Disqus - Latest Comments for jfleck

Re: ABQNews: Around the Tubes

jfleck — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:16:40 -0000

Bill -

Thanks for the comment. I think the study by Fergus, Roger and James is an important contribution to our understanding of what climate scientists broadly think. (I followed their attempts to get it published and was disappointed they did not succeed.)

The details of what they found are important. 65 percent of the climate scientists they surveyed in general agreed with the IPCC's Fourth Assessment. Of those who took issue with it, roughly half felt it overstated the anthropogenic influence, and the other half felt the IPCC understated it. This is, I think precisely what we should expect from a consensus process like the IPCC's - capturing the broad middle, with smaller tails of disagreement on either side.

It's also notable, as James has pointed out, that their finding that 97 percent of climate scientists agree with the statement that "the human addition of CO2 into the atmosphere is an important component of the climate system and has contributed to some extent in recent observed global average warming" is consistent with the recent study by Peter Doran published in Eos.

Re: ABQNews: Monday Bird Blogging, Hummingbird Genome Edition

jfleck — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:53:24 -0000

Bill -

Good question. I took a quick look at the paper, and it looks like they did not do the calliope. They did 37, which is a little less than 10 percent of all hummingbird species. But one of the interesting things they found is that there was little variation in size among the hummingbirds, suggesting that the reduction in genome size preceded the diversification, and didn't change much once hummingbirds branched off of the bird family tree.

Re: ABQNews: But It's a Dry Heat

jfleck — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:57:24 -0000

Great question, Dan. The answer is almost certainly yes.

The "official" city number comes from the Weather Service station, which is in an open area out at the airport, away from the warmer "urban heat island" in the city. There are two other official reporting stations in the city that report daily, one in the foothills near Tramway and one in the south valley, neither of which has had a 100-degree day yet. Some of the personal weather stations around town are reading above 100, and they probably are accurate, but you never know whether it's really that hot or whether the thermometer isn't properly calibrated:

http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather...

Re: ABQNews: Federal scientists say climate change in southwest "well underway"

jfleck — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:46:07 -0000

Brutha -

Thanks for you contributions, and especially for bringing the "650 dissenting voices" report into the discussion. As a science journalist, I have the privilege and responsibility of interviewing scientists and reading the scientific literature, so I've naturally spent a good deal of time with Morano's report, along with the reports of the IPCC, the latest USGCRP report and many, many more. Your confident invocation of Morano's list suggests that you might be well served by giving it a closer look. It's a bit of a hodge-podge of quotes from a remarkably diverse assortment of people. Many of them, when interviewed (as I have), or when their work is read in full (as I have), in fact agree with the IPCC's position. Many more have no qualification whatsoever as climate scientists. It is not, in other words, what you seem to think it is. It may be useful as a political talking point, but it is useless as a guide to the science.

Michael Tobis has suggested a reasonable test of where the bulk of the science lies, which is to go to the scientific meetings, read the journals, listen to what scientists working in the field actually say. That's what I do, and I'm quite comfortable with Michael's characterization of where the vast bulk of the science lies. It's pretty darn easy to get an abstract onto the agenda at an AGU or AMS meeting. The resulting scientific discussions, and in the journals - where the real science is discussed, not on Internet forums - is quite clear. Your suggestion of some hidden controversy simply hasn't borne up to my journalistic scrutiny. I stand by my coverage of this issue.

Re: ABQNews: No news is good news on the runoff front

jfleck — Sat, 09 May 2009 10:38:39 -0000

Two places to go for that information:

The USGS provides current runoff:

http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/rt

Click on the map for the state you're interested in.

For snow pack:

http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/snow/

Re: ABQNews: Sunday Bird Blogging

jfleck — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:28:19 -0000

Alison - I had to wear real shoes (bike safe) but I wore shorts. Not quite flip-flops, but the same idea.

Re: ABQNews: Old Hippies Call, Young Hippies Tweet

jfleck — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:32:35 -0000

Trip - We're still both old, Twitter or not.

