One Day Blog Silence
« March 2007 | Main | May 2007 »
April 30, 2007
April 28, 2007
Sun getting bubbly: Coronal Mass Ejection may hit Earth
We had "yellow" level geomagnetic activity on the sun last night, and more may
come tonight and tomorrow night. Its coming from Sunspot 953, which is about 3 times the size of the Earth.
Sunspot 953 is crackling with mild
B-class solar flares. Credit: SOHO/MDI
Image of sunspot 953 taken today by Sebastien Kersten of Le Cocq, Belgium:
Here is the dispatch:
From: solarxactivity@bbso.njit.edu
Date: April 28, 2007 9:24:59 AM CDT
To: xxxx@rice.edu
Subject: BBSO Solar Activity Warning 28-APR-2007 14:19:18 UT
Region NOAA 10953 is currently beta-gamma magnetic class, and may increase in complexity.
The region is bright in H-alpha as well. This region has a chance of producing M-class
events.
NOAA 10953, S10 E41. Beta-gamma region. Position as of April 28, 2007 at 13:30 UT.
And this is in the middle of our solar minimum, indicating our sun still has a few belches to pass out before completely settling down.
One of the best tools we have is the ACE Spacecraft, which monitors the sun 24/7 and provides us with a plethora of real-time data, of the magnetic
field, the solar wind, and inter-galactic cosmic ray counts.
For the latest "dial" info (including our "space weather stoplight") go to
http://space.rice.edu/ISTP/dials.html
For the latest 10-minute averages of the Boyle Index from realtime ACE
spacecraft data, go to http://space.rice.edu/ISTP/wind.html
Some guides to interpret the gauges
If the hourly-average of the Boyle index exceeds 110, then Kp 4-6 storms
will likely occur within the next three hours
If the hourly average of the Boyle index exceeds 200, then major magnetic
storms will occur within the next three hours
If the hourly average of the Boyle index exceeds 250, major low-latitude
auroras will occur within the next three hours.
A magnetic storm generally occurs about an hour or two after the CME arrives at Earth, which is roughly 26-48 hours *after* a major solar flare. The Boyle Index is derived from real-time ACE spacecraft data, which gives about 45 minutes of warning before it hits the Earth.
April 27, 2007
NEWSFLASH: Cause for Global Warming Found
An astute letter to the editor writer in Arkansas has found the reason for global warming:
This actually happened, as attested to on the rumor/urban legend verifcation website Snopes.com
Follow up to "Cell Phones Kill Bees" story
About two weeks ago I published this story about the loony idea that was proposed by some researcher in Europe about "cell phone radiation may be killing bees". I pointed out that it was garbage then, as it is now. Here's a portion of the original post I made:
There's an article on UK's The Independent website about a most unusual scientific theory: "Cell Phones kill bees."
Well today in the LA Times, it seems that UC San Francisco researchers have uncovered what they believe to be the real cause, and its not loony ideas like cell phones. Its fungus.
From the article:
A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States, UC San Francisco researchers said Wednesday.
Researchers have been struggling for months to explain the disorder, and the new findings provide the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause.
Other researchers said Wednesday that they too had found the fungus, a single-celled parasite called Nosema ceranae, in affected hives from around the country — as well as in some hives where bees had survived. Those researchers have also found two other fungi and half a dozen viruses in the dead bees.
The researchers caution that the results are preliminary, and data sampling represents just a fraction of hives, but they are encouraged by the findings. Hopefully they'll be able to come up with a solution.
Yet it appears that the "Cell Phones kill bees" lunacy has caught on, since there's a comment today in the ER's "Tell it to the ER" that furthers that nutball idea. What a public disservice that column is.
Thanks to Lon Glazner for the tip.
April 26, 2007
Internet Radio may get a reprieve
In Today's Chico News and Review, the cover story is about Internet Radio and all the trouble the Copyright Royalty Board recently caused with a draconian ruling on the cost to Internet Radio Stations. Regular over the air broadcasters don't have such limits because they are seen to "promote the music industry" Its an alliance as old as payola.
But good news comes today. A bill introduced in Congress today could nullify the new rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) which advocates say would put Internet Radio webcasters out of business, such as our own local Radio Paradise.
Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL) have presented the "Internet Radio Equality Act" which aims to negate the controversial March 2nd decision which puts royalty of a .08 cent per song per listener, retroactively from 2006 to 2010 on internet radio.
Advocates of Internet Radio have dreaded the CRB ruling, which they say could raise rates between 300 to 1200 per cent for webcasters. Earlier this month, the CRB threw out an appeal by commercial webcasters, National Public Radio and others to review the new rates and postpone a May 15 deadline for the introduction of the royalty schedule.
If passed, today's proposed bill would set new rates at 7.5 per cent of the webcaster's revenue — the same rate paid by satellite radio. Alternatively, webcasters could decide to pay 33 cents per hour of sound recordings transmitted to a single user.
This bill is a critical step to preserve this new growing medium, and would present a level playing field where webcasters can compete on the same royalty terms with satellite radio. It would also reset royalty rules for non-profit radio such as NPR. Public radio would be required present a report to Congress on how it should determine rates for their internet streaming media.
I hope this passes, not so much because local radio needs more competition,
but because this insane CRB ruling makes it nearly impossible for local broadcasters to
compete on the Internet at all. This would give everybody a fair chance and at
the same time bring in millions, perhaps billions in royalties for artists.
The Carbonica Card - don't heat home without it
A recent investigation by the Financial Times says that the new Carbon Credit Industry may already be rife with fraud. Hmmm...now where have we heard that before?
Among the findings:
■ Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.
■ Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.
■ Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.
■ A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.
■ Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.
