Jump to content

etudiant

Members
  • Posts

    799
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by etudiant

  1. Afaik, they do, but is seems sort of pointless, they only need to live long enough to mate and lay their eggs. Maybe Nature is hedging her bets in case of bad weather I've no idea whether males mate multiple times, in which case being able to eat might be a real advantage, unlike the situation with Mayflies.
  2. Quite an impressive performance. It seems to have been a more potent system than expected. Any insights as to why?
  3. The UV traps moistly catch harmless insects and mosquito predators, so they make your yard safer for mosquitoes. There are lots of traps that use CO2 as a lure for mosquitoes, these are somewhat useful, but don't expect miracles. Any BBQ emits way more CO2 than these traps, but I've never seen any mosquitoes self immolating on them.
  4. Do the various changes in the definition/recognition of such storms play a substantial role? It would be nice if we could avoid 'grade inflation' in meteorology.
  5. I've sen some maps like that, only one I could find was here: https://psmsl.org/products/trends/ The detail maps I've seen show both rises as well as falls, often quite localized. Presumably this reflects local issues. Given that the earth is far from a sphere, it is frankly a miracle to measure ocean height to within a few millimetres.
  6. My bad, the CDC only tightened the testing rules for people who were vaccinated, but got Covid anyways. They did not change anything for routine testing afaik. The new rules limit the number of PCR cycles that can be used to 28, well under the broader norm of 35-40. Apparently the results become more dubious as the cycle number rises, at least according to Dr Fauci, who said any result from 35 or more cycles is 'meaningless'.
  7. Do note that the CDC criteria for a Covid diagnosis have been tightened, so the comparisons are no longer like for like.
  8. The late John Daly had a website titled: 'Still waiting for Greenhouse', which prominently featured a high tide marker placed in 1841 on an island off Tasmania by British Admiral Napier. That benchmark is still quite visible and well clear of the water at low tide, as shown in the associated photos. http://www.john-daly.com/ It does cast some doubt on the claimed sea level rise acceleration.
  9. striking how LGA has so many more 90* days than NYC. Is that because the NYC temperature is taken in Central Park, where the greenery tempers the heat?
  10. You're lucky, I've never found a pigeon nest in the wild, although there must be zillions around here in NYC. But I am surprised the nest survived the winter, must be in a good spot that makes it worth reusing.
  11. Don, has there been any previous swing of this magnitude in your experience? We went from the odds for a sub normal May to a well above normal probability in much less than a week.
  12. Rock doves operate on the Facebook principle, move fast and break things. So they make cursory quick nests and hurry to get the kids out on their own, then go on to the next nest. There is probably a bestselling business strategy book in there somewhere.
  13. Seems like it should be a healthy dish, the cicadas are purely vegan, unlike farmed shrimp that are raised in near cesspools. But 17 years between meals is a difficult marketing problem.
  14. You're a fan of nature in the raw or are the cooking instructions secret?
  15. Turkeys are fussy eaters, so compliments on your lettuce.
  16. I'd not sound the 'All Clear' as yet, the case load in Asia is surging, not just in India, after having been back down to relatively low numbers. Research studies suggest the virus could potentially be 100x more infectious, although that may also influence its health impact in some unpredictable way. So there is a real risk that this will be a long drawn out affair.
  17. Afaik, coyotes can take a deer, but pumas and wolves are really much more suitable. Good luck getting their return accepted by suburban America.
  18. Deer populations in the East are way above normal carrying capacity, thanks to the absence of predators and the proliferation of edge habitat due to suburban sprawl. Lyme disease is likely to have a great time this year, not too dry a winter for the ticks and plenty of deer to feed on. Iirc, Greenwich Audubon had about 600 deer on their roughly 1 square mile property, they tried to cull the herd with bow hunters over a salt lick, with no real effect. So the ground cover and low nesting birds are toast. Eventually there will be a disease that culls the herd, most likely something such as Chronic Wasting Disease, which is as ugly as it sounds.
  19. Life on earth began about as soon as the surface cooled enough to allow liquid water, so it seems a pretty quick process. Intelligent life on the other hand took a little longer, many would say it still not yet here.
  20. Think Orwell had something to say about those who control the past... Frankly, storage these days is so cheap that there is no excuse for deleting data. Anyone who does so should be suspected of ulterior motives.
  21. Maybe a link to a site that explains these charts, pretty please?
  22. Not sure I'd put much weight on a deBlasio promise. If India is any guide, I'd keep my mask on well beyond that date.
  23. Would someone please post a link to site where this spaghetti chart is explained? As is, it is possibly casting pearls before swine. I at least will admit that I'm baffled, but where can I get less so?
  24. Seems short sighted to let the virus evolve in the poorer countries, the vaccines we have are not magic bullets, they protect against some variants, not against all. It just seems that neither common sense nor charity are getting much traction in the official reaction to the epidemic.
×
×
  • Create New...