n2doc
n2doc's Journal"We are in uncharted territory here" (CO2 increases)
by John Timmer - Nov 28 2012, 6:40pm EST
As recent events have shown, even the World Bank is trying to understand the trajectory of future climate changes. Although there are a number of ways of doing this, many organizations rely on a measure called the climate sensitivity. It's a bit rough, but it's simple: it provides a value for the temperature increase we'd expect given a doubling of CO2.
Currently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change places this value between 2 and 4.5°C, with a most likely value of about 3°C. But a variety of studies have come up with measurements spread around that range, and nailing down the likely upper limit has been a challenge. Now, a large group of researchers has gone through millions of years of data on the Earth's past, incorporating information from a number of past studies. In the end, the group decided that the IPCC estimates are more or less on target.
Adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere doesn't drive temperatures in a linear manner. You can think of this in terms of the infrared photons they absorb: each one can only be absorbed once, and the more CO2 molecules you add, the more likely it is that an existing one would have absorbed that photon anyway. As a result, each doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations are expected to have roughly an equivalent impact.
...
More disturbingly, however, they calculate that we can go back to roughly when the dinosaurs died off and not see another period like the present: "Present-day atmospheric GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations and the radiative perturbation due to anthropogenic emissions increase much faster than observed for any natural process within the Cenozoic era." We really do seem to be into uncharted territory here.
rest of article
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/11/how-sensitive-is-the-climate-to-added-co2/
Birth of Baby Planets Spotted Around Distant Star
Astronomers have detected dust grains glomming together around a faraway star, capturing a snapshot of what appear to be newly forming alien planets caught in the act of being born.
Scientists used the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii to image the disk of dust and gas surrounding UX Tauri A, a young star found about 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus (The Bull). Analysis of the image revealed large and non-spherical dust particles — a telltale sign that grains are adhering to each other in a process that will eventually lead to planet formation, researchers said.
UX Tauri A is a sun-like star about 1 million years old, and it's part of a binary star system. Back in 2007, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope discovered a gap in the protoplanetary disk surrounding UX Tauri A, suggesting that one or more planets may be taking shape there.
This gap is huge, extending from 0.2 to 56 astronomical units from UX Tauri A (1 astronomical unit is the distance from Earth to the sun, or about 93 million miles). If this gap were transported to our solar system, it would range from Mercury to Pluto, researchers have said.
more
http://www.space.com/18660-alien-planet-formation-birth.html
Saturn’s Strange Hexagon – In Living Color!
Color-composite Cassini image of Saturn’s northern hexagon (NASA/JPL/SSI/Jason Major)
Cassini sure has been busy these past few days! After returning some mind-blowing images of the swirling 3,000-km-wide cyclone over Saturn’s north pole the spacecraft pulled back to give a wider view of the ringed giant’s upper latitudes, revealing one of its most curious features: the northern hexagon.
The image above is a color-composite made from raw images acquired by Cassini on November 28 from a distance of 379,268 miles (610,373 kilometers) away. Because the color channels were of a much lower resolution than the clear-filter monochrome image, the color is approximate in relation to individual atmospheric details. Still, it gives an idea of the incredible variation in hues around Saturn’s northern hemisphere as well as clearly showing the uncannily geometric structure of the hexagon.
(Can I get another “WOW”?)
Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/98699/saturns-strange-hexagon-in-living-color/
the 42 worst nativity sets
let’s get to it! merry christmas all, and enjoy or be horrified by this weird collection of nativity oddness.
the kitty cat nativity. makes me want to cough up a hairball.
the nativity kitchen timer (ding-ding! baby jesus is born!):
yeah, the cat nativity is probably worse. but these dogs ain’t much better…
technically, not a nativity. but it’s a christmas lawn ornament, showing (can you believe it?) the flogging of jesus on the way to the cross. there’s some christmas cheer for your neighborhood!
more
http://whyismarko.com/2012/the-42-worst-nativity-sets/
Police force woman to take down middle-finger Christmas lights
Christmas spirit is in short supply in Denham Springs, Louisiana where a woman has been forced to take down her holiday lights after neighbors complained about the not very subtle message she was sending them.
Sarah Henderson, a mother of four children aged between 4 and 16, admits she deliberately fashioned her light display to look like a human hand ‘flipping the bird’.
Henderson says the middle finger salute was a message to some of her neighbors whom she has been involved in a year-long dispute with.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2239887/Sarah-Henderson-Woman-forced-remove-offensive-middle-finger-Christmas-lights.html
Krugman- The Con Goes On
I wondered recently whether Paul Ryan, who is a con man pure and simple, would be able to step right back into his role as Washington’s favorite Honest, Serious Conservative.
Well, Alec MacGillis appears to have the answer: Foreign Policy Magazine has named Ryan one of its top 10 global thinkers.
And people wonder why I’m so caustic about the Very Serious People.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/the-con-goes-on/
The Autism Advantage
Thorkil Sonne and his son Lars, who has autism, at home in Ringsted, Denmark.
By GARETH COOK
Published: November 29, 2012
When Thorkil Sonne and his wife, Annette, learned that their 3-year-old son, Lars, had autism, they did what any parent who has faith in reason and research would do: They started reading. At first they were relieved that so much was written on the topic. “Then came sadness,” Annette says. Lars would have difficulty navigating the social world, they learned, and might never be completely independent. The bleak accounts of autistic adults who had to rely on their parents made them fear the future.
What they read, however, didn’t square with the Lars they came home to every day. He was a happy, curious boy, and as he grew, he amazed them with his quirky and astonishing abilities. If his parents threw out a date — Dec. 20, 1997, say — he could name, almost instantly, the day of the week (Saturday). And, far more usefully for his family, who live near Copenhagen, Lars knew the train schedules of all of Denmark’s major routes.
One day when Lars was 7, Thorkil Sonne was puttering around the house doing weekend chores while Lars sat on a wooden chair, hunched for hours over a sheet of paper, pencil in hand, sketching chubby rectangles and filling them with numerals in what seemed to represent a rough outline of Europe. The family had recently gone on a long car trip from Scotland to Germany, and Lars passed the time in the back seat studying a road atlas. Sonne walked over to a low shelf in the living room, pulled out the atlas and opened it up. The table of contents was presented as a map of the continent, with page numbers listed in boxes over the various countries (the fjords of Norway, Pages 34-35; Ireland, Pages 76-77). Thorkil returned to Lars’s side. He slid a finger along the atlas, moving from box to box, comparing the source with his son’s copy. Every number matched. Lars had reproduced the entire spread, from memory, without an error. “I was stunned, absolutely,” Sonne told me.
To his father, Lars seemed less defined by deficits than by his unusual skills. And those skills, like intense focus and careful execution, were exactly the ones that Sonne, who was the technical director at a spinoff of TDC, Denmark’s largest telecommunications company, often looked for in his own employees. Sonne did not consider himself an entrepreneurial type, but watching Lars — and hearing similar stories from parents he met volunteering with an autism organization — he slowly conceived a business plan: many companies struggle to find workers who can perform specific, often tedious tasks, like data entry or software testing; some autistic people would be exceptionally good at those tasks. So in 2003, Sonne quit his job, mortgaged the family’s home, took a two-day accounting course and started a company called Specialisterne, Danish for “the specialists,” on the theory that, given the right environment, an autistic adult could not just hold down a job but also be the best person for it.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/the-autism-advantage.html?hp&_r=0
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