Earth ChangesS


Sun

Sunspot Minimum at Hand

Joseph D'Aleo
IceCap
Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:48 UTC
sun spot
© NASA/SOHO

The sun has become more active in recent days with cycles 24 spots in middle latitudes. See sunspot group number 11019 for group of red spots. This is slightly diminished since yesterday. The dark green areas are coronal holes out of which the solar wind escapes at higher velocity.

Peter Lawrence has a close up view of that sunspot posted on spaceweather.com.
sun spopt
© NASA/SOHO

There is a loop of the sunspots develop and rotate around the solar disk the last few days here.

This activity came late enough in the month of May, to keep the monthly number for May below the value of 14 months ago of 3.2 which it is replacing in the 13 month running mean. That means the solar cycle minimum can't be earlier than November 2008, making it at least a 12.5 year long cycle 23.
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Bizarro Earth

Earthquake Magnitude 5.7 - Revilla Gigedo Islands Region


US Geological Survey
Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:33 UTC
Image
© US Geological Survey
Date-Time:
Wednesday, June 03, 2009 at 21:37:34 UTC

Wednesday, June 03, 2009 at 02:37:34 PM at epicenter
Location: 19.171°N, 109.311°W

Depth: 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program

Region: REVILLA GIGEDO ISLANDS REGION

Distances:
180 km (110 miles) ENE of Socorro Island, Mexico

410 km (255 miles) S of Cabo San Lucas, Baja Calif. Sur, Mexico

455 km (280 miles) WSW of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico

1065 km (660 miles) W of MEXICO CITY, D.F., Mexico
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Bug

US: 10,000 bees crowd wing of plane at Massachusetts airport


Associated Press
Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:59 UTC
Image
© AFP/File/Saul LoebHoney bees walk on a moveable comb hive at the Bee Research Laboratory, in Beltsville, Maryland in 2007. The number of domesticated bees is on the rise worldwide despite declining numbers of wild honey bees in the United States and Europe, a study said Thursday.
Danvers - Maybe these bees were too tired to fly for themselves. A gang of honeybees landed on the wing of a plane used for flight school training at Beverly Airport. At first, the 10,000 or so bees swarmed over the left side of the aircraft, then landed on top of the left wing. The owner of the flight center called police, who said to call local bee removal expert Al Wilkins.

Wilkins used a specially designed vacuum to suck the bees off the plane, and then relocated them to hives where they will produce honey.
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Book

Climate Change Reconsidered: 880-page Report Counters UN IPCC


Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change
Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:54 UTC
Image
As Congress debates global warming legislation that would raise energy costs to consumers by hundreds of billions of dollars, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) has released an 880-page book challenging the scientific basis of concerns that global warming is either man-made or would have harmful effects.

In "Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)," coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress rely for their regulatory proposals.
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Arrow Down

US: Honey Bee Loss for Third Year in a Row


California Farmer
Fri, 29 May 2009 05:33 UTC
Image
© Jack Dykinga
News continues to be bleak for the nation's commercial beekeeping industry, which could ultimately mean more bad news for farmers and higher prices at the grocery store.

Although a recent survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America to measure colony losses over the winter of 2008-2009 found that the total number of colonies lost last winter was lower than the losses suffered over the previous two winters, a 29% loss is worrying. Overall, beekeepers are facing honey bee losses at rates that are economically unsustainable.
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Info

Satellites spot new penguin colonies by their poo

Catherine Brahic
New Scientist
Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:52 UTC
emperor penguin colonies
© Thorsten Milse/Robert Harding/Rex FeaturesBreeding emperor penguin colonies like this one in Halley Bay can stay in one spot on the ice for eight months, creating a characteristic reddish-brown spot of guano.
Looking for penguins? The fastest and easiest way is to spot their poo from space, say researchers.

