Welcome to ScienceBits

Submitted by shaviv on Mon, 2009-03-23 15:16
4 cm in diameter hail. Read all about it in the Jumbo Deluxe Hail blog entry.
A random (and subjective) walk in science and physics in particular.

In the blog and bits sections, you'll find various interesting science related anecdotes you'll find nowhere else (e.g., an exhaled breath condensation calculator, or a snow probability calculator), and also things you will (such as a pension calculator written for my needs).

In the Research section, you'll find articles which are more directly related to my personal research in astrophysics, or on the role of cosmic rays behind climate variability. For example, you'll find articles on the Milky Way and Ice-Ages, or on the question of which mechanism is behind the 20th century global warming, is it Solar or Anthropogenic?

If there are any comments about the site you would like to post, feel free to post them here.

Enjoy your stay in $ \int \hskip -2pt c_i e^n ce ~ {\Cal B}i^ts $ !

Note, you're more than welcome to post comments, however due to some flooding by spam (mostly for v-pills), some precautions were placed. There are now two options to place comments:
  1. Anonymous comments, using a captcha and moderation (i.e., after I verify and approve that the content is legit.)
  2. Register/login using a captcha, and then comment without a captcha. If the comment appears legit., the next comments will not require any approval

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Does the global temperature lag CO2? More flaws in the Shakun et al. paper in Nature.

Submitted by shaviv on Sat, 2012-04-21 18:49
Over the past two weeks, perhaps a dozen people asked me about the recently published paper of Shakun et al. in Nature. It allegedly demonstrates that the global temperature followed CO2 around the warming associated with the last interglacial warming, between 20 to 10 thousand years ago. One even sent the story as a news item on NPR. So, having no other choice, I decided to actually read the paper and find what is it all about. Should I abandon all that I advocated over the past decade?

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Open letter to Rep. Adam Schiff, regarding SOPA and PIPA bills.

Submitted by shaviv on Thu, 2012-01-19 22:49
Dear Rep. Adam Schiff (representing California's 29th district).

Although I presently live outside the US, I am a registered voter in the 29th district which you represent. I kindly ask that you will drop your support of SOPA.

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Causes of Climate Change - Poll Results

Submitted by shaviv on Mon, 2012-01-16 19:42
Out of curiosity, I opened a few weeks ago a poll asking the visitors of this site, what do they think is the primary cause of global warming. 429 people answered the poll (thanks to all of you!).

The results can be summarized as follows.

First, the visitors of this site have the following background:
Background Fraction (Votes)
Layman 54.9% (232)
General Scientist 41.1% (174)
Climate Scientist 4.0% (17)

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On IPCCs exaggerated climate sensitivity and the emperor’s new clothes

Submitted by shaviv on Mon, 2012-01-09 08:00
A few days ago I had a very pleasant meeting with Andrew Bolt. He was visiting Israel and we met for an hour in my office. During the discussion, I mentioned that the writers of the recent IPCC reports are not very scientific in their conduct and realized that I should write about it here.

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What is your expertise, and what is the cause of 20th century climate change?

Submitted by shaviv on Thu, 2011-12-22 17:39
Laymen, mostly anthropogenic
2% (8 votes)
Laymen, mostly natural
45% (193 votes)
Laymen, nobody knows
7% (31 votes)
General scientist, mostly anthropogenic
1% (6 votes)
General scientist, mostly natural
33% (142 votes)
General scientist, nobody knows
6% (26 votes)
Climate scientist, mostly anthropogenic
0% (0 votes)
Climate scientist, mostly natural
3% (11 votes)
Climate scientist, nobody knows
1% (6 votes)
Have absolutely no idea what to answer
1% (6 votes)
Total votes: 429

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Climategate 2.0

Submitted by shaviv on Wed, 2011-12-21 09:25
A few weeks ago, the hacker/whistleblower has done it again. A new release of a large amount of e-mails from the same source (University of East Anglia) has surfaced in Russia. It is most likely from the same original batch because the last of the new e-mails is from 2009. Here is my perspective of things. Here are my thoughts about it.

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Upgrade from Drupal 5 to Drupal 7

Submitted by shaviv on Wed, 2011-11-23 09:23
Any repeating visitor will notice that I have changed the site. In fact, besides changing the appearance, the backbone engine running the site was upgraded from drupal 5 to drupal 7. Here is a very short summary how the site was upgraded.

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Why don't I believe the that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light?

Submitted by shaviv on Wed, 2011-09-28 00:44
Three weeks ago I visited the underground laboratory of Gran Sasso near l'Aquila. Little did I know that it would make headline news so soon, for "discovering" particles moving faster than the speed of light. Since a few people asked me what did I think of it, I decided to write something about it here.

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The CLOUD is clearing

Submitted by shaviv on Sat, 2011-08-27 00:53
The CLOUD collaboration from CERN finally had their results published in nature, showing that ionization increases the nucleation rate of condensation nuclei. The results are very beautiful and they demonstrate, yet again, how cosmic rays (which govern the amount of atmospheric ionization) can in principle have an affect on climate.

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From Masada to the Messinian Salinity Crisis

Submitted by shaviv on Fri, 2010-12-31 17:44
Masada, the Dead Sea, the Messinian Salinity Crisis and Augustus Ceasar, all in one post.

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Expert credibility in climate change?

Submitted by shaviv on Sat, 2010-06-26 20:48
I recently stumbled upon one of the most meaningless papers I have ever seen. The paper "proves" that the scientists advocating an anthropogenic greenhouse warming (AGW) are statistically more credible than the "unconvinced". Their main goal is to convince people that they should join the AGW bandwagon simply because it is allegedly more credible.

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A visit to Stromboli

Submitted by shaviv on Wed, 2010-02-03 18:04
Last May I had a conference in the island of Vulcano. During the conference I had a half day excursion to the Island of Stromboli, where I climbed the mountain and got to see one of the most impressive geological phenomena one can see... Here are my impressions, photos and even a movie of it.

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Climategate and the "hockey stitch" - Not news to me.

Submitted by shaviv on Sun, 2009-12-13 17:02
After being asked once too many about the climategate scandal, I decided it would save me some time if I simply wrote down my opinion about it.

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