Earth ChangesS


Bullseye

Met Office global warming figures 'are fatally flawed and could result in millions being squandered'

Lord Lawson
© Getty ImagesLord Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation say the Met Office's predictions are biased

The Met Office's global warming predictions are flawed and could result in millions of pounds being squandered, it is claimed.

A report for a think tank led by former Tory chancellor Lord Lawson says a computer programme behind figures that shape climate change policy is biased in favour of higher temperatures.

Large sums of public and private sector money could be 'malinvested' in everything from wind farms to heat-proof road surfaces as a result, it claims.

Lord Lawson, chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: 'The Government's policy of abandoning cheap conventional energy and moving to expensive (and unreliable) renewable energy has always been of dubious merit.

'The fact that it now emerges this policy has been based on projections by a computer model which has been found to be fatally flawed means that an independent expert review of the model and its projections is both essential and urgent.'

The claim, hotly disputed by the Met Office, comes as scientists and officials meet in Stockholm to finalise a major report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Comment: The prediction of arctic sea ice is a great example, showing how completely useless the Met Office' models are and how much their models are based on policy and not science.
In June they made the lowest prediction of just 3.4 million square kilometers. It ended up at 5.1 million square kilometers. It was based on modeling. In July they stuck with their prediction of 3.4 million square kilometers. More can be read on Sea Ice News Volume 4 number 6.


Bizarro Earth

7.7 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan just created a new island

A massive, 7.7 magnitude quake struck south-central Pakistan on Tuesday afternoon local time. The USGS warns that there will high casualties and economic losses, requiring international response. Seismologists have also confirmed that the quake raised a new island, about 30-40 feet high, off the coast.

The island is about half a mile off the coast of Gwadar, in the Arabian Sea. Already, reports the International Herald Tribune, crowds have gathered to see the mountainous, rocky island. Some are claiming it is 100 feet long.

Image

Bizarro Earth

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 7.7 - 66km NNE of Awaran, Pakistan

Image
© USGS
Event Time:
2013-09-24 11:29:48 UTC
2013-09-24 16:29:48 UTC+05:00 at epicenter

Location:
27.000°N 65.514°E depth=20.0km (12.4mi)

Nearby Cities:
66km (41mi) NNE of Awaran, Pakistan
116km (72mi) NW of Bela, Pakistan
172km (107mi) NW of Uthal, Pakistan
175km (109mi) S of Kharan, Pakistan
791km (492mi) ENE of Muscat, Oman

Technical data

Bizarro Earth

30 large dolphins beach themselves in northeastern Brazil; 7 die, news reports say

Rio De Janeiro - Around 30 large dolphins beached themselves in northeastern Brazil over the weekend, and news reports said Monday that at least seven of them had died.

The dolphins, known as false killer whales, ran aground early Sunday on the shallow sands of Upanema beach in Areia Branca, roughly halfway between the cities of Fortaleza and Natal.

Images distributed by the environmental police of Rio Grande do Norte state show beachgoers and passers-by attempting to aid the animals, which lay stranded in inches- (centimeters-) deep water. Most of the animals were still, occasionally twitching their tails, as beachgoers swabbed them with wet T-shirts.

O Globo newspaper reported Monday that at least seven on the animals died, six of them on the Upanema beach. O Globo said one animal died following an apparent shark attack after it was returned to the ocean. The report stressed that the dolphin was likely attacked in very deep waters and that area beachgoers needn't worry about shark attacks.

The paper said it was not immediately known why the animals beached themselves, but biologists were examining whether the pod leader might have been ill. Another hypothesis is that the dolphins were pursuing a school of fish and were trapped on Upanema's high sand banks.

O Globo said it was among the largest collective beachings in Brazil in recent decades. In 1991, around 19 whales beached themselves on the sands of the nearby town of Sao Miguel do Gostoso, the report said.

Source: Associated Press

Cow Skull

World's top climate scientists told to 'cover up' the fact that the Earth's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years

The earth from space
© Alamy
Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed.

A leaked copy of a United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States raised concerns about the final draft.

Published next week, it is expected to address the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on record and world temperatures have not yet exceeded it, which scientists have so far struggled to explain.

The report is the result of six years' work by UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is seen as the world authority on the extent of climate change and what is causing it - on which governments including Britain's base their green policies.

But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.

Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was 'misleading' and they should focus on decades or centuries.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has changed its tune after issuing stern warnings about climate change for years

Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change.

Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat - and suggested using 1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve.

