Hard hitting global and local news
Tweet I first saw Clare Malone at 538 suggest it , then somewhere else – Kasich is in the race to be Vice President. It makes sense of course that any second-tier candidate would have this as the backup possibility. Kasich has mostly stayed out of the mud (he did attack Trump some last fall), and his staying in the race is tremendously helpful for Trump.
( Source ) Nuclear power proponents keep saying that environmentalists should sing a nuclear tune, and a few enviros agree. Personally I remain "meh", maybe even moreso (moremeh?) over the years as the price of renewables and storage keep dropping. I know that nuclear power cost breakthroughs are scheduled for South Korea and China, but we’ve all heard that one before.
Eli Rabett Eli Rabett Eli Rabett is a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny, a chair election from retirement, at a wanna be research university that has a lot to be proud of but has swallowed the Kool-Aid. The students are naive but great and the administrators vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional. His colleagues are smart, but they have a curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves
Tweet Usually the NH winter is a time when the bets are laid for the summer minimum. Friend Weasel was not too excited last year although things were, as they were pretty, but not astoundingly (see 2011) low. This year already astounding things are happening, or perhaps better put not happening, in the Arctic winter. Not that there is no ice, but there is a lot less ice than expected. Enough less that 2016 looks like a lock for the lowest global sea ice evah. John Nielsen Gammon has been sending around a frame comparing how in 1922 the farthest north that a expedition could get was 81 o 29′, open ice this year. Andy Dessler tweeted it  OTOH, the resolution of Cryosphere Today is a bit low, so let’s take a look at the higher resolution images at the University of Bremen from the AMSR2 (2016) and the original AMSR (2003) for February right now and then. But wait, there is even more, at Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice Blog and Gerg has a GIF of the sea ice in August from the Danish Meteorological Institute’s sea ice maps between 1920 and 1939. Today’s February looks pretty much icewise like August then
Tweet Elementary quantum mechanics quickly shows that harmonic oscillators (shown by the dotted line in the figure to the right) can only absorb or emit light associated with a transition between neighboring quantum levels such as between v = 0 and 1. Â To the extent that molecular vibrational motion is harmonic, this is an absolute rule. Oh yes, there also has to be a change in the dipole moment between the two levels of the transition which explains why homonuclear diatomics (N 2 Â , O 2 , H 2 ) don’t absorb in the infrared
Tweet Scalia’s death might change everything for the Clean Power Plan. Before there appeared to be a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court that was likely ready to overrule the appellate court if the appellate ruling favored the Plan. Now there’s just four, and on a 4-4 split, the appellate ruling would stand.
