It's not enough to bash in heads, you have to bash in minds
I have always felt that the choice of Kitimat BC (which lies at the end of a long narrow fjord) as the destination for the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline was odd. Surely a narrow winding fjord presents a navigational challenge for large oil tankers. But put on your Enbridge supplied rose-coloured glasses and all of... Continue Reading →
Good news Everyone! Only two per cent of Canadians who responded to a new opinion poll believed climate change is not occurring. A further nine per cent believed climate change is occurring naturally and 54 per cent felt both humans and nature are playing a role. I would like more information on that 54%. Because... Continue Reading →
I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine who are the zombies
Last night's successful landing of Curiosity was absolutely a moment I will never forget. For those who chose the sensible option of sleep this is what you missed: And here is the short dramatized version: The words "we have thumbnails" instantly became this generation's "One small step for man..." Of course NASA's servers went down... Continue Reading →
Definitely going to use this one at work:
This is humanity at its best. Never forget we are capable of amazing things. The first (small) image from the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity!!! A few minutes later a larger version of the same image arrived from Mars Another image, this time with more detail: Meanwhile at the JPL mission control this was the reaction:... Continue Reading →
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has released a video detailing what we can expect tonight after the 7 minutes of terror:
David Appell crunches some numbers and finds that if the US were to use natural gas exclusively for all its energy production it would reduce GHG emissions from 5471 Mt to roughly 4800 Mt. A reduction of only 13%, which is far less than needed to stabilize the climate.
The recent wave of extreme heat-waves and drought over much of the U.S. has rekindled the public's interest in and acceptance of climate change. The inevitable question that always gets asked is "is this caused by climate change" and the resulting answer is never as simple as the yes-no answer people want. Reality, of course,... Continue Reading →
via techdirt
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. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence... Continue Reading →
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is holding a round table on Nuclear Power and climate change with a focus on developing countries.
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. The answer...maybe a little, but not a lot. The Guardian has more: We could only attribute as much as 30%... Continue Reading →
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. Set you alarm! And everyone should definitely follow the mission on Twitter.
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. CEO ex Tillerson said, at the Council of Foreign Relations: “Increasing CO2 emissions in the atmosphere will have a warming impact,” Tillerson said. “It’s an... Continue Reading →
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. The Wall Street Journal's reputation has taken a nose-dive within the climate community... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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.... Continue Reading →
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). The basic layout hasn't changed much,... Continue Reading →
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. On Twitter Michael Mann has announced: I have formally demanded retraction & apology for defamatory piece by #NationalReview. I have retained legal counsel: http://on.fb.me/OeWbQ1 It would certainly... Continue Reading →
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). I left most of the WordPress settings on default (even... Continue Reading →
From Jeff Masters: 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. According to NCDC, the odds of this occurring randomly during any particular month are 1 in 1,594,323. Thus, we should only see... Continue Reading →
We need evidence-based decision-making; not decision-based evidence-making. -Raj Sherman, leader of Alberta Liberals Via Elizabeth May
Granted, we’ve only lived in the area for 25 years... But the first 15 left an impression that this was not one of Dante’s circles. The last ten: approaching inner circle quickly.
I am not a jealous person... or at least I wasn't until I saw this picture: (h/t boingboing)
The brainiacs at CERN have found the Higgs Boson!!! Or rather they have found a new particle that resembles what they think the Higgs should look like. Phil Plait has a good run-down of what this means for our understanding of the universe that is worth reading. The very short and oversimplified answer is that... Continue Reading →
Robert Grumbine points out that the recent derecho that hit Washington DC demonstrates the folly of thinking we can simply adapt to climate change: I live in the national Capitol area for what is supposed to be the richest and most technologically advanced country on the earth. ; And many, large population, counties around me... Continue Reading →
The conclusion of a review by the Royal Society in the UK, is that fracking can be done 'safely', provided "best practices are implemented and robustly enforced through regulation." Unfortunately the Royal Society did not examine the more interesting questions of what fracking means for the climate, hence the scare quotes in the title of this post. There... Continue Reading →
Tomorrow, North America's only Carbon tax will increase by $5. British Columbia's carbon tax was introduced July 1st 2008 at $10/tonne by the right of centre BC Liberals. Every year the carbon tax increases by $5 until the tax reaches a maximum of $30/tonne which it will do tomorrow July 1st. The tax, designed to... Continue Reading →
Mark McCaffrey is not happy with the recent trend of downplaying the importance of climate literacy: There's a dangerous meme drifting through the climate community: that when it comes to "solving" climate change, literacy does not matter. True, years of promoting filling the information deficit with more facts hasn’t worked, but the current “literacy bashing,”... Continue Reading →
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