The Horror of Drought
The price of Australian wine is predicted to soar as the country’s crippling drought threatens to halve next year’s grape harvest.
Archive of entries posted by jfleck
The Soybean Problem
Today’s paper of the day is Regional climate change over eastern Amazonia caused by pasture and soybean cropland expansion: Field observations and numerical studies revealed that large scale deforestation in Amazonia could alter the regional climate significantly, projecting a warmer and somewhat drier post-deforestation climate. Sampaio, G., C. Nobre, M. H. Costa, P. Satyamurty, B. …
Water in the Desert: Base Flow Edition
Rio Grande Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Looking south down the Rio Grande from the Paseo del Norte Bridge in Albuquerque Sunday, Sept. 23, 2007. That’s maybe 450 cubic feet per second of flow, which is getting down toward what they call “base flow“. That’s the minimum flow in a desert river, the point at which …
Water in the Desert: Muscular Americana Edition
Hoover Dam – Small Version Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. From our trip to the New Mexico State Fair a week ago. It’s a scale model of Hoover Dam, the great monument to America’s confidence in its ability to tame the great Colorado River and make the desert bloom. I’ve always loved the triumphant architecture of …
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Sawmill Park
Sawmill Park Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Wandering on the bike today, I stumbled (rolled?) into this lovely little new park in the Sawmill neighborhood, just north of Albuquerque’s Old Town.
The Problem With Meat
The problem with meat is that it’s yummy. But it’s also probably the lowest hanging greenhouse gas reduction fruit in the developed world. Simon Donner has more: In order to achieve the twin goals of reducing poverty and fighting climate change, we will need to decrease the GHG emissions required to produce a gram of …
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Budget Chaos Edition
On the federal budget process and its implications for the nuclear weapons program: The new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1— in just 10 days. But Congress hasn’t completed any spending bills, and partisan bickering has broken out in Washington over what to do about the problem. In the long term, the battle is over …
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Dry Out West
Every state in the Western U.S., save Colorado, currently has below average reservoir storage.
Dude!
Via Stoat comes word that the fight against global warming does not come without a price: The British Surfing Association (BSA) and the environmental campaign group Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) back the principle of wave power and the Wave Hub project. But they remain worried that if the size of the project is increased or …
Antarctic Snowmelt
From NASA Goddard: NASA researchers using data collected from 1987 to 2006 found snow melting in unlikely places in 2005: as far inland as 500 miles away from the Antarctic coast and as high as 1.2 miles above sea level in the Transantarctic Mountains. The 20-year data record was three times longer than previous studies …