A Tale of Two Lease Sales

Or, more accurately, two tales about the same lease sale… Guest rant by David Middleton Earlier this year, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced that all available leases in the Gulf of Mexico would be offered in two area-wide sales each year.  This is in contrast to the old practice of offering the leases once a…

Invest in Nature, not infrastructure for storm abatement

I suppose maybe they didn’t see this study on how a long forgotten seawall helped save homes in New Jersey. The best defense against catastrophic storms: Mother Nature, say Stanford researchers Stanford researchers say that natural habitats such as dunes and reefs are the best protection against storms and rising sea levels along the U.S.…

Tropical Storm Andrea Tracking

TS Andrea, the first named Atlantic storm of the season continues to organize, but so far has only maximum sustained winds of ~60mph. Florida will get quite a bit of rain in addition to winds. The real issue will be what happens after it crosses the Florida peninsula and re-emerges in the Atlantic. Right now…

Hurricane Isaac tracking

After battling the “dry” tropical air along its route from Haiti, Cuba, Florida, to Louisiana, Isaac has finally become a hurricane with the required 64+ knots 1-minute sustained near-surface winds.  Numerical models finally expressed some certainty on a Louisiana coastal landfall, but diverged significantly on intensity.  There is also some question about the ability of…

One benefit of the midwest drought

From Texas A&M University Good news from the bad drought: Gulf ‘Dead Zone’ smallest in years, says Texas A&M expert The worst drought to hit the United States in at least 50 years does have one benefit: it has created the smallest “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico in years, says a Texas A&M…

Isaac takes aim – look out New Orleans and Biloxi

The track models have all been pointing to the Gulf coast rather than central Florida, this plot of 10 meter wind velocity through August 31st is from WeatherBell’s newly setup HWRF model website by hurricane expert Dr. Ryan Maue: The brown colors near the eye indicate sustained wind speeds of 100 to 130 knots (115…

An active tropical Atlantic

The big worry of course is Tropical Storm Isaac, which may collide with Florida this coming week, just in time for the Republican National Convention in Tampa Monday. This from NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center The Atlantic Ocean is kicking into high gear with low pressure areas that have a chance at becoming tropical depressions, storms…

Debby, a lot of clouds, wind, rain – but no hurricane

NASA Sees Tropical Storm Debby’s Clouds Blanket Florida Two satellites have captured imagery that shows Tropical Storm Debby has thrown a large white blanket of clouds over the state of Florida, and it doesn’t seem like that blanket is going to lift quickly as Debby moves slowly north. NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm…

Tropical Storm Debby

Well it seems the Gulf Coast is in for a wet and windy start of the week. It will be interesting to see what hype the media tries to make out of this storm. I wonder if they learned anything from the overhype of hurricane tropical storm Irene last year? Here’s the latest tracks and…

Younger Dryas -The Rest of the Story!

WUWT readers may recall this recent story: New evidence of Younger Dryas extraterrestrial impact The story below provides much more detail about the Younger Dryas event and the split that has developed in the scientific community over the cause. I’ve added this graph below from NCDC to give readers a sense of time and magnitude of…

Friday Funny – screwy thinking for Earth Day

We’ve known for some time that the eco-minded tend to think that humans are a bad thing. For example, there’s the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement: That’s no joke, it is a real organization. What follows is something I thought was just a  clever April Fools Joke, but sadly turns out to be only too real.…