Tin Foil Hats
Geez, conspiracies are complicated. Turns out that tin foil hat I’ve been wearing may actually enhance those evil government radio transmissions. (hat tips The Register and Dave)
Archive of entries posted by jfleck
More on that Pesky Single Number
Jim Hansen and buds offer an explanation of the 2005 global temperature numbers, in part in response to last month’s Washington Post story on their data. Money quote: The existing record in the period of instrumental temperature measurements occurred when the 1997-98 “El Nino of the century” occurred on the back of a strong two-decade …
“the echoing complaints of the foot soldiers”
Johnny_Mango (historyblogger? – Chantal is right, let’s just dump the labels and go with “writer”) on the old Confederate encampment in the south valley bosque. The Ghosts of 1000 Texans Still Whisper in the Bosque. I’ve ridden past there a hundred times. Who knew?
Environmental Determinism
I’ve been struggling to understand “environmental determinism,” and why some people think it’s so icky. Thanks to Wikipedia, I finally get it. I was stuck on the plain English meaning of the words, and thought I had stumbled down the rabbit hole of some sort of academic argument over the relative importance of environmental boundary …
Abrupt Climate Change
I’ve been guilty in my journalism of playing the “thermohaline card” – using the example of a thermohaline circulation shutdown as an example of the sort of abrupt climate change that could happen unexpectedly as a result of anthropogenic climate change. I never pushed it hard, but I thought it relevant. But a good story …
Cave Talk
A cool talk tomorrow evening (Thurs. 11/10) in Albuquerque on bats, swallows and the stuff that lives in caves. The speaker is Diana Northup, a cave biologist at UNM and one of my favorite scientists. She’s speaking to the local Audubon Society. From the press release they sent me at work: “Sight Unseen: The Life …
Kucinich Resolution Defeated
Dennis Kucinich’s wacky “resolution of inquiry” into What the President Knew About Global Warming and When He Knew It (see Prometheus for background) has been defeated. Comments from House Science Committee chair Sherwood Boehlert (he’s an R), as reported in the committee press release: I want to make clear at the outset that any debate …
A Single Global Number
David Appell’s not around to do this, so I guess it’s my job to point out that October 2005 was the second-warmest globally in history. The three warmest Octobers in history have come in the last three years. It’s not that I think that a single global number is useless. I agree with Roger Pielke …
Water Vapor Feedbacks in Europe
Given the recent discussions here and elsewhere about the suitability (or lack thereof) of globally averaged surface temperature as a measure of anthropogenic climate change, I note a paper by Swiss climate researcher Rolf Philipona and colleagues that found a positive water vapor feedback responsible for excess warming in Europe:
I Wish I Spoke German
Dave points me to this: Anyone in the audience speak German?