via techdirt
It's not enough to bash in heads, you have to bash in minds
Monthly Archives: July 2012
Muller’s BEST
After a couple of days filled with rumours and wild speculation we finally know what all the commotion was about. Richard Muller, the head of the BEST project, has written an op-ed in the NYTimes:
CALL me a converted skeptic.
The nuclear approach to climate risk
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is holding a round table on Nuclear Power and climate change with a focus on developing countries.
Drought’s Footprint
More than half of the country was under moderate to extreme drought in June, the largest area of the contiguous United States affected by such dryness in nearly 60 years. Nearly 1,300 counties across 29 states have been declared federal disaster areas.
Loss of Arctic Sea ice at least 70% man made
Not exactly shocking news, James Annan reports on the recent paper investigating:
how much of the decline in sea ice was plausibly due to various natural phenomena like the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Arctic Oscillation.
7 minutes of terror
NASA’s Curiosity Rover, currently on route to Mars, has an absolutely crazy method of getting from the top of the atmosphere to the surface.
All of this will happen on August 5th 2012 at 10:31pm PDT.
Questions for Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson
Now that Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon Mobil has admitted that CO2 emissions will cause warming David Appell thinks some follow-up questions are in order:
Last month, Exxon Mobil Corp.
Ars Technica on the Wall Street Journal
From the article: WSJ mangles history to argue government didn’t launch the Internet
The Wall Street Journal has earned a reputation for producing in-depth and meticulously fact-checked news coverage. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always apply that same high standard of quality to their editorial page.
What if we could harness the force for renewable energy?
Randall Munroe (the creator of XKCD) has created a “what-if” blog which is bound to become a delightful waste of time. One of the first questions he asks is “What if we could harness the force to generate energy?”
After doing some calculations comparing Yoda, the Emperor and Luke Skywalker’s force abilities he concludes:
At current electricity prices, Yoda would be worth about $2/hour…
So Yoda sounds like our best bet as an energy source.
Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math
Bill Mckibben has just written a must read article in Rolling stone, ignore the initial error which I also made here on P3, and go read it now.
Here are a few highlights:
We have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn.
Welcome to the new Mind of Dan
After the massive database crash a couple of weeks ago I decided to give Mind of Dan a proper upgrade. Really these were things that I should have done a long time ago (such as implementing proper permalinks instead of the ugly /?p=1063 type links I used to have).
Standing up against bullies
Michael Mann continues to do everyone a great service by consistently not backing down when faced with constant harassment, threats and unending attempts to smear his reputation.
The latest is a particularly despicable short post at the National Review Online.
Pingback spam
I screwed up.
A few days ago Mind of Dan had a database crash. A bunch of posts were lost and I had to rebuild the site from scratch. This meant restoring the recoverable archives by hand (a tedious job that is now mostly done).
U.S. heat over the past 13 months: a one in 1.6 million event [UPDATED]
Each of the 13 months from June 2011 through June 2012 ranked among the warmest third of their historical distribution for the first time in the 1895 – present record.
Quote of the day
We need evidence-based decision-making; not decision-based evidence-making.
-Raj Sherman, leader of Alberta Liberals
Via Elizabeth May