In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, a plume of organic peroxides has been moving through the air and water after two explosions at a chemical plant. As the temperature and waters rise, and cooling facilities lose electrical power, toxic substances are more likely to escape into the environment. Read more here, and here.
"The survey, which covered a representative sample of 1,500 middle and high school science teachers from all 50 states, found that classrooms often suffer from a problem also common in the media: the false "balance" of giving equal weight to mainstream climate science and climate change denial."
Link to original article here. (*bangs head on teacher desk repeatedly*) I'm back after a much needed and successful vacation (in which I discovered Disney World has little to no recycling going on), a fried motherboard on my 2-year old desktop, and a destructively sly virus on my laptop which managed to thwart all my attempts to eradicate it. The good news is that we now have a new desktop plus all the salvaged parts from the old one; the bad news is I am much poorer and still have no laptop - the reimaging program was down, the person who administers said program was on vacation, and our IT person at work has no administrator privileges either. School system. Enough said.
Anyway, a few weeks ago, an article appeared in the Independentfeaturing Dr. Orrin Pilkey and his son Keith. Many of you know that Dr. Pilkey is a fan favorite of Mr. Greenberg, and for good reason. Pilkey is a world famous climatologist from Duke University, whose new book is entitled Global Climate Change: A Primer. Like me and many other scientists, Pilkey is tired of the know-nothing denialists out there, and he makes no apologies about going after them in this book. Climate change is occurring, the facts are right in front of us, and we need to understand what the real hoax is - the interest groups who sow seeds of doubt and dissent for their own financial gain. And true to form, the responses in this week's Indy feature a know-nothing who claims to be smarter than Dr. Pilkey. A science brief by James E. Hansen and Makiko Sato can be found at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies website. Models, they say, can be a tool for understanding climate change, but paleoclimate studies are necessary to evaluate the impact of human-imposed warming. And, as we learn in APES, as the ice sheets melt, the surface albedo decreases, the surface warms, which makes the ice sheets melt, and the surface albedo decreases, the surface warms, and...well, you get the point. A nice positive feedback loop. But what does it mean for us right now?
- Link A report from the OSPAR Commission indicates that while pollution in the North Atlantic may be down, acidification of the ocean is up. The ocean acidifies as it absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This makes it that much harder for creatures to build their shells. - Link
Some Pacific Ocean species are crossing the Arctic now that the ice has dwindled. A gray whale was found in the Mediterranean, and a Pacific algae called Neodenticula seminae has been found as far south as New York. With fisheries declining, the species competition adds another variable to the mix. - Link
Today, NASA and the Space Agency of Argentina launched the Aquarius Spacecraft, a mission to map salinity patterns in the ocean. If all goes well, it will quickly surpass the amount of data gathered from ships over the past century in mere months.
Salinity data will enhance the understanding of ocean circulation and how it responds to freshwater inputs (like massive glacial melting) and global climate changes. Good stuff - Link A brief glance at these two maps indicates that just because there is a higher frequency of tornadoes doesn't mean that's where all the death and destruction occurs. Read the post from a geologist at the University of Chicago to find out what may drive the discrepancy. - Link |
Who is Riss?
Alan Rissberger "No one warned me that life would involve science, except my science teacher. But, of course, he's going to say that. He's got a job to protect."
- Stephen Colbert, I Am America (And So Can You) Wish List
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