From the article:
Some companies are benefiting by asking “green” consumers to pay them for cleaning up their own pollution. For instance, DuPont, the chemicals company, invites consumers to pay $4 to eliminate a ton of carbon dioxide from its plant in Kentucky that produces a potent greenhouse gas called HFC-23. But the equipment required to reduce such gases is relatively cheap. DuPont refused to comment and declined to specify its earnings from the project, saying it was at too early a stage to discuss.
The burgeoning regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more than double in size to about $68.2bn by 2010, with the unregulated voluntary sector rising to $4bn in the same period.
Seems like the "green" here is not about Gaia...but all about Benjamins.
There's no mention of how much these companies pay gamers to have virtual trees planted in video games.
April 25, 2007
When the earth was purple
Have you ever wondered why the vast majority of plants and trees have green leaves and not some other color?
It's always been a bit of a mystery why plants absorb red and blue light, but reflect green, allow us to see the leaves as green. It seems inefficient of nature when the sun emits the peak energy of its visible spectrum in the yellow-green areas. A new theory offers one possible answer: that the first chlorophyll-utilizing microbes evolved to exploit the red-and-blue light that older green-absorbing microbes didn't use, eventually out-competing them through greater efficiency and the rise of oxygen.
If that were the case, plant life long ago may have had purple leaves to catch both the red and blue portions of the spectrum. For those whom don't know this, RED + BLUE = MAGENTA (purple)
April 23, 2007
On Trees, ordinances, obstructionism, and compromise
This post is an outgrowth of comments I made on Commission Impossible on the new proposed strengthened tree ordinance.
I like trees, and I recently planted four, but at the same time I've had to remove a couple of trees from my home and business property. In the latter case, the City did the work because they agreed with me that the tree was unsafe and posed a public hazard.
This tree ordinance thing is taking on overtones of the abortion battle, except that the roles seem to be reversed, with the "right to life" being on the left. Lately, it seems that meadowfoam, garter snake habitat (see Sundays letters to the editor) and beetle habitat Elderberry bushes are more important than the rights and lives of people.
Case in point - how many people have died at the Highways 70/149/99 interchanges in the 10+ years that environmentalists have placed roadblocks in front of that project? I remember one little boy, about two years ago, who died when the car he and his mom were riding in was broadsided by a car on 70 as she turned onto 149. If the road had been improved on schedule, that never would have happened.
Was that worth 10 years of delay to protect some Meadowfoam and beavers? I think not. Meadowfoam is being grown in quantities at reserves near Vina and commercially in Oregon, and the Limnanthes Flococcus Californica aka Butte County Meadowfoam can just as easily be grown with it. Beavers relocate with ease too. Anybody who tells you otherwise is just pushing an agenda.
Now we have the City saying there's a delay in authorizing a bid to fix drainage problems for a man made stormwater retention basin near south Chico street Paseo Campaneros that becomes a West Nile hotspot. Two people have died on that street from West Nile in the past year...yet the "garter snake habitat" aka man-made retention basin gets hands-off priority according to what the city said recently.
It's lunacy and its morally wrong. Public health, be it an accident prone intersection or a festering man-made mosquito pool should always trump protecting bugs, plants, snakes, and the occasional beaver. If you think these things are more important than the health of the community, then you have your social priorities reversed.
Environmentalists digging in their heels on this only hurts their cause, because it makes them look unreasonable, and maybe they are. But most people I know, on either side of the political spectrum actually want to protect the environment, me included, but they want to protect their children and grandparents more.
Making them choose through obstruction is a no-win polarizating situation. We CAN have it both ways.
In the case of trees, the folks pushing this strengthened law act as if the tree, once cut down, could never be replaced. We're not talking giant Redwoods here...more like Dogwoods and Pines, available at Home Depot.
Compromise folks...compromise.
April 22, 2007
Ultimate lunacy: Dell says plant "virtual trees" for Earth Day
From the "you've GOT to be freaking kidding me" department:
Dell's Virtual Plant a Tree for Me program into the computer game Second Life has many tech savvy people wondering if this represents a new low in Earth Day marketing tie-ins. It looks like in the rush to pander to green-ness, some Dell executives maybe didn't think beyond the boardroom door.
You may wonder, too, after reading Dell's invitation to its Earth Day Party at Dell Island in the Second Life game where they say proudly "get your own tree sapling to plant in Second Life!".
Yes that's' right, you can plant a virtual tree in a video game for Earth Day. And, Dell is only too happy to take a couple bucks from you in the process as well for their real tree planting program designed to assuage your guilt at using a computer that uses electricity.
You have to wonder just how hypocritically lazy some people might be to take this offer seriously, though with 5.7 million "residents" in the Second Life game, I suppose its hard to deny that this offer would have an impact.
Just how much electricity is used by PC's in pursuing this pointless exploit in "green-ness"? And with Dell soliciting and online Earth Day Party, that will tie up PC's, routers, and Servers nationwide, using even more electricity. There's no mention in Dell's press release of the expected carbon footprint on this bogus promotion. Maybe Gore will fly in on his private jet to make a "virtual appearance" to preach to the faithful.
But since some people nowadays seem incapable of disconnecting themselves from the virtual world of gaming, it stands to reason that a virtual eco-delusional activity might very well appear valid to them.
Maybe next the researchers at Berkeley can tap into the seti@home background processing idea and instead of searching for intelligent life in radio-telescope signals, we could program our wasted CPU cycles to grow virtual trees on a screen-saver. It could boast onscreen counts of virtual carbon sequestered, and virtual O2 produced. I can smell the virtual fresh air already!
We're doomed.
April 21, 2007
My New Weather Invention - Now 100% pig free!
For those of us that hate having Winnie the pig presented to us as part of our local weather report, I'd like to offer this solution that cuts all of us annoying weather middlemen and weather forecasting pigs right out of the picture and give you total control over your weather report.
