Leituras interessantes #9

"«História, subst. fem. Um relato, em grande medida falso, de acontecimentos, em grande medida irrelevantes, causados por governantes, na sua maioria tratantes, e por soldados, na sua maioria tolos.» Por vezes é difícil discordar da definição cómica de Ambrose Bierce."

"Como todos os animais mais inteligentes, somos criaturas curiosas. Estamos em constante rebuliço, perguntando-nos se as coisas são comestíveis, se nos podemos divertir com elas, se as podemos melhorar. Simplesmente somos melhores neste rebuliço que os restantes animais, porque temos cérebros grandes e rápidos com imensas pregas para pensar nas coisas, cordas vocais infinitamente flexíveis para falar das coisas e polegares oponíveis para mexer nas coisas."

O Domínio do Ocidente de Ian Morris,

Now You See The East Midnight Hole

Leituras interessantes #8

"[Lisboa] É uma das mais belas capitais europeias (ou, melhor: do Atlântico Sul). (...) Os portugueses são simpáticos, inteligentes e trabalhadores, mas o país ainda está excessivamente virado para actividades de mão-de-obra com fraco valor acrescentado: por efeito de uma emigração excessiva, o trabalho dos seus homens e das suas mulheres é mais proveitoso para a Franço do que para ele." 

- Toda a Geografia do Mundo, de Jeau-Claude Barreau e Guillaume Bigot

Música para os meus ouvidos #3

 

The Grand Spring Oblivion

Música para os meus ouvidos #2

Leituras interessantes #7

Working Group I, remember, was supposed to tell us the scientific case for man-made global warming. If our emissions aren’t driving the climate towards a catastrophe, then we don’t need to analyze what happens during the catastrophe we probably won’t get. This applies equally to War, Pestilence, Famine, Drought, Floods, Storms, and Shrinking Fish (which, keep in mind, could have led to the ultimate disaster: shrinking fish and chips).

JoNova

This way of looking at the climate is new for both scientists and policymakers. Until now, many of them have thought of the climate as a problem like no other; and best dealt with by trying to stop it (by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions). The new report breaks with this approach. It sees the climate as one problem among many, the severity of which is often determined by its interaction with those other problems. And the right policies frequently try to lessen the burden—to adapt to change, rather than attempting to stop it. In that respect, then, this report marks the end of climate exceptionalism and the beginning of realism.

The Economist via Climate Etc.

The question then becomes NOT what is causing climate change or how we can prevent it, but rather: How much resilience can we afford? 

Judith Curry

Take this climate matter everybody is thinking about. They all talk, they pass laws, they do things, as if they knew what was happening. I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess. And a whole group of them meet together and encourage each other’s guesses. 

James Lovelock, BBC Newsnight, 2 April 2014, via WattsUpWithThat

Até (quase) me sinto especial

Thanks dudes!!

Música para os meu ouvidos

Arcade Fire Reflector

Muito bom, of course.

Chvrches The Bones of What You Believe

Tão bom.

Justin Timberlake The 20/20 Experience

Babe.

Vampire Weekend Modern Vampires of the City

Bem bom.

Leituras ainda mais interessantes

Uma investigação conduzida pelo Centro de Estudos Geográficos da Universidade de Lisboa para reconstituir o clima dos últimos 350 anos contabilizou, no séc. XIX, 148 tempestades semelhantes às que assolaram o litoral em Janeiro. Parece que as ondas que arrasaram a costa no Inverno de 2014 foram iguais às que em 1814, no Inverno, a costa arrasaram.

José Diogo Quintela in Público.

Leituras interessantes #6

UK professor refuses to put his name to ‘apocalyptic’ UN climate change survey that he claims is exaggerating the effects

JoNova

APS reconsiders its position on climate — Scientific storm on the way?

Everything about associations and committees is so paralyzingly slow. But nearly four and a half years after 160 members bitterly complained about the American Physical Society (APS) statement on climate change, they are finally revisiting it, and there are very promising signs.

JoNova

A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds "dramatic variability" of the infrared radiative cooling of the thermosphere by carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, "the two most important thermospheric infrared cooling agents."

Hockey Schtick

Dr. Susan Crockford has a timely post on her site today about the International Union for Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission (IUCN/SSC) Polar Bear Species Group walking back the basis for polar bears being listed as “threatened” in the U.S.

Excerpt:

But now, in an astonishing admission, the PBSG have acknowledged that the last population survey for the SB (Regehr, Amstrup and Stirling, 2006), which appeared to register a decline in population size and reduced cub survival over time, did not take known movements of bears into account as it should have done.

WattsUpWithThat

Welcome to The Monuments Survivor

Do excesso de eólicas

Então, quanto mais eólica instalada, mais energia em excesso durante a noite a necessitar de mais bombagem e mais térmicas de dia subutilizadas a funcionarem como back-up das eólicas, ou seja, brutais custos fixos dessas centrais.

Mira Amaral no Expresso via Espectador Interessado

I Give Philomena Lincoln Effects

Ca coisa tão boa / Tou um cadinho viciada nisto

Resoluções de Ano Novo

#2 - desemprego (involuntário, vá, não é propriamente uma resolução, mas as suas consequências são belíssimas e verdadeiras resoluções/renovações)

#3 - comprar um bilhete para ir ver o Justin (o Timberlake, não há outro) ao RiR (blargh, aqui há uns meses estava convencidíssima que nunca iria àquela coisa mas ele há sapos que uma pessoa tem que engolir e que belo sapo que ele é)

Hallelujah

My baby has arrived.

Da co-adopção

Muito bom. Da Cibertúlia.

Lido por aí #10

Agora é que estão preocupados com a democracia? Com um assunto que nem sequer devia ser discutido quanto mais largado nas mãos de um povo burro e conservador? Caralho, pá. É só coisas para me enervar a toda a hora.

 D'O Blogue do Desassossego, where else

Leituras interessantes #5

Those claiming the ocean has cooled the climate in the last 15 years, never acknowledge that the oceans might equally have been warming it in the 20 before that. There is no symmetry in this “science”.

JoNova

The biggest untruth about human global warming is the assertion that nearly all scientists agree that it is occurring, and at a dangerous rate.

The Climate Sceptics Party

My stepmother, by contrast, though going day after day without electricity, has had a lovely time stoking up the log fire, going to bed by candlelight and cooking her neighbours’ dinners with her gas stove. She didn’t care for television much anyway.

Christopher Howse - The Telegraph

Thus and verily, ergo, ergot and a truffle too, climate sensitivity on Planet Earth is 3.3 degrees C.

JoNova

One may note, that the stronger temperature increase from the 1970s to the 1990s, which is “officially” argued to prove warming by CO2, is essentially due to the AMO/PDO cycle.

No Tricks Zone