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Topics in land use, culture, and nature.
Or, how I learned to hike with others. This is a post about backpacking with teenagers in the high Sierra Nevada. It might be of interest to beginner backpackers and thru hikers alike, as well as those interested in backpacking with kids in mountainous terrain. Here’s the short summary, the ES, since you want that…
The climate alarmists are agog about the cold region in the north Atlantic, as evidence of a failing AMOC current. Now, I’m not an oceanographer, but I have discussed the science of thermal uptake here, and I should review the literature about the AMOC, but I was under the impression that weakening of the AMOC…
copyright Graham Paul Knopp 2026 It’s really difficult to put these two words in the same sentence. Houston is infamous for its lack of urban planning. Now, planning has been a subject of study for some time now, more than a minute. It became a formal study when I prepared for the American Institute of…
It’s late February and the sea surface anomaly map looks like this. Yes, this is starting to get serious. Let’s update a few other maps in this post. Like drought. Here’s the USA, and the much less important (irony alert, just to be sure), rest of the world. Not a great picture, but look at…
Observing the global drought monitor, it appears that much of the world is in drought. International | Drought.gov There are significant parts of Europe, central Asia, Africa, South America, and North America in significant drought (D3 or worse). While the USA drought map shows somewhat improved conditions in recent weeks, particularly in California, the situation…
Have a gander at the GoogleEarth image below, in which the Texas-New Mexico border runs down the middle. The difference in color, due to irrigation for crops, is the important thing here. Texas law permits essentially unregulated groundwater withdrawals while New Mexico law does not permit this. Underlying this area is the Ogallala Aquifer: The…
The huge amount of misinformation around 3I/ATLAS is annoying. Let’s stick to the facts. The 3I/ATLAS radio “signal” was from a radio observatory and detected OH in absorption in the bounced signal, which is what one expects for a cometary object. The object is still very strange, of course, given the trajectory alone, which is…
copyright 2025 Graham Paul Knopp Parry’s Agave with crickets in the high Chihuahuan Desert at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Many of these plants had crickets so arranged. Is this normal? Is this because rain is on the way? When you want to climb mountains in Texas, your choices are very limited to Big Bend National…
September 16, 2025 Copyright Graham Paul Knopp 2025 More immediately in weather news, not climate, I experienced my first Texas hail storm, and my car now has some dimples to show for it. I did not take action quite quickly enough to move the car into the garage. Standing at the front door, watching the…
Hurricane Erin is spinning in the northeast Atlantic Ocean, soon to be renamed the American Ocean, before it is realized that the Pacific Ocean is bigger, then its name will be changed to American Ocean II, with the Pacific Ocean being renamed the American Ocean I. There’s a nice satellite loop of Hurricane Erin at…
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