch Brothers’ Attempt To Buy Our Democracy
Carnival of Evolution: Darwin’s Day Edition
Talk on Evolutionary Psychology, Sunday, March 2nd
I will be giving a talk in Saint Paul, at the Best Western Kelly Inn, on Evolutionary Psychology.
The original plan was to get two people to debate the topic, but it was hard to find two people in town to do that. One idea was to get PZ Myers over here, and then he and I would debate the topic. Problem with that is that we probably agree a lot more than we disagree so that would be boring. Well, I’m sure we’d make it interesting but we’d have to switch topics.
So it ended up being me. There will be a debate. I’ll handle both sides. Seriously.
I’d love to give you a working link to meetup.com for this event, but meetup.com appears to be undergoing a massive, extended DDoS attack. From some very lonely person, I assume. Here’s the link in case it works.
Anyway, this talk is sponsored by the Critical Thinking Club of Saint Paul. Details:
Sunday, March 2, 2014
10:00 AM
Best Western Kelly Inn
161 Saint Anthony Ave
Saint Paul, MN 55103
Evolutionary Psychology is a late 20th century scientific discipline created for the explicit purpose of understanding how the brain works (mechanisms) and why the brain works that way (adaptations). It assumes the adaptations we observe in the brain are to the environment in which they arose. Unfortunately, this new discipline was created in human brains (as opposed to some other really smart species) and human brains did not evolve in an environment in which understanding the workings of brains was important. Rather, human brains evolved in an environment in which outsmarting other people may have been more important than getting things right. In this talk, we will see what is right, and perhaps not right, about evolutionary psychology.
Greg Laden is a biological anthropologist who has studied key transitions in human evolution, including the ape-human split and the rise of our genus, Homo. He was present at the birth of Evolutionary Psychology, in room 14A of the Peabody Museum, at Harvard, and has been observing the field ever since. Greg writes about evolution, climate change, and other issues on his blog at National Geographic Scienceblogs, often provides public talks or interviews on these topics.
Breakfast Buffet $12.00 Coffee only $3.00. We need to plan for the room setup and meal, so if you are going to attend, please RSVP by Friday, February 28.
Finally, a discussion of the energy crisis that makes sense …
The Faraday Electric Bike
Powered bikes have been around for a long time, and there are many electric bikes available now. But it seems that this new one is a significant change from prior versions.
The Faraday Bike doesn’t even look like it could possibly be powered. But apparently it is. The frame is, more or less, the battery. The motor is small because electric motors can be small. It has a computer, and apparently, LED lights.
It does not operate without human power, but it adds power to your stroke, by about 300% (but that is adjustable) according to the manufacturer.
It costs a mere $3,500. But it is coming out very slowly; 200 will be shipped by some time in March.
How do birds survive the winter?
How do birds survive the cold weather, especially duringreally cold winters like the one we are having now in much of the United States?
One part of this answer has to be, sadly perhaps, that the sometimes don’t. But I’ll get to that later.
You need to know two things as context. First, there are a lot of different kinds of birds, and the adaptations I’ll mention below are not found in all of them, and probably all of these adaptations are not found in very many species. Second, many birds are actually at great risk during cold periods because birds generally live on the edge when it comes to energetics. It takes energy (from food) to keep warm. Birds are endothermic, meaning that they produce their own heat (mostly) via blood flow in their bodies, but unlike mammals, birds change their body temperature a fair amount, so the amount of heat they need to produce to fly is a little bit flexible. The thing is, temperate and sub-Arctic birds have to survive not only the cold of winter, but even the chill of a non-winter night. Since they don’t store a lot of energy in fat (that is hard to do for a flying animal) it is quite possible for a bird to run out of heat-producing energy overnight even when it isn’t winter. That would amount to, essentially, starving to death. So, some of the adaptations for surviving the cold apply year round, depending on conditions and the species.
There are several things birds do (or avoid doing) to help them survive the winter.
First, they can leave. Migration is a great strategy to avoid winter. I highly recommend it. Migration is costly, though. One has to spend a lot of time flying instead of feeding, and a bird is probably more susceptible to predation while flying through the territories of various predators and spending time in areas it is not familiar with. Most migratory birds that die during migration probably do it on their first migration, and thereafter have the advantage of knowing the territory a bit better. So, migration is one way to handle winter. Note, however, that there are birds that live in the Arctic or sub-Arctic that migrate south to regions where it is still winter. (Some of these are referred to as snowbirds because they show up during the snowy season).
Birds wear down coats. All their feathers help them to keep warm, but especially the downy under feathers (called, of course, “down”) act like tiny little North Face down coats. Some birds probably grow extra down during the cold season.
When you are trying to stay warm, water is your enemy. Air makes a good insulator but water transmits heat, so wet feathers are bad. So, birds have oil producing glands that allow them to preen a coating of waterproof onto their feathers to avoid the down coats getting wet.
