We Return to Reality

Are you liking this cool weather? Today might become only the fifth day of the year with below normal temperatures. If so, tomorrow will be the sixth! There might be snow showers Friday afternoon into Saturday. Don't get your hopes up as there's only a slight chance of snow and almost no chance of substantial accumulation. The weekend? Much like today.

We were walking down the street this morning, looking at the shadows on the sidewalk, when we realized Gothamist had totally missed the sunrise version of Manhattanhenge. The more familiar version, when the sun's rays parallel the streets at sunset, occur on two dates on either side of the summer solstice. The sunrise version happened on January 11th , with the next on December 2nd. For those of you who like to plan ahead, our Manhattanhenge sunsets will occur on May 25th and July 17th this year. Wouldn't it be awesome to get a sunset photo from every street on the Manhattan grid for one of those days?

More follow-up on the news that NASA was censoring its scientists: Michael Griffin, NASA Administrator, did the right thing and issued a strongly-worded statement that publicly-funded scientists should speak to the public without interference. George Deutsch, the public affairs officer who had been altering scientists views in press releases turns out to be a young Texas A&M dropout, political appointee who either had his own political and religious agenda or was being used as a patsy by the Bush administration, has resigned. Mr. Deutsch's résumé claimed he had graduated from Texas A&M. It turns out he had not. Oops! Gothamist loves how someone at NASA gave the résumé to a reporter. They must have been eager to see him go. We will let James Hansen, the NASA scientist who first alleged the problem, have the last word (as quoted from today's Times):

"He's only a bit player," Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Deutsch. " The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That's what I'm really concerned about."

"On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed," he said. "The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That's the big issue here."

January temperature anomalies from NASA's MODIS satellite sensor (global version).