I only had a few minutes last week to blog at work about a new paper on climate feedbacks by Chris Jones at the UK's Met Office, but I finally had some time this afternoon to sit down and read it more carefully. Here's more....
(climate wonks click through)
Jones and Peter Cox looked at the anomalous rise in CO2 in 2003, which they concluded couldn't be blamed on the usual: El Niño.
When you get an El Niño, you get tropics that are, on balance, drier and warmer. That means more CO2 in the air. The opposite occurs in La Niña years. Carbon dioxide is steadily rising, but it's not a flat line, and the biggest source of variability, according to Jones and Cox, is the El Niño cycle. Add in the effect of volcanic activity, and you can explain most of the variability seen seen in CO2 numbers since folks began collecting data in the late 1950s.
But 2003 (and, to a lesser extent, 2002) was just weird. The huge increase in CO2 couldn't be explained with the El Niño numbers. But remember that 2003 was extraordinarily warm in Europe and Asia, and Jones and Cox cite research linking the heat wave to large-scale burning in Siberia. And with the heat wave of 2003 linked to global warming, it's not unreasonable to chain them all together: greenhouse warming->fires->more CO2->more warming. To quote Jones and Cox:
If the anomalous 2003 rise in CO2 was due to the hot conditions of that year which in turn may have been due to man-made global warming then might we be seeing the first signs of this positive feedback?
Lissa planted a lovely new Arizona sycamore (Platanus wrightii) yesterday morning. As it happens, she rather by accident planted it dead center in a line so that you can see it out the back window when you're washing dishes.
It's native to riparian areas of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. Thanks to the Institute of Natural Resource Analysis and Management biodiversity database, you can see it's been primarily found in Hidalgo and Catron counties in New Mexico, with a few straggles elsewhere, including one in Spruce Park here in Albuquerque.
My friend Jaime, doing some historical photo stuff recently, found this:
My shiny new Donjoy Lateral Unloader Brace:
The purpose is to push the knee slightly outward, unloading the weight from the outside of the knee where stuff is damaged, carrying weight on the inside of the knee where things are in excellent chape. I'm supposed to wear it during strenuous weight-bearing activity (thankfully not needed for cycling). "Strenuous" currently includes pulling weeds, which I did this morning in the backyard for the first time in a month and a half. Or sweeping the bedroom.
Were you Albuquerque folks feelin' cranky when you woke up this morning, like you really hadn't gotten a good night's sleep? Those of you who escaped to the mountains for a bit of cool had the right idea. With an overnight low in Albuquerque of 71 F, the rest of you just lived through, by one measure, the third-warmest month in Albuquerque history.
The measure in this case is the overnight low. The daytime highs have been unusually warm too, but not as extreme. My amateur calculation of the overnight low average is 68.5 F. That's 3.9 F above the long-term average, going back to 1919, third behind the insufferable July of 2003 (71) and 1951 (68.9). And since July is the hottest month of the year here, those are the three warmest monthly average overnight lows in Albuquerque history period.
Daytime highs with one day to go are 94.2 (expect that to come down a bit, maybe 94.1 when the day's done). That's 2.4 F above average, ranking something like 14th or 15th warmest July - top quartile, but not nearly so far out on the tail of the July curve. That follows a trend in recent decades - more warming in the overnight temperatures, which I will pedantically point out is one of the "fingerprints" of greenhouse-induced global warming.
Dave: I'm in if I can be the bosun. I could start raising some extra cash by driving around early in the morning on recycling day and stealing the aluminum cans people leave on the curb.
I'm not entirely sure what a bosun is, but I wanna be it. Do they have a guy on the front of an icebreaker who drops a rope down from the bow and shouts "Mark Twain"? That'd be a cool job too.
A friend told me the other day that he'd checked into my blog to see how my knee was coming along, and I hadn't posted on it in a while. He inferred that the adventure was wearing thin. He inferred correctly.