Hardhat

Flashback 5,000 new emergency underground shelters built in Moscow 'in case of nuclear attack'

Image
Nearly 5,000 new emergency bomb shelters will be built in Moscow by 2012 to save people in case of potential attacks.

Moscow authorities say the measure is urgent as the shelters currently available in the city can house no more that half of its population.

In the last 20 years, the area of air-raid defense has been developed little, and the existing shelters have become outdated. Moreover, they are located mostly in the city center, which makes densely populated Moscow outskirts especially vulnerable in the event of a nuclear attack.

In order to resolve the issue, the city has given architects a task to construct a typical model of an easy-to-build shelter that will be located all over the city 10 to 15 meters underneath apartment blocks, shopping centers, sport complexes and parks, as in case of attack people will need to reach the shelters within a minute.

Moscow saw its first mass building of shelters in the 1930s, after which 7,000 of them were constructed. Some of Russia's metro stations have been built very deep underground so that they could double as air raid shelters.

However, in the early 1990s, many shelters were privatized by commercial firms that used them as warehouses, parking lots, and even restaurants.

Snowflake

The Ice Age is coming, and corrupted scientists continue to lie through their teeth: Stronger winds explain puzzling growth of sea ice in Antarctica

Image
© NASA/Digital Mapping SystemThis mixture of different types of Antarctic sea ice was photographed Oct. 13, 2012, by a NASA aircraft flying over the Bellingshausen Sea.
Much attention is paid to melting sea ice in the Arctic. But less clear is the situation on the other side of the planet. Despite warmer air and oceans, there's more sea ice in Antarctica now than in the 1970s - a fact often pounced on by global warming skeptics. The latest numbers suggest the Antarctic sea ice may be heading toward a record high this year.


Comment: "Melting sea ice in the Arctic?" We wonder if the so called scientists in the University of Washington:
a) live on the same planet
b) are dangerously ignorant
c) deliberately distort the facts
because last time we heard about Arctic ice, it was actually growing:
Ice Age cometh: Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year; top scientists warn of global cooling
NASA stumped: Summer Arctic ice extent among highest this decade, Antarctica "headed toward record extent"


While changes in weather may play a big role in short-term changes in sea ice seen in the past couple of months, changes in winds have apparently led to the more general upward sea ice trend during the past few decades, according to University of Washington research. A new modeling study to be published in the Journal of Climate shows that stronger polar winds lead to an increase in Antarctic sea ice, even in a warming climate.


Comment: Oh, so it's still a Global Warming, but we will find ourselves under a mile of ice...ahem...just like during an Ice Age? Don't let the corrupted science confuse you. Read Fire and Ice: The Day After Tomorrow to learn about the reality of the situation.


"The overwhelming evidence is that the Southern Ocean is warming," said author Jinlun Zhang, an oceanographer at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. "Why would sea ice be increasing? Although the rate of increase is small, it is a puzzle to scientists."

Comment: Famous last words.


Cloud Precipitation

Video: Extreme weather events of the first two weeks of September 2013


Question

Dead birds found around cellular tower in Conception Bay South, Canada

A number of dead birds found near the base of a Bell Aliant cellular tower in Conception Bay South have both a resident and a councillor concerned.

Ward 3 councillor and C.B.S. candidate for the mayor's chair Ken McDonald was out campaigning Thursday evening when a call came in from a resident who had been walking his dog near the cellular tower on Eason's Road behind the Manuels River Interpretation Centre.

Image
© Rhonda Hayward/The TelegramA group of dead birds were discovered near a cellular tower in Conception Bay South by a man walking his dog Thursday evening.
The resident said he had seen a number of large, dead birds near the tower.

"He was concerned, one, for the dog and secondly that this is above the Manuels River and everything runs towards there," said McDonald. "He felt it might be something related to the tower or some seepage that's coming from the water that's trickling past it."

McDonald met with The Telegram at the site Friday morning.

There were at least a half dozen bird carcasses - what appeared to be crows and ravens, which belong to a group called the corvids.

Question

Strange odor coming from waterfront in Bellingham, Washington

The source of a mysterious smell coming off the waterfront and wafting through Bellingham remained a mystery Thursday afternoon, Sept. 19, as reports continued to come in to official agencies.

More than 100 callers reported a sulfur, natural gas, methane or petroleum smell in Bellingham Wednesday evening, Sept. 18.

Callers to 911 first reported the smell in the area of Fieldston Road, south of Fairhaven, around 5 p.m. About 20 calls continued to come in as the smell apparently moved north toward the Columbia and Birchwood Neighborhoods, said David Doll, deputy chief of Bellingham Police. The calls dropped off around Alderwood Avenue.