Tag Archives: sciences

Climate change expected to bring more thunder, hail, and tornadoes

by h0di80ju Posted on September 23, 2013

Climate change expected to bring more thunder, hail, and tornadoes

By

Jerry Bowley

Conditions are ripe for more tornadoes.

Hail-spitting, tornado-spawning thunderstorms are likely to occur more frequently in the U.S. as the climate changes.

That’s according to new research that found the two main ingredients needed to produce these intense storms are likely to occur simultaneously with growing frequency as greenhouse-gas levels continue their meteoric rise.

The research could help explain this spring’s remarkably deadly tornado season, though it doesn’t explain the long calm that preceded it.

Severe thunderstorms typically occur when wind speeds high in the sky exceed those nearer the ground, and when there are also fast updrafts. As the climate changes, these two weather conditions will coincide more often, according to the results of modeling published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We’re seeing that global warming produces more days with high [convective available potential energy] and sufficient shear to form severe thunderstorms,” lead researcher Noah Diffenbaugh of Stanford University said in a statement. “We are looking at the conditions that produce severe events, which are relatively rare at present. … The changes during spring represent an increase of about 40 percent over the eastern U.S. by the late 21st century.”

And it’s not just spring thunderstorms that are forecast to occur more frequently; the researchers expect more big storms in every season. Get ready to bunker down.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Climate change expected to bring more thunder, hail, and tornadoes

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People save more energy when they know they’re being watched

by JuliaPage Posted on September 4, 2013

People save more energy when they know they’re being watched

By

Shutterstock

We’re watching you.

How do you prevent someone from wasting electricity? The same way you prevent them from picking their nose — make them think they are being watched.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers wanted to see whether the Hawthorne effect could be used to change energy-use patterns. The Hawthorne effect refers to the way people tend to alter their behavior when they sense they are being observed. The effect can be a pain in the ass for scientists trying to study human behavior, but it can also be a powerful tool for influencing that behavior.

The researchers sent postcards to a group of utility customers notifying them that their electricity usage was being tracked for one month as part of an experiment. The series of postcards offered no incentives or instructions to reduce energy use — they just let the customers know that they were being, in effect, watched. A control group of utility customers got no postcards.

Sure enough, the Hawthorne effect arose to work its magic. According to results reported Tuesday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, people who received the postcards reduced their electricity consumption by an average of 2.7 percent.

A follow-up survey of postcard recipients indicated that the experiment had heightened their awareness of their own energy habits. Here’s what they said they did to cut electricity use:

PNAS

That all sounds good. But once the customers thought the month-long experiment had ended, they returned to their former energy-wasting ways.

So all we need now are surveillance cameras installed in everybody’s homes, watching their every appliance. Right? Oh, wait …

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Climate & Energy

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People save more energy when they know they’re being watched

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Chinese science academy slaps down climate-denying Heartland Institute

by kk0qhbx Posted on June 18, 2013

Chinese science academy slaps down climate-denying Heartland Institute

By John Upton

Heartland Institute

Translated, yes. Endorsed, no.

Well, that was embarrassing.

The Heartland Institute — the right-wing group best known for its Unabomber billboard — recently boasted on a blog about successfully spreading its message of climate denial to the Chinese:

The trend toward skepticism and away from alarmism is now unmistakable …

Publication of a Chinese translation of Climate Change Reconsidered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences indicates the country’s leaders believe their [failure to sign a global climate treaty] is justified by science and not just economics.

But really all that happened was that one of Heartland’s climate-denial reports, “Climate Change Reconsidered,” was translated into Chinese [PDF].

And translation does not mean endorsement. Even the translators’ preface says the work was undertaken “to understand different opinions and positions in debates on climate change” and “does not reflect that [those involved in the translation] agree with the views” in the report.

When the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) got wind of Heartland’s blog post, it was not pleased. It put out a statement harshly condemning the post:

The claim of the Heartland Institute about CAS’ endorsement of its report is completely false. …

Since there is absolutely no ground for the so called CAS endorsement of the report, and the actions by the Heartland Institute went way beyond acceptable academic integrity, we have requested by email to the president of the Heartland Institute that the false news on its website to be removed. We also requested that the Institute issue a public apology to CAS for the misleading statement on the CAS endorsement.

Heartland then offered up a weak non-apology apology and the offending blog post was deleted. Oops.

Source

The Heartland Institute’s skeptical Chinese fantasy, The Guardian
Heartland Institute Embarrasses Itself Again, Slate

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Entomologists: “Stop feeding corn syrup to honeybees.” Duh.

by rikkiqlyons Posted on May 7, 2013

Entomologists: “Stop feeding corn syrup to honeybees.” Duh.

By John Upton

Shutterstock

It’s time to share more honey with the honeybees that make it.

If you want to a kill a honeybee hive’s buzz, take all its honey away and feed the bees a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup.

Believe it or not, apiarists have been doing just that since the 1970s — feeding HFCS to their colonies as a replacement source of nourishment for the honey that gets taken away from them to be sold.

And believe it or not, HFCS, which is bad for humans, is also bad for honeybees. It’s especially bad for those that are exposed to pesticides, which these days is a high proportion of them.

It’s not that HFCS contributes to honeybee diabetes, nor does it result in honeybee obesity. But it weakens their defenses. And right now, the bees need all the defenses they can get in order to survive.

When honeybees collect nectar from flowers, they also gather pollen and a substance called propolis, which they use to make waxy honeycombs. The pollen and propolis are loaded with three types of compounds that University of Illinois entomologists discovered can help the bees detoxify their cells and protect themselves from pesticides and microbes.

“The widespread apicultural use of honey substitutes, including high-fructose corn syrup, may thus compromise the ability of honey bees to cope with pesticides and pathogens and contribute to colony losses,” the scientists wrote in a paper reporting their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

From Phys.org:

The researchers aren’t suggesting that high-fructose corn syrup is itself toxic to bees, instead, they say their findings indicate that by eating the replacement food instead of honey, the bees are not being exposed to other chemicals that help the bees fight off toxins, such as those found in pesticides.

Cutting the crappy sweeteners from honeybees’ diets and allowing them to eat a bit more of their own honey won’t necessarily save them in a world doused in pesticides. But it might give bees back some of their natural defenses against the poisons they encounter every day.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

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