Earth ChangesS

Bizarro Earth

U.S.: Tornadoes Hit Upstate New York


The Associated Press
Mon, 18 May 2009 17:58 UTC
Weather service officials say two small tornadoes that touched down in parts of central New York destroyed a handful of barns and sheds and damaged numerous trees.

Steven Ippoliti, a National Weather Service meteorologist, says a tornado hit Cortland County just after 4 p.m. Saturday and moved into Madison County around 4:30 p.m. It was classified as a two on a scale that ranks the severity of tornadoes from zero to five.

Winds reached between 100 and 120 mph and a roof was torn off a house in the village of Georgetown, about 28 miles southeast of Syracuse.

Several barns and outlying buildings were destroyed and trees were uprooted.
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Sun

Trends in solar spectral irradiance


The Sun Blog
Mon, 18 May 2009 19:18 UTC
The SORCE (Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment) folks have just published a very interesting paper with some surprising results about the solar irradiance over the end of Cycle 23.

As is well known, the TSI (Total Solar Irradiance) varies directly with the Sun's activity level, with an amplitude of about 0.1%. The Sun is about 0.1% brighter at activity maximum than at minimum. SORCE carries an instrument called TIM (Total Irradiance Monitor) that measures just this, but it also includes another intrument called SIM, the Spectral Irradiance Monitor. This instrument measures solar variability in six different wavelength bands, and SIM has turned up something very interesting.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Magnitude-5.0 Quake Rocks Los Angeles, California


CBS
Mon, 18 May 2009 04:08 UTC
A 5.0-magnitude earthquake has just struck Los Angeles, reports CBS station KCBS-TV.

The moderate earthquake shook the Los Angeles area.

There were no immediate reports of any major injuries or damage.
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Better Earth

Blue whales return for the first time in 40 years

Geoffrey Lean
The Independent
Sun, 17 May 2009 19:39 UTC
Image
© Mike JohnsonBlue Whale
Decades after a ban on hunting the world's largest animals, the creatures have made their way back to waters off Alaska and Canada

Blue whales - thought to be the largest animals ever to have inhabited the Earth - have returned to the seas off Canada and Alaska for the first time since hunting them ceased more than four decades ago. New research suggests that they appear to have rediscovered an old migration route that they abandoned at the height of the slaughter.

The research, by US and government scientists and a private research institute focussing on marine mammals, comes as whales face their greatest ever danger in over 20 years, as key governments threaten to breach the international moratorium on commercial whaling.

It has so far spotted 15 of the blue whales, which can weigh up to 200 tons, in the Gulf of Alaska and off British Columbia, and identified four of them as having been previously seen off southern California. Long ago, before commercial whaling began, they used to migrate between the two areas, heading north in summer in search of food - they can each consume four tons of tiny crustacean krill a day. But they were hunted close to extinction, with their numbers reduced from some 200,000 world wide to between 5,000 and 12,000.
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Better Earth

Andes Mountains Are Older Than Previously Believed


Science Daily
Sun, 17 May 2009 19:23 UTC
Image
© Carlos Jaramillo, STRISediments that gather at the base of mountains provide important clues about how and when the mountains were formed.
The geologic faults responsible for the rise of the eastern Andes mountains in Colombia became active 25 million years ago - 18 million years before the previously accepted start date for the Andes' rise, according to researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, the University of Potsdam in Germany and Ecopetrol in Colombia.

"No one had ever dated mountain-building events in the eastern range of the Colombian Andes," said Mauricio Parra, a former doctoral candidate at the University of Potsdam (now a postdoctoral fellow with the University of Texas) and lead author. "This eastern sector of America's backbone turned out to be far more ancient here than in the central Andes, where the eastern ranges probably began to form only about 10 million years ago."
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Cut

Scientific Jargon - "Would" "Will" "Could" "Might" "Maybe"

Steven Goddard
Watts Up With That
Fri, 15 May 2009 05:23 UTC
Tidal wave
© Art Lebedev Studio

The BBC has perfected the use of weasel words to create alarm. They have a lead story today :
The collapse of a major polar ice sheet will not raise global sea levels as much as previous projections suggest, a team of scientists has calculated.

