May guide to the bright planets

Coming soon! Look for the bright waxing gibbous moon to swing by the brilliant planet Jupiter on May, 6, 7 and 8. Read more.

Our yearly fund-raiser ends May 5! Please donate to help EarthSky keep going.

Rather donate via PayPal or send a check? Click here.

Three of the 5 five bright planets are easy to see in the May 2017 night sky: Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. Jupiter appears first thing at dusk and shines nearly all night long. Saturn rises into the southeast sky at mid-to-late evening and then stays out for rest of the night. Venus rises over the eastern horizon as the predawn darkness is giving way to morning dawn. Mars and Mercury present more of a challenge this month, as Mars is somewhat obscured by evening dusk and Mercury by morning dawn. Follow the links below to learn more about the planets in May 2017.

Mercury, below Venus, low in east before sunrise

Mars fading into western evening twilight

Bright Jupiter rules the nighttime

Saturn from late evening till dawn

Venus, brilliant in east at morning dawn

Like what EarthSky offers? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Astronomy events, star parties, festivals, workshops

Visit a new EarthSky feature – Best Places to Stargaze – and add your fav.

Wow! Wonderful shot of Mercury – over the Chilean Andes – January 2017, from Yuri Beletsky Nightscapes.

From northerly latitudes, Mercury is found to the lower left of the brilliant planet Venus. From the Southern Hemisphere, look for Mercury about the same distance from Venus but more directly below. Read more.

Mercury, below Venus, low in east before sunrise. When we say that Mercury is low in the east before sunrise, we’re really talking about the Northern Hemisphere. For the Southern Hemisphere, May 2017 presents the best showing of Mercury in the morning sky for the year. (For northerly latitudes, this is least favorable apparition of Mercury in the morning sky in 2017.) For much of the Southern Hemisphere, Mercury actually comes up before dawn’s first light all month long; in the Northern Hemisphere, Mercury rises a short while before sunrise and sits low in the glare of morning twilight throughout May 2017.

Mercury is tricky. If you look too soon before sunrise, Mercury will still be below the horizon; if you look too late, it will obscured by the morning twilight. Watch for Mercury low in the sky, and near the sunrise point on the horizon, being mindful of Mercury’s rising time.

Binoculars are always helpful for any Mercury search. Use them to scan along the eastern horizon until a starlike point – deep in the twilight – comes into view. Mercury is bright, but it’s always near the sunset or sunrise. Thus you have to search for it.

If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, this is your month! A super apparition of Mercury take places in the morning sky throughout May of 2017.

Watch for the slender waning crescent moon to pair up with Mercury on or near May 23.

Click here for recommended almanacs; they can give you Mercury’s rising time in your sky.

Let the young moon guide you to Mars’ place in the sky on May 26 and 27. You may need binoculars to see Mars in the glare of evening twilight. Read more.

Mars fading into western evening twilight. After appearing as a fiery red light last year – in May and June 2016 – Mars is now a fading ember of its former self. Look for Mars rather low in the west as soon as darkness begins to fall. Mars is edging closer to the sunset day by day. It’ll disappear in the glare of evening dusk by June 2017.

Because Earth is traveling faster in its orbit than Mars is, Earth’s distance from Mars is increasing by the day. So there are two reasons for Mars’ disappearing act this month. Its increasing distance from Earth means Mars’ brightness is decreasing daily. Plus, Mars is setting sooner after the sun with each passing day. The fading planet is sinking closer to glare of sunset, soon to disappear from the evening sky.

From mid-northern latitudes (U.S. and Europe), look for the red planet Mars to set in the west around nightfall in early May, and a bit more than one hour after sunset by the month’s end. The same holds true for mid-southern latitudes (Australia and South Africa).

Let the waxing crescent moon help guide you to Mars on May 26. This will probably be your last chance to catch the young waxing crescent moon and Mars coupling up together in the evening sky this year. You may need binoculars to see Mars in the glow of evening dusk.

Mars won’t make its official transition from the evening to morning sky until July 27, 2017. It’ll emerge in the east before dawn in late September or October 2017. The conjunction of Mars and Venus on October 5, 2017, might well be the first time most people notice the red planet in the morning sky.

Looking for a sky almanac? EarthSky recommends…

Look for the bright waxing gibbous moon to beam close to Jupiter on May, 6, 7 and 8. Read more.

Bright Jupiter rules the nighttime. Jupiter reached opposition on April 7 and came closest to Earth for the year on April 8. Although Jupiter shone at its brightest best for all of 2017 in April, it’ll still be blazing away in May! Jupiter beams as the third-brightest celestial body in the nighttime sky, after the moon and Venus. Yet Jupiter shines from dusk until the wee hours of the morning whereas Venus only appears in the morning sky. In fact, this month will find Jupiter setting in the west at roughly the same time that Venus rises in the east.

Click here for an almanac telling you Jupiter’s setting time and Venus’ rising time in your sky.

Watch for a bright waxing gibbous moon to join up with Jupiter for several days, centered on or near May 6. See the above sky chart. Wonderful sight!

From around the world, Jupiter appears in the east to southeast sky first thing at dusk. It crosses the sky during the night, to set in the west to southwest at or near dawn.

Jupiter shines in front of the constellation Virgo, near Virgo’s sole 1st-magnitude star, Spica.

Fernando Roquel Torres in Caguas, Puerto Rico captured Jupiter, the Great Red Spot (GRS) and all 4 of its largest moons – the Galilean satellites – on the date of Jupiter’s 2017 opposition (April 7).

If you have binoculars or a telescope, it’s fairly easy to see Jupiter’s four major moons, which look like pinpricks of light on or near the same plane. They are often called the Galilean moons to honor Galileo, who discovered these great Jovian moons in 1610. In their order from Jupiter, these moons are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

These moons circle Jupiter around the Jovian equator. In cycles of six years, we view Jupiter’s equator edge-on. So, in 2015, we got to view a number of mutual events involving Jupiter’s moons through a high-powered telescope. Click here or here or here for more details.

Although Jupiter’s axial tilt is only 3^o out of perpendicular relative to the ecliptic (Earth’s orbital plane), Jupiter’s axis will tilt enough toward the sun and Earth so that the farthest of these four moons, Callisto, won’t pass in front of Jupiter or behind Jupiter for a period of about three years, starting in late 2016. During this approximate 3-year period, Callisto will remain “perpetually” visible, alternately swinging “above” and “below” Jupiter.

Click here for a Jupiter’s moons almanac, courtesy of Sky & Telescope.

Watch for the waning gibbous moon to pass close to the star Antares and the planet Saturn on May 11, 12 and 13. Read more.

Saturn from late evening till dawn. Saturn is getting close to its June 15 opposition and is now appearing the evening sky.

From mid-northern latitudes, Saturn rises in the southeast sky somewhere around 10 to 11 p.m. local time (11 p.m. to midnight daylight-saving time) in early May 2017. By the month’s end, Saturn is up by late dusk or nightfall.

At temperate latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, Saturn rises around mid-evening (8:30 to 9:30 p.m. local time), and by the month’s end, Saturn rises at late dusk or nightfall.

But your best view of Saturn, from either the Northern or Southern Hemisphere, is still during the wee hours before dawn. That’s when Saturn climbs highest up for the night. Click here to find out Saturn’s transit time (when Saturn soars highest up for the night).

Be sure to let the waning crescent moon guide you to Saturn (and the nearby star Antares) for several days, centered on or near May 13.

Saturn, the farthest world that you can easily view with the eye alone, appears golden in color. It shines with a steady light.

Binoculars don’t reveal Saturn’s gorgeous rings, by the way, although binoculars will enhance Saturn’s golden color. To see the rings, you need a small telescope. A telescope will also reveal one or more of Saturn’s many moons, most notably Titan.

Saturn’s rings are inclined at nearly 27^o from edge-on, exhibiting their northern face. In October 2017, the rings will open most widely, displaying a maximum inclination of 27^o.

As with so much in space (and on Earth), the appearance of Saturn’s rings from Earth is cyclical. In the year 2025, the rings will appear edge-on as seen from Earth. After that, we’ll begin to see the south side of Saturn’s rings, to increase to a maximum inclination of 27^o by May 2032.

Click here for recommended almanacs; they can help you know when the planets rise, transit and set in your sky.

Jenney Disimon in Sabah, Borneo captured Venus before dawn on April 8, 2017.

Watch for the waning crescent moon to swing by Venus on the mornings of May 21, 22 and 23. Read more.

Venus, brilliant in east at morning dawn In the first three weeks of March 2017, Venus shone in the west after sunset. In late March, Venus entered our morning sky, passing between the sun and Earth on March 25. Venus then reached its greatest illuminated extent in the morning sky on April 30. This dazzling world will still be at or near its peak brilliance as the morning “star” in early May 2017.

So it’s brightest in the morning sky in late April and early May, but … Venus is always brilliant and beautiful, the brightest celestial body to light up our sky besides the sun and moon. If you’re an early bird, you can count on Venus to be your morning companion for many months to come.

Enjoy the picturesque coupling of the waning crescent moon and Venus in the eastern sky before sunrise on or near May 22.

From mid-northern latitudes (U.S. and Europe), Venus rises nearly two hours before sunrise in early May, and by the month’s end, Venus comes up a little more than two hours before the sun.

At mid-southern latitudes (Australia and South Africa), Venus rises about about 3 hours before sunup in early May, and by the end of the month, it comes up nearly 4 hours before sunrise. Venus and Mercury both rise much sooner before the sun in the Southern Hemisphere than they do in the Northern Hemisphere.

Click here for an almanac giving rising time of Venus and Mercury in your sky.

The chart below helps to illustrate why we sometimes see Venus in the evening, and sometimes before dawn.

The Earth and Venus orbit the sun counterclockwise as seen from earthly north. When Venus is to the east (left) of the Earth-sun line, we see Venus as an evening “star” in the west after sunset. After Venus reaches its inferior conjunction, Venus then moves to the west (right) of the Earth-sun line, appearing as a morning “star” in the east before sunrise.

This month, Jupiter will set in the west at roughly the same time that Venus rises in the east. Next month, in June, Jupiter will set in the west before Venus rises in the east.

What do we mean by bright planet? By bright planet, we mean any solar system planet that is easily visible without an optical aid and that has been watched by our ancestors since time immemorial. In their outward order from the sun, the five bright planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These planets actually do appear bright in our sky. They are typically as bright as – or brighter than – the brightest stars. Plus, these relatively nearby worlds tend to shine with a steadier light than the distant, twinkling stars. You can spot them, and come to know them as faithful friends, if you try.

This image is from February 8, 2016. It shows all 5 bright planets at once. Photo by our friend Eliot Herman in Tucson, Arizona.

Skywatcher, by Predrag Agatonovic.

Bottom line: In May 2017, three of the five bright planets appear in the evening sky: Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Venus and Mercury are found exclusively in the morning sky.

Don’t miss anything. Subscribe to EarthSky News by email

Enjoy knowing where to look in the night sky? Please donate to help EarthSky keep going.

Rather donate via PayPal or send a check? Click here.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/IJfHCr

Coming soon! Look for the bright waxing gibbous moon to swing by the brilliant planet Jupiter on May, 6, 7 and 8. Read more.

Our yearly fund-raiser ends May 5! Please donate to help EarthSky keep going.

Rather donate via PayPal or send a check? Click here.

Three of the 5 five bright planets are easy to see in the May 2017 night sky: Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. Jupiter appears first thing at dusk and shines nearly all night long. Saturn rises into the southeast sky at mid-to-late evening and then stays out for rest of the night. Venus rises over the eastern horizon as the predawn darkness is giving way to morning dawn. Mars and Mercury present more of a challenge this month, as Mars is somewhat obscured by evening dusk and Mercury by morning dawn. Follow the links below to learn more about the planets in May 2017.

Mercury, below Venus, low in east before sunrise

Mars fading into western evening twilight

Bright Jupiter rules the nighttime

Saturn from late evening till dawn

Venus, brilliant in east at morning dawn

Like what EarthSky offers? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Astronomy events, star parties, festivals, workshops

Visit a new EarthSky feature – Best Places to Stargaze – and add your fav.

Wow! Wonderful shot of Mercury – over the Chilean Andes – January 2017, from Yuri Beletsky Nightscapes.

From northerly latitudes, Mercury is found to the lower left of the brilliant planet Venus. From the Southern Hemisphere, look for Mercury about the same distance from Venus but more directly below. Read more.

Mercury, below Venus, low in east before sunrise. When we say that Mercury is low in the east before sunrise, we’re really talking about the Northern Hemisphere. For the Southern Hemisphere, May 2017 presents the best showing of Mercury in the morning sky for the year. (For northerly latitudes, this is least favorable apparition of Mercury in the morning sky in 2017.) For much of the Southern Hemisphere, Mercury actually comes up before dawn’s first light all month long; in the Northern Hemisphere, Mercury rises a short while before sunrise and sits low in the glare of morning twilight throughout May 2017.

Mercury is tricky. If you look too soon before sunrise, Mercury will still be below the horizon; if you look too late, it will obscured by the morning twilight. Watch for Mercury low in the sky, and near the sunrise point on the horizon, being mindful of Mercury’s rising time.

Binoculars are always helpful for any Mercury search. Use them to scan along the eastern horizon until a starlike point – deep in the twilight – comes into view. Mercury is bright, but it’s always near the sunset or sunrise. Thus you have to search for it.

If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, this is your month! A super apparition of Mercury take places in the morning sky throughout May of 2017.

Watch for the slender waning crescent moon to pair up with Mercury on or near May 23.

Click here for recommended almanacs; they can give you Mercury’s rising time in your sky.

Let the young moon guide you to Mars’ place in the sky on May 26 and 27. You may need binoculars to see Mars in the glare of evening twilight. Read more.

Mars fading into western evening twilight. After appearing as a fiery red light last year – in May and June 2016 – Mars is now a fading ember of its former self. Look for Mars rather low in the west as soon as darkness begins to fall. Mars is edging closer to the sunset day by day. It’ll disappear in the glare of evening dusk by June 2017.

Because Earth is traveling faster in its orbit than Mars is, Earth’s distance from Mars is increasing by the day. So there are two reasons for Mars’ disappearing act this month. Its increasing distance from Earth means Mars’ brightness is decreasing daily. Plus, Mars is setting sooner after the sun with each passing day. The fading planet is sinking closer to glare of sunset, soon to disappear from the evening sky.

From mid-northern latitudes (U.S. and Europe), look for the red planet Mars to set in the west around nightfall in early May, and a bit more than one hour after sunset by the month’s end. The same holds true for mid-southern latitudes (Australia and South Africa).

Let the waxing crescent moon help guide you to Mars on May 26. This will probably be your last chance to catch the young waxing crescent moon and Mars coupling up together in the evening sky this year. You may need binoculars to see Mars in the glow of evening dusk.

Mars won’t make its official transition from the evening to morning sky until July 27, 2017. It’ll emerge in the east before dawn in late September or October 2017. The conjunction of Mars and Venus on October 5, 2017, might well be the first time most people notice the red planet in the morning sky.

Looking for a sky almanac? EarthSky recommends…

Look for the bright waxing gibbous moon to beam close to Jupiter on May, 6, 7 and 8. Read more.