Peter Fretwell and Philip Trathan of the British Antarctic Survey located 38 emperor penguin colonies on winter sea ice all the way around Antarctica by spotting patches of their faeces, or guano, in satellite images. Ten of the colonies had not been observed before.
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Red Flag

The cloud with no name: Meteorologists campaign to classify unique 'Asperatus' clouds seen across the world

Luke Salkeld
Daily Mail UK
Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:32 UTC
Whipped into fantastical shapes, these clouds hang over the darkening landscape like the harbingers of a mighty storm.

Image
Stunning but undefined: The clouds loom over the skies of New Zealand - but unfortunately words can't describe this dramatic vision from the heavens
But despite their stunning and frequent appearances, the formations have yet to be officially recognised with a name.

They have been seen all over Britain in different forms - from Snowdonia to the Scottish Highlands - and in other parts of the world such as New Zealand, but usually break up without producing a storm.
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Bizarro Earth

Global warming scientist who boasted he could 'slaughter' skeptics in debate, backs off

Marc Morano
Climate Depot
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:24 UTC
Professor Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, a prominent proponent of man-made global warming fears, appears to be backing off of his boast that he could "slaughter" skeptical scientists in a global warming debate. In a May 24, 2009 interview, Schneider publicly boasted any skeptical scientist would be "slaughtered in public debate" against him.

But after many dissenting scientists happily took up the debate challenge, it now appears Schneider is shying away from any such debate.

"I certainly will not schedule some political show debate in front of a non-scientific audience," Schneider told the San Francisco Examiner in a follow up June 1, 2009 article.

"A presidential like debate format with shallow staccato jibes and no nuanced arguments, no--confusion only in that style. I never do those anymore," Schneider explained.

Former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. publicly accepted Schneider's global warming debate challenge just days after it was issued. "I would be glad to debate Dr. Schneider...he represents a narrow perspective on climate science," Pielke Sr. said on May 24, 2009. [Editor's Note: Climate Depot was copied on many emails from scientists writing to Professor Schneider accepting his debate challange and Climate Depot also received numerous notes from many scientists eager to accept Schneider's debate challenge in the past week.]
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Blackbox

How Many IPCC (and Other) Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research?

Norm Kalmanovitch
IceCap
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:05 UTC
The measured global temperature record which started around 1856 shows that the Earth was in a warming cycle until around 1880. The CO2 record shows that CO2 was increasing by about 0.21ppmv/year over this period. During the cooling cycle which followed from 1880 to 1910, the CO2 concentration increased at a rate of about 0.30ppmv/year.

The next warming cycle from 1910 to 1942 saw a dramatic increase in global temperature, but the rate of increase in CO2 concentration only grew to 0.33ppmv over this time period. The well documented global cooling period from 1942 to 1975 that had the world concerned about an impending return to the equivalent of the Little Ice Age, had a contemporaneous rise in atmospheric CO2 that equated to 0.63ppmv/year; almost twice the increase in CO2 of the precious warming cycle.

During the warming that took place from 1975 to 1998, the rate of CO2 increase took another dramatic jump to 1.54ppmv/year, but this was followed by an increase to 1.91ppmv/year that we are currently experiencing during the present ongoing cooling cycle. Each successive cooling cycle has had an increase in the rate of CO2 growth over the previous warming cycle, indicating that there is no possible correlation of CO2 with global warming.
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Bizarro Earth

Earthquake Magnitude 4.9 - Mendoza, Argentina


US Geological Survey
Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:30 UTC
Image
© US Geological Survey
Date-Time

* Tuesday, June 02, 2009 at 03:52:22 UTC
* Tuesday, June 02, 2009 at 12:52:22 AM at epicenter

Location: 32.595°S, 68.724°W

Depth: 29 km (18.0 miles)

Region: MENDOZA, ARGENTINA

Distances: 35 km (20 miles) NNE of Mendoza, Argentina

120 km (75 miles) S of San Juan, Argentina

205 km (125 miles) ENE of SANTIAGO, Chile

960 km (600 miles) W of BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
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