The first thing we do….

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Luis suggests an approach to the spam problem:

[I]t really seems like it is a shame we probably couldn’t get away with killing a few spammers- because surely you wouldn’t need to do more than 1 or 2 before the point got across very clearly. To put it another way: I don’t think all spammers should die; I just think that enough spammers should die so that the rest stop doing it. 🙂 We’re clearly in a fairly interesting historical situation, where some of the things we all hate have no clear moral or legal antecedents, and the penalties we’ve set up so far are clearly not discouraging enough.

Worth noting in passing that Luis blogged earlier in the day about “the ethics (or lack thereof) in business school”. One wonders what the “kill the spammer” idea says about the corresponding ethics he’s getting in law school. 🙂

The Spinach Puzzle

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As of Friday, according to the CDC, 166 people had been sickened by eating spinach contaminated with E. coli since late August. Eighty-eight have been hospitalized. There is one confirmed death and two additional possible deaths.

Food-borne pathogens normally send 325,000 people to the hospital every year in this country, and cause 5,200 deaths, according to the CDC. In other words, one would expect that roughly 25,000-30,000 people have been hospitalized over the last month for eating tainted foods other than spinach, and more than 400 people died. Given those numbers, I’m puzzled as to why spinach has caused a national conniption.

The Hurricane Story We All Missed

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While we’ve all been palavering about whether there’s a legitimate hurricane-global warming link, we’ve apparently missed the real story about the way humans are causing more powerful hurricanes (this is from last October – my humble apologies for missing this vital story for so long):

That, despite what experts tell us, the technlogy currently exists to actually control the weather — and specifically, nature’s most destructive type of storm: the hurricane itself.

And that “someone” has been using this technology this summer “in an undeclared, all-out ‘weather war’ against the United States” … with (after Katrina) disasterous results ….

Kyoto Doesn’t Seem to Help

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Another reminder that, while we all try to furiously explain that the hockey stick doesn’t matter all that much, or that solar variability isn’t really a deal killer, or that we shouldn’t be too concerned that the ocean is actually cooling, out beyong the science skirmishes where people have ignored the climate wars, accepted the scientific consensus and promised to act on it, Kyoto doesn’t seem to be working real well.

Bread Mold Query

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Shirley has a bread mold question:

hello,
we are doing a bread molds lab, but we found the bread are turning into liquid after one week. why?
by the way, we poured salt, sugar and water on them respectively.
thanks a lot!

I’m afraid I’m no help, but perhaps if you have any suggestions, you could leave them in the comments on that post?

Thanks.

Global Cooling

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This has already been hashed out in some detail over on Roger Pielke Sr.’s blog, but the Lyman et al. paper on ocean heat content is out:

We observe a net loss of 3.2 (±1.1) × 1022 J of heat from the upper ocean between 2003 and 2005. Using a broad array of in situ ocean measurements, we present annual estimates of global upper-ocean heat content anomaly from 1993 through 2005. Including the recent downturn, the average warming rate for the entire 13-year period is 0.33 ± 0.23 W/m2 (of the Earth’s total surface area). A new estimate of sampling error in the heat content record suggests that both the recent and previous global cooling events are significant and unlikely to be artifacts of inadequate ocean sampling.

Name That Paper

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A pair of papers on the relationship between solar variability and climate have been all the rage in the media and climate wars blogosphere over the last week or so.

One, by Foukal et al., got the big headlines: “Study acquits sun of climate change.” Blame the humans! And it was in Nature!

The other, by Scafetta and West, came out a day letter and raised questions about whether climate models are understimating the solar contribution. Sadly, it didn’t get much press (It wasn’t in Nature!), but Benny Peiser gave it a good ride, saying that if Scafetta and West are right, it “would present serious trouble for the IPCC.”

So here’s a quiz for readers. Below the fold are quotes from each of the papers. Try to guess which quote is from which paper:

Continue reading ‘Name That Paper’ »

Out of Nowhere

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A weird musical moment: I’m listening to this old scratchy bad Charlie Parker album I bought on a discount rack, and I realize I’m listening to the theme from Star Trek. It’s a song called “Out of Nowhere.” The CD box doesn’t say when it was recorded, but Charlie Parker died in 1955, so I’m guessing he didn’t write the Star Trek theme music.

Apparently among music types this is a well-known example of, umm, appropriation.