If everyone thought the way Rud Istvan thinks, civilisation would soon crumble

There's an article at WUWT that gives some insight into the minds of the ideologically-constrained at WUWT. Rud Istvan wrote why he doesn't want his tax going to assist in recovery efforts in Texas and Louisiana (archived here). It boils down to him being able to afford to live in a fancy apartment that was designed to withstand Cat 5 storms. Those who can't afford that should suffer the consequences, according to Rud.

This is symptomatic of all that is wrong in the deniosphere and some "free market" survival of the fittest thinkers. It's ideologically opposed to the fundamentals of most of the world's religions, and society as a whole. Society functions best when we look out for each other, not when we worship money, greed and selfishness.

Dark days ahead - rise above despair

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My first reaction on hearing of Donald Trump's probably victory was an emotional jolt, accompanied by the physical sensation of nausea. This is despite the fact that I was partly prepared. I was at a meeting in a tiny town in rural New South Wales, with a number of other people from various walks of life.

Internet reception was patchy (very poor Optus coverage) and I had to take the laptop outside to learn what was happening. When I came back to the meeting and told everyone that Trump was the likely next US President, people were shocked and dismayed. There were comments about Nazi Germany, melting away of life savings, and concerns about how the Putin-Trump relationship would adversely affect global stability, particularly in regard to China. (Australia's security and place in the world is now under threat, and we will need to adapt and find new allies.)

AGU Fall Meeting 13 #AGU13: Post-glacial rebound; Earthquakes and Disaster Preparedness; The Coldest Place on Earth

I've been watching some of the AGU videos.  This is a tiny selection.

Rebound: An Earth Story

This video won the AGU student video contest this year.  It's about post-glacial isostatic rebound and presented in a very engaging way.

Here is how Meg Rosenburg, the creator, describes it:

My submission is an education video about glacial isostatic adjustment, why we have glacial and interglacial periods, how we can reconstruct climate history, and how the Earth is responding to the retreat of the continental glaciers. I found that this topic brings together a lot of different areas of study relevant to AGU, from geophysics, to orbital mechanics, to geochemistry.

Public Lecture: Imagine America without Los Angeles - Dr Lucy Jones

Dr Lucy Jones gives a very informative public lecture and I expect it will interest disaster planners all around the world.  She talks about what to expect with a major earthquake along the San Andreas fault. It is a very comprehensive presentation. She discusses impacts on and preparedness of utilities, such as in response to interruptions to water, transport and communication.  She also discusses building codes and what proportion of buildings will be useable afterwards, if there is a major earthquake.  Lucy Jones gives examples of past events in California as well learnings from recent events around the world, such as earthquakes in Christchurch and Chile.

Even if you don't live in an earthquake zone, you or people you know may well live in a region that could or has had to recover from a major disaster such as floods, fires, landslides, tornadoes, hurricanes or cyclones. This video is relevant to all of these.  You'll probably be prompted to check your [fill in the gap] disaster plan after watching this video. (You'll have to log into AGU to see this one.  I don't think it's up on YouTube.)

Taking Landsat to the Extreme: The coldest place on Earth

By now you've probably read how NSIDC scientists have used Landsat 8 to discover the "coldest place on Earth" at minus 93.2 degrees Celsius.  It's been all over the news and all over Twitter today. (It even made it to WUWT where the poor darlings are feeling so persecuted they decided that "cold" = "no-one in the mainstream media will talk about it"!)

Here is the AGU Fall Meeting presentation by Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) describing the discovery using Landsat 8.

The NASA video below is included in the above presentation.  It shows where these coldest temperatures were observed and how it came to be so cold.

And here is a short NASA video in HD, which Ted Scambos also includes in his presentation.  It explains diagramatically how those very low temperatures come about.

That's probably enough for one blog post.  There is just so much to see at AGU13 - on all sorts of Earth science topics.

How to see the AGU13 videos

In case you missed it, the steps to getting access to the AGU13 on-demand videos are listed in my previous article   It's a bit fiddly to get through to them but well worth the effort.

Here is the schedule for the live #AGU13 videos. I don't know if they will all be made available on demand, so if there's something you want to see best set your alarm clock :)