Earth ChangesS

Bizarro Earth

Another Meteorologist Dissents: 'Does carbon dioxide drive the climate? The answer is no!'

Marc Morano
Climate Depot
Sun, 12 Jul 2009 01:11 UTC
Chief Meteorologist David Paul, a holder of the AMS (American Meteorological Society) Seal of Approval and the upgraded AMS CBM (Certified Broadcast Meteorologist) holds a degree in meteorology and is currently at Louisiana's KLFY TV10, dissented from man-made global warming fears in July 2009.

"Is there a climate crisis? I say, absolutely not!" Paul wrote in a July 8, 2009 article on KLFY TV 10's website. "Does carbon dioxide drive the climate? The answer is no! Natural cycles play a much bigger role with the sun at the top of the list," Paul explained. "There's much more driving the climate than carbon dioxide. There are so many variables at work, known and unknown, that not a single person, or computer model, can predict the future climate for sure," Paul wrote.

"Then there's El Nino Southern Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation, the Arctic Oscillation, the Pacific-North American Teleconnection, Milankovitch forcing, ocean variations, and so on and so forth. Is there any way to model all these variables? Again, the answer is no! The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has tried and failed!" Paul added.
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Igloo

New Zealand: May the coldest on record, Niwa figures show

Matt Stewart
Wairarapa Times-Age
Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:06 UTC
Wairarapa certainly played its part in the record-breaking chill that gripped the country during May, with Martinborough plunged into gloom courtesy of a paltry 92 hours of sunshine.

Niwa senior climate scientist Georgina Griffiths said May "broke records from one end of the country to the other - it was the coldest May on record", and there was nothing much to toast in the South Wairarapa wine village, which registered 69 percent of normal sunshine hours for May - the lowest figure for the town since records began.

"In May, Martinborough was gray, gloomy and depressing," she said.

"In June, the east coast strips of both islands were gloomy while sun shone around the rest of the country, like Hamilton which had record sunshine hours," Ms Griffiths said.

Below normal June sunshine (75 - 90 percent of normal) blighted coastal Otago, coastal Canterbury and the East Cape, she said.

It was wet too with double the normal rainfall for May (about 200 percent of normal) in Wairarapa, Canterbury and Otago while much of Northland, Auckland, Wellington and Southland got at least 150 percent of normal May rainfall.
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Magnify

US: Searchers shovel Northwest dirt seeking giant worm

Nicholas K. Geranios
Associated Press
Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:44 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Dean Hare
The giant Palouse earthworm has taken on mythic qualities in this vast agricultural region that stretches from eastern Washington into the Idaho panhandle - its very name evoking the fictional sandworms from "Dune" or those vicious creatures from the movie "Tremors."

The worm is said to secrete a lily-like smell when handled, spit at predators, and live in burrows 15 feet deep. There have been only a handful of sightings.

But scientists hope to change that this summer with researchers scouring the Palouse region in hopes of finding more of the giant earthworms. Conservationists also want the Obama administration to protect the worm as an endangered species, even though little research has been done on it.
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Hourglass

US: Chicago has its coolest July 8 in 118 years

Tom Skilling
Chicago Tribune
Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:15 UTC
For the 12th time this meteorological summer (since June 1), daytime highs failed to reach 70 degrees Wednesday. Only one other year in the past half century has hosted so many sub-70-degree days up to this point in a summer season -- 1969, when 14 such days occurred.

Wednesday's paltry 65-degree high at O'Hare International Airport (an early-May-level temperature and a reading 18 degrees below normal) was also the city's coolest July 8 high in 118 years -- since a 61-degree high on the date in 1891.
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Bizarro Earth

Toxic Substance Allows Birds to "See" Magnetic Field

Matt Kaplan
National Geographic News
Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:00 UTC
Owl Eyes
© Tim Laman/NGSAn African goshawk is seen on Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea. Low amounts of a toxic substance give birds the ability to "see" Earth's magnetic field as they navigate on long journeys.
A toxic substance plays a key role in helping birds migrate, a new study says.

