This is of great importance to the climatic system of the earth.

Weather intensification is occurring now.  Coupled with weak regulations and low budget building practices, insurance companies are becoming aware of this problem and reacting by canceling insurance.

“The largest homeowners insurer in Florida is canceling the policies of 125,000 of its most vulnerable customers beginning Aug. 1, halfway through the 2010 hurricane season.”

Follow this link to the report.

I have recently finished the book “Storms of my Grandchildren” and recommend it be read carefully.  Dr. James Hansen’s Columbia University web site can be accessed here.

I recommend carefully reviewing his presentations, they can be found here.

I enjoyed receiving this from a colleague.

This shows a water droplet striking the surface of water at 2000 frames per second.  What happens?  Should be simple?  Wow, this is cool.

Cheers and thanks for this link, very cool:

http://www.flixxy.com/water-drop.htm

The beauty of our world is limitless.

The recent economic statistics, largely unreported, are very negative

Some important economic statistics have been presented by the genius squad at CalculatedRisk (check the links on the left, or specific links to their blogs at the end of this).  I knew these numbers would be bad, but was shocked.

Long term employment is off-the-charts.

From CalculatedRisk, the present Great Depression has no comparison in recent times.

There was a terribly sad article in the New York Times that highlighted the human toll of such long-term unemployment.   The trauma of joblessness in the United States is reported here.

This change in unemployment had been covered in blogs, such as this one for monthsimport.

The lack of the general media (e.g. the echo chamber)  to cover this important story, realistically and in-depth, is a crime.

Calculated Risk has consistently compared our present Great Depression with the previous economic downturns, this latest comparison is shown below and is off-scale, especially if one considers the possibility that we are partially into a “double dip” downturn.

From Calculated Risk

The key question is if we are in a W or double dip path.   I’m not sure but very worried and watching these statistics closely.  This is much more than the “null decade” it’s the criminal party controlling government.

Here is the link to the excellent CalculatedRisk long term unemployment blog.

Here is a link to the excellent CalculatedRisk comparison of economic downturns blog.

Given the train wreak that California has become, set off by the realization that the Republican party would never be a majority party in that state and the scramble to “game the system” so a majority was never needed, it’s not surprising that conservatives in Texas want to set up the same permanent minority rule for their state.   Here is the story.    The party is realizing permanent minority status has arrived with these continuing bad economic news.

The long predicted collapse of biodiesel has begun, another road to no where.

An excellent article from WIRED about how science works.  In the United States in general people are technology savy, but science ignorant.

Here is the link.

Regarding communication about science, there is an excellent an important opinion from the LA Times, which I will link into this blog shortly.

A rather scary book by James Hansen is reviewed below by the LA Times.

Book review of Storms of my Grandchildren by James Hansen.

T-Rex upper portion of skull--fun to touch; teeth were very sharp

Best wishes for a successful and pleasant 2010.

Regarding the last decade:  The Big Zero by Paul Krugman.

This is an important viewpoint.  Here is the link.

I feel that things are turning around.  It is clear that the right has been hijacked by fanatics who have ruined vast portions of our economic and political landscape.   While the right still rages about socialist democrats and nazi-protesters, while mocking our government and most of our citizens, cooler heads have prevailed and I look forward to this year.  It reminds me of who we are as a nation.

Inspiring words from FDR:
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want — which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear — which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor– anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception — the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change — in a perpetual peaceful revolution — a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions — without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.

To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

FDR’s address to Congress, January 6, 1941.

Read more at the Wiki page for this famous speech.

Happy New Year!

Cheers.

The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe has determined that the universe to be 13.73 billion years old to within 1% (0.12 billion years).

Here is the web site.

I converted their full-sky microwave background image to JPEG format.  Enjoy.

Science is so cool.

Our universe--a new view.

Recently there has been some tension in the financial market related to the inability of a financial group in Dubai to cover their payments.   Specifically a stand still in $4 billion of debt has been requested.

Here is a Wiki page describing this portion of the UAE.

Here is an interesting Independent article about the dark side of Dubai. I had seen these expats from the United States in other countries, giving terribly bad financial advice for their own short term profit.  You can count the countries that followed this advice and the misery now for these poor people and their new governments.  There really is a global mess related to very, very poor leadership from the United States.  I expect similar melt-downs in the future.  The Great Depression started by financial collapse in Europe.  We’ll see if we can escape another, deeper, depression. I’m tracking this closely.

