Earth ChangesS


Cut

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

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 -

Mr. Potato

Ice sheet melt threat reassessed

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"


Magic Hat

Pouring cold water on global warming

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.

Bell

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

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.

Mr. Potato

The Guardian Relocates The North Pole By 500km

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.

Document

Global warming explorers in Arctic get nasty shock: polar ice caps blooming freezing

Hurrah! Intrepid explorer Pen Hadow and his Catlin Arctic Survey team are off the polar ice cap and safe and well. This is a huge relief to those many of us well-wishers concerned that they were doomed to die either by frostbite, attack by one of the numerous killer polar bears that stalk the region, or shame that their expedition had turned out to be such a Scott-tastic flop.

They set out to the high arctic 73 days ago full of high hopes. They were going to tramp all the way to the North Pole. (But were frustrated by the unseasonal cold.) They were going to march 1000 km (they managed 434). Above all, they were going to raise awareness of "climate change" by drilling lots of holes in the polar ice cap so as to show how worryingly thin it is, and in how imminent danger of doom. (But their equipment broke in the freezing temperatures and anyway, as Christopher Booker reported the other day, there are US Army buoys which already do this job perfectly well and have found that since last March the ice has thickened by "at least half a metre").

Igloo

'90% of the last million years, the normal state of the Earth's climate has been an ice age'

Last Ice Age
© unknown

Those who ignore the geologic perspective do so at great risk. In fall of 1985, geologists warned that a Columbian volcano, Nevado del Ruiz, was getting ready to erupt. But the volcano had been dormant for 150 years. So government officials and inhabitants of nearby towns did not take the warnings seriously. On the evening of November 13, Nevado del Ruiz erupted, triggering catastrophic mudslides. In the town of Armero, 23,000 people were buried alive in a matter of seconds.

For ninety percent of the last million years, the normal state of the Earth's climate has been an ice age. Ice ages last about 100,000 years, and are punctuated by short periods of warm climate, or interglacials. The last ice age started about 114,000 years ago. It began instantaneously. For a hundred-thousand years, temperatures fell and sheets of ice a mile thick grew to envelop much of North America, Europe and Asia. The ice age ended nearly as abruptly as it began. Between about 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, the temperature in Greenland rose more than 50 °F.

We don't know what causes ice ages to begin or end. In 1875, a janitor turned geologist, James Croll, proposed that small variations in Earth's orbit around the Sun were responsible for climate change. This idea enjoyed its greatest heyday during the 1970s, when ocean sediment cores appeared to confirm the theory. But in 1992, Ike Winograd and his colleagues at the US Geological Survey falsified the theory by demonstrating that its predictions were inconsistent with new, high-quality data.

Better Earth

Attempt To Discredit Cosmic Ray-Climate Link Using Computer Model

cosmic rays
© unknown

Two computer modelers from CMU have written a program to simulate the interaction of cosmic rays with Earth's atmosphere. Because the model failed to predict significant increases in cloud cover, global warming activists are claiming the theory linking cosmic rays to climate change has been discredited. Climate models have failed to accurately predict the current downward trend in temperatures and now we are asked to accept a model as proof of how the Universe works. In truth, the paper cited is nothing more than a study of a computer program, and has nothing to do with the physical reality of how Earth's climate functions.

Appearing in Science under the title, "Study Challenges Cosmic Ray - Climate Link," a review of the paper by Jeffrey Pierce and Peter Adams of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was used as an excuse to cast doubt on the theory that cosmic ray levels affect the creation of clouds in Earth's atmosphere. This theory was first proposed in 1997 by physicists Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen of the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen. They reported that Earth's cloud cover seemed to vary in step with galactic cosmic rays - high-energy charged particles from outer space - striking Earth's atmosphere. The more cosmic rays, the more cloud cover, the more cloud cover the fewer warming rays from the sun reaching Earth's surface to affect the climate.

Bulb

Arctic (Non) Warming Since 1958

From time to time we hear that various places on earth have been "warming much faster than the rest of the planet - as predicted by "the models." One of the places commonly mentioned in that list is the Arctic, based largely on 30 years of satellite data. Fortunately though, we are not limited by 30 years of satellite data, as the Danish Meteorological Institute has records going back to 1958 and GISSTEMP has even longer records.

Fish

Fish That Triggers Hallucinations Found Off British Coast

Image
© BNPSThe Sarpa salpa fish is a potentially hallucinogenic form of Bream normally found in off the coast of Africa
The species of bream is normally found in the balmier waters of the Mediterranean and South Africa, was found by fisherman Andy Giles in his nets in the English Channel.

Mr Giles, 38, caught the fish, which is instantly recognized by its gold stripes running along its body, six miles south of Polperro, Cornwall.

"We were trawling for lemon sole and hauled up the net at the end of the day and almost immediately saw this striped fish, we didn't have a clue what it was," he said.