As Sandy converges on our stark, inevitable fate, people outside the weather nerd community are being again confronted by our dark, uncomfortable question – why do the official forecasts always make it seem like they’re shouting? Why do the forecasters always write in all caps? There are times when this feels right: FLOOD WATCH FOR …
Forgot to blog earlier in the week, a frustratingly inconclusive newspaper piece on the reasons behind the rising cost of refurbishing the US stockpile of B61 bombs: Is Sandia National Laboratories to blame for cost overruns in the multibillion-dollar effort to refurbish the U.S. arsenal of B61 nuclear bombs? A December 2011 evaluation by the …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: more on the B61’ »
So what’s up with that full court PR madness from the folks in the Tarrant Regional Water District in Texas? Is the future of the many interstate water management compacts that govern water distribution among the western states really under threat. This may seem obscure, but if you follow water, you can’t help but have …
On page 399 of The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver cites my work with Tom Peterson and William Connolley examining the claim that scientists in the 1970s were predicting global cooling. Footnote 88. This makes me embarrassingly fanboy happy.
From a great Circle of Blue interview, Pat Mulroy of the Southern Nevada Water Authority has some great insights into how we value water, but also how we think about paying the resulting costs: [W]e in the water business stand back, and we become amazed that somebody is willing to pay $US 80, $US 90, $US …
One might expect the Las Vegas mob experience to involve criminal activity. But the Las Vegas Mob Experience, a tourist trap? Financing for the Las Vegas Mob Experience tourist attraction likely involved a “fraudulent transaction” and “the earmarks of a Ponzi scheme,” a court-appointed accountant has determined. (With a hat tip to Tampa Bay Times …
Continue reading ‘Oh Vegas: Ponzi Scheme at the Las Vegas Mob Experience?’ »
Intriguing paper by Pierson and colleagues, looking at a big demographic survey of the great saguaro cactus: Averaged across the region, saguaro regeneration rates were highest from 1780 to 1860, coincident with wet conditions and high Pinus ponderosa recruitment in the highlands. Milder and wetter winters and protection from livestock grazing likely promoted late 20th …
Continue reading ‘Saguaro, Ponderosa and regional climate’ »
In the midst of reading Nate Silver’s book, I felt like I ought to say something nuanced about the seasonal forecast that came out this morning: In this morning’s briefing, the forecasters were careful to explain that they’re not making predictions here, but rather forecasting odds – “probabilistic” in the jargon: “These impacts are not …
Here in the arid West, land of the pioneer spirit and the rugged individual, we have a longstanding tradition of sticking someone else with the bill for our water projects. The carefully constructed edifice that is Law of the (Colorado) River is complex set of legal and institutional deals among the basin’s water users built …