Has anyone been able to determine which scientific papers the media will report? It seems like a crap shoot to me. The latest is about aerosols and their effect on surface temperatures. The journal Geophysical Research Letters published a paper titled Aerosol and cloud effects on solar brightening and the recent rapid warming by a group of scientists mostly from Switzerland.

They found that the temperatures in Europe have been increasing faster than expected if greenhouse gases were the only cause. They also calculate that aerosols will cause a surface cooling. This is not news. The “surprising” part (their word) is that the cooling is mostly due to the direct aerosol effect and not the indirect cloud effect.
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In case you missed the announcement, Scienceblogs has a new blog about energy called The Next Generation of Energy Ideas. Their about page says that it “is a blog about energy policy and alternative energy solutions. It is sponsored by Shell…” Hmmm, not a great start in my book. In fact, it’d probably be a deal breaker. But I wasn’t asked to be part of the team. [Insert fake sobbing sounds here.]

So who are the writers at this “new” blog? It’s composed of 7 people, 3 of whom already have been assimilated by the Scienceborg: Connolley, Hrynyshyn, and Kirshenbaum. Romm gets added to the mix, as well as two people from Seed. So this blog really only brings one new voice to the table, that of Solomon Hsiang, a Ph.D. Student in Sustainable Development.
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This story hit the newsstands almost two weeks ago, but it’s an important one I think. Sky islands are chains of mountains that are isolated in valleys. I’m sure most everyone is aware that as you go higher in elevation, the temperature decreases. Snow-capped mountains are a good example of this. But how much does the temperature change with height?

Wikipedia offers a definition of the dry adiabatic lapse rate. I’ve not seen it written like that before. I only recall seeing it as Γ=g/cp. In either case, the temperature decreases by about 10C for every kilometer you go up in altitude. As an example, I live in Tucson and it’s hot. The forecast for Tucson is 99F for today.
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For the last week I’ve been only able to sleep about 1 hour per night. Needless to say, this makes functioning during the day a little difficult, and thinking even more so. I’m feeling a lot better today after a fairly good nights sleep, so I’ll try to write an on topic post. In the meantime, I have lots of posts around the blogosphere to catch up with.