Climate and Weather
gregladen | June 10, 2008The film we've all been waiting for ... Randy Olson (of Flock of Dodos fame) has produced a new film called Sizzle. In the film Olson uses the approach he used in Dodos to address the global warming issue. I have not seen the film but hope to review it soon.
Mean time, here's the press release in full:
SILLY AND SERIOUS PREMIERES:
"SIZZLE: A GLOBAL WARMING COMEDY" OPENS AT OUTFEST AND WOODS HOLE FILM FESTIVALS IN JULY
Hollywood, Ca. (June 9, 2008) - The new feature film from scientist-turned-filmmaker Dr. Randy Olson ("Flock of Dodos: the evolution-intelligent design circus," Tribeca 2006…
gregladen | June 6, 2008A half mile wide tornado with a virtually south to north trajectory from near Park Rapids towards Bemidji, in Hubbard County, destroyed several homes and did a lot of property damage. The worst damage was near Highway 34 and County Road 4, in or near Emmaville and Lake George.
Several other tornadoes have been reported around the state. Conditions are ripe for further serious storms and possibly tornadoes almost anywhere round these parts, though I'm not sure what the NWS is giving us in the way of watch boxes.
In Minnesota terms, this is spittin' distance from the cabin, sort of. (…
gregladen | May 19, 2008Quirky Pulsar System Challenges Theories of Binary Formation; Observing Stem Cells at Work; Large scale carbon sequestration
Quirky Pulsar System Challenges Theories of Binary Formation
From a Cornell Press Release:
An ongoing sky survey using the Cornell-managed Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico has turned up a massive, fast-spinning binary pulsar with a mysterious elongated orbit, researchers say.
The pulsar and its companion star challenge currently accepted views of binary pulsar formation and give researchers a new opportunity for understanding the fundamental properties of highly…
gregladen | May 18, 2008 Impacts from warming are evident in satellite images showing that lakes in Siberia disappearing as the permafrost thaws and lake water drains deeper into the ground. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory A new study led by NASA links anthropogenic climate change to a wide range of effects. The study involved scientists from about a dozen institutions and agencies, and looked at biological impacts arising from global temperature increase since the 1970s. The article is published in Nature. According to lead author Cynthia Rosenweig, "This is the first study to link global temperature data sets…
gregladen | May 15, 2008In this fiery and funny talk, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what's wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it's putting the entire planet at risk.
gregladen | May 13, 2008There is a point that I've been trying to make for the last few weeks now, off and on, and it is not working. So I'm going to try something new. Please bear with me, and consider the following three scenarios regarding the idea that the Earth is Round (or, possibly, flat):
Please ask yourself: Which of these scenarios is best? Which is least desirable?
Scenario A: Divided Opinion
Maureen: "I think the world is round."
John: "I think the world is flat."
A public opinion poll indicates that fifty percent of those polled believe the world is round, the other fifty percent believe the world…
gregladen | May 12, 2008With all the interest in tornadoes, I thought it would be helpful to provide some contextual data (focusing on US tornadoes).
Damaged houses along Grace St. in St. Peter. (Photo courtesy of St. Peter Kiwanis) One thing that has to be said is that tornadoes are very powerful, but very small and short lived meteorological phenomena. They are like bullets being fired from cheap handguns by incompetent shooters. There are many stories of two gang bangers aiming their rods at each other at short distance, emptying them out, and failing to harm each other. In the mean time, a stray bullet…
gregladen | May 11, 2008 Marilee Thomas of Beaver City, Nebraska. And a tornado. [source] Mid-Americans ... Minnesotans, Texans, Nebraskans and denizens of Arkansas, and everyone in between, understand tornadoes, but to varying degrees. There are differences by region in how we deal with them. In Arkansas, I've seen foolish bravado. The tornado shelter there is known as the "fraidy hole" and having one or not in your back yard may be linked to one's sense of machismo. People from Missouri that I have known have a deep respect for tornadoes. An example: A few years back there was a talk being given at The U…
gregladen | May 9, 2008The first deliver of aid from the UN World Food Programme was stolen by officials from the Burma military Junta. As a result, the shipment of aid into the country by the UN has stopped.
This is as earlier reports indicating that the death toll would surpass 100,000 are starting to look realistic, if not optimistic. Yesterday, a BBC reporter, under cover, was taken on a tour of the peninsula, where he and his crew filmed rice fields with a thin scatter of corpses. Tradition in this region dictates that the dead are cremated, but local monks claim that there is not enough firewood to cremate…
gregladen | May 6, 2008The Myanmar/Burma death toll is now experiencing the usual effects of poor information, limited reporting, and the outcome of being stuck between sensationalism and horror.