Previous research had shown that birds seem to have an internal compass that allows them to "see" Earth's magnetic field. This magnetic vision guides them on long journeys.

Scientists have also studied a protein molecule, called cryptochrome, that drives the chemical processes behind the birds' magnetic abilities.

But what the molecule was reacting with to create birds' special sight has been a mystery - until now.

Due to a laboratory mishap, scientists have discovered that toxic superoxides may be the previously missed ingredient.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Hairless Mystery Animal Photographed

Loren Coleman
Crpytomundo
Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:07 UTC
The following animal jumped into the trunk of someone's car in Goodhue, Minnesota, near Minneapolis, and was driven home (allegedly) before being photographed.

Hairless animal
© Unknown
Hairless animal II
© Unknown
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Life Preserver

Boston has Sixth Coldest June on Record

Angela Zalucha
The Tech
Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:19 UTC
As you are well aware, June was unseasonably cold. The mean temperature for June was 63.3ยฐF, which ties it with June 1982 as the sixth coldest June on record in Boston since records began in 1872. Average temperatures of various sorts are often reported by meteorologists, such as the average high or low for a particular day of the year. A statistical quantity that is often overlooked is the standard deviation. That is, when a record occurs, how statistically unlikely is that event compared with the mean?

Your intuition tells you that the standard deviation for Boston temperatures is probably high, since the weather varies greatly from day to day. In places like Los Angeles, California, or Phoenix, Arizona, however, the temperature is fairly constant on a day-to-day time scale, and so the standard deviation is low. Even from month to month, the standard deviation of temperature may vary. For example, in Boston the standard deviation is higher in January than in July.
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Alarm Clock

Tasmania as cold as ice: Temperatures plummet eight below average

Brett Dutschke
Weather Zone
Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:01 UTC
Bitterly cold weather has been gripping Tasmania as temperatures plummet as much as eight below average.

Widespread frost has affected much of the state in the last few mornings and has been severe in central and eastern parts. Liawenee has had minimum temperatures of minus seven degrees in the last two days, six degrees below average.

Some valley locations, such as Bushy Park and Ouse, which dipped to minus four on Wednesday morning, failed to get within seven degrees of the average maximum. Bushy Park only reached three degrees and Ouse four. Fog and a lack of wind were the main culprits, hampering any warmth from the sun. For Bushy park this is likely to be its coldest day in more than two years and coldest July day in at least eight years.
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Binoculars

Top Physicist: Global Warming a Dangerous Belief

Phil Brennan
NewsMax
Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:59 UTC
Despite alarmist claims of dangerous global warming there's nothing to worry about - it's really getting cooler says Laurence Gould, a professor of physics at the University of Hartford and one of the seven signers of a letter to Congress warning against passage of the so-called cap and trade legislation now awaiting Senate action after being enacted by the House of Representatives last week.

Professor Gould told Newsmax that the evidence on cooling is being ignored by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) upon whose specious reports the cap and trade bill relied.

Gould explained that both "global cooling and global warming have happened throughout much of the earth's climate history," adding that "there have, for example, been the great ice ages as well as the more recent little ice age - all this taking place well before the large buildup of 20th century human industrialization - an industrialization that resulted and continues to result in the increase in the standard of living and in the increased life expectancy of people around the globe."
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Bizarro Earth

NASA report of thinning arctic ice is deceiving

Tony Pann
Examiner
Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:45 UTC
NASA Ice report
© NASA ICESatNASA ICESat shows ice thinning. Report ignores where it is thicker.

When looking at arctic ice reports, the most important thing to remember is that we have only been studying the arctic since the end of 1978. That's only three decades, which is a small data set to truly identify a trend for long-term climate. We must look closely at the reports themselves, such as the most recent one from NASA/JPL. The analysis does take time, but that could also mean old data is shown, ignoring current trends. Also, many of these ice reports are released in the summer, when it is 'expected' to be hot, and ice in the arctic is at its lowest point all year. So gloabal warming or climate change aside, the time of year can be misleading.

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