Birds have legs and parts of their faces that are exposed. But they can sit in a position that covers, or partly covers, their legs and feet with their down coat. They can also hunker down in a protected area, with less wind-chill causing wind, in the canopy of an evergreen or some other place. Gregarious over-wintering birds like Chickadees will roost together in little bird-lumps to give each other protection and warmth.
Birds shiver. That helps get added heat from circulation and muscle movement.
Bird feet are covered with scales and have very little cold-damagable tissue in them. They are mostly bone and sinew.
Some birds have a special adaptation in the circulatory system of their feet (and maybe elsewhere) whereby blood is circulated between colder outer areas and warmer inner areas more efficiently than might otherwise be the case, to avoid frostbite.
Birds can not only tuck their feet in under their down, but they may also switch which foot is holding them on a branch. Also, as you probably know, bird feet are generally grabbing at rest, so it takes very little energy to stay attached to a branch. The default is “hang on.” Sort of like the safety feature of an Otis elevator, where the default position for the machinery is “don’t drop” so when the power goes off the elevator gets stuck instead of plummeting to the bottom.
Birds may find a place in the sun and use a bit of solar energy. This, of course, depends on the wind. It also puts them out there for predators to find them, but it can work.
Birds may eat more, or selectively eat higher energy food during the winter. For small birds this may include storing up food during the warmer season. They are adapted to find, store, and remember where the food is so they can find it quickly. This makes winter foraging super efficient.
Some birds store some fat, but really, that is not a great strategy for birds that fly.
One of the most effective strategies for having enough energy from food to stay warm is to not do highly energetic things during the cold season. I already mentioned the increase in foraging efficiency for birds that store food. Another obvious strategy is to not do energetically costly things during this season such as defend territories, spend a lot of time singing (singing is very costly in terms of energy), don’t build or maintain nests, don’t produce eggs or have hungry chicks around. This may seem self evident but it is actually very important. Indeed, the reproductive success of a pair of birds in a given year may be significantly hampered by late cold weather or forage-covering snow storms in the spring.
Finally, birds use another strategy that also works against the cost of predation and other forms of death: Reproduce more. Most pairs of birds produce one or a few offspring that become adults a year for five or more years. If all of those adult or subadult birds survive and reproduce, we’d be covered in birds in a few decades. But lots of things kill birds, including predators, disease, starvation, and cold.
Here is a pretty good video that covers some of these things:
The photo of a Dark Eyed Junco is from HERE, where you will also find a bit more discussion on birds in winter.
_____
I also write about birds here.
In case you want to help a bird out, have a look at these resources:
Feeding Wild Birds in America: Culture, Commerce, and Conservation
Stokes Beginner’s Guide to Bird Feeding
Climate Change Science Search Engine
This search engine will scan a large number of sites known to have good climate change related information on them.
Below is a list of sites scanned. If you know of a site that is not included here but that should be, please put a link in the comments. Don’t bother with climate science denialist sites, they will not be added.
Also note that many sites are parts of larger domains. So if the site you suggest is already part of, for example, Scienceblogs, The Guardian, etc. then it is already on the list by default. This, of course, means that some of the hits from this search engine will be not “certified” as part of this excellent list of sources because a large domain could have science denialism lurking around on it. But for the most part, the results of this search should be pretty useful. Also, since some very large domains are searched you may want to use some climate change related keywords. For example, searching for the term “hiatus” by itself will get you links for broadway shows taking a hiatus. But searching for “global warming hiatus” will get you (mostly) links about the so-called “pause” in global warming.
There are also aggregating or linky sites on this list so there may be some redundancy in your search results, but there is not much one can do about that.
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com
http://bigcitylib.blogspot.ca
http://blog.hotwhopper.com
http://blog.weathernationtv.com
http://capitalclimate.blogspot.com
http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/
http://climatedesk.org
http://climatemediawatch.com
http://deepclimate.org
http://desmogblog.com
http://getenergysmartnow.com
http://gpwayne.wordpress.com
http://hot-topic.co.nz
http://insideclimatenews.org
http://mediamatters.org
http://ncse.com
http://nsidc.org
http://www.realclimate.org/
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com
http://pacinst.org
http://planet3.org
http://profmandia.wordpress.com
http://rabett.blogspot.com
http://scholarsandrogues.com
http://scienceblogs.com
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen
http://simondonner.blogspot.com
http://stephenleahy.net
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/issue
http://www.climatecodered.org
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org
http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve
http://www.ecoequity.org
http://www.gwfotd.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
http://www.nasa.gov
http://www.noaa.gov
http://www.thefrogthatjumpedout.blogspot.com
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus–97-per-cent
http://www.theguardian.com/us
http://www.wunderground.com/blog
https://www.skepticalscience.com
Fifty interesting facts about each of the US State Capitals
John McCain and Newt Gingrich are acting like Middle School Bullies
I’d love to describe the details to you but I don’t think I can ever do as good a job as Representative Henry Waxman and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. They wrote a letter to McCain and Gingrich. Gave ’em a good shellacking, they did. I love this letter so much I’m giving it to you three times. First, as a picture of the letter because it is so cool looking. Then, as a transcript so it is searchable. Then, as a link to a PDF file.
