Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal

I wrote a post here about the so called “climategate” emails several months ago. None of these have ever been published here because they were private and were stolen.

That’s a felony .

The reality of the planet's temperature rise. From Richard Smith UNC Dept of Statistics from a presentation last week in Washington.

Most of the public have never even heard about them, which is not surprising. Unfortunately, the minority of conspiracy theorists out there have been busy sending death threats to some of the top experts in the world. Some of these experts I ‘ve spent time with (quite recently) and call them friends. What I think of the people behind these death threats is not a big secret.

This blog has always been about science and not politics and I plan on keeping it that way. That said, when someone makes wild accusations or states as facts that are on a scientific basis are flat wrong, they become fair game. Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma is one of them. I have said before and repeat again that he is an embarrassment to the good people of my home state of Oklahoma.

Peter Sinclair a science journalist has been producing some excellent journalism in the form of videos for quite awhile now. They  highlight the inanity of those on the front lines of the war against science. This weeks edition pretty much sums up the reality of the so called “climategate” issue.

That about covers it.

A couple of TED talks That should leave you angry.

It does me.
First is the slurry of plastic we now have in our oceans. One thing you can do is to NEVER use plastic at the grocery store.

Next are one of my favourite subjects.
Penguins.
They truly are the warning sign of what we are doing to our oceans. Nearly every species on the planet is in sharp decline and Penguins are no different. Pollution and climate change are the main causes. Listen to Penguin expert Dee Boersma:

The oceans are dying and so is the life that live in them. We mammals cannot survive without the oceans either.

Brian Cox was host of Wonders Of The Solar System on the BBC earlier this year. As I wrote in a previous post, the series was the first I have seen that surpassed Carl Sagan’s COSMOS.

TED (Ideas Worth Spreading) invited Cox to make a talk on exploration. I do not even have to watch it to know that I should post it here.

I cannot imagine that I’ll disagree with it.

OK, so now I have watched it.

Thought you might like to see the original presentation of Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. I have the audio. The pictures are from NASA. I might be pushing fair use but it’s only a small clip of audio from an hour long program, and I think Carl Sagan (If he were alive today, and witnessing for himself the war on science underway in America) would approve.

Oh and this- Look who just got an OBE (Order of the British Empire)! (Read down aways)

A HUGE bow to Dr. Michael Tobis of Only In It For The Gold. He found this video and posted it.
I am posting it too and EVERY person who blogs about science should post it as well. (Maybe I can start something here!)

I have several heroes (Everyone should have heroes). Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman and Neil DeGrasse Tyson are all near the top. Sagan and Feynman are no longer with us, but Tyson is thank goodness. He has stepped into Sagan’s shoes as the nations scientist. He fills them well.

Very well.

In case you do not know who Tyson is (which means your scientific literacy is lacking but perhaps not horribly so) then go here.

A link on the CNN website lead me to a couple of must see videos. Both are by vbs.tv. The first is on the most polluted city on Earth. Linfen, China.

You may not know it but about 1% of all air pollution in the United States is estimated to originate in China. It takes a lot of coal to make the electricity to run the factories that make all that stuff you see in Wal Mart and Best Buy and Ikea. The Asian Brown Cloud is HUGE.

The next video is also by VBS. It’s about the great garbage dump in the Pacific Gyre. The gyre is where ocean currents in the Pacific spiral together. It forms because of a semi permanent high pressure area that sits over the North Pacific. The clockwise flow of winds around this high blow across the water and induce the currents. Just like in the air, the moving water gets turned to the right (left) in the Northern (Southern) Hemisphere by the Coriolis affect.

Other gyres exist in the Atlantic as well.

This video is over an hour long, but well worth watching. (Warning for strong language)

Something to think about the next time the person at the supermarket says: “Paper or plastic?”

Dan