Six weeks out. Early weight-bearing, first steps walking today without the crutches. Just a few small crutchless journeys. I felt as though I could have done more, but I'm trying very hard to be patient. These journeys were quite literally the first time in six weeks that those crutches have been out of arms' reach, except perhaps for the times my friend Paul gave me a ride to work and put them in the back of his pickup. Palpable freedom.
I got the brace yesterday, beginning what I expect to be a lifelong relationship. It gave me the confidence to start the walking, though in truth I don't really need it for that. Its main role is to protect the damaged part of the knee during strenuous exercise. Two logos in full view: U.S. Ski Team on the box and the Arthritis Society on the brace itself. Interesting conjunction of lifestyles.
Physical therapy right now involves endless series of quad contraction exercises of various sorts, a rear guard action in the losing battle against lost muscle mass. And more and more time on the bike: up on the stand with a view out the back window of trumpet vines and hummingbirds and sunflowers. (Note to self: find gardener and kiss her.) I'm finally able to starting pushing enough with my right leg to get my heart rate up, revealing a whole new level of frustration. I've slipped aerobically out of shape.
Work to be done. Work to be done.
While the hipsters have booked their 'Topes tickets for Thursday's Duke City Fix night at the Lab, the real stadium action will be Friday: Myron Noodleman Bobblehead Doll night! Thousands of screaming fans pushing and shoving to be among the first 2,500 through the turnstyles to get theirs!
(Correction: Myron is Saturday)
A new pumpkin patch has sprouted, largely of its own accord, in our backyard.
Last fall, I put one of the Halloween pumpkins out in the raised bed in the backyard, smashing it open with the idea that the birds would eat the seeds. They seem to have been less than interested. Then over the last few weeks, Lissa has been disassembling the planter box and using the dirt to make a new mound in the back garden. The pumpin seeds, mixed in with the new mound's soil, have sprouted enthusiastically, on several fronts.
It's late enough in the summer that we should be past the risk of squash bugs, which have made previous pumpkin experiments sketchy. So perhaps this fall, we can sit in the backyard in our accidental patch and await the arrival of the Great Pumpkin.
For future reference (and because the easiest way for me to find something is to post it to the blog so I can Google it later), a nice explanation of how to set up multiple link colors.
"It feels like the end of something," Dad said as we left my parents' apartment this morning after the final stage of Le Tour.
I remember when this started. It was the first Saturday in July 1999, and I was home alone watching a network TV feed of the opening day time trial at Puy du Fou, and this brash kid who'd come back from cancer offered us a surprising moment of hope. I cried.
This morning I sat with the two cancer survivors closest to me as the boys lapped the Champs Élysées, and I didn't much think about cancer, which is OK. It is, after all, a bike race:
So how 'bout that Vinokourov? Man he's fun to watch.
Lissa notes that SpongeBob always wears the Yellow Jersey.
We had a visit by a rufous hummingbird this afternoon at the trumpet vine outside the back door.
(Image courtesy National Park Service.)
He had a lovely rust back with a bright red throat - matched the orange flowers. We may have had more of them at our feeders, but I usually see them backlit in silhouette, so I'm not sure. Big fat guy, though, as hummingbirds go. Lissa said they usually show up around this time. Sure enough, in the margin of the rufous entry in our Sibley is a notation in Lissa's handwriting: "Our house, Aliso, 7-20-04".
I wish William Connolley was my neighbor, so I could sit out with him on the back stoop while he makes up 9 frames to fill a super. Not only can the guy usefully dissect the satellite record, but he also knows his way around an Apistan strip.
Overnight low before dawn in Albuquerque: 73.
Previous record, according to the Western Regional Climate Center: 72, set in 1925.
update, 3:40 p.m.: I wasn't very clear. It's a record for July 20. All-time record is 78, July 15, 2003.
Last day Albuquerque had below-average temperatures: June 14.
