So, I promised a post on the Late Triassic Mass Extinction. It's still in the state that I talked of on Thursday. A lot has happened since then. My wife had her wisdom tooth pulled and...we were in a car accident. Right after the tooth pulling. All of us were in the car. No one was hurt, save Lyuda's car. And the other woman's car. I'll post more soon.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Whew!
Late Triassic Mass Extinction post is all written. Pix included. Need to just do a bit of addition for the sources, but that will come later tonight. I am happy with it. I wish I had more time, but think I'm getting a bit burned on this post. It'll be ready for Saturday's Boneyard.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Global Warming Round Up
I have a few links on climate change. Rather than do a self-spamming of the blog...
As the climate models have been predicting, the tropical rainfall, as a whole, has been increasing. Overall it has increased in the tropical areas 5%, but in Africa as a whole its decreased. (red above is the highest point of the spectrum and purple is the lowest). The tropics are not the only places getting dumped on. Ireland is reporting an increase in rainfall related to global warming. Should I be considering importing redwoods there? I think I'll stick to doing that in Greenland though.
Changing our time frames, a group of British researchers think that we are postponing the end of this interglacial. If we burn 1000 gigatons of carbon based fuels (specifically fossil fuels), then they think we'll skip the next glacial cycle. Furthermore, they say, we'll skip the next five if we burn 3000 gigatons. Interestingly, one of the juicy bits from Under a Green Sky that I hinted at is that Ward thinks we're headed to the Eocene[1] and right out of the glacial cycles altogether. Truthfully, I am somewhat inclined to agree, but that's due to a gut feeling rather than hard data. The paleoclimate guys seem to think that breaking out of the glacial cycle is a done deal if I am not misunderstanding what I've read.
Additionally, over on Real Climate, they have some projections of the near future for the regional climate changes that are expected. Africa is just in for a world of hurt, no matter who you talk to. :(
1. Sorry, no Neo-Oligocene, James, but fret not, the paleo climate guys in general think the Pliocene prior to the Ice Age is more likely than the Eocene. As noted before and will be in the future, I quoth Pielou: climate doesn't repeat; it's unique every single time.
As the climate models have been predicting, the tropical rainfall, as a whole, has been increasing. Overall it has increased in the tropical areas 5%, but in Africa as a whole its decreased. (red above is the highest point of the spectrum and purple is the lowest). The tropics are not the only places getting dumped on. Ireland is reporting an increase in rainfall related to global warming. Should I be considering importing redwoods there? I think I'll stick to doing that in Greenland though.
Changing our time frames, a group of British researchers think that we are postponing the end of this interglacial. If we burn 1000 gigatons of carbon based fuels (specifically fossil fuels), then they think we'll skip the next glacial cycle. Furthermore, they say, we'll skip the next five if we burn 3000 gigatons. Interestingly, one of the juicy bits from Under a Green Sky that I hinted at is that Ward thinks we're headed to the Eocene[1] and right out of the glacial cycles altogether. Truthfully, I am somewhat inclined to agree, but that's due to a gut feeling rather than hard data. The paleoclimate guys seem to think that breaking out of the glacial cycle is a done deal if I am not misunderstanding what I've read.
Additionally, over on Real Climate, they have some projections of the near future for the regional climate changes that are expected. Africa is just in for a world of hurt, no matter who you talk to. :(
1. Sorry, no Neo-Oligocene, James, but fret not, the paleo climate guys in general think the Pliocene prior to the Ice Age is more likely than the Eocene. As noted before and will be in the future, I quoth Pielou: climate doesn't repeat; it's unique every single time.
Some bits on the Eocene Ocean & PETM Extinction
I finished reading Under a Green Sky by Dr Peter D Ward. It's an interesting book, but not as deep as his other latest one that I read, Out of Thin Air. This has more travelogue and discussion of the see-sawing on the Permian Extinction's announcements - Becker et al vs most everyone else on the Permian Extinction root cause and mechanism, frex - and other bits of paleo historia. However, it does have a lot of good bits that are well worth reading.
One of those good bits is the chapter on the Eocene called "The Overlooked Extinction." More specifically it's really about the PETM and the associated extinctions. He goes on to link a flood basalt eruption to the PETM kick off: the Brito-Arctic Province I believe is the one he's fingering. He paints a picture of the chain of events that are a lot like the Permian Mass Extinction but on a much smaller scale. I find the evidence as presented as interesting and possibly compelling, but as with other extinction events, I think it's premature to say that there's a Grand Unified Mass Extinction Theory[1].
