Friday, May 23, 2014

Viewing global changes since 1984

This goes hand in hand with my previous theme of what a long strange trip it's been.  Google Earth and TIME working together with NASA Landsat images created a fantastic resource for visually exploring changes on this planet since 1984.  
A special touch is "Explore The World" where you can type in any location on the Earth and after some computing the time-lapse of your selected area begins.  You can control the speed and zoom in:
TIME and Space | By Jeffrey Kluger 
http://world.time.com/timelapse/

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

What a long strange trip it's been.

I stumbled upon this excellent documentary, fits right in with my current musing on the latest news from the Antarctic and the woefully predictable reactions from the climate science denialist crowd.   

It's an interesting natural history of sorts, more to the point than most, tracking America's evolution over the past centuries, including some background on the progression of European society, and a look at the roots of the radical differences between Native America and European societies.  

If you are curious about how we got ourselves to this point in history, here's an introduction with plenty of background and food for thought.
Upon the arrival of Columbus in 1492 in the Carabean Islands, unknown to Columbus (and majority of the Eastern Hemisphere), he landed on Islands located in the middle of two huge continents now known has North America and South America that was teaming with huge Civilizations (that rivaled any in the world at that time) and thousands of smaller Nations and Tribes. With recent estimations, the population may have been over 100 million people that spanned from Alaska and Green Land, all the to the tip of southern South America. 

The Real History Of The Americas Before Columbus 

1491: Complete Series | Timeline




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Friday, May 9, 2014

Dr. Michael MacCracken's 1982 Climate Change Presentation


Here's an interesting lecture where Dr. MacCracken explains the state of the science, aka consensus, as it was in 1982.  It's an interesting historical document that reveals what we knew and where the uncertainties were.  

Even better it shows a scientist in action, (not perfectly polished like so many on the climate science denialist's talk circuit), but with a deep commitment to arriving at honest, defensible conclusions while never neglecting uncertainties and all they don't yet understand.

Dr. Michael MacCracken received his B.S. in Engineering degree from Princeton University in 1964 and his Ph.D. degree in Applied Science from the University of California Davis/Livermore in 1968.  At the time of this lecture he was deputy division leader of the atmospheric and geoscience division of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

Dr. MacCracken sent me a nice note, when I notified him of this new collection, it included the following worth sharing information:
"A the time I was also an adviser to the Department of Energy’s climate change research and climate modeling program, which I had in part prompted with a letter to them way back in 1975, and so, in that capacity, was involved in examining and considering the science across the whole field, and not just in the modeling area where I was personally active. 
I think the lecture tape is pretty complete except towards the end where they actually had to change the tape as I ran a bit long." 
Mike MacCracken"

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

berrens.nl: degree by degree review of CAGW

I came across an interesting, actually frightening article at http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm.  Though it seems like a conservative review since it assumes certain systems particularly transportation, power supply and global communications have a resilience that I don't think can stand up to the various challenges coming their way.  Still it's a sobering review of what the known Earth Sciences have to tell us about the direction we are taking our one and only home planet.

Here I share some excerpts - but I encourage you to read the entire nearly 5,000 word review. 

"A degree by degree explanation of what will happen when the earth warms"