Re: ABQNews: News Conference to Discuss Snow Pack Cancelled Because of Snow

jfleck — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:16:35 -0000

Danny -

The key areas for snow pack to feed the Rio Grande are the mountains of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The snow monitoring stations up around Chama are average to below-average. The Sangres around Taos are similar. The numbers in this map are "percent of normal" for this date:

http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/snotelanom/basinswen.html

Re: ABQNews: News Conference to Discuss Snow Pack Cancelled Because of Snow

jfleck — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:59:32 -0000

Scott - Great question. In fact, I'd be more than happy to skip the theater of news conferences entirely for subjects like this (in fact, I often do). For those putting on the show, the in-person theater is needed to try to create a "visual" for the TV people.

Re: BigTweet - Surf the Web and Post to Twitter

jfleck — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:16:19 -0000

Sweet!

Re: ABQNews: Transparency We Can Believe In?

jfleck — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:59:35 -0000

A reader sent this comment:

John,
I am a long time reader of your blog and really appreciate all the information you provide. I just looked at the video of Chu's all hands meeting.
At the end of Chu's all hands meeting (I believe it was on 1/22) he was pressed for time but took one final question. He was asked: "What do you see the role of the NNSA is in the DOE?". Chu's quick response was "It will remain part of the Department of Energy".

Re: ABQNews: Council to Rename Gibson Boulevard?

jfleck — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:07:51 -0000

Who is Gibson named after?

Re: Obama Administration Removes Potential Barrier to NM Greenhouse Gas Regulation

jfleck — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:00:39 -0000

Danny - Thanks for the comment. Just to clarify, there is at this point the possibility of just two standards: the federal standard, and the California standard. Federal law explicitly allows California to operate under separate, more stringent air quality rules, and allows other states, should they choose, to follow the California standard if they prefer it to the federal standard. So there is the potential here, under federal law, for two standards, not 50.

Re: US Support for Action on Greenhouse Gases Weak

jfleck — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:28:57 -0000

Posted on behalf of John Mashey, who emailed to me because Disqus wouldn't let him in:
==========================
This is a somewhat silly poll, akin to Lomborg (http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/lom... in mixing short-term with long-term issues, although perhaps
accidentally. Most of the the topics are concrete things that most people
figure they understand.

What's "global warming"? really mean to most people? For one thing, the
consequences vary radically according to your geography, ranging from
"already a serious problem" down to "warmer would be nice for a while".

I'm not sure what an appropriate replacement for NM would be. How about:

"Your children or grandchildren will not be able to live in NM, because
there will be insufficient water, and NM as a whole will likely suffer the
fate of the Anasazi."

Where would NM folks rank that one? It probably applies to AZ, NV, and
maybe SOCAL, depending on whether or not the latter can get more water from
NORCAL.

In Colorado, it might be:

"Lodgepole pines will disappear from CO, due to beetles." [Well, that's
actually happening, and in fact, the milder parts of British Columbia are
being chewed up as well.]

In Florida, it might be "No insurance company will insure your coastal
property, and after Florida's Citizen's Property Insurance runs out of
money, the rest of the US will *not* subsidize you. or your descendents."

In the SouthEast, it might be: "You've gotten a recent introduction to the
regional water wars like those of the West. How important is fixing that?
(because they will get much worse)."

Re: Obama Gets to Work, Reads Personal Note from Bush

jfleck — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 12:45:13 -0000

I was sitting at home at my computer, starting my day's work, at about that same time, and was trying to imagine what he was doing.

Re: NMI’s Inauguration Day slideshow

jfleck — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:43:00 -0000

This is so nice. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Brackish Water Regulation

jfleck — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:28:02 -0000

John Sparks emailed me this question (posted with permission):

have been following the discussion on brackish water and the one question I have not seen addressed is if there is any connection between the various aquifers. I understand that the deep, brackish waters a heavily saline and it would seem therefor that they would tend to stay where they are. However if one starts to pump that water a void is created which would result in three possible conditions: 1. a empty cavity would be created 2. the earth would subside and fill the void or 3. water from higher levels would infiltrate. It would seem to me that the third option is the worst case scenario. What is the likelihood of the occurring and what studies are being done to ensure that the pumping of the deep aquifer does not exacerbate current surface water concerns?