Bright Jupiter rules the nighttime. Jupiter reached opposition on April 7 and came closest to Earth for the year on April 8. Although Jupiter shone at its brightest best for all of 2017 in April, it’ll still be blazing away in May! Jupiter beams as the third-brightest celestial body in the nighttime sky, after the moon and Venus. Yet Jupiter shines from dusk until the wee hours of the morning whereas Venus only appears in the morning sky. In fact, this month will find Jupiter setting in the west at roughly the same time that Venus rises in the east.

Click here for an almanac telling you Jupiter’s setting time and Venus’ rising time in your sky.

Watch for a bright waxing gibbous moon to join up with Jupiter for several days, centered on or near May 6. See the above sky chart. Wonderful sight!

From around the world, Jupiter appears in the east to southeast sky first thing at dusk. It crosses the sky during the night, to set in the west to southwest at or near dawn.

Jupiter shines in front of the constellation Virgo, near Virgo’s sole 1st-magnitude star, Spica.

Fernando Roquel Torres in Caguas, Puerto Rico captured Jupiter, the Great Red Spot (GRS) and all 4 of its largest moons – the Galilean satellites – on the date of Jupiter’s 2017 opposition (April 7).

If you have binoculars or a telescope, it’s fairly easy to see Jupiter’s four major moons, which look like pinpricks of light on or near the same plane. They are often called the Galilean moons to honor Galileo, who discovered these great Jovian moons in 1610. In their order from Jupiter, these moons are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

These moons circle Jupiter around the Jovian equator. In cycles of six years, we view Jupiter’s equator edge-on. So, in 2015, we got to view a number of mutual events involving Jupiter’s moons through a high-powered telescope. Click here or here or here for more details.

Although Jupiter’s axial tilt is only 3^o out of perpendicular relative to the ecliptic (Earth’s orbital plane), Jupiter’s axis will tilt enough toward the sun and Earth so that the farthest of these four moons, Callisto, won’t pass in front of Jupiter or behind Jupiter for a period of about three years, starting in late 2016. During this approximate 3-year period, Callisto will remain “perpetually” visible, alternately swinging “above” and “below” Jupiter.

Click here for a Jupiter’s moons almanac, courtesy of Sky & Telescope.

Watch for the waning gibbous moon to pass close to the star Antares and the planet Saturn on May 11, 12 and 13. Read more.

Saturn from late evening till dawn. Saturn is getting close to its June 15 opposition and is now appearing the evening sky.

From mid-northern latitudes, Saturn rises in the southeast sky somewhere around 10 to 11 p.m. local time (11 p.m. to midnight daylight-saving time) in early May 2017. By the month’s end, Saturn is up by late dusk or nightfall.

At temperate latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, Saturn rises around mid-evening (8:30 to 9:30 p.m. local time), and by the month’s end, Saturn rises at late dusk or nightfall.

But your best view of Saturn, from either the Northern or Southern Hemisphere, is still during the wee hours before dawn. That’s when Saturn climbs highest up for the night. Click here to find out Saturn’s transit time (when Saturn soars highest up for the night).

Be sure to let the waning crescent moon guide you to Saturn (and the nearby star Antares) for several days, centered on or near May 13.

Saturn, the farthest world that you can easily view with the eye alone, appears golden in color. It shines with a steady light.

Binoculars don’t reveal Saturn’s gorgeous rings, by the way, although binoculars will enhance Saturn’s golden color. To see the rings, you need a small telescope. A telescope will also reveal one or more of Saturn’s many moons, most notably Titan.

Saturn’s rings are inclined at nearly 27^o from edge-on, exhibiting their northern face. In October 2017, the rings will open most widely, displaying a maximum inclination of 27^o.

As with so much in space (and on Earth), the appearance of Saturn’s rings from Earth is cyclical. In the year 2025, the rings will appear edge-on as seen from Earth. After that, we’ll begin to see the south side of Saturn’s rings, to increase to a maximum inclination of 27^o by May 2032.

Click here for recommended almanacs; they can help you know when the planets rise, transit and set in your sky.

Jenney Disimon in Sabah, Borneo captured Venus before dawn on April 8, 2017.

Watch for the waning crescent moon to swing by Venus on the mornings of May 21, 22 and 23. Read more.

Venus, brilliant in east at morning dawn In the first three weeks of March 2017, Venus shone in the west after sunset. In late March, Venus entered our morning sky, passing between the sun and Earth on March 25. Venus then reached its greatest illuminated extent in the morning sky on April 30. This dazzling world will still be at or near its peak brilliance as the morning “star” in early May 2017.

So it’s brightest in the morning sky in late April and early May, but … Venus is always brilliant and beautiful, the brightest celestial body to light up our sky besides the sun and moon. If you’re an early bird, you can count on Venus to be your morning companion for many months to come.

Enjoy the picturesque coupling of the waning crescent moon and Venus in the eastern sky before sunrise on or near May 22.

From mid-northern latitudes (U.S. and Europe), Venus rises nearly two hours before sunrise in early May, and by the month’s end, Venus comes up a little more than two hours before the sun.

At mid-southern latitudes (Australia and South Africa), Venus rises about about 3 hours before sunup in early May, and by the end of the month, it comes up nearly 4 hours before sunrise. Venus and Mercury both rise much sooner before the sun in the Southern Hemisphere than they do in the Northern Hemisphere.

Click here for an almanac giving rising time of Venus and Mercury in your sky.

The chart below helps to illustrate why we sometimes see Venus in the evening, and sometimes before dawn.

The Earth and Venus orbit the sun counterclockwise as seen from earthly north. When Venus is to the east (left) of the Earth-sun line, we see Venus as an evening “star” in the west after sunset. After Venus reaches its inferior conjunction, Venus then moves to the west (right) of the Earth-sun line, appearing as a morning “star” in the east before sunrise.

This month, Jupiter will set in the west at roughly the same time that Venus rises in the east. Next month, in June, Jupiter will set in the west before Venus rises in the east.

What do we mean by bright planet? By bright planet, we mean any solar system planet that is easily visible without an optical aid and that has been watched by our ancestors since time immemorial. In their outward order from the sun, the five bright planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These planets actually do appear bright in our sky. They are typically as bright as – or brighter than – the brightest stars. Plus, these relatively nearby worlds tend to shine with a steadier light than the distant, twinkling stars. You can spot them, and come to know them as faithful friends, if you try.

This image is from February 8, 2016. It shows all 5 bright planets at once. Photo by our friend Eliot Herman in Tucson, Arizona.

Skywatcher, by Predrag Agatonovic.

Bottom line: In May 2017, three of the five bright planets appear in the evening sky: Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Venus and Mercury are found exclusively in the morning sky.

Don’t miss anything. Subscribe to EarthSky News by email

Enjoy knowing where to look in the night sky? Please donate to help EarthSky keep going.

Rather donate via PayPal or send a check? Click here.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/IJfHCr

Comments of the Week #158: from event horizons to time travel [Starts With A Bang]

“Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein’s general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.” -Stephen Hawking

As always, there’s been a new fantastic week of articles here at Starts With A Bang, punctuated by our new podcast this month, on the physics of time travel!

Have a listen (or download it and take it with you) and thank our Patreon supporters for making it possible! Now, what was this past week all about? Come enjoy some fabulous stories if you missed anything, including:

• What should a black hole’s event horizon look like? (for Ask Ethan),
• What’s the largest planet in the Universe? (for Mostly Mute Monday),
• Science discovers how complex life came to the Galapagos Islands,
• We’ve lost sight of the most important rule in debating science,
• How to prove Einstein’s relativity for less than $100, and
• Is time travel possible, according to science?

There’s always so much more I could have talked about or so many more details I could have gone into but didn’t, and that’s what makes doing a follow-up so informative and educational. So let’s jump into what you wanted to learn or discuss more about here, and enjoy our comments of the week!

Image credit: Mark Garlick / SPL.

From Michael Mooney on his ‘key issues’ with relativity: “I am sorry that you refuse to address the core of the issue I bring to your forum.
Is there a “real world” independent of observation or not? (Yes, there is.)
Does the Earth physically change dimensions when (if ever) viewed from near light speed or not? (Ans: Not)
Does Earth’s atmosphere physically change in depth/height “for” every incoming muon or not? (Ans: Not.)”

When I “refuse to address” your issue it’s because you are asking a question that doesn’t have a scientific answer. I’m not in the business of giving you uninformed opinions and asserting them as facts. So if you want these three questions answered with scientific accuracy, let’s go.

1.) We cannot and have not ever measured the world independent of observation, and will never be able to do so. That is a fundamental limit of being a physical being in a physical Universe. Some things we can not observe for a very long time, then look at them and they will be exactly the same as a deterministic equation predicted. Others, if we observe them continuously, will give different results than if we didn’t look. So is there a “real world” independent of observation? You can’t answer, and I also assert that your quoted phrase “real world” is ambiguously defined.

Moving close to the speed of light results in times and distances transforming, with lengths — including the length of your starship — becoming shorter in the direction of motion. Image credit: David Taylor of Northwestern, via http://ift.tt/2m8aTPM.

2.) Does Earth physically change dimensions when viewed near the speed of light? The answer is yes, dependent on which observer you ask. If I ask you, on Earth, whether Earth’s physical dimensions change, the answer is no. If I ask the traveler whether they do, the answer is yes. There are some things that are invariant under relativistic transformations, but physical extents in space are not one of them.

Cosmic rays shower particles by striking protons and atoms in the atmosphere, but they also emit light due to Cherenkov radiation. Image credit: Simon Swordy (U. Chicago), NASA.

3.) Does the Earth’s atmosphere change for every incoming relativistic particle? It’s not a “change,” as you incorrectly use the word, but it achieves a unique size/extent with respect to that particle, defined by that particle’s motion. The size of the atmosphere is entirely dependent on that particle’s frame-of-reference, and there is no definition of size/length/distance/spatial extent independent of reference frame in relativity.

Now, I have stated previously to you that there is an apparent length contraction that is not visually real, and I want you to understand why. If an object is moving close to the speed of light and it is emitting/reflecting photons, the way the object appears will often be uncontracted because of the superimposed effects of length contraction atop the fact that the speed of light is finite and not much greater than the moving object. You can also get visual effects that appear to move faster-than-light, known as photonic booms. But the thing you want to be invariant — the physical size of a physical object — simply isn’t, nor is it well-defined in the absence of an observer.

Image credit: CERN/Maximlien Brice, of the CMS detector, the small detector at the LHC.

From Elle H.C. on the future of science: “‘Real’ physical testing isn’t going to open any new doors (physics). The future will come from fiddling and experimenting with computer simulations.”

The day we stop doing experimental or observational tests of our theories — the day we totally divorce science from testability — is the day we stop doing physics. Do you know where the word physics comes from? It’s from the ancient greek work, φύσις, which is best translated as “nature.” The study of physics is a study of the natural, physical world. Simulations are useful, particularly about the past, but are only really informative when you can compare the results of a simulation with something physically observable.

If you don’t deem it necessary to compare the existing Universe with what you predict or simulate, you are engaging in exercise for your imagination and for possibilities, but you are not doing physics. If you think there are no more doors to be opened, that’s fine; I don’t care if you give up. Just don’t expect many followers, particularly among physicists.

Artist’s impression of a black hole. What goes on outside the black hole is well understood, but inside, we run up against the limits of fundamental physics… and potentially, the laws governing the Universe itself. Image credit: XMM-Newton, ESA, NASA.

From Andrew on event horizons in classical vs. quantum realities: “Remarkable, that event horizon, as it is described by GRT is far from what quantum theory says. When an observer falls to the black hole and crosses aforementioned event horizon, he notice nothing extraordinary (well, if the black hole is large enough). But, in accordance with quantum theory, there will be a firewall…”

So just to refresh your memory, because it’s been about four years since I wrote about it, here’s the deal with black holes, event horizons and firewalls:

• Classically, the event horizon is the region within nothing, not even light, can escape.
• Outside the event horizon, there is a location where you can have an innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO), where things outside of that orbit can exist stably but anything inside of it will spiral into the black hole.
• In quantum physics, particles are entangled, meaning that two particles can have a property where the sum of the states is known, but an individual state of each is not determined until one or the other is measured.
• If one entangled member of a pair falls into a black hole, and you measure the other one, you break the entanglement… but that causes a “firewall” of energetic particles to descend onto the black hole.

Given that particles fall into black holes and quantum entanglement is real, are firewalls real, and do you get fried falling in as a result? Probably not.

Image credit: Sabrina Herbst of Penn State.

A 2013 paper showed that entanglement across all event horizons is maximized, which pushed the time of black hole firewall formation out to… infinity. Since black holes decay in a finite time, these firewalls shouldn’t exist in our Universe. It’s not that quantum physics is in conflict with classical physics, though; it’s that this is an effect that shows up only when you add quantum effects in to your background of classical spacetime.

We still have not figured out a quantum theory of spacetime, or of gravity, which some argue will be necessary to fully understand the firewall paradox, and other paradoxes about black holes.

The eight planets of our Solar System and our Sun, to scale in size but not in terms of orbital distances. Mercury is the most difficult naked-eye planet to see. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user WP.

From eric on an amusing fact about the 8 planets in our Solar System: “Amusing factoid: every planet in our solar system is more massive than all the planets smaller than it, combined. Thus, Venus has more mass than Mercury+Mars, Earth has more mass than Mercury+Mars+Venus, Uranus has more mass than Mercury+Mars+Venus+Earth, and so on.”

What’s also interesting is not just that this is true, but that it’s barely true! Venus (82% of Earth) plus Mars (11% of Earth) plus Mercury (5.5% of Earth) is almost equal to the mass of Earth, but not quite. Uranus (at 14.54 times the mass of Earth) plus all the rocky planets (1.98 Earth masses) comes out to 16.52 Earth masses, just shy of Neptune’s 17.15 Earth masses.

TRAPPIST-1 system compared to the solar system; all seven planets of TRAPPIST-1 could fit inside the orbit of Mercury. Note that at least the inner six worlds of TRAPPIST-1 are all locked to the star. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

If you were to count Earth’s Moon and the four moons of Jupiter as “planets,” by the way — or go whole hog and buy into the “planetary science” definition of a planet — this fun fact would cease to be true. We know it is not a universal law, by the way, as many other solar systems, such as the TRAPPIST-1 system, violate this egregiously. In fact, if we consider that our Solar System likely once had a fifth rocky world similar in size to Mars that once collided with a proto-Earth, and that simulations indicate we once had a 5th gaseous world, it wasn’t always true for us, either.

Satellite photo of the Galapagos islands overlayed with the Spanish names of the visible main islands. The islands themselves are, at most, only a few million years old. Image credit: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Project at NASA/GSFC.

From eric on Planet Earth II: “Watching Planet Earth II, I was struck by just how inhospitable Zavadovski Island is. Evidently the volcano is still active and has covered much of the island’s surface in fresh volcanic rock as recently as the 1800s. So basically, there’s little or no growing things on it. And yet, it’s home to a million penguins. So it’s not just mosses and algae that start the process of turning rocky wastelands into green pastures.”

Can I tell you how much I adore all of the BBC/Attenborough documentaries about nature and naturalism here on Earth? If you asked me to design my dream job — what I’d really like to do with my life if given the opportunity — it would be to do my own version of that for the Universe, astronomy and astrophysics. The Universe is out there, waiting for us to discover it, and the cosmic story is one we all share. I’d love to tell that story, as accurately and excitingly as possible, to anyone willing to listen and learn.

