Tag Archives: Scientific

Unless You Can Do It Blindfolded, Please STFU

by DeenaBumg Posted on April 8, 2014

Mother Jones

I’ve long suspected this, but now we have Scientific Proof™. Professional violinists who insist that there’s nothing like a Strad can’t even tell them apart from modern instruments:

In this study, 10 renowned soloists each blind-tested six Old Italian violins (including five by Stradivari) and six new during two 75-min sessions—the first in a rehearsal room, the second in a 300-seat concert hall. When asked to choose a violin to replace their own for a hypothetical concert tour, 6 of the 10 soloists chose a new instrument….On average, soloists rated their favorite new violins more highly than their favorite old for playability, articulation, and projection, and at least equal to old in terms of timbre. Soloists failed to distinguish new from old at better than chance levels.

Wine snobs can barely distinguish red from white when they’re blindfolded. Pro violinists can’t pick out a Strad from a decent modern violin. Art aficionados are routinely taken in by fakes even when they’re allowed to investigate them from inches away. The examples of this kind of thing are endless.

So am I skeptical when you claim your $90,000 turntable is really and truly light years better than some mere $2,000 POS? Yes I am. Am I skeptical when you claim you can distinguish Beluga caviar from Sterlet? Yes I am. Hell, I’m not even sure you can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi. If you can do it blindfolded, then I’ll believe you. Until then, don’t even bother me with this nonsense.

Source:  

Unless You Can Do It Blindfolded, Please STFU

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Unless You Can Do It Blindfolded, Please STFU

Adventures in Factoids: The Great Birthday Gap

by IgnacioHku Posted on March 3, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Joyce Carol Oates tweets:

Stunning data: though 91% of women remember virtually all birthdays of relatives, friends, etc., mere 8% of men remember more than one.

Is this true? Or just too good to check? I have to say I’m skeptical. My memory sucks pretty badly, but even I can remember half a dozen birthdays. On the other hand, it’s true that these are all birthdays of immediate family members. With one exception outside of that—a friend whose birthday is the same as my mother’s—I’m pretty clueless. Though, oddly enough, I remember Matt Yglesias’s exact birthdate because he turned ten the day I got married. And Jim Henley shares my birthday, so I remember that. I’m not really sure any of these coincidental dates really count, though.

Still, 8 percent? That just hardly seems likely. I demand Scientific Evidence™.

Read this article – 

Adventures in Factoids: The Great Birthday Gap

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Adventures in Factoids: The Great Birthday Gap

Is the Arctic Really Drunk, Or Does It Just Act Like This Sometimes?

by NatishaFe Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Just when weather weary Americans thought they’d found a reprieve, the latest forecasts suggest that the polar vortex will, again, descend into the heart of the country next week, bringing with it staggering cold. If so, it will be just the latest weather extreme in a winter that has seen so many of them. California has been extremely dry, while the flood-soaked UK has been extremely wet. Alaska has been extremely hot (as has Sochi), while the snow-pummeled US East Coast has been extremely cold. They’re all different, and yet on a deeper level, perhaps, they’re all the same.

This weather now serves as the backdrop—and perhaps, as the inspiration—for an increasingly epic debate within the field of climate research. You see, one climate researcher, Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, has advanced an influential theory suggesting that winters like this one may be growing more likely to occur. The hypothesis is that by rapidly melting the Arctic, global warming is slowing down the fast-moving river of air far above us known as the jet stream—in turn causing weather patterns to get stuck in place for longer, and leading to more extremes of the sort that we’ve all been experiencing. “There is a lot of pretty tantalizing evidence that our hypothesis seems to be bearing some fruit,” Francis explained on the latest installment of the Inquiring Minds podcast. The current winter is a “perfect example” of the kind of jet stream pattern that her research predicts, Francis added (although she emphasized that no one atmospheric event can be directly blamed on climate change).

Francis’s idea has gained rapid celebrity, no doubt because it seems to make sense of our mindboggling weather. After all, it isn’t often that an idea first published less than two years is strongly embraced by the president’s science adviser in a widely watched YouTube video. And yet in a letter to the journal Science last week, five leading climate scientists—mainstream researchers who accept a number of other ideas about how global warming is changing the weather, from worsening heat waves to driving heavier rainfall—strongly contested Francis’s jet stream claim, calling it “interesting” but contending that “alternative observational analyses and simulations have not confirmed the hypothesis.” One of the authors was the highly influential climate researcher Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who also appeared on Inquiring Minds this week alongside Francis to debate the matter.

