Month: September 2013

Brought me to tears. This is what messaging can be like if you have good people and a nice budget.

 

UPDATE:

One reader has already responded that, ” I like Chipolte’s food, and I also like the ad, but I do think you can make the argument that the “Cultivate a Better World” sign at the end is a bit much, especially when you think about the role meat production plays in greenhouse gas emissions.”

Point taken, but I think there is a reasonable case to be made that, given that we in the west could healthily and sensibly reduce our meat consumption, there are more scientific, humane, and climate friendly ways to produce meat.

Another reader sends me a link to yet another ad in the series, this with Willie Nelson singing the background music.

Another tear jerker.

National Weather Service September 12:

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DENVER/BOULDER CO
941 AM MDT THU SEP 12 2013

.UPDATE...MAJOR FLOODING/FLASH FLOODING EVENT UNDERWAY AT THIS
TIME WITH BIBLICAL RAINFALL AMOUNTS REPORTED IN MANY AREAS IN/NEAR
THE FOOTHILLS. PRECIPITABLE WATER VALUES IN EXCESS OF AN INCH AND
A QUARTER ON GPS SENSORS CERTAINLY SUPPORT LOTS MORE RAIN TODAY
AND TONIGHT.  13Z HRRR RUN HAS ANOTHER 1-3 INCHES OF RAIN
PREDICTED IN THE FOOTHILLS THROUGH 04Z SO THINGS ARE NOT LOOKING
GOOD. WILL EXTEND THE AREA OF THE FLASH FLOOD WATCH TO INCLUDE
ZONE 43 AND ALSO EXTEND IT IN TIME THROUGH 12Z TOMORROW MORNING.

Weather.com

As of Friday morning, 12.30 inches of rain had fallen in Boulder, Colo. since Monday afternoon.

According to the Western Regional Climate Center, the previous all-time record rainfall for any calendar day in Boulder was a 4.80 inch deluge on July 31, 1919., in records dating to 1893.

Continue reading ““Biblical” Flooding in Boulder. Nothing to See Here, Move along..”

Dr Jason Box posts this at the DarkSnowProject facebook page.

The first Dark Snow samples to get run through the ICP-MS (inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer)! We are using this highly sensitive and accurate instrument to scan for concentrations of certain elements that could be tracers for aerosol source.

The six minutes spent listening to this will not be subtracted from your life.

One feature of the changing landscape of energy distribution  is the movement in some communities to gain local control of their electrical supply. It’s not a new thing, many communities around the country have their own utility system. But its a model that, understandably, large electric monopolies are deeply frightened of.

Bloomberg:

Solar panels are the next granite countertops: an amenity for new homes that’s becoming a standard option for buyers in U.S. markets.

At least six of 10 largest U.S. homebuilders led by KB Home include the photovoltaic devices in new construction, according to supplier SunPower Corp. (SPWR) Two California towns are mandating installations, and demand for the systems that generate electricity at home will jump 56 percent nationwide this year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

“In the next six months, homebuilders in California and the expensive-energy states will be going solar as a standard, and just incorporating it into the cost of the house like any other feature,” Jim Petersen, chief executive officer of the PetersenDean Inc., the largest closely held U.S. roofing and solar contractor, said in an interview.

Lashing panels to roofs during construction is about 20 percent cheaper than after a house is built. Homeowners who can afford the extra $10,000 to $20,000 cost in return for free power threaten the business of traditional utilities such as Edison International of California or Kansas’ Westar Energy Inc.

Power companies are losing business because they can’t cut their rates in line with the tumbling prices of residential solar systems. Those cost about $4.93 a watt in the first quarter, down 16 percent from a year earlier, according to the Washington-based solar association. That was sparked by the 18 percent slump in prices for solar panels and related hardware in the same period.

Mortgage Embed

A 3-kilowatt system, enough to power a typical mid-size home, costs less than $15,000 and can be rolled into a mortgage, said Tom Werner, CEO of San Jose, California-based SunPower.

“You embed it into your home mortgage, you’re cashflow positive month one,” he said.

That’s similar to how some buyers decided to pay $5,000 or $10,000 for a kitchen countertop that would be from natural materials and would outlast a Formica-style top.

“You’re going to see a transition from novelty, to granite countertops, to mainstream option,” Werner said in an interview. “We’re rapidly passing the equivalent of a ‘countertops decision’ to a ‘no-brainer.’ You just do it.”