More from me in this morning's paper(sub. req.):
When the monsoon is firing on all cylinders, it can bring as much as 40 percent of the annual precipitation that falls in New Mexico, with thunderstorms firing up in early July and lasting into mid-September.But research by Higgins suggests that a late start translates to a sub-par monsoon season.
Dry summers have become a habit of late. After gangbuster monsoon seasons from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, with above-average rainfall, the last five summers have been the driest in New Mexico since the late 1930s.
As often happens, heat has been an unwelcome side effect of the lackluster monsoon season. In Albuquerque, we have not had a cooler-than-average day since June 14, and the current National Weather Service long-range forecast suggests that is not likely to change at least through early next week, despite Emily's lingering ghost.
Overnight temperatures have been especially warm— four degrees warmer than average for July, on track to be the second-warmest average overnight temperature reading in Albuquerque history. Tuesday morning's low of 72 tied an all-time record for warmest overnight low for July 19.
Using my l33t haxor crutch skills, I was able to load the dishwasher this morning. Slowly but surely, the little victories add up.
Hurricane Emily could deliver some moisture to kick off the southwest monsoon. More on that in tomorrow's newspaper. But the real interesting bit I learned today, blogged at the Journal, involves our perception of how wet it really ought to be in July and August. I was surprised at what the data showed.
I realized this morning as I was watching those ever-present adds on OLN for their replay of the first season of Surivor that the attraction of The Tour is very much like the draw that has made those "reality shows" such a hit.
You have an enduring cast of characters, faced with daunting challenges and the need for both cooperation and competition. You get to know them over the three weeks of the tour, not so much their human personalities as their cycling ones - the plucky Rasmussen, unassuming in his polkadot jersey, alone in the bunch defending his own unexpected success; the mercurial Vinokourov, at once flying up the mountain and collapsing in a self-inflected heap; the regal Armstrong, the man they love to hate; the darling sidekick Georgie, cute and impish and unexpectedly alone atop a treeless mountain this morning in the Pyrenees, the wristband for his old late chum Fabio adorning his arm; the relentless and ultimately tragic Jan, the winning loser, the magnificent talent for naught; the jack Mennonite Floyd, one of the many former friends of Lance with whom the peleton is littered.
I don't watch NASCAR, but I'm told it has much the same appeal - the same drivers out every Sunday, week after week, shifting alliances and story lines and characters, real and imagined, actual and creations of the storytellers in the media who help it along. Reality TV soap opera.
Back in the day, when I was working in Pasadena, California, there was a local development guru called Christopher Leinberger who was beginning to make a name for himself nationally for his thinking about remaking American cities in a more usable way. We used to quote him all the time, and then he had a cover story in (I think) the Atlantic. We began referring to him, joking, as "the ubiquitous Christopher Leinberger."
And then, just as I was preparing to move to Albuquerque, there was a big spread in the LA Times about the new breed of uber-commuters who had homes in beautiful places like New Mexico and commuted a few days a week to their home base in LA. And there, in a casa in Tesuque, was the ubiquitous Christopher Leinberger.
After I moved here, a new developer emerged in the downtown Albuquerque scene, and... well, you can see what's coming.
So here's my plan. I'm going to move to, like, North Dakota or something. And see if he follows.
Over at Duke City Fix, Coco has an excellent look at the Mesa del Sol backstory.
Chris Mooney alert! Wacky Republican science!
The Orlando Sentinel reports on an effort four years ago to eliminate citrus canker, a disease that was plaguing Florida's lucrative citrus orchards:
Researchers worked with a rabbi and a cardiologist to test "Celestial Drops," promoted as a canker inhibitor because of its "improved fractal design," "infinite levels of order" and "high energy and low entropy."But the cure proved useless against canker. That's because it was water -- possibly, mystically blessed water.
Why the state's enthusiasm for the "infinite levels of order"?
