part of Cameron Wake's UCS ad

Cameron Wake, a glaciologist who has for years been the most prominent voice at UNH in regards to the reality of climate change, is one of three scientists featured in a new advertising campaign by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The ads depict scientists as kids talking about what things in the natural world made them become scientists.

Part of Wake’s ad is shown above - the other two ads have the scientists depicted as grubby children, but Wake gets to be a teenager in a convertible VW bug, next to what looks like a ’60s-era Cameron Diaz clone. The text says in part: “In high school I was a romantic—and I still am. Faraway places have always filled me with wonder. I get to mountaineer my way to new discoveries. My research on Arctic glaciers has revealed how our world is warming like never before.”

Here’s the ad campaign. Here’s an NY Times article about it, which notes that the campaign is designed in part to defray lingering images from the Climategate email brouhaha. If you don’t believe that image lingers, check the comments on my Telegraph column this week about climate change. (The column, by the way, concerns a report co-written by Wake.)

SIDE NOTE: This item from Boing Boing (read it here) notes that this is the 35th anniversary of the first major scientific paper predicting climate change from CO2 buildup. It’s a good response for those who trot out the tired “back in the 70s they warned about global cooling!” comment.

Tags: climate change

It was inevitable, I suppose: I wrote a column two weeks ago highlighting the virtual disappearance of West Nile Virus from New Hampshire (no cases were found in animals, birds or mosquitoes last year, making us the only state in the nation so favored) - and now the state announces that it has been found [...]

Tags: west nile virus; arbovirus

The advocacy group center for Biological Diversity is pushing for endangered-species protection for the Bicknell’s Thrush, which breeds only in the alpine portions of mountain ranges in northern New England and Quebec. Here’s their statement.
From the laymen’s point over view, the interesting thing about this bland-looking songbird is its parenting: All males and females take [...]

Tags: endangered species, protected species

CNET reporter Martin LaMonica has done something I’ve long wanted to do - visited ISO New England, the control center for New England’s electric grid. It’s a good description of how the system works, including the push for “demand response,” in which companies get lower rates if they agree to stop using power at peak [...]

Tags: ISO New England

Sprint, via its Clearwire subsidiary, is launching the first 4G wireless network in Boston next month, says the Globe. (Read it here) It claims downloads of 3 to 6 megabits/second, somewhere around two to four times faster than 3G. Except that 3G, as we learned in a post last week, is a moving target that [...]

Tags: 3g, 4g

Because of my back problems I am looking into yoga, tai chi and the like - activities that emphasize balance and flexibility rather than strength and endurance. So I was amused by a Washington Post article about the Indian government fighting efforts by some US companies to copyright their styles of yoga. (Read it here.)
Apparently [...]

Tags: Patent

New Hampshire will probably cut its rebate program for small-scale, residential solar and wind projects, as I report in the Sunday Telegraph. (Read it here) The rebates will probably be cut in half, from a maximum of $6,000 (almost everybody gets the maximum) to $3,000.
The idea is to free up more money to help organizations [...]

Tags: solar, wind

We’re all familiar with the debate in the White Mountains about charging for rescues (this is the famous case) partly because cell phones have given people a false sense of security in the wild. The NY Times has a story about how this is a problem in all National Parks, to the point where “Inattention [...]

The NY TImes has a post about a gathering of Zionists, teaching them how to edit wikipedia articles because “People in the U.S. and Europe never hear about Israel’s side, with all the correct arguments and explanations.” (Read it here) I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often, frankly; by now I would have expected Vermonters [...]

Tags: wikipedia

As we all wait for 4G (whatever that is) to arrive in Northern New England, let’s peruse a fine piece of reporting about how the definition of 3G has changed over, and over, and over again, with examples dating back to 2002. Read it here, and chuckle/cringe.
The key points are these:
This is all a red [...]

Tags: 3g, 4g

Technology Review has a fine piece by John Paulos of “Innumeracy” fame about the proposed proof that P/=NP (I haven’t got a “not equals” sign, hence the clunky topography), the most central unsolved problem in computer science. The proof seems flawed, says the article, but it explains that even though everybody believes that P doesn’t [...]

Tags: proof

Portland, Maine-based Ocean Renewable Power Co. says its 60-kilowatt tidal-power generator off Eastport, on the edge of the Bay of Fundy tidal area, is generating “grid-compatible” power - albeit only as a further test. (Mass High Tech article here) The company says it won’t actually send power into the grid from its TideGen system until [...]

Tags: tidal power

For some Baby Boomer New Hampshire-ites, the term “Clamshell Alliance” brings back the sort of memories that other folks associate with Woodstock or attending your first (Insert Minority Group Here) Rights Parade. In the late 1970s and early 1980s this group fought hard against the construction of Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant on New Hampshire’s coast; [...]

Tags: nuclear energy, nuclear power

A fascinating study (discussed here in the NY Times) indicates that acupuncture does help ease self-reported pain in patients with knee arthritis, even when it’s “fake” acupuncture, meaning that the needles were inserted randomly rather than in the places indicated by traditional acupuncture theory.
This seems to indicate that much of acupuncture’s benefit comes from the [...]

Tags: acupuncture

You’ve probably seen various stories about a relic with a piece of the true cross - the actual physical cross upon which Jesus was crucified* - was stolen and returned. Here’s a typical AP story.
None of these stories really answer the most interesting question: how the church knows this bit of wood, as compared to [...]