flood
dr. dolittle | August 29, 2017
By U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Got bugs? Get a bat. As many species of bats are insectivores, they help keep insect populations in check. Hurricane Harvey has been devastating to people, animals and property. So it probably comes as no surprise that there are many volunteers dedicating their time to saving animals displaced by Hurricane Harvey as well. From squirrels, cats and dogs to...you guessed it...bats. It turns out that bats are not very…
gregladen | April 6, 2016There is a new study out in Nature that is liable to be misinterpreted, or that may be flawed in a way that lends itself to misuse, in the context of climate science driven policy.
The study is "Northern Hemisphere hydroclimate variability over the past twelve centuries" by Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Paul J. Krusic, Hanna S. Sundqvist, Eduardo Zorita, Gudrun Brattström & David Frank
I'll make just a few comments here, but mainly, I want to point you to comments by climate scientist Michael Mann (author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines and…
gregladen | December 28, 2015I had considered writing an accounting of all the outlandish weather events of 2015, but that project quickly became a tl:dr list of untoward happenings which is both alarming and a bit boring, since it is so long. So, I decided to generate something less comprehensive, focusing more on the context and meaning of the diverse and impressive set of outcomes of anthropogenic global warming, an historically strong El Niño, and, well, weather which is already a pretty whacky thing.
See: Highlights of Climate Change Research in 2015
It should be noted right away that 2015 is the last year in which…
gregladen | June 20, 2012The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood by David Montgomery is new book on the Noachian flood. It is by a real life geologist and is not a creationist book. Might be a good gift for your annoying creationist relative.
Here is a write-up from the publisher:
In Tibet, geologist David R. Montgomery heard a local story about a great flood that bore a striking similarity to Noah’s Flood. Intrigued, Montgomery began investigating the world’s flood stories and—drawing from historic works by theologians, natural philosophers, and scientists—discovered the counterintuitive role…
lborkowski | November 16, 2010When severe flooding in Pakistan left millions of people without food, shelter, and water, I wrote a post wondering why that disaster was getting less attention than Haiti's earthquake. I suspected the gradual nature of the disaster was part of the problem, and commenters had additional suggestions, ranging from Haiti's closeness to the US to the US public's overall view of Pakistan as a nation.
Last week, The New York Times' Lydia Polgreen put some numbers on the Haitian earthquake vs. Pakistani floods comparison and delved into reasons for the disparity:
In all, $3.4 billion has been…
edyong | June 8, 2009
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, one of the largest floods in Earth's history turned us into an island and changed the course of our history. Britain was not always isolated from our continental neighbours. In the Pleistocene era, we were linked to France by a land ridge called the Weald-Artois anticline that extended from Dover, across what are now the Dover Straits.
This ridge of chalk separated the North Sea on one side from the English Channel on the other. For Britain to become an island, something had to have breached the ridge.
Now, Sanjeev Gupta and colleagues from Imperial…
gregladen | March 23, 2009In 1997, the sandbagging was not enough to save Grand Forks. The river rose higher than it had been since 1826. Downtown Grand Forks was destroyed by explosions and fire that added on to the damage caused by the water. ... The local TV stations carried stories of cattle stranded in flowing water, unable to reach higher ground. Some cattle were frozen standing in place as the floodwaters froze at night.
From A Simple Assignment . Go read it!
sciencepunk | February 26, 2009
A mischievous octopus is being held responsible over the flooding of a Californian aquarium after sabotaging the filtration system. Employees at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium arrived at work yesterday to find their offices soaked with hundreds of gallons of seawater. The source of the flood was traced to the aquarium's small two-spotted octopus. Staff member Brianne Emhiser stated in a press release:
"Our best guess is that the octopus, who is incredibly gregarious and curious, tugged on a valve in her tank last night causing a steady stream of water to overflow out of the tank."
The…