With all the active volcanic activity on the island, it’s possible — as the names suggest — that Zavodovski island is also the smelliest place in the world. Image credit: UK Antarctic Place-names Committee / British Antarctic Survey / NERC.

Zavodovski Island, by the way, is not in the Galapagos, but is rather a 5 km by 5 km island located at the northern edge of the South Sandwich Islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean. It’s maybe 1,000 kilometers north of Antarctica, as the crow flies. And it was discovered two centuries ago, but two recent eruptions, in 2012 and 2016, have put the penguin colonies located there at risk. Remember, penguins go there for safety from predators, to breed, and to warm themselves in the Sun, not for food or shelter; they don’t exactly create green pastures on their own, but they are an important part of the ecosystem nonetheless.

Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein together in 1925, engaging in their famous conversations/debates about quantum mechanics. Public domain image.

From Denier on winning a scientific debate: “At the end of the day, more and better science will win. If you want to win a scientific debate then forget the debate and focus on doing more and better science.”

So what do you do when a scientific debate is over and won, and yet the policies and politics of the world refuses to accept the results? What would you do, hypothetically, in that case as it applies to a flat Earth, to relativity, to evolution, to the Big Bang, etc.? I bring up the Big Bang in contrast to the other three, because unlike a flat Earth (with implications for travel and commerce), relativity (technologies like GPS), evolution (health and medical breakthroughs), there is no tangible, physical, capitalistic benefit or consequence to “believing in” the Big Bang.

How would doing more and better science help the world win?

Image credit: Japan Meteorological Association (JMA), of the monthly average temperatures in February, going back as far as temperature records do. Via the Sydney Morning Herald at http://ift.tt/1LqCRlA.

From Ragtag media exemplifying the difference between scientific and non-scientific debate: “OK my evidence is that a Steve Koonin was a Professor Of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, Was an Under Secretary of Science at the dept of Energy, and is the Director at NYU center for science and urban progress.
Says press releases put out by the govt was about climate data and climate analysis was “MISLEADING and sometimes just WRONG”
FACT,FACT,FACT”

How does one person’s credentials, employment history, and claims made by them without showing the supporting scientific evidence count as a valid part of a scientific debate? What is the data? What do you think the world’s temperature is doing? What do you think atmospheric gases are doing? What do you think is the connection between temperature and these gases, and what do you think is responsible for the changes in gas concentration?

Do you see the difference between scientific questions and politicized accusations, and does it matter to you? Or is your goal to find and amplify the voices of the people who agree with you to sow doubt and outrage among those doing more and better science to further verify and solidify an already robust conclusion?

Mongo McMichael vs. Jeff Jarrett, 1997, WCW.

From lloyd on commenter policies: “Regarding denier, CFT and ragtag media: can we have Wow back now please?”

Wow is welcome back, as he was after his temporary 1 week ban. If denier, CFT, Ragtag media or anyone else engage in outrageous personal attacks or affronts against other individuals here they will be banned as well. Affronts against reason, logic, or scientific facts are not given bans in the same way; unless someone else is promoting their own pet theories/websites/spam sources, I don’t ban for that.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite senses temperature using infrared wavelengths. This image shows temperature of the Earth’s surface or clouds covering it for the month of April 2003. The scale ranges from -81 degrees Celsius (-114° Fahrenheit) in black/blue to 47° C (116° F) in red. Higher latitudes are increasingly obscured by clouds, though some features like the Great Lakes are apparent. Northernmost Europe and Eurasia are completely obscured by clouds, while Antarctica stands out cold and clear at the bottom of the image. Image credit: NASA AIRS.

From John on what science should be: “I think the purpose of Science is to describe – ideally to explain – the physical world. The purpose of Science is not to win debates. Science “wins” debates by providing a correct description or explanation of an event or process. Leave oratorical sleights of hand to others.”

I think that first sentence is definitely true; the second is arguably true; the third is demonstrably untrue as respects human beings on this planet. So… then what? Where are the “others” who will sway public opinion into agreement with the scientific conclusions? Will the real slim shady please stand up?

Cosmic rays produced by high-energy astrophysics sources can reach Earth’s surface. By detecting these fast-moving particles correctly, we can put Einstein’s relativity to the test. Image credit: ASPERA collaboration / AStroParticle ERAnet.

From D.C. Sessions on proving relativity for yourself: “$100? Spendthrift. Why not just run a current through a pair of wires and watch as they attract (or repel) each other. Special relativity at work, as even the slow drift velocity is enough to unbalance the effective balance between the forces exerted by moving electrons and stationary protons.”

And you are measuring the drift velocity of electrons how? And this is special relativity rather than electric current how? I am not saying that you are wrong; I am saying that this is not exactly a clear and obvious demonstration of relativity the way that receiving and observing a slew of unstable particles created very large distances away — that shouldn’t exist without relativity — are.

Image credit: Einstein deriving special relativity, 1934, via http://ift.tt/1AFefJn.

From Frank on proving Einstein wrong: “I had read somewhere that one time a reporter said to Einstein “There are hundred professors who say you are wrong.”
Einstein answered “If I was really wrong just one professor would be enough.””

This is very, very relevant. I will try and keep this in mind, and see if I can source that and verify its validity.

A quantum eraser experiment setup, where two entangled particles are separated and measured. No alterations of one particle at its destination affect the outcome of the other. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Patrick Edwin Moran, under c.c.a.-s.a.-3.0.

From Sinisa Lazarek quoting the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: ““11. Conclusion
Grammatical variants of the term ‘observation’ have been applied to impressively different perceptual and non-perceptual process and to records of the results they produce. Their diversity is a reason to doubt whether general philosophical accounts of observation, observables, and observational data can tell epistemologists as much as local accounts grounded in close studies of specific kinds of cases. Furthermore, scientists continue to find ways to produce data that can’t be called observational without stretching the term to the point of vagueness.
It’s plausible that philosophers who value the kind of rigor, precision, and generality to which l logical empiricists and other exact philosophers aspired could do better by examining and developing techniques and results from logic, probability theory, statistics, machine learning, and computer modeling, etc. than by trying to construct highly general theories of observation and its role in science. Logic and the rest seem unable to deliver satisfactory, universally applicable accounts of scientific reasoning. But they have illuminating local applications, some of which can be of use to scientists as well as philosophers.””

If you’re more concerned with an ideology or the “purity” of a definition than what’s actually scientifically robust about observations, prediction, measurement and reproducibility, that’s your prerogative, but please stay out of the way of those doing the science and adding to our actual, empirical understanding of the world. You are free to advocate for your preferred logical systems or syllogisms or definitions all you like, but don’t try and place unnecessary restrictions on physics; it won’t obey them anyway.

Image credit: John D. Norton, via http://ift.tt/1rCI50V.

From Kasim Muflahi on misinterpreting relativity: “>>if you observe someone in motion relative to you, their clock will appear to run slow.
That’s because, as the clock moves further and further away from you, the images of the clock take longer and longer times to get to you giving the illusion that the clock is running slow.”

So I always hesitate to tell someone that they are wrong because I worry that they will not listen if they hear that… so let’s try a different approach.

Sure! When an object moves away from you, all the waves coming from it — including light waves — will take longer to reach you from crest-to-crest. So if your idea is correct, time should be sped-up as an object moves towards you, and it should remain constant when an object moves transverse to you.

Unfortunately, we can do the experiment, and not only is the clock really running slow (it’s not an illusion), but it does so independent of the redshift/blueshift of the waves. So we can put your idea to the test and show, scientifically, that it is not the way things actually work.

Thanks for a good week, everyone, and looking forward to another great week of science ahead!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2qt7Q75

“Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein’s general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.” -Stephen Hawking

As always, there’s been a new fantastic week of articles here at Starts With A Bang, punctuated by our new podcast this month, on the physics of time travel!

Have a listen (or download it and take it with you) and thank our Patreon supporters for making it possible! Now, what was this past week all about? Come enjoy some fabulous stories if you missed anything, including:

• What should a black hole’s event horizon look like? (for Ask Ethan),
• What’s the largest planet in the Universe? (for Mostly Mute Monday),
• Science discovers how complex life came to the Galapagos Islands,
• We’ve lost sight of the most important rule in debating science,
• How to prove Einstein’s relativity for less than $100, and
• Is time travel possible, according to science?

There’s always so much more I could have talked about or so many more details I could have gone into but didn’t, and that’s what makes doing a follow-up so informative and educational. So let’s jump into what you wanted to learn or discuss more about here, and enjoy our comments of the week!

Image credit: Mark Garlick / SPL.

From Michael Mooney on his ‘key issues’ with relativity: “I am sorry that you refuse to address the core of the issue I bring to your forum.
Is there a “real world” independent of observation or not? (Yes, there is.)
Does the Earth physically change dimensions when (if ever) viewed from near light speed or not? (Ans: Not)
Does Earth’s atmosphere physically change in depth/height “for” every incoming muon or not? (Ans: Not.)”

When I “refuse to address” your issue it’s because you are asking a question that doesn’t have a scientific answer. I’m not in the business of giving you uninformed opinions and asserting them as facts. So if you want these three questions answered with scientific accuracy, let’s go.

1.) We cannot and have not ever measured the world independent of observation, and will never be able to do so. That is a fundamental limit of being a physical being in a physical Universe. Some things we can not observe for a very long time, then look at them and they will be exactly the same as a deterministic equation predicted. Others, if we observe them continuously, will give different results than if we didn’t look. So is there a “real world” independent of observation? You can’t answer, and I also assert that your quoted phrase “real world” is ambiguously defined.

Moving close to the speed of light results in times and distances transforming, with lengths — including the length of your starship — becoming shorter in the direction of motion. Image credit: David Taylor of Northwestern, via http://ift.tt/2m8aTPM.

2.) Does Earth physically change dimensions when viewed near the speed of light? The answer is yes, dependent on which observer you ask. If I ask you, on Earth, whether Earth’s physical dimensions change, the answer is no. If I ask the traveler whether they do, the answer is yes. There are some things that are invariant under relativistic transformations, but physical extents in space are not one of them.

Cosmic rays shower particles by striking protons and atoms in the atmosphere, but they also emit light due to Cherenkov radiation. Image credit: Simon Swordy (U. Chicago), NASA.

3.) Does the Earth’s atmosphere change for every incoming relativistic particle? It’s not a “change,” as you incorrectly use the word, but it achieves a unique size/extent with respect to that particle, defined by that particle’s motion. The size of the atmosphere is entirely dependent on that particle’s frame-of-reference, and there is no definition of size/length/distance/spatial extent independent of reference frame in relativity.

Now, I have stated previously to you that there is an apparent length contraction that is not visually real, and I want you to understand why. If an object is moving close to the speed of light and it is emitting/reflecting photons, the way the object appears will often be uncontracted because of the superimposed effects of length contraction atop the fact that the speed of light is finite and not much greater than the moving object. You can also get visual effects that appear to move faster-than-light, known as photonic booms. But the thing you want to be invariant — the physical size of a physical object — simply isn’t, nor is it well-defined in the absence of an observer.

Image credit: CERN/Maximlien Brice, of the CMS detector, the small detector at the LHC.

From Elle H.C. on the future of science: “‘Real’ physical testing isn’t going to open any new doors (physics). The future will come from fiddling and experimenting with computer simulations.”

The day we stop doing experimental or observational tests of our theories — the day we totally divorce science from testability — is the day we stop doing physics. Do you know where the word physics comes from? It’s from the ancient greek work, φύσις, which is best translated as “nature.” The study of physics is a study of the natural, physical world. Simulations are useful, particularly about the past, but are only really informative when you can compare the results of a simulation with something physically observable.

If you don’t deem it necessary to compare the existing Universe with what you predict or simulate, you are engaging in exercise for your imagination and for possibilities, but you are not doing physics. If you think there are no more doors to be opened, that’s fine; I don’t care if you give up. Just don’t expect many followers, particularly among physicists.

Artist’s impression of a black hole. What goes on outside the black hole is well understood, but inside, we run up against the limits of fundamental physics… and potentially, the laws governing the Universe itself. Image credit: XMM-Newton, ESA, NASA.

From Andrew on event horizons in classical vs. quantum realities: “Remarkable, that event horizon, as it is described by GRT is far from what quantum theory says. When an observer falls to the black hole and crosses aforementioned event horizon, he notice nothing extraordinary (well, if the black hole is large enough). But, in accordance with quantum theory, there will be a firewall…”

So just to refresh your memory, because it’s been about four years since I wrote about it, here’s the deal with black holes, event horizons and firewalls:

• Classically, the event horizon is the region within nothing, not even light, can escape.
• Outside the event horizon, there is a location where you can have an innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO), where things outside of that orbit can exist stably but anything inside of it will spiral into the black hole.
• In quantum physics, particles are entangled, meaning that two particles can have a property where the sum of the states is known, but an individual state of each is not determined until one or the other is measured.
• If one entangled member of a pair falls into a black hole, and you measure the other one, you break the entanglement… but that causes a “firewall” of energetic particles to descend onto the black hole.

Given that particles fall into black holes and quantum entanglement is real, are firewalls real, and do you get fried falling in as a result? Probably not.

Image credit: Sabrina Herbst of Penn State.

A 2013 paper showed that entanglement across all event horizons is maximized, which pushed the time of black hole firewall formation out to… infinity. Since black holes decay in a finite time, these firewalls shouldn’t exist in our Universe. It’s not that quantum physics is in conflict with classical physics, though; it’s that this is an effect that shows up only when you add quantum effects in to your background of classical spacetime.

We still have not figured out a quantum theory of spacetime, or of gravity, which some argue will be necessary to fully understand the firewall paradox, and other paradoxes about black holes.

The eight planets of our Solar System and our Sun, to scale in size but not in terms of orbital distances. Mercury is the most difficult naked-eye planet to see. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user WP.

From eric on an amusing fact about the 8 planets in our Solar System: “Amusing factoid: every planet in our solar system is more massive than all the planets smaller than it, combined. Thus, Venus has more mass than Mercury+Mars, Earth has more mass than Mercury+Mars+Venus, Uranus has more mass than Mercury+Mars+Venus+Earth, and so on.”

What’s also interesting is not just that this is true, but that it’s barely true! Venus (82% of Earth) plus Mars (11% of Earth) plus Mercury (5.5% of Earth) is almost equal to the mass of Earth, but not quite. Uranus (at 14.54 times the mass of Earth) plus all the rocky planets (1.98 Earth masses) comes out to 16.52 Earth masses, just shy of Neptune’s 17.15 Earth masses.

TRAPPIST-1 system compared to the solar system; all seven planets of TRAPPIST-1 could fit inside the orbit of Mercury. Note that at least the inner six worlds of TRAPPIST-1 are all locked to the star. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

If you were to count Earth’s Moon and the four moons of Jupiter as “planets,” by the way — or go whole hog and buy into the “planetary science” definition of a planet — this fun fact would cease to be true. We know it is not a universal law, by the way, as many other solar systems, such as the TRAPPIST-1 system, violate this egregiously. In fact, if we consider that our Solar System likely once had a fifth rocky world similar in size to Mars that once collided with a proto-Earth, and that simulations indicate we once had a 5th gaseous world, it wasn’t always true for us, either.

Satellite photo of the Galapagos islands overlayed with the Spanish names of the visible main islands. The islands themselves are, at most, only a few million years old. Image credit: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Project at NASA/GSFC.

