Remote
Ed Wiebe
@edwiebe@mstdn.ca
mastodon 4.8.0-alpha.3+glitchScience - Photography - Woodturning - Climate - Weather - Curious - Running - Cycling - Computing - Sense - Nonsense
752 Followers
293 Following
25 Posts
Joined November 07, 2022
Web:
Location:
Victoria, BC
Territory:
I acknowledge and respect the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples on whose traditional territory I live and work.
Me:
He,Him -- I'm a working educator and scientist in atmospheric, oceanic, and climate science.
I'm going to try managing 'my own' instance using masto.host. If you follow me here, and want to keep following me, go to @edwiebe@scribili.masto.host.
If I follow you here you'll see that account following you.
I'll not delete this account for now; I want to see what's going to happen here.
I’ve been reading #MansfieldPark which, I won’t deny, is not without challenges. However, Austen can do wonders with a sentence. I loved this one.
“Too soon did she find herself at the drawing-room door, and after pausing a moment for what she knew would not come, for a courage which the outside of no door had ever supplied to her, she turned the lock in desperation, and the lights of the drawing-room and all the collected family were before her.”
“for a courage which the outside of no door had ever supplied to her” is wonderful.
Spring blooms.
'Nature' is good for something! 🤑
"Can nature benefit Canada's economy? New report says parks contribute billions in taxes, wages."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/nature-parks-tourism-conservation-9.7105393
Here's the view looking north from #UVic in January, 2026. There were some technical problems last month so some observations are missing.
1/6
Environment and Climate Change Canada press secretary Keean Nembhard wrote in an emailed statement to DeSmog that the government’s clean energy regulations continue “to apply in all provinces and territories and will require electricity-generating units to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.”
However, Nembhard added, “data centres with their own power generation, not connected to the commercial grid, would not be covered by the [regulation].”
Here's my Month in a Minute video for July, 2025. This is the view looking north from #UVic in #VictoriaBC.
“Things are overregulated because people often don’t do the right thing.”
A tidy summary of modern human history.
Replying to
Rain at #UVic in January was a bit above average 114 mm versus 95 mm. We observed some activity at the rain gauge on 22 days (versus 19 days). However, a number of the single rain gauge tips, about 0.25 mm were due to dew and frost, and collection from some heavy fogs.
By coincidence, on the last three days of the month, we recorded the same amount of rain, 3.8 mm.
There was no snow observed last month.
4/
#Saanich #VictoriaBC
Replying to
The last bit of data I found interesting has month has to do with mistaken perception and recollection of weather data.
It is very well known in meteorological science [OK, citation clearly needed here] that human beings are poor observational data storage devices. This past month I demonstrated that to myself. When I sat down to write all of this up I had in mind that January was exceptionally sunny. It was not. I think what happened was that following a December that was a bit more dreary than usual, dreariness that continued to mid-January, the sunshine we did see then fell really, really good. What I recalled, and what is commonly recalled, is the sensation of experience, not any kind of realistic set of observations.
In the plot, I'm showing all daily average January observations of insolation (incoming short-wave radiation). 2026 is shown with filled circles. The diamonds show the 'theoretical' maximum amount for each day.
5/
#UVic #Saanich #VictoriaBC
Replying to
The first image shows all of the observed Januaries, plotted separately. What's immediately obvious is that January always has sunny days. This past month wasn't unusually sunny. And, the sunny days are often grouped in clusters, due to the cause being lingering high-pressure systems.
The final pair of charts is here to illustrate the difference between a cloudy day and a sunny one in January. The light shaded region shows the insolation we expect. The dark is what was observed. The sunny day chart shows incoming energy was blocked in the morning and late afternoon. This is due a trees that shade the sensor at those times. Trees that were much smaller when the site was selected.
#UVic #Saanich #VictoriaBC
6/6
"A court on Wednesday ordered the Dutch government to draw up a plan to protect residents on the tiny Caribbean island of Bonaire from the devastating effects of #ClimateChangehttps://www.cbc.ca/news/science/bonaire-climate-change-hague-9.7064791
What's with the orange obelisk in the photograph?
Colonisation and slavery.
https://www.beautiful-bonaire.com/sightseeing/obelisks.php
Another reason the US is stupid: paper weights.
Sane:
GSM (grams per square meter) – A metric unit measuring the weight [mass] of a 1m² sheet.
Insane:
LBS (pounds) – Common in the U.S., it represents the weight of 500 sheets of paper in its base size, which _differs depending on the type_ (bond, text, cover, etc.).
https://www.paperpapers.com/news/paper-weight-guide-gsm-vs-lbs/
Whatever update or change that just happened @chad@mstdn.ca turned off dark mode in my settings on the web interface. No big deal. #mstdnca
RE: https://mastodon.social/@Analyst207/116976753928710218
Every bit spent on weapons is money that can’t be spent on unmet social needs.
Replying to
@tobiaspatton@cosocial.ca The project is pretty much deceased. No one wanted to continue to fund it.
Replying to on greennet.social
@cedric@greennet.social @TheConversationUK@newsie.social
Good grief no. Generative 'AI' is not creative is because it's not possible for it to be creative.
'AI' can't be connected to real world concerns because it's not a thing that can feel or experience anything at all. 'AI' is just statistical modelling of words and images. It's boring because most people like boring crap.
The stagnation they are referring to is human cultural stagnation and I don't really buy it. Pop culture has always been same same and boring. Maybe what's new is that it's never been more obvious that what most people pay attention to is uninteresting and of poor quality.
Replying to
@elliott4mp@mastodon.social FFS Bernier is a genuinely awful human being. Libertarians are genuinely awful stupid selfish people. Freedom has nothing to do with owning private property. Freedom comes from living in a community which, through mutual support, gives everyone the ability to reach their potential. Fuck libertarians.
Replying to on mstdn.ca
Consider the histogram shown here. it includes all daily average January temperatures observed at #UVic (2002–2026). Extreme events are rare events, by definition. Notice that that while there are a small number of extremely cold days in the record, much farther out than 3 standard deviations (-8 °C is about 3 standard deviations from the mean) there are no similarly exceptionally warm days. This is because the rare really cold days are caused by so-called arctic outbursts, very cold air flowing south and west from the continent. There is not similar mechanism for hot days, yet.
3/
#Saanich #VictoriaBC