My friend George, who commutes to work by bike very early in the morning, has seen beavers in the bosque a couple of times, at dawn on the west end of the Alameda Bridge where the Corrales drain empties into the river. I’ve never seen ’em, though I’ve seen gnawed tree trunks many times. But …
With help from Nora, the Easy-Do Parties lady wishes you and yours an electric Christmas.
There’s been much curiosity in our household about this Festival of Illumination thing. How will we certify that Albuquerque really has lit up 3 million (5 million?) luminarias to convince those Guiness World Record sticklers? Some sort of Santa-borne spy satellite? The honor system? Isabel Sanchez has the goods (sub. req.) in this morning’s paper: …
With Tania Soussan, the latest (sub. req.) on our meager snowpack and prospects for the future. The current conditions: The upper Rio Grande, Rio Chama, San Juan and Cimarron river basins have less than a third of the normal snow water equivalent for this time of year, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Snotel …
The question of whether global warming is bumping up hurricanes gets another good airing in today’s Nature, with two strong arguments against the suggestion that Kerry Emanuel made in August in Nature (sub. req. for the Nature links) of a global warming-hurricane link. Just as Emanuel’s initial work was seized upon by the left (“As …
From the “50 and 100 years ago” feature in this week’s Nature (sub. req): A recent survey shows that the study of physics in American public high schools has been declining for more than half a century… why [does our youth] turn away from a career in science? We can only grope for the answer. …
The holiday ritual of indeterminate origin returned to the Heineman-Fleck household over the weekend with the hanging of a small rubber chicken, at least two plastic bananas and other assorted traditional family remembrances. “Where’s the pickle,” Nora asked as soon as the lights went up. And so the pickle launched this year’s Yule festivity. I …
Two drought-related things crossed my desk today. The first was the CLIMAS southwest outlook, documenting growing drought conditions where I live. The second involves drought in Niger. Drought’s a complicated thing, and it’s worth remembering that climate is not the only driver. A society’s resiliency is key, and Niger clearly has just about no margin …
This critique of RealClimate by James Annan resonated with me: More recently, they have plucked a couple of fairly minor papers out of relative obscurity and thrust them into the limelight for no apparent purpose other than to tear into them …. The authors’ crimes? In each case, they included a throwaway phrase which appears …
It occurs to me that if I really believe that the regional-scale climate change question is relevant, I should offer up the Albuquerque temperature numbers. 2005, according to the GISS data (adjusted to try to remove an urban bias), is the seventh warmest in history. Seven of the ten warmest years here have come since …