I like all the mammatus clouds that you see at the very end of the video.

My Brother-in-Law's Video of our Recent Ski Trip:

Ski Trip 2010 from Cliff Cartwright on Vimeo.

When it comes to my field of atmospheric science, a similar cloud surrounds the debate over climate change on both sides of the debate. Careful reason is often overshadowed by anecdotal data and conclusions based on ideology and not facts. Because of this, I often ask myself as a scientists, "What can I do to ensure that good science prevails over the bad?" How do you assert credibility as an legitimate expert when true experts are constantly vilified as biased mouthpieces with evil hidden agendas; particularly when, in an ironic twist, it's biased mouthpieces with evil hidden agendas that do the vilifying. The internet, despite being an invaluable tool for research and data dissemination, in many way compounds the issue. After all, how to you know if the blog post your reading is being written by an experienced researcher or a corporate marketing executive? How do you know that the author has done their due diligence in assuring that their claims are valid and robust.

The pro-vaccine camp has more-or-less been beat down to the point where they state that when enough children die, the public will finally understand their message that the risk associated with vaccines is far outweighed by the risk from the diseases they protect against. Perhaps the climate change debate will only be settled in one hundred years when we can see if the sea-level rose as predicted. Off the top of my head I think the most recent IPCC report predicted a sea-level rise on the order of three feet by the year 2100. If the sea-level only rises one foot will the debate rage on?

[An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All]

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1219

http://www.stormpulse.com/

Below is a visualization where I show three radar scans from a collection of scans. Also displayed is a 35 dBZ isosurface that shows how convective cells move and change between the scans displayed. This isn't a methodology and toolkit that I've perfected for research use yet, but the image below represents a good proof-of-concept.