However, there is an interesting bit that seems to have come out of the research on the PETM and more specifically the Eocene Oceans. Doug Muir once commented that the water column for the Eocene Ocean was warm, damn warm from top to bottom (Doug, was this on HDTD, SHWI, or here somewhere? I can't seem to find it!). It wasn't quite as warm as the ocean surface temperatures in the Permian, but the Permian had uber stratified oceans, so the depths were colder. This contrasts with the PETM oceans. They were warm and not stratified, at least vertically. The mixing - from top to bottom - still happened, but in a way that seems wrong to those of us that grew up with our oceans and their circulation.
It seems that there were cold provinces - if I may use that word here - in the Arctic and Antarctic. However, they were more like cool provinces since they were ice free as far as we can tell (-1.5 C is the average temperature recorded for the Arctic waters at this point). Whereas the tropical surface temperatures were approximately 8 C. To a lay person, this would seem to say that the oceans would have a normal circulation albeit a sluggish one due to the smaller differential. However, the reality is that it had a completely opposite direction than our own.
Our oceans have the warm waters sweep to the north and then get cold and sink. The water then flows along the ocean basins and upwells in the tropics where it is once again heated and sent back to the north and south. This keeps the waters oxygenated and the bottoms of the oceans from becoming anoxic. Mostly. However, during the PETM it seems that the oceans had the opposite pattern. The upwelling was in the higher latitudes and the sinking was in the tropics. The reason being is that the water evaporation of the very warm tropical waters would produce very salty water which would sink and displace the cooler waters of the south and north along the top to the tropics by upwelling at the mid-latitudes or Arctic depending on the model used. If the warm bottom waters upwelled in the mid-latitudes that means that Arctic and Antarctic Seas might have been isolated in terms of water circulation...which is interesting. In my mind, it almost gives the ocean current circulation a model that looks like how the atmospheric circulation looks today.
That's interesting, very interesting, and has a lot of implications. I haven't thought them through as yet: the PETM and it's associated extinction are so far down pipeline that it might not ever see the light of day. However, if you guys have some thoughts be sure to post (*cough*doug*cough*carlos*cough*Zach*cough*Brian*cough*) Since I finished Ward's book and found it worthwhile I thought I'd share it. I've done so before and I'll do it again. There are some other juicy bits in there as well, but this one came up first. Now I have to get the Late Triassic Extinction rewrite done (Open Office core dumped yesterday's work) and clear up some bits with work. Woo.
1. I am going to have to do a post on why I find GUMETs annoying at some point. While we are making progress in that direction, I'm unconvinced we've arrived there whatsoever.
One of those good bits is the chapter on the Eocene called "The Overlooked Extinction." More specifically it's really about the PETM and the associated extinctions. He goes on to link a flood basalt eruption to the PETM kick off: the Brito-Arctic Province I believe is the one he's fingering. He paints a picture of the chain of events that are a lot like the Permian Mass Extinction but on a much smaller scale. I find the evidence as presented as interesting and possibly compelling, but as with other extinction events, I think it's premature to say that there's a Grand Unified Mass Extinction Theory[1].
However, there is an interesting bit that seems to have come out of the research on the PETM and more specifically the Eocene Oceans. Doug Muir once commented that the water column for the Eocene Ocean was warm, damn warm from top to bottom (Doug, was this on HDTD, SHWI, or here somewhere? I can't seem to find it!). It wasn't quite as warm as the ocean surface temperatures in the Permian, but the Permian had uber stratified oceans, so the depths were colder. This contrasts with the PETM oceans. They were warm and not stratified, at least vertically. The mixing - from top to bottom - still happened, but in a way that seems wrong to those of us that grew up with our oceans and their circulation.
It seems that there were cold provinces - if I may use that word here - in the Arctic and Antarctic. However, they were more like cool provinces since they were ice free as far as we can tell (-1.5 C is the average temperature recorded for the Arctic waters at this point). Whereas the tropical surface temperatures were approximately 8 C. To a lay person, this would seem to say that the oceans would have a normal circulation albeit a sluggish one due to the smaller differential. However, the reality is that it had a completely opposite direction than our own.
