The monthly ENSO assessment, out today, suggests El Niño may be peaking (the “Kelvin waves” it talks about are essentially big pulses of warmth moving west to east across the equatorial ocean, which are a key feature of El Niño): Most of the statistical and coupled models, including the NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFS), indicate …
Mike Campana, one of my favorite water academics, launches WaterWired with a reprise of the case against bottled water.
weather: Looks like we’re on the El Niño one-storm-a-week track here, with another wet patch headed for New Mexico through the weekend. This’ll be the fourth in a row. book1: Andrew Revkin’s The North Pole Was Here. Don’t be fooled by the whole “children’s book” thing. It’s a ripping good read, and Revkin has clearly …
This is one of those Prufrock moments, when it is impossible to say just what I mean. From the paid job blog, on my old friend Ed McGaffigan: Reporters depend on the generosity of smart people, people who understand how things work and are willing to spend the time to help us understand it too. …
San Juan-Chama Project pipe, Albuquerque, Jan. 7 2007 Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. When I was in Phoenix a couple of years ago, I made a pilgrimage to the Frank Lloyd Wrightish Biltmore. Phoenix is flat-out desert, hot, just 7.5 inches of rain (19 cm) a year. But the Biltmore is an oasis, green, cool and …
Paseo del Nordeste bike trail, 1/7/2006 Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. One of the great things about Albuquerque is that I can ride all winter. It can get cold, but with the right clothing it’s rarely enough to keep me indoors. There’s never enough snow on the ground to keep me cooped up for more than …
The ubiquitous Andy Revkin has a delightful little bit of speculation in this morning’s New York Times regarding the differences between U.S. and European attitudes toward climate change: Some climate experts muse that the innately variegated climate across the country might help explain why it has taken longer for human-caused global warming to rise to …
Continue reading ‘Europe vs. America on Climate: a Hypothesis’ »
I see via Prometheus that David Roberts has taken up my challenge offered in the comments of a previous thread about whether Al Gore is representative of the mainstream consensus or an outlier (as suggested by Andy Revkin in his recent New York Times piece). I argued that Gore’s treatment of hurricanes and sea level …
In which Malcolm Gladwell gives his less-well-paid brethren a nice slap on the back: We’ve spent a lot of time, post-Enron, criticizing the flaws in the investment community’s gatekeeping activities. But I think we should also recognize what the Enron case tells us about the value of newspaper journalism. Maybe, in other words, we have …
I don’t know if it’s true or just apocryphal, but someone told me yesterday that the word “albedo” came from Giuseppe Albedo, the 17th century Italian polymath who discovered snow. Whatever, folks in Albuquerque, unaccustomed to a blanket of snow that sticks around, are having a direct personal experience with albedo, which I used this …