Matthew Nisbet nails the New York Times’ hanging curve ball in his analysis of the problems of the collision between science and journalism, quoting Andrew Revkin’s fabulous line about “the tyranny of the news peg.” The context is a piece by the always provocative Gary Taubes about the problems of epidemiological research. I’ve given a …
Cropped hawk photo Originally uploaded by mjhinton. Among other things while we were gone, Mark Justice Hinton got this fabulous picture of a hawk at our neighborhood park.
Ocotillo Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Lissa and I just back from a lovely weeks’ trip around Arizona. The main purpose was a visit to the University of Arizona and environs in Tucson for a project we’re working on. We spent a delightful day at the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, made a pilgrimage to Tumamoc …
Continue reading ‘Water in the Desert: Arizona Road Trip Edition’ »
What happens when what used to be abnormally dry becomes the new normal? Drought will become a redundant term as Australia plans for a permanently drier future, according to the nation’s urban water industries chief. And climate experts yesterday predicted the present drought would continue, signalling a cruel summer for farmers and sparking fears of …
Via Strange Maps
Embudo Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Driving up to Taos last weekend to see art, Lissa and I stopped at Embudo in the Rio Grande Gorge to see the oldest continuously operated stream gage in the United States. The river was running about 450 cfs while we were there – not a lot of water, but …
This week’s drought tour of America takes us to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where they just completed the driest August on record. It is an old river town, with its downtown opening onto a bend in the Mississippi River. For those interested in Western lore, it’s where John Wesley Powell spent a summer early in his …
Staci Matlock has a nice story in the New Mexican about water problems in the San Luis Valley, on the upper Rio Grande in Colorado: Until five years ago, most people thought water in the upper one-third of the San Luis Valley was hydrologically disconnected from the river. It was called a closed basin — …
On water and growth: We live in the fastest growing part of the country. It is also the driest. We don’t seem to be doing a very good job of linking those two issues, according to experts gathered for a two-day symposium on water and growth. “We don’t adequately combine planning for growth and planning …
This paper by Martin Beniston on recent temperature extremes is a great example of the sort of exercise we need at the regional scale to help societies think about climate change. Switzerland has been hotter than Hades lately (bonkers 2003, record July 2006, near record winter 2006-07). Attribution is tricky, but Beniston neatly sidesteps the …