Earth ChangesS


Black Cat

Why cats fail to grasp string theory

Image
© Loliloli, Wikimedia Commons
Now we know why cats never get bored of chasing string. A new study has found that domestic felines don't seem to understand cause and effect connections between objects.

Chimpanzees, tamarin monkeys, parrots and ravens all understand that tugging on one end of a string will bring a treat at the other end closer. Pigeons and human infants don't; and cat lovers dismayed at their pets' lack of nous can console themselves with the knowledge that dogs don't either.

"There's no reason to think that cats are more stupid than dogs," says Britta Osthaus, a comparative psychologist at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, who led the study. "I've done quite a few tests and I always find that dogs just don't get it."

Bizarro Earth

Earthquake Magnitude 4.9 - Potosi, Bolivia

Image
© US Geological Survey
Date-Time

* Tuesday, June 02, 2009 at 02:35:26 UTC
* Monday, June 01, 2009 at 10:35:26 PM at epicenter

Location 21.272°S, 68.130°W

Depth 25.4 km (15.8 miles)

Region POTOSI, BOLIVIA

Distances: 155 km (95 miles) NNE of Calama, Chile

230 km (145 miles) ENE of Tocopilla, Chile

240 km (150 miles) ESE of Iquique, Chile

1365 km (850 miles) N of SANTIAGO, Chile

Bizarro Earth

Earthquake Magnitude 6.5 - Vanuatu

Image
© US Geological Survey
Date-Time

* Tuesday, June 02, 2009 at 02:17:07 UTC
* Tuesday, June 02, 2009 at 01:17:07 PM at epicenter

Location 17.763°S, 167.878°E

Depth 39.6 km (24.6 miles)

Region VANUATU

Distances 45 km (30 miles) W of PORT-VILA, Efate, Vanuatu

245 km (155 miles) NW of Isangel, Tanna, Vanuatu

260 km (160 miles) SSE of Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu

1860 km (1160 miles) ENE of BRISBANE, Queensland, Australia

Bizarro Earth

New Type of Cloud Found

new type of cloud found
An unusual type of storm cloud could become the first new variety of cloud to be officially identified in more than half a century.

Meteorologists believe they have discovered a new classification of cloud after the unique formation has been spotted in skies around the world.

Experts at the Royal Meteorological Society are now attempting to have the new cloud type, which has been named "Asperatus" after the Latin word for rough, officially added to the international nomenclature scheme used by forecasters to identify clouds.

Better Earth

Babysitting whales give mums time for a snack

Image
© SplashdownDirect/Lisa Steiner/Rex FeaturesI'm popping down for a quick squid. You stay with your auntie.
Only adult sperm whales are able dive into deep waters to hunt for squid, so who looks after the kids? Babysitting mums, that's who. Shane Gero of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, and colleagues tracked two populations of sperm whales in the Caribbean and Sargasso seas to see what happened when mother whales dived for food.

The Sargasso mothers formed a babysitting circle, taking it in turns to watch over other calves and go hunting themselves. The babysitters even allowed the other mums' calves to nurse if they were hungry. The smaller Caribbean population had fewer mothers, so calves were left with a close female relative instead.

Igloo

Antarctic warming; Steig et al - falsified

Spin Art
© unknownSmearing around data or paint - the results are similar.

Jeff Id of The Air Vent emailed me today inviting me to repost Ryan O's latest work on statistical evaluation of the Steig et al "Antarctica is warming" paper ( Nature, Jan 22, 2009) I thought long and hard about the title, especially after reviewing the previous work from Ryan O we posted on WUWT where the paper was dealt a serious blow to "robustness". After reading this latest statistical analysis, I think it is fair to conclude that the paper's premise has been falsified.

Ryan O, in his conclusion, is a bit more gracious:
I am perfectly comfortable saying that Steig's reconstruction is not a faithful representation of Antarctic temperatures over the past 50 years and that ours is closer to the mark.
Not only that, Ryan O did a more complete job of the reconstruction than Steig et al did, he mentions this in comments at The Air Vent:
Steig only used 42 stations to perform his reconstruction. I used 98, since I included AWS stations.
The AWS stations have their problems, such as periods of warmer temperatures due to being buried in snow, but even when using this data, Ryan O's analysis still comes out with less warming than the original Steig et al paper.