Jennifer Francis and Kevin Trenberth.

“I applaud Jennifer for raising the issue,” Trenberth said on the show, but he argued that much more research is needed, adding that “I’m suspicious that the outcome will not be quite the way in which Jennifer would like.” Trenberth just doesn’t buy the seemingly counterintuitive idea of global warming making winters seem worse, although he is more than willing to cite other recent events, such as dramatic heat in Australia, Alaska, and Brazil, as the kind of extreme weather that climate change should produce. “At least with regard to global warming, it’s on the right side of things,” said Trenberth of these heat waves. “It’s much harder to see how cold can be caused by global warming.”

What’s going on here? In climate science, too many of the “debates” that we hear about are fake, trumped up affairs generated by climate skeptics who aim to sow doubt. But that’s not the case here: The argument over Francis’s work is real, legitimate, and damn interesting to boot. There is, quite simply, a massive amount at stake. The weather touches all of us personally and immediately. Indeed, social scientists have shown that our recent weather experience is a powerful determinant of whether we believe in global warming in the first place. If Francis is right, the very way that we experience global warming will be vastly different than scientists had, until now, foreseen—and perhaps will stay that way for our entire lives.

What Happens in the Arctic…

To understand Jennifer Francis’ big idea, you first have to understand what’s happening with the Arctic. It’s the part of the climate system that Francis has spent her career studying, and it’s the part that has changed the most, and the most rapidly, over the past decade. The rate of warming in the Arctic has been twice that of the mid-latitudes, and that warming has been punctuated by some truly shocking moments, such as the year 2007 and its unprecedented sea ice decline (since surpassed by the year 2012). 2007 “literally smashed the all-time record low for the summer minimum extent,” says Francis. And as she watched it happen, she knew that “the system as we knew it had fundamentally changed.”

What happened next is that Francis in effect crossed the streams: She combined together her expertise on the Arctic with some new thinking about the dynamics of the atmosphere. “Those momentous changes that we started to see happening got me thinking, and this kind of got me going back to my roots in meteorology,” Francis says. “And I realized that this rapid warming happening up there, and the ice loss we were witnessing, must have an effect on the large-scale circulation system, or the atmospheric patterns, beyond the Arctic.”

The result was a now famous 2012 paper titled, “Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes,” co-authored with Stephen Vavrus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In it, the two researchers presented evidence that the Arctic’s rapid warming, which they termed “Arctic amplification,” was having a major atmospheric effect by reducing something called the “poleward thickness gradient.” That sounds pretty wonky, but it simply refers to the difference in the atmosphere’s thickness as one progresses from south to north. We all know that hot air rises, and thus, the atmosphere is thicker nearer to the equator than it is at the poles. But with a rapidly warming Arctic, the thickness difference between south and north should decline, because the Arctic atmosphere would increase in thickness more rapidly than the atmosphere to the south. And that, in turn, changes the jet stream, whose motion is driven by these thickness differences.

You can watch Francis give a more thorough scientific explanation of the idea here, complete with an impressive video animation of the jet stream:

“We know that as the Arctic warms much faster, it will weaken this temperature difference between the north and the south,” Francis explains. “And because that temperature difference is one of the drivers of the west to east winds of the jet stream, we expect to see the west to east winds get weaker, as that temperature difference gets smaller. And we know that when the jet stream gets weaker, it is more easily deflected.”

That, in turn, leads to extreme weather—or so the theory goes. As Francis and Vavrus put it in their 2012 paper, a slowing down of the jet stream “causes more persistent weather conditions that can increase the likelihood of certain types of extreme weather, such as drought, prolonged precipitation, cold spells, and heat waves.” That sounds an awful lot like a recipe for what we’ve recently seen in California, the UK, the East Coast, and Alaska/Sochi. So no wonder this idea has gotten so much attention lately. The jet stream this winter, says Francis, has been “pretty much locked in place since December, until very recently.”

The Case for Skepticism

Francis’s idea is surprisingly simple, once you get down to it, so much so that as the polar vortex descended upon the US in early January, pop culture references abounded. One particularly popular Internet meme declared, “Go home, Arctic, you’re drunk,” a line that even made its way onto to NPR’s popular program “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me.” The meme isn’t just funny: It captures the basic idea that weather is staggering around in a way that it doesn’t normally do, a bit out of its wits of late due to the jet stream.

Greg Laden/ECMWF

No wonder, then, that Francis’ ideas have gotten so much media attention. At a time when all of us are searching for some explanation for mind-boggling winter weather, along comes a scientist who seems to explain it all to us clearly, and also to link it to climate change.

