Recommend a car?

My 10 yr old American sedan is showing its age. The power windows fail yearly ($400 to replace each motor), the paint is faded, the suspension bounces like a Jumpy Castle, and the mileage (21 city) is criminal for a midsize car. Plus, no recent safety features like side airbags or anti-lock brakes.

Replacement suggestions? Breaking from my past as a loyal Big 3 customer, I'm willing to buy a Japanese car if >50% is manufactured in the US.

Needs to be a wagon or hatchback with folding seats, for surfboard & crap-hauling.

Climate Change

NASA's foremost climate scientist, Jim Hansen (you may remember the Bushies trying to muzzle him), has a new paper on arxiv.org. Here's the abstract:

Paleoclimate data show that climate sensitivity is ~3 deg-C for doubled CO2, including only fast feedback processes. Equilibrium sensitivity, including slower surface albedo feedbacks, is ~6 deg-C for doubled CO2 for the range of climate states between glacial conditions and ice-free Antarctica. Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, large scale glaciation occurring when CO2 fell to 425 +/- 75 ppm, a level that will be exceeded within decades, barring prompt policy changes. If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm. The largest uncertainty in the target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings. An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.

Emphasis added by me. Holy shit, people. The cliff's ahead, and we're blithely driving toward it.

Are you biking to work yet?

Happy birthday, "What's New"

Every Friday afternoon, I get an opinionated, funny, informative "What's New" email from Bob Parks, summarizing the last week's news regarding physics, astronomy, climate change, and space politics. "What's New" has been running for 23 years -- if you haven't subscribed, perhaps you should!

Props to the American Physical Society, and now the University of Maryland, for sponsoring such a useful, often bitchy, bulletin. You can't help adoring the disclaimer:

Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.

Noctilucent clouds

NASA just launched the "AIM" satellite to study noctilucent clouds (very high altitude clouds seen in reflected sunlight long after sunset), and why they're becoming more common. These clouds increase the reflectivity of the Earth, and are therefore important to understand man-made climate change.

A few noctilucent clouds are caused by rocket launches -- here are some cool examples. The top photo, of a Minotaur rocket launch in 2006 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, was taken by Steve West in Tucson. I saw those clouds, too (in a Target parking lot) -- they really were that spectacular! Drivers pulled over and got out to gawk.

Here's another fanastic launch-cloud photo by Steve West, this one of a THAAD missile test.