A little less talk, a little more action

Trying to wean myself from the constant scanning of political blogs and newssites, and focus on the science and tech.

Am also going to try to use my del.icio.us bookmarks a little more. I've got the account and the space, might as well put something there.

Getting to the tropics

I've been trying to get to the tropics for more than three decades, but now it looks like the tropics are coming to me. It turns out that climate zones that characterize the tropics are expanding, both north and south. (Which actually isn't good news, but it's not like we can do anything. Check the last line in the quote.) The link below is to the website of Nature. The blockquote below is the Associated Press summary report published on Salon.com.

Earth's Tropics Belt Expands

By SETH BORENSTEIN Associated Press Writer

Dec 2nd, 2007 | WASHINGTON -- Earth's tropical belt seems to have expanded a couple hundred miles over the past quarter century, which could mean more arid weather for some already dry subtropical regions, new climate research shows.

Geographically, the tropical region is a wide swath around Earth's middle stretching from the Tropic of Cancer, just south of Miami, to the Tropic of Capricorn, which cuts Australia almost in half. It's about one-quarter of the globe and generally thought of as hot, steamy and damp, but it also has areas of brutal desert.

To meteorologists, however, the tropics region is defined by long-term climate and what's happening in the atmosphere. Recent studies show changes that indicate an expansion of the tropical atmosphere.

The newest study, published Sunday in the new scientific journal Nature Geoscience, shows that by using the weather definition, the tropics are expanding toward Earth's poles more than predicted. And that means more dry weather is moving to the edges of the tropics in places like the U.S. Southwest.

Independent teams using four different meteorological measurements found that the tropical atmospheric belt has grown by anywhere between 2 and 4.8 degrees latitude since 1979. That translates to a total north and south expansion of 140 to 330 miles.

One key determination of the tropical belt is called the Hadley circulation, which is essentially prevailing rivers of wind that move vertically as well as horizontally, carrying lots of moisture to rainy areas while drying out arid regions on the edges of the tropics. That wind is circulating over a larger area than a couple decades ago.

But that's not the only type of change meteorologists have found that shows an expansion of the tropics. They've seen more tropical conditions by measuring the amount of ozone in the atmosphere, measuring the depth of the lower atmosphere, and the level of dryness in the atmosphere at the edges of the tropics.

Climate scientists have long predicted a growing tropical belt toward the end of the 21st century because of man-made global warming. But what has happened in the past quarter century is larger and more puzzling than initially predicted, said Dian Seidel, a research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Silver Spring, Md. She is the author of the newest study.

"They are big changes," she said. "It's a little puzzling."

She said this expansion may only be temporary, but there's no way of knowing yet.

Seidel said she has not determined the cause of this tropical belt widening. While a leading suspect is global warming, other suspects include depletion in the ozone layer and changes in El Nino, the periodic weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean.

Other climate scientists are split on the meaning of the research because it shows such a dramatic change — beyond climate model predictions. Some scientists, such as Richard Seager at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, say changes in El Nino since the 1970s probably are a big factor and could make it hard to conclude there's a dramatic expansion of the tropical belt.

But climate scientists Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria and Richard Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said Seidel's work makes sense and that computer models have consistently been underestimating the ill effects of global warming.

"Every time you look at what the world is doing it's always far more dramatic than what climate models predict," Weaver said.

Both Weaver and Seidel said the big concern is that dry areas on the edge of the tropics — such as the U.S. Southwest, parts of the Mediterranean and southern Australia — could get drier because of this.

"You're not expanding the tropical jungles, what you're expanding is the area of desertification," Weaver said.

Malibu Fire, 21 October 2007

Google Map of the Malibu Fire.
Web site of the fire.
LA Observed’s Here In Malibu.

I’m going to look up the Santa Monica Airport (SMO) frequencies and see if I can get info on the air freqs the water birds are using.

swim

Swam 1,000 yards today, the first in a long time that I’ve swum that far in a workout. It wasn’t too hard and I wasn’t too tired when I finished. I could have done more, but arms and shoulders were a little tired and my blood CO2 was fairly high. The distance was good, so I called the workout a success and called it a day.