Our oceans have the warm waters sweep to the north and then get cold and sink. The water then flows along the ocean basins and upwells in the tropics where it is once again heated and sent back to the north and south. This keeps the waters oxygenated and the bottoms of the oceans from becoming anoxic. Mostly. However, during the PETM it seems that the oceans had the opposite pattern. The upwelling was in the higher latitudes and the sinking was in the tropics. The reason being is that the water evaporation of the very warm tropical waters would produce very salty water which would sink and displace the cooler waters of the south and north along the top to the tropics by upwelling at the mid-latitudes or Arctic depending on the model used. If the warm bottom waters upwelled in the mid-latitudes that means that Arctic and Antarctic Seas might have been isolated in terms of water circulation...which is interesting. In my mind, it almost gives the ocean current circulation a model that looks like how the atmospheric circulation looks today.
That's interesting, very interesting, and has a lot of implications. I haven't thought them through as yet: the PETM and it's associated extinction are so far down pipeline that it might not ever see the light of day. However, if you guys have some thoughts be sure to post (*cough*doug*cough*carlos*cough*Zach*cough*Brian*cough*) Since I finished Ward's book and found it worthwhile I thought I'd share it. I've done so before and I'll do it again. There are some other juicy bits in there as well, but this one came up first. Now I have to get the Late Triassic Extinction rewrite done (Open Office core dumped yesterday's work) and clear up some bits with work. Woo.
1. I am going to have to do a post on why I find GUMETs annoying at some point. While we are making progress in that direction, I'm unconvinced we've arrived there whatsoever.
I Think The Defense Backfired
It appears that chemical warfare has been around a lot longer than poison arrows, mustard gas or nerve weapons – about 100 million years, give or take a little.
A new study by researchers at Oregon State University has identified a soldier beetle, preserved almost perfectly in amber, which was in the process of using chemical repellants to fight off an attacker when an oozing flow of sap preserved the struggle for eternity.
The discovery is the earliest fossil record of a chemical defense response, scientists say, and indicates that this type of protective mechanism – now common in the insect world and among other animal species – has been around for more than 100 million years. It’s a sophisticated form of defense that clearly was in good working order while dinosaurs still roamed the Earth.
The findings were just published in the Journal of Chemical Ecology.
“The chance of these circumstances all coming together at the exact right second was pretty slim,” said George Poinar, Jr., a courtesy professor of zoology at OSU and one of the world’s leading experts on distant life forms preserved in amber. “You have a prehistoric insect being attacked, using its defenses to ward off the predator and the whole event becoming captured in action as sap flowed down a tree. It’s quite remarkable.”
The beetle was a small insect, about one-quarter inch long, which may have been in the process of becoming lunch for a giant roach or some other larger insect that apparently was 2-3 inches long, judging by the length of an antenna from the other insect also found in the specimen. The other insect either escaped the sap or was preserved in a different piece of amber, in these samples of Burmese amber that came from the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar.
“This particular insect is now extinct, but the broader family of soldier beetles still exists, and they still use this same type of chemical defense mechanism,” Poinar said. “That this type of defense has been preserved through 100 million years of evolution is evidence that it works pretty well.”
At the time of this event in the Early Cretaceous Period, huge animals such as dinosaurs still dominated the Earth, but scurrying beneath them were early mammals and large numbers of terrestrial invertebrates, such as these insects. Soldier beetles, then as now, were omnivores that lived on things like aphids, other tiny insects or plant pollen. Among other things, this finding pushes back the known existence of this type of beetle by about 60 million years. And at that distant time, they had already evolved ways to defend themselves.
“This beetle was able to exude a sticky chemical substance that was irritating to potential predators, and caused them to go away or leave it alone,” Poinar said. “It could even conserve its excretions and control the direction of the defense; in other words, produce the substance only on its left rear side if that was where the attack was coming from.”
Major kewlness factor there.
Stumbled Upon
I was out looking for a graph on Raup's Kill Curve for asteroid impacts and found this instead.
Amateurs!
We did far more impressive things to people in Los Alamos when I was a teenager.