Writing in Science, the researchers said that the demise of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) would result in a sea level rise of 3.3m (10 ft).
There is no evidence presented that such an event would, could or will occur - other than some 30 year old hearsay.
"It has been hypothesised for more than 30 years now that the WAIS is inherently unstable," he explained.
And how many other global catastrophes have been forecast over the last 30 years? Seems like a new one nearly every week. The article goes on -
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Mr. Potato

Ice sheet melt threat reassessed

Mark Kinver
BBC News
Thu, 14 May 2009 05:15 UTC
Ice sheets
© unknown

The collapse of a major polar ice sheet will not raise global sea levels as much as previous projections suggest, a team of scientists has calculated.

Writing in Science, the researchers said that the demise of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) would result in a sea level rise of 3.3m (10 ft).

Previous estimates had forecast a rise in the region of five to six metres.

However, they added, the rise would still pose a serious threat to major coastal cities, such as New York.

"Sea level rise is considered to be the one of the most serious consequence of climate change," lead author Jonathan Bamber told the Science podcast.

"A sea level rise of just 1.5m would displace 17 million people in Bangladesh alone," he added.

"So it is of the utmost importance to understand the potential threats to coastlines and people living in coastal areas."

Comment: This article and the study it discusses are both filled with nonsense.

After reading the above propaganda read this review of it by Steven Goddard.

Scientific Jargon - "Would" "Will" "Could" "Might" "Maybe"

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Magic Hat

Pouring cold water on global warming

Terri Jackson
Belfast Telegraph
Wed, 13 May 2009 04:34 UTC
Ice Snow
© Belfast Telegraph

There is now irrefutable scientific evidence that far from global warming the earth has now entered a period of global cooling which will last at least for the next two decades.

Evidence for this comes from the NASA Microwave Sounding Unit and the Hadley Climate Research Unit while evidence that CO2 levels are continuing to increase comes from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.

Professor Don Easterbrook one of the principle speakers at the recent World Conference on climate change held in New York in March this year attended by 800 leading climatologists, has documented a consistent cycle of warm and cool periods each with a 27 year cycle. Indeed the warm period from 1976 to 1998 exactly fits the pattern of climate changes for the past several centuries long before there were any CO2 emissions. Greenland Ice core temperature measurements for the past 500 years show this 27 year cycle of alternating warm and cool periods. Recently the global temperature increased from 1918 to 1940, decreased from 1940 to 1976, increased again from 1976 to 1998 and has been decreasing ever since.

However throughout this time CO2 has been added to the atmosphere in increasing amounts. This point was brought out by at the New York conference by Vaclav Klaus the rotating President of the EU and President of the Czech Republic. If CO2 emissions cause temperature rises than why is it that every 27 years the earth climate switches to a cooling mode with decreasing temperature? Clearly there is another explanation that does not include humans.
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Bell

Carbon is not causing global warming or climate change All life on planet depends on CO2

Tim Ball
http://www.serve.com/pvbr/Issue_1/cvsty.htm
Mon, 11 May 2009 04:12 UTC
A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses: it is an idea that possesses the mind. Robert Bolton

The Possessive Belief

Co2 (carbon) is not causing global warming or climate change. I can't say it more boldly but it doesn't seem to matter; the belief persists that CO2 is the cause and therefore a problem. The belief is enhanced by government policies and plans, which spawn businesses to exploit the opportunities they create.

A majority of the mainstream media pushes the belief because of political bias rather than understanding of the science. Evidence continues to show what is wrong with the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but it is complex and so most don't understand. The fact they hold definitive positions without understanding is disturbing. However, ignoring the fact that IPCC predictions are always wrong doesn't require understanding of the science is completely unacceptable and proof of the political bias.
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Mr. Potato

The Guardian Relocates The North Pole By 500km

Steven Goddard
Watts Up With That
Sat, 16 May 2009 03:19 UTC
north pole relocated
© google

The Catlin crew was picked up this week, after completing less than 50% of their planned journey to the North Pole and coming up about 500km short. Immediately upon their return, The Guardian reported :
After 73 days, the Catlin Arctic Survey has come to an end. Pen Hadow's team of British Arctic explorers have battled to the North Pole through freezing conditions collecting data about the ice en route.
This reminds me of the legend of "bringing the mountain to Mohammed." The crew reported traveling over 400km, a non-trivial percentage of which was due to floating along with the Arctic drift. See this map of Arctic buoys and their drift patterns:
Polar drift map
© unknownPolar drift map over the last 60 days.
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