So why don’t scientists like Kevin Trenberth accept it?

On Inquiring Minds, Trenberth outlined a number of scientific criticisms. One of them is simply that there is a great deal of change in the jet stream anyway, and more wavy patterns just happen from time to time. “The main counterargument to Jennifer at the moment is that a lot of this can simply happen through natural variability,” Trenberth explained. As he noted, there have been winters in the past with wavy jet streams and very cold mid-latitude “polar vortex” excursions. “In some years, the Arctic air gets bottled up, and it doesn’t penetrate into middle latitudes much,” says Trenberth, “and in other years, it has more waviness, outbreaks of cold occur.”

And there’s an additional reason for skepticism. Trenberth thinks that if a process as important as the one described by Francis were occurring, then climate models—complex computer simulations of the atmosphere under climate change—would have picked it up. But when scientists run these models, he says, “it takes a really long time, 50 years or something like that, to see a big change in the atmospheric circulation in association with climate change.” Francis is thus postulating a change much more rapid than what the models show.

In response to such criticisms, Francis fully admits that her idea is new, not fully accepted by all scientists, and requires further testing. One problem, she notes, is that the Arctic change has been so fast that there aren’t many years of jet stream behavior that you can even study to prove or disprove her ideas. “The rapidly warming Arctic has really only been a detectable signal in the system really in the last decade, maybe decade and a half,” she says. “And so literally we only have maybe 15 years where we might be able to detect any response of the atmosphere to this rapidly warming Arctic.”

That’s How Science Works

Stepping back and surveying this exchange, what one sees is a model of how science works when it is working well, in the way that it is supposed to. It’s the utter opposite of politicized “debates” in which skeptics go to the media to raise issues that are red herrings or already resolved by researchers, and most scientists don’t even bother to respond.

By contrast, here we have a scientist (Francis) who has reason to believe she’s uncovered something new and unexpected in the climate system, who publishes that idea, and who cites a combination of physical reasoning and (admittedly limited) observations. But other scientists (like Trenberth) are, as yet, unconvinced that the new idea meets the burden placed upon ideas of its kind when they are first introduced. Nor are they able to fit the argument easily into the context of what they already know, as encoded in the climate models whose equations represent our state-of-the-art physical understanding of the climate system.

So what happens now? Well, every year is more data, which means that every year is an additional scientific test for Francis. Scientists simply have to watch the Arctic, and the atmosphere, and see how they match what Francis has postulated. And given the amount of attention the idea has received, there are a lot of them out there now, paying very close attention.

“I think in the next few years, we’re going to get a lot of answers,” says Francis. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you may not have to wait for scientists to publish those answers: You’ll probably feel them first.

To listen to the full Inquiring Minds debate between Jennifer Francis and Kevin Trenberth, you can stream here:

This episode of Inquiring Minds, a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and best-selling author Chris Mooney, also features a discussion about Indre’s new 24-lecture course, “12 Essential Scientific Concepts,” which was just released by The Teaching Company as part of the “Great Courses” series.

To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. We are also available on Stitcher and on Swell. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook. Inquiring Minds was also recently singled out as one of the “Best of 2013” on iTunes—you can learn more here.

View original post here:  

Is the Arctic Really Drunk, Or Does It Just Act Like This Sometimes?

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is the Arctic Really Drunk, Or Does It Just Act Like This Sometimes?

Natural Gas Is Dirtier Than We Thought—But It’s Still Better Than Coal

by PhilomenaRawson Posted on February 13, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has underestimated US emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. That’s the argument of a new analysis appearing in the Feb. 14 issue of Science, which also finds that a big factor behind the lowball estimates is the EPA’s poor grasp of methane leaks from the natural gas industry.

The analysis, which examines more than 200 existing studies, is the first to take a broad view of scientific knowledge of methane emissions, and it has critical implications for the use of natural gas. Gas has been touted by its proponents as a cleaner alternative to traditional fossil fuels such as coal—President Obama hails it as a “bridge fuel” that will allow the country to transition to cleaner energy sources—since burning natural gas for energy emits far less carbon dioxide. But because methane, a main component of natural gas, is such a powerful greenhouse gas, the new evidence of narrows the gap between the climate change contributions of gas and coal.

