Friday Cornucopia Blogging

Photograph courtesy NOAA

Hurricanes and typhoons have become stronger and longer-lasting over the past 30 years as global temperatures have risen, a new study has found.

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Disappearing Lakes in Siberia

This image pair shows lakes dotting the tundra in northern Siberia to the east of the Taz River (bottom left). The tundra vegetation is colored a faded red, while lakes appear blue or blue-green. White arrows point to lakes that have disappeared or shrunk considerably between 1973 (top) and 2002 (bottom). After studying satellite imagery of about 10,000 large lakes in a 500,000-square-kilometer area in northern Siberia, the scientists documented a decline of 11 percent in the number of lakes, with at least 125 disappearing completely.

As the Arctic warms, loss of snow and ice make the region less efficient at reflecting incoming sunlight, which accelerates warming. As a result, the Arctic is warming faster than Earth’s middle or equatorial latitudes.

Corpus Callosum advice: don't buy lakefront (or oceanfront) property.

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Smithsonian magazine has the winners of their annual photo contest, here.

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Skeptic's Circle has come around again.  This time, narrated in a supremely clever Rawlingseque fashion.  

Hi All,

The fourteenth Skeptics' Circle has occurred, and a full report can be
found here:

http://www.lambic.co.uk/blog/archives/2005/08/wizardly-skepticism/

A big thank you to all the contributors, and to Orac for his hints, tips
and overall management of the circle. And of course a big thankyou must
go to St Nate too for creating this thing in the first place.

Hope you enjoy this edition.

"The ceiling of the great hall was studded with stars, the milky way splashed across the centre of it, mimicking the night sky outside Hogwarts. The long house tables were groaning under the weight of hundreds of bowls, plates and platters. Ron Weasley was in the middle of his second large helping of chocolate ice cream when, with a bright flash, all the food vanished. The buzz of conversation died down as Professor McGonagall stood and surveyed the room..."

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According to Blogpulse, the number one blog post at this time is by Ann Arbor's own Juan Cole, Fisking the "War on Terror".  The number three post is Pharyngula's post on ID, which I've mentioned in the last couple of posts.  Dr. Myers had been keeping a log of all the mostly science-oriented) bloggers who participated in the outcry, but tired of it after logging over 150 of them.  Blogpulse now lists over 450 in the past two days.  

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Partnership for a Secure America is a new, bipartisan coalition of former statespersons who are hoping to bring some degree of moderation to American statecraft.  Significantly, they promote an emphasis on multilateralism and national security.  It appears that they hope to shape the national debate away from the "grunt loudly and carry a big stick" approach, toward a saner approach.  Oddly, they placed a full-page ad in the NYT on August 2, but as of today, the only news item pertaining to them is in Asia Times: Reviving 'the radical center'.  Hat tip to The Impolitic.

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Forging a connection between the post above, and a recent one by Ron Beasley at Middle Earth Journal, The "Gray Lady' has fallen and she can't get up, I too wonder what the devil is going on with our media.  Here we have a group of very prominent statespersons (e.g. Howard Baker, Samuel R. Berger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Warren Christopher, et. al.) forming a group to try to restore sanity to foreign policy, and the media in the USA simply ignore them.  Don't the folks at NYT read their own paper???

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Friday Dog Blogging