European Heat Wave

Posted by on

A new analysis in today’s Nature by Stott, Stone and Allen[1] concludes that human-caused climate change doubles the odds of heat waves like the summer 2003 bender that killed at least 22,000 people:

Using a threshold for mean summer temperature that was exceeded in 2003, but in no other year since the start of the instrumental record in 1851, we estimate it is very likely (confidence level >90%) that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heatwave exceeding this threshold magnitude.

Stott et al. make a very interesting point, which is worth quoting:

“It is an ill-posed question whether the 2003 heatwave was caused, in a simple deterministic sense, by a modification of the external influences on climate?for example, increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?because almost any such weather event might have occurred by chance in an unmodified climate.”

In other words, you can’t just say “global warming caused the heat wave.” All you can do is look at ranges of statistical probabilities, and determine where this fits in. It’s an important point to remember in understanding climate change science. I’m glad they said it so explicitly up front.

[1] Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003, Peter A. Stott, D. A. Stone and M. R. Allen, Nature 432, 610 – 614 (02 December 2004); doi:10.1038/nature03089

PoMo Island

Posted by on

Postmodernism is one of those things, like pornography, that’s difficult to define, but you know it when you see it.

Today’s example: The Real Gilligan’s Island, a “reality” show based on a sitcom. And then, on network TV news, an interview with an original cast member from the “real” Gilligan’s Island.

Disentangling the strands of reality is left as an exercise for the reader.

Trader Joe’s

Posted by on

Lissa and I finally made the pilgrimage this afternoon to the new Trader Joe’s in Santa Fe.

When people ask where we’re from, we typically say “L.A.,” but we actually lived for many years in South Pasadena, a little bit of old-school suburbia between Los Angeles and Pasadena. It’s the home of Joe Coulombe’s first Trader Joe’s, and we did a lot of shopping at the second, a crowded little cheese and wine emporium on Arroyo Parkway in Pasadena. The stuff was cheap and good and, most important, a bit odd. Workers wore Hawaiian shirts, stuff was stacked around in wooden crates like it had just come off the boat. And did I mention that it was cheap?

The first TJ’s in New Mexico has been greeted with almost religious fervor, but to be honest I was a bit nervous about making the pilgrimage. In this age of Wild Whole Oat Foods markets, with their colored concrete floors and beautiful produce and oh-so-hiply-pierced staff, I was worried about what TJ’s might have become. But I was pleasantly surprised. There was Joe’s low-sodium V8 knockoff vegetable juice – cheaper than V8 at the regular supermarket. Intriguing frozen vegetables. Frozen salmon patties. Stuff stacked around like it had just come off the boat. And did I mention that it was cheap?

Prairie Dog Linguistics

Posted by on

My colleague Tania Soussan has a delightful story in this morning’s paper about the question of whether prairie dogs have language:

Some of those words or calls were created by the prairie dogs when they saw something for the first time. Four prairie dogs in Slobodchikoff’s lab were shown a great-horned owl and European ferret, two animals they had likely not seen before, if only because the owls are mostly nocturnal and this kind of ferret is foreign. The prairie dogs independently came up with the same new calls.

In the field, black plywood cutouts showing the silhouette of a coyote, a skunk and an oval shape were randomly run along a wire through the prairie dog colony.

“There are no black ovals running around out there and yet they all had the same word for black oval,” Slobodchikoff said.

He guesses the prairie dogs are genetically programmed with some vocabulary and the ability to describe things.

A Computer Is Just a Computer

Posted by on

The Hypothetical Wren, on standing in line at the computer lab to use Windows machines when the Macs are free:

I was dithering whether or not to stay in line or just sit down at one of the lonely computers, since no one at the head of the line seemed compelled to use any of them, when someone else came up, someone really loud, willing to ask the questions out loud that I am not, and, half-asking, half-yelling, said, “YOU PEOPLE ARE ALL IN LINE FOR THE WINDOWS THINGIES, RIGHT?”

They were.

The People’s Science

Posted by on

“I always felt that science as the preserve of people from Oxbridge or Ivy League universities – and not for the common mortal – was a very bad idea.”
– Benoit Mandelbrot, in last week’s New Scientist, on seeing his fractals on T-shirts