For Environmental Sustainability class:
I built a Google Docs spreadsheet ap embodying the regression model obtained by Judith Lean and David Rind in their 2009 paper, How will Earth's climate change in future decades, which we have been studying.
Instructions are here.
The calculator is here.
(Note, there are no margins of error given in this simple ap. To see the margins of error, which are important, you would have to get the basic data and replicate the model in a stats program such as .JMP or Smith's Statistical Package (a free download). I will give extra credit to any student who replicates this analysis on their own using the software package of their choice. See me for the data.)
Enjoy
Friday, October 7, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Andy Burt comes to visit
One of my favorite local organizers came to visit college yesterday. "Andy" Burt is a Quaker, a long-time member of Mid-Coast Friends Meeting (where I met Aimee, many years ago now), and was for many years the key organizer in Maine Interfaith Power and Light, the religious environmental organization that spurred creation of the renewable electricity market here in Maine.
Andy now organizes the Green Sneakers Project, a door-to-door canvas working on local energy advocacy.
http://www.coolmaine.org/green-sneakers.html
I think this is a great project for Maine, primarily because of its ability to reach out to people suffering what is currently great hardship each winter because of high energy prices and actually help reduce the hardship by making homes tighter, warmer, and more efficient.
Andy was also arrested at the Keystone XL protests in DC.
Andy now organizes the Green Sneakers Project, a door-to-door canvas working on local energy advocacy.
http://www.coolmaine.org/green-sneakers.html
I think this is a great project for Maine, primarily because of its ability to reach out to people suffering what is currently great hardship each winter because of high energy prices and actually help reduce the hardship by making homes tighter, warmer, and more efficient.
Andy was also arrested at the Keystone XL protests in DC.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
McKibben hammers Obama on pipeline
In today's paper.
Of course, Bill doesn't have to win re-election.
What the Obama administration are thinking, and why they are thinking it, is probably less to do with cronies and more to do with the calculation of 2012 votes, and the timing of the decision.
Obama's team probably wishes it could drag out the discussion until after next November.
Think about it:
If the administration nixes the pipeline directly, the climate wins a short-term battle, but then the Koch brothers and less rabid oil interests pour money into the election, and get their pipeline anyway.
If the administration supports the pipeline directly, they lose all negotiating power with moderate oil interests. No point in giving it away.
But if the administration is seen to be thinking of supporting the pipeline, asking, even begging for moderate oil interests to show some support, jeez, buddy, spare a dime for a poor embattled most-powerful-man-in-the-world, then the Obamites get a new angle on the election, something they're going to need if they continue to abandon their base, and a wedge is driven between the radical conservatives such as the Koch brothers, and more moderate oil interests.
The notion that somewhere in Canada there are two trillion barrels is itself enough to take the edge off the bull market in oil which will take the edge off the bear market in general. I'm not a practicing econometrist but I was well trained by some very good ones, and can read the numbers well enough to know that there may be two percentage points of employment numbers for Obama, if the edge can be taken off the oil price.
I'm not saying it's good, or that I like it, or that Bill should back off. As Jim Hansen has intimated, the CO2 from two trillion barrels of Canadian crude is probably enough to send us back to the paleocene.
I'm just saying, it is what it is.
By the way, if the jobs numbers will be the primary determinant of 2012, and if oil interests like the Koch brothers want so badly to see Obama gone, do you think they might find a way to send the NYMEX crude numbers up again at some opportune point?
I would bet on it, myself.
You'd think that those conservative types clever enough to work this kind of stuff out would be clever enough to read a few science papers and realize that, no, scientists actually aren't kidding, nor a liberal conspiracy, and that the possibility of going back to the paleocene is real.
You'd think.
In the same paper, an article about new support for geoengineering, and a good discussion of the risks of the Keystone XL.
Of course, Bill doesn't have to win re-election.
What the Obama administration are thinking, and why they are thinking it, is probably less to do with cronies and more to do with the calculation of 2012 votes, and the timing of the decision.
Obama's team probably wishes it could drag out the discussion until after next November.
Think about it:
If the administration nixes the pipeline directly, the climate wins a short-term battle, but then the Koch brothers and less rabid oil interests pour money into the election, and get their pipeline anyway.
If the administration supports the pipeline directly, they lose all negotiating power with moderate oil interests. No point in giving it away.
But if the administration is seen to be thinking of supporting the pipeline, asking, even begging for moderate oil interests to show some support, jeez, buddy, spare a dime for a poor embattled most-powerful-man-in-the-world, then the Obamites get a new angle on the election, something they're going to need if they continue to abandon their base, and a wedge is driven between the radical conservatives such as the Koch brothers, and more moderate oil interests.
The notion that somewhere in Canada there are two trillion barrels is itself enough to take the edge off the bull market in oil which will take the edge off the bear market in general. I'm not a practicing econometrist but I was well trained by some very good ones, and can read the numbers well enough to know that there may be two percentage points of employment numbers for Obama, if the edge can be taken off the oil price.
I'm not saying it's good, or that I like it, or that Bill should back off. As Jim Hansen has intimated, the CO2 from two trillion barrels of Canadian crude is probably enough to send us back to the paleocene.
I'm just saying, it is what it is.
By the way, if the jobs numbers will be the primary determinant of 2012, and if oil interests like the Koch brothers want so badly to see Obama gone, do you think they might find a way to send the NYMEX crude numbers up again at some opportune point?
I would bet on it, myself.
You'd think that those conservative types clever enough to work this kind of stuff out would be clever enough to read a few science papers and realize that, no, scientists actually aren't kidding, nor a liberal conspiracy, and that the possibility of going back to the paleocene is real.
You'd think.
In the same paper, an article about new support for geoengineering, and a good discussion of the risks of the Keystone XL.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Forests and climate change
An excellent article in the NYT, featuring woolly algedids, the Harvard Forest, and the work of the Running lab at UMT, among other things we teach in Environmental Sustainability and at Unity College in general.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/science/earth/01forest.html?pagewanted=1&hpw
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/science/earth/01forest.html?pagewanted=1&hpw
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