One of my favorite experiences as a science writer is asking a scientist to explain what I have assumed is a fundamental underlying bit of background, only to get the answer, “We don’t know.” I’m reminded of that by an article in the latest Eos by Julio Betancourt about the efforts to create a national …
David Fields of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute has a paper in tomorrow’s Science (press release here) suggesting an interesting anthropogenic warming fingerprint: plankton in varves on the ocean floor. Both warm- and cold-water forams can be found, and the relative abundances of the various types works as a climate proxy. Fields sees the …
Of no great climate wars import, just a fun story about the people who collect the data: DOE Climate Study Spans the Planet This is climate science at its most basic— understanding how energy moves through the atmosphere, making the warm spots warm, the cold spots cold, some places wet and some places dry.
Peter Gleick’s year-ender includes a discussion of one of my favorite topics: the misrepresentation of “consensus science”: One such doughnut hole is what climate change skeptics call “consensus science.” They argue that just because the vast majority of serious climate scientists believe in the greenhouse effect – that humans are causing the earth’s climate to …
Last Link in the Chain: Dam Will Help Wean ABQ From Its Dependence On Aquifer Water. But you really ought to check it out in the paper copy of the newspaper if you have a chance, for maximum benefit of Carol Cooperrider’s lovely graphic explaining how the city’s new Alameda dam works, and for Jim …
The problem with climate change is change. It’s a simple thing, really, but it’s a point sometimes missed. It’s not that it gets warmer or colder or wetter or drier. It’s that it gets different, and the societal systems we’ve put in place to cope with what used to be “normal” become less useful. A …
The overnight low this morning in Albuquerque – 42 – was a record. Previous record – 41, back in 1982. (Via NewWest, we note that it’s a bit colder in Pinedale, Wyoming.) (update Jan. 2, 2006: Ken points out that it dropped down to 38 before midnight, so that’s the official Jan. 1 low. I …
Tropical storm Zeta. Atlantic sea surface anomalies.
I very much liked Jared Diamond’s Collapse, but as a non-specialist in the fields he writes about, I approached this work (like Guns Germs and Steel) with a bit of trepidation. So I was pleased this morning to run across this collection of reviews from the latest issue of Current Anthropology.
With Tania Soussan, the latest (sub. req.) on our meager snowpack and prospects for the future. The current conditions: The upper Rio Grande, Rio Chama, San Juan and Cimarron river basins have less than a third of the normal snow water equivalent for this time of year, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Snotel …