The initial push came from (Katherine) Harris, now a U.S. House representative and candidate for U.S. Senate. Harris, the granddaughter of legendary citrus baron Ben Hill Griffin Jr., said she was introduced to one of the product's promoters, New York Rabbi Abe Hardoon, in 2000.
Hat tip Dave Thomas, whose levels of order are substantially less than infinite, but generally more than ample to meet my needs.
From cancer to Parish Hilton and a "beach hut made of cash":
This bracelet and the people who made it are worse than cancer or aids or tsunamis or any of that other supposedly bad stuff. I wouldnt wear it if it was the last piece of clothing left on earth, and it was just me and paris hilton left on a tropical island after a nuclear war. if it was either this bracelet or nothing i would throw it into the sea, and paris and i would live naked on the tropical island and have so many babies. we would live like royalty with pet dolphins and a beach hut made of cash.
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Looks like we've finally got some rising dewponts. Maybe some monsoon rains Tuesday? I haven't talked to my weather geeks yet, but my amateur reading looks promising.
"Muddy Gap." That's a dateline to treasure. You just don't run across place names like that every day.
That's where our intrepid cyclist Johnny_Mango found himself last week, and he's found an opportunity worth pursuing for you chess players out there: If you can beat the owner of the Deli Express in Muddy Gap, Wyoming, you get a free gelato. As Johnny notes, "that's a buck an hour job I might go for."
From today's Zippy:
Z-Man: "Remember - Donuts are a natural and delicious sugar and high-fat delivery system! But one serving per day is enough to do the job."Griffy: "Thanks, Z-Man! If not for your sensible dietary intervention, I'd have consumed all 24 of those fabulous custardy toroids in one sitting!"
I don't dance.
But when Nora was a baby, and she had a hard time sleeping, I would take her into the living room and put on music softly and cradle her in my arms, dancing around the room.
The record I remember playing most - it was my favorite at the time, I guess - was Bonnie Raitt's Takin' My Time, which I think was in Lissa's half of the record collection back in the early days of our merged lives.
Well I'm guilty, honey I'm guilty, and I'll be guilty for the rest of my life
How come I never do, what I'm s'posed to do
Nothin' I try to do ever turns out right.
The closest I come to dancing these days is when I'm listening to music on the headphones while I crank away on a stationary bike. I've learned a sort of dance step to the music, altering the resistance and the cadence to match the tempo. Which is more of a challenge than it might sound.
Doubly so now that I can only pedal with one leg. Instead of the smooth shimmy, the machine makes this kind of wheezing noise as it spins on the left pedal downstroke, then coasts (clickclickclickclick) as the right pedal rolls through - "No resistance, no weight." But I'm getting it. It's the best I've got right now, so it's what I'll do.
Tonight, I got off the bike all by myself. Lissa was there to spot for me, but no help. Woot.
In honor of Lance, and my goofball friend Barbara, and that guy with the cast, I reprise Bonus Time:
Back at the finish, we sat around on the lawn in the shade of a big tree for a while. The guy on the beach cruiser was there, grinning, and Charlie and Katie rolled in the grass.Later in the afternoon, everbody got back together at the park for drawings for a bunch of swag. Barbara, the organizer, called bib numbers and if we were there, prize action ensued. There were bike tires and Harley Davidson beer glasses and water bottles and all manner of goods donated by the event's sponsors. I won a helmet and explained to Barbara that it was destined for the head of my cancer survivor wife.
The guy on the old beach cruiser came up to collect a prize - I wish I remembered what - and Barbara pointed out that he is a cancer survivor, one year out. So now I understand the grin, and the fealty to a beautiful old Schwinn beach cruiser and the way he didn't seem to care about the discomfort of riding with a big cast on his arm. This guy is on bonus time.
If you're in Albuquerque and you've got a bike, you could do worse with your Sunday morning a week hence than riding in this year's Sunshine Spin. Barbara Tyner, the organizer, an artist and bike racer and impish angel, uses it to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. She understands the importance of living strong and celebrating survival and the next great thing after you get through the current one when the current one might suck. She understands bonus time, and whether you hammer the long ride or just take the leisurely river ride, it's a chance to celebrate being alive on the morning of July 17.
