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Climate change 101: Data from NASA, snark courtesy of DemFromCT

The image above adorns a post on a new site some friends put together for me, but I’m far from the major attraction. FreeThoughtBlogs is a work in progress with plenty of layout changes and additions in the works. But FTB already features the familiar powerhouse science and political blogging duo PZ Myers and Ed Brayton, as well as some newer faces with specialties guaranteed to entertain, and at times depress …

• The pseudonymous PhysioProffe is, as the name suggests, a physiology professor at a private medical school who blogs about politics, sports, food, science, booze and academia, and not necessarily in that order.
• The Digital Cuttlefish an atheist and a skeptic, and is madly, passionately in love with science. Plus he’s not afraid to pen the occasional satirical poem about Michele Bachmann.
• Chris Rodda runs This Week in Christian Nationalism and wrote the book Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History. She’ll keep you up to date on historical revisionism in everything from education to legislation.

On a related science note, it’s storm season. There are several systems in the Atlantic right now, two of which bear watching over the next several days and could develop into tropical storms next week. And farther north a pattern is emerging which could set a new record low for Arctic ice:

This weather pattern, known as the Arctic Dipole, was also responsible for the record sea ice loss in 2007, but was stronger that year. …  The 2011 summer weather pattern in the Arctic has not been nearly as extreme as in 2007, but the total sea ice volume has declined significantly since 2007, leading to much loss of old, thick, multi-year ice, making it easier to set a new low extent record with less extreme weather conditions.