Antarctica as a whole is not warming, the Antarctic peninsula is, which is significantly removed climatically from the main continent.

Sun

New Cycle 24 spots emerging

Michael Ronayne writes:
To the right of the burned out pixel, a second Sunspot group, with two spots, is forming which can be seen in this image:
Cycle 24 sun specks
© SOHO (ESA & NASA)

Evil Rays

'Report is worse than fiction, it is a lie!' -- Climate expert rejects claim of 300,000 climate deaths as 'methodological embarrassment' - 'Absurd'

Roger Pielke Jr. May 29, 2009 Excerpt: The new report issued by the Global Humanitarian Forum which makes the absurd claim that 315,000 deaths a year can be attributed to the effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations. Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies disaster trends, said the forum's report was "a methodological embarrassment" because there was no way to distinguish deaths or economic losses related to human-driven global warming amid the much larger losses resulting from the growth in populations and economic development in vulnerable regions. [...]

It is a methodological embarrassment and poster child for how to lie with statistics. The report will harm the cause for action on both climate change and disasters because it is so deeply flawed. [...]

The report is worse than fiction, it is a lie. These are strong words I know. [...] Let me first start by noting that the same group that did the analysis for the UN, the Geo-Risks group in Munich Re, earlier this year published a peer-reviewed paper arguing that the signal of human-caused climate change could not presently be seen in the loss data on disasters.

For Pielke Jr.'s complete analysis see here.

Bulb

315,000 deaths due to Global Warming: A Methodological Embarassment

I am quoted in today's New York Times on a new report issued by the Global Humanitarian Forum which makes the absurd claim that 315,000 deaths a year can be attributed to the effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations. Here is what I said:
Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies disaster trends, said the forum's report was "a methodological embarrassment" because there was no way to distinguish deaths or economic losses related to human-driven global warming amid the much larger losses resulting from the growth in populations and economic development in vulnerable regions. Dr. Pielke said that "climate change is an important problem requiring our utmost attention." But the report, he said, "will harm the cause for action on both climate change and disasters because it is so deeply flawed."
Strong comments I know. Shoddy work on disasters and climate change is the norm, unfortunately, and something I've been closely following for well over a decade. I have no illusions that this latest concoction will be repeatedly cited regardless.

Below are my comments to the New York Times upon reading the report (cleaned up and formatted). Caution, strong views ahead.

Attention

Global warming terrorists declare warming must stay below 2C or world faces ruin

World carbon emissions must start to decline in only six years if humanity is to stand a chance of preventing dangerous global warming, a group of 20 Nobel prize-winning scientists, economists and writers declared today.

The United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December must agree to halve greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050 to stop temperatures from increasing by more than 2C (3.6F), the St James's Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium concluded.

While even a 2C temperature rise will have adverse consequences, a bigger increase would create "unmanageable climate risks", according to the St James's Palace memorandum, signed today by 20 Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry, economics, peace and literature.

Comment: The Global Warming Propaganda is ramping up daily. The political machine and psychological marketers now control Climate Science. Every aspect of daily life is coming under worldwide control.

Scientists, climate scientists, solar scientists, statistical analysts, physicists, you name it, all must tow the political line regardless of what their own research tells them, regardless of what common sense tells them, regardless of objective reality.

There are thousands and thousands of scientists and their research and data and analysis that finds the global warming hypothesis falsified. They are called deniers, a dirty derogatory slanderous term that dehumanizes them by equating them with the familiar term used for Nazi Holocaust deniers. A clever move by the psychological marketing team running the show. And now an all too cooperative media commonly uses this disgusting term to belittle and taunt and lower the image of these scientists in the eyes of the world. Why is that okay? Why is it accepted and even encouraged?

Why are scientists everywhere skeptical?

Ian Plimer's recent article here, is a good example explaining just some of the issues as to why skepticism and disgust abounds in the scientific community.