It’s over. And I didn’t see any of you there.

Talk went good. Saw some people with Wikipedia articles. Saw other more notable people without Wikipedia articles.

Other musings:
You can tell how popular your talk title is by the number of people that session-hop from a talk by Kerry Emanuel which was running late to your talk which was running early. (There were none, if you’re interested.) Still, I think there were more people at my talk than at Bill Gray’s. (I may be biased, but I think my talk was better too. Even though mine wasn’t that good…)

Funniest thing heard:
“This is Hurricane Katrina, which I’m sure you’ve all heard about…” (That’s not the end of the quote, but I think it’s funny nonetheless.)

Best talk:
Not sure. Possibly Peter Black, Hugh Willoughby, Morris Bender, or Greg Holland. Bonus points if anyone in the peanut gallery (that’s you) has ever heard of any of them.

So this week is Bike 2 Work week here in the Old Pueblo. I decided that was as good of time as any to dust off the bike from its winter storage and let it get some use. Of course, it also means I have get to wake up at the butt crack of dawn so that I don’t have to ride home in the dark, but still get a good days work in.

This also means it’s frickin’ freezing when I start riding in the morning. Today it was 45 F (7.2C) when I began the journey. Those observant folks might notice that it didn’t officially get as low as 45 F last night. “Officially” is recorded at the airport. Which only proves I don’t live at the airport. I sure could go for some local warming in the mornings. And for sure I could use some local cooling in the afternoons when I get to ride home in 80 F (26.7 C) heat. By the end of the week, it’s supposed to get to almost 90 F (32.2 C) already. Ick.

In other news, WAG has declared the end of global cooling. Not that there was any global cooling to begin with, but I can’t let it slide that record highs in the United States prove nothing about global temperatures.

As I was reading though my blogroll, I found this post by a very smart rodent. Eli has dumped one of the NASA freedom of information act (FOIA for those in the acronym game) requests in the memory hole. I’m sure it’s mentioned somewhere, but there should be a contest about which quote(s) will be taken out of context. My contribution:

I should have kept more data, but I was not interested in US data.

(I’ve only got through about 1/4 of it, so maybe they’ll be something “juicier” later.)

In other rabbit news, Eli references my “wiki work”: “Here is a short derivation of the adiabatic lapse rate.”<ref>[1]<ref /> which isn’t so much writing as fixing, as the previous version was _________ (not sure of the right word, “bad” comes to mind but isn’t quite right).

I mentioned in one my latest posts that I’m going to be teaching an introductory weather and climate course this summer. I’ve exhausted the sources available, (why doesn’t the library seem to carry these introductory texts?) and the quality seems to range from “not what I’m looking for” to “might be able to use it” for the material that ”’I”’ think should be covered. Luckily, there’s this novel invention called interlibrary loan. It’s like magic. I click a link on a website, a form gets filled out automatically (which I’m supposed to check to make sure it’s right, but didn’t) and supposedly the book will appear in the library in a few days/weeks/months/sometime. If it works, it’ll be the best thing since Wikipedia. (I’m trying to change the phrase from ’sliced bread’. Although I’m not sure it works in this case, since IL probably existed before WP.)

I found 4 more potential textbooks to use, and 1 that just looked interesting. Can you tell which is which?

• The earth system by Kump, Kasting, and Crane
• Climatology by Rohli and Vega
• Earth’s climate : past and future by Ruddiman
• Climate change : picturing the science by Schmidt and Wolfe
• Understanding Earth by Grotzinger, Jordan, Press, and Siever

I’ve looked at these as possible texts, but they don’t have enough about climate.

• Essentials of Meteorology by Ahrens
• Meteorology Today: An Introduction to Weather, Climate, and the Environment by Ahrens
• Meteorology: The Atmosphere and Science of Weather by Moran, Morgan, and Pauley

This might be better, but I haven’t looked at it in depth yet.

• Understanding Weather and Climate by Aguado and Burt

I’m not quite sure a textbook exists that covers the material I want. Most seem to focus on meteorology. A few focus just on climatology. I’d like one that is about half and half. If I don’t make a decision soon, I’ll have to either use Essentials of Meteorology or have no official textbook. Any suggestions?