“Our best guess is that methane emissions in this country are about 50 percent more than the EPA estimates,” says Adam Brandt, an assistant professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford University and the lead author of the analysis. Methane emissions could plausibly be anywhere between 25 to 75 percent more than what EPA measures have shown, Brandt adds. “That amounts to something like 7 to 21 million excess tons of methane every year.” Brandt and his co-authors, he says, did not have enough evidence to determine what proportion of total excess methane is released by the natural gas industry, as opposed to by other energy sectors, agriculture, or landfills.

But the study concludes that natural gas as a fuel source still contributes less to climate change than coal. “We don’t believe that the evidence suggests that burning coal is better,” Brandt says. “There’s just not support for that.” The reason is that while methane is the more damaging greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, which coal emits in huge quantities when burned, stays in the atmosphere for a much longer period of time. Coal is a “cleaner” fuel only in the near-term—a period of 20 years or so. Brandt says that over a period of 100 years, natural gas—leaks and all—would still be a less greenhouse gas-intensive source of energy than coal.

Still, Brandt cautions, natural gas is not a long-term energy solution for keeping climate change in check. “Uncontrolled use of gas over a century or more isn’t a good thing, from a climate change perspective,” Brandt says. “Most climate change scenarios suggest that this can’t be a solution for 100 years.”

The analysis also concludes that even under the most conservative estimates of methane leaks from the gas sector, keeping diesel-powered powered vehicles, such as buses, on the road contributes smaller amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than switching to gas-powered buses.

The researchers believe that only a small percentage of methane leaked by the gas sector is coming from the controversial hydraulic fracturing—or fracking—process itself. Rather, accidental leaks that occur as the industry moves and processes natural gas likely account for the biggest proportion of these emissions. One study cited by the analysis found that less than 1 percent of individual pieces of equipment at a single natural gas plant were responsible for nearly 60 percent of its leakage. Brandt says new technology that quickly identifies these “superemitters” is the best hope for reigning in the industry’s emissions.

As for why the EPA underestimates methane leaks in the gas industry, the analysis notes that the agency can only measure emission rates at wells and plants where the operators volunteered to allow the EPA on site. In one instance, the EPA asked 30 natural gas companies to allow them on site, but only six cooperated.

Visit source – 

Natural Gas Is Dirtier Than We Thought—But It’s Still Better Than Coal

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Natural Gas Is Dirtier Than We Thought—But It’s Still Better Than Coal

Will Obama do the right thing on ozone and smog this time around?

by AudreaEQQE Posted on February 6, 2014

Will Obama do the right thing on ozone and smog this time around?

By

Barack Obama has been just as bad as George W. Bush when it comes to curbing ground-level ozone pollution. But soon he’ll have another chance to get ozone regulations right.

Ozone rocks when it’s up in the stratosphere, protecting us from UV rays and skin cancer. But when it’s at ground level, where it’s the main component of smog, it can cause respiratory infections, asthma, and other ailments. Ground-level ozone pollution is produced when sunlight triggers reactions involving the chemicals that are spewed out of factories and tailpipes. Naturally, oil companies and other polluting industries don’t want to be required to rein in this pollution.

In 2008, the last year of the Bush administration, the EPA finalized new rules on ground-level ozone, allowing 75 parts per billion in the air. Clean air advocates and enviros had called for a lower limit of 60 ppb, saying it was needed to protect public health. In 2011, the EPA was poised to tighten the standard, but the Obama White House cravenly quashed the effort, fearing backlash from industry the year before a presidential election. At the time, John Walke of the Natural Resources Defense Council called this “the most outrageous environmental offense of the Obama administration.”

Under the requirements of the Clean Air Act, the EPA was supposed to revise its ozone rules in 2013, but it missed the deadline. Now it’s being sued by environmental and health groups for its tardiness.

As EPA slowly moves toward crafting new ozone rules, its experts are taking another look at the science. And — surprise, surprise — those experts have found that the current Bush-era rules could be exposing Americans to dangerously high levels of ozone pollution.

From E&E Publishing:

In a draft document released [Monday], U.S. EPA staff say that based on available scientific evidence, the agency should consider tightening its current ozone standard to a level as low as 60 parts per billion. …

In a separate health and risk exposure assessment, agency staff says that setting a standard in the 60-70 ppb range would result in reduced child exposure, lower hospitalization and mortality rates, and reduced risk of lower lung function.

The documents are meant to inform agency scientists and policymakers ahead of a meeting of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee at the end of March. Following that meeting, the agency is expected to release a proposal, although the administration has not specified a timeline.

As Bloomberg BNA reports reports, “A stricter ozone standard would lead to new requirements for emissions controls on sources that emit nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, which contribute to ozone formation, including industrial facilities, power plants and vehicles.”

