Homely Scientist

Illustration Credit: NSIDC
The National Snow and Ice Data Center here in Boulder has collected data from the 2007 melting season and discovered:
At the end of the melt season, September 2007 sea ice was 39 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000 (Full Press Release).
These guys watch the ice from all over the planet using satellites with microwave radiometers along with meteorological satellites to get an idea of how much ice there is. Then, as the year progresses, measure how much of it is melting or growing.
In the northern hemisphere, as fall begins, the melting season ends …read more

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 Yes I know that driving your car isn’t the best thing to do for the environment–or your wallet.  I was passed a link to a Sympatico article with 10 easy things to do to save both fuel and money.  This really easy stuff.  Air pressure in your tires, oil changes, not speeding, keeping a constant speed.  Easy.  I also like using cruise control as much as I can.  Cruise let the engine get into a good steady cruising mode, and by not changing speed you aren’t forcing the engine to rev up and down.
Read the tips and try putting at these …read more

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In case you weren’t aware, The Bay of Fundy has some of the largest tidal variations in the world.  The amount of energy that passes through there is absolutely tremendous.  Having seen the tidal bore–as standing wave of rising tide that is the only true “tidal wave”–first hand, well yeah, it’s freakin’ impressive.  A turbine is being planned for testing in a couple years:
According to local legend in Atlantic Canada, a giant whale in ancient times made such a splash with his mighty tail that the water in the Bay of Fundy sloshes back and forth to this day.
Getting power …read more

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This came out last week I think.  Turns out the folks at the Goddard Institute made a bad assumption about their data and got called on it:
The Goddard Institute claimed that the cause of the error was a switch to a new data-collection system in 2000. This led to an incorrect assumption that the old and new methods matched, which was proved to be untrue.
According to latest figures, 1934 is now the hottest year on record in the US at 1.25C higher than normal. 1998, the previous front-runner, is now second at 1.23C, followed by 1921 at 1.15C.
The old system …read more

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 Think of all the small, free-standing structures you see in a given day.  Bus stops, small sheds, fixed awnings.  They are put there to keep sun (yes and rain, I know) off people.  What about the roofs of those structures?  Looks like there could be a product that will let us take advantage of a lot of small surfaces and use them as solar collectors:
Soliant’s primary customer is commercial building owners but the company’s product design is flexible enough that it has developed a specialized solar-power generator for car parks, or roofs that shade cars during the day.
“One thing we …read more

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While coastal upwelling is generally a good thing, like many things in nature, you can have too much of a good thing.  In this case the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich deep water causes not only a plankton bloom, but the death and decomposition of the buggers have a dark side:
Unlike the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which is caused by fertilizer washing down the Mississippi River, the Oregon dead zone is triggered by northerly winds, which create an ocean-mixing condition called upwelling.
This brings low-oxygen waters from deep in the ocean close to shore, and spreads nitrogen and other nutrients …read more

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Nice to start off the week with some good news:
The wind power industry made big strides last year, according to a Worldwatch Institute report released late Thursday.
15,200 megawatts of new wind turbines were installed around the world last year, representing a 26 percent jump in global wind power capacity, according to the study.
By year’s end, total wind power capacity exceeded 74,200 megawatts, enough to offset 43 million tons of carbon dioxide, the institute said. Source:Study: Wind power soared in 2006 | Tech news blog – CNET News.com

Large-scale deployment and adoption of any alternative energy is the key.  Once it hits …read more

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Need a daily dose of ideas to help save energy (and the planet…but that is such a huge concept, too distant for many…stick to stuff closer to home and you)?  Check out LiveEarth’s Twitter feed:
Shading windows. It can lower your home’s temperature and reduce your cooling costs by 30%. Source: Twitter / LiveEarth070707
This tip is especially good right now as the hottest part of the summer is coming our way in the Northern Hemisphere (the Dog Day … which are named such because Sirius the Dog Star become visible this time of year).  Another great one is to put a …read more

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About 10,000 years ago humans started domesticating plants and animals–commonly called the Agricultural Revolution.  In doing this people had to stop their nomadic/hunter-gatherer ways and settle down.  Yes, animals were domesticated first in all likelihood–much easier to move your cow/sheep/goat/horse/dog with you as you move than a patch of grains growing.
Settling down and the development of agriculture is generally seen as the first step to modern human society.  People found they had time to do other things and the need to invent things (plows, pumps, more and different tools)–it all started from there.
One of the big questions has always been …read more

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Last week I talked about how we could be looking at a disaster of Biblical proportions (think Noah) if some of the major ice sheets melted, now comes word that the largest of the world’s ice sheets, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, is safe for the time being:
While studies of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets show they are both at risk from global warming, the East Antarctic ice sheet will “need quite a bit of warming” to be affected, Andrew Mackintosh, a senior lecturer at Victoria University, said Wednesday.
The air over the East Antarctic ice sheet, an ice …read more

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