Revkin on the nonskeptical heretics

Andrew Revkin does a nice job in this morning’s New York Times in characterizing those scientists that Roger Pielke Jr. has described as the “nonskeptical heretics”: A third stance is now emerging, espoused by many experts who challenge both poles of the debate. They agree that accumulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe …

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Storm of 2006: Water Supply Implications

Dec. 30, 2006 Colorado Snowpack Map Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. It’ll be another few days before the InterWeb data sources catch up with what the eastern two Four Corners states must call the Big Storm of 2006, but the preliminary data suggests that the water supply implications are less significant than the enormous pile of …

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Storm of the Century and Stuff

From our friends at the National Weather Service: 00 SXUS75 KABQ 300848 RERABQ RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ALBUQUERQUE NM 148 AM MST SAT DEC 30 2006 …RECORD DAILY MAXIMUM SNOWFALL SET AT ALBUQUERQUE NM… A RECORD SNOWFALL OF 11.3 INCHES WAS SET AT THE ALBUQUERQUE SUNPORT YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF …

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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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