From eric on Planet Earth II: “Watching Planet Earth II, I was struck by just how inhospitable Zavadovski Island is. Evidently the volcano is still active and has covered much of the island’s surface in fresh volcanic rock as recently as the 1800s. So basically, there’s little or no growing things on it. And yet, it’s home to a million penguins. So it’s not just mosses and algae that start the process of turning rocky wastelands into green pastures.”

Can I tell you how much I adore all of the BBC/Attenborough documentaries about nature and naturalism here on Earth? If you asked me to design my dream job — what I’d really like to do with my life if given the opportunity — it would be to do my own version of that for the Universe, astronomy and astrophysics. The Universe is out there, waiting for us to discover it, and the cosmic story is one we all share. I’d love to tell that story, as accurately and excitingly as possible, to anyone willing to listen and learn.

With all the active volcanic activity on the island, it’s possible — as the names suggest — that Zavodovski island is also the smelliest place in the world. Image credit: UK Antarctic Place-names Committee / British Antarctic Survey / NERC.

Zavodovski Island, by the way, is not in the Galapagos, but is rather a 5 km by 5 km island located at the northern edge of the South Sandwich Islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean. It’s maybe 1,000 kilometers north of Antarctica, as the crow flies. And it was discovered two centuries ago, but two recent eruptions, in 2012 and 2016, have put the penguin colonies located there at risk. Remember, penguins go there for safety from predators, to breed, and to warm themselves in the Sun, not for food or shelter; they don’t exactly create green pastures on their own, but they are an important part of the ecosystem nonetheless.

Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein together in 1925, engaging in their famous conversations/debates about quantum mechanics. Public domain image.

From Denier on winning a scientific debate: “At the end of the day, more and better science will win. If you want to win a scientific debate then forget the debate and focus on doing more and better science.”

So what do you do when a scientific debate is over and won, and yet the policies and politics of the world refuses to accept the results? What would you do, hypothetically, in that case as it applies to a flat Earth, to relativity, to evolution, to the Big Bang, etc.? I bring up the Big Bang in contrast to the other three, because unlike a flat Earth (with implications for travel and commerce), relativity (technologies like GPS), evolution (health and medical breakthroughs), there is no tangible, physical, capitalistic benefit or consequence to “believing in” the Big Bang.

How would doing more and better science help the world win?

Image credit: Japan Meteorological Association (JMA), of the monthly average temperatures in February, going back as far as temperature records do. Via the Sydney Morning Herald at http://ift.tt/1LqCRlA.

From Ragtag media exemplifying the difference between scientific and non-scientific debate: “OK my evidence is that a Steve Koonin was a Professor Of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, Was an Under Secretary of Science at the dept of Energy, and is the Director at NYU center for science and urban progress.
Says press releases put out by the govt was about climate data and climate analysis was “MISLEADING and sometimes just WRONG”
FACT,FACT,FACT”

How does one person’s credentials, employment history, and claims made by them without showing the supporting scientific evidence count as a valid part of a scientific debate? What is the data? What do you think the world’s temperature is doing? What do you think atmospheric gases are doing? What do you think is the connection between temperature and these gases, and what do you think is responsible for the changes in gas concentration?

Do you see the difference between scientific questions and politicized accusations, and does it matter to you? Or is your goal to find and amplify the voices of the people who agree with you to sow doubt and outrage among those doing more and better science to further verify and solidify an already robust conclusion?

Mongo McMichael vs. Jeff Jarrett, 1997, WCW.

From lloyd on commenter policies: “Regarding denier, CFT and ragtag media: can we have Wow back now please?”

Wow is welcome back, as he was after his temporary 1 week ban. If denier, CFT, Ragtag media or anyone else engage in outrageous personal attacks or affronts against other individuals here they will be banned as well. Affronts against reason, logic, or scientific facts are not given bans in the same way; unless someone else is promoting their own pet theories/websites/spam sources, I don’t ban for that.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite senses temperature using infrared wavelengths. This image shows temperature of the Earth’s surface or clouds covering it for the month of April 2003. The scale ranges from -81 degrees Celsius (-114° Fahrenheit) in black/blue to 47° C (116° F) in red. Higher latitudes are increasingly obscured by clouds, though some features like the Great Lakes are apparent. Northernmost Europe and Eurasia are completely obscured by clouds, while Antarctica stands out cold and clear at the bottom of the image. Image credit: NASA AIRS.

From John on what science should be: “I think the purpose of Science is to describe – ideally to explain – the physical world. The purpose of Science is not to win debates. Science “wins” debates by providing a correct description or explanation of an event or process. Leave oratorical sleights of hand to others.”

I think that first sentence is definitely true; the second is arguably true; the third is demonstrably untrue as respects human beings on this planet. So… then what? Where are the “others” who will sway public opinion into agreement with the scientific conclusions? Will the real slim shady please stand up?

Cosmic rays produced by high-energy astrophysics sources can reach Earth’s surface. By detecting these fast-moving particles correctly, we can put Einstein’s relativity to the test. Image credit: ASPERA collaboration / AStroParticle ERAnet.

From D.C. Sessions on proving relativity for yourself: “$100? Spendthrift. Why not just run a current through a pair of wires and watch as they attract (or repel) each other. Special relativity at work, as even the slow drift velocity is enough to unbalance the effective balance between the forces exerted by moving electrons and stationary protons.”

And you are measuring the drift velocity of electrons how? And this is special relativity rather than electric current how? I am not saying that you are wrong; I am saying that this is not exactly a clear and obvious demonstration of relativity the way that receiving and observing a slew of unstable particles created very large distances away — that shouldn’t exist without relativity — are.

Image credit: Einstein deriving special relativity, 1934, via http://ift.tt/1AFefJn.

From Frank on proving Einstein wrong: “I had read somewhere that one time a reporter said to Einstein “There are hundred professors who say you are wrong.”
Einstein answered “If I was really wrong just one professor would be enough.””

This is very, very relevant. I will try and keep this in mind, and see if I can source that and verify its validity.

A quantum eraser experiment setup, where two entangled particles are separated and measured. No alterations of one particle at its destination affect the outcome of the other. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Patrick Edwin Moran, under c.c.a.-s.a.-3.0.

From Sinisa Lazarek quoting the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: ““11. Conclusion
Grammatical variants of the term ‘observation’ have been applied to impressively different perceptual and non-perceptual process and to records of the results they produce. Their diversity is a reason to doubt whether general philosophical accounts of observation, observables, and observational data can tell epistemologists as much as local accounts grounded in close studies of specific kinds of cases. Furthermore, scientists continue to find ways to produce data that can’t be called observational without stretching the term to the point of vagueness.
It’s plausible that philosophers who value the kind of rigor, precision, and generality to which l logical empiricists and other exact philosophers aspired could do better by examining and developing techniques and results from logic, probability theory, statistics, machine learning, and computer modeling, etc. than by trying to construct highly general theories of observation and its role in science. Logic and the rest seem unable to deliver satisfactory, universally applicable accounts of scientific reasoning. But they have illuminating local applications, some of which can be of use to scientists as well as philosophers.””

If you’re more concerned with an ideology or the “purity” of a definition than what’s actually scientifically robust about observations, prediction, measurement and reproducibility, that’s your prerogative, but please stay out of the way of those doing the science and adding to our actual, empirical understanding of the world. You are free to advocate for your preferred logical systems or syllogisms or definitions all you like, but don’t try and place unnecessary restrictions on physics; it won’t obey them anyway.

Image credit: John D. Norton, via http://ift.tt/1rCI50V.

From Kasim Muflahi on misinterpreting relativity: “>>if you observe someone in motion relative to you, their clock will appear to run slow.
That’s because, as the clock moves further and further away from you, the images of the clock take longer and longer times to get to you giving the illusion that the clock is running slow.”

So I always hesitate to tell someone that they are wrong because I worry that they will not listen if they hear that… so let’s try a different approach.

Sure! When an object moves away from you, all the waves coming from it — including light waves — will take longer to reach you from crest-to-crest. So if your idea is correct, time should be sped-up as an object moves towards you, and it should remain constant when an object moves transverse to you.

Unfortunately, we can do the experiment, and not only is the clock really running slow (it’s not an illusion), but it does so independent of the redshift/blueshift of the waves. So we can put your idea to the test and show, scientifically, that it is not the way things actually work.

Thanks for a good week, everyone, and looking forward to another great week of science ahead!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2qt7Q75

Why do we celebrate May Day?

Maypole wrapping in 2005 at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where May Day festivities are an annual tradition. Image via Mike Goren via Wikimedia Commons

Our annual fund-raiser ends May 5. EarthSky needs your help to keep going! Please donate!

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You might not realize it, but May Day – an ancient spring festival in the Northern Hemisphere – is an astronomical holiday. It’s one of the year’s four cross-quarter days, or a day that falls more or less midway between an equinox and solstice, in this case the March equinox and June solstice. The other cross-quarter days are Groundhog Day on February 2, Lammas on August 1 and Halloween on October 31. May Day also stems from the Celtic festival of Beltane, which was related to the waxing power of the sun as we in the Northern Hemisphere move closer to summer. At Beltane, people lit fires through which livestock were driven and around which people danced, moving in the same direction that the sun crosses the sky.

School children rehearsing Maypole festivity, in Gee's Bend, Alabama, 1939. Image via Wikimedia Commons

The top of a Maypole set up for a May 1 celebration. Image via WrldVoyagr/Flickr.

A group of happy neighbors in Texas in 2012, after wrapping a Maypole. See the wrapped pole being held up? Image via Rick Patrick

Wrapping a Maypole with colorful ribbons is perhaps the best known of all May Day traditions. In the Middle Ages, English villages all had Maypoles, which were actual trees brought in from the woods in the midst of rejoicing and raucous merrymaking. Maypoles came in many sizes, and villages were said to compete with each other to show whose Maypole was tallest. Maypoles were usually set up for the day in small towns, but in London and the larger towns they were erected permanently.

We’re not too far away from a time in the late 20th century when people left homemade May baskets filled with spring flowers and sweets on each others’ doorsteps, usually anonymously. I can remember doing this as a child. Maybe it’s a tradition that can be revived.

Homemade May basket left on neighbor or friend's doorstep anonymously. Nice tradition!

Bottom line: May 1 is one of four cross-quarter days, midway between an equinox and a solstice. It stems from the ancient festival of Beltane, which relates to the waxing power of the sun at this time of year. Wrapping a Maypole is its most recognized tradition.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1bl4CtT

Maypole wrapping in 2005 at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where May Day festivities are an annual tradition. Image via Mike Goren via Wikimedia Commons

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You might not realize it, but May Day – an ancient spring festival in the Northern Hemisphere – is an astronomical holiday. It’s one of the year’s four cross-quarter days, or a day that falls more or less midway between an equinox and solstice, in this case the March equinox and June solstice. The other cross-quarter days are Groundhog Day on February 2, Lammas on August 1 and Halloween on October 31. May Day also stems from the Celtic festival of Beltane, which was related to the waxing power of the sun as we in the Northern Hemisphere move closer to summer. At Beltane, people lit fires through which livestock were driven and around which people danced, moving in the same direction that the sun crosses the sky.

School children rehearsing Maypole festivity, in Gee's Bend, Alabama, 1939. Image via Wikimedia Commons

The top of a Maypole set up for a May 1 celebration. Image via WrldVoyagr/Flickr.

A group of happy neighbors in Texas in 2012, after wrapping a Maypole. See the wrapped pole being held up? Image via Rick Patrick

Wrapping a Maypole with colorful ribbons is perhaps the best known of all May Day traditions. In the Middle Ages, English villages all had Maypoles, which were actual trees brought in from the woods in the midst of rejoicing and raucous merrymaking. Maypoles came in many sizes, and villages were said to compete with each other to show whose Maypole was tallest. Maypoles were usually set up for the day in small towns, but in London and the larger towns they were erected permanently.

We’re not too far away from a time in the late 20th century when people left homemade May baskets filled with spring flowers and sweets on each others’ doorsteps, usually anonymously. I can remember doing this as a child. Maybe it’s a tradition that can be revived.

Homemade May basket left on neighbor or friend's doorstep anonymously. Nice tradition!

Bottom line: May 1 is one of four cross-quarter days, midway between an equinox and a solstice. It stems from the ancient festival of Beltane, which relates to the waxing power of the sun at this time of year. Wrapping a Maypole is its most recognized tradition.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1bl4CtT

Are we alarmed yet? [Greg Laden's Blog]

Climate science deniers like to call we who are correct and rational (we the good guys) “alarmists.” So be it.

This is a post that closely reflects my own feelings, by my friend and colleague, Lawrence Torcello. It begins:

Most of us have wondered about the human context of past crimes against humanity: why didn’t more people intervene? How could so many pretend not to know? To be sure, crimes against humanity are not always easy to identify while they unfold.

We need some time to reflect and to analyze, even when our reasoning suggests that large scale human suffering and death are likely imminent. The principled condemnation of large scale atrocity is, too often …

GO HERE AND READ IT

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2oVjEh5

Climate science deniers like to call we who are correct and rational (we the good guys) “alarmists.” So be it.

This is a post that closely reflects my own feelings, by my friend and colleague, Lawrence Torcello. It begins:

Most of us have wondered about the human context of past crimes against humanity: why didn’t more people intervene? How could so many pretend not to know? To be sure, crimes against humanity are not always easy to identify while they unfold.

We need some time to reflect and to analyze, even when our reasoning suggests that large scale human suffering and death are likely imminent. The principled condemnation of large scale atrocity is, too often …

GO HERE AND READ IT

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2oVjEh5

Simulating the smallest ring world

The Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York said on Friday (April 28, 2017) that Japanese researchers have modeled the two known rings around 10199 Chariklo, a possible dwarf planet orbiting the sun between the major planets Saturn and Uranus. They say it’s the first time an entire ring system has been simulated using realistic sizes for the ring particles while also taking into account collisions and gravitational interactions between the particles. They also created the visuals on this page, including the video above, which lets you dive into Chariklo’s ring system. Note that Chariklo itself is really potato-shaped and no doubt pocked with craters; the round, smooth shape in the video is for purposes of the simulation.

These researchers’ work is published in the peer-reviewed March 2017 edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Chariklo is a tiny world. Its estimated size about 200 miles (334 km) by about 140 miles (226 km) by about 100 miles (172 km). Our solar system’s major outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) all are known to have rings. These planets’ rings are composed of particles estimated to range from inches to several feet (centimeters to meters) in size. Chariklo’s gravitational attraction is small relative to the major planets, so its rings – which were discovered in 2014 – are likely only temporary.

Although Chariklo is small, and although its gravity is relatively weak, its rings are as opaque as those around Saturn and Uranus. Thus, the researchers said, Chariklo offered an ideal chance to model a complete ring system.

The team said their simulation revealed information about the size and density of the particles in the rings. They found that Chariklo’s inner ring should be unstable without help. So – the researchers said – the ring particles must be much smaller than previously thought. Or it means that an undiscovered shepherd satellite around Chariklo is stabilizing the ring.

Visualization constructed from simulation of Chariklo’s double ring. Note that Chariklo itself is really potato-shaped and no doubt pocked with craters; the round, smooth shape here is for purposes of the simulation. Image via Shugo Michikoshi, Eiichiro Kokubo, Hirotaka Nakayama, 4D2U Project, NAOJ/ CFCA.