*look of digust*
;)
*look of digust*
;)
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
How Immigration Effects US Cities
In the past 25 years immigration has re-emerged as a driving force in the size and composition of U.S. cities. This paper describes the effects of immigration on overall population growth and the skill composition of cities, focusing on the connection between immigrant inflows and the relative number of less-skilled workers in the local population. The labor market impacts of immigrant arrivals can be offset by outflows of natives and earlier generations of immigrants. Empirically, however, these offsetting flows are small, so most cities with higher rates of immigration have experienced overall population growth and a rising share of the less-skilled. These supply shifts are associated with a modest widening of the wage gap between more- and less-skilled natives, coupled with a positive effect on average native wages. Beyond the labor market, immigrant arrivals also affect rents and housing prices, government revenues and expenses, and the composition of neighborhoods and schools. The effect on rents is the same magnitude as the effect on average wages, implying that the average “rent burden” (the ratio of rents to incomes) is roughly constant. The local fiscal effects of increased immigration also appear to be relatively small. The neighborhood and school externalities posed by the presence of low-income and minority families may be larger, and may be a key factor in understanding native reactions to immigration.
Found via The Economist's View.
Major problem for Ukraine now is to preserve territorial integrity
“Today, the question is not on the agenda whether Ukraine can become a part of any other state. Today, the question is whether the Ukrainian territorial integrity will be maintained. In this case, independence and threat acquire a kind of another meaning. For instance, many people believe that involvement of Ukraine into NATO is a threat to Ukraine’s independence. Others, on the contrary, think that if Ukraine remains outside NATO, it will fall under Russia’s influence again. There are many different notions,” the analyst concluded.
Oy. Thinking about what he just said makes my brain hurt.
First off, joining NATO doesn't make you not independent from anyone. For Chrissakes! If someone were to tell the French that they were an American sock puppet, first they'd be insulted rather badly and then mocked to the extreme! To take it even further, which I have heard from Ukrainians multiple times, joining NATO doesn't make you a colony of the United States either.
Unfortunately, there is a lingering xenophobic world view in Ukraine. They feel that The West, especially the United States and NATO, are out to kill them - not kidding here - or make them into a colony on the order of what the Europeans did in Africa or we did in the Philippines. The fact of the matter is that we don't want that. That we never wanted anything even remotely like that for Ukraine. However, a large number of their leaders and their managers have been beating that drum rather effectively. Blend that liberally with the automatic fear of things of the West that underlies a lot of their culture already because of the undispellable - understandably so - ghost of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. After all, they fell from an okay standard of living to a bit of crushing poverty...and this was the work of the West. Or so Western triumphantalists, Ukrainian wishers for the return of the Soviet Union say and Russian nationalists say. Its a vicious bit of work and would seem that its self feeding with little hope of escape. Yet there are a few signs that this hard shell is beginning to crack.
One of the more amusing bits that is driving this break is that there have been some Western companies that have been taking over local businesses. Banks are a good example. Another was the sale of that large steel company to the Dutch conglomerate. It turns out that some relatives of mine - by marriage - work there. For years, their managers had been telling them that the workers had better be glad that their company had Ukrainian owners because Westerners would fire all the workers and sell all the equipment to make a profit - something that a lot of privateers essentially did during the attempt to move from the state controlled economy to capitalism after the Fall of the Soviet Union - and so the workers better work twice as hard and twice as long with minuscule, irregular pay because there was no light at the end of the rainbow. On the contrary, it was a crocodile beneath their feet!!! Then came Yushenko...
As part of the Orange Revolution, they ripped the company from the Ukrainian owners because the deal smacked of cronyism and corruption. They put it back up for bid and sold it to the Dutch. The Ukrainians I knew expected that the world would end for the workers. On the contrary, according to the inside source here, they love the changes! The pay is higher and comes on time as promised. The crazy hours are done. The management is no longer acting as though they are Darth Vader's little Slavic understudies.
His one comment as he related it to my mother-in-law was: Why the hell didn't they do it sooner??? And when are they going to resell all the other big businesses?!?
Cracks are definitely showing.
Yet Another Memetic Virus
I blame Brian and Zach for this one...
Three things in my fridge that define life right now:
1. My wife and daughter's lunch. Every night or morning, if I am unlucky and too preoccupied the night before, I make lunch for my daughter, wife, and myself. My wife is banging her head against the wall of ESLdom and weird profs at her college and my daughter - being 2 and a 1/2 - is still to young to really help out, so I am left doing the food prep. That extends to breakfast and dinner, btw.