Now that he doesn’t have to worry about reelection, will Obama endorse stronger ozone rules? We’ll be watching.


Source
EPA Draft Policy Document Says Science Justifies Stricter Ozone Air Quality Standard, Bloomberg BNA
EPA draft eyes tightening ozone standard to 60 ppb, E&E Publishing

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

,

Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Visit source: 

Will Obama do the right thing on ozone and smog this time around?

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, organic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Will Obama do the right thing on ozone and smog this time around?

Here’s Why Bob McDonnell Just Got Indicted

by TangelaCso Posted on January 21, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Tuesday, a federal grand jury indicted former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, on 14 counts related to gifts the couple accepted from a businessman looking to curry favor with the McDonnell administration. McDonnell, whose one term in office expired in early January, was once considered a possible Republican vice presidential candidate before reports of his dealings with businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. cast a shadow over his last year-and-half in office.

In a statement, McDonnell apologized for his actions but maintained that he never did anything illegal: “I deeply regret accepting legal gifts and loans from Mr. Williams, all of which have been repaid with interest, and I have apologized for my poor judgment for which I take full responsibility. However, I repeat emphatically that I did nothing illegal for Mr. Williams in exchange for what I believed was his personal generosity and friendship. I never promised—and Mr. Williams and his company never received—any government benefit of any kind from me or my Administration. We did not violate the law, and I will use every available resource and advocate I have for as long as it takes to fight these false allegations, and to prevail against this unjust overreach of the federal government.”

Here’s everything you need to know:

Who’s Jonnie R. Williams Sr.? Until December, Williams was the CEO of Star Scientific, Inc., a dietary supplements company. The company’s main products are Anatabloc—an anti-inflammatory supplement derived from tobacco plants—and smoking-cessation product CigRx. According to the indictment, Williams forged a friendship with the the McDonnells starting in 2009, after he gave Bob McDonnell use of his private jet during his gubernatorial campaign. McDonnell and Williams soon discovered that they both had a lot in common, according to the Associated Press: They both have large families, started their careers in health services, and honeymooned at the same spot in Maine. This isn’t the first time Williams has had a run-in with federal investigators: In 1993, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined him $300,000 for peddling false medical claims.

What kinds of gifts did he give the McDonnells? The lengthy list includes over $100,000 in corporate jet travel; an engraved $6,500 Rolex watch; a $15,000 Bergdorf Goodman shopping spree; a $10,000 engagement gift for the McDonnells’ daughter Jeanine; and $15,000 to foot the catering bill for another McDonnell daughter, Cailin. (McDonnell maintains his daughters returned these gifts.) The indictment reveals that the McDonnells had a taste for Louis Vuitton: If convicted, the couple will have to relinquish a number of items made by the high-priced designer, including shoes, a raincoat, a purse, and a wallet.

What did Williams get out of this? Authorities say that in exchange for gifts, the McDonnells legitimized and promoted Star Scientific products. Among the allegations: In February 2011, Bob and Maureen McDonnell praised Star Scientific’s products at a dinner the company held in an effort to convince doctors to prescribe CigRx to their patients. In August, 2011, the defendants hosted an event for the launch of Star Scientific’s Anatabloc product at the Governor’s Mansion; the invitees included some university researchers Star Scientific wanted to perform clinical trials of Anatabloc. In October 2011, Maureen McDonnell attended another Star Scientific dinner to lend her support to Anatabloc, according to the indictment.

Could this have been avoided if the McDonnells had been nicer to their staff? Maybe. Things began to fall apart when the couple’s chef, Todd Schneider, was accused of stealing food in 2012. Schneider denied any wrongdoing, instead implicating the McDonnell family themselves as the culprits. Upset about his treatment, he turned over a pile of documents revealing the tip of the iceberg of the family’s financially cozy relationship with Williams.

What will happen to McDonnell if he’s found guilty? Per the Richmond Times Dispatch, the charges could put the couple behind bars for decades and carry a fine of more than $1 million. But prominent political couples don’t normally receive maximum sentences. Top Virginia politicians in both parties have, at McDonnell’s request, lobbied the Department of Justice to go easy on him.

Is there a silver lining? If recent history is an indication, he’ll probably get a reality show. Former Illinois Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich was indicted in 2009 for attempting to sell President Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat. He was convicted one year later and is currently serving a 14-year sentence—but not before his wife, Patricia, raised funds for his legal fees by starring in the show I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! Former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards, who served six years in prison over federal corruption charges, landed a post-penitentiary gig as the co-star of short-lived A&E series The Governor’s Wife.