The researchers – Shugo Michikoshi (Kyoto Women’s University/University of Tsukuba) and Eiichiro Kokubo (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, or NAOJ) modeled Chariklo’s rings using the supercomputer ATERUI*1 at NAOJ. They calculated the motions of 345 million ring particles with the realistic size of a few meters taking into account the collisions and mutual gravitational attractions between the particles.

Chariklo is the largest member of a class known as the Centaurs, orbiting between Saturn and Uranus in the outer solar system. These bodies are categorized like asteroids, but, whereas most asteroids lie in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – closer to the sun – Centaurs may have come from the Kuiper Belt, which is visualized as extending from the orbit of the outermost major planet Neptune to approximately 50 Earth-sun units (AU) from our sun. Centaurs have unstable orbits that cross the giant planets’ orbit. Chariklo’s orbit gazes that of Uranus. Because their orbits are frequently perturbed, Centaurs like Chariklo are expected to only remain in their orbits only for millions of years, in contrast to our Earth and the other major planets which have been orbiting for billions of years around our sun.

The new computer visualization suggests that the density of Chariklo’s ring particles must be less than half the density of Chariklo itself. And they show a striped pattern forming in the inner ring due to interactions between the particles. They use the term “self-gravity wakes” for this pattern (see the image below). These self-gravity wakes accelerate the break-up of the ring, the researchers said.

But perhaps the most surprising result of the new study is a recalculated life expectancy for Chariklo’s rings. The study suggests the rings may be able to reamin around Chariklo for only one to 100 years! That’s much shorter than previous estimates, and it’s less than an eye-blink in astronomical terms.

So what we are seeing with Chariklo and its ring system is likely a very temporary and dynamic situation. Things in space tend to happen on a vastly-longer timescales than we humans are used to, but sometimes things do happen on human timescales. Chariklo’s rings may be an example!

Simulation of Chariklo’s ring system. The researchers said they used a ring particle density equal to half of Chariklo’s density, in order to maintain the rings’ overall structure. In the close-up view (right) complicated, elongated structures are visible. These structures are called self-gravity wakes. The numbers along the axes indicate distances in km. Image via Shugo Michikoshi / CFCA.

Bottom line: Chariklo – a possible dwarf planet orbiting between Saturn and Uranus – has been known to have rings since 2014. Japanese researchers have created a first-ever supercomputer simulation of Chariklo’s surprising rings.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2qsbxtq

The Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York said on Friday (April 28, 2017) that Japanese researchers have modeled the two known rings around 10199 Chariklo, a possible dwarf planet orbiting the sun between the major planets Saturn and Uranus. They say it’s the first time an entire ring system has been simulated using realistic sizes for the ring particles while also taking into account collisions and gravitational interactions between the particles. They also created the visuals on this page, including the video above, which lets you dive into Chariklo’s ring system. Note that Chariklo itself is really potato-shaped and no doubt pocked with craters; the round, smooth shape in the video is for purposes of the simulation.

These researchers’ work is published in the peer-reviewed March 2017 edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Chariklo is a tiny world. Its estimated size about 200 miles (334 km) by about 140 miles (226 km) by about 100 miles (172 km). Our solar system’s major outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) all are known to have rings. These planets’ rings are composed of particles estimated to range from inches to several feet (centimeters to meters) in size. Chariklo’s gravitational attraction is small relative to the major planets, so its rings – which were discovered in 2014 – are likely only temporary.

Although Chariklo is small, and although its gravity is relatively weak, its rings are as opaque as those around Saturn and Uranus. Thus, the researchers said, Chariklo offered an ideal chance to model a complete ring system.

The team said their simulation revealed information about the size and density of the particles in the rings. They found that Chariklo’s inner ring should be unstable without help. So – the researchers said – the ring particles must be much smaller than previously thought. Or it means that an undiscovered shepherd satellite around Chariklo is stabilizing the ring.

Visualization constructed from simulation of Chariklo’s double ring. Note that Chariklo itself is really potato-shaped and no doubt pocked with craters; the round, smooth shape here is for purposes of the simulation. Image via Shugo Michikoshi, Eiichiro Kokubo, Hirotaka Nakayama, 4D2U Project, NAOJ/ CFCA.

The researchers – Shugo Michikoshi (Kyoto Women’s University/University of Tsukuba) and Eiichiro Kokubo (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, or NAOJ) modeled Chariklo’s rings using the supercomputer ATERUI*1 at NAOJ. They calculated the motions of 345 million ring particles with the realistic size of a few meters taking into account the collisions and mutual gravitational attractions between the particles.

Chariklo is the largest member of a class known as the Centaurs, orbiting between Saturn and Uranus in the outer solar system. These bodies are categorized like asteroids, but, whereas most asteroids lie in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – closer to the sun – Centaurs may have come from the Kuiper Belt, which is visualized as extending from the orbit of the outermost major planet Neptune to approximately 50 Earth-sun units (AU) from our sun. Centaurs have unstable orbits that cross the giant planets’ orbit. Chariklo’s orbit gazes that of Uranus. Because their orbits are frequently perturbed, Centaurs like Chariklo are expected to only remain in their orbits only for millions of years, in contrast to our Earth and the other major planets which have been orbiting for billions of years around our sun.

The new computer visualization suggests that the density of Chariklo’s ring particles must be less than half the density of Chariklo itself. And they show a striped pattern forming in the inner ring due to interactions between the particles. They use the term “self-gravity wakes” for this pattern (see the image below). These self-gravity wakes accelerate the break-up of the ring, the researchers said.

But perhaps the most surprising result of the new study is a recalculated life expectancy for Chariklo’s rings. The study suggests the rings may be able to reamin around Chariklo for only one to 100 years! That’s much shorter than previous estimates, and it’s less than an eye-blink in astronomical terms.

So what we are seeing with Chariklo and its ring system is likely a very temporary and dynamic situation. Things in space tend to happen on a vastly-longer timescales than we humans are used to, but sometimes things do happen on human timescales. Chariklo’s rings may be an example!

Simulation of Chariklo’s ring system. The researchers said they used a ring particle density equal to half of Chariklo’s density, in order to maintain the rings’ overall structure. In the close-up view (right) complicated, elongated structures are visible. These structures are called self-gravity wakes. The numbers along the axes indicate distances in km. Image via Shugo Michikoshi / CFCA.

Bottom line: Chariklo – a possible dwarf planet orbiting between Saturn and Uranus – has been known to have rings since 2014. Japanese researchers have created a first-ever supercomputer simulation of Chariklo’s surprising rings.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2qsbxtq

Kid Writing Update [Uncertain Principles]

One of the things parents of multiple kids often talk about is how they don’t end up doing the same things with second children that they did with their first. For example, I carried the weekly Appa-for-scale photos on with SteelyKid for a couple of years, but didn’t last anywhere near that long with The Pip. Another thing I did with SteelyKid was to report fairly regularly here on cute stories she told me, and that kind of thing, which I’ve largely been failing to do with The Pip. the fact that I’ve fallen out of doing any kind of kid-blogging at all doesn’t really make this any better…

But the absence of cute-schoolwork stories doesn’t mean there hasn’t bee cute schoolwork from our Little Dude. He’s considerably younger compared to his classmates than SteelyKid was when she entered kindergarten (his birthday is in November, and kids need to be 5 by December 1 in order to start kindergarten), but he’s working really hard, and has come a long, long way this year. Here’s an excerpt from his April writing journal, on Earth Day:

The Pip on Earth Day.

(Transcribed literally, save for fixing a couple of letters, including the continuation on the next page:)

Earth day is a day war you taek care of the earth. You can reasikle. You can reidus. You can reyu. I like earth day. Do you?

(With spelling corrected, that’s “Earth Day is a day where you take care of the Earth. You can recycle. You can reduce. You can reuse. I like Earth Day. Do You?”)

He’s also gotten really good at reading, thanks in part to his obsessive study of Pokemon cards.

His big sister also continues to have a fertile imagination; I particularly liked the story that she wrote to go with this cute-animal coloring page (which is on the back; the photo is a composite):

Coloring page and SteelyKid’s story that accompanies it.

The story (3rd-grade spelling transcribed as is):

Once Opon a time… there was a dog and two mice. One was riding a skateboard at the playground while the other was doing the jumprope, on the same play ground. Then they went to a witch’s place, got turned into stew, and the stew got eaten by the witch’s black cat! the end! And… the cat got eaten by a dog wich got eaten by a bear wich got eaten by a wolf wich got shot by a hunter and eaten for dinner.

THE END (for real!)!

“Wow, honey, that got a little dark,” I remarked. “Oh, everybody in the class got dark like that…” she replied airily. I’m not sure what to make of that…

Anyway, there’s your cute-kid update. I’m going to try to carve out a little time for more regular kid updates, probably on weekend mornings, because it’ll probably be a good exercise mental-health-wise.

And, for those reading by RSS, here’s the “featured image” from up top, a composite of our “cautious daredevils” (a self-description from a hike we took at the Christman Sanctuary down in Duanesburg) on the climber at the middle school playground in Whitney Point, when we were at my parents’ over Easter. These are cell-phone pictures because like an idiot I forgot my good camera, but I like having the climber as a standard reference object so you can judge their relative sizes.

Cautious daredevils posing atop the climber.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2pxjiBg

One of the things parents of multiple kids often talk about is how they don’t end up doing the same things with second children that they did with their first. For example, I carried the weekly Appa-for-scale photos on with SteelyKid for a couple of years, but didn’t last anywhere near that long with The Pip. Another thing I did with SteelyKid was to report fairly regularly here on cute stories she told me, and that kind of thing, which I’ve largely been failing to do with The Pip. the fact that I’ve fallen out of doing any kind of kid-blogging at all doesn’t really make this any better…

But the absence of cute-schoolwork stories doesn’t mean there hasn’t bee cute schoolwork from our Little Dude. He’s considerably younger compared to his classmates than SteelyKid was when she entered kindergarten (his birthday is in November, and kids need to be 5 by December 1 in order to start kindergarten), but he’s working really hard, and has come a long, long way this year. Here’s an excerpt from his April writing journal, on Earth Day:

The Pip on Earth Day.

(Transcribed literally, save for fixing a couple of letters, including the continuation on the next page:)

Earth day is a day war you taek care of the earth. You can reasikle. You can reidus. You can reyu. I like earth day. Do you?

(With spelling corrected, that’s “Earth Day is a day where you take care of the Earth. You can recycle. You can reduce. You can reuse. I like Earth Day. Do You?”)

He’s also gotten really good at reading, thanks in part to his obsessive study of Pokemon cards.

His big sister also continues to have a fertile imagination; I particularly liked the story that she wrote to go with this cute-animal coloring page (which is on the back; the photo is a composite):

Coloring page and SteelyKid’s story that accompanies it.

The story (3rd-grade spelling transcribed as is):

Once Opon a time… there was a dog and two mice. One was riding a skateboard at the playground while the other was doing the jumprope, on the same play ground. Then they went to a witch’s place, got turned into stew, and the stew got eaten by the witch’s black cat! the end! And… the cat got eaten by a dog wich got eaten by a bear wich got eaten by a wolf wich got shot by a hunter and eaten for dinner.

THE END (for real!)!

“Wow, honey, that got a little dark,” I remarked. “Oh, everybody in the class got dark like that…” she replied airily. I’m not sure what to make of that…

Anyway, there’s your cute-kid update. I’m going to try to carve out a little time for more regular kid updates, probably on weekend mornings, because it’ll probably be a good exercise mental-health-wise.

And, for those reading by RSS, here’s the “featured image” from up top, a composite of our “cautious daredevils” (a self-description from a hike we took at the Christman Sanctuary down in Duanesburg) on the climber at the middle school playground in Whitney Point, when we were at my parents’ over Easter. These are cell-phone pictures because like an idiot I forgot my good camera, but I like having the climber as a standard reference object so you can judge their relative sizes.

Cautious daredevils posing atop the climber.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2pxjiBg

Find Hercules between 2 bright stars

Tonight, try locating one of the coolest constellations up there. The constellation Hercules the Kneeling Giant can be seen ascending in the east-northeast on these Northern Hemisphere spring evenings. You can find Hercules in between two brilliant stars: Arcturus and Vega, which, by the way. The chart at the top of this post shows the sky for around 10 to 11 p.m. local time, when the constellation Hercules, and the two bright stars so essential for finding it, are well up in the northeastern to eastern sky.

Arcturus is in the constellation Bootes, and Vega is in the constellation Lyra. A line between them passes through what is known as the Keystone in Hercules.

At nightfall, Vega may still be below in your horizon. If so, look for Hercules below the star Arcturus.

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The constellation Hercules, with its prominent Keystone asterism marked. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The Keystone in Hercules is a squarish figure in the center of the constellation. This sky pattern is an asterism, or noticeable pattern within a larger constellation.

The Keystone is a helpful pattern for more reasons than one. First, it’s noticeable on the sky’s dome, so can lead your eye to Hercules.

Also, the Keystone in Hercules can help you find the most fascinating telescopic object within the boundaries of this constellation. This object is a globular star cluster known to stargazers as M13 or the Great Cluster in Hercules. It’s barely visible the eye alone in the darkest of skies.

Binoculars show M13 as a nebulous star-like patch of light. And telescopes show stars both on the periphery of the cluster and toward its center.

This beautiful object is one of the galaxy’s oldest inhabitants. It’s a tightly packed spherical collection of about one million stars.

EarthSky astronomy kits are perfect for beginners. Order today from the EarthSky store

M13, aka the Great Cluster in Hercules. This object is a globular star cluster, one of our galaxy’s oldest inhabitants. More about M13: Great cluster in Hercules Photo via Bareket Observatory in Israel, via CelestronImages.

Bottom line: Use the brilliant stars Arcturus and Vega to find the constellation Hercules tonight!

Donate: Your support means the world to us

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1rdci4D

Tonight, try locating one of the coolest constellations up there. The constellation Hercules the Kneeling Giant can be seen ascending in the east-northeast on these Northern Hemisphere spring evenings. You can find Hercules in between two brilliant stars: Arcturus and Vega, which, by the way. The chart at the top of this post shows the sky for around 10 to 11 p.m. local time, when the constellation Hercules, and the two bright stars so essential for finding it, are well up in the northeastern to eastern sky.

Arcturus is in the constellation Bootes, and Vega is in the constellation Lyra. A line between them passes through what is known as the Keystone in Hercules.

At nightfall, Vega may still be below in your horizon. If so, look for Hercules below the star Arcturus.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

The constellation Hercules, with its prominent Keystone asterism marked. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The Keystone in Hercules is a squarish figure in the center of the constellation. This sky pattern is an asterism, or noticeable pattern within a larger constellation.

The Keystone is a helpful pattern for more reasons than one. First, it’s noticeable on the sky’s dome, so can lead your eye to Hercules.

Also, the Keystone in Hercules can help you find the most fascinating telescopic object within the boundaries of this constellation. This object is a globular star cluster known to stargazers as M13 or the Great Cluster in Hercules. It’s barely visible the eye alone in the darkest of skies.

Binoculars show M13 as a nebulous star-like patch of light. And telescopes show stars both on the periphery of the cluster and toward its center.

This beautiful object is one of the galaxy’s oldest inhabitants. It’s a tightly packed spherical collection of about one million stars.

EarthSky astronomy kits are perfect for beginners. Order today from the EarthSky store

M13, aka the Great Cluster in Hercules. This object is a globular star cluster, one of our galaxy’s oldest inhabitants. More about M13: Great cluster in Hercules Photo via Bareket Observatory in Israel, via CelestronImages.