And now, here is the text, from here:
February 20, 2014
The Honorable John McCain
241 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510The Honorable Newt Gingrich
Gingrich Productions
4501 North Fairfax Drive
Suite 900
Arlington, VA 22203Dear Senator McCain and Mr. Gingrich:
Over the weekend, Secretary of State John Kerry gave a powerful and important speech in Indonesia about the dangers of climate change. Secretary Kerry accurately said, “When I think about the array of global threats … terrorism, epidemics, poverty, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction … the reality is that climate change ranks right up there with every single one of them.”
Your reaction was disappointing. Senator McCain asked, “On what planet does he reside?” Mr. Gingrich called the Secretary “delusional” and “dangerous to our safety.”
You should know that Secretary Kerry’s assessment of the risks we face is consistent with those of national security experts of unimpeachable credentials. For example:
• Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, Chief of U.S. military forces in the Pacific region, said that the biggest long-term security threat in the region is climate change because it “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.”
• General Anthony Zinni, the former Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Central Command, warned, “You may also have a population that is traumatized by an event or a change in conditions triggered by climate change. … [T]hen you can be faced with a collapsing state. And these end up as breeding grounds for instability, for insurgencies, for warlords. You start to see extremism. These places act like Petri dishes for extremism and for terrorist networks.”
• Robert Gates, the former Defense Secretary, said, “over the next 20 years and more certain pressures – population, resource, energy, climate, economic, and environmental – could combine with rapid cultural, social, and technological change to produce new sources of deprivation, rage, and instability. … I believe the most persistent and dangerous threats will come less from ambitious states than failing ones that cannot meet the basic needs – much less aspirations – of their people.”
• Admiral Michael Mullen, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated, “The scarcity of an potential competition for resources like water, food and space, compounded by the influx of refugees if coastal lands are lost, does not only create a humanitarian crisis but it creates conditions of hopelessness that could lead to failed states and make populations vulnerable to radicalization.”
• Admiral John Nathan, former Commander of the U.S. Fleet Forces, predicted, “There are serious risks to doing nothing about climate change. We can pay now or we’re going to pay more later.”
• James Clapper, the Director of the National Intelligence, testified, “there will almost assuredly be security concerns with respect to … energy and climate change. Environmental stresses are not just humanitarian issues. They legitimately threaten regional stability.”
• Thomas Fingar, the former Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, concluded, “We judge global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for US national security interests.”
• Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, said he thought climate change posed a greater threat to the planet than nuclear proliferation.
You may also want to review the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, which called climate change “an accelerant of instability or conflict” that “could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments.”
These concerns about the profound risks of climate change are shared by distinguished world leaders. Last month, Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, wrote in the Washington Post, “Climate change is the biggest challenge of our time. It threatens the well-being of hundreds of millions of people today and many billions more in the future.” Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, said last year that climate change has the “potential for major social and economic disruption.” And Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, stated that if we fail to confront climate change “we could witness the rolling back of decades of development gains and force tens of millions more to live in poverty.”
You may also want to reflect on what Robert Rubin, the widely respected former Treasury Secretary, said just last month about climate change: “There are a lot of really significant, monumental issues facing the global economy, but this supersedes them all.”
Senator McCain made a particular point of criticizing Secretary Kerry for talking about climate change “when we have got 130,000 people in Syria killed.” This is an inaccurate criticism because Secretary Kerry has been devoting extensive attention to Syria. It is also uninformed. There are experts who believe that climate change and the extended drought is one of the underlying causes of the conflicts in Syria. As the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote, tensions in the Middle East have been “driven not only by political and economic stresses, but, less visibly, by environmental, population and climate stresses as well. If we focus only on the former and not the latter, we will never be able to help stabilize these societies.”
Secretary Kerry needs allies in this fight for the future of our planet. History will not look back and fault him for leading the charge to prevent the worst impacts of climate change while we still have time. But history may question why Republican leaders who were once their party’s champions on climate change fled the field at a crucial moment.
Sincerely,
Rep. Henry A. Waxman
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
And finally, here is the link to the PDF file.
How confetti knowledge took down Universal Knowledge. Allah. And his friend Salah.
The War on the Poor: Connecting the Dots
This is a video by Robert Reich found here. Just watch this and then dare to do nothing but to be quiet.