Let us not gird science to our loins as the warrior buckles on his sword. Let us raise science aloft as the olive branch of peace and the emblem of hope. John Wesley Powell, in an 1882 talk, “Darwin’s contributions to philosophy” update: It’s worth pointing out here that Powell was full of extraordinary amounts …
I have absolutely no earthly idea what ionospheric plasma blobs are, but I’m pretty sure they’re a serious threat to life as we know it, or possibly they’re associated with the villain in a 1950s science fiction film, or else I read about them in Zippy the Pinhead. Whatever, I’m pretty excited that Pimenta and …
The collision of nuclear power and climate change is one of the more fascinating political and public policy debates afoot. Today’s case in point: a Financial Times story about a new Deutsche Bank study: Germany will miss its CO2 emission targets, face rising electricity prices and become “dramatically” more reliant on Russian gas if it …
David Roberts, who has gotten a lot of leftie blogosphere traction with his dirty hippie post, is at it again. Here’s David, describing the point he made on a conservative talk show (“one of the B-list Limbaughs”) yesterday: The IPCC is one of the most rigorous scientific processes ever developed, and its new report pegs …
One of my favorite science journalists, Alex Witze, had an excellent recent piece in Nature on peak oil (sub. req.). It’s a terrific bit of work because of the thoughtful way Witze embraces the uncertainty, explaining to us why smart and reasonable people disagree about this issue, rather than trying to tell us which answer …
It is rare that my two journalistic specialties, climate and the blinding tools of nuclear Armageddon, converge as they have today in Chicago. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved up the hands on its famed Doomsday Clock – not just because of those pesky Norks with the nuclear testing and the plutonium and …
weather: Looks like we’re on the El Niño one-storm-a-week track here, with another wet patch headed for New Mexico through the weekend. This’ll be the fourth in a row. book1: Andrew Revkin’s The North Pole Was Here. Don’t be fooled by the whole “children’s book” thing. It’s a ripping good read, and Revkin has clearly …
I see via Prometheus that David Roberts has taken up my challenge offered in the comments of a previous thread about whether Al Gore is representative of the mainstream consensus or an outlier (as suggested by Andy Revkin in his recent New York Times piece). I argued that Gore’s treatment of hurricanes and sea level …
I don’t know if it’s true or just apocryphal, but someone told me yesterday that the word “albedo” came from Giuseppe Albedo, the 17th century Italian polymath who discovered snow. Whatever, folks in Albuquerque, unaccustomed to a blanket of snow that sticks around, are having a direct personal experience with albedo, which I used this …
Charlie Liles at the National Weather Service lays out the factors (sub. or ad req.) that made our winter storm past so special: