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OKLAHOMA CITY - Of the fourteen 4.0 magnitude earthquakes or higher recorded in Oklahoma, ten of them have occurred in the past four years. Between the years of 1975 and 2008 an average of one to three earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or larger occurred annually. From 2009 onwards the state has experienced over 200 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or higher, an average of more than 40 per year. Several of them have centered near the most populated part of the state, central Oklahoma. In addition, in 2013 Oklahoma experienced 99 earthquakes which measured 3.0 or greater, the second largest in...

Lake Ontario is the only major holdout, and the forecast there is for extreme cold during the next two weeks. (more images and comments at the link)

<p>Research from Stanford University in California holds out hope for hurricane protection that's better and cheaper than a seawall. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change, uses computer models to estimate the reduction in hurricane winds and storm surge that results from installing huge wind turbine farms. For example, had there been 78,000 turbines spread across a wide swath of Louisiana coastline when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, the turbines would have reduced the wind speed by between 80 and 98 mph and the storm surge by 79 percent, the study showed. For Hurricane Sandy, which hit New York and New Jersey in 2012, the model projected a wind speed reduction of 78 to 87 mph and up to 34 percent decrease in storm surge.</p>

‘We had both higher temps and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today’ Unknown-4 Selected Highlights of Dr. Patrick Moore’s Feb. 25, 2014 testimony before the U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee: ‘There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years.’

Evidence is accumulating that quality control is a serious issue in academic publishing, which is the key to career advancement for scientists and other scholars. In an age when appeals to "peer reviewed" "settled science" have become standard operating procedure in efforts to impose radical increases in government control over our lives, corruption in the mechanisms for reviewing  scientific publications has very real consequences for all of us. Nature magazine tells us: Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers. Richard Van Noorden writes: The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after...

Fire, brimstone, eternal suffering — hell is not a pleasant concept. But research has pointed to the societal benefits of a belief in supernatural punishment, including higher economic growth in developing countries and less crime. But there are also drawbacks, even in this life. A new study links believing in hell, and perhaps even thinking about it, with lower levels of happiness and satisfaction in life. "It seems there is this trade-off," said Azim Shariff, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. In research published in January in PLOS ONE, Shariff and a colleague looked at international...

Editorial cartoons often aren't pretty, to paraphrase Steve Martin's observation about the perils of comedy. But one found in the Opinion section of today's New York Times is downright ugly. The cartoon, alluding to this year's brutal winter, suggests U.S. Department of Commerce "Strategies for Dealing With the 2014 Icicle Surplus." Among them are using icicles as "locally sourced hydration devices," "temporary doorsteps," and "brainteasers for dogs." Then comes a suggestion that one immediately looks at again, in disgust and disbelief -- icicles can also be used as "self-destructing sabers for dispatching climate-change deniers." (Entire cartoon shown after the jump)...

(big time BARF ALERT!)When I was a little kid, I used to hear my brothers, cousins, and friends say things like “That’s so gay!” on a pretty regular basis. I would usually laugh along, hoping with all my might that they didn’t know my secret. My parents and other adults in my life would tell me things like “Boys don’t cry” or “Be a man!” which essentially was their way of telling me that being emotional was forbidden or a sign of weakness. When I was a teenager, there were a few boys at my high school who ridiculed me,...

Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday slammed “loud interest groups” and “a tiny minority of shoddy scientists” who challenge claims on climate change, a phenomenon he described as “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” In a speech in Jakarta, Kerry said that “97 percent of climate scientists have confirmed that climate change is happening and that human activity is responsible.” “[President] Obama and I believe very deeply that we do not have time for a meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society,” he said. […] “The science of climate change is leaping out at us like...

Next time you and your friends are our for a pint, maybe hold off on the dark stout. As tempting as it might be in this wintry weather, scientists have recently released a study suggesting that stout beer, Guinness in particular, might make you bitter. The study links tart and bitter tastes with, you guessed it, a tart and bitter mind. When consumed in “delicate situations,” bitter drinks might lead people to “voicing thoughts they’ll later regret.” The study asked people to rate certain scenarios on how morally questionable they were. Those with bitter drinks were much harsher on the...