 

Jason Box’s Meltfactor Blog:

I’m in South Greenland drilling low tech metal pipes into the ice to calibrate high tech satellite, aircraft, and model data.

Flying over this landscape, it’s stunning how much the ice has retreated. Annual (let alone summer) average air temperatures at nearby Narsarsuaq have been above the melting point 39 of the past 51 years [1]. Unequivocal evidence of rapid ice retreat; relic stranded ice [2] was what led Denmark to support scientists at GEUS to install modern ice monitoring measurements in 2001. The observations are now called “Q transect” as part of the PROMICE network around Greenland.

I was stunned to witness (and photograph ) more stranded relic ice on the sides of the glacier. Notice how no ice is feeding Phoenix’s wings from upstream.

The glacier’s current shape resembles a Phoenix, with wings (relic ice) outstretched to the front, and the phoenix has a demise, like this glacier.

Continue reading “In Greenland: This Phoenix Will Not Rise Again”

Charlie Pierce in Esquire:

The blog’s Second-Favorite Canadian is getting into it as regards our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the proposed death funnel that is going to bisect the continent in order to bring the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel from the blasted moonscape of Alberta to the refineries of Texas, and thence to the world. Apparently, if you think this cancer juice is bad when it spills, you ought to see the places where they dig it up out of the ground. (A while back, our own John H. Richardson did and, well, wow.) Our Second Favorite Canadian pointed this out.

“Fort McMurray looks like Hiroshima. Fort McMurray is a wasteland,” said Young, 67, during a National Farmers Union conference. “The Indians up there and the native peoples are dying. The fuels all over – the fumes everywhere – you can smell it when you get to town,” he said.”People are sick. People are dying of cancer because of this. All the First Nations people up there are threatened by this. Their food supply is wasted, their treaties are no good. They have the right to live on the land, like they always did, but there’s no land left that they can live on. All the animals are dying.”

This is not sitting well with the mayor of the blasted moonscape her own self.

They are so extreme that they may very well be discounted by people who genuinely care about the state of the environment,” Blake said. “The community’s reaction is inevitably not happy, probably outraged, because it’s such a gross misrepresentation,” she added. Chris Byrne, a DJ at Fort McMurray radio station Rock 97.9, said they were starting a “No Neil” day and promoting the #notawasteland hashtag on Twitter. “We’re going to ask our listeners, ‘We’re not going to play Neil Young all day today, should we make this a permanent thing?’ If he doesn’t like us, then we may not like him.”

Well, that’s an end to his career, I guess. If you’ve lost Rock 97.9 in Fort McMurray, there’s not much point in going on. Meanwhile, the largely-in-the-bag Canadian government is taking a more modest approach.

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver said Tuesday that he was a fan of Young’s music. “But on this matter we disagree, because Keystone XL will displace heavy oil from Venezuela, which has the same or higher greenhouse gas emissions, with a stable and secure source of Canadian oil,” the minister said a short statement issued through from his office via email.

You will note that the minister’s statement doesn’t say fk-all about turning Alberta into a blasted moonscape, which was Young’s whole point. Anyway, we report, you decide.

I’ll be talking this evening at the Erb Institute of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, so not much time to post right now.
Right down the road from the Ross School, in Ypsilanti, (IP-sul-ANti) Dave Strenski has been busily installing solar panels for the last several years.

Here he discusses the nuts and bolts of solar tech from economics to install in the cloudy midwest.  The Utility companies could be leading this revolution instead of running from it – but until they get that memo, it’s guys like Dave who are at the pointy end of the spear.

Description:

Solar power has been growing in this country at a tremendous rate over the past few years, and Ypsilanti is ahead of the curve in embracing it. Dave will explain the basics of photovoltaic power: how to install grid-tied systems, the economics of solar power in Michigan, and why you should consider a solar installation on your building. This lively talk will also describe an ambitious new goal to dramatically increase the number of solar installations in Ypsilanti by 2020, and make Ypsilanti a “Solar Destination”.

Dave has degrees in Surveying, Civil and Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Tech. Currently he works as an applications analyst for Cray Inc., which designs and manufactures high performance computers. Dave started playing with solar power in 2005 when he founded SolarYpsi, a group of volunteers that design and install photovoltaic systems locally. SolarYpsi’s primary function is to help people understand how solar power works. The SolarYpsi.org website was created by EMU alumni Nik Estep and has been visited by people from around the world. The SolarYpsi video made by Google has been viewed by a ¼ million people.

I love Symphony of Science. I think this is the latest.