monkburger

Indeed. We have a very limited winter. There are often more warm days than cold days.

The last time I had to use my snowblower was in a mega snowstorm during the winter of 2015/2016. That is simply unheard of! (at least here)

Our last big snowstorm was in 2016. Afterwards we were in a snowfall drought for years (well below average)

We had a few close calls for big snow, but they never materialized. This is unheard of.

Even during strong El Nino patterns, the east coast is supposed to receive good snowfall. It did not happen. Even with a -NAO, -AO, +PNA!

I've gone from 6b to 7a.

Winters almost do not exist here in the mid-Atlantic. Sure, there are some cold snaps, but they do not last as long as 20 to 30 years ago. Snowfall? Getting less and less with an occasional nor'easter here and there.

Ancedotally, in late February, I had to mow the lawn.

We've started measuring TTFF. (Time-to-first-frost). Historically, it was in early to mid October for decades. Now it's pushing mid-November. The growing seasons are longer, for sure.

There's a few:

NOAA's GHCN: Global Historical Climatology Network, Its coverage includes data going back several centuries, with the earliest records starting around 1750.

HadCRUIT (Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit Temperature). Has marine (ship-borne and buoy) and terrestrial (land-based stations) sources.

NASA's GISS Surface Temperature Analysis has records from the 1880s.

As for calibration, I believe some places routinely calibrated their mercury tstats. But since that was a potential issue, we started using indirect measurements (eg: what I mentioned) to confirm certain climate trends.

They aren't guesses. Those charts are reflecting oxygen isotope ratios (which are measured directly), among countless others (which are covered in Hasen et al)

Oxygen isotope ratios are more or less ^16O and ^18O. These isotopes are distributed differently based on temperature and precipitation patterns, which can be recorded in ice cores, ocean sediments, lake sediments, and even in the shells of marine organisms. ^16O is more often seen in 'warmer' events, vs ^18O

Yes.

I don't like using Wikipedia for a source, but here's some paleoclimate data going back to the early Phanerozoic.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Al...

Also, I /highly/ recommend reading over Hansen et al's 2013 paper

It's quite lengthy but it should answer a lot of questions you may have:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

As the oceans warm, there's more humidity. More humidity, more latent heat of vaporization. This is the energy that powers thunderstorms and hurricanes.

The planet was probably the warmest during the Cretaceous.

The planet is warming up, even the USDA plant hardiness map was updated (I was in 6b now I'm 7a):

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1213600629/-it-feels-like-im-...

Usually, yes.

However, some PCPs / endo will order up A1c as well as glucose challenge, depending on certain factors (eg, family history, BMI, symptoms). If I were you, order up the following:

- A1C - 12 hour Fasting blood glucose levels - Two-hour glucose tolerance test: this test will measure blood glucose levels before and after ingestion of 75 g of glucose solution (if the results show blood levels that fall between 140 mg/dL to 199 mg/dL, it is diagnostic of prediabetes. - A random plasma glucose test

Personally, if you have a family history of diabetes/obesity, you should get checked often. Some providers have been writing rx's of GLP-1's to aid in weight loss, which reduces the risk of developing T2DM.

> Also note that HbA1c tests aren't perfect for diagnosing type 2 diabetes and can > have false positives or false negatives.

When we do workups on pts suspected of diabetes, we use the following criteria.

- Iron deficiency anemia workup to confirm accuracy of HbA1C

- HbA1C ≥6.5%

- FPG ≥126mg/dL (7.0 mmol/L). Fasting is defined as no caloric intake for at least eight hours

- Two-hour plasma glucose ≥200mg/dL (11.1 mmol/L) during an oral glucose tolerance test

- In a patient with classic symptoms of hyperglycemia or hyperglycemic crisis, a random plasma glucose ≥200mg/dL (11.1 mmol/L)

I would like to redo the diagnostic criteria to include their BMI.

They are like the blind and proud idiots in Versailles who lived in a bubble of bliss before the mobs of commoners came and dragged them off to the guillotines.

mRNA research is going to change medicine for the better.

The energy released by an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 on SA is approximately 6.31×10^16 joules. When converted to an equivalent in terms of TNT, this energy amounts to about 15,080 kilotons of TNT. (About the same as the Castle Bravo nuclear test)

Now, to use such a weapon to cause a stress-relief earthquake, some factors need to come into play: Depth at which the device should be detonated to optimize stress relief without causing surface damage. detailed seismic imaging and rock mechanics studies. Geometry of the fault zone.

Even w/ a Castle Bravo type test, massive radioactive fallout would occur in groundwater as well as air. There's also the chance that such an event would cause local volcanic activity.

More of a concern in the bay area, the geological composition is sand, mud, basic river delta sediments--not the most stable stuff.

eg: During a hypothetical Earthquake in the Bay area, the liquefaction of sand occurs, which causes underground structures to move upward due to buoyancy (think of a lower level parking garage), and the soil mass from the structure collapses.

the liquefied sand diffuses to the surrounding area after the earthquake, causing the sand beneath the underground structure to be lost, and the building will return to its original position or even collapse.

