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 …
Continue reading ‘Climate Change and Australian “drought”’ »
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 …
Betsy Blaney is a reporter after my own heart. The theme is Texas drought. The story has numbers: The first 11 months of 2006 rank as the 31st driest January-through-November stretch since 1895. Average rainfall for that period was 23 inches, down from the normal of 26.02 inches, the National Weather Service said. Compounding the …
The AP’s Charles Hanely reports that a deal is near between the nine nations that share (or don’t share) the waters of the Nile: After three years of closed-door talks, nine nations are quietly edging toward a deal to jointly oversee the waters of the Nile, an agreement that has eluded lands along the great …
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 …
I don’t know southern New Mexico water issues, so I’ll offer up this Las Cruces Sun-News story without comment, except to suggest that the issue is worth following: Local conservation groups are balking at the idea that the Gila and San Francisco rivers could be used to supply water to Doña Ana County as part …
A record year for wildfires in the U.S.: Drought and hot conditions contributed to the record wildfire season, with more than 9.5 million acres burned through early December, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The annual climate report, released Thursday by the National Climatic Data Center, says 2006 will most likely be the third …
Most readers of this blog already know what a dork Michael Crichton is. If you had any doubt, check this out – the account of how, in his latest novel, Crichton turned one of his critics into a child molester.
Steve Lohr has a nice piece in today’s New York Times about the economics of carbon mitigation, pointing out how some in carbon emitting industries actually welcome a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system: So it is something of a surprise that James E. Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy, a coal-burning utility in the Midwest …
Forced to write a daybook on account of ’cause I ran across a cool word of the day, which is: word of the day: “apophenia” – “the experience of seeing patterns where none exist” – definition from Bob Park, writing in the 9 December New Scientist reading: Acequia Culture, Jose Rivera’s book about the village-based …