As is often the case with financial meltdowns, the World Bank is in the middle of this.  You can track where the least competent people in the previous political administration went to, the World Bank, to get a sense of the political outlook of this group.  Here one of these clowns quits because of scandal and a description of the mess he left.

You might remember the very strong political push to have US ports managed by a Dubai company for big profits by an off-shore company (this nonsense strongly supported by editorials from the usual clowns; Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Washington Post, Friedman, Limbaugh, O’Reilly etc, etc.).  Here is an excellent review and article  from Hullabaloo.

Here is a review of the financial meltdown these wonder businesses people have created.  Guardian UK article. Telegraph UK article. Times UK article. NYTimes article.

There have been some excellent books written that explain in detail what is happening; I recommend this book (The Wrecking Crew), and this book (The Shock Doctrine), to gain important perspectives.   Individual states are now following closely the scenarios outlined in The Shock Doctrine).   Naomi Klein explains it for Californians here.

This all started in California when the Republicans discovered “double Santa Claus“.  This is worth reading carefully.  I remember understanding that we were burning through the accumulated wealth of the richest nation in the world to support, for the short term, the greediest generation.  That’s over now.

As usual Bob Herbert of the New York Times has an excellent editorial.

“The American economy is broken, ruined by the greed and irresponsibility of fabulously wealthy corporate chieftains and their shabby acolytes and enablers in government. While Wall Street is handing out billions in bonuses, American families are struggling with joblessness, home foreclosures and rampant debt. The economic woes are exacting a fierce toll on family life, and children are taking a big hit — emotionally, psychologically and otherwise.“

Here is his editorial. He understands.

This is of great importance to the climatic system of the earth.

China announced significant changes in policy related to CO2 emissions.  Their target of reductions of CO2 is significant.  Especially considering their energy sector, as with the United States, has a significant coal portion.

Here is the Guardian Story reporting the Chinese announcement.

There has been an important report just released by the Working Group I to the Fourth report of the IPCC.  Find this report here. This is their excellent web site. I encourage you to carefully review this site.

There has also been a non-story, bouncing around the media echo chamber, based upon stolen emails and computer-files.  I find it hilarious that a press that could not accurately report a science-based story if the future of the world depended upon it, would spend this sort of time on wacko rumors based on stolen files available on a (where else) russian computer server.

The village idiots will soon be publishing books and, with lots of financial help from fringe corporate friends, movies based upon their conspiracy theories.   Real Climate describes, accurately, what is going on. This is the most complete run-down on the manufactured FUD attack.

I find it funny that some people call this utterly fake, made up event; climate-gate.  In the Watergate Scandal the people who were breaking into a private facility were the criminals and the resulting scandal hurt one political party badly.  In this case the small group of people shouting most loudly about this nonsense are on the side of the criminals, who hacked a computer system, moved the files to a server and, oh, wait, no, of course they would identify with the criminals, never mind.  This is one of the hacks throwing money at the lunatic fringe.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD); nature doesn’t care about the stupidity we are capable of.  We are loading the atmosphere, like a sewer, with billions of tons of greenhouse gases every year, and the resulting feedbacks in complex systems (atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, biosphere) that transport heat all over the planet and are more thoroughly understood now than at any other time in our scientific history, are producing measurable changes in climate.  We are truly sowing the wind (and acidifying the oceans).

I have been interacting with press people lately and am, once again, struck by the realization that their their sole role is to generate profit for their companies.  There is no other reason that newspapers, nightly news programs, etc., to exist.  Their only goal is to find a “hook” that will keep the viewers either turning pages and looking at advertisements, or sitting through another commercial on teevee.  It’s amazing to see, again, zero money down, no payments for six months, no credit check-based advertisements back on the television.  No need to report anything related to these sorts of stories, they don’t generate profit!

Here is a video segment from Tom Tomorrow.

The earth system has reached a critical point, and this is a widely appreciated point in the scientific community.  The time for significant, policy driven action, has arrived.   With one notable exception, the super major companies have been committed to real carbon reduction for sometime.  This is another change in our society, and a fundamental one.  How fundamental?

I predict that carbon reduction will be read into the fundamentalist reading of the bible and added as another “biblical truth”, that is the degree to which this fundamental response to the challenge of global climate change, will shape all aspects of our lives.  Just as the idea of the biblical truth of an earth-centric universe was replaced by the biblical truth of a sun-centric universe.