San Andreas is a transform fault, also known as a 'strike-slip' fault.

These generally do not cause as much damage as a subduction zone event, also known as dip-slip. An example of this type of event (dip-slip) would be the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, or the violent 1700 Cascadia Megathrust Earthquake.

Personally, Cascadia is /more/ dangerous than any strike-slip earthquakes like SA. We have sedimentation records of massive Cascadia tsunamis going back to about ~900CE.

Greed makes them expensive.

Besides, modern American homes are constructed very poorly, unable to justify the cost..

America: Land of Gun Care and Health Control

I wonder if any kind of pro-security legalisation were proposed, how many lobbying firms from big tech (Google, Amazon, etc) would fight it tooth and nail.

Kind of reminds me of PHK's criticisms of HTTP2, tho (https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2716278 ), where he makes this point;

"The reason HTTP/2.0 does not improve privacy is that the big corporate backers have built their business model on top of the lack of privacy"

Teflon contain PFAS

Look at pubchem.

Yes. Many compounds are not even listed because of IP/patents.

Just a reminder - Chemical Companies, legally, police themselves.

We have sooooo many PFOA's, like GenX, and some minor ones that are similar.

The original DuP documents from the 1950s said that /all/ PFOS/PFOAs should be burned.

This is the most ridiculous 'bill' I have seen in quite some time.

The NAM overestimates southern jetstream energy. And the 3km is just awful for anything beyond 24hr.

HRRR is OK, but usually <10 hours for better numbers.

You should relllllly look at the soundings, though.

In such a limited RCT, yeah. It does.

I'll chime in:

(β = −0.482; 95% CI, −0.813, −0.141; p = 0.014): The "β" represents the change in the factor score due to the prebiotic. A negative number here (-0.482) likely means that the prebiotic reduced some kind of negative score associated with poorer cognition, thus improving cognitive function. The "95% CI" stands for the 95% confidence interval, which is a range of values (-0.813 to -0.141) that likely contains the true effect size. The smaller this range, the more precise the estimate. The "p-value" (p = 0.014) tells us the probability that the observed results could have occurred by chance. A p-value of 0.014 means there's a 1.4% chance the results are due to random variation, which is low, so the results are considered statistically significant.

In simpler terms, that study found the prebiotic to significantly improve mental functions compared to not taking anything, with a high level of confidence that this result is not due to chance.

HOWEVER, when you look at the size of the study, it's unimpressive. A larger RCT will be needed. Also, it was a 'remote' study, so they could not measure muscle mass. Also, analyzing stool samples has serious limitations, as there are quite a few species that cannot be cultured (or identified).

Are you talking about the local NWS offices in the PNW?

I always tell tech savvy people to look at the forecast discussion and not the infographics. For example, look at Spokane:

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=47.65726000000...

Then select 'Forecast Discussion' and read the discussions. They are usually updated a few times a day at the minimum, but during active weather events they are generally updated every 3 to 4 hours with new information (more data from the 850mb layer, for example).

Barry Myers / Accuweather would love nothing more than to privatize all weather forecasting services, which means I, and my colleagues at SPC, would be out of a job

At IBM, a call was made with flair, "For layoffs, who'd volunteer, who'd dare?" But the staff found it funny, "No thanks, we need our money!" So the volunteers were as rare as a bear in midair.

Big Pharma's profits are a result of taxpayer funded research via the NIH and others for drug discovery.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/us-tax-dolla...

Big Pharma has a very powerful lobbying arm that is against Medicare negotiating down prices.

Ah! I should have read a little further. I apologize!

Environmental half lives are a different animal. I vaguely recall some obs studies that estimate a half life of PFOA to be 90 (water), 114 days for PFOS, their half-life in water is greater than 90 years for PFOA and greater than 41 years for PFOS, according to a 2014 publication from the EPA.

There's also a study from Europe showing vastly different half-lives based on soil temperature (colder temps -> longer half life), but I cannot locate the paper at the moment.

US EPA. (2014). Emerging Contaminants Perfluorooctane Sulfonate (PFOS) and Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA), https://www.wqa.org/Portals/0/Government%20Relations/factshe... arch2014.pdf

They do go away, but it depends on numerous factors. In humans, if you have polymorphisms in various genes relating to GSH detoxification, the half life could increase. (in theory)

half-lives of long-chain PFAS were longer than those of short-chain compounds, reaching almost 3 years in some cases. Some studies estimated the average half-lives for PFHxS at 2.86 years and L-PFOS (a specific form of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, C8) at 2.91 years. In comparison, the short-chain PFPeS had an estimated average half-life of 0.63 years, and perfluoroheptane sulfonic acid (PFHpS, C7) concentrations were 1.46 years. The shortest estimated half-lives were for perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA, C4) at 0.12 years and perfluoroheptanoic acid (PFHpA, C7) at 0.17 years.