Accepting the science

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From Saturday’s Washington Post:

“We have to deal with greenhouse gases,” John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., said in a recent speech at the National Press Club. “From Shell’s point of view, the debate is over. When 98 percent of scientists agree, who is Shell to say, ‘Let’s debate the science’?”

The interesting bit here is where I tip my hat for the link to the story: NEI Nuclear Notes. The nuclear industry seems remarkable enthusiastic about the scientific consensus on climate change. Perhaps it is because, as Roger Pielke Jr. recently noted, “There is no such thing as decisions driven by science. Decisions are always driven by values.”

Climate Catastrophe

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Never mind drought, famine, rising sea level inundating coastal cities, etc. This is serious:

High temperatures in Europe have disrupted the Alpine skiing World Cup, throwing the calendar of the sport’s premier circuit into disarray and raising questions about the future of a sport so vulnerable to climate change.

“It will very quickly be a big crisis for us if we continue canceling races in December,” said Atle Skaardal, who oversees the women’s portion of the tour for the International Ski Federation. “I think it’s very critical, not only for racing but for public skiing, which also has a big impact on racing. We all have to hope for colder temperatures and snowfall in Europe.”

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere

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Dustin Hoffman in the graduate

In which I get references to The Graduate, Richard Feynman and Rumpelstiltskin into the same story.

Nanotechnology enthusiasts love to cite a classic exchange from the 1967 film “The Graduate.”

Mr. McGuire, an older businessman, is trying to explain the future to a young Benjamin Braddock. “I want to say one word to you. Just one word,” McGuire says. “Plastics.”

McGuire turned out to be right. Plastics are now ubiquitous. Nanotechnology enthusiasts think their vision— of disruptive, world-changing technologies made possible by manipulating matter at the tiniest of scales— will be much the same.

But the joke’s subtext also applies. “Plastics” was a 1960s buzzword, a bandwagon everyone wanted to jump on. Make “nano” your one word and you get the idea.

Waiting For Santa

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waiting-for-Santa

Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck.

I love a parade, so Lissa and I went downtown last night to watch the Twinkle Light Parade. It was fabulous – lowriders decked out in Christmas lights with those wacky hydraulic bouncy thingies, marching cheerleaders cheering for Christmas cheer (Go Christmas!), a motorcycle cop with his bike decked out. And Santa!

But the surreal bit was early Saturday afternoon, when I rode through downtown on my bike ride. There, parked down Third Street like a giant non-sequitur, was Santa’s float, awaiting the great man’s arrival.

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere

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Schiaparelli map of Mars

On University of New Mexico geographer Maria Lane’s fascinating work on the late 19th and early 20th century mapping of Mars (sub. req. or you gotta watch the ad):

Schiaparelli, Lowell and a host of others in the late 19th century were using advanced new telescopes to study Mars every two years as Earth made its closest approach to the red planet. But the telescopes did not yet have cameras. The astronomers’ data was recorded as sketches that were then turned into published maps.

And therein lies Lane’s explanation for the remarkable mistake.

The late 19th century was a time of exploration on Earth, and the map was the tool through which the Earthly explorers’ discoveries were shared with an eager public.

When Schiaparelli turned his eye to Mars, his first map adopted the visual conventions of the earthly map makers. Dark areas were not colored the ruddy reds and browns Schiaparelli saw through his telescope, but were instead shaded blue, like the oceans on a map of Earth.

This raises all kinds of interesting questions about the way scientific imagery both contributes to, and is a product of, the cultural landscape of its time. The full paper, which is great read, is here.

Cheap Shit From China Watch

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shipping containers behind Wal-Mart

I didn’t have my camera with me this morning when I rode by the Wal-Mart up on Carlisle, so you’ll have to forgive this Inkstain file photo to illustrate today’s update on the onrushing Christmas consuming season. When last we tallied up the temporary shipping containers filling the parking lot behind this particular Wal-Mart superstore, it was a few weeks before Thanksgiving 2005, and there were 27.

This morning’s is just a rough count, because they’re so clogged up I couldn’t see them all, but my approximate tally as of Nov. 24, 2006, is 40. That’s a lot of stuff. Get out there and buy!

It’s Not the Fall that Kills You

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From Somalia:

The flood-hit communities in southern Somalia were already vulnerable because they had not recovered from the severe drought of earlier this year when they lost thousands of livestock and had no harvest. “Juba has been in a chronic humanitarian crisis,” said Cindy Holleman, technical manager with Somalia’s Food Security Analysis Unit (FSAU), a project funded by USAID, the European Commission and Norway, and managed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The assets of an already vulnerable people had been destroyed by the floods, Holleman said.

It’s the variability that gets you every time.

Get back to work

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20061123webstats

Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck.

Y’all are a predictable bunch, according to Google Analytics. This is the number of visitors by day of the week since last June, when I started running GA. I can’t imagine how this blog could possibly be work related, but there it is. The stats don’t lie: you roll into the office on Monday, catch up on your blog reading (see the big Monday spike), keep up with the blogs all week long, slack off on the weekend. Then, come Monday….

Anticipation

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charger

Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck.

The artist L. Heineman made the decorations for our Thanksgiving table today in the manner of the season. We’ve a big feast planned, which is both cultural ritual obligation and genuine fun.

This is an interesting time of year in a desert culture both removed from environmental but also steeped in it. Here in Albuquerque, we pump groundwater to drink and bathe and cook and irrigate our modest backyard crops. So it doesn’t matter a whole lot whether it rains or not. But we still live in the rhythm of the seasons, or at least I do – thinking back on the harvest season past and watching for the season to come with the same fascination as a dryland farmer. I may not have the same skin in the game, so maybe it’s not precisely the same, but it is a fascination.

Fall – now – is a time of anticipation. El Niño is out there, but he’s not doing much teleconnecting just yet, so the storm track has been north. The snow pack is modest so far down here. It’s not too early to pay attention, but it’s too early to make much of the shortage.

So today we’ll gather and feast on a bounty that really has little or nothing to do with the actual vicissitudes of climate. We’d be having the same big fat turkey, drought or not. But I still watch.