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You are browsing the archive for September 2014 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.

30 September 2014

The Devil In The Climate Change Details

  Greenland is melting, the oceans are warming, the sea is rising (and becoming more acidic), and the Arctic sea ice is in a serious decline (that seems to be faster than predicted). These are all things that those who work in climate science understand and accept. They also accept that they are almost certainly being caused by rising greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. Yes, large portions of the public may not …

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29 September 2014

The Thin Line Between A Nobel Prize and a Straight-Jacket

I’ve written frequently here about conspiracy theories, and it’s something that has long fascinated me (and many meteorologists as well, thanks to the chemtrail folks). I spotted a great piece on the subject today by Katy Waldman in Slate. I must say, that having conversed with these folks in person, and via email for 3 decades, it made a lot of sense to me. So, if you have relative or …

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26 September 2014

Saharan Dust Storm Below Towering Thunderstorms

Here are the particulars of the image, and what you are seeing from NASA Earth Observatory: More dust blows out of the Sahara Desert and into the atmosphere than from any other desert in the world, and more than half of the dust deposited in the ocean lifts off from these arid North African lands. Saharan dust influences the fertility of Atlantic waters and soils in the Americas. It blocks or reflects …

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Dead Rat Journalism, and The Ethics of Communicating Scientific Uncertainty

  I spent all day Monday (and part of Tuesday) at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, attending a seminar on the ethics of communicating scientific uncertainty. It was hosted by the Environmental Law Institute with funding from the National Science Foundation, and it brought together a diverse group of lawyers, journalists and scientists. I was one of two meteorologists invited (Jason Samenow of the Washington Post being the other) …

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24 September 2014

Answers To The Climate Questions TV Meteorologists Get Asked The Most

My good friend Meteorologist Paul Gross, at WDIV-TV in Detroit, decided to do something very few on air weathercasters have done: he directly addressed climate change in a station webcast. Paul was my predecessor as chairman of the AMS Committee on Station Science (he actually started the committee), and he and I care deeply about using our positions to give viewers accurate science information. Many on air weathercasters shy away …

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19 September 2014

NOAA: Hottest August On Record. Ocean Temperatures Smash Old Record

The NOAA, National Climate Data Center has released the global summary of temperatures this summer. It was the hottest June-August period on record, and August was also the hottest on record globally. Ocean temperatures were also hottest on record. NASA, and the Japanese Metr. Agency also compile the data (using a slightly different method ), and they also showed record temps. Here is the data from NCDC: Global Highlights The …

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17 September 2014

If The Scientific Truth Is Inconvenient, Publish your Own Truth!

A fellow meteorologist pointed me to a web-site today about a new scientific society called the Open Atmospheric Society (OAS), which is apparently in the process of organizing. They have a fancy logo, and a list of membership requirements that look very similar to that of other scientific societies, until you start looking closely. When you do, things begin to look a rather strange. One of the options to full …

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Shake, Rattle and Frack

A new study was published today in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, by three USGS scientists, and it’s the latest in a growing number of scientific studies that show that deep injection of waste water during fracking is causing earthquakes. It seems pretty likely that a quake will do damage in a fracking zone soon, and all this science will be moved into a courtroom. The graph …

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14 September 2014

If British Airways Offered Jet Service To The Moon, How long A Flight Would It Be?

Have you ever thought about how long a commercial airline flight to the Moon would take?? It’s actually a good question, and an excellent way of getting your head around the vast distances of just our own solar system. It’s actually an easy math problem, and while not all such questions are that simple, they almost all come with surprising results. Meteorologists frequently get these type questions, and  can tell …

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10 September 2014

Andy Revkin in Audubon Is Well Worth A Read

The Audubon Society has released a well done report about climate change. Part of their report is a great piece by NY Times Dot Earth blogger Andy Revkin (Click the image below to read it). One thing worth noting however, and that is that you might be the idea from it that we can continue as we are for 49 years and still be ok. We almost certainly cannot, because …

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