Earth ChangesS


Better Earth

The Great Global Warming Deception

Bob Ellis
Dakota Voice
Thu, 28 May 2009 20:33 UTC
Sargasso Sea temperatures
© unknown

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine has a video/slideshow presentation which shows once gain that worshippers of the religion of global warming are full of hot air.

Al Gore and fellow socialists at the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - a political organization, not a scientific one - and elsewhere desperately want people to believe the earth is going through unprecedented warming...and that it's all the fault of those evil coal-burning, SUV-driving capitalists.

Unfortunately for them, this crazy idea not only doesn't meet the test of science, it doesn't even pass the smell-test. As a commenter at Free Republic said, ordinary folk can recognize bull feces by the smell and don't need the recipe. But thanks to information such as this report from Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson and Willie Soon, those who need the recipe to see the light have it.
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Life Preserver

A Closer Look at Climate Change

Mark W. Hendrickson
Townhall
Mon, 25 May 2009 20:18 UTC
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is widely regarded in the media as the ultimate authority on climate change. Created by two divisions of the United Nations, and recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, its pronouncements are received as if they come down from Mount Olympus or Mount Sinai. The common presumption is that the IPCC has assembled the best scientific knowledge. Let's take a closer look at this organization to see whether it merits such uncritical deference.

The IPCC's Feb. 2007 report stated: It is "very likely" that human activity is causing global warming. Why then, just two months later, did the Vice Chair of the IPCC, Yuri Izrael, write, "the panic over global warming is totally unjustified;" "there is no serious threat to the climate;" and humanity is "hypothetically ... more threatened by cold than by global warming?"

IPCC press releases have warned about increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere, yet Dr. Vincent Gray, a member of the IPCC's expert reviewers' panel asserts, "There is no relationship between warming and [the] level of gases in the atmosphere."
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Question

US: Turtle Death Mystery


WBAY/ ABC
Thu, 28 May 2009 20:09 UTC
Menasha - A wildlife expert in east-central Wisconsin says she's worried about the increasing number of dead turtles in the area.

Tracey Koenig is the executive director of the Heckrodt Wetland Reserve in Menasha. She says an empty turtle shell occasionally washes ashore, but lately there are more deaths involving larger turtles.

She says some turtles just crawl ashore and die.

Her staff reports the recent deaths of six snapping turtles and four or five painted turtles. Another two dozen large turtles were discovered dead at a nearby pond in the past month.
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Question

Philippines: Virus kills 200 hogs in San Simon, rapidly spreading in Pampanga

Joel Mapiles
Business Mirror
Thu, 28 May 2009 19:54 UTC
City of San Fernando - More than 200 swine in San Simon town were found dead recently due to Porcine Reproductive Syndrome (PRRS) virus.

The Provincial Veterinary Office (PVO) said the rapid spread of PRRS among hogs and piglets in Apalit, Mexico, San Luis, Bacolor and in the City of San Fernando has reached an alarming proportion.

Mayor Rodrigo "Digos" Canlas said he accompanied the PVO officers in giving vaccines to afflicted pigs in some of the big and backyard piggeries in San Simon to avoid the mortality increase.

Augusto Baluyut, provincial veterinarian, said the PRRS first erupted in San Simon and it is continuously spreading in more towns in the province.

Baluyut recalled that two years ago, over 40 percent of the piggeries in the towns of Porac, Lubao, Santa Rita, Guagua were severely affected by PRRS, which caused financial setbacks to the owners of backyard farming.
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Evil Rays

Will Anyone Notice Global Cooling

Norm Kalmanovitch
Climate Realists
Thu, 28 May 2009 19:46 UTC
CO2 vs global temperature
© unknownThe graph above shows the temperature changes of the lower troposphere from the surface up to about 8 km as determined from the average of two analyses of satellite data. The best fit line from January 2002 to April 2009 indicates a decline of 0.25 Celsius/decade. The Sun's activity, which was increasing through most of the 20th century, has recently become quiet, causing a change of trend. The green line shows the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, as measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

It is inconceivable that even after a decade since global warming ended and seven years into a cooling trend with no end of cooling in sight, that world leaders are unaware of these facts and are still pursuing initiatives to stop global warming. Something is terribly wrong with the official international science bodies such as the IPCC who have not come forward and properly informed the world leaders of current global temperatures.

Something is terribly wrong with the individual government science bodies who did not come forward and inform their own leaders when it was certain that global warming had ended, or when there was sufficient data to claim that we are now in a cooling trend. It is not as though this is highly guarded secret data that can only be accessed by a limited group of people. The global temperature data is in fact readily available from several public sites and can be downloaded at no cost.

For the past year Friends of Science has been maintaining a graph of satellite temperature data and atmospheric CO2 concentration data on their website. This graph is updated every month as the new data becomes available. The cooling trend that started in 2002 is highlighted by a straight line best fit posted on this graph. The numerical value for this trend is 0.25C/decade of cooling!
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Bizarro Earth

7.1 earthquake topples homes, kills 2 in Honduras

Freddy Cuevas
Associated Press
Thu, 28 May 2009 15:15 UTC
Image
© USGS; ESRI
Tegucigalpa - A powerful earthquake toppled more than two dozen homes in Honduras and Belize early Thursday, killing two children and injuring 40 people as terrified residents spilled from their homes across much of Central America.

