The Blackboard

I found a cool new toy to check out the sea ice (and other things!) The toy is a program available as a downloadable .exe file. It will let you do cool things like quickly access images for sea ice or sun spots. The programmers have also coded features to let you subtract images separated [...]

Many people have already entered guesses for July’s UAH anomaly. I guessed 0.435C based on Channel 5 anomalies. Bill Buckner suggested that NOAA maps suggest lower surface temperatures than Channel 5. ( Channel 5 is not a perfect indicator of UAH temps. I can provide statistics on that later. ) Here’s the 30 day image [...]

As a Chicagoan, I always chuckle when I read UK news reports about killer weather. Take this example from the UK Met office which begins Britain is turning into a pressure cooker as hot, steamy air and intense sunshine roasts the country and kicks off the first serious heatwave of summer. My reaction: July is [...]

I know very little about James Hansen’s tax plan. One of the reasons is that Hansen himself said very little about it during his recent well publicized speech commemorating his 1988 presentation to Congress. He blew his powder on more explosive sound bites, distracting everyone from actions he is proposing. Still, Boris did notice Hansen [...]

Winter brings hunger: The furry frisky squirrels get me to feed them. One day, this little squirrel discovered that peanuts rain down from my open window. She also noticed that the window is opened when my favorite squirrel, Rumpy, visits. So, now, whenever Rumpy is in the yard, she stops by too. Here’s Rumpy. He [...]

     The first day of spring: Opossum waddles slowly across my backyard.      We get a lot of opossums around here. I don’t see them much during the winter. Heck, they are nocturnal, so I don’t often see them out in the bright sun. But, cutey was out there wandering around 10 am. I wish [...]

Last November, when visitors at Unthreaded at Climate Audit were claiming that it was not unusually warm, on Nov. 16, I responded: Bernie: It is darn warm in Chicago. I’ve got pepper plants that aren’t dead! My tomato plants are alive — but the tomatoes themselves are just green and lingering. It’s an eyesore, but [...]