Don’t Blame the Sun
A lovely bit of amateur climate science from Tim Haab: Follow the bouncing ball of logic. C02 concentrations and temperatures are correlated. Sunspot activity and temperatures are not and neither are CO2 concentrations and sunspot activity. Therefore, sunspots activities are not a causal factor in determining long-term temperature trends. Don’t worry. His work is easily [...]
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: plant sex edition
On the pollen count: Unable to meet up in person, elm and juniper are among the many plants that have developed a decidedly unromantic reproductive strategy. They spew pollen into the air in search of a mate. A lot of pollen. “The pollen is basically sperm,” explained University of New Mexico biologist Felisa Smith. “The [...]
Access to the Code
One of my old Gnome friends, Dave Mason, is in Rwanda working on a public health technology project. He told a great story today about what the Rwandans he is working with need from their software: I was very directly asked if we would develop our software in open source. They asked because two other [...]
My Darkest Secret
At the risk of tarnishing whatever green cred I might possess, a confession: I have always wanted a riding mower. I sit in them when I’m in the garden department at Home Depot, making brrmm brrmm noises under my breath. I imagine myself king of my domain as I ride the mower this way and [...]
Credit Where Credit is Due
Last week, USA Today’s Doyle Rice wrote a story about a research project in which I was involved. Rice did what journalists do. He got wind of a topic that interested him, tracked down and interviewed the lead researcher, got and read the paper, interviewed others for perspective, and wrote a story. Four days later, [...]
Water in the Desert: Tempe Edition
We’ve got a standard joke around the office when it starts raining: “Drought’s over.” You’ve gotta love the picture on Arizona Republic water guy Shaun McKinnon’s blog today of water spilling over the dam in the middle of Tempe. To non-southwestern desert types: that’s a place where you don’t usually see water. But Shaun bids [...]
Water in the Desert: Angostura Edition
Angostura Dam Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Lissa and I stopped at Angostura Dam on a recent drive up to Santa Fe. It’s the diversion for water used in the Albuquerque reach of the middle Rio Grande. It’s a modest affair, built in the 1930s, just building up enough head to divert water into a concrete [...]
Boykoff Revisited
Max and Jules Boykoff wrote a widely quoted paper back in 2004 that has been used as a cudgel to bludgeon the news media for providing a sort of false balance in coverage of climate change that amounts to a hidden bias. The argument is that mainstream U.S. media, in its instinctive search for “balance,” [...]
Drought in Chile
While I’m at it, another global drought report (I’m really just catching up on some news stories I set aside over the last week to read). This time Chile: Farmers in small towns in south-central Chile have lost crops and livestock in the drought blamed on the weather phenomenon La Nina. Rainfall records show the [...]
Drought in China
While we’ve been seeing news of extraordinary snows in China, folks in the north are in the grip of what sounds like serious drought: The drought has led to loss of arable land, livestock and drinking water, according to the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, the official Xinhua News Agency said late Sunday. [...]
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