Bottom line: Use the brilliant stars Arcturus and Vega to find the constellation Hercules tonight!

Donate: Your support means the world to us

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1rdci4D

NY Times hired a hippie puncher to give climate obstructionists cover

Yesterday, New York Times subscribers were treated to an email alert announcing the first opinion column from Bret Stephens, who they hired away from the Wall Street Journal. Like all Journal opinion columnists who write about climate change, Stephens has said a lot of things on the subject that could charitably be described as ignorant and wrong. Thus many Times subscribers voiced bewilderment and concern about his hiring, to which the paper’s public editor issued a rather offensive response.

Justifying the critics, here’s how the paper announced Stephens’ first opinion column in an email alert (usually reserved for important breaking news):

TOP STORIES

In his debut as a Times Op-Ed columnist, Bret Stephens says reasonable people can be skeptical about the dangers of climate change

Stephens gets his few facts wrong

In his column, Stephens pooh-poohed climate change as a “modest (0.85 degrees Celsius) warming of the Northern Hemisphere since 1880,” citing the 2014 IPCC report. However, Stephens packed three big mistakes into that single sentence. Here’s what the IPCC said (emphasis added):

The globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend show a warming of 0.85 [0.65 to 1.06] °C over the period 1880 to 2012

The northern hemisphere warms faster than the global average because it has more land and less ocean than the southern hemisphere (water warms slowly), so this is an important mistake that underestimates the global temperature rise. On top of that, since 2012 we’ve seen the three hottest years on record (2014, 2015, and 2016), so even the 0.85°C warming figure is outdated (it’s now right around 1°C).

Stephens doesn’t understand the rapid pace or urgency of the problem

Most importantly, the global warming we’ve experience is in no way “modest.” We’re already causing a rate of warming faster than when the Earth transitions out of an ice age, and within a few decades we could be causing the fastest climate change Earth has seen in 50 million years. The last ice age transition saw about 4°C global warming over 10,000 years; humans are on pace to cause that much warming between 1900 and 2100 – a period of just 200 years, with most of that warming happening since 1975.

Of course, how much global warming we see in the coming decades depends on how much carbon pollution we dump into the atmosphere. If we take serious immediate action to cut those emissions, as the international community pledged to do under the Paris agreement, we can limit global warming to perhaps 2°C, and the climate consequences that come along with it.

But this is where Stephens’ opinions are particularly unhelpful:

Demanding abrupt and expensive changes in public policy raises fair questions about ideological intentions. Censoriously asserting one’s moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts … Perhaps if there were less certitude about our climate future, more Americans would be interested in having a reasoned conversation about it.

In other words, the people obstructing climate policies are justified because climate “advocates” are too mean to them, and claim too much certainty about the future.

This is of course nonsense. There is uncertainty about how much global warming and climate change we’ll see in the coming decades (climate scientists are crystal clear about this), but the biggest factor contributing to that uncertainty is human behavior – how much carbon pollution we end up dumping into the atmosphere. This is apparent from looking at the IPCC global temperature projections:

Global average surface temperature projections. Illustration: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report.

In the red ‘burn lots of fossil fuels’ (RCP8.5) scenario, we’ll see a further 3.0–5.5°C warming between now and 2100. In the blue ‘take immediate serious climate action’ (RCP2.6) scenario, we’ll see a further 0.5–1.5°C global warming by 2100. Those ranges represent uncertainties in the climate modeling, but the difference between them – which is based on how much carbon pollution we release – is bigger than the uncertainty in each scenario.

Stephens needs a lesson in risk management

Smoking provides an apt analogy. Each time we smoke, we increase the odds of developing cancer a little bit more. The future outcome is uncertain – we don’t know exactly if or when the disaster of cancer will hit – but we know we’re making it more likely every time we smoke, and the smart move is to mitigate that risk by cutting down on the cigarettes as quickly as possible. With climate change, each time we add more carbon pollution to the atmosphere, we increase the odds of a climate catastrophe a little bit more. The smart move is to mitigate that risk by cutting down on our burning of fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

Stephens’ piece is akin to criticizing doctors and anti-smoking groups for being too mean to the tobacco industry, and for not focusing on the uncertainty about exactly when the chain-smoking patient will develop cancer.

So far, climate change may be humanity’s greatest-ever risk management failure. The Paris climate agreement was a major step to remedy that failure, but now the Trump administration is debating whether to withdraw from it, or simply refuse to honor America’s pledges. 

There have been bipartisan bills in Congress to implement market-based solutionsto the problem, but each has been blocked by the Republican Party at the behest of its fossil fuel donors. Democrats have even proposed small government, revenue-neutral solutions that would benefit the economy, but while some Republican elder statesmen support the policy, Republicans in Congress have refused to even vote on it.

Stephens punches the hippies

In short, on climate science and policy it’s clear where the problem lies, and it’s not with the advocates. Not only does Stephens get basic facts wrong and gloss over the tremendous risks posed by climate change, but he blames partisan policy obstruction on the people who are desperately trying every possible avenue to solve the problem. The New York Times is publishing and promoting textbook hippie punching, and its readers are rightly appalled. 

Click here to read the rest

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/2oWZALY

Yesterday, New York Times subscribers were treated to an email alert announcing the first opinion column from Bret Stephens, who they hired away from the Wall Street Journal. Like all Journal opinion columnists who write about climate change, Stephens has said a lot of things on the subject that could charitably be described as ignorant and wrong. Thus many Times subscribers voiced bewilderment and concern about his hiring, to which the paper’s public editor issued a rather offensive response.

Justifying the critics, here’s how the paper announced Stephens’ first opinion column in an email alert (usually reserved for important breaking news):

TOP STORIES

In his debut as a Times Op-Ed columnist, Bret Stephens says reasonable people can be skeptical about the dangers of climate change

Stephens gets his few facts wrong

In his column, Stephens pooh-poohed climate change as a “modest (0.85 degrees Celsius) warming of the Northern Hemisphere since 1880,” citing the 2014 IPCC report. However, Stephens packed three big mistakes into that single sentence. Here’s what the IPCC said (emphasis added):

The globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend show a warming of 0.85 [0.65 to 1.06] °C over the period 1880 to 2012

The northern hemisphere warms faster than the global average because it has more land and less ocean than the southern hemisphere (water warms slowly), so this is an important mistake that underestimates the global temperature rise. On top of that, since 2012 we’ve seen the three hottest years on record (2014, 2015, and 2016), so even the 0.85°C warming figure is outdated (it’s now right around 1°C).

Stephens doesn’t understand the rapid pace or urgency of the problem

Most importantly, the global warming we’ve experience is in no way “modest.” We’re already causing a rate of warming faster than when the Earth transitions out of an ice age, and within a few decades we could be causing the fastest climate change Earth has seen in 50 million years. The last ice age transition saw about 4°C global warming over 10,000 years; humans are on pace to cause that much warming between 1900 and 2100 – a period of just 200 years, with most of that warming happening since 1975.

Of course, how much global warming we see in the coming decades depends on how much carbon pollution we dump into the atmosphere. If we take serious immediate action to cut those emissions, as the international community pledged to do under the Paris agreement, we can limit global warming to perhaps 2°C, and the climate consequences that come along with it.

But this is where Stephens’ opinions are particularly unhelpful:

Demanding abrupt and expensive changes in public policy raises fair questions about ideological intentions. Censoriously asserting one’s moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts … Perhaps if there were less certitude about our climate future, more Americans would be interested in having a reasoned conversation about it.

In other words, the people obstructing climate policies are justified because climate “advocates” are too mean to them, and claim too much certainty about the future.

This is of course nonsense. There is uncertainty about how much global warming and climate change we’ll see in the coming decades (climate scientists are crystal clear about this), but the biggest factor contributing to that uncertainty is human behavior – how much carbon pollution we end up dumping into the atmosphere. This is apparent from looking at the IPCC global temperature projections:

Global average surface temperature projections. Illustration: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report.

In the red ‘burn lots of fossil fuels’ (RCP8.5) scenario, we’ll see a further 3.0–5.5°C warming between now and 2100. In the blue ‘take immediate serious climate action’ (RCP2.6) scenario, we’ll see a further 0.5–1.5°C global warming by 2100. Those ranges represent uncertainties in the climate modeling, but the difference between them – which is based on how much carbon pollution we release – is bigger than the uncertainty in each scenario.

Stephens needs a lesson in risk management

Smoking provides an apt analogy. Each time we smoke, we increase the odds of developing cancer a little bit more. The future outcome is uncertain – we don’t know exactly if or when the disaster of cancer will hit – but we know we’re making it more likely every time we smoke, and the smart move is to mitigate that risk by cutting down on the cigarettes as quickly as possible. With climate change, each time we add more carbon pollution to the atmosphere, we increase the odds of a climate catastrophe a little bit more. The smart move is to mitigate that risk by cutting down on our burning of fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

Stephens’ piece is akin to criticizing doctors and anti-smoking groups for being too mean to the tobacco industry, and for not focusing on the uncertainty about exactly when the chain-smoking patient will develop cancer.

So far, climate change may be humanity’s greatest-ever risk management failure. The Paris climate agreement was a major step to remedy that failure, but now the Trump administration is debating whether to withdraw from it, or simply refuse to honor America’s pledges. 

There have been bipartisan bills in Congress to implement market-based solutionsto the problem, but each has been blocked by the Republican Party at the behest of its fossil fuel donors. Democrats have even proposed small government, revenue-neutral solutions that would benefit the economy, but while some Republican elder statesmen support the policy, Republicans in Congress have refused to even vote on it.

Stephens punches the hippies

In short, on climate science and policy it’s clear where the problem lies, and it’s not with the advocates. Not only does Stephens get basic facts wrong and gloss over the tremendous risks posed by climate change, but he blames partisan policy obstruction on the people who are desperately trying every possible avenue to solve the problem. The New York Times is publishing and promoting textbook hippie punching, and its readers are rightly appalled. 

Click here to read the rest

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/2oWZALY

Climate March April 29: A few video tweets [Greg Laden's Blog]

The #ClimateMarch in front of Trump's DC Hotel. "Shame, shame" http://pic.twitter.com/7XACSbTJzG

— Peter Gleick (@PeterGleick) April 29, 2017

Leading the #ClimateMarch in Washington: @LeoDiCaprio, waiving a "climate change is real" sign. #Resist http://pic.twitter.com/GqfTfJJb6y

— SeriouslyUS? (@USseriously) April 29, 2017

Protectors of Justice, #BlackLivesMatter, holding it down on the frontlines. #climatemarch #ittakesroots @CJAOurPower http://pic.twitter.com/Z9ELt7Yl5t

— bryan parras (@HighTechAztec) April 29, 2017

We all march for different reasons. We also march together. #ClimateMarch https://t.co/dFBFoHatqo http://pic.twitter.com/FXSEFyLaa5

— NRDC (@NRDC) April 29, 2017

With @mayboeve before Peoples #climatemarch — on 100th day of Trump in office we are standing strongly against him. We March for justice! http://pic.twitter.com/8Y0vDWoFrA

— 350 dot org (@350) April 29, 2017

We r here at People's #ClimateMarch. Hear from @ahdum24 on why she is marching. #IndigenousWomenRise #Women4ClimateJustice http://pic.twitter.com/ZoHfXNtqM7

— WECAN, International (@WECAN_INTL) April 29, 2017

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2oTienv

The #ClimateMarch in front of Trump's DC Hotel. "Shame, shame" http://pic.twitter.com/7XACSbTJzG

— Peter Gleick (@PeterGleick) April 29, 2017

Leading the #ClimateMarch in Washington: @LeoDiCaprio, waiving a "climate change is real" sign. #Resist http://pic.twitter.com/GqfTfJJb6y

— SeriouslyUS? (@USseriously) April 29, 2017

Protectors of Justice, #BlackLivesMatter, holding it down on the frontlines. #climatemarch #ittakesroots @CJAOurPower http://pic.twitter.com/Z9ELt7Yl5t

— bryan parras (@HighTechAztec) April 29, 2017

We all march for different reasons. We also march together. #ClimateMarch https://t.co/dFBFoHatqo http://pic.twitter.com/FXSEFyLaa5

— NRDC (@NRDC) April 29, 2017

With @mayboeve before Peoples #climatemarch — on 100th day of Trump in office we are standing strongly against him. We March for justice! http://pic.twitter.com/8Y0vDWoFrA

— 350 dot org (@350) April 29, 2017

We r here at People's #ClimateMarch. Hear from @ahdum24 on why she is marching. #IndigenousWomenRise #Women4ClimateJustice http://pic.twitter.com/ZoHfXNtqM7

— WECAN, International (@WECAN_INTL) April 29, 2017

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2oTienv

Taking The Axe To The Environmental Movement: Resolute v. Greenpeace [Greg Laden's Blog]

A major Canadian logger appears to be using a pair of law suits to end the existence of Greenpeace and to stop or curtail pro-environmental activities by other organizations operating in North America, or perhaps, generally.

This activity is being carried out by Resolute Forest Products. This is a rapidly developing story. Aside from the usual sources of information, I had a long conversation with a representative of Greenpeace. I also refer you to this blog post.

Resolute Forest Products is one of North America’s largest converters of forest into pulp, ultimately to be used to make paper. They do other things as well. Back in 2010, Resolute Forest Products joined a group of 30 entities, including other forestry companies as well as environmental organizations such as Greenpeace. The group, called the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, intended to reduce negative impacts on the northern boreal forests caused by companies like Resolute.

Resolute, for its part, is said to have stonewalled movement in any positive direction, and eventually, Greenpeace Canada and others dropped out of the agreement. Greenpeace Canada then produced a report, in May 2013, outlining alleged deception by Resolute about the sustainability of their products. Generally, Greenpeace has been encouraging pulp customers to select producers that log sustainably, and that appears to annoy Resolute. That started a relatively complex back and forth between Resolute and Greenpeace, and other Canadian stakeholders, including a $7 million defamation suite by resolute against Greenpeace Canada as well as two of its staff members.

To get caught up on the environmental arguments concerns at hand, see Endangered Forests in the Balance: The impact of logging reaches new heights in the Montagnes Blanches Endangered Forest.

And now this ongoing battle is heating up again.

At present, there are two new significant suits by Resolute Forest Products, one against Greenpeace Canada, the other against Greenpeace International. The latter is said to have been filed in the US because the limitations on liability are much higher; Indeed, the Canadian suit is for millions, while the US based suit is for hundreds of millions. Along with these legal actions, Resolute is, again, directly attacking individuals and not just the company.

It is generally believed by observers that Resolute intends to use this legal action to end Greenpeace. Other environmental organizations are concerned that this type of suit may end their efforts as well.

Many will consider this a SLAPP suit. This is a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.” A SLAPP “… is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition. Such lawsuits have been made illegal in many jurisdictions on the grounds that they impede freedom of speech.*”

The US based law suit uses RICO statute. RICO stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and was created to allow prosecutors important tools to go after previously nearly untouchable organized crime entities. Apparently, legal experts view the RICO suit against Greenpeace International to be absurd and unwinnable. That is what would make it a SLAPP. All Resolute has to do is pour a few tens of millions into the effort, and Greenpeace will have to give in. Unless, of course, judges throw the suits out early enough.

