Reading John Houghton’s Global Warming: The Complete Briefing this evening, I was reminded of one of my favorite episodes in the history of science: Lewis Fry Richardson and the first numerical weather forecast. Richardson was of that era that ended with the burst of modernism in the early 20th century – a generalist, dabbler in …
Forests are a good thing, right? And reversing deforestation is a smart approach to climate change – locking all that carbon back up in trees, right? A new paper out of Lawrence Livermore throws an odd monkey wrench into the conventional wisdom, using model simulations to conclude that grassland cools while forest warms: We find …
Via the comments at ScienceGate, a good science blog I’d not read before: James Hrynyshyn’s Island of Doubt.
Interesting work presented at AGU by a University of Alabama/NASA/etc. group suggesting the the possibility that Mayan deforestation may have brought on the drought conditions that some blame for the collapse of classic Maya culture. I have thought that the Maya might make a good case study for a society done in by drought, expanding …
Jeff Bingaman, fresh from Montreal, talks about U.S. greenhouse gas policies: Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., thinks now is the time for the United States to act on climate change. But Bingaman, who has emerged as a congressional leader on the issue, acknowledges he has his work cut out for him in persuading the Bush administration. …
Cycling News has a picture of New Mexico rider Tove Shere, national Masters 50-54 champion. Check out the snow. That’s serious bike riding.
Monahan on crime stats
John Keller, in the comments below, notes that he lives in what by my measure is clearly not a world-class city: No Taco Bells here, but 5 in the equivalent Zip code. The place? Paris, France. Guess we’re not world-class yet… Though I hope we’re never as “world-class” as NYC by this metric.
Johannes J. Feddema and colleagues have a paper in Science today(Feddema et al. 2005) on the importance of land use in climate change. (And the suddenly ubiquitous Roger Pielke Sr. has an accompanying Perspective piece(Pielke Sr. 2005), and Roger also blogs it here.) What Feddema and company did was run a global climate model with …
Continue reading ‘Climate, Land Use and Spatial Variability’ »
Writing a little squib for the Rio Grande Racing Team newsletter on staying warm cycling in the winter, I ran across a rather odd suggestion from one of my teammates: aluminum foil inside the helmet to block the helmet air holes, thus keeping your head warmer. It occurs to me that this might have additional …