Telecommuting with robotics

In the middle of September I took a day off work and went downtown to the LA Convention Center to see the Wired NextFest. (I haven't written about NextFest yet, but I will soon.)

But what I wanted to write about is the link to the robot used as a telepresence avatar. With my program at work about to incorporate and envelope (and probably be consumed) by telecommuting, this could be a useful thing to propose as a virtual presence for people who are remoting in to meetings.

Shrinking icepack

An even better representation of the shrinking ice pack.

Defrosting the icebox, warming the planet

I've been following the saga of climate change since I was an undergraduate and studied both global warming (IR absorption by CO2, CH4, NOx, etc) and ozone depletion. I find it a sad irony that most people are just now discovering the problem when the scientists have known about the imminent problems for decades. In fact, Al Gore's book came out long before he became VP in the Clinton Administration, but to the degree that anybody was paying attention it was the whacko right wing who screeched that he is a psychopath.

(I am not making this up. I have a friend who while supposedly being an environmental scientist and engineer, he is much more strongly a radical neoconservative Republican and far right conservative. He ranted wildly about Gore before that election, and to this day 15 years later still rants wildly about Gore as a "psychopath". He's not the only rational person I know who gets wildly irrational when attempting to confront Gore and the scientific fact of Global Warming Climate Change, GWCC.)

NASA has recently released their mid-September satellite imagery of the minimum extent of the Arctic sea ice. The pictures are scribed with the extent of the ice pack for 1979-2000, for 2005, and then for 2007. The shrinking of the ice is shocking to see, but it is simply the end result of what we have known and expected for decades.

It is worth reading the entire description of the picture (see the link), but here is the final sentence.

In 2007, all Arctic sea ice records were broken by August, more than a month before the end of melt season.

Note that in the (approx.) six months of melt season from spring to autumn, the ice had melted back to its previous minimum more than a month before solar insolation fell past a seasonal level where melting begins to reverse. So there was another whole month of melting, thus setting a new record. We can expect 2008 to be worse.

NASA working with Google Earth

I subscribe (by email) to NASA's Natural Hazards Updates, part of the NASA Earth Observatory. This sends daily notifications of satellite pictures of significant events - storms, floods, volcanoes - essentially any natural event that is best seen from low earth orbit. They use several satellites to provide the images, and include a one-sentence description with a URL of each event. There are usually two events listed everyday.

I just opened Friday's email and found a description and link to an erupting volcano in the Red Sea. I found it interesting because I didn't know that the area was active, but what was very interesting in the message was a link to a Google Earth KMZ file. NASA - the 900 pound gorilla of space imagery - is working with Google Earth!

It's pretty cool to see a government working with common commercial tools and adopting them so quickly.

xkcd

Hilarious. A riot.
Total geek humor, but too funny everytime.
Every time I look at it I get a new ATF.
I am too geeked out.
My favorite today.
Okay, the next one is great too...
Yet again!

See what I mean?

Writing for Attribution (and satire)

I just checked my "scorecard" of letters to Salon and I've got 9 "Editor's Choice" out of 17 total letters! Woohoo! I don't always try to write for score, but I nearly always try to make it witty, or pithy, or satirical.

I haven't mentioned that I'm taking a class at UCLA Extension in Political Satire, but I am. It's not exactly what I expected it to be; that is, it's not at all a class on how to write satire. But it is a good overview of American satire and satirists of the past century (with a few other token eras and cultures thrown in for contrast and comparison). Now that I'm in the class it's fun to look back at a collection and see where it stands. For an amateur, it seems to hold its own.

Not that I'm patting myself on the back you know, I'm just sayin' ...

swim

I got in the water for 500 yards yesterday. It was easier than the 500 yds I did last weekend (which I did not write about). I should have stayed longer, but... boooring.

Mapping Dimona

For a long time the satellites that map the earth have been fuzzing out the Israeli nuc site at Dimona. Now, for some reason, Google Earth shows it clearly. Thanks to Arms Control Wonk for pointing this out. (KMZ file on the site.)

