The residents of Lexington, Ky., Indianapolis and Cincinnati emit the most greenhouse gases—nearly 2.5 times as much carbon on a per capita basis as their peers at the top of the list with smaller footprints. But these cities have the added burden of being major regional transportation hubs; in other words, their per capita emissions burden is skewed upward by the freight needs of the rest of the country, according to senior research analyst Andrea Sarzynski at Brookings (based in Washington, D.C., ranked 89th).

Rounding out the bottom 10 biggest emitters per capita are: Knoxville, Tenn., Harrisburg, Pa., Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Nashville, Louisville, Ky., and Toledo, Ohio.

No.s 4 and 8, here in TN. One of my first thoughts on what these cities might have in common is that they are all widespread cities in which cars are the dominant means of transportation (that is: almost no bikes, walking, mass transit, etc.) – not that this is by any means uncommon in the U.S. Perhaps this is the silver lining around $4/gal. gasoline?

Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends. The study reports, “There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. “A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists’ thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth’s climate on human time scales.”

The journal article can be found here [.pdf]. via RealClimate

Literally.

Almost two years ago, I (and most of the internet, it seems) saw a thought question at Kottke.org regarding an airplane on a giant conveyor belt. If the belt moved the exact same speed as the airplane’s wheels – only in the opposite direction – would the plane take off? Well, the answer was immediately clear to me, but that’s for the sole reason of I took several semesters of statics, dynamics, and physics in college. I knew immediately that the plane would take off, without any question. I did my best to clearly explain why this was the case in the ensuing discussion on Jason Kottke’s website¹.

Well, last night, I (and Kottke, along with a lot of others) were vindicated as we watched a little yellow, single seat ultralight take off from a 2,000 foot long conveyor belt on a new episode of Mythbusters.

Now, as just a brief – and parenthetical – afterthought: it always feels good to be proven right. However, one of the most awesome experiences in science is when all common sense tells you one thing, but the numbers and scientific logic tell you the opposite. In that case, when a empirical result supports the unlikely or seemingly impossible, it is a marvelous and wonderful surprise. Think about all the really cool experiments you ever saw in science class or on Mr. Wizard, and I’ll bet they fit into that latter case. What you thought couldn’t happen does indeed happen right before your eyes. That very thing has made many a person fall in love with science for the rest of their lives and I sincerely hope that this experiment did the same for a lot of people last night.

In the meantime: I told you so!

1. Kottke has really taken some ownership of this question, too. He even live-blogged last night’s episode. I, unfortunately, had to TiVo it and watch it this morning. Hence, the somewhat late post of mine.