From Happisburgh, on Britain’s eastern coast, an interesting story about the way adaptation decisions end up being made not at some global level, but one crumbling seawall at a time: Ronan Uhel, a top official at the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen, said the situation in Happisburgh shows that governments and insurance companies have finally …
This is apparently not satire (thought it’s sometimes hard to tell): Also, these scientists are mostly liberal athiests, untroubled by the hubris that man can destroy the Earth which God gave him. (See also Unicorn)
Tom Yulsman, in the comments below, raises an interesting question about yesterday’s release of the National Research Council Colorado River report: [N]othing in the NRC report sounded terribly new. We knew that droughts much worse than what we’ve experienced in the last 100 years have occurred in the past, we knew that the river is …
So if you wanted to find out more about Luddite groups, could you do a Google search to find them? update: And what about the Amish?
The NAS Colorado River report was released this morning: Recent studies of past climate and streamflow conditions have broadened understanding of long-term water availability in the Colorado River, revealing many periods when streamflow was lower than at any time in the past 100 years of recorded flows. That information, along with two important trends—a rapid …
On the online disinhibition effect and Pat the Dog. Update: Pat the Dog responds
update: Looks like William Connolley, whose qualifications to deal with this issue are above reproach, has done a nice update on the Roger Pielke Jr. WikiThing. In a recent comment thread, I facetiously threatened to start a new Inkstian feature: I think I’m gonna start a new “Pielke watch” feature on Inkstain, where I highlight …
Water in the Desert Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Mountainair, New Mexico, is not technically a desert. It averages nearly 15 inches (~40 cm) of precipitation a year. Nearly half of that falls in the summer rainy season, from late June into September, in big rapid thunderstorms. With essentially no surface water for miles around, the …
dad_train_4 Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. It is very likely that this is the first view my Dad ever had of Albuquerque, riding the train across American more than three score years ago, a Pennsylvania boy on his way to California for the first time. I didn’t mean to get his reflection in the picture. In …
One useful measure of drought/pluvial conditions is soil moisture, which is critical both for non-irrigated farming and natural ecosystems. Today’s map is from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, which publishes a host of map products intended to illustrate what’s going on. Note that the map I’ve chosen does not represent absolute soil moisture, which is available …