The Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry was the first African American regiment formed in the US Civil War. Lead by Robert Gould Shaw the regiment endured heavy casualties and fought with valor. Shaw was killed in the attack on Fort Wagner…
As John von Neuman put itWith four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.and, as fate would happen, along comes Ned Nikolov and Karl Zellner with "New Insights on the Physical…
Tyler Cowen has an interesting point about "defensive innovation" meant to prevent future problems, wherein he describes climate change as a future problem and Tesla as a defensive innovator that solves the future problem without necessarily improving human lives over…
Sometimes Eli gets the feeling he was created for Twitter. In answer to the old question of how a cooler atmosphere with greenhouse gases can warm the surface For the Earth the sun provides the energy the ghgs limit the…
Andy Dessler set off a bit of a tweetstorm asking where the definition of climate sensitivity as 2xCO2 came from. Does anyone know why the standard unit of climate sensitivity is doubled CO2?— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) July 28, 2017 Turns…
(Maybe worth emphasizing this is Brian writing, not Eli or John.)A new study gives some reason to believe that wind turbines have secondary effects on bat mortality compared to other anthropogenic factors like intentional killing, accidents, and the imported fungal…
As part of another post not finished, Ethon took a look over at the nameless one's twitter feed where he has posted a talk. Now, not to be snarky, but it appears that the nameless one has really put his…
I've been following but not talking about the runup to California's recently re-enacted climate legislation, authorizing more action from now to 2030 and removing the legal uncertainty that existed in the previous law over cap-and-trade.I didn't know what to say…
So some pro-tohedgehog (hate to meet the amateur type) has a post on why people don't trust science, with a nice little Socratic dialog. Only problem is that pro has not yet emerged from hibernation and things have changed or…
So Eli returns from vacation with a report from Ethon who has taken up Twitter on the economics of energy sources. To put it simply, nuclear and hydro are very long term investments, efficiency, wind and solar are investments and…
Last fall I suggested both Trump and his campaign could and should be sued by the women he called "liars" when they accused him of assault. Trump also claimed he'd sue for defamation, that was just another lie of his.So…
This picture of nothing is what used to be my favorite and most-convenient gas station, just a week or so ago. I doubt it'll be replaced by a gas station.I stand by an argument I made four years ago that…
The Trump administration has been pushing the idea of a "Red Team" to re-examine the EPAs endangerment finding. As Eli has pointed out, this is not a Red Team effort but a Team B attempt. Red teams bring in experts…
I've been dumbfounded by the willingness/denialism of Republicans and of parties in other democracies to be the manipulated tools of the hostile Russian government. Apparently, rabid nationalism can be turned on and off as circumstances warrant.OTOH, until recently I've been…
An evergreen across science communication is that scientists don't know how to communicate science. Eli has confronted this issue before at the cost of ticking (permanently) off a bunch of communicators . . . a whole lot of other people…
An evergreen in the denial crowd is that CO2 is only a very small part of the atmosphere so how could it make a difference. The short answer is that the atmosphere is very big, but Eli has a nice…
Kind of new to me, but obvious enough: wind blows some of the time when the sun doesn't shine, so put wind generation and solar on the same location and reduce some infrastructure cost while getting less-intermittent power. Obviously it…
Ms. Rabett when still employed worked in a nest of libertarian types who complained about how complicated government regulations were, and how it was stifling business and most importantly how they could make more money without them. The same folk…
It is certainly an evergreen claim by the climate change disbelievings crew that the absorption of CO2 in the atmosphere is saturated. What does saturated mean to them is a useful question to ask. A useful answer would be that…
Eli has been watching the reports on today's Senate hearing which features the Ted Cruz - Sally Yates death match. The general feeling is that Yates did to Cruz what Macron did to Le Pen. However, rather than getting too…
Behold the CrapWaffler, the writer that the New York Times thinks is a contribution to the climate change debate. It's what happens when you hire a climate denialist with the implied condition of employment that they can't completely lie about…
One of the weirdest flips in an exceedingly weird year has been the usual suspects going into complete meltdown about there now being extended periods where there is so much renewable energy from wind and solar and hydro that they…
The problem with data fetishists is their choking down a daily flagon of numerical drivel without analyzing the brew. One of the things that a good scientist knows is how to interrogate the numbers, not waterboard them. Truth is that…
Together with in-laws and friends, including (unlike me) an actual scientist, we went on the march in San Francisco yesterday.The most hand-written/individualized signs I've seen on any march. Quite a young crowd too, and I'd guess two-thirds female. We'll see…
Eli had a rockem sockem post cued up on the replication crisis (nononono, Eli and Ms. Rabett are much too old for that stuff) but the Squeegee Kid, Steve Koonin reappeared in the Wall Street Journal editorial swamp and duty…
One of the good things about 140 characters is that it concentrates the mind and lets you compose your elevator speech. One of the bad things is that while concentrating the mind and composing the elevator speech you forget to…
Read Mashey. Definitely plagiarism, and Gorsuch didn't read "his" primary sources (e.g. a court case that was sealed years prior to Gorsuch, after the author who Gorsuch copied had read the filings). The claims by his academic defenders, who should've…
January through March anomaly is 1.04C above the already-warmed 1950-1980 baseline. The record-warm 2016 was .98C above. I hadn't thought there'd be any chance that a (so far) non-El Nino year would beat the 2016 record, but now I'm not…