Pulp: The coal of the wood industry

Why is this happening? The most obvious reason is that Resolute is tired of having their lack of sustainable practice pointed out to them by organizations like Greenpeace. There may even be a cost to Resolute, in that customers are increasingly demanding that sustainable practices be followed by extractive industries such as logging. Indeed, I expect that one response to the Resolute legal action will be an effort to pressure book publishers to use paper made from sustainably produced pulp.

So there’s that, but there is probably more to it. Resolute is part of a rapidly declining industry: North American pulp. Resolute could scale down its overall expectations and become the sustainable pulp producer. Or, it could barrel into the future full speed ahead, using up whatever expanse of the northern forest it can lay it’s saws on before getting stopped. It seems to be doing the latter.

Over the last fifty years or so, the production of paper has gone up significantly (from tens of millions of tons in 1960 to over 350 millions of tons more recently). People will tell you that the internet killed off paper production, but that seems not quite true. Paper production does not increase each year as much as it formerly did, but it still increases.

But two other things have happened. For one, the amount of paper that is recycled has also gone up, but at a slightly slower rate than overall paper production. So, that shift from 10 to 350 million tons a year of paper, an increase of about 30 times, is actually an increase of about 10 or 15 times for the virgin pulp some paper is made out of. Related is the use of more wood waste to make pulp instead of virgin timber.

The other factor is the shift in pulp and paper production to places other than North America, so from a North American perspective, pulp looks a lot like coal: it is a dying business.

Putting all this together, and you can see that Greenpeace is really Resolute’s smaller problem. The bigger problem is a dramatic and ongoing decline in its own market.

I would have thought this would be the ideal time go go full on rogue sustainable, and be the one company that produces most of the sustainable pulp in a world where North Americans will tolerate nothing else. But apparently I do not work at Resolute, do I?

Stay tuned!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2oWbfLh

A major Canadian logger appears to be using a pair of law suits to end the existence of Greenpeace and to stop or curtail pro-environmental activities by other organizations operating in North America, or perhaps, generally.

This activity is being carried out by Resolute Forest Products. This is a rapidly developing story. Aside from the usual sources of information, I had a long conversation with a representative of Greenpeace. I also refer you to this blog post.

Resolute Forest Products is one of North America’s largest converters of forest into pulp, ultimately to be used to make paper. They do other things as well. Back in 2010, Resolute Forest Products joined a group of 30 entities, including other forestry companies as well as environmental organizations such as Greenpeace. The group, called the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, intended to reduce negative impacts on the northern boreal forests caused by companies like Resolute.

Resolute, for its part, is said to have stonewalled movement in any positive direction, and eventually, Greenpeace Canada and others dropped out of the agreement. Greenpeace Canada then produced a report, in May 2013, outlining alleged deception by Resolute about the sustainability of their products. Generally, Greenpeace has been encouraging pulp customers to select producers that log sustainably, and that appears to annoy Resolute. That started a relatively complex back and forth between Resolute and Greenpeace, and other Canadian stakeholders, including a $7 million defamation suite by resolute against Greenpeace Canada as well as two of its staff members.

To get caught up on the environmental arguments concerns at hand, see Endangered Forests in the Balance: The impact of logging reaches new heights in the Montagnes Blanches Endangered Forest.

And now this ongoing battle is heating up again.

At present, there are two new significant suits by Resolute Forest Products, one against Greenpeace Canada, the other against Greenpeace International. The latter is said to have been filed in the US because the limitations on liability are much higher; Indeed, the Canadian suit is for millions, while the US based suit is for hundreds of millions. Along with these legal actions, Resolute is, again, directly attacking individuals and not just the company.

It is generally believed by observers that Resolute intends to use this legal action to end Greenpeace. Other environmental organizations are concerned that this type of suit may end their efforts as well.

Many will consider this a SLAPP suit. This is a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.” A SLAPP “… is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition. Such lawsuits have been made illegal in many jurisdictions on the grounds that they impede freedom of speech.*”

The US based law suit uses RICO statute. RICO stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and was created to allow prosecutors important tools to go after previously nearly untouchable organized crime entities. Apparently, legal experts view the RICO suit against Greenpeace International to be absurd and unwinnable. That is what would make it a SLAPP. All Resolute has to do is pour a few tens of millions into the effort, and Greenpeace will have to give in. Unless, of course, judges throw the suits out early enough.

Pulp: The coal of the wood industry

Why is this happening? The most obvious reason is that Resolute is tired of having their lack of sustainable practice pointed out to them by organizations like Greenpeace. There may even be a cost to Resolute, in that customers are increasingly demanding that sustainable practices be followed by extractive industries such as logging. Indeed, I expect that one response to the Resolute legal action will be an effort to pressure book publishers to use paper made from sustainably produced pulp.

So there’s that, but there is probably more to it. Resolute is part of a rapidly declining industry: North American pulp. Resolute could scale down its overall expectations and become the sustainable pulp producer. Or, it could barrel into the future full speed ahead, using up whatever expanse of the northern forest it can lay it’s saws on before getting stopped. It seems to be doing the latter.

Over the last fifty years or so, the production of paper has gone up significantly (from tens of millions of tons in 1960 to over 350 millions of tons more recently). People will tell you that the internet killed off paper production, but that seems not quite true. Paper production does not increase each year as much as it formerly did, but it still increases.

But two other things have happened. For one, the amount of paper that is recycled has also gone up, but at a slightly slower rate than overall paper production. So, that shift from 10 to 350 million tons a year of paper, an increase of about 30 times, is actually an increase of about 10 or 15 times for the virgin pulp some paper is made out of. Related is the use of more wood waste to make pulp instead of virgin timber.

The other factor is the shift in pulp and paper production to places other than North America, so from a North American perspective, pulp looks a lot like coal: it is a dying business.

Putting all this together, and you can see that Greenpeace is really Resolute’s smaller problem. The bigger problem is a dramatic and ongoing decline in its own market.

I would have thought this would be the ideal time go go full on rogue sustainable, and be the one company that produces most of the sustainable pulp in a world where North Americans will tolerate nothing else. But apparently I do not work at Resolute, do I?

Stay tuned!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2oWbfLh

2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #17

A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week. Articles of signifigance as determined by the editor are highlighted in the Editor's Picks' section.

Editor's Picks

Tens of thousands marched for science. Now what?

 

Just hours after the Washington March for Science dispersed, organizers sent an email to demonstrators with the subject line, “What's next?”

“Our movement is just starting,” the message read. It went on to urge marchers to take part in a “week of action,” a set of coordinated activities that range from signing an environmental voting pledge to participating in a citizen science project. They will provide postcards for participants to send to their political leaders and a calendar of events recommended by the march's partner groups.

The march website was also overhauled Saturday night to include a new page on the organization's vision for the future. The details are not fully fleshed out (and the page still included a few typos Sunday afternoon), but organizers say they aim to build a new science advocacy network and establish programs to better engage the public with science.

“We intend to symbolically keep marching,” said national co-chair Valerie Aquino. “I would love for the March for Science to continue growing into a global movement.”

That goal will require a sea change in how scientists think about outreach. But after the success of the march, which turned out tens of thousands of demonstrators in more than 600 cities, organizers think it could happen.

Tens of thousands marched for science. Now what? by Sarah Kaplan, Speaking of Science, Washington Post, Apr 23, 2107 

---

China, India Become Climate Leaders as West Falters

Less than two years after world leaders signed off on a historic United Nations climate treaty in Paris in late 2015, and following three years of record-setting heat worldwide, climate policies are advancing in developing countries but stalling or regressing in richer ones.

In the Western hemisphere, where centuries of polluting fossil fuel use have created comfortable lifestyles, the fight against warming has faltered largely due to the rise of far-right political groups and nationalist movements. As numerous rich countries have foundered, India and China have emerged as global leaders in tackling global warming.

Nowhere is backtracking more apparent than in the U.S., where President Trump is moving swiftly to dismantle environmental protections and reverse President Obama’s push for domestic and global solutions to global warming.

The U.S. isn’t alone in its regression. European lawmakers are balking at far-reaching measures to tackle climate change. Australian climate policy is in tatters. International efforts to slow deforestation in tropical countries are failing.

China, India Become Climate Leaders as West Falters by John Upton, Climate Central, Apr 24, 2017 

---

 

 April 1970 through March 2017 temperature trend from Berkeley Earth.

With the first quarter of 2017 now past, the year is shaping up to be one of climate extremes: high temperatures, low sea ice, and coral bleaching. 

Global surface temperatures continue to increase in-line with climate model predictions, and the world has now experienced an increased global temperature of about 0.8 degrees C (1.5 degrees F) since 1970. Temperatures for the first three months of the year were actually warmer than the 2016 average, and there is a reasonable chance that 2017 for a fourth consecutive year will be the warmest on record.

Global sea ice extent is near historic lows in the Arctic and Antarctic, and Arctic sea ice volume has also been decreasing as it ages and thins, with less new ice to replace it. The Great Barrier Reef experienced an unprecedented second consecutive year of coral bleaching, the only major coral bleaching on record to have occurred other than in an El Niño year.

Worrisome first quarter of 2017 climate trends by Zeke Hausfather, Yale Climate Connections, Apr 27, 2017

---

An Ice-Free Summer in the Arctic Ocean Would Be Deadly for the Northern Hemisphere

 

Arctic sea ice near the coast of Greenland in September of 2015 at the peak of the melt season. (Photo: Bob Berwyn)

Climate scientists don’t like to get pinned down on making date-specific projections about the effects of global warming. But after months of watching Arctic sea ice languish at a record low, the big question has surfaced once again: When will we see the Arctic’s first ice-free summer?

According to University of Exeter climate researcher James Screen, the latest modeling suggests that, unless heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions stop soon, an ice-free Arctic summer will happen as soon as 2046.

“That’s our best estimate, give or take 20 years,” Screen said during an April 24th press conference at the European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna. The ice decline is clearly linked with rising global temperatures, and the chances that the Arctic will be ice-free increase dramatically when the average global temperature rises between 1.7 and 2.1 degrees Celsius, Screen said. 

Worrisome first quarter of 2017 climate trends by Zeke Hausfather, Yale Climate Connections, Apr 28, 2017 

---

The kids suing Donald Trump are marching to the White House

 

"The state of the planet is unraveling all around us because of our addiction to fossil fuels," Xiuhtezcatl Martinez said at the steps of the US Supreme Court this week. "For the last several decades, we have been neglecting the fact that this is the only planet that we have and that the main stakeholders in this issue (of climate change) are the younger generation. Not only are the youth going to be inheriting every problem that we see in the world today — after our politicians have been long gone — but our voices have been neglected from the conversation.

"Our politicians are no longer representing our voices."

So, what's a voiceless kid to do?

How about sue President Donald Trump and his administration — and then march to the White House?

The kids suing Donald Trump are marching to the White House by John Sutter, CNN, Apr 29, 2017 

---

Sun Apr 23, 2017

• There’s a Leadership Vacuum on Climate Change. Business Should Fill It by Andrew Winston, Harvard Business Review, Apr 21, 2017
• UK launches ‘world first’ research programme into negative emissions by Simon Evans, Carbon Brief, Apr 21, 2017
• March for Science: mad scientists in action by Carla Bleiker, Deutsche Welle (DW), Apr 22, 2017
• March for Science: Protesters gather worldwide to support 'evidence' by Laura Smith-Spark & Jason Hanna, CNN, Apr 22, 2017
• Defending science: How the art of rhetoric can help by Leah Ceccarelli, The Conversation US, Apr 20. 2017
• India's 2017 monsoon rains seen at average levels: weather office by Sudarshan Varadhan & Mayank Bhardwaj, Reuters, Apr 18, 2017
• How a Melting Arctic Changes Everything by Eric Roston & Blacki Migliozzi, Bloomberg News, Apr 19, 2017
• Bloomberg To World Leaders: Ignore Trump’s Ideas On Climate Change, AP/CBS New York, Apr 23, 2017

Mon Apr 24, 2017

• The effects of climate change will force millions to migrate. Here’s what this means for human security. by Kelly M. McFarland & Vanessa Lide, Monkey Cage, Washington Post, Apr 23, 2017
• The Surprising List of States Leading U.S. on Renewable Energy by Zahra Hirji, InsideClimate News, Apr 21, 2017
• 15 Climate Change Facts That You'll Know Are True If You're Not An Idiot by Erin La Rosa, BuzzFeed, Apr 22, 2017
• How The March For Science Finally Found Its Voice by Ed Young, The Atlantic, Apr 24, 2017
• Bloomberg Adds Climate Change Site To Its Financial News Empire by Alexander C. Kaufman, Huffington Post US, Apr 20, 2017
• Pictures From the March for Science, New York Times, Apr 22, 2017
• China, India Become Climate Leaders as West Falters by John Upton, Climate Central, Apr 24, 2017
• The Electric Car Revolution Now Faces Its Biggest Test by Tom Randall, Climate Changed, Bloomberg News, Apr 24, 2017
• Record-breaking climate events all over the world are being shaped by global warming, scientists find by Chelsea Harvey, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Apr 24, 2017

Tue Apr 25, 2017

• As global groundwater disappears, rice, wheat and other international crops may start to vanish by David Bersndsten, PBS News Hour, Apr 17, 2017
• Here come back-to-back science and climate marches. Organizers insist there’s no competition. by Chelsea Harvey, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Apr 21, 2017
• Tens of thousands marched for science. Now what? by Sarah Kaplan, Speaking of Science, Washington Post, Apr 23, 2107
• Extreme Arctic Melt Is Raising Sea Level Rise Threat; New Estimate Nearly Twice IPCC's by Sabrina Shankman, InsideClimate News, Apr 25, 2017
• Trump to set new executive orders on environment, energy this week by David Shepardson and Valerie Volcovici. Reuters, Apr 24, 2017
• Trump's Climate Cuts Could Result in Half-Billion Extra Tons of CO2 in the Air by Marianne Lavelle, InsideClimate News, Apr 25, 2017
• SkS Analogy 2 - Ferrari Without Gas by Evan, Skeptical Science, Apr 24, 2017
• Record-challenging heat possible for climate march in Washington on Saturday by Jason Samenow, Capital Weather Gang, Washington Post, April 25, 2017
• March against madness - denial has pushed scientists out into the streets by Dana Nuccitelli, Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian, Apr 25, 2017

Wed Apr 26, 2017

• Cut fossil fuel use ‘dramatically’ to meet climate goals, says Shell-backed report by Simon Evans, Carbon Brief, Apr 25, 2017
• Networks Covering March For Science Provided Platform For Climate Deniers by Kevin Kalhoefer, Media Matters for America, Apr 24, 2017
• The nightmare scenario for Florida’s coastal homeowners – sea levels rising by Christopher Flavelle, Domain, Apr 21, 2017
• Did 'people power' save a trove of EPA data from a shutdown by Trump? by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, Apr 24, 2017
• Most global investors recognise financial risk of climate change, report finds by Paul Karp, Guardian, Apr 25, 2017
• Our Climate Future Is Actually Our Climate Present by Jon Mooallem, New York Times Magazine, Apr 19, 2017
• Rising Seas Will Send Millions of Refugees to Inland Cities by Marlene Cimons, Nexus Media, Apr 24, 2017
• Scientists keep increasing their projections for how much the oceans will rise this century by Chris Mooney, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Apr 21, 2017

