There’s a fascinating anecdote in Peter Spotts’ Christian Science Monitor piece on athletes and doping. After publishing results of tests on a new compound that showed promise in growing extraordinary muscles in mice, University of Pennsylvania researchers were inundated with requests for information, but not from people in the medical community: After the university published …
I’ve been much of the week up in Santa Fe at a workshop of drought scientists, and while we’ve been busy palavering, things have been changing on the ground here in the drought-stricken southwest. The greatest excitement was in Coronado National Memorial Park, near Bisbee in far southern Arizona, which got 12 inches of rain …
Zippy’s concerned about global warming: I’m concerned about global warming, but I’m even more concerned about Al Gore’s love affair with his Powerpoint program. On the one hand, I don’t want to be underwater in 30 years, but on the other, can Al Gore sweep into the oval office on a wave of animated carbon …
Andrew Dessler, one of my favorite climate science/politics/policy ‘splainers, has started a blog.
Of possible interest to at least one Inkstain reader, there’s a paper in last week’s Science documenting the decline in bee diversity in Britain and the Netherlands. It’s of potential significance because of the importance of pollinators to our ability to grow food, though, as the authors note, “the evidence for such declines remains scanty.”
Interesting new bit of work by Dirmeyer and Brubaker in GRL about the effects of early spring on northern hemisphere water budgets: Over most mid- and high-latitude areas, a strong annual cycle of recycling ratio exists; low during winter when storm tracks are active, tropospheric circulation strong, and surface evaporation rates low, high during summer …
In which I describe the climate wars tribal labels being attached to me because of my Sunday story on climate change science.
There’s good reason to think the whole hurricane-global warming debate is a huge distraction, because of its relative lack of importance in understanding societal hurricane risk. (See Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog for the latest in many, many discussions of the data suggesting that building houses on the beach is the most important risk factor in …
From my work blog, on how not to make national non-proliferation policy.
Some useful background for those cycling fans in the audience trying to understand the context of Floyd’s test results. Turns out Malcolm Gladwell spent the necessary time getting on terms with the subject some years ago: Athletes have now switched from injection to transdermal testosterone patches, which administer a continuous low-level dose of the hormone, …