My answer:

No one knows what the connections between deep and shallow aquifers or surface water might be. At this point those interested in developing the water argue that there aren't really connections, but the science is at this point murky. One of the things the bill would do is give the Office of State engineer the regulator authority to look at the question and make determinations.

Re: Social media, citizen journalism trumps traditional media (in some cases)

jfleck — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:54:06 -0000

Social media feedback loops. I just went back to Matt Bernhardt's office to tell him he was famous. He had this story up on his computer. He'd already heard about your story from Julie Pukelis, the woman in New York who took the picture.

Re: Los Alamos Cleanup as Stimulus?

jfleck — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:34:50 -0000

Sorry, Kalugas, I was less than clear above. The nationwide cleanup effort includes spending money at WIPP to dispose of the waste. I didn't mean to suggest they'd be cleaning up WIPP. Poorly worded.

Re: Sabinoso Wilderness Bill moves forward

jfleck — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:18:48 -0000

The bill also includes the Navajo-Gallup water settlement, which settles the Navajo Nation's water claims in New Mexico (they're huge) and sets up a funding mechanism for building the big Navajo-Gallup pipeline project.

Re: NMI punched in arm, called stupid by boys who secretly love us

jfleck — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:01:49 -0000

I can't speak for Kent, but we all know y'all do real news.

Re: The Costs and Benefits of Climate Change Action

jfleck — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:30:37 -0000

Jim -

Roger Pielke Jr. had a nice discussion of this question recently. The short answer is that it all depends on what time scale you're looking at:

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/ha...

I've always argued that it's important not to look at any one time scale, but rather to look at how the system is behaving at all relevant time scales, which is, I think, Roger's point. On short enough time scales, one can find many periods in the climate record that show periods that might be subject to a similar argument of short-term cooling. That's the nature of variability superimposed on a long term trend.

Re: The Coming Storm

jfleck — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:24:18 -0000

Scot - I like your idea of a betting market. The whole "wisdom of crowds" thing makes we think we could use it as our own, alternative forecasting tool!

Re: The future of solar energy, by Sandia Labs researcher Cliff Ho

jfleck — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:38:05 -0000

FYI, when I wrote a story on this a couple of weeks ago for the newspaper, Cliff told me that if he won he was gonna donate the swag to his daughters' elementary school.

Re: Will newspaper failures cripple watchdog journalism?

jfleck — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:46:24 -0000

Babyfatt -

A million blogs are blooming, and I love it (in fact, a couple of them are mine, separate from those subsidized by my employer). But I have yet to see a blog expose the hundreds of millions of dollars in excessive spending by the Department of Energy on failed nuclear weapons projects in New Mexico, or lay out (repeatedly) the details of the way our storm track is shifting to the north under the relentless battering of climate change, drying out New Mexico, or deconstruct the claims and reality behind the Department of Energy's budget for nuclear waste disposal in New Mexico, or their plans for its future.

The cyber-literate young modern may not care about Domenici hagiography, but if that cyber-literate young modern cares about nuclear weapons and waste in New Mexico, or climate change, they need someone to cover those things too. The newspaper is not just the handful of things involving Pete Domenici or Darren White that you love to hate. It's also the things that the nuclear waste industry in this state hates about what I write in the Albuquerque Journal, or the things I write that draw the ire of anti-Al Gore stalwarts who bombard me with skeptical nonsense about climate change. The newspaper pays me to know they're wrong, and to say so.

I invite you to go write the blog that informs those discussions, because I want to read it. It will make the failure of the old economic model that provided me the privilege of doing those things a little easier to take. I will link to it. But in the meantime I'm off to work today to try to figure out a compelling way to explain, in the pages of a newspaper, the important truth that New Mexico's water future is imperiled, that we're failing to confront harsh realities about how much water we have compared to what we're trying to do, and that climate change will only make it worse.

No need for you to read it. I'm sure a blog will link to it.