Thursday, January 10, 2013

Thursday Links

  • The above is Arctic land snow cover in June.  This hasn't gotten as much coverage as the sea-ice, but it's collapsing too and it's probably even more important.  The total area lost is larger, and the land is at lower latitude than the Arctic ocean (ie higher sun angle), so the amount of extra absorbed sunlight being introduced into the top of the planet is likely larger due to land snow loss than sea ice loss.
  • Cars driving themselves: another step closer.
  • 2012 was the hottest year on record in the United States.
  • Widespread fires in Australia right now due to record-breaking heat.
  • For those of you in cold places, if you have ice dams or big icicles hanging off your roof, it means your attic is leaking far too much heat; that's a waste of energy.  This article has a good simple overview of the do-it-yourself approach to fixing it.

4 comments:

sunbeam said...

This is an article up your ally.

http://www.newgeography.com/content/003389-globalization-too-many-americans-are-dropping-under-radar

Nothing new here, but a pretty interesting site.

rjs said...

stuart, perhaps you meant to link to this; http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=80102&src=ve

someone complained about heat escaping from a chimney in one of the comments at this old house...

one could use a triple lined stovepipe (some come with diameters of 6,7, & 8 inches) and use the outer layer as an air intake from the roof...as the hot air rises through the inner pipe, it is cooled by outdoor air pulled down the stack; conversely, the outdoor air is heated as it's pulled down the stack to the indoors; as a result, one has very little heat loss from your stove's chimney...

Stuart Staniford said...

rjs - thx, fixed.

noiv said...

Due to day round sunlight insolation at high latitudes is much higher in Summer than usually thought. You may want to do a reality check on the first point.