Andrew Dessler has a great post today on the implications of the recent ozone chemistry discovery for the standard argument that science as an institution is uncomfortable with those who attack consensus: Overall, the idea that any scientific community is not interested in new ideas is ridiculous. Good new ideas are the fuel that science …
Freeze warning for parts of the Albuquerque area tonight, but it looks like we’ll be OK: ALBUQUERQUE VALLEY LOCATIONS ARE EXPECTED TO SEE FROST CONDITIONS DEVELOP WITH TEMPERATURES RIGHT AROUND THE FREEZING MARK FOR 1 TO 2 HOURS. OTHER AREAS ACROSS THE CITY WILL SEE TEMPERATURES IN THE 30S BUT ABOVE THE 32 DEGREE MARK …
water politics: Looks like Sophie and the guy with the steely set in his jaw are going to stop Caesar’s evil plot to steal groundwater to build subdivisions. water politics II: Looks like Sophie and the guy with the steely set in his jaw may need to head over to Arizona next. water politics III: …
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: As northern Georgia suffers through a monumental drought and the toughest water restrictions ever imposed, Stone Mountain is using up to 38 gallons of water a minute — for 12 to 18 hours a day for the next month — to make snow. On the day Gov. Sonny Perdue took the …
Continue reading ‘I Guess This is One Way to Respond to Drought’ »
reading: Tired of printing out PDF’s, I’m placing my order today for the IPCC Working Group I report paper of the day: “A Method of Approximating Rainfall over Long Periods and Some Results of its Application,” A.E. Douglass, Science, Jan. 3, 1913. Sorry, nothing to link here, you’ll just have to take my word for …
From today’s Judge Parker, it looks like Sophie’s on to something big: “A company in Nevada has been slowly buying agricultural property all over the West!” “So?” “They’re buying the property to gain access to the water underneath!” Smart girl. This sounds like trouble. (Hat tip Kelsey.)
Went back to the full text in my RSS feed. Sorry for the delay, Luis. I just forgot.
There’s an interesting framing thing going on here in New Mexico around the Fiscal Year 2008 budget. The House of Representatives is pushing some relatively deep cuts in the nuclear weapons research, development, manufacturing etc. budget. For those not familiar with New Mexico, we’re home to two large nuclear weapons labs. Those cuts would effect …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Framing Edition’ »
Staci Matlock has a good story in this morning’s Santa Fe New Mexican outlining the regulatory dilemma facing New Mexico related to Sandoval County’s hunt for brackish water for desalination: This new, deep source of water poses a regulatory challenge to the state engineer, who is charged with overseeing New Mexico’s increasingly precious water resources. …
Continue reading ‘Inland Desalination: The Regulatory Side’ »
One of my great frustrations as a science journalist covering environmental controversies is that they are often driven not by risks themselves, but by the entities that cause them. Thus, for example, an environmental risk caused by us – the hazardous wastes we through out in our own trash, which ends up at a municipal …