2. JUICE! We consume juice like we use it instead of air. We often go to Trader Joe's and pick up a good 7 gallons at a time and this covers us for about two weeks...if we're lucky. Keep in mind, based on what our Doctor told us, we are watering down the juice for Avrora: it's only 25% juice and the rest is old fashioned water. She still sucks down 1/3 a gallon of juice per day. Which means she is drinking 1 1/3 gallons of juice/water mix and a cup of milk each day.
3. Cilantro: It's a good symptom of my life. WHAT?! Let me explain, but just hold still this won't hurt. It's something that I have been long curious about - not the herb itself - but experimental cooking. Some of my NMican friends are probably still wincing in remembered pain when I tried stir frying back about 7 years ago: you just have to mumble "ginger" to them to retrigger their Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome that was only recently cured after what was probably a long road through expensive therapy. OTOH, occasionally I hit some real home runs. Chicken a la Will, as Jason calls it was one. My spaghetti was another. My salsas are yet another. However, like any good Mad Scientist there are lots of casualties dumped out the laboratory and let loose on the unsuspecting mankind.
Three recent acquisitions:
1. Books. They are political (immigration mostly), deep time, and history related.
2. A Microscope. For my wife on her birthday. Being an up and coming bio type, it seemed like a good idea. Besides, she wanted it.
3. tickets to hawaii. We'll be there over Turkey Day.
Three classics I reach for every day:
1. Books. I read every down moment I have which isn't much. This includes walking to and from the parking garage, the few moments after putting my daughter in bed, or when I am cooking and the pot needs stirring, but I can't get away. I even read when I am at the gym: either in a treadmill or exercise bike or between sets on weights.
2. The Tivo remote. I do stomach crunches every day. I actually do between five hundred and two thousand depending on the amount of time I have. I'm a classic Gen Xer so I need constant mental stimulation. Doing exercise is, frankly, BORING with a blink tag. Stomach crunches are accompanied by a movie, show, or some such. It's close to the only TV I get these days.
3. My family. Hugs and kisses and tickles and general affection keeps my mood up even when I am frustrated and lances any festering anger or unhappiness if I am frustrated with something...which happens alot.
My kids right now, in three words or less:
Brilliant, Beautiful Weed.
My sweetie right now, in three words or less:
Beautiful, Aggressive, Crafty.
What's on my to-do list:
Too much. White & academic papers to read and comment on. A uber long blog post to finish for the Boneyard. A design document to finish. A project at work to reinvigorate.
What I'm listening to right now:
nada. I need to remember to bring an ipod to work. My puter has issues for playing music at the moment.
What I'm worried about right now:
Family. Not my immediate family, but my wife's and my own extended one.
Which news stories I'm following right now:
Immigration related. Global Warming Related. International Relations Related (esp wrt to Ukraine and Russia since it effects family). Presidential Election Related.
What I'm reading right now:
The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science.
What I'm looking forward to right now:
A Date with My Wife. I have a coworker that is offering to babysit Avrora since I stayed late when I was not supposed to to help her with a problem at work that I had some idea on how to fix: being one of the GPFS people here and she was getting whacked by confused fs mgr by didn't realize it. So, Lyuda and I are planning to go out to dinner and either catch something of the fine arts - opera, ballet, or symphony - or go to a movie depending on the time we have.
A thought I keep returning to right now:
I need more hours in a day.
One small thing that's making me happy right now:
Seeing my daughter run up to me, demand to sit on my lap, wrap her arms around me and tell me: "Papa, I love you."
Three things in my fridge that define life right now:
1. My wife and daughter's lunch. Every night or morning, if I am unlucky and too preoccupied the night before, I make lunch for my daughter, wife, and myself. My wife is banging her head against the wall of ESLdom and weird profs at her college and my daughter - being 2 and a 1/2 - is still to young to really help out, so I am left doing the food prep. That extends to breakfast and dinner, btw.
2. JUICE! We consume juice like we use it instead of air. We often go to Trader Joe's and pick up a good 7 gallons at a time and this covers us for about two weeks...if we're lucky. Keep in mind, based on what our Doctor told us, we are watering down the juice for Avrora: it's only 25% juice and the rest is old fashioned water. She still sucks down 1/3 a gallon of juice per day. Which means she is drinking 1 1/3 gallons of juice/water mix and a cup of milk each day.
