Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

I just heard today about a fabulous project to help get supplies to teachers in need. Donors Choose is a clearing house where teachers who need supplies can be matched with donors.

Teachers list exactly what they need equipment wise and you can chip in to help them get it! Any amount is excepted and it’s tax deductible!

I have made a special page on their site where readers of this blog can help out teachers of Math and Science.

Click the image above and you can see what classroom needs what. Even a dollar makes a difference! If you have a blog, please give this project some publicity!

The Royal Society was once presided over by Isaac Newton himself. It’s the world’s oldest science institution.

They have just released a very good summary of what is now known about climate science and climate change.

Well worth a read.

Speaking of science, this blog will soon be part of a new project by the American Geophysical Union. The AGU has over 50,000 members worldwide and is one of the largest science organizations on the planet.

The AGU will soon be hosting a collection of earth and space science blogs. I was honored to be asked to join in!

This means you will soon see a different look here! Even better, you will be able to quickly read the thoughts of other people who are as fascinated about the world around us as I am!

More soon,

Dan

This is an excellent story from the AP. It’s about the Gulf of Mexico – AFTER the oil spill.

Pretty powerful stuff isn’t it.

Dan

Unlike the UK, where a TV and Radio license  fee pays for the BBC’s slew of excellent educational programming, we have only NPR and PBS here in America. I’ve frequently compared NPR to the BBC with no money. That really about covers it….except.

NPR is still fabulous.

If you see Wonders of The Solar System on in your area, then make plans to watch it. This BBC program is full of fabulous science. (image from the BBC)

In an era where scientific ignorance seems to be at it’s peak, we have very few excellent programs on Science available. Yes, NOVA and NATURE are great. Hopefully the BBC series Wonders of The Solar System by Astronomer Brian Cox will make it here soon as well.

Some of the programming I’ve seen on the History channel and Discovery are absolute junk. Especially the 2012 stuff. In reality there is a slew of junk science programs on backwater cable. Trust me, if it’s about UFO’s, aliens from space helping to build the pyramids, or Nostradamus, then you are being sold a bag of fertilizer.

Discovery does get a kudo from me, and that is for Astronomer Phil Plait’s Bad Universe. Science is, and can be shown to be, rabidly interesting and Phil Plait makes it so.

Before you think that nobody takes those programs seriously, let me tell you something. I was getting a danish in the Albany airport, when the girl behind the counter found out I was a meteorologist. Guess what she asked me?

What is the dew point? Will it rain tomorrow? What does 40% chance of rain (answered here) really mean?

Nope.

The actual Question: “Is the world really going to end in 2012???”

My answer: “Trust me, it’s not.” I wanted to add “you should cancel cable.”

Consider, that hundreds of thousands of gullible folks are buying bracelets that harness magic fields that do not exist. Add in the school boards who are trying to ban science books based on solid  science because they are politically unpopular, and you know we truly have a problem.

American students rank with 3rd world countries now in math and science. I’m not exaggerating. A Canadian high school graduate has more science and math knowledge than many college seniors in America.

Now, comes news that Science Friday on NPR has lost some of it’s funding. I rate that program the best regular science program on radio (U.S. at least). Good solid science that is fascinating and timely.

It turns out that if you make a donation this year to the program they have grant that will match it two to one! The word that their funding might be in trouble has already gotten them an outpouring of support. You can find out more about how you can help here. You can listen to today’s (Friday Oct 8th 2010) program here.

Trust me, they will get a donation from me!

So will my local NPR station that carries the program.

The Eemian was the warm period before the last ice age. Scientists had never recovered ice that old from Greenland until this past July. I was there to witness some real history. (This trace is from an ice core at Vostok, Antarctica. NOAA)

Back in July I spent 9 days and (at that latitude) no nights at the top of the world.

Scientists from over a dozen nations made history by recovering the oldest ice ever obtained from Greenland. Year after year the snow piles up in Greenland, and as it gets buried and compressed it eventually forms a hard clear ice.

That ice is 2 km thick across most of Greenland. It’s one of three icecaps on Earth. The other two are in Antarctica.

Scientists are drilling cores of ice in all of them and are getting a look at out past climate in a resolution thought impossible a few decades ago. They can see year by year for thousands of years into the past!

NEEM folks take 1 night a week off and open the "ice bar".

The North Greenland Eemian Ice Core project (NEEM) was the first to scan the ice core as it came up for a host of scientific measurements. By counting the oxygen atoms in the ice they can derive the temperature of the planet, when that ice was snow falling from the sky. Most oxygen atoms have 16 neutrons but some have  18 neutrons. The ratio of one to the other is a natural thermometer.

This amazing fact was discovered by Willi Dansgaard from Denmark and the Danes have been leaders in climate research ever since.

I was lucky enough to be the guest of Dr. Jim White. He is the Lead U.S. Scientist at NEEM.  In spite of the difficulties in dealing with one of the harshest environments on Earth, it was an amazing adventure.

Now I can share it with you.

A big thank you to Dave Jones at Storm Center Comm. for arranging it and to David Wood the best photojournalist in Alabama for turning my shaky camera work into TV.

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Here are some out takes you may enjoy

Some more from the scientists at NEEM in the next post.

Dan