Category Archives: Curious things

The Simon-Erlich Wager at Seven Billion People

Guest post by David Middleton Back in 1980, the great libertarian economist, Julian Simon, and the prepetually wrong Malthusian biologist, Paul Erlich, entered into a little wager regarding population growth and resource scarcity. They decided on using the inflation-adjusted prices … Continue reading

Posted in Alarmism, Curious things, economy-health, energy, Environment | Tagged , , , , , , , | 157 Comments

Climate change invites aliens into Canada

From the Canadian Science Publishing (NRC Research Press) Climate change invites alien invaders – Is Canada ready? Ottawa, Ontario – A comprehensive multi-disciplinary synthesis just published in Environmental Reviews reveals the urgent need for further investigation and policy development to … Continue reading

Posted in Curious things, Environment, satire | Tagged , , , , , , , | 53 Comments

Spaceballs – the debris

Curious story in AFP yesterday: Full story here – Click the image above for a large view of the object. Me thinks it is from either of these spacecraft:

Posted in Curious things, space | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 93 Comments

Climate Skeptic Combusts in New [William J Clinton Foundation] Video

By WUWT regular “Just The Facts” Correction: This video appears to be associated with the William J Clinton Foundation versus the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as was previously stated. Updated Below – New “The Air-Conditioned Suit” video surfaces “‘Combustible’ is … Continue reading

Posted in Alarmism, climate ugliness, Curious things | Tagged , , , , | 145 Comments

Little Bubbles, part 1

Guest Post by Caleb Shaw Preface:  Climate Scientists and School Girls – A humorous description of a layman trying to investigate the little bubbles in ice cores,  involving both the actual science,  and a layman’s amazement over the politics. My … Continue reading

Posted in Antarctic, Curious things | Tagged , , , | 152 Comments

Earth versus the flying saucers

I’m sure many of you remember this campy scifi film from 1956. Roswell on steroids. But did you know that there is a natural phenomenon on Earth that gives rise to reports of flying saucers on a regular basis? In … Continue reading

Posted in clouds, Curious things | Tagged , , , , | 129 Comments

Electric airplane

No, that’s not the name of a rock band. But there is a real twin fuselage motor glider featuring a 145 kW electric motor, lithium-ion batteries, and retractable landing gear. From NASA: Pipistrel-USA, Taurus G4 aircraft is seen as it … Continue reading

Posted in Curious things, Technology | Tagged , , , | 63 Comments

Deep Carbon Pollution?

From the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this press release was for some reason included in the atmospheric science category of Eurekalert. Carbon cycle reaches Earth’s lower mantle, Science study reports Evidence of carbon cycle found in ‘superdeep’ … Continue reading

Posted in Curious things | Tagged , | 52 Comments

Astronomers find extreme weather on an alien world

Alternate title: How long before Bill McKibben says: this brown dwarf has a middle name, and it’s global warming. Cosmic oddball may harbor a gigantic storm TORONTO, ON – A University of Toronto-led team of astronomers has observed extreme brightness … Continue reading

Posted in Curious things, space | Tagged , , | 31 Comments

Uranium munching microbes

From Michigan State University Microbes generate electricity while cleaning up nuclear waste EAST LANSING, Mich. — Researchers at Michigan State University have unraveled the mystery of how microbes generate electricity while cleaning up nuclear waste and other toxic metals. Details … Continue reading

Posted in Curious things | Tagged , , , | 36 Comments

Diamonds the size of potatoes shoot up at 40 miles per hour from their birthplace 100 miles below Earth’s surface and other strange carbon tales

From the American Chemical Society the same folks who are looking for science superheroes, carbon tales of the weird. Tackling mysteries about carbon, possible oil formation and more deep inside Earth DENVER, Aug. 28, 2011 — How do diamonds the … Continue reading

Posted in Carbon dioxide, Curious things | Tagged | 101 Comments

The tool that will save you time on WUWT and the web

I was surprised to learn that many people don’t know what I know about how to find things in web pages and documents. For as many comments and web pages we have on WUWT, I wanted to  make sure everybody … Continue reading

Posted in Curious things | 88 Comments

Hey – how much Thorium you got under the hood?

Much like “flying cars”, atomic powered cars were a campy futuristic meme of the 50′s, for example, there was the Ford Nucleon concept: From Wikipedia: The Ford Nucleon was a scale model concept car developed by Ford Motor Company in … Continue reading

Posted in Curious things, energy, thorium power | 173 Comments

Even Further Down “The Borehole”

Yesterday we had an enlightening guest post by Ian Rons titled Further Down the “Bore Hole” which presented some comment data and graphs, along with some observations about that nature of RealClimate.org and the way they treat visitors and commenters. Ian … Continue reading

Posted in Curious things | Tagged , , , | 60 Comments

Further Down the “Bore Hole”

A look at comment deletion at RealClimate compared with WUWT Guest post submitted by Ian Rons Regular readers will doubtless be familiar, either at first- or second-hand, with the enthusiasm with which moderators at RealClimate.org seem to reject comments from … Continue reading

Posted in Curious things | Tagged , , , , , | 162 Comments

20 trillion watts is not even Trenberth’s missing heat

Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. writes: News Article On The Earth’s Heat From Radioactive Decay An intriguing news article has appeared by Charles Q. Choi titled Radioactive decay fuels Earth’s inner fires The article includes the text “Extraordinary amount of heat remains from … Continue reading

Posted in Curious things, Radiation | Tagged | 105 Comments

A demonstration of Chladni Patterns

Post submitted by John A. Readers of Climate Audit will have noted Steve McIntyre  mentioning Chladni patterns in respect to the results of some climate reconstructions which exhibit spacial autocorrelation – which means that the data points are related to … Continue reading

Posted in Antarctic, Curious things | 25 Comments

For you military history buffs – bad karma das boot

Since I spent so much time working with Google Earth for the surfacestations project, I decided to create a blog for fun, where I can practice my sleuthing skills using that great tool. I find aerial photo recon quite fun.

Posted in Curious things | Tagged , , | 20 Comments

Yesterday it was triangles in the desert…

…today it is arrows carved in the forest.

Posted in Curious things | 20 Comments

Curiosity in the desert

It is not often we see perfect triangles in the desert from space. Anybody know what this is?

Posted in Curious things | Tagged | 92 Comments