Its called the ViziFrame - now you can program your own local weather channel at home, or at the office, or at the marina, or the golf course, your school, a truck stop, gas station, or wherever there may be an interest in weather to make a go/no go decision. You can view it on your own terms, and unlike the Weather Channel, you don't have to wait a half hour to get the info you need.
And the graphics, look at good as anything on TV. For those of you with a profit in mind, it can have advertising and other information too. Its way cool, inexpensive, and trouble free. It works with any TV, big screen, or computer monitor. It updates its information via WiFi or a regular Internet cabled connection to a home DSL/cable router or T1 router.
The Chico Chamber of Commerce is going to put a bunch of them (the premium model that also does video and audio clips with touch screen interactivity) around town at hotels, restaurants, city hall and other public places that cater to visitors. Local artist Gregg Payne worked out a cool design for the front fascia that looks like the Hooker Oak tree...a concept view is below along with the current weather page and forecast...which are live content links soon to be on the Chamber of Commerce web page. Kris Koenig and Anita Berkow of Interstellar Studios are doing the interactive kiosk presentation for it. Look for these around town soon!
Note the current conditions page - it has solar irradiance on it - I figured if we were going to become a solar powered city, getting a real-time indicator that people can use to calculate solar panel efficiency would be a good first step, so I invested in the equipment to do that. I'll have an entire blog entry on this service later.
The graphics are made in my rendering system as weather data arrives at my office here in Chico, there's actually about a hundred plus graphics that are available.
But you can get a weather channel for your home or business too. See www.viziframe.com I've sold several of these already and people at home just connect them up to a spare video port on their big screen TV, and when they want weather, just switch to it. No waiting, no pigs, no hassle.
Human blood may contain a cure For AIDS - it just needs to be amplified
Here's some encouraging news:
German scientists at the University of Ulm have identified a natural ingredient of human blood that prevents the HIV-1 virus from from infecting immune cells and multiplying. The molecule, which they call virus-inhibitory peptide (VIRIP), promises new types of effective treatment for HIV in the future. 'Tweaks to its amino acid components boosted its anti-HIV potency by two orders of magnitude.
Tests also showed that some derivatives of the molecule are highly stable in human blood plasma, and non-toxic even at very high concentrations. A synthetic version of VIRIP also proved effective at blocking HIV, excluding the possibility that some other factor was responsible. VIRIP targets a sugar molecule which HIV uses to infect a host cell.
This may have other anti-viral applications beyong HIV-1
April 19, 2007
Delta Airlines says: A sucker born every minute
Recently I received this email from Delta Airlines with the offer that now I could pay extra money for my airline ticket so that Delta could contribute to global warming "offsets" by planting trees. This allows frequent or not so frequent flyers to assuage their guilt over flying in an airplane propelled by earth killing petroleum based fuel.
Only one problem: Delta apparently never read the recent press release from Lawrence Livermore Labs on the link between too many trees at certain latitudes and increased global warming. Such a conundrum.
Support Delta's Force for Global Good Take part in the first-ever U.S. airline program to plant trees to help offset carbon emissions.
Hello Mr. Watts,
In a partnership with The Conservation Fund, we are the first U.S. airline to implement a voluntary carbon offset program — and we'd love to have you "onboard."
It's simple. Beginning
We'll disburse 100 percent of your donation to
The Conservation Fund program to plant trees and to support the organization's education and outreach efforts. Additionally, we'll make a donation to The Conservation Fund for every customer flying on a Delta mainline jet worldwide on Earth Day (April 22).
It's just part of our Force for Global Good initiative that strives to benefit the world we fly everyday. So go ahead and take a flight, and join us in uniting our customers and employees in support of environmental stewardship.
April 17, 2007
Asteroid flyby tonight
Newly discovered asteroid 2007 HA is flying past Earth today about 2.5 million kilometers away.
It's big (300 meters wide), bright (13th magnitude), and an easy target for large
backyard telescopes. Last night, Greg Selleck of Madison, Wisconsin, made this 75-minute movie (1.8 MB mpeg) of the space rock racing 47,000 mph through the constellation Virgo. Tonight the asteroid streaks across the Big Dipper.
If skies clear enough we might be able to see it. But there are lots more this month.
Today there were 858 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time.
April 16, 2007
Daylight Saving Time snafu lands kid in jail
From the "spring forward fall back" department:
A fifteen-year old boy in Pennsylvania was incarcerated for twelve days, wrongly accused of making a hoax bomb threat - because his school had forgotten about the change to Daylight Saving Time.
Cody Webb was arrested last month, after Hempfield Area High School received a bomb threat on their student hotline – which provides a range of information to students about the school - at 3.17am on March 11th. They believed they'd found the culprit when they traced the call they thought was responsible to Webb.
They simply lined up the time of the bomb threat being called in to the phone numbers on the caller ID.
Unfortunately, the school staff forgot that the clocks had switched to Daylight Saving Time that morning. The time stamps left on the hotline caller ID were adjusted by an hour after Day Light Savings causing Webb's call to logged as the same time the bomb threat was placed. Webb, who's never even had a detention in his life, had actually made his call an hour before the bomb threat was placed.
Despite the fact that the recording of the call featured a voice that sounded nothing like Webb's, the police arrested Webb and he spent 12 days in a juvenile detention facility before the school eventually realized their mistake.
Webb gave an insight into the school's impressive investigative techniques, saying that he was hauled in to see the principal, Kathy Charlton. She asked him what his phone number was, and , according to Webb, when he replied 'she started waving her hands in the air and saying “we got him, we got him.”'
'They just started flipping out, saying I made a bomb threat to the school,' he told local television station KDKA. After he protested his innocence, Webb says that the principal said: 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'
All charges against Webb have now been dropped. Now starts the payback process.