My most warm and excited congratulations to Mikael and Carina, and welcome to Emma.
"all email address of business woman in south korea 2005 @yahoo."
I don't think he found what he was looking for on Inkstain.
We're on the cusp of the normal start of the monsoons here (July 7 is the average onset date for Albuquerque), but it's hot as hell and dry and there's no monsoon in sight.
We had a bit of a false start two weeks ago with a slug of moisture and some big thunderstorms, but things have dried out, with a big ridge of high pressure blocking the moisture from the south that we need to get the summer storms rolling. A couple of things I watch: Rain in Mexico. Watch for the storms to start firing up over the Sierra Madre Occidental, creeping north up Mexico's central mountains. You can see that as of this writing they're still stuck quite far south. The other thing to keep your eye on is the dewpoint. It really needs to settle in above 50 - the higher the better. I also keep an eye on Tucson, both because it's a harbinger for us (usually they get monsoons first) and because I have friends down there who are as fascinated by the monsoons as I am.
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: my review of Daniel Coyle's "Lance Armstrong's War":
It is a story that would read like a good novel if it weren't true. A remarkable cast of characters light up the tale. There is the gritty and lovable American Tyler Hamilton ("How could someone who loves his dog so much cheat?" I said to a friend after Hamilton was accused last year of blood doping.), the wildly talented but inevitably unpredictable German Jan Ullrich, the fearless Kazakh Alexandre Vinokourov, the cocky Mennonite Floyd Landis, the teammate who rode at Armstrong's side in victory.The complex and dark world of European pro cycling provides an almost Dickensian backdrop— a hardscrabble existence where most cyclists make a pittance compared to other pro athletes, where injury rates dwarf those of any other sport.
The knee's on the mend, but the annoyance level with not be able to put weight on my right leg is growing. Another four to six weeks of that, I fear.
Back to work all week, working slightly shortened days so I can get enough time in my "bendy buddy" leg-mover machine. So it's pretty much get up, bendy buddy, work, then back in the bendy buddy 'til bedtime. Inspried by Daniel, I'll try to get some snaps of the inside of my knee up this weekend.
I've spent some time over the last few days in an interesting discussion in the comments over at ClimateAudit about Crichton and Thomas Kuhn and the nature of science and scientific consensus.
I love to write about interesting people, and Bob Cordwell is one of the most interesting people I've run across in a while:
"Think of a circle with a lot of points on it— in fact, 79 points." Eighteen-year-old Bob Cordwell stands at a chalkboard heading cheerfully into terrain that would make most of us uncomfortable.For Cordwell, though, mathematics is a familiar landscape, like the keyboard for a piano prodigy, or the hardwood for a teenage basketball star.
"That's a fairly sad circle of points," he said with a laugh at the lopsided orb he drew, picking at it to smooth out the curve.
Points on a circle, and the lines joining them, are central to a mathematical proof the recent Manzano High School valedictorian worked out last summer.
"Obviously," Cordwell said, "there have to be copies of every edge length."
Well, no, it isn't obvious to most of us. But Cordwell's gift, and his charm, is that it is to him.
I know this is gonna sound cheap, because the Prologue's already history, but here are my Tour podium picks (I swear I announced before the racing started, Mom and Dad are my witnesses):
- Lance Armstrong
- Alexandre Vinokourov
- Ivan Basso
Strong riders with strong teams. If all it took was a strong rider, I might have picked Floyd Landis higher (a sentimental nod to my Pennsylvania roots). And yes, I picked Vino ahead of Ullrich
DCM's answer to the Wal-Mart problem: toll roads. Don't ask. Just go read it. (And I, for one, would be excited to visit Dave's Museum of Crap I Like.)