You are browsing the archive for May 2013 - Page 2 of 2 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
14 May 2013
Global Cooling Is A Silly Myth
John Cook over at Skeptical Science has produced an excellent video, that explains why anyone who telling you the climate has stopped warming, or that the planet is now cooling is wrong. Utterly wrong. It’s in the same league as HAARP and Chem-trails. This video comes out in the same week that the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by William Happer and Harrison Schmidt that contained all the usual canards. All of …
11 May 2013
The Turbulence of Van Gogh and the Labrador Shelf Current
This is a guest post by Andreas Muenchow at Icy Seas. Vincent Van Gogh painted his most turbulent images when insane. The Labrador Current resembles Van Gogh’s paintings when it becomes unstable. There is no reason that mental and geophysical instability relate to each other. And yet they do. Russian physicist Andrey Kolmogorov developed theories of turbulence 70 years ago that Mexican physicist applied to some of Van Gogh’s paintings such as “Starry Sky:” Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Sky” painted in June 1889. …
10 May 2013
The Future Of Weather Forecasting Is Under Construction
Every summer, thousands of people drive out to Chincoteague in Virginia to see the beautiful beach, wild ponies, and the stunning National Wildlife Refuge. To get there, they drive around the long NASA runway at the Wallops Island Flight facility, and you can’t help noticing the cluster of big satellite dishes. If you’ve been there, you probably have wondered just what all those dishes are for. Meteorologists already know, and you’re about to find …
8 May 2013
Has Voyager One Left The Heliosphere?? Maybe Not, But It’s Close.
A bit late on spotting this bit in case you have not seen it: Voyager 1 has entered a new region of space, sudden changes in cosmic rays indicate 20 March 2013 AGU Release No. 13-11 For Immediate Release WASHINGTON – Thirty-five years after its launch, Voyager 1 appears to have travelled beyond the influence of the Sun and exited the heliosphere, according to a new study appearing online today. …
5 May 2013
How To Think Like a Scientist and Why You Should
Anecdotal evidence can be very interesting, and it can lead to great discoveries, but it’s usually false. Unfortunately, many people make almost all of their decisions based on it. In some rare cases it’s almost a necessity, but in most you do not, and certainly should not. To a scientist, anecdotal evidence says something along the lines of “hey, I wonder if someone has tested this scientifically and discovered what the truth …
3 May 2013
Global Carbon Dioxide Levels Approaching 400 PPM
We are very near passing a milestone. The CO2 levels will likely soon reach 400 ppm at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. The curve of course is named after Charles Keeling who started the measurements in 1958. They started it because even then there was concern that we might be dangerously interfering with our climate by burning fossil fuels. They just did not know, and when scientists do not know, they …
2 May 2013
Kiera Wilmot- You are MY Hero! (UPDATED) (Update Two)
Update Two: Homer Hickam the real person behind October Sky has joined us in supporting Kiera: Hat tip to Astronomer Pamela Gay for the tip: http://spaceref.com/nasa-hack-space/homer-hickam-supports-high-school-student-whose-science-project-got-her-expelled-and-arrested.html UPDATE: I had a very nice email from Marie Wilmot (Kiera’s Mom) today. It seems that the school board has relented, and Keiera will be allowed back to High School next year. The State’s Attorney has offered a deal but their attorney Larry Hardaway has rejected …
1 May 2013
You’ll See This On TV Tomorrow
Each dot is a Molecule of Carbon Monoxide ( A stack of two molecules actually). The world’s smallest animation ever made. More here. Note I previously wrote atom instead of molecules and that has been corrected in the post above.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.