12″

Sadie in the snow Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. To measure your snowfall, pick an open area, away from the influence of buildings, trees, etc. Use a ruler or yardstick and take three separate measurements at widely separated spots. Average the results. Sadie does not care about this level of detail. Her concern seems to be …

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The Mythology Around the Japanese Bomb

I usually leave the nuke stuff elsewhere, (or here – too many blogs?) but this post by Jeffrey Lewis, the Arms Control Wonk, seems relevant to the science policy discussions that go on here. Lewis is trying to critically examine the conventional wisdom, widely reported of late, that Japan is just six months away from …

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Climate Change and Australian “drought”

A new paper by Wenju Cai and Tim Cowan at CSIRO in Victoria argues that anthropogenic climate change can explain some, but not all, of the marked decline in rainfall over the last half century in southwest Western Australia: “An ensemble result from 71 experiments reveals that anthropogenic forcing contributes to about 50% of the …

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A Greenhouse Calculation

Here’s a lazyweb word problem: John rides his bicycle to work, thus saving a half gallon (1.9 liters) of gasoline, consuming 700 calories in the process. If John replaces those calories by eating beef, what is the net reduction (increase?) in greenhouse gas emissions? If he gets the calories from soy protein? Etc? (Ideally, the …

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Giant Scissors Update

Peter Rice in the Albuquerque Tribune today today has an upate on the Albuquerque giant scissors phenomenon: For official ribbon cuttings, Kerby Moore had been borrowing a jumbo-sized pair of scissors from the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, but those events are becoming so frequent that she’s ordering her own.