Interesting new bit of work by Dirmeyer and Brubaker in GRL about the effects of early spring on northern hemisphere water budgets: Over most mid- and high-latitude areas, a strong annual cycle of recycling ratio exists; low during winter when storm tracks are active, tropospheric circulation strong, and surface evaporation rates low, high during summer …
In which I describe the climate wars tribal labels being attached to me because of my Sunday story on climate change science.
There’s good reason to think the whole hurricane-global warming debate is a huge distraction, because of its relative lack of importance in understanding societal hurricane risk. (See Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog for the latest in many, many discussions of the data suggesting that building houses on the beach is the most important risk factor in …
Last fall, Lissa and I spent a couple of days in and around Lee’s Ferry. As the linchpin between the upper and lower Colorado basins, it’s central to storytelling about water, drought and the west, which is part of my attraction to the place. But it’s also magnificent country in a stark and powerful way. …
Naomi “Don’t Call Me Nancy” Oreskes responded yesterday in the Los Angeles Times to Richard Lindzen’s Wall Street Journal claim that her Science magazine review of the climate change literature had been refuted: My study demonstrated that there is no significant disagreement within the scientific community that the Earth is warming and that human activities …
One of the fundamental public misunderstandings about science, I think, is the difference between textbooks full of answers known and scientists poking blindly out at the fuzzy edge. That’s why the latest dietary study (“But I thought they said coffee was good for me!”) always causes such public puzzlement. That’s the premise I was trying …
A week ago, I wrote a snarky post in which I implied that the criticism of Michael Mann and his hockey stick had gone beyond a debate about the science to become a personal attack. A thoughtful commenter suggested that perhaps I’d gone too far: “There has been little in there which is ad hominem, …
In another life, I wrote about California water policy. So it was with some nostalgia that I saw this LA Times story come across a local water policy email list: The cost of dismantling the dam that created Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and restoring the glacial gorge that John Muir considered one of the national …
The AP’s Douglas Pizac reports this week that Lake Powell is seeing less water than expected: Lake Powell is barely half full and taking a quarter less runoff than expected this year — a sign the Colorado River basin remains in the grip of a multiyear drought, according to a new report from government hydrologists. …
Hahn_Arroyo_Under_Repair Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. I did another water ride this morning, up the Hahn Arroyo bike trail to see the bits that washed out in last Saturday’s downpour. Water in a sense defines landscape (or at least contributes strongly to its definition), and the concrete of the Hahn is a great illustration of one …