April 15, 2007
Panic of the Day: Cell Phones Kill Bees
There's an article on UK's The Independent website about a most unusual scientific theory.
"Cell Phones kill bees."
From the article: Some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail. They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world — the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. They say the cell phone emissions cause the bees internal navigation systems to go haywire and they can't find their way back to the hive.
Ok, just two problems; Bees navigate by the sun. You can watch a video of how this works here. And, we've had cell phones since the late 80's, microwave radiation of all kinds since the 40's, and worldwide radio emissions of all sorts and frequencies since about 1920. So why is this "problem" showing up just now?
More likely this has to do with the fact that domesticated honeybees, the kind we have in California are quite inbred compared to wild bees. Domesticated bees are being raised to survive a shorter off-season, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. That has most likely lowered their immunity to disease and parasites. This can happen in any kind of biological population that is artificially isolated from natural selection, which allows the strong to survive and propagate. In the case of domesticated bees, they are packed together in boxed clusters, which makes disease and parasites spread very quickly. In nature, hives are well separated.
In fact, there are two types of parasitic mites, introduced into the USA in the 1980's which are believed to be responsible for this epidemic. Here's a letter to Congress from May R. Berenbaum, Head of the Department of Entomology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that describes the problem in-depth and concludes: "That honey bees are experiencing losses on an unprecedented scale, however, was essentially predicted by the report—over-reliance on one managed non-native species is inherently unstable."
In insects, which have short generation lifespans measured in days or weeks, dilution of strong traits to disease and parasite resistance can happen fairly quickly. What's needed is some new breeding programs and better isolation methods, not cell phone panic.
The offspring of the bees that survive this epidemic will do far better.
This seems reminiscent of the artificial worry about a cell phone tower at the Hooker Oak park. Some people just have to paint technology they don't understand as the boogieman. I can visualize some panic driven loony legislation about cell phones and bees to hit our state legislature soon.
But to point out just how silly this is, I work at radio station KPAY-AM 1290 which has its offices on Cramer Lane. Right next door, no more that 500 feet from the powerful 5000 watts radio transmitter is a man who keeps bees. Bee hives are scattered all over his property. I'd think that if there was a radio energy to bee death link, this fellow would have been pounding on our doors long ago.
The "research" that cell phones kill bees is just junk science. Next I expect we'll hear about cell phones and talk radio stations being linked to global warming for "heating up the atmosphere".
Thanks to my lovely wife Stacey, for helping me out with this article.
April 14, 2007
What's that Smell?
Today the ER editorial Board poked some fun in Hits and Misses at the proposed forensic body farm, and Bidwell Ranch by suggesting I add a "stink-o-meter" to my www.bidwellranchcam.com website if the body farm were to be put on the land.
Not wanting to be labeled a NIMBY, I'm only too happy to oblige. Here's the concept view above.
Actually this could work, as scientists have created a smell microchip that I could build into the webcam system.
April 13, 2007
What if Global Warming Melted All Ice Worldwide?
Picture: Get ready to Panic! Oroville, Willows, Marysville, and Sacramento will be underwater - the Sutter Buttes will be the only landmass in the very center of the valley.
"What If All the Ice Melts?" Myths and Realities is an article which features 3D computer generated images of what the globe would look like if all of the ice (both land and sea) on the planet melted, leading to a sealevel rise of around 66 meters.
The change shown in global dry land goes from about 132 million sq. kilometers to 128 million, and the analysis seems sound, making this article a sober and very useful counter to some of the more hysterical claims which has been circulated in relation to global warming.
Even if both the poles melted along with all the ice in Greenland, which is not likely to happen unless our orbit or sun changes dramatically, it would still take hundreds if not thousands of years for it to occur. That's plenty of time to adapt. Sure we'd lose Florida, parts of Californiua's Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, Seattle, Portland, and Washington along with New York and Boston, but many new areas would now be habitable due to the change.
Here's what the Sacramento Valley would look like city-wise based on elevations:
| Some Valley Cities | and their elevations | compared to 66 meter sea level rise |
| Chico | 75 meters | waterfront property on the southwest side |
| Orland | 78 meters | waterfront property just south of town |
| Oroville | 58 meters | 8 meters underwater |
| Willows | 41 meters | 25 meters underwater |
| Red Bluff | 106 meters | 40 meters to go |
| Marysville | 34 meters | 32 meters underwater |
| Sacramento | 7 meters | 59 meters underwater |
Discovery: Photosynthesis may be Quantum Effect Driven
PhysOrg has a summary of new research suggesting that the near instantaneous energy transfer achieved by photosynthesis may rely on quantum effects. From the article:
"Through photosynthesis, green plants and cyanobacteria are able to transfer sunlight energy to molecular reaction centers for conversion into chemical energy with nearly 100-percent efficiency. Speed is the key — the transfer of the solar energy takes place almost instantaneously so little energy is wasted as heat. How photosynthesis achieves this near instantaneous energy transfer is a long-standing mystery that may have finally been solved."
If this holds, it may mean that we'll be able to create artificial photosynthesis ourselves, and could be a huge gain for the solar power industry.
April 12, 2007
The "D" Word (Drought) may be premature
With the “D” word a headline in just about every Bay Area newspaper this morning it bears some examination of "drought" definitions. The word drought does not have a universal definition and it’s much more complicated more than just a deficit of rain or snow in a particular place. The condition is also largely dependent on the number and type of water-users, and whether only local water is used or if it is imported from other regions.
Consequently, extended moisture deficiency can be thought of in terms of meteorological, hydrological, agricultural or socioeconomic drought. Choose your favorite.
Below are some links to resources on Drought.
