Tag: sweden

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

March 28, 2013 0

Laughing at those who laugh at science

By News Desk

Laughing at those who laugh at science Chris Mooney had one of his usual good Point of Inquiry shows back in November that I just caught, an interview with Michael Gordin , who wrote The Pseudoscience Wars. Gordin considers the idiot Velikovsky to be one of the originators of modern pseudoscience

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.

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.

March 23, 2013 0

Have some denial spaghetti

By News Desk

Ridley doesn’t look very good, and his escape attempts don’t work . Anyway, I want to play: Lindzen is from his 2004 prediction that temps were as likely to go down as up in 20 years, and his offer to bet over that prediction that he ran away from as fast as his denialist legs could take him (by insisting on unscientific odds in his favor).

March 23, 2013 0

The Egg Was First, No, the Chicken, No Never Mind

By News Desk

The Egg Was First, No, the Chicken, No Never Mind An evergreen in Eli’s business is which came first exiting the ice age, the temperature or the greenhouse gas concentrations.  Since the forcing is orbital changes, it is reasonable to expect at least some initial lag in the greenhouse gas and that includes water vapor, but the length of this lag has been an issue ever since Monnin, et al’s analysis of the EPICA Dome C core inferred a lag of 800 + 200 years.  This has become an evergreen amongst the less serious, and indeed, there has even been considerable discussion by reasonable folk . Jeff Severinghaus provided an answer So one should not claim that greenhouse gases are the major cause of the ice ages. No credible scientist has argued that position (even though Al Gore implied as much in his movie)

March 20, 2013 0

About as good as I can get

By News Desk

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.

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. 

March 17, 2013 0

A Night in Doolin

By News Desk

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.