Most agencies are reporting 22,000 dead with twice that missing. I do think that these numbers are meaningless at this point, as the Junta government can't be trusted to be able to deliver this sort of information, and aid agencies are only now arriving on the scene.
About 50 million people live in the country,
The main cause of death appears to have been a storm surge that swept across towns and villages in the low…
gregladen | April 28, 2008... is expected to reach Cat-4 status before making landfall somewhere. Watch The Intersection for details.
gregladen | April 25, 2008The Bell Museum, in Minneapolis, has some fun stuff planned.
The Bell Museum's Seeing Climate Change Film & Video Festival is taking
place this weekend.
Don't miss a special breakfast edition of Cafe Scientifique this Sunday
at the Red Stag Supper Club. You can make reservations by calling
612.767.7766. More information is below.
TONIGHT AT THE BELL MUSEUM:
An Evening with National Geographic explorer Jon Bowermaster - 8 P.M.
The Bell Museum and The Will Steger Foundation welcome renowned
explorer and National Geographic correspondent Jon Bowermaster to the
Seeing Climate Change Film…
gregladen | April 18, 2008Good question ... what IS in the air?
The simple answer is that the air ... the Earth's atmosphere ... is about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, with a tiny amount of some other gases including water vapor. Then, there's dirt. I want to talk a little about the oxygen, one of the other gases (carbon dioxide to be exact), the water vapor, and the dirt.
Oxygen
The oxygen is one of the most important parts to us because we (and all the other animals) need it to breath. To me, what is most interesting about the oxygen is that in the old days ... before any animals or plants evolved but life…
gregladen | April 17, 2008Check out the new Climatology of Global Ocean Winds Atlas:
You can drill down to various segments of the planet (well, the oceans) and loot at wind patterns in great detail, with nice rose plots and everything. (Click on the picture to go to the site.)
Winds are the largest source of momentum for the upper ocean, affecting the full range of ocean movement, from individual surface gravity waves to complete current systems. Ocean winds modulate air-sea exchanges of heat, moisture, gases, and particulates. This modulation regulates the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean, which…
gregladen | April 10, 2008
This is the first time we are forced to weather a major storm in the Twin Cities without Paul Douglas! We're doomed!!!! This storm is supposed to go for another 24 hours or so.
I am reminded of last spring when there was a particularly bad storm raging outside...
... and Amanda and I had the TV on with Paul showing all the cool radar signals and telling people what was going to happen next. Suddely, he zoomed in on our neighborhood, had a look at the radar, and got a very worried look on his face. He turned to us and said "If you're in Blaine or Coon Rapids right now, go to the…
gregladen | April 10, 2008
A noted hurricane researcher predicted Wednesday that rising water temperatures in the Atlantic will bring a "well above average" storm season this year, including four major storms.
The updated forecast by William Gray's team at Colorado State University calls for 15 named storms in the Atlantic in 2008 and says there's a better than average chance that at least one major hurricane will hit the United States.
An average of 5.9 hurricanes form in the Atlantic each year.
"The Atlantic is a bit warmer than in the past couple of years," said Phil Klotzbach, a member of the forecast team. "That…
gregladen | April 10, 2008The story goes like this: Paul Douglas was a back-room meteorologist for a local Twin Cities news show. He was one of the guys in the back that actually predicted the weather, which was then delivered by the pretty boy/girl weathermen/women on camera. One day the main weatherman was out of town, and the other weatherman was sick (details of the story vary), and nobody realized that they had no one to report the weather until the very last second. So they threw Paul a jacket and tie and said "Get out there, boy, you're the weatherman today."
....
So Paul went in front of the camera and…
gregladen | March 26, 2008Welcome to Berry Go Round #3, the blog carnival deicated to all things botanical.
The previous installment, Berry Go Round #2, is located here, at Further Thoughts. If you would like to submit an item to the next Berry Go Round, you may use this handy submission form. The Berry Go Round Home Page is here.
Let us begin right away with the Artichokes. Seeds Aside has a piece on the relationship between the artichoke and the cardoon, both known in ADL (ancient dead language) as Cynara cardunculus. The phyloge relatinship between the two, and the story of domestication for each, is very…