U.S. Drought Monitorhttp://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html has been widely featured the last couple of days in news reports but it should be used with caution as it is primarily an index of agricultural drought. It does not factor in such important things like existing water supplies, population and usage patterns. This is even stated within the website as it notes on each page “The Drought Monitor focuses on broad-scale conditions. Local conditions may vary.” Further buried in the text is "It should be noted that the relationship between indicators and impacts varies, sometimes markedly, with location and season. This is particularly true of water supplies, which are additionally dependent on the source (or sources) tapped, management practices, and legal mandates. Exercise caution when attempting to relate these maps to specific impact implications for a particular location and time of year. The blend-to-impact correlation is not always direct, and will vary spatially and temporally.”
The definition from the American Meteorological Society Glossary of Meteorology is: drought A period of abnormally dry weather sufficiently long enough to cause a serious hydrological imbalance. Drought is a relative term, therefore any discussion in terms of precipitation deficit must refer to the particular precipitation-related activity that is under discussion. For example, there may be a shortage of precipitation during the growing season resulting in crop damage (agricultural drought), or during the winter runoff and percolation season affecting water supplies (hydrological drought). Compare dry spell; see absolute drought, partial drought.
From Wikipedia:
A drought is a period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives below average precipitation over an extended period, usually ranging from several months to several years.
Meteorological droughts are usually defined by the departure from normal precipitation on a monthly or seasonal time scale. Hydrological drought is primarily a function of the effect of precipitation on surface and subsurface water supply, but is also influenced by such factors as local water usage and storage.
Probably the most localized and fastest responding variety of drought is agricultural drought, which can vary from crop to crop and is measured on time scales as short as a week or two. How all of the above interact with human activity is reflected in a catch-all term, socioeconomic drought. That term is essentially a balance sheet of the supply and demand of water on residential, industrial and agricultural usage as well as its impact on hydroelectric power and energy conservation.
More Links:
California Climate Tracker at http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/monitor/cal-mon/index.html
California DWR Hydrologic Conditions: http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/current/EXECSUM
Summary for California's Condition:
This year is not unlike some years in the 90's where we've seen dry Jan-March periods, with more precipitation in April and May that gets us closer to being on track. Don't panic yet.
The bottom line is that coming off several very wet years that topped off most reservoirs and groundwater tables that it is premature to say universally that California is in a drought. However, there are local and even some region interests that are facing deficits and would at least qualify as “drought impacted”.
Thanks to Jan Null, former lead forecaster for the National Weather Service for much of the information above.
April 11, 2007
The Day of Rainbows
Rainbow over Bidwell Ranch - my weather station in the foreground
Today was one of those unique weather days where orographic lifting (moist air blowing upslope till it cools and condenses to rain) caused rain and thunderstorms on the slopes of the foothills while further west in the valley, the sun was shining. This setup the perfect scenario for rainbows today in and around Chico.
I saw more rainbows today than I've seen in years. I saw several that were full arcs and even a rare double arc rainbow. The colors today were intense enough to even see the violet part of the spectrum, which is usually only seen in intensely sunlit rainbows.
My own Bidwell Ranch Webcam and weather station had one within its view tonight about 6:45PM, as shown above.
What a great day.
April 10, 2007
Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high
Here's more inconvenient news from solar researchers. Even though our sun is quiet at the moment while we are in between peaks in the 11 year sunspot cycles, scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past.
Researchers extended the record into the past by measuring isotopes of Beryllium-10 (created by cosmic rays entering our upper atmosphere, which then drifts earthward and is trapped in the ice) in Greenland ice cores. Based on both observations and ice core records, we are now at a sunspot peak exceeding solar activity for any time in the past thousand years."
The number of cosmic rays entering our atmosphere is modulated by the suns magnetic and solar wind activity, which modulates earth's magnetic field, setting up conditions to either allow more or deflect more cosmic rays entering the upper atmosphere.
They say that over the last century the number of sunspots. which are a proxy indicator of solar magnetic activity, rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer. According to climate scientists, the Sun’s radiance has changed little during this period. But looking back over 1,150 years, Solanki found the Sun had never been as bright as in the past 60 years.
“The change in solar brightness over the past 20 years is not enough to cause the observed changes in our climate. But the indirect effects (such as the cosmic ray to cloud connection) may be larger, and the range of their influence is unclear, so more study is needed,” he added.
April 08, 2007
What could they possibly be thinking ?
Today, just for a moment, I thought I was transported in time back to last Sunday, April 1st, because surely this had to be an April Fools joke. Nope. It's just a poorly thought out yet persistent business model. Yes, as of today, as proudly displayed on their banner, Easter Sunday, the "new" Oriental Buffet, formerly "Kings Super Buffet" formerly "China Star Buffet" has risen from the dead -- again Let's just hope only the restaurant has been reincarnated, and not what lived inside of it.
Do they think this community has no memory? I mean come on, open any other business or restaurant type there and you might have a fighting chance. But nooooo, lets open up another Chinese food buffet. Yeah, thats the ticket.
For those of you unfamiliar with the building in the picture above, here is the Enterprise Record article about what happened with the original China Star restaurant just over one year ago.
Calculating Easter
Did you ever wonder why the date of Easter is not fixed like Christmas, or St Patrick's Day?
Well its because there is a series of complex and somewhat inane rules that combine astronomy and religion and some arbitrary religious driven political decisions that determine the date. The date can change based on the position of the vernal equinox in the calendar, the full moon, the number of Sundays in April and whether you choose the Roman Catholic rule or the Protestant rule.
When Easter falls in a leap year, and there are five Sundays in April, the Easter Bunny is replaced by the Jackalope.
The US Naval Observatory has made sense of it all, sort of, and their explanation follows. In the meantime you can use their handy online calculator to figure out future dates for Easter.
