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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Quacks in the Internet Age

The Internet has made it too easy to be a quack. In my desk drawer at work, I have a wonderful collection of old UFO nuttiness from the early 1990s. It’s wonderful stuff – wildly imaginative zines full of poor writing, even poorer graphical presentation and absolutely wonderfully muddy thinking. Back in the day, you …

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