Mike Talbot

Changes Protection of Drinking Water and Ground Water Ground water must be protected from radiological contamination Consideration must be given to avoiding or minimizing potential radiological contamination of groundwater from NE-authorized nuclear facilities and radiological activities,to ensure compliance with public dose limits in this Order and consistent with ALARA process requirements. To this end: (i) baseline conditions of the ground water quantity and quality are documentedmay be considered; (ii) potential sources of, and potential for, radiological contamination are may be identified and assessed; (iii) strategies to control radiological groundwater contamination are documented and implemented; may be developed, as appropriate;

I s'pose that's one way to cut nuclear costs:

"Trump administration secretly loosens nuclear safety rules" www.npr.org/2026/01/28/n...

Hydrology Paper of the Day @webbhydrology.bsky.social on how snow hydrological processes are affected by wildfire: AmeriFlux sites and calculations of PET in context of the water balance; a conceptual model including wind and LAI; changes to sublimation; and moderate multi-year process modifications

Hydrology Paper of the Day @mollystroud.bsky.social @geoallen.bsky.social on how Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) remote sensing data products can be utilized for an understanding of the geomorphology of rivers and sediment transport: observing knickpoints and estimating shear stress.

Hydrology Paper of the Day @michaljenicek.bsky.social @jansei.bsky.social on understanding how rain-on-snow events are influenced by climatic drivers in 93 European catchments: modelling utilized to explore variability; spatial distribution over elevation; and a climatic sensitivity analysis.

Hydrology Paper of the Day @rosswoodskiwi.bsky.social on grouping catchments by snow hydrology, hydroclimatology and water balances: a geography of locations and a conceptual model framework; four periods of a hydrological year explored over spatial landscapes; and mapping seasonality and anomalies.

Hydrology Paper of the Day @cw3escripps.bsky.social on how Long Short-Term Memory models can improve streamflow: the need to consider time scales for integration of SWE and Q; the veracity of different observations at daily and monthly integrations; and a better understanding of spatial patterns.

I love the car analogy

Roger Pielke Jr.’s Appallingly Bad Analysis of Billion Dollar Disasters – Economics from the Top Down In a recent paper called Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters”, Roger Pielke Jr. published a chart that's so bad I've devoted a whole essay to debunking it.

In a 2024 paper criticizing the 'billion-dollar-disasters' database, Roger Pielke Jr. published analysis that is best described as a Russian-doll of errors.

Here's my in-depth take down of his appallingly bad work.

economicsfromthetopdown.com/2025/10/26/r...

By the way, I'd be really interested to see this same calculation but on a per-unit-area basis. This might show how data centers have the potential to create very acute problems for specific water resources...

There are areas in the world (not the Great Lakes region) that are already really struggling with water availability due to the combination of climate change and population growth (and some geopolitics as well), and putting data centers there is really irresponsible.

However, I feel like the issue posed by data centers is not really best viewed in the global context, but rather in the local one. It's where they're being built - in areaS that are already water stressed - that's the problem.

You're on the right track. The "consumptive water use" of agriculture, as we call it, can be quite high, and approaches 100% of withdrawals in arid areas. We consistently undervalue our water across all industries.

From December of last year

I think this is correct. A PhD is not a signal of innate intelligence, but rather of perseverance and grit in the pursuit of knowledge. Conflating LLMs with PhDs is a category error.

Something that I have been thinking about with attribution of "PhD level intelligence" or "PhD level expertise" to a machine is that it reflects an increasing trend among these AI bros and their sycophants to want the products of highly skilled training without actually doing any of the work.

A new co-authored research paper on "Rain-on-snow (ROS) based flooding" got published recently. We showed how ROS events contribute to actual flooding and identified the causal structure leading to ROS floods in different regions of the globe.

Paper link: doi.org/10.1016/j.jh...

Hydrologists face an incredibly difficult task: communicating statistics about streamflow that defy both intuition and the lived memory of a community. But helping people understand that risk (even when it's invisible) might be our most important job.

Properly managing the floodplain is a societal good, not an example of government overreach. The single most effective way to keep people out of the way of a flood is to keep them out of the floodplain.

There are many factors involved in making the recent Texas flood so deadly, but one I haven't seen much in the discussion is land use deregulation. This is the kind of thing we can expect to happen in a world where we allow businesses to do whatever they want, wherever they want.

I wish people would stop describing things that are indisputably provable as a matter of fact as "controversial." People not liking a fact doesn't mean the fact is controversial. Reality is not malleable around our beliefs and it shouldn't be. We need to stop acting like it is.

Show Your Stripes Visualising how the climate has changed for every country across the globe

showyourstripes.info/s/northameri...

I just saw a good example of what I was talking about with chatgpt being a crackpot generating machine.

A guy had started Wheeler's Spacetime Physics, and had a problem on page 2.

Wheeler expressed a square root as a power of 1/2.

√a = a^1/2. This is basic algebra, not physics.

I just have to say, as a historian of the Reconstruction-era Klan, that masked paramilitaries are very bad and masked vigilantes are even worse and there are causal links between the two and none of this is good for democracy.

Is “abundance” basically “development” with a glow-up?

What does it mean to talk about development when the Trump administration is basically on a project of reversing development?

and how should we be talking about “development” in 2025, anyway?

new article:

www.compactmag.com/article/the-...

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect.

Thanks for the reminder @janemunday.bsky.social. Every summer, I repost this article DROWNING DOES NOT LOOK LIKE DROWNING. To date, I know of FOUR kids who were saved after someone who'd clicked on the link learnt how to spot actual drowning. Take time to read and pass on.

slate.com/technology/2...

The amount of AI slop on LinkedIn is so unreal, you can now read a post written by AI featuring a misleading photo created by AI, commented on by hundreds of users automating their online presence with AI tools.

What could be more devoid of real value?

E.P.A. Plans to Reconsider a Ban on Cancer-Causing Asbestos

OFFS.

☠️☠️

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/u...

The root that tears apart your foundation begins as a seed of distrust, hate, and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe didn’t arrive overnight.

It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

It makes my day when I get an aggressive bus driver who owns the road. Show those cars who's boss, m'man.