I heard some of it last night flipping through the cable channels. Then this morning on Morning Joe it was all the rage. Apparently those weren’t flukes and the word has not-so-quietly gone out to any in the GOP still listening to reason: throw Santorum off the surging train. [Read more…]
NASA’s SOHO mission team has posted some beautiful images of our local star under the fitting header The Sun as Art with descriptive captions. Some of the images have been reworked, but most are simply composites or color filters. They’re remarkable, and a reminder of the enormous power of a massive hydrogen fusion reactor (And potential energy source) pumping out 4 trillion terawatts a mere 93 million miles away. Now if only I could find the original slideshow link … [Read more…]
Via Balloon Juice, above, this is what your gas prices have actually done over the past year courtesy of Triple A. Below, this is your gas prices for the past year on Fox News. Hahaha! Any questions? [Read more…]
A hypothetical water world orbiting a nearby red dwarf. This planet would be much cooler than GJ 1214B. Click image for more on the latest find.
The Hubble Space Telescope pulled off an interesting feat this month. A super earth designated GJ 1214B orbiting tightly around a red dwarf 40 light years away may be loaded with water: [Read more…]
It struck me that a lot of readers may not know the back story on the post about Watts, below, so here’s some context. The Heartland Institute is a right-wing org originally created in 1984, appropriately, to spread lies about issues like the health effects of tobacco use. When that gig started drying up in the 90s they had to find new wealthy benefactors, fast. One of the biggest clients they landed was the fossil fuel energy industry, interested in using similar disinformation tactics to combat pollution regulations and especially the growing scientific consensus on human induced climate change.
Last week internal documents from Heartland came to light reportedly showing the lengths to which the institute would go to further their sponsors’ interests. Via the Wiki: [Read more…]
An artist's impression of a 300-million-year-old peat forest in northern China, based on plant fossils preserved in a huge volcanic ash-fall. PNAS
Paleobiologists of all kinds are used to dealing with frustrating scraps. Occasionally they get entire bones and once in a blue moon a nearly complete skeleton or fossil of an extinct plant or animal. But scientists working with remains below a Mongolian coal mine have done one better, they found a 300 million year old forest preserved in volcanic ash and have brought it to virtual life in what is being called the Permian Pompeii:
Speaking on Face the Nation this weekend, GOP front-runner and future guest-in-a sweater vest Romper Room host Rick Santourm decreed that Barack Obama is following a phony, dare we say heretical theology, in which the end goal is to enslave man to that commie bitch mother earth. Or something like that: [Read more…]
A few days ago an insider at the industry friendly Heartland Institute reportedly released some internal emails and other documents. One of them seems to feature Anthony Watts of the climate change denier site WhatsUpWithThat in a very bad light: [Read more…]
Move over John Glenn, I’m a half century old today. So I’m taking it easy. Maybe that would be cause for the blues, but considering the crazy shit I’ve done over the years, from heads down vertical relative work skydiving to broken bones right and left, to a decade and a half of technical rock climbing half the classic routes in North America including El Capitan and then some, I’m fortunate to be alive and in one piece. This would be an off day in celebration, except it’s a holiday which means if I do work, I get double pay. Can’t pass that up in this dismal day and age.
The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From The Front Lines by Dr. Michael Mann, Ph.D
Columbia University Press; Cost $10 to $30
Imagine a place where you and your family are threatened, your employer pressured by the most powerful people on earth to fire you, your email hacked and posted by the usual suspects in accusatory snippets, and where a mysterious letter containing white powder mixed in with tons of traditional hate mail land in your inbox. A suspected communist sympathizer during the McCarthy era, or a Muslim in the wake of 9-11? Nope. All because you helped make one of the most important scientific discoveries in a generation. That’s life in the land of the free and the home of the brave for prominent climate scientists these days, which is why I was personally thrilled to feature one yesterday who not only didn’t shrink an inch, he is fighting back, hard. [Read more…]