A preview of the future -- much hotter decades on a warming planet -- has been delivered today by the continent-spanning heat wave, climate experts tell USA Today:  "Heat wave projections all agree. They are going to intensify in length and frequency" in this century, says climate scientist Claudia Tebaldi of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.  Global warming is projected to raise average temperatures worldwide about 3 to 9 degrees in this century, according to a U.N. climate panel. Warmer temperatures load the dice in favor of extreme weather such as heat waves, says climate modeler Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.  "We can't just say global warming caused this heat wave, but we can say that what we are seeing is very consistent with what you would expect to see in a warmer world," says climate expert Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel.

Still looking for that "smoking gun" on climate change?  Here you go:  A top federal research meteorologist said he "almost fell out of my chair" when he looked over U.S. night minimum temperature records over the past 96 years and saw the skyrocketing trend of hot summer nights.  "This is unbelievable," said National Climatic Data Center research meteorologist Richard Heim. "Something strange has happened in the last 10 to 15 years on the minimums."  But it is not surprising because climate models, used to forecast global warming, have been predicting this trend for more than 20 years, said Jerry Mahlman, a climate scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research and a top federal climate modeler.  [In a climactic version of Lake Woebegone, far too many temperatures are above normal...]  From 2001 to 2005, on average nearly 30 percent of the nation had "much above normal" average summertime minimum temperatures, according to the National Climatic Data in Asheville, N.C.

The invisible dark matter at the center of galaxies is not as dense as we would expect - and now we know why. It seems that the explosions of exhausted old stars are to blame for puffing out dark matter.  These supernovae can also account for a mysterious shortfall in the universe's quota of dwarf galaxies - because supernovae smoothed out the spike in dark matter density at the center, dwarf galaxies were less tightly bound together by their own gravity. Any encounters with bigger galaxies would therefore have easily torn many dwarfs apart, and this may explain their paucity.

If you want to eat less, use a smaller bowl and spoon - this is the finding of a study from an ice cream social for nutritionists (who should know better than to overeat), which was secretly a study on self-served portion sizes.  The bigger the bowl, the more folks piled it on: the researchers blamed this on the human perceptual tendency to judge object sizes based on comparisons with neighboring items. Participants in the study, for example, served themselves 31 percent more ice cream when they were given a 34-ounce bowl instead of a 17-ounce bowl. Their servings increased by 14.5 percent when they were given a 3-ounce spoon instead of a 2-ounce utensil. When given both a large spoon and big bowl, they served themselves 56.8 percent more. Yet they were unaware of the greater ice cream quantities.  [Could this be why your boss serves postage-stamp sized sandwiches on tiny plates at the company Christmas party - to save money?]

It's a truism that predators go after the old, weak, and sick.  Now we can add the stupid to the list:  Predators such as leopards and chimpanzees consistently target smaller-brained prey less capable of escape, research at the University of Liverpool has shown. They avoid more intelligent prey such as monkeys, which have exceptionally large brains and are more capable of escaping attacks.  

Astronomers have discovered a binary star system in which a Jupiter-sized brown dwarf is orbiting an Earth-sized white dwarf. What's unusual about the arrangement, however, is the brown dwarf once actually orbited inside its companion when the white dwarf grew into a red giant star.


"Money ruined Democracy. Washington is lost. We only have the grassroots left." - Bill Moyers

Weather Roundup:

Up to 10,000 North Koreans were believed dead or missing in what Pyongyang's official media is describing as the worst flooding in a century, an independent South Korean humanitarian group said Wednesday. "About 4,000 people are now listed as missing, and we expect the final toll of dead and missing to reach 10,000," said the independent aid group Good Friends.  Reckless rampant deforestation left the country vulnerable to floods, which helped trigger the famine of the 1990s in which up to 2,000,000 died.  The same typhoon (Ewiniar) produced only 19 flood-related deaths in South Korea.

Snow fell on Johannesburg, South Africa for the first time in 25 years as icy temperatures gripped vast swathes of the country on Wednesday, the weather office said. "It (the snow) is by no means freakish but I would certainly classify it as rare," said Kevin Rae, assistant manager of forecasting at the South African Weather Service in Pretoria.

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY

Japanese in Space: This story is confusing. It will take the Japanese until 2030 to have a manned Lunar Base? Clearly women are getting their long before that, as it says the lunar orbit will be followed by a "probe ship" . . .oh dear, this is just another sex story, isn't it? (See last week).

Climate people: We have some clear new anti-gender stereotyping going on here. The females (I assume Claudia and Heidi are female) are respectively a scientist and an expert. The guys (Richard & Jerry) are both "climate modelers" - Jerry being a "top" modeler, must be some kind of Super Model. Hmm. Just what do "top climate modelers" wear? Do they stand behind strategically placed fake clouds while singing "We're having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave. . ."?

Explosions of exhausted old stars: We've got to do something about the smoke that these old Hollywood has-beens are putting out. Have we run out of TV shows where these folks can appear and earn a few bucks? Maybe we need a special Law & Order: High Fiber edition. Not sure what to do about the shortage of groupies (galaxies) for those tiny (child?) stars. Must be due to all those video games.

Predators go after the old, weak, sick, and stupid. Oh, right. This is really true. And my cat is a member of the Supreme Court. Just how do these folks in Liverpool explain Dick Cheney's survival?

And now, for the Not New, and Not News:  To eat less, use a smaller bowl and spoon. Yes, just issue everyone the itty-bitty dishes and spoons that are still being given as playthings to preschool children. Better yet, just paste pictures of ice cream on a paper plate and pretend to eat it. Yummy. I believe the operating idea here is called Portion Control. Stop eating your ice cream straight out of the gallon container!  Who came up with this one? Do they really expect to get tenure with this kind of research?