3. Cilantro: It's a good symptom of my life. WHAT?! Let me explain, but just hold still this won't hurt. It's something that I have been long curious about - not the herb itself - but experimental cooking. Some of my NMican friends are probably still wincing in remembered pain when I tried stir frying back about 7 years ago: you just have to mumble "ginger" to them to retrigger their Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome that was only recently cured after what was probably a long road through expensive therapy. OTOH, occasionally I hit some real home runs. Chicken a la Will, as Jason calls it was one. My spaghetti was another. My salsas are yet another. However, like any good Mad Scientist there are lots of casualties dumped out the laboratory and let loose on the unsuspecting mankind.
Three recent acquisitions:
1. Books. They are political (immigration mostly), deep time, and history related.
2. A Microscope. For my wife on her birthday. Being an up and coming bio type, it seemed like a good idea. Besides, she wanted it.
3. tickets to hawaii. We'll be there over Turkey Day.
Three classics I reach for every day:
1. Books. I read every down moment I have which isn't much. This includes walking to and from the parking garage, the few moments after putting my daughter in bed, or when I am cooking and the pot needs stirring, but I can't get away. I even read when I am at the gym: either in a treadmill or exercise bike or between sets on weights.
2. The Tivo remote. I do stomach crunches every day. I actually do between five hundred and two thousand depending on the amount of time I have. I'm a classic Gen Xer so I need constant mental stimulation. Doing exercise is, frankly, BORING with a blink tag. Stomach crunches are accompanied by a movie, show, or some such. It's close to the only TV I get these days.
3. My family. Hugs and kisses and tickles and general affection keeps my mood up even when I am frustrated and lances any festering anger or unhappiness if I am frustrated with something...which happens alot.
My kids right now, in three words or less:
Brilliant, Beautiful Weed.
My sweetie right now, in three words or less:
Beautiful, Aggressive, Crafty.
What's on my to-do list:
Too much. White & academic papers to read and comment on. A uber long blog post to finish for the Boneyard. A design document to finish. A project at work to reinvigorate.
What I'm listening to right now:
nada. I need to remember to bring an ipod to work. My puter has issues for playing music at the moment.
What I'm worried about right now:
Family. Not my immediate family, but my wife's and my own extended one.
Which news stories I'm following right now:
Immigration related. Global Warming Related. International Relations Related (esp wrt to Ukraine and Russia since it effects family). Presidential Election Related.
What I'm reading right now:
The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science.
What I'm looking forward to right now:
A Date with My Wife. I have a coworker that is offering to babysit Avrora since I stayed late when I was not supposed to to help her with a problem at work that I had some idea on how to fix: being one of the GPFS people here and she was getting whacked by confused fs mgr by didn't realize it. So, Lyuda and I are planning to go out to dinner and either catch something of the fine arts - opera, ballet, or symphony - or go to a movie depending on the time we have.
A thought I keep returning to right now:
I need more hours in a day.
One small thing that's making me happy right now:
Seeing my daughter run up to me, demand to sit on my lap, wrap her arms around me and tell me: "Papa, I love you."
Sunday, August 26, 2007
What Book Am I?
You're Jurassic Park!
by Michael Crichton
You combine all the elements of a mad scientist, a brash philosopher, a humble researcher, and a money-hungry attracter of tourists. With all these features, you could build something monumental or get chased around by your own demons. Probably both, in fact. A movie based on your life would make millions, and spawn at least two sequels that wouldn't be very good. Be very careful around islands.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
I blame James. Making me into a bad, bad book! bah!
Friday, August 24, 2007
Weekly Updated Arctic Sea Ice Information
The link aboveis going to be updating weekly on the sea ice extent. Worth looking at.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Timing is Everything
The text of my Late Triassic Extinction Post is done. I just needed to put in the references and footnotes. I have a pile of books in my office at work about the extinction that I could read and reference to double check everything as I wrote. With the exception of the Fraser work, one of the Hallam works, and one of the Ward's, most of my references are about ten years old. Mass extinction work is a very fast moving field. The issue is that there are only so many popular works to go through on the subject that are not KT related.
Part of the problem is that I don't have access to all the journals and I am already hurting for time: I have been reading the white papers about the Claytronics Project at CMU and trying to formulate some good questions and comments, writing up a design paper for the Usenet successor, trying to get this albatross of a project wrt work off the ground, keep this blog up, write my book, and still have a family life. Oy.