Although this may strike you are flip, it’s all happened before, with Galileo Galilei, who recently turned up in the news again.  His scientific observations and previously published observations and ideas, led to our “new” view of the solar system, our “new” view of physics, and the world we live in today, with respect to science and technology.   For Galileo it was ugly between science and those with political power, and very personal.

Another hero of science.

“For 95 years after his death, ecclesiastical authorities refused to allow Galileo to be buried in consecrated ground because his findings were considered contrary to the teachings of the Catholic church.“

In the end science won the day, as it always does.

“His body now lies in Florence’s Santa Croce church, opposite the tomb of Michelangelo.”

Here is a story in which his tooth, thumb and finger have been rediscovered, and the history of the end of his life, are described.

You can read about this  scientist at this Wiki link.

In hindsight those who opposed Galileo were fools.  Politically powerful and dangerous at the time, but now forgotten.  One can only be mystified by their closed minds.  We are experiencing similar times;  science will determine the future.

Feathers that sing–what a little sexual selection can do.  Wow, this is very cool.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Enjoy.

Here is the story.

Direct link to the video and the Carl Zimmer:  Singing Wings from Carl Zimmer.

An important new fossil has been discovered and described.

“What makes A. celestae so exciting is that the species, like a crucial piece in a complicated jigsaw puzzle, helps explain how some of the earliest dinosaurs, two-legged herbivores known as prosauropods, evolved into the largest creatures that ever walked Earth: the sauropods, four-legged creatures with long necks and small heads that ripped foliage off trees with their cavernous jaws.“

Here is the story.

Darwin’s theory of natural selection is the most basic concept in the biological sciences and the foundation for many of the exciting new developments in the field.  In the UK education in evolution is now included for all children, as is history.

Here is the BBC story.

Charles Darwin was a genius, a dedicated, kind and gentle family man; a man of great personal courage and integrity.  He has inspired me to be more than I am and I remember fondly listening to a beautiful lecture as an undergraduate about his life.  A portion of my library is filled with his books, books about him and Admiral Fitzroy and his insight. I often reflect on this quote from his Origin of Species (1859).

A hero of science.

“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.“

Recently a fundamentalist group, led by (who else?) an ex-actor,  printed and handed out 50,000 altered copies of Darwin’s book.  These altered copies included 54 pages of material that was inaccurate, full of misinformation, and included rather stark passages including “before we die…we have to face …the law of sin and death…” blah blah blah.  You get the idea.   Pure ignorance.

These were handed out at conservative events and some college campuses.   The reception was not what the Christian publishing company expected.

““The books all have a 54-page introduction of creationist bulls— by the renowned dumbass, Ray Comfort,” said Vlad Chituc ‘12, the community service co-coordinator of the Secular Student Alliance at Yale.“ 

Here is the Yale Daily News college paper article describing this nonsense.

As usual, Darwin had an insightful opinion regarding this sort of thing:

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”

Some fringe  groups in the United States have declared a war on science.   This has happened before, when the legislature of Indiana (where else?) tried to legislate the value of pi equal to 3.000 (exactly) on the basic of biblical literalism.   Follow this link to read about the nonsense of House Bill No. 246. This bill died in the state Senate.

As an undergraduate math major I enjoyed finally understanding pi, it’s beauty, and the fantastic complexity of mathematics.   BBC4 has a wonderful program about the number pi.  Here is the link to their page (listen again) to hear the program. Here is a more detailed description of pi, including how to make approximations yourself using strings.

The dynamic is always the darkness of ignorance and want versus the light of progress.  Science is a light in the darkness.  In the end, science always wins.

Accurate reporting is the foundation of our political system.

FOX news was caught, surprise, editing and mixing news clips in a fundamentally dishonest way.   Why people put up with nonsense is beyond me.    What is the role of the media?  This sort of dishonesty in reporting is happening constantly.   There are so many examples.  One was analyzed in detail by Glenn Greenwald recently.

Glenn explains what is happening in the media:

“But the U.S. media’s willingness to mindlessly apply the term “terrorist” in exactly the subjective, self-serving way the U.S. Government dictates — starkly contrasted with their refusal to use the far more objective term ”torture” on the ground that the term is in dispute (i.e., disputed by the U.S. Government torturers) — illustrates the establishment media’s principal function:  to serve American political power and justify whatever our government does. “

Here is his piece, it’s important.

The Daily Show puts parts of it together, this is crazy, but well considered.

South Park does a great job at showing how stupid the airbags are, as only South Park can.