According to a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, about 20 percent of the population is attracted to their own gender. That’s nearly double the usual estimates of about 10 percent. The authors explain that their methodology might have something to do with it: Participants were randomly assigned to either a “best practices method” that was computer-based and provides privacy and anonymity, or to a “veiled elicitation method” that further conceals individual responses. Answers in the veiled method preclude inference about any particular individual, but can be used to accurately estimate statistics about the population. Comparing the two...

Researchers say they’ve found more DNA evidence that possibly shows gay men don’t have a choice — that their biological makeup drives them to homosexuality. In a study at Chicago University, researchers looked at DNA chains of 400-plus pairs of gay brothers and found what they said were two distinct bits of genetic material that they claim are linked to homosexuality, The Daily Mail reported. The gay brothers were identified and recruited to help with the study over the course of several years’ worth of Gay Pride festivals and marches. The research was highlighted during the recent annual American Association...

It turns out clues about a person’s identity and ethnicity can come from a surprising source: earwax. Researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia decided to analyze earwax as a possible source of personal information based on previous studies in which researchers analyzed underarm odor to unlock clues about a person’s identity. "Our previous research has shown that underarm odors can convey a great deal of information about an individual, including personal identity, gender, sexual orientation and health status," study author George Preti, an organic chemist at Monell, said in a press release. "We think it possible that...

As ugly as this was, it is worse than it seems. Briffa’s trees did match Hansen, 1981. The next graph overlays Briffa on Hansen, 1981 northern latitude temperatures. The match was almost perfect.

Another insane cold wave — not the infamous “polar vortex ” but its evil twin — is bringing sub-zero and single-digit temperatures to much of the nation. And global warming may be even more extreme, and potentially more catastrophic, than climate scientists had feared. This is, of course, no contradiction. The rallying cry of the denialists — “It’s really cold outside, so global warming must be a crock!” — can be taken seriously only by those with a toddler’s limited conception of time and space. They forget that it’s winter, and apparently they don’t quite grasp that even when it’s...

David Remnick of The New Yorker showed up on PBS’s Charlie Rose Monday night to discuss his long, mostly sympathetic profile of Barack Obama from the January 27 issue of the magazine. Near the end of the interview, Rose focused in on the president’s reported desire to be “big.” The host wondered, “[W]hat's his definition of 'big,' and does he believe in his deep recesses of his own mind that the chance of that has slipped away?” Remnick replied that no, Obama does not think his chance of being “big” has slipped away. The editor then rattled off a laundry...

Scientists have recently discovered that rough surfaces may actually reduce the amount of friction and drag after testing the hypothesis on the microscopic level. “According to researchers at UCLA, rough surfaces lined with tiny ridges may actually reduce drag,” says the Science Recorder. “Modeling fluid flow between two surfaces lined with tiny ridges, researchers found tiny ridges actually reduce drag, allowing the for fluid to flow around in a more efficient manner….This is not the first time scientists have sought to create models based on rough ridges to reduce drag. However, advances in technology now allow scientists to create models...

Regardless of the culture a child lives in, corporal punishment may do lasting psychological harm, German researchers say. In a new study conducted in Tanzania, where physical punishment is considered normal, primary school students who were beaten by teachers or family members in the name of discipline tended to show more behavior problems, not fewer, the researchers found. "Parents aim to educate children through corporal punishment, but instead of learning good social behaviors, the beatings often have the opposite effect," said Tobias Hecker, a psychologist at the University of Konstanz, who led the study. "Some people still believe, despite an...

While the planet's surface temperatures over the past century have risen to unprecedented levels, records have shown a slowdown in the pace of warming over the past 15 years. Scientists have proposed several theories of natural climate variability and heat redistribution that may have contributed to the slowdown to varying degrees. A new study, however, suggests that the slowdown itself may be a mirage — the result of temperature records that have considerably underestimated the pace of warming since 1997. The global coverage of temperature measurements is incomplete, and that can cause biases in temperature records — research datasets deal...

The next time you hear someone dispute that human activity is destabilizing our climate, remember this pie chart. It represents geochemist James Lawrence Powell's review of 2,258 peer-reviewed scientific articles about climate change, written by 9,136 authors, published between Nov. 12, 2012 and December 31, 2013. Of all those hundreds of papers and thousands of researchers, Powell found one article, authored by a single scientist, that attributed climate change to something other than human actions: "The Role of Solar Activity in Global Warming," by S.V. Avakyan, appearing in the Herald of the Russian Academy of Science, Vol. 83, No. 3....