We got our first dusting of the season overnight. Just rain at my house – 0.03 inch (0.76mm). But up in the foothills, there was enough snow to stick on the dirt bits at least through midday. Windy and cold, not the ideal day for a bike ride. Fortunately the wind was at our backs up the Tramway climb, and the lightly dusted Sandias were in front.
The Blues
I tried to write a blues song once. It went something like this:
Well it’s floodin’ down in Texas.
All the telephone lines are down.
Yeah it’s floodin’ down in Texas.
All the telephone lines are down.I’ve been tryin’ to reach my baby
To tell her to bring the patio furniture in.
On Drought
I finally got around to reading the Pielke Sr. et al. paper on drought in Colorado in 2002 (paper here and Roger blogged it here).
The data’s Colorado-specific, but the New Mexico data doesn’t look that much different, and the message here is pretty much the same. What we viewed as an “exceptionally severe drought,” as measured against historical and paleo records, really wasn’t. It’s our water needs that have changed as population has exploded here in the intermountain west:
The sobering conclusion is that Colorado is more vulnerable to drought today than under similar precipitation deficits in the past.
Winners and Losers
More on global warming winners and losers:
For regions producing high-quality grapes at the margins of their climatic limits, these results suggest that future climate change will exceed a climatic threshold such that the ripening of balanced fruit required for existing varieties and wine styles will become progressively more difficult. In other regions, historical and predicted climate changes could push some regions into more optimal climatic regimes for the production of current varietals. In addition, the warmer conditions could lead to more poleward locations potentially becoming more conducive to grape growing and wine production.
A toast to the new Siberian varietals, coming to a wine shop near you.
Helping Out
In which Dave helps out some folks in need.
Ode to Stephen Dowling Botts Revisited
My amusement is unbound by the delightful discovery that Inkstain is the top Google result when searching on Stephen Dowling Botts. Really, though, the more useful site for Botts aficionados is the Wikipedia entry on Julia Moore, wherein we learn that Mark Twain based his Emmeline Grangerford character in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on Moore.
More on Globally Averaged Surface Temperature
This whole blog-to-blog comment conversation thing can get a bit maddening. What we really need is to all sit down in a room together. I think a lot of the misunderstandings that turn into arguments would instead play out as useful conversations. Plus we could drink beer*.
Today’s disjointed conversation has Mark Hadfield raising good questions in the comments here on Inkstain:
There’s no doubt that this metric (globally averaged surface temperature) doesn’t tell the whole story, but it’s quite another thing to suggest that it tells us nothing, or very little. Now I’m not suggesting that Roger (Senior) is suggesting such a thing, but the trouble is that on this issue, as on many others, I find it hard to work out what Roger *is* suggesting.
Over on his blog, Roger responds:
Here is what I am “suggesting”. For the assessment of global heat content changes (”global warming”) over the last 50 years, we focus on the assessment of ocean heat content changes, as the primary metric to assess the radiative imbalance of the climate system (http://blue.atmos.colostate.edu/publications/pdf/R-247.pdf). We avoid using the trends in the globally-averaged surface temperatures, since this diagnostic is fraught with a wide range of problems, including the most recent one that we identified in our GRL paper (http://blue.atmos.colostate.edu/publications/pdf/R-302.pdf). For earlier time periods, we have no choice but to use an estimate of global averaged temperature trends, but we need to recognize the very large uncertainty that exists with such a climate metric.
I don’t think globally averaged surface temperature tells us nothing. In fact, I think it answers a question the general public has, which is “how much warmer is it getting.” People live in air at the surface, so by “warmer,” it’s surface temperature they want to understand. That’s why I defended Juliet Eilperin last month against Roger’s criticism, and why I’ll probably do an end-of-the-year story for the paper that includes a discussion of the fact that 2005 is the warmest year ever. But I also am increasingly persuaded that an overemphasis on that one s
* I don’t really like beer. It’s metaphor.
Stuff from the bike
Scribblista was right: “I love the vantage point from a bike… one always gets to see the city and the day from such a different perspective…”
When you move through your world on a bicycle, it unfolds before you at a perfect pace, full of surprises. The act of cycling demands awareness as a practical matter, and rewards it as an aesthetic matter. Nothing more delightful than a wander on the bike. Of note today:
- Three leisurely Thanksgiving football games at my neighborhood park, and another at that park across the street from the zoo.
- A couple on skateboards – those really looooong ones – riding home from the supermarket. She had a bouquet of flowers, and he had two of those single-serving yogurts clutched in one hand and a leashed dog in the other. It wasn’t that cold, but she was fiddling with a colorful knit scarf.
- Some guys of indeterminate national origin (Pakistan? India?) on Johnson field at the University playing cricket.
Bill’s Bike-Racing Pics
Bill McLain’s latest bike-racing pics. This is cyclocross, which is a hoot to watch. If you’re looking for a fun couple hours in the park, you can do worse than the Dec. 4 state championships.
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere
Some nuke news in this morning’s paper (sub. req.). The state of New Mexico’s proposed WIPP permit modification is out. It goes along with a Department of Energy request to reduce waste testing requirements, and allows shipment of remote-handled waste (this is the stuff that is much more radioactive) to go forward.