Originally posted here: 

Here’s Why Bob McDonnell Just Got Indicted

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s Why Bob McDonnell Just Got Indicted

Antarctic researchers rescued following icy ordeal

by KaraBloomer Posted on January 2, 2014

Antarctic researchers rescued following icy ordeal

By

M R

The MV Akademik Shokalskiy in happier times.

A team of Antarctic researchers was rescued after spending nine days “stuck,” as one of the scientists put it, “in our own experiment.”

Members of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition were among 52 passengers aboard the MV Akademik Shokalskiy when it became trapped in sea ice on Dec. 24. Rescue efforts were thwarted for more than a week by bad weather, but on Thursday the scientists and tourists were finally airlifted by a Chinese helicopter to the safety of an Australian icebreaker:

The scientists had planned to study how the melting of B09B, one of the world’s biggest icebergs, is triggering a buildup in surrounding sea ice and altering deep ocean currents.

“We followed Sir Douglas Mawson‘s footsteps into Commonwealth Bay, and are now ourselves trapped by ice surrounding our ship,” wrote scientists Chris Turney in a statement.

Even while international teams scrambled to rescue the crew, the fossil fuel industry’s henchmen delighted in the scientists’ predicament, excitedly pointing to the emergency as a reminder that ice still exists in cold places. (And, yes, sea ice around Antarctica is expanding even as glaciers, the Arctic, and other parts of Antarctica melt, pushing up sea levels and altering worldwide weather patterns — confusing though that might be for those who do not try to understand science.)

Despite their plight and right-wing media mockery, the researchers celebrated in style on New Year’s Eve. A video shows them in high spirits, laughing and singing about ”having fun doing science in Antarctica,” even as they lamented the “bloody great shame” of being stuck there:

Agence France-Presse reports on their makeshift New Year’s Eve party:

“It was rather amazing actually,” [Turney] told AFP via Skype from his remote location. “We set this tent up on top of the deck. It was very cosy. There was a lot of excitement.

“It was just what the team needed, letting their hair down for a bit and forgetting about their worries and concerns.”

He said those onboard were keeping busy — either continuing to pack up the scientific equipment on the boat or taking part in seminars ranging from sewing to salsa dancing and reflecting the skills of those trapped on the vessel.

Now that the 52 passengers have been rescued, things will get even lonelier for the 22 crew members aboard — they are planning on staying with the vessel in hopes that the ice around it will eventually break up naturally.


Source
Winds, rain halt Antarctic ship rescue, Agence France-Presse
Icebound ship rescue thwarted in Antarctic, Al Jazeera
Antarctic passengers rescued from ship by helicopter – live coverage, The Guardian

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

This article is from:  

Antarctic researchers rescued following icy ordeal

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Antarctic researchers rescued following icy ordeal

Why Some Meteorologists Still Deny Global Warming

by NestorHPOM Posted on December 4, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Just before Thanksgiving, many conservatives seized on a new study examining the climate views of members of the American Meteorological Society. It’s no secret that there’s a schism between climate scientists and weather forecasters over climate change, and the study captured this, to skeptics’ delight. The fact that a sizable percentage of AMS members disagree with mainstream climate science represented “the latest in a long line of evidence indicating the often asserted global warming consensus does not exist,” according to Forbes blogger and Heartland Institute fellow James Taylor.

Yet a closer look at the study—conducted by researchers at George Mason University, Yale, and the AMS itself—shows that its main punch line is quite different. The research was chiefly focused on trying to understand why the meteorological community as a whole (the AMS includes climate scientists, academic meteorologists, forecast meteorologists, and general atmospheric scientists, among others) features such disparate views on global warming. And one of its principal findings is that AMS members who publish less peer-reviewed climate research, or less peer-reviewed research in general, are more likely to be climate skeptics.

Far from undermining the scientific consensus on climate change, then, the new study could be said to strengthen it, by defining who’s a relevant expert in the first place. “You listen to the scientists who really know the field in question,” says George Mason’s Neil Stenhouse, a Ph.D. student and the study’s lead author. “And previous studies show that if you ask the scientists who really know climate change, there is high consensus on human causation.”

Similarly, after sorting AMS members by their climate expertise as well as their scientific publishing record, Stenhouse’s study found that this seemed to have a big impact on their views about climate change. “93% of actively publishing climate scientists indicated they are convinced that humans have contributed to global warming,” noted the study’s authors. By contrast, among “nonpublishing” climate scientists, only 65 percent believed that humans have contributed to global warming.

