You are browsing the archive for February 2014 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
28 February 2014
Did The Farmers Almanac Winter Forecast Verify?? Nope!
I suspect a lot of folks think the Farmers Almanac winter forecast was right, and the reason they think so is because of CONFIRMATION BIAS. Science in many ways is a vaccine against confirmation bias. Read the link on confirmation bias, and my friend Jim Gandy’s guest post. Then you will understand something that those who read horoscopes, wear magic bracelets, or buy pills for their prostate (hawked by retired …
26 February 2014
Video of the X Class Flare
You heard about the big X4.9 solar flare at 00:50 GMT Monday I suspect. Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy is always the go to person on that, but NASA has a video out of the fare in different wavelengths that is pretty cool. The sunspot that produced the flare is rotating slowly around, and will be facing Earth in a few days. If it erupts again then we may be …
23 February 2014
Can Neil de Grasse Tyson Bring His Own Magic To Sagan’s Cosmos? Oh Yes!
The first episode of the new COSMOS airs on March 9th (worldwide on Fox, and National Geographic Channel in many countries). Neil de Grasse Tyson (Director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York) has been thought of by many of my fellow science geeks to be THE person to do a much-needed update of Carl Sagan’s epic tour of the Universe, and that means filling some big shoes. Sagan died …
18 February 2014
Buy This Book
Hat tip to Brain Pickings for the scoop. From the book: Mathematical knowledge is unlike any other knowledge. While our perception of the physical world can always be distorted, our perception of mathematical truths can’t be. They are objective, persistent, necessary truths. A mathematical formula or theorem means the same thing to anyone anywhere — no matter what gender, religion, or skin color; it will mean the same thing to …
David Gregory at Meet The Press Stops The Ridiculous
I wasn’t the only one who was very critical of NBC’s Meet The Press program last Sunday, but there was a bright spot. David Gregory stopped his guest cold when she started making totally incorrect statements about climate science. No, not Dr. Heidi Cullen (who is an expert), but the other guest (a politician) who knows nothing about the subject (except perhaps that it’s inconvenient to her political world-view). This …
16 February 2014
Meet The Press Shows How Not To Cover Science
My friend Heidi Cullen will be on ABC’s THIS WEEK Sunday morning (Feb16, 2014) talking about climate change, and our 2013 President of the American Meteorological Society, Marshall Shepherd will be on Face the Nation. Dr. Cullen works for Climate Central (a non-profit clearing house that helps science communicators (like me) keep up to date on the latest real science), and Dr. Shepherd has been a great supporter of our AMS …
13 February 2014
Wild Weather and Forecast Uncertainty
The flooding in the UK is the worst on record in many areas, and the SW mainline rail to Cornwall has washed away. This being just the latest in a series of powerful storms that have blasted the UK and Ireland since early January. Some areas had a months worth of rain last night alone, and some areas had two months worth of rain in two days. The BBC has …
11 February 2014
Another Snowstorm Heads For The East Coast But The World Is Still Warming
It looks like another major storm will dump heavy snow from North Carolina to New York Wednesday into Thursday, but it really means very little in regard to climate change. A few of those who think it’s all a big conspiracy will email meteorologists and climatologists with snide remarks like “How’s that global warming” going for you!”, but the only thing a statement like that indicates is how little the …
9 February 2014
…and In Other Science News This Weekend
NUCLEAR WINTER What are you seeing, and what does it have to with weather? Check out this post on the CIMMS Satellite blog from the Uni. of Wisconsin. WELL MADE POINT After last week’s (and the previous week’s) viral false rumor about an impending doomsday blizzard (see this post), the NWS in New York posted this graphic on Twitter Friday. It was welcomed by every real meteorologist (in TV or …
8 February 2014
Footsteps Of The Oldest Britains Uncovered By Phenomenal Seas
The Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4 this week used a word for the sea-state it has never used before – PHENOMENAL. It’s been that bad, with storm after storm and the worst flooding on record (Records of flooding go back to the time when the Virginia was a colony!). The storms have given archeologists a priceless gift though, because they uncovered footprints in the sand that have been dated …
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.