Nerd Take-over of San Francisco - Day 1

Monday Dec. 10, 11:45 PM
Hello from San Francisco! I am pooped, but have had a good day. I overslept this morning until 7:40 … oops. I didn’t get much sleep Friday night, and I only slept 2 hours Saturday night because I was finishing my poster, so I don’t feel too bad for oversleeping. I still made it to the conference by 9:30. I was lucky enough to go to a talk by someone from Georgia Tech. Despite being a school of nerds, there is a research group there that does some work that I find very interesting. I should see if any of them has a poster this week so I could talk to them. This talk was about cloud cover trends in the Tropics. They found that, according to a particular satellite, cloud cover has been decreasing in the Tropics in the past couple of decades. I am not sure if this is because of local effects, or if it is because of large-scale forcings that may connect to the Atlantic and East Pacific Oceans.
One of the best things about AGU is that there is a wide diversity of interesting talks. For example, I went to one that was a study of the Maassai tribe in Kenya, a nomadic tribe that is very sensitive to climate change. It is kind of sad that nomads are on the brink of extinction, due to a combination of factors that include increased droughts and land-use changes (privatization of land). I also stopped by some good posters. I met a woman, Tracey, from the Univ. of Wisconsin, who has started a group for women in the Earth Sciences that I will probably join. It is kind of a networking/support/Q&A group that has 500 women from all over the world. I saw a poster comparing maternity leave in the U.S. to other nations, and saw that we have a pretty crappy deal. By law, women get no paid leave in the U.S. In Norway, they get 42 weeks at 100% pay. I also stopped by a poster by Michel Mesquita, one of the reporters for the newsletter I edit. He is an incredibly friendly and positive guy, and it was good to learn more about his research (on the effects of melting Arctic sea ice on high latitude storms).
I had lunch with Brad, a recent graduate from CSU who now works in Boulder, and Nick, from my group. I managed to only spend $5 on lunch at Whole Foods – way to go me! After lunch, I went to a few talks in the Global Change section, including one on future changes in precipitation in the Amazon due to El Nino. I skipped out of the meetings at 3:30. This afternoon was the only extended period of time when there were no talks that I really wanted to go to. I had a really nice afternoon. I took bus #71 up Haight Street (saw a hooker along the way) and took a stroll through Buena Vista park. It is located on a hill and has beautiful eucalyptus and conifer trees, and a stupendous view at the top of the bay, ocean, mountains, city, and of course the Golden Gate Bridge. I would recommend this park to anyone visiting the city. I wish I had more time to walk around, but it was getting dark and I didn’t want to be in the woods alone. After that, I walked along Haight and Ashbury and did some shopping in the myriad of thrift stores. No comment on if I bought anything. ;) It was fun, and I got back to my side of town (near Union Square) in time to meet up with Brad, Joe Munchak, and Erica for dinner. We went to an Italian seafood restaurant in a cute alley that has about 6 restaurants. I enjoyed some lobster and prawns pasta, and a $6.50 pint of Pilsner Urquell – yikes!!! I had to make sure to drink the whole thing at that price.
After dinner, we stopped by the cheesecake Factory for some take-out dessert, and then Brad, Joe, Nick, and I went to Brad’s hotel room for some wine and vegging. Now I am more than ready to go to sleep! I love being here! ☺