Something similar occurred with a different set of experts within AMS: meteorologists and atmospheric scientists. Those who published a lot on climate change, or a lot on other aspects of meteorological science, generally showed much higher conviction that humans are contributing to global warming (79 percent and 78 percent, respectively) than the “nonpublishing” experts (59 percent).

And there’s more bad news for skeptics who want to cite this AMS survey to bolster their case. You see, the study also showed that conservative political ideology is a big factor behind the denial of climate science by some meteorologists—ideology was a consistently bigger influence on meteorologists’ views, in fact, than their level of scientific expertise. This finding of a major role for ideology, write the researchers, “goes against the idea of scientists’ opinions being entirely based on objective analysis of the evidence.”

The irony, then, is considerable. Even as climate skeptics cite the new AMS survey to claim there’s no scientific consensus on climate change, the survey itself calls into question whether disagreement among meteorologists has much to do with purely scientific considerations in the first place.

View original:

Why Some Meteorologists Still Deny Global Warming

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Some Meteorologists Still Deny Global Warming

Federal shutdown freezes Antarctic science, other research

by Gabrielle Hartzog Posted on October 8, 2013

Federal shutdown freezes Antarctic science, other research

By

Stacy Kim, National Science Foundation

Nothing to see here, folks. Y’all can just stay home this year.

It’s springtime at the South Pole, meaning there soon will be enough daylight and warmth for hardy climate researchers to make their annual haul south — way, way south. (Since Antarctica’s ice sheet would raise seas more than 150 feet upon melting, it seems like an important thing to stay on top of.)

But preparations by America’s team are being threatened by the American government shutdown. NPR explains:

Advance teams have already started working to get things set up and ready for the researchers, who usually begin heading south right about now.

But they’re hearing that the government’s contractor for logistics in Antarctica, Lockheed Martin, will run out of funding for its Antarctic support program in about a week. A decision about whether they will need to start pulling back personnel is expected very soon.

The fear is that this year’s entire research season will effectively be cancelled — that scientists and logistical support workers will be called back home, and only skeleton crews will be left to keep the three U.S. research stations going.

What’s it like to stare down the looming threat of an entire lost year of research? Peter Doran, a professor of earth sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago, articulated his feelings to NPR’s All Things Considered:

“We can do things that other countries can’t do because of the great logistic support that we’ve had for years,” he says.

The thought of all the science that wouldn’t get done if there is a pullback is depressing to Doran. “And the waste of money is just heartbreaking,” he adds. “All the equipment that’s been shipped down already for this field season, all the people having to reverse all that — for nothing? It really kind of makes me ill.”

The federal government shutdown jeopardizes more than  just the scientific study of Antarctica’s expansive ice mass. House Republicans’ continued effort to hold the U.S. hostage in a bid to quash Obamacare affects science research across the board. From Greenwire:

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics’ mission statement vows “to advance our knowledge and understanding of the universe.” But when the federal government shut down last Tuesday, its scientists were forced to trim their sails.

The center sent home more than 100 of its 900 employees, affecting as many as 60 projects — including the mapping of solar flares, a threat to satellites that feed data to American smartphones. Disrupted federal funding is “so counterproductive” at a time of global competition for technological dominance, center spokesman David Aguilar lamented in an interview.

“For people to say that this is not important, that it doesn’t have an impact,” Aguilar added, reflects a lack of awareness “of what technology does for our lives.”

While the economic fallout from closed national parks and unpaid federal workers began to hit almost immediately after the shutdown began, its effect on scientific research promises to kick in on a slower time scale and with less easily communicated consequences for many Americans.

And as the federal shutdown stretches into its second week, polls are showing that most Americans blame the GOP. The L.A. Times reports that the president’s approval rating has risen even as his agencies have been furloughed by Congress’s inability to pass a budget:

The standoff over the government shutdown continues to damage the public’s opinion of congressional Republicans, two new surveys indicate, a finding likely to deepen concern among GOP leaders about the impact the stalemate is having on their party.

A third newly released survey shows that overall approval of Congress has fallen to nearly a record low.

Disapproval of the way congressional Republicans are “handling negotiations over the federal budget” has jumped to 70%, a Washington Post-ABC News poll shows. The poll, taken Wednesday through Sunday, found 24% approving of the congressional GOP.

Of course, this is a fantasy come true for fossil-fuel-allied Republicans: No government means crippled regulators and hobbled science. Maybe that’s why greens are vocally seething over the shutdown while the energy industry, in the words of a recent Politico article, “are mostly staying mum” about it.


