Month: November 2014

Business Insider:

At first, the team thought there was a bug in their system, but Throne soon realized it wasn’t a glitch, but a direct result of the calculations. This unexpected light halo offers scientists new insights into how light behaves around a spinning black hole. It was a triumph for both Thorne as a scientist and director Christopher Nolan.

When Nolan first called upon Thorne’s expertise for the film, he anticipated that the special effects team would have to tweak the scientifically-accurate image to make it more aesthetically appealing and understandable to audiences.

However, the shocking, gorgeous results that came from Thorne’s physics equations was more than Nolan or Thorne could have hoped for and what audiences will see in the film.

“What we found was …we could get some very understandable, tactile imagery from those equations,” Nolan said in the video. “[The equations] were constantly surprising and it spoke to the maxim that truth can be stranger than fiction.”

Thorne is planning on writing up the team’s efforts in two scientific papers: one for the astrophysics community and one for the computer science community.

Made me feel better. Might work for you. Fullscreen helps.

Back to work.

And, in answer to the question posed at the end of this piece, here’s the video they’re asking for… Continue reading “Is This NextGen Climate Change Ad Effective?”

When I see Wolf Blitzer in hell I am so going to ream his ass.

The incredible contrast between the release of actual scientific warnings about climate, that MUST be heard and heeded to avoid catastrophe, and the media’s complete lack of attention – at this stage of the game, 2014, is mind boggling.

In 2003, I told a group of people concerned about the impending war in Iraq that the media, that we once thought was on the side of fact, on the side of uncovering truth, was no longer interested in truth and fact, and if we wanted to get anything out to the public, we would obviously have to do it ourselves – so let’s pass the hat and take out an ad.

I realize bitterly that we were right then, and I feel increasing dread that nothing was learned in that disaster – things have only gotten worse.

Doug Craig – Climate of Change:

Last year FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) reported how only four percent of news segments on the national network newscasts (CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News) covering extreme weather mentioned the words “climate change,” “global warming” or “greenhouse gases,” despite the fact that “human-made climate change…is affecting, and in some cases exacerbating, that extreme weather.”

They wrote,

“So in what was an unusually active weather year in the United States–a massive tornado in Oklahoma, deadly flooding in Colorado, massive wildfires across several Western states and bouts of unseasonable temperatures across the country–96 percent of extreme weather stories never discussed the human impact on the climate that is contributing to these outcomes.

“It’s almost as if the altered climate and the weather were happening on two different planets.”

Meanwhile, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the “synthesis” report of their fifth full scientific climate assessment since 1990, and according to Joe Romm, “issued their bluntest plea yet to the world: Slash carbon pollution now (at a very low cost) or risk ‘severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.’”

Romm reminds us that this report “is the last time they (IPCC authors) have a serious shot at influencing the world’s major governments while we still have a plausible chance of stabilizing at non-catastrophic levels.

Continue reading “Epic Failure of Media on Climate Change will Baffle Future Historians”

If you missed my most recent vid, and a lot of people did, you might want to check it out.  Another sunny one on solutions.

Don’t worry, ripping good one on doom and gloom coming.

Gas2:

A new video on climate solutions from the wonderful videographer Peter Sinclair highlights the EV revolution. Furthermore, what it really highlights is what I’ve been emphasizing as much as possible for the past year or so: the #1 thing that will really create an EV revolution is the absolutely fun and helpful instant torque that electric vehicles bring to the table.

Peter does a good job highlighting this point with the intro showing a 2011 Nissan LEAF ad focused on environmental issues (that one really brought me back) and then a few minutes later a new 2014 Nissan LEAF highlighting the LEAF’s great acceleration (great ad, by the way).

The video also highlights the low cost of electricity when it comes to transportation “fuel.” It’s alsovery stable, while the cost of oil/gas is highly volatile. Of course, this often leads to big financial savings.

The video also touches on the safety benefits electric cars can offer.

One thing the video misses, however, is “the other #1 factor” that I think will drive an electric car revolution: convenience. Being able to charge your car at home as you sit on the couch, eat dinner, sleep, or whatever, is massively more convenient than filling up a gas tank. Saving hours upon hours looking for a gas station, pulling into one, filling up, paying, etc is probably the most underrated benefit of electric cars these days.

Anyhow, though, it’s a great video. Watch it, above, if you haven’t yet, and a big shout-out to Peter Sinclair.

Above, fake commercial spells out the awful truth.

Below, Bill Maher on  anti-science flim-flams.

Last week Pope Francis stood up for a scientific world view, including defending evolutionary biology (that is, uh, well ..biology) and the importance of a planetary life support system.  Here’s more discussion.

In Tuesday’s election in Colorado, Koch fueled Theocrat and Oil Shale Shill Cory Gardner, running for Senate, is trying to pretend he cares about a sound economy and a viable planet.
His record however is clear.

Just in case you know anyone in Colorado.

Hill Heat:

Gardner is a “long-time friend” of Americans for Prosperity Colorado head Jeff Crank, and is known to have appeared at the Koch’s 2014 summit in California. AFP and the Koch super PAC Freedom Partners have spent over $3 million supporting Gardner’s candidacy, primarily by attacking Udall. Koch Industries is Gardner’s top campaign contributor this cycle. Gardner, who joined Congress in 2011, has raked in $772,000 in campaign contributions from the oil & gas industry.

TRANSCRIPT:

We have to stand up to the radical environmentalists, the social engineers who believe that we must stop. And in Colorado we know that threat is real. We know they’re going to try to stop something that is creating jobs on the eastern plains and the western slope of this great state. We know they’re going to try to say no to the Marcellus, no to the Bakken. They’ve already tried to say no to the Keystone pipeline. But you know what? We know we’re going to win because of the power of our individual job creators. They are right, they are with us. And when the individuals realize what is at stake in this country, we will rise up, and we will win. The shale revolution is real.