From the US Naval Observatory:
The date for Easter shifts every year within the Gregorian Calendar. The Gregorian Calendar is the standard international calendar for civil use. In addition, it regulates the ceremonial cycle of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. The current Gregorian ecclesiastical rules that determine the date of Easter trace back to 325 CE at the First Council of Nicaea convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine. At that time the Roman world used the Julian Calendar (put in place by Julius Caesar).
The Council decided to keep Easter on a Sunday, the same Sunday throughout the world. To fix incontrovertibly the date for Easter, and to make it determinable indefinitely in advance, the Council constructed special tables to compute the date. These tables were revised in the following few centuries resulting eventually in the tables constructed by the 6th century Abbot of Scythia, Dionysius Exiguous. Nonetheless, different means of calculations continued in use throughout the Christian world.
In 1582 Gregory XIII (Pope of the Roman Catholic Church) completed a reconstruction of the Julian calendar and produced new Easter tables. One major difference between the Julian and Gregorian Calendar is the "leap year rule". See our FAQ on Calendars for a description of the difference. Universal adoption of this Gregorian calendar occurred slowly. By the 1700's, though, most of western Europe had adopted the Gregorian Calendar. The Eastern Christian churches still determine the Easter dates using the older Julian Calendar method.
The usual statement, that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, is not a precise statement of the actual ecclesiastical rules. The full moon involved is not the astronomical Full Moon but an ecclesiastical moon (determined from tables) that keeps, more or less, in step with the astronomical Moon.
The ecclesiastical rules are:
Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox;
this particular ecclesiastical full moon is the 14th day of a tabular lunation (new moon); and
the vernal equinox is fixed as March 21.
resulting in that Easter can never occur before March 22 or later than April 25. The Gregorian dates for the ecclesiastical full moon come from the Gregorian tables. Therefore, the civil date of Easter depends upon which tables - Gregorian or pre-Gregorian - are used. The western (Roman Catholic and Protestant) Christian churches use the Gregorian tables; many eastern (Orthodox) Christian churches use the older tables based on the Julian Calendar.
In a congress held in 1923, the eastern churches adopted a modified Gregorian Calendar and decided to set the date of Easter according to the astronomical Full Moon for the meridian of Jerusalem. However, a variety of practices remain among the eastern churches.
There are three major differences between the ecclesiastical system and the astronomical system.
The times of the ecclesiastical full moons are not necessarily identical to the times of astronomical Full Moons. The ecclesiastical tables did not account for the full complexity of the lunar motion.
The vernal equinox has a precise astronomical definition determined by the actual apparent motion of the Sun as seen from the Earth. It is the precise time at which the apparent ecliptic longitude of the Sun is zero. (Yes, the Sun's ecliptic longitude, not its declination, is used for the astronomical definition.) This precise time shifts within the civil calendar very slightly from year to year. In the ecclesiastical system the vernal equinox does not shift; it is fixed at March 21 regardless of the actual motion of the Sun.
The date of Easter is a specific calendar date. Easter starts when that date starts for your local time zone. The vernal equinox occurs at a specific date and time all over the Earth at once.
Inevitably, then, the date of Easter occasionally differs from a date that depends on the astronomical Full Moon and vernal equinox. In some cases this difference may occur in some parts of the world and not in others because two dates separated by the International Date Line are always simultaneously in progress on the Earth.
For example, take the year 1962. In 1962, the astronomical Full Moon occurred on March 21, UT=7h 55m - about six hours after astronomical equinox. The ecclesiastical full moon (taken from the tables), however, occurred on March 20, before the fixed ecclesiastical equinox at March 21. In the astronomical case, the Full Moon followed its equinox; in the ecclesiastical case, it preceded its equinox. Following the rules, Easter, therefore, was not until the Sunday that followed the next ecclesiastical full moon (Wednesday, April 18) making Easter Sunday, April 22.
Similarly, in 1954 the first ecclesiastical full moon after March 21 fell on Saturday, April 17. Thus, Easter was Sunday, April 18. The astronomical equinox also occurred on March 21. The next astronomical Full Moon occurred on April 18 at UT=5h. So in some places in the world Easter was on the same Sunday as the astronomical Full Moon.
April 07, 2007
New hope for hearing loss
Here's one of the best reasons ever to support stem cell research.
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, recently published research findings in Developmental Neuroscience which suggest new ways of treating hearing loss. These researchers have isolated "cochlear stem cells" located in the inner ear and already primed for development into ear-related tissue due to their proximity to the ear and expression of certain genes necessary for the development of hearing.
The team's research is a major step in devising a therapy to reverse permanent hearing loss because it may lead to the activation of cochlear stem cells in the inner ear to regenerate new hair cells.
As a sufferer of sensorineural hearing loss myself, this is very encouraging news. For people that don't know about hearing loss, it can have significant effects on a persons ability for social interaction, which is why I don't party much.
Millions of people worldwide suffer from this type of hearing loss, and with the blasting of Ipods in young ears becoming a fixture of society, the problem will only get worse
The adapability of man to his climate
Yesterday, the IPCC Climate Change Report was released. Now the hand wringing starts. I’ve made a lot of entries on climate change here, I’ve given newspaper interviews, radio interviews, written guest columns and letters to the editor. Mostly what I got from that is loads of criticism heaped on me. Some called me unqualified to comment, others said I’m caught up in a cultural bias that stems from my political views, others say I'm just flat wrong. But few have even bothered to engage me on the topic, preferring to write about me, rather than what I've said.
To those whom voiced such complaints I say: “tough noogies”, I’m pressing on. But I am going to give it a rest for awhile after this entry. There’s many more interesting things I haven’t covered yet here. And I'm sure many readers would like to see some other topics. Rest assured I’m not done with the subject though. There's a big idea brewing.