Source
Government shutdown: GOP losing ground with public, polls indicate, L.A. Times
Government shutdown: Scientific research takes a quiet but devastating hit, Greenwire
Even Antarctica Feels Effects Of The Government Shutdown, NPR

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

,

Politics

Continue at source: 

Federal shutdown freezes Antarctic science, other research

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Prepara, Smith's, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Federal shutdown freezes Antarctic science, other research

Scientific American goes totally pro-GMO

by kosiczek1910 Posted on September 10, 2013

green4us

Munitorum: Plasma Guns – Games Workshop

Weapons crafted using almost forgotten technology from a lost age, the plasma gun fires bolts of superheated particles blazing with blinding light. While a shot from this weapon is able to burn through almost all kinds of armour, the plasma gun is also prone to catastrophic overheating that is quite capable of killing the user. About this Series: Weapons are […]

iTunes Store
Cat Sense – John Bradshaw

Cats have been popular household pets for thousands of years, and their numbers only continue to rise. Today there are three cats for every dog on the planet, and yet cats remain more mysterious, even to their most adoring owners. In Cat Sense , renowned anthrozoologist John Bradshaw takes us further into the mind of the domestic cat than ever before, using […]

iTunes Store
1, 2, 3 Sew – Ellen Luckett Baker

Now in ebook for the first time ever! Sewing is as easy as 1-2-3! In this creative teaching book, craft blogger Ellen Luckett Baker offers a wholly unique approach to sewing: she presents projects in groups of three, each building on the techniques used in the project before. Baker shows, for example, how to sew a glasses case, then build on those skills to […]

iTunes Store
How to Paint Citadel Miniatures: Sternguard Veterans – Games Workshop

Sternguard veterans deploy wherever the battleline is most vulnerable, facing down the most impossible odds with icy calm and precise bursts of bolter fire. They are the very image of what every Space Marine aspires to become, and the pinnacle of any Chapter’s fighting force. About this Guide: In this guide demonstrates how to paint Space Marine Sterngu […]

iTunes Store
Codex: Space Marines (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

The Space Marines are the chosen warriors of the Emperor, and the greatest fighting force of the Imperium. Each Space Marine is a genetically enhanced super soldier, easily a match for a dozen lesser men, armed with the some of the deadliest weapons in the galaxy and encased in a formidable power armour. This Codex explores the formations and Chapters of the […]

iTunes Store
Index Astartes: Centurions – Games Workshop

Designed as siege breakers and for the close quarters of boarding actions, Centurions are heavy exo-armour suits used by specialist Space Marine formations. Incorporating either close range weapons like siege drills and heavy flamers or heavy weapons like lascannons and heavy bolters making each Centurion a formidable adversary. About this Series: The Adeptu […]

iTunes Store
Paracord Crafts – Leisure Arts

“Paracord Crafts” is multi-touch book for the lovers of handicrafts. Book has exciting projects for making beautiful bracelets. Book features interesting photo galleries, and informative notes to guide reader in making cobra stitch bracelets as well as six more styles of knots: Chain Sinnet, Stitched Solomon Bar, Raising the Bar, Trilobite, Switchback, and R […]

iTunes Store
How to Paint Citadel Miniatures: Space Marines – Games Workshop

The First Founding Space Marine Chapters are the foundation of the Adeptus Astartes, each one distinct with its own iconography, colours and markings. When they march to war the symbols of the Chapter strike fear into their foes, each one heavy with their valorous deeds. In this, our biggest painting guide to date, you will find extensive detail on how […]

iTunes Store
Space Marines Digital Collection – Games Workshop

The Space Marines are the superhuman warriors of humanity, fighting across the galaxy to hold back the Imperium’s endless tide of enemies. Few can stand against these peerless soldiers, and even a single company is often enough to change the fate of a world forever. This digital collection gathers together the brand new Codex: Space Marines, How to Paint Cit […]

iTunes Store
Warlords of the Dark Millenium: Sammael – Games Workshop

Sammael is the Grand Master of the Ravenwing and Leader of the Hunt, a peerless jetbike rider and veteran commander of hundreds of battles. Known for being bold, often to the point of recklessness, Sammael continually confounds his enemies with his changeable tactics and the expert raiding skills of his Ravenwing warriors. About this series: The galaxy burns […]

iTunes Store

Visit site – 

Scientific American goes totally pro-GMO

Posted in alo, Citadel, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, solar, solar power, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Scientific American goes totally pro-GMO