The magnitude-7.1 quake struck at 2:24 a.m. (4:24 a.m. EDT; 0824 GMT) off the Caribbean coast of Honduras, 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of the beach town of La Ceiba, according to the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado.

"People were running for the door," Alfredo Cedeno said from the reception desk at the Gran Hotel Paris in La Ceiba. "You could really feel it and you could see it - the water came out of the pool."

Reynaldo Funez, 15, was buried in his house in Pineda de la Lima, 120 miles (200 kilometers) north of the capital, Tegucigalpa, and 6-year-old Deily Yazmin Santos was killed when her house collapsed in the beach town of Morazan, national fire commander Col. Carlos Cordero said.

He said there were unconfirmed reports of two more deaths. In all, he said, at least 40 people were injured, most along the Caribbean coast.
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Binoculars

US: Colorado dust storms speed snowmelt in the West

Nicholas Riccardi
Los Angeles Times
Sun, 24 May 2009 10:02 UTC
Colorado Peaks
© McKenzie Skiles / For the Los Angeles TimesSpring dust storms have left the snowcapped mountains of western Colorado tinged pink
Denver - A series of unusual spring dust storms has left the snowcapped mountains of western Colorado stained brown and red, even a bit pink. The dust is speeding up the runoff to rivers that supply millions of people with water and raising fears of an increasingly arid West.

Twelve dust storms barreled into the southern Rockies from the deserts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico so far this year. In contrast, four storms hit the mountains all year long in 2003. Eight occurred in each of the last three years.

"This year's been really, really strong," said Jason Neff, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder. "Something's been going on, and I don't think we're exactly sure what."

The storms leave a dark film on snow that melts it faster by hastening its absorption of the sun's energy. That, coupled with unseasonably warm temperatures, has sped up the runoff here, swelling rivers to near flood stage, threatening to make reservoirs overflow and fueling fears that there will not be enough water left for late-summer crops.
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Attention

Greenpeace study compares U.S. pollution to other nations

Meredith Cohn
The Baltimor Sun
Thu, 28 May 2009 07:12 UTC
Maryland emits more greenhouse gases than 150 countries

Maryland emitted more cumulative global warming pollution between 1960-2005 than more than 150 other nations surveyed, according to a report released today from Greenpeace. And that makes the state one of the least polluting on a per person basis.

The United States has long been considered the chief emitter, but months ahead of a global forum on the subject, the environmental organization was seeking to underscore the level by compiling Department of Energy statistics for individual states and comparing them to World Resource Institute data from 184 other countries.
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Evil Rays

Canada Has a Frigid May after a Cold Winter

Joseph D'Aleo
IceCap
Wed, 27 May 2009 05:39 UTC
May has been frigid slowing the planting and emergence of the summer crops in Canada. Late freezes and even snows are still occurring regularly and can be expected the rest of the month.
Canada May 2009 temperature anomaly
© NOAACanada May 2009 temperature anomaly

The chart above shows the May 2009 temperature anomaly through May 24th. Parts of central Canada (Churchill, Manitoba) are running 16 degrees F below normal for the month through the 26th (map ends 24th). Every day this month has seen lows below freezing in Churchill and only 6 out of the first 26 days days had highs edge above freezing. The forecast the rest of the month is for more cold with even some snow today in Churchill and again this weekend perhaps further south.

Hudson Bay remains mostly frozen though most of the seasonal melting occurs in June and July most years.
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Ambulance

BSE, Climate Change and Science Journalism

David Whitehouse
CCNet
Fri, 22 May 2009 05:14 UTC
Dear Benny,

It is very interesting to see today's story on BBC News Online about BSE/CJD "vCJD carrier risk overestimated." It is the latest in a long line of similar assessments of the vCJD situation.

After many years of sporadic interest the BSE/vCJD story took off in 1996 after an admission in parliament by the health minister that there was a link between BSE contaminated meat and a new strain of the degenerative vCJD brain disease that had afflicted a handful of people. Initially, few people knew anything definite about the disease and its possible progression and, depending upon assumptions, computer models predicted anything from a small number of people being affected to a large fraction of the population. While such uncertainty existed it was right for journalists to reflect the scientific situation but as I was science correspondent for BBC Radio at the time, I soon began to realise the tension between science and journalism and the changing approach to science within BBC News at the time.

In terms of news the potential for a modern day catastrophic plague is a much 'better' story than the possibility that nothing much more will happen. So whilst the uncertainty persisted that was the story that was emphasised with the appropriate caveats. However, it soon became clear to most scientists at least that a major catastrophe was not in the making. The increase in numbers afflicted, despite the unknown incubation of the disease, was not increasing as some predicted, but that fact was inconvenient to some and did not impinge on our general approach to the story.
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