Wes Anderson retrospective at the Aero

There is a Wes Anderson retrospective at American Cinematheque's Aero theatre this week. I went to see The Royal Tenenbaums this evening. It's a quirky (Hollywood technical term) story of a dysfunctional family, and boy could I relate to it. I'm sorry I didn't see it before my dad died, but I'm glad I didn't see it when it came out. That is, I don't think I could have handled seeing it before last Thanksgiving, but I wish I'd seen it between then and when he died.

Mod Blog, or modding the blog

Woohoo!

I used the Blogger Help Link (in the link below, named "Link") to figure out how to modify this blog's template so as to add the Link button that you (hopefully) can see.

As I slowly learn html, this is a small but pleasing step in the process. (And I did make a copy of the original template before modifying it.)

EOL

One of these days I will write about my father's death.

One good Marine; or how the ethnic media doesn't know its own stories

Twice today I've heard stories on National Public Radio criticizing the lack of mention of Latino soldiers in the new Ken Burns documentary about WWII. The first was on Morning Edition by Richard Gonzales, and the second was by Adolfo Guzman Lopez on KPCC (local Pasadena college radio).

The interview some living WW2 latino vets, talk about some guys who died both in Europe and the Pacific, and then talk about the contribution made by the ethnic group, with the strong implication being that their ethnic group is being slighted by being left out of the movie. Which is fair enough. Burns ought to have mentioned them, if only to mention the one guy that neither Gonzales nor Guzman Lopez mentioned, and who is arguably the biggest hero of the PTO - Guy Gabaldon.

I think that there is some irony in that in neither reporter appears to know the history. Gabaldon was personally responsible for taking over 1,000 Japanese prisoners on Saipan, many of them soldiers but some also women and children. Which means he saved all those lives, as well as the (literally) uncountable lives of US Marines who would have had to fight against those Japanese soldiers if they had not been persuaded by Gabaldon to surrender.

To add a little bitterness to the irony of these Latino trying to build a little racism into a scenario where it was part of the circumstance of the time, Gabaldon's case was one of pure racism. Here is a guy who rescues himself from a very bad situation, and uses his own skills of language and social engineering to save at least a thousand people. And he does this against the orders of his commanders, but with his buddies who also go against orders because they see the benefit to everybody. And then when a higher officer nominated Gabaldon for the MoH, an officer above him refused - and that refusal was purely out of racism.

That is the story that Ken Burns should have told to include a Latino; and that is the story that Gonzales and Guzman Lopez should have told also.

Solar Power Conference 2007

Going to Solar Power Conference 2007 in Long Beach on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of next week. My hoped-for itinerary is here. Am trying to see talks that are relevant to managing a business in the solar industry.

Serious Back Pain

I have had chronic but intermittent bad to serious to severe back pain for thirty years now. It returned last Sunday night. I was sitting in the easy chair (known to be dangerous for my back) for much of the day. A little after 10 PM I got up to put the laptop back on the desk and got a flash of server pain in the same place I always get the pain. It almost dropped me to the floor. In fact I would have gone down but for the expensive equipment in my hands.

I had a very difficult night, and was barely able to get out of bed in the morning. There was no way I could go to work. In fact, I was not able to go to work any day this week.

Web 2.0 and stock watching

When my dad died I received a small inheritance from his IRA. It had been all invested in (bad) index funds (see below). I let those ride for 90 days and then sold them. While I had them though, I tracked them manually with Yahoo Finance and Google Docs, by setting up a spreadsheet which calculated the net change month to month of each, and the annualized change. I had to enter the monthly prices of each for the spreadsheet to do the calculation though.

I just discovered Google's Finance blog, which appears to have code that will automate that process (and probably more). It's Web 2.0 also. So it's an opportunity for me to play with one technique to help me track and learn something else. (Not that I've replaced the sold index funds with anything else at this point.)

Better Living Through Chemistry

Last night I was able to help Chuck Goolsbee with a little advice about his home chemistry program for converting waste vegetable oil to usable oil for diesel engines. Thanks for the nice compliment!