I’ve written in the past about the importance of the notion of moving water from where it wants to be. A lot of our problems seem to happen when we do that, because water wants to be where it wants to be, and its powerful urges are difficult to resist. My past discussions have focused …
Friday’s release of the National Academy study on pumping restrictions in the California Bay-Delta system on behalf of endangered fish offers a great case study in “scientization,” the process by which competing political factions repurpose scientific findings to meet their political needs. The panel concluded that the pumping restrictions are scientifically justified, a blow for …
Continue reading ‘Scientization: Delta Smelt, a Case Study’ »
I am happy to report that a paper I helped write, The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus, has been included in McGraw Hill Annual Editions Environment 10/11, a collection used as an undergraduate environmental and earth science reader. (Full disclosure: the series editor, Zach Sharp, is a friend.)
A lot of the discussion about the new “Bloom Energy Server,” which is having its 15 minutes of fame, is of the binary “is it or isn’t it” flavor. David Douglas has a more nuanced view of the way in which what happened here is an example of the sort of path forward me might …
Continue reading ‘Zigs and Zags on the Path to Lower Carbon Energy’ »
Albuquerque’s per capita water consumption continues to drop (sub/ad req): Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority customers used an average of 159 gallons per capita per day in 2009, down from 252 gallons in 1994, when the community’s water conservation efforts began, according to Katherine Yuhas, head of the utility’s water conservation program. Yuhas and …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: ABQ Water Consumption Declining’ »
Matthew Nisbet, in Slate today, gives thoughtful voice to my growing frustration with the way my friends in the science community have been approaching the climate politics and policy discussion of late: The problems begin when scientists overestimate the influence of climate skeptics and their corporate backers. When legislation and international treaties fail, and polls …
Continue reading ‘Confusing metaphorical warfare with policy substance’ »
From today’s newspaper, my story (sub/ad req) about a Senate hearing earlier this week that touched on a study of water supply and demand now getting underway in the Colorado River Basin. The story’s brief, but the hearing raised what I think is a very interesting question: While individual states have looked at their own …
Continue reading ‘Concerns About New Colorado River Study’ »
It is a testament to the nature of rivers in the arid western United States that this is news: The San Joaquin River is flowing from Friant Dam near Fresno to the Delta…. That’s Alex Breitler writing today in the Stockton Record. If you follow the link, he gives a pretty good accounting of why …
In my second spring of actually writing down the birds I see, I’ve encountered a hole in my data. Dark-eyed juncos have been a steady and heavy presence all winter, first showing up in mid-October. But I was a slacker last March, so I don’t have data on when they leave. Through the winter, I …
The existence of bunk when science lumbers into the political sphere with what to some are uncomfortable observations seems to be a remarkably resilient feature of our landscape. I learned this more than a decade ago when I spent a good deal of time reading the work of quasi-scientific young-earth creationists. The arguments raised by …