Going Metric

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For the more sophisticated in the Inkstain audience (either scientifically or geographically), I usually try to translate units from those we use here in America to their metric equivalents. But I realized I had no idea what the standard metric equivalent was for our quaint river flow metric – cubic feet per second. Malcolm to the rescue!

The current flow in the Rio Grande through Albuquerque is 3,600 cubic feet per second  (102 kilolitres per second). Now you metric folks know the ugly truth: our “rio” is not really very “grande” at all.

“the grumbling of mountain lions”

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From today’s Washington Post:

At 9 a.m. on the very edge of the dusty, desolate collection of adobe homes and Vietnamese restaurants that seem to form this city, David Iglesias begins his run through the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. This is not easy terrain. The footing is terribly uneven. The altitude can be unbearable. At certain times one can hear the grumbling of mountain lions and the feasting of coyotes.

I personally have never heard the grumbling of mountain lions or the feasting of coyotes in my nearly two decades in Albuquerque, but I clearly am not half the creative writer Sridhar Pappu is. Maybe that’s why.

Update: For the record, I have eaten at several Vietnamese restaurants here, though I had never considered them to be a signature feature of our growing community, unless you happen to live near my friend Andrew, over by the fairgrounds, in which case, holy mother of Ho Chi Minh there are a lot of Vietnamese restaurants ’round here.

Discussing the Coming Dust Bowl

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Roger Pielke Sr. and I have been having a polite disagreement today over at his blog on how to think about Richard Seager’s paper last month in Science on the risk of future drought in the southwest.

Roger argues Seager’s work is contradicted by a 1997 paper by Trenberth and Hoar arguing for stronger El Ninos in a globally warming world, which would lead to a wetter southwest. I argue that Roger is misusing the Trenberth and Hoar paper and misunderstanding the Seager paper.

Various Canaries

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canarythe “canary in the climate change coal mine”

(Full disclosure: I’ve done it too: “Mountain ecosystems are a canary in the climate-change coal mine.”)

Water in the Desert

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Rio Grande, May 19, 2007

Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck.

I’ve been otherwise occupied over the last week, so I haven’t been paying my usual attention to the river. But when I went out yesterday for a bike ride, it was wonderfully high – 3,700 cubic feet per second through Albuquerque, which I think is the highest it’s been this season. This picture was taken from the old Alameda Bridge, which is a great place to walk out and look at the river. The water’s overtopping the island in the middle of the stream there. Another great view spot right now is the Montano Bridge. On the south side pedestrian walkway, they built little observation decks. The one in the middle looks out on one of the islands where they’ve cut little stream paths for minnow habitat. The water’s high enough to fill them right now with the sort of low flow water the little fishies need.

Montano Bridge Island

A Google Map (or not)

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George and Big Toe

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George and Big Toe

Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck.

Big Toe joined me Thursday morning at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which has been in Albuquerque all week. He in particular wanted to see George Hotz, who I’d featured in the morning newspaper:

George Hotz’s words exploded, as if there were three sentences in his head for every two that made it out of his mouth.
“I’m sure you’re familiar with polar coordinates. They have a theta, an R and a Z,” he said to the gray-haired man visiting his science fair booth.
The man leaned in and nodded as a smile crept across his face.
“You’re familiar with DLP technology,” Hotz said, holding up a circuit board. The man nodded again, the smile growing, as he responded, “From Texas Instruments?”
Hotz, a 17-year-old wunderkind from Glen Rock, N.J., and Craig Barrett, chairman of the board of Intel— the largest computer chip maker in the world— spoke the same language.

George, I’m happy to say, won one of the fair’s top prizes – a trip to Stockholm to the Nobel ceremonies. I feel personally privileged to have spent the week with George and the rest of these kids, who are so bright, creative, passionate and morally committed to what they do that it gives me hope.

P.S. Chantal did a nice job of capturing my enthusiasm here.

The Innovation Frame

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An example of framing in the statement out today from the national academies of 13 nations:

Major investments and successful technological and institutional innovation will be needed to achieve better energy efficiency, low- or zero-carbon energy sources and carbon-removing schemes. A clear area for increased investment is energy conservation and efficiency. This has immediate and long-term benefits for local and regional health and environment, security of energy services and climate change, while having potential for local economic development and build-up of local technological capabilities.

But How Does It Taste?

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This must seem silly to folks who don’t have access to potable water at all, but those folks probably aren’t reading my blog. Here in the first world, we care about how our water tastes, and the folks in San Diego, California, are trying to figure out how to best market desalinated seawater, so they did a real, peer-reviewed taste test:

Consumers were able to discern between desalinated seawater and imported water, preferring imported water when forced to make a choice. However, the investigators did not believe that the difference in consumer perception was significant enough to warrant special blending facilities to mitigate the relatively minor aesthetic quality differences between imported water supplies and desalinated seawater.