Tag: paris

Biodiversity
April 14, 2013 0

Biodiversity

By News Desk

This week’s Science Friday had a segment with Lincoln Brower , an entymologist who studies the monarch butterfly.  The monarch population is collapsing faster than the Arctic ice cap, with the area of their wintering grounds in Mexico going from 52 acres to less than 3 in twenty years.  In Brower’s words “In previous years we had seventeen sites with colonies, this year eight of those sites had zero butterflies, and the rest of them had very few butterflies.   Only one of the colonies had significant numbers.  My worry is that they are winking out one by one and they may not be able to recover” There are several reasons for this, among them that the Oyamel forest is being thinned which exposes the area under the canopy and makes it harder for the butterflies to shelter from winter frost in the high forest.  Monarchs have an absolutely crazy life cycle .  Simplified, overwintering butterflies in Mexico (there are also populations in California) leave Mexico in late March and head for Texas, where they feed on milkweed and create a new generation.  The new generation is short lived, and starts the migration north to the Great Lakes region and the east coast.  They, in turn, lead to two other short lived generation, with the fourth and final one being the one that migrates back to Oyamel and overwinters.  You can follow this on Journey North , a science activity for young and old. Monarch larvae are fussy eaters, depending on milkweed the way that pandas depend on bamboo.  It is the only thing that they feed on in all stages of their lives.  This has made them indirectly vulnerable to GMCs.  The introduction of Roundup Ready crops has lead to broadcast spreading of Roundup, which kills everything EXCEPT the Roundup Ready crops, including the milkweed (and also nectar yielding plants which does nasty things for pollinators).  This breaks the Monarch’s lifecycle

The Sea Is Not Flat
April 2, 2013 0

The Sea Is Not Flat

By News Desk

Tweet One of the surprising things is that the sea is not flat, but there are places where sea level is lower than others, rising faster than others or slower.  Mostly bunnies just look at the averages, but the money, just as with temperature and precipitation changes is local. Turns out that the northeast US coast, from Cape Hatteras on north up to Maine is the so called Northeast Hot Spot (NEH) and the rate of sea level rise since 1950 or so is three times the global. Sallenger Doran and Howd explore the " Hotspot of accelerated sea level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America ".  Turns out it’s not all bad news because In the late twentieth century, sea levels were relatively low along the North American east coast, particularly north of Cape Hatteras8,9

Bridge Building
March 30, 2013 0

Bridge Building

By News Desk

Bridge Building Eli grew up in Brooklyn and one of the things he particularly was fond of, other than Flatbush carrots , was biking down to and across the Brooklyn Bridge.  The story of the Roeblings and especially Emily Warren Roebling at Scandalous Women is worth reading I’ve always found the story of Emily Warren Roebling inspiring, because it’s a story of how a woman came into her own and learned what she was capable of through adversity.  It’s also a deeply moving love story. When Washington Roebling was unable to continue hands-on work as chief engineer, his wife Emily worked tirelessly to relay his wishes to the workers, and to keep the vision that father and son had worked long and hard to achieve.   This was during the late 19th century, when the idea of a woman being able to understand complex mathematics or science, was unheard of.  Many men(and women) believed that women’s brains weren’t developed enough or that they were too weak

My carbon or yours?
March 27, 2013 0

My carbon or yours?

By News Desk

So our water district staff presented how they thought we could reach carbon neutrality by 2020. Depending on how you do the numbers, we became carbon neutral without even trying. A lot depends on this: ( Full presentation via scrolling to March 26 2013, Item 4.1) That’s how much energy’s used to cradle-to-grave a water drop from the Sierras to the outflow of a wastewater treatment plant

Should Eli Believe His Lying Eyes or Makarieva
March 27, 2013 0

Should Eli Believe His Lying Eyes or Makarieva

By News Desk

Should Eli Believe His Lying Eyes or Makarieva James reminds Eli of  Makarieva et al in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics as well as featuring on several blogs.  One can summarize the entire thing by noting that Makarieva claims that winds are formed when water vapor condenses decreasing the gaseous volume.  Were this the major process, air would move inwards towards the area where the condensation occurred.  Most others point out that the release of energy from the heat of condensation will blow the air outwards.  That’s the summary There was an almost infinite amount of mathturbation about this including the original paper, and Dr. Makarieva was very, well, insistent. Eli OTOH is a member of the reality based community.  The Rabett likes to look at what is going on and figure out what it means before turning the math crank.  Recently Ms Rabett dragged Eli off into the mountains where he could actually watch the clouds form.  He could tell you what happened, but in this world we have the video.

My "prediction": Tolkien was a wrestler
March 24, 2013 0

My "prediction": Tolkien was a wrestler

By News Desk

My "prediction": Tolkien was a wrestler Off topic, but still a prediction in that I don’t know the answer:  I think Tolkien wrestled in his youth. When you read his description of armed combat, it’s pretty simple and somewhat vague, but when it becomes unarmed combat, suddenly every single motion gets described and punching takes a distant second place to grappling. Maybe it’s out there somewhere, but I’ve looked around and not read much about Tolkien’s athleticism – some brief mention of tennis and rugby at Oxford, but that’s about it.

Shameless self-promotion, Part Two
March 21, 2013 0

Shameless self-promotion, Part Two

By News Desk

Shameless self-promotion, Part Two So the contest of Solutions for Planetary Stability continues, and both of the solutions I entered (former blog posts) have made it to the finalist stage.

Rose gets stuck on statistical significance
March 19, 2013 0

Rose gets stuck on statistical significance

By News Desk

Too many takedowns to count for David Rose who doesn’t realize that short-term fluctuations in temperature tell you little about long term trends.  The latest case is that according to one computer model, the temperature sequence ending in 2012 is close to the bottom edge of the statistical uncertainty range, a point where there’s only supposed to be a 5% chance that random variation produces a temperature below the modeled range.

The Wheelchair
March 19, 2013 0

The Wheelchair

By News Desk

UPDATE:  An English version of Jos Hagelaars Dutch  post is now available on Our Changing Climate.  Eli appreciates their recognition that this indeed is the Wheelchair Curve Jos Hagelaar s splicing of the Shakun, Marcott, HadCRUT4 and CMIP5 A1B temperature anomaly reconstructions is clearly going to become iconic .  Icons, like the hockey stick, need names.  Eli was playing around with a few, the beach chair,  the Barca lounger the airplane seat, none quite fit, until the Rabett thought about what we are doing to our world Oh yes, FWIW, the spike at the end is the instrumental record and the CMIP5 models of our future based on our current behavior and has nothing to do with how accurate the Marcott reconstruction is at recent times.  Indeed that is the strength of Hagelaar’s wheelchair, that it uses multiple sources to give us the big picture in one figure.