The new winter forecast is out. El Niño’s still being a bit shy (“the coupling of the unusually warm SSTs near the date line with the atmosphere in the tropical Pacific has not yet become fully established” is the more technical description) but he’s definitely there.
Quote of the Week
I bet you that most of the world’s most cherished sites are all far more peed upon than most of the world’s most uninteresting, non-descript buildings.
The Moon Landing and Climate Change
John Quiggin threw down the gauntlet last week:
Although both global warming denialists and moon landing denialists routinely accuse NASA scientists of fraud, the two groups appear not to have made common cause as yet (Please correct me if I’m wrong).
Were that it were so, John. From someone called “gren” over at something called the “Justice Awareness and Basic Support” forum:
It is universally known that man has never set foot on the moon. For those that want to begin to learn the truth about that little lie then try moonmovie.com and the samples for starters. The astronauts could never have survived exposure to the radiation belts. Yet climate change hype might well mirror the moon landing hoax. Our earth has been warming up since the 1600’s , holes appear in the ozone layer as a matter of cycle during winter. The polar ice caps on Mars are melting and so begs the question whether this is a solar thingummy type scientific whatsit. Let’s load tony blair into a rocket and send him to Mars to probe the martians into why they are driving too much, spraying too many aerosols and overpopulating their patch.
QED.
Little Help Please?
If some of my friends from the UK and its former extened empire could help me a bit, please, I’m befuddled by this, which is apparently a feat of some significance, but which completely baffles me:
B Manoj Kumar and Mohammed Shaibaaz Tumbi, opening for St Peter’s School in Hyderabad, rattled off 721 runs in just 40 overs, thereby putting several records in the shade. “It’s good to see that the boys were hungry to score big,” Kambli told Cricinfo. “They seem to have been told about the record and how to get there, but they deserve all the credit. We created our record in the late ’80s and it stood for so long. Sri Lanka’s two batsmen [Jayawardene and Sangakkara] came close but couldn’t get it.”
Yulsman on Broad
There’s been a great discussion over at Prometheus about a story last week in the New York Times by Bill Broad about atmospheric CO2 and paleoclimate. Given that it’s unlikely that very many people actually get 42 comments into a thread, I’ve pulled out my comment here so all three of Inkstain’s readers (hi Mom!) don’t miss it.
Dr. Yulsman –
Thanks for a provocative post that has triggered quite a useful discussion.
Miguel Cooks
That hat makes the man. Or possibly the tongs. Or possibly it’s simply the joie de vivre that leads one to invite one’s friends to a stadium parking lot on a blustery Saturday afternoon for a pre-game tailgate party. Never mind that none of us had station wagons or pickup trucks, so we really didn’t have a tailgate. Or that the University of New Mexico football squad has a less than stellar skill set. Whatever, we had Miguel’s barbecue skills, and that was all that mattered Saturday afternoon. And Miguel was safe, with that spectacular hat.
There was apparently an unfortunate incident before I arrived involving The Man and a prohibited glass container and a certain prominent Albuquerque citizen whose name you might recognize.
Some us then actually went to the (American) football game, which our Lobos (“Everyone’s a Lobo, woof woof woof.”) lost in dramatic fashion. It was the first football game I have attended in more than two decades. I enjoyed myself immensely.
Rio Grande at Central
My friend Miguel’s take on the ever-present Rio Grande.
“first” freeze
Albuquerque had its first “official” freeze of the year this morning, with a low of somewhere around 29 at the airport this morning. At my house in town, we’ve dropped below freezing a bunch of times already (apparently I live in an urban cold island), but the airport is the place with a long and consistent record, so it’s reasonable to compare Nov. 10 with the long term numbers.
The long term average is Oct. 31, but the recent trend, not surprisingly, has been toward later dates. This is a local manifestation of what is known in the scientific community as “global frickin’ warming.”
Who’s Rumsfeld?
From today’s New York Times, a story about a Marine patrol, occupying an Iraqi home as an observation outpost, and getting news of the election fallout from their “host”:
Now they were being told by an Iraqi whose house they occupied that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, one of the principal architects of the policies that had them here, had resigned. “Rumsfeld is gone?” the sergeant asked. “Really?”
Mr. Menti nodded. “This is better for Iraq,” he said. “Iraqi people say thank you.”
The sergeant went upstairs to tell his marines, just as he had informed them the day before that the Republican Party had lost control of the House of Representatives and that Congress was in the midst of sweeping change. Mr. Menti had told them that, too.
“Rumsfeld’s out,” he said to five marines sprawled with rifles on the cold floor.
Lance Cpl. James L. Davis Jr. looked up from his cigarette. “Who’s Rumsfeld?” he asked.
ENSO Update
The latest ENSO forecast is out. More of the same, expect El Niño to keep ramping up at least into early spring, odds favor season ski passes here where I live, but some bad shit elsewhere”
Global effects that can be expected during November-March include drier-than-average conditions over most of Malaysia, Indonesia, some of the U.S.-affiliated islands in the tropical North Pacific, northern South America and southeastern Africa, and wetter-than-average conditions over equatorial East Africa, central South America (Uruguay, northeastern Argentina, and southern Brazil) and along the coasts of Ecuador and northern Peru.