As for the IPCC report:
Here’s what we’ve got. After leaving the dark ages, and after engaging in hundreds of years of logical scientific inquiry, finding mountains of evidence that the planet's weather is dynamic, vibrant, and above all fickle beyond certain prognostication, that there are regular up and down periods of cold and hot climate, we now turn a blind eye to that mountain of evidence and proclaim this: The world’s climate should revert to exactly as it was on February 2nd, 1886, in Punxsutawney, PA (the first groundhog day), and that we must move Heaven and Earth to make it stay that way or billions will suffer.
Of course, our ridge browed ancestors probably felt some sort of worries as they watched the Earth begin to thaw from the last ice age, and the oceans rose to cover the continental shelves and give rise to the planet-wide myths about a globe covering flood.
I’ll bet the leader of the people then uttered some sort of similar proclamation to the IPCC report such as “grunt, grunt, ooofa, mlock” and pointed his finger to the new land up north that was exposed, inviting his throng to migrate there.
Except, back then they didn't have scientific evidence in huge piles of climate data and historical records tweaked out of dead trees and ice cores showing that this sort of thing happens all the time regardless of what humankind is doing at the moment. So, they didn’t have all the manufactured angst we have today when the same thing happened. They just adapted.
It’s been warmer than today’s climate in the past, much warmer. It has been colder than this climate in the past, much colder. We know this for a fact. We know that this happens with or without our activities. And we know that there is NOTHING we can do about it at our present technological level. So why do we insist that we are the ones causing it when for over half a million years it happened several times and we've only had this supposedly evil earth killing CO2 belching technology a mere speck of that time?
Because, many believe global warming is real and there are people in our political world who want the masses to hand over power over their lives to them, so they say “let us handle it”. To make that transition easier, they trot out this false premise, that we are totally responsible for natural occurrences in the long span of our planetary history.
They say we can save us from ourselves if only we give them the reigns of power. This has been done before. We’ve had a history of crises that “required” political intervention Here’s a few; the oil crisis that never happened in the 70s, or the global cooling crisis of the 70’s, or the global starvation crisis that never happened in the 60s, the Communist scare of the 50s that was overcome in the 90’s, the dust bowl of the 30’s, and many other crises.
When we look at the Anthropogenic Global Warming argument, it seems on the surface that we are completely full of ourselves and yet at the same time terribly dubious, sometimes completely without hope, and utterly given to embracing our own fallibility as a cause célèbre. We show no faith in ourselves by accepting this idea that we’ve caused Global Warming and still none in the idea that we can stop it. These are hollow beliefs put forth to enrich the power of the few whom offer us the way to salvation.
As a people, we’ve overcome much to get where we are today. We should keep faith in that progress and our human nature to counter the false guilt that we are not so bad as we would think and as others would profess. We have potential greatness that is unknown and unmatched simply waiting to be explored. Once, we dreamed of exploring the universe and doing so in style and comfort where now many dream simply of returning to past primitive conditions lest Mother Earth shrug us off in anger over our insolence. But, Mother Earth, Gaia, Mother Nature, and Old Man Winter, are nonentities and the physics of our world, our solar system, and our universe are merely uncaring un-malleable processes that are completely indifferent to our existence.
No matter what we wish or attempt to do, we cannot make our world remain in steady-state, we can only live with it as it changes. We are supremely capable of doing that, even when our world changes dramatically. It’s never been a question of if we can, but if we will.
Yes there are problems with how we treat the environment, but growing the power of the state over the power of the individual, regressing to dreary primitive existences, embracing inanities like hemp clothing and carbon trading schemes,, and forgetting all the wondrous things we've thought up in the past centuries to overcome each problem in turn, is to turn our back on being human.
We’ve proven that we can solve the challenges and adapt to a changing earth. So there is no need for the predictions of doom and gloom. But be warned; the solutions need not involve handing more power over to those who have far too much already and have not the wisdom to know what to properly do with it.
The world will change and we will change with it, just as our ancestors have done for millennia.
April 06, 2007
It's the Sun, stupid
The The United Nations's IPCC Report comes out today so I thought I'd make a report too.
James Carville used to remind Clinton during the '92 campaign that “its the economy, stupid”.
I (and many others far smarter than I am) say that on the subject of Global Warming: “its the SUN, stupid”
Our earth is warmed by a gigantic nuclear fireball, millions of times the mass of earth and a mere 8.5 light-minutes away. One hundred and nine Earths would be required to fit across the Sun’s disk, and its interior could hold over 1.3 million Earths.
By the way, the sun has a total luminosity output of 386 YottaWatts thats 386,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts, but we only get a tiny portion of that.
You can’t just ignore that kind of power. Though it seems some prefer to, since it muddles the results they seek.
The total luminous energy output received by earth from the sun is 174 PETAWATTS (174,000,000,000,000,000) watts. Now lets just say the sun increases its output by 0.1% as its been measured to do. (And its gotten way more active this century.) That dumps an extra 174,000,000,000,000 watts into our atmosphere (174 trillion watts) 24/7.
Data source for graph: http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/lean2000_irradiance.txt
Note: In the graph above, the low flatline from 1645-1715 is the Maunder Minimum, a period of virtually no sunspots, where the historical reports from the northern hemisphere tell a story of dramatic climate change: harsh winters, cools summers, crop failures, famine and disease.
From the abstract referenced above: "Estimated increases since 1675 are 0.7%, 0.2% and 0.07% in broad ultraviolet, visible/near infrared and infrared spectral bands, with a total irradiance increase of 0.2%. "
So its not just 0.1 %, it is 0.2% which translates to a 348 TeraWatts global irradiance increase.
Now lets put 348 trillion watts into perspective:
Hurricanes: the heat energy released by a hurricanes category 1-5 equals about 50 to 200 trillion watts or about the same amount of energy released by exploding a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes.