Sometimes something fortuituous happens. Sometimes it might be that, but still fscking annoying. I have been reading Ward's latest, Under A Green Sky by Peter Ward. There's a wonderful section on the Late Triassic Extinction. It will force me to rewrite chunks of my post. This is good that I read first and didn't publish here before it was done. OTOH, damnit, I'm going to have to revise my nine page in MS Word post. argh.
Better accurate than not, I s'pose since this is meant to be a Boneyard submission.
Part of the problem is that I don't have access to all the journals and I am already hurting for time: I have been reading the white papers about the Claytronics Project at CMU and trying to formulate some good questions and comments, writing up a design paper for the Usenet successor, trying to get this albatross of a project wrt work off the ground, keep this blog up, write my book, and still have a family life. Oy.
Sometimes something fortuituous happens. Sometimes it might be that, but still fscking annoying. I have been reading Ward's latest, Under A Green Sky by Peter Ward. There's a wonderful section on the Late Triassic Extinction. It will force me to rewrite chunks of my post. This is good that I read first and didn't publish here before it was done. OTOH, damnit, I'm going to have to revise my nine page in MS Word post. argh.
Better accurate than not, I s'pose since this is meant to be a Boneyard submission.
China to Lose Farmland to Global Warming too
Global warming is set to cut China's annual grain harvest by up to 10 percent by 2030, placing extra burden on its shrinking farmland, state press reported Thursday.
Zheng Guoguang, head of the State Meteorological Administration, said the impact of global warming means that China will likely need an extra 10 million hectares (247 million acres) of farmland by 2030.
The year 2030 is a key date because that is when the nation's population is expected to peak at 1.5 billion people, up from just over 1.3 billion today, requiring an extra 100 million tons of food to feed them.
"Global warming may cause the grain harvest to fall by five to 10 percent, that is by 30-50 million tons, by 2030," the China Daily quoted Zheng as saying.
[...]
Chinese authorities have issued a series of reports and studies in recent months outlining the grim impact global warming will have on the country.
Last month environmental authorities said climate change was shrinking wetlands at the source of China's two greatest rivers -- the Yangtze and the Yellow -- which had reduced water flows.
Other studies found that massive glaciers in northwestern China's Xinjiang region and in the Himalayas had been shrinking rapidly.
This would have dire consequences for much of Asia as many of the region's rivers begin in those regions.
Note, my bet is that China will have something worse based on the fact that there is a lot of evidence that makes it seem as though the climate is changing much faster than we thought it would. If China loses even more farm land, what do you want to bet the farmers in the US will definitely no longer need subsidies? Especially if we make the possibly foolish switchover to biofuels.
Deutchland Uber Mond
The latest plans for the Lunar Explorations Orbiter (LEO), a German lunar mission due for launch in 2012, will be presented on Wednesday 22nd August at the European Planetary Science Congress, Potsdam
Professor Ralf Jaumann, from the German aerospace centre DLR, said "The Lunar Explorations Orbiter will be a unique mission. It will consist of two spacecraft flying in formation and taking simultaneous measurements, which will give us the first three-dimensional view of the Moon's magnetic and gravitation field. It will also give us the first opportunity to study these fields on the far site of the Moon. In addition LEO will give us a very detailed picture of the lunar surface and also the structure of the lunar regolith, layers of crushed rocks that extend about 100 metres beneath the lunar surface, and the boundary with the bed-rock beneath."
Brits have attempted to go to Mars (well, they got there, but...) The Euros together went with the Americans to Saturn and went to Venus and the moon on their own. Now the Germans are going to the Moon! Kewl!
Say Hi to Russia's Skat
Aviation Week has a number of posts on their tour of the mockup of the new Russian Mikoyan UCAV, the Skat (skate, as in fish). Best picts are here. Note: it is not a flying prototype. It's at the same point as the Kliper was and is. I think this will move along further than the Kliper though. This is a military project, not a company's wishful thinking. OTOH, Russia's got serious quality control issues and there has been speculation in the press that soon Russia will need to start buying weapons from the West because its own military industrial complex is in terrible shape.
Ed: Just realized that this, as pronounced sounds identical to this. Perhaps not the best choice of names then.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Read this: LOT OF POKEMON CARDS THAT MY KIDS TRIED TO SNEAK BY ME
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
James, you're a bad man for bringing this to my attention.
:D
James, you're a bad man for bringing this to my attention.
:D
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