Thu Apr 27, 2017

• State Department Memo Boosts Case to Stay in Paris Climate Pact by Jennifer A Dlouhy & Nick Wadhams, Bloomberg News, Apr 25, 2017
• The Regulatory Accountability Act Subverts Science and Must Be Stopped by Michael Halpern, Union of Concerned Scientists, Apr 26, 2016
• I’m Elise, and I’m a Scientist Marching in the Peoples Climate March. This Is Why. by Elsie Tolbert, Blog, Union of Concened Scientists, Apr 24, 2017
• Looming 'catastrophe' in East Africa proves why world must tackle climate change, says Oxfam by Ian Johnston, Independent, Apr 27, 2017
• The Trump White House is at war with itself about climate change by Chris Mooney & Juliet Elperin, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Apr 26. 2017
• Climate models have underestimated Earth’s sensitivity to CO2 changes, study finds by Jim Shelton, Yale News, Apr 4, 2017
• Sowing Climate Doubt Among Schoolteachers, Opinion by Curt Stager, New York Times, Apr 27, 2017
• El Niño and the end of the global warming hiatus by Jim Shelton, Yale News, Apr 26, 2017

Fri Apr 28, 2017

• Germany Calls Rick Perry’s Push to Rework Paris Climate Agreement ‘Absurd’ by Joe Ryan & Brian Parkin, Bloomberg News, Apr 26, 2017
• U.S. Vulnerable to Worst of Extreme Sea Rise by John Upton, Climate Central. Apr 26, 2017
• How is this weekend’s climate march different from its predecessor? ‘Now, the task is full-on resistance.’ by Brady Dennis, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Apr 26. 2017
• Climate Scientists Cancelling Their New York Times Subscription Over Hiring of Climate Denialist Bret Stephens by Graham Readfearn, DeSmog, Apr 27, 2017
• Amazon’s fate hangs on outcome of war between opposing worldviews by Sue Branford & Maurício Torres, Mongaby, Apr 27, 2017
• We owe our planet this climate march. But we also owe it – very faint – hope, Opinion by Bill McKibben, Guardian, Apr 28, 2017
• Impacted Communities Draw 'Red Line' for Mother Earth Across US Capitol by Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams, Apr 28, 2017
• New study: global warming keeps on keeping on by John Abraham, Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian, Apr 27, 2017

Sat Apr 29, 2017

• The Faith Community & Climate Change by John Gehring, Commonweal, Apr 27, 2017
• Suddenly, the future doesn’t seem so far away by Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick Diary of a Climate Scientist, Inside Story, Apr 28, 2017
• The kids suing Donald Trump are marching to the White House by John Sutter, CNN, Apr 29, 2017
• 5 Year Study: What Happens in the Arctic Does not Stay in the Arctic by Peter Sinclair, Climate Crock of the Week, Apr 25, 2017
• Climate March expected to draw massive crowd to D.C. in sweltering heat by Chris Mooney, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Apr 29, 2017
• An Ice-Free Summer in the Arctic Ocean Would Be Deadly for the Northern Hemisphere by Bob Berwyn, Pacific Standard, Apr 28, 2017
• Worrisome first quarter of 2017 climate trends by Zeke Hausfather, Yale Climate Connections, Apr 27, 2017

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/2oVYksD

A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week. Articles of signifigance as determined by the editor are highlighted in the Editor's Picks' section.

Editor's Picks

Tens of thousands marched for science. Now what?

 

Just hours after the Washington March for Science dispersed, organizers sent an email to demonstrators with the subject line, “What's next?”

“Our movement is just starting,” the message read. It went on to urge marchers to take part in a “week of action,” a set of coordinated activities that range from signing an environmental voting pledge to participating in a citizen science project. They will provide postcards for participants to send to their political leaders and a calendar of events recommended by the march's partner groups.

The march website was also overhauled Saturday night to include a new page on the organization's vision for the future. The details are not fully fleshed out (and the page still included a few typos Sunday afternoon), but organizers say they aim to build a new science advocacy network and establish programs to better engage the public with science.

“We intend to symbolically keep marching,” said national co-chair Valerie Aquino. “I would love for the March for Science to continue growing into a global movement.”

That goal will require a sea change in how scientists think about outreach. But after the success of the march, which turned out tens of thousands of demonstrators in more than 600 cities, organizers think it could happen.

Tens of thousands marched for science. Now what? by Sarah Kaplan, Speaking of Science, Washington Post, Apr 23, 2107 

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China, India Become Climate Leaders as West Falters

Less than two years after world leaders signed off on a historic United Nations climate treaty in Paris in late 2015, and following three years of record-setting heat worldwide, climate policies are advancing in developing countries but stalling or regressing in richer ones.

In the Western hemisphere, where centuries of polluting fossil fuel use have created comfortable lifestyles, the fight against warming has faltered largely due to the rise of far-right political groups and nationalist movements. As numerous rich countries have foundered, India and China have emerged as global leaders in tackling global warming.

Nowhere is backtracking more apparent than in the U.S., where President Trump is moving swiftly to dismantle environmental protections and reverse President Obama’s push for domestic and global solutions to global warming.

The U.S. isn’t alone in its regression. European lawmakers are balking at far-reaching measures to tackle climate change. Australian climate policy is in tatters. International efforts to slow deforestation in tropical countries are failing.

China, India Become Climate Leaders as West Falters by John Upton, Climate Central, Apr 24, 2017 

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 April 1970 through March 2017 temperature trend from Berkeley Earth.

With the first quarter of 2017 now past, the year is shaping up to be one of climate extremes: high temperatures, low sea ice, and coral bleaching. 

Global surface temperatures continue to increase in-line with climate model predictions, and the world has now experienced an increased global temperature of about 0.8 degrees C (1.5 degrees F) since 1970. Temperatures for the first three months of the year were actually warmer than the 2016 average, and there is a reasonable chance that 2017 for a fourth consecutive year will be the warmest on record.

Global sea ice extent is near historic lows in the Arctic and Antarctic, and Arctic sea ice volume has also been decreasing as it ages and thins, with less new ice to replace it. The Great Barrier Reef experienced an unprecedented second consecutive year of coral bleaching, the only major coral bleaching on record to have occurred other than in an El Niño year.

Worrisome first quarter of 2017 climate trends by Zeke Hausfather, Yale Climate Connections, Apr 27, 2017

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An Ice-Free Summer in the Arctic Ocean Would Be Deadly for the Northern Hemisphere

 

Arctic sea ice near the coast of Greenland in September of 2015 at the peak of the melt season. (Photo: Bob Berwyn)

Climate scientists don’t like to get pinned down on making date-specific projections about the effects of global warming. But after months of watching Arctic sea ice languish at a record low, the big question has surfaced once again: When will we see the Arctic’s first ice-free summer?

According to University of Exeter climate researcher James Screen, the latest modeling suggests that, unless heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions stop soon, an ice-free Arctic summer will happen as soon as 2046.

“That’s our best estimate, give or take 20 years,” Screen said during an April 24th press conference at the European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna. The ice decline is clearly linked with rising global temperatures, and the chances that the Arctic will be ice-free increase dramatically when the average global temperature rises between 1.7 and 2.1 degrees Celsius, Screen said. 

Worrisome first quarter of 2017 climate trends by Zeke Hausfather, Yale Climate Connections, Apr 28, 2017 

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The kids suing Donald Trump are marching to the White House

 

"The state of the planet is unraveling all around us because of our addiction to fossil fuels," Xiuhtezcatl Martinez said at the steps of the US Supreme Court this week. "For the last several decades, we have been neglecting the fact that this is the only planet that we have and that the main stakeholders in this issue (of climate change) are the younger generation. Not only are the youth going to be inheriting every problem that we see in the world today — after our politicians have been long gone — but our voices have been neglected from the conversation.

"Our politicians are no longer representing our voices."

So, what's a voiceless kid to do?

How about sue President Donald Trump and his administration — and then march to the White House?

The kids suing Donald Trump are marching to the White House by John Sutter, CNN, Apr 29, 2017 

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Sun Apr 23, 2017

• There’s a Leadership Vacuum on Climate Change. Business Should Fill It by Andrew Winston, Harvard Business Review, Apr 21, 2017
• UK launches ‘world first’ research programme into negative emissions by Simon Evans, Carbon Brief, Apr 21, 2017
• March for Science: mad scientists in action by Carla Bleiker, Deutsche Welle (DW), Apr 22, 2017
• March for Science: Protesters gather worldwide to support 'evidence' by Laura Smith-Spark & Jason Hanna, CNN, Apr 22, 2017
• Defending science: How the art of rhetoric can help by Leah Ceccarelli, The Conversation US, Apr 20. 2017
• India's 2017 monsoon rains seen at average levels: weather office by Sudarshan Varadhan & Mayank Bhardwaj, Reuters, Apr 18, 2017
• How a Melting Arctic Changes Everything by Eric Roston & Blacki Migliozzi, Bloomberg News, Apr 19, 2017
• Bloomberg To World Leaders: Ignore Trump’s Ideas On Climate Change, AP/CBS New York, Apr 23, 2017

Mon Apr 24, 2017

• The effects of climate change will force millions to migrate. Here’s what this means for human security. by Kelly M. McFarland & Vanessa Lide, Monkey Cage, Washington Post, Apr 23, 2017
• The Surprising List of States Leading U.S. on Renewable Energy by Zahra Hirji, InsideClimate News, Apr 21, 2017
• 15 Climate Change Facts That You'll Know Are True If You're Not An Idiot by Erin La Rosa, BuzzFeed, Apr 22, 2017
• How The March For Science Finally Found Its Voice by Ed Young, The Atlantic, Apr 24, 2017
• Bloomberg Adds Climate Change Site To Its Financial News Empire by Alexander C. Kaufman, Huffington Post US, Apr 20, 2017
• Pictures From the March for Science, New York Times, Apr 22, 2017
• China, India Become Climate Leaders as West Falters by John Upton, Climate Central, Apr 24, 2017
• The Electric Car Revolution Now Faces Its Biggest Test by Tom Randall, Climate Changed, Bloomberg News, Apr 24, 2017
• Record-breaking climate events all over the world are being shaped by global warming, scientists find by Chelsea Harvey, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Apr 24, 2017

Tue Apr 25, 2017

• As global groundwater disappears, rice, wheat and other international crops may start to vanish by David Bersndsten, PBS News Hour, Apr 17, 2017
• Here come back-to-back science and climate marches. Organizers insist there’s no competition. by Chelsea Harvey, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Apr 21, 2017
• Tens of thousands marched for science. Now what? by Sarah Kaplan, Speaking of Science, Washington Post, Apr 23, 2107
• Extreme Arctic Melt Is Raising Sea Level Rise Threat; New Estimate Nearly Twice IPCC's by Sabrina Shankman, InsideClimate News, Apr 25, 2017
• Trump to set new executive orders on environment, energy this week by David Shepardson and Valerie Volcovici. Reuters, Apr 24, 2017
• Trump's Climate Cuts Could Result in Half-Billion Extra Tons of CO2 in the Air by Marianne Lavelle, InsideClimate News, Apr 25, 2017
• SkS Analogy 2 - Ferrari Without Gas by Evan, Skeptical Science, Apr 24, 2017
• Record-challenging heat possible for climate march in Washington on Saturday by Jason Samenow, Capital Weather Gang, Washington Post, April 25, 2017
• March against madness - denial has pushed scientists out into the streets by Dana Nuccitelli, Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian, Apr 25, 2017

Wed Apr 26, 2017

• Cut fossil fuel use ‘dramatically’ to meet climate goals, says Shell-backed report by Simon Evans, Carbon Brief, Apr 25, 2017
• Networks Covering March For Science Provided Platform For Climate Deniers by Kevin Kalhoefer, Media Matters for America, Apr 24, 2017
• The nightmare scenario for Florida’s coastal homeowners – sea levels rising by Christopher Flavelle, Domain, Apr 21, 2017
• Did 'people power' save a trove of EPA data from a shutdown by Trump? by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, Apr 24, 2017
• Most global investors recognise financial risk of climate change, report finds by Paul Karp, Guardian, Apr 25, 2017
• Our Climate Future Is Actually Our Climate Present by Jon Mooallem, New York Times Magazine, Apr 19, 2017
• Rising Seas Will Send Millions of Refugees to Inland Cities by Marlene Cimons, Nexus Media, Apr 24, 2017
• Scientists keep increasing their projections for how much the oceans will rise this century by Chris Mooney, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Apr 21, 2017

Thu Apr 27, 2017

• State Department Memo Boosts Case to Stay in Paris Climate Pact by Jennifer A Dlouhy & Nick Wadhams, Bloomberg News, Apr 25, 2017
• The Regulatory Accountability Act Subverts Science and Must Be Stopped by Michael Halpern, Union of Concerned Scientists, Apr 26, 2016
• I’m Elise, and I’m a Scientist Marching in the Peoples Climate March. This Is Why. by Elsie Tolbert, Blog, Union of Concened Scientists, Apr 24, 2017
• Looming 'catastrophe' in East Africa proves why world must tackle climate change, says Oxfam by Ian Johnston, Independent, Apr 27, 2017
• The Trump White House is at war with itself about climate change by Chris Mooney & Juliet Elperin, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Apr 26. 2017
• Climate models have underestimated Earth’s sensitivity to CO2 changes, study finds by Jim Shelton, Yale News, Apr 4, 2017
• Sowing Climate Doubt Among Schoolteachers, Opinion by Curt Stager, New York Times, Apr 27, 2017
• El Niño and the end of the global warming hiatus by Jim Shelton, Yale News, Apr 26, 2017

Fri Apr 28, 2017

• Germany Calls Rick Perry’s Push to Rework Paris Climate Agreement ‘Absurd’ by Joe Ryan & Brian Parkin, Bloomberg News, Apr 26, 2017
• U.S. Vulnerable to Worst of Extreme Sea Rise by John Upton, Climate Central. Apr 26, 2017
• How is this weekend’s climate march different from its predecessor? ‘Now, the task is full-on resistance.’ by Brady Dennis, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Apr 26. 2017
• Climate Scientists Cancelling Their New York Times Subscription Over Hiring of Climate Denialist Bret Stephens by Graham Readfearn, DeSmog, Apr 27, 2017
• Amazon’s fate hangs on outcome of war between opposing worldviews by Sue Branford & Maurício Torres, Mongaby, Apr 27, 2017
• We owe our planet this climate march. But we also owe it – very faint – hope, Opinion by Bill McKibben, Guardian, Apr 28, 2017
• Impacted Communities Draw 'Red Line' for Mother Earth Across US Capitol by Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams, Apr 28, 2017
• New study: global warming keeps on keeping on by John Abraham, Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian, Apr 27, 2017

Sat Apr 29, 2017

• The Faith Community & Climate Change by John Gehring, Commonweal, Apr 27, 2017
• Suddenly, the future doesn’t seem so far away by Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick Diary of a Climate Scientist, Inside Story, Apr 28, 2017
• The kids suing Donald Trump are marching to the White House by John Sutter, CNN, Apr 29, 2017
• 5 Year Study: What Happens in the Arctic Does not Stay in the Arctic by Peter Sinclair, Climate Crock of the Week, Apr 25, 2017
• Climate March expected to draw massive crowd to D.C. in sweltering heat by Chris Mooney, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Apr 29, 2017
• An Ice-Free Summer in the Arctic Ocean Would Be Deadly for the Northern Hemisphere by Bob Berwyn, Pacific Standard, Apr 28, 2017
• Worrisome first quarter of 2017 climate trends by Zeke Hausfather, Yale Climate Connections, Apr 27, 2017

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/2oVYksD