Katrina, released about 200 trillion watts over its life cycle.
Now imagine double that amount of extra energy being added to earth’s atmosphere every second by small increases in the suns output that have been documented to exist. Thats what the increase in solar irradiance is doing. Since 1675, after the depths of the Maunder Minimum, we've seen an increase in solar irradiance of about 2.5 watts per square meter.
Climate modelers say that the extra CO2 equates to a forcing of about 2 watts per square meter, which totals about 1.12 Petawatt (1,120,000,000,000,000 watts). The problem is, they can't always recreate that reliably between all of the different models out there, with the positive and negative feedback mechanisms, and other variables involved. There's disagreement on the total contribution. A lot of it. Nonetheless they seem all to agree that CO2 makes some contribution, and thats likely true. But compared to the sun, I beleive it's minimal.
Now lets look at us: 13.5 TeraWatts is the average total power consumption of the human world in 2001.
Do you think we could change the planets atmospheric energy balance with that if we squeezed all the power we made that year together and shot it into our atmosphere ?
Whats very clear though, when you look at history, and the graph above, is that our earths atmosphere and resulting climate is extremely sensitive to variations in solar output. The sweet center point seems to be about 1365 watts per square meter of irradiance...what we consider as "normal" climate. Take 1.5 watts/sq. meter away, and we get significant cooling, harsh winters, cool summers, and increases in ice and glaciers. Add 1.5 watts,/sq. meter and we get hotter summers, mild winters, and melting of ice and glaciers.
Now irradiance aside, as it's only one component, there's also the suns dynamic magnetic field and solar wind, which modulates earths magnetic field, which modulates the number of cosmic rays that enter our atmosphere, which modulates the number of clouds that form, hence changing the net surface irradiance. Plots of changes in the suns magnetic field line up very well with climate change.
There's growing sentiment that CO2 theory may very well be a red herring.
Yeah, its the sun, stupid.
April 05, 2007
The Sun may disrupt GPS system, banks, hi-tech during next solar max
As previously mentioned on this blog, sunspot 930 released a masive solar flare in December, even though we are in the solar minimum between 11 year sunspot cycle peaks. Now after analysing what happened during that event, scientists are concerned that solar cycle 25, expected to be one of the largest ever, may cause significant disruption in the GPS system, banks communications, and other hi-tech that relies on satellite communication.
An article in Information Week outlines some of the serious concerns that have been raised about the survivability of our staellite communications during the next big solar storm that is coming. The last time solar storms were of this magnitudes, in the late 50's, sateliite technology was in it's infancy, and many of the circuits then were far less complex and sensitive than todays microcircuits.
"Our increasingly technologically dependent society is becoming increasingly vulnerable to space weather," David L. Johnson, director of the National Weather Service, said at a briefing.
What will people do without their cellphones, GPS, and iPods?
April 04, 2007
Flying Wind Farms
Here's a novel idea. The Economist magazine has an article on Flying wind farms. Now we're not talking about ordinary, land based windmills here. We're talking about actual airborne — up to 7miles up in the sky — wind farms intended to harvest the immense supply of energy in the jet stream. The jet stream has winds that sometimes exceed 200 miles per hour.
On the surface, the idea seems a little nutty but, in fact, San Diego based Sky WindPower has apparently thought their concept through pretty thoroughly and believes they can not only make this work, but do so profitably.
The article discusses several other ideas for high-flying wind farming including a Dutch proposal to use pairs of kites to drive a generator.
This could bring a whole new meaning to Chico's Kite Day or maybe we could park one of these over Bidwell Ranch
April 03, 2007
Guest Blogger: William F. Buckley on Climate Change
From RealClearPolitics April 03, 2007
Business of Global Warming Feels a Lot Like Inquisition
By William F. Buckley
The heavy condemnatory breathing on the subject of global warming outdoes anything since high moments of the Inquisition. A respectable columnist (Thomas Friedman of The New York Times) opened his essay last week by writing, "Sometimes you read something about this administration that's just so shameful it takes your breath away."
What asphyxiated this critic was the discovery that a White House official had edited "government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming." The correspondent advises that the culprit had been an oil-industry lobbyist before joining the administration, and on leaving it he took a job with Exxon Mobil.
For those with addled reflexes, here is the story compressed: (1) Anyone who speaks discriminatingly about global warming is conspiring to belittle the threat. Such people end up (2) working for Exxon Mobil, a perpetrator of the great threat the malefactor sought to distract us from.
I'd guess that, in the current mood, I should enter the datum that my father was in the oil business. But having done that, I think it fair to ask: Are we invited to assume that anyone who works in a business that generates greenhouse gases (a) is complicit in the global-warming problem, and (b) should resign and seek work elsewhere? One recalls the plant in Nazi Germany that manufactured the toxic gas Zyklon B. The primary use of this gas was in the extermination camps, whose masters were looking for efficient ways to destroy human beings. Is the community engaged in oil production the contemporary equivalent of the makers of Zyklon B?
Critics are correct in insisting that human enterprises have an effect on climate. What they cannot at this point do is specify exactly how great the damage is, nor how much relief would be effected by specific acts of natural propitiation.
The whole business is eerily religious in feel. Back in the 15th century, the question was: Do you believe in Christ? It was required in Spain by the Inquisition that the answer should be affirmative, leaving to one side subsidiary specifications.
It is required today to believe that carbon-dioxide emissions threaten the basic ecological balance. The assumption then is that inasmuch as a large proportion of the damage is man-made, man-made solutions are necessary. But it is easy to see, right away, that there is a problem in devising appropriate solutions, and in allocating responsibility for them.
To speak in very general terms, the United States is easily the principal offender, given the size of our country and the intensity of our use of fossil-fuel energy. But even accepting the high per-capita rate of consumption in