6 November 2014

Some Sciency Stuff You Ought To Read

Posted by Dan Satterfield

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint – it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.” – Doctor Who 

NPR has a great piece about a clock that is accurate to 5,000 million years, and why this is a real PROBLEM! Will we see more pieces like this after they axed their climate and energy team?

Read this. Click to do so.

Read this. Click to do so.

The French have a saying: “War is how americans learn geography”. Maybe it should be “Ebola is how Americans learn geography”. See this in the Wash. Post. (Right on Adam Taylor!)

I think the amount of criticism leveled at politicians (like the Gov. of Maine) was far to little. When a government official acts on totally unfounded fear instead of truth, they deserve to be criticized, and frankly, they’ve forever lost my vote, no matter what party they hail from. That holds for the top official in a state, all the way down to school board member. It’s the 21st century,and yet the Ebola crisis in Africa has shown how amazingly scientifically illiterate many of our so-called leaders are.

Fortunately, the Maine Judge who overruled the state IS scientifically literate, and I make no apologies for standing up for science when it’s up against mythical fear. Kaci Hickox is my “science hero” of the month! ( Maybe I should start naming one each month!)

Remember the Antares Explosion in Virginia at NASA’s Wallops Island facility. Well, the GOES 13 weather satellite detected the hot smoke cloud (and debris) when it scanned the area about 7 mins. after the accident. Hat tip to the CIMMS Satellite blog at the Univ. of Wisconsin for finding this! I should have looked myself, but I assumed the cirrus over the area would block it.

This is a thermal IR pic. Warm temps are darker and cold is lighter. YOU can see the pixel of warm cloud just after the explosion. GOES 13 image.

This is a thermal IR pic. Warm temps are darker and cold is lighter. You can see the pixel of warm cloud just after the explosion. GOES 13 image. Click for larger version.

Why is the Arctic warming so much faster than the lower latitudes as greenhouse gases rise? An interesting paper in PNAS may have some answers.

Lastly, listen to this Yale Climate Connection story. Click the image to read/hear it:

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