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Ocean Survey Reveals Hundreds of 'Bipolar' Species

Catherine Brahic
New Scientist
Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:14 UTC
Poles apart, but intimately linked. Of the thousands of species that populate Antarctica and the Arctic, it seems hundreds are "bipolar": found at both ends of the 11,000 kilometre span between the poles.

The surveys, part of the international Census of Marine Life, also suggest the Antarctic acts as a cold incubator for species that populate the deep sea around the planet. As ice ages come and go, and the ice shelf advances and retreats, species are isolated, evolve, then released to the global sea floor.

The 235 species that we believe are found at both poles include a great variety of animals, says Julian Gutt of the Alfred Wegner Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany. The easiest ones to explain are the large migrating organisms, such as whales and birds. But the list also includes a large number of animals that are thought to live relatively sedentary lives.
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Sherlock

Ancient Geologic Escape Hatches Mistaken for Tube Worms


Science Daily
Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:00 UTC
Krause
© Ken BendiktsenFederico Krause points to one of the tubeworms that he believes is actually an escape hatch for methane.
Tubeworms have been around for millions of years and the fossil record is rich with their distinctive imprints. But a discovery made by U of C scientists found that what previous researchers had labeled as tubeworms in a formation near Denver, Colorado, are actually 70 million-year-old escape hatches for methane.

Tubeworms, or siboglinids, look like long lipstick tubes and have been observed in warm and cold environments on the ocean floor, as well as in whale carcasses and decomposing organic-rich cargoes in sunken ships. Ecosystems teeming with tubeworm colonies were discovered at hydrothermal vents in the Galapagos Ridge in 1977 and at cold seeps at the base of the Florida Escarpment in 1984. As a result of these modern sightings, a number of fossil examples of tubeworms were subsequently identified in the rock record. One of these localities, found south of Denver, Colorado, was recently re-examined by U of C scientists.
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Sherlock

Scientists Dig for the Guts of Earthquakes

Randolph E. Schmid
The Associated Press
Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:07 UTC
Scientists are pursuing earthquakes deep into their subterranean lairs, studying them on land and below the sea. Yet, confronted with the question of when and where the "next big one" will occur, an uncomfortable silence sets in.

Based on history there will be quakes in Japan, also in Tibet, said Leigh Royden of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Will we ever be able to predict them? I don't know," she said Sunday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"There have been a few signals associated with quakes, but only in hindsight," she said. "And those quakes are rare."
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Target

Propaganda: Scientists must rein in misleading climate change claims

Vicky Pope
The Guardian
Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:30 UTC
Ice Storm
© unknown

News headlines vie for attention and it is easy for scientists to grab this attention by linking climate change to the latest extreme weather event or apocalyptic prediction. But in doing so, the public perception of climate change can be distorted. The reality is that extreme events arise when natural variations in the weather and climate combine with long-term climate change. This message is more difficult to get heard. Scientists and journalists need to find ways to help to make this clear without the wider audience switching off.

Recent headlines have proclaimed that Arctic summer sea ice has decreased so much in the past few years that it has reached a tipping point and will disappear very quickly. The truth is that there is little evidence to support this. Indeed, the record-breaking losses in the past couple of years could easily be due to natural fluctuations in the weather, with summer sea ice increasing again over the next few years. This diverts attention from the real, longer-term issues. For example, recent results from the Met Office do show that there is a detectable human impact in the long-term decline in sea ice over the past 30 years, and all the evidence points to a complete loss of summer sea ice much later this century.


Comment: See an examination of this story's propaganda here.


Comment: See an examination of this story's propaganda here.

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Binoculars

UK Met Office Issues 'Blistering Attack on Scientific Colleagues' For 'Apocalyptic Climate Predictions'


Environment and Public Works Press Blog
Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:51 UTC
Scientists at the UK Met office "launched a blistering attack on scientific colleagues and journalists who exaggerate the effects of global warming." The Met office, "one of the most prestigious research facilities in the world" according to the February 11, 2009, article in the UK Guardian, is no hotbed of climate skeptics, as the organization accepts the UN IPCC view of man-made global warming. A U.S. climate expert has also declared that "the political consensus surrounding climate policy is collapsing," and a U.S. Naval Academy chemist has accused the media of "journalistic malpractice" for hyping warming fears. Furthermore, NASA's James Hansen and RealClimate.org have also come under renewed criticism.
The scientists at the UK Met Office lamented the "recent 'apocalyptic predictions' about Arctic ice melt," according to the UK Guardian newspaper.

Dr. Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, warned that "there is little evidence to support claims that Arctic ice has reached a tipping point and could disappear within a decade or so," according to the UK Guardian.

"The record-breaking losses in the past couple of years could easily be due to natural fluctuations in the weather, with summer ice increasing again over the next few years," Pope explained.
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Hourglass

Flashback Best of the Web: Life Is Convenient When You Define 'Truth'

Amy Menefee
Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute
Wed, 31 Jan 2007 01:02 UTC
If you want to shut down a debate, simply call your opponent a Nazi.

It's quick, easy and requires no thought whatsoever.

Laugh at your opponent without allowing him to speak. Oh, and make a film about your point of view and name it "The Truth."

It's worked well for the global warming bandwagoners - and conservatives can't seem to get out of defensive mode.

"Every time you address the Holocaust, you don't bring somebody in that says it didn't happen. And we're at that stage now. We have Holocaust deniers; we have climate change deniers. And to be honest, I don't think there's a great deal of difference." That was the blunt assessment of Bill McGuire, an earth sciences professor, on ABC's Aug. 30, 2006, 20/20.

But McGuire isn't alone. Al Gore has talked about "global warming deniers." There are journalists who agree, and one of them went so far as to state it publicly.

CBS's Scott Pelley was asked why he refused to include global warming skeptics in his reporting. His response: "If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?"

Comment: Even though this author's views paint everything as a Liberal versus Conservative issue, it is not. The valid points made by the author regarding the alarmism, the labeling of global warming skeptics as holocaust deniers, the complicity of the media in service to the propaganda, these points are all valid and demonstrate the insanity that has replaced reason.

In effect the Global Warming issue is another example of the ponerization of society at large.

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Ark

Response to Gavin Schmidt - Global Climate Data Base Issues Are Real

Joseph D'Aleo
IceCap
Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:47 UTC
Gavin Schmidt wrote a hit piece on Tuesday night's the Lou Dobbs show that featured a discussion of global cooling. He objected that he was the sole voice on the side on global warming. He said the piece was not fair and balanced. To Gavin and the other alarmists, it appears, a piece that is fair and balanced can make no mention of any other opinion except that carbon dioxide is causing global warming and action is needed now and will deliver gain and no pain, something the one sided media coverage has gotten them used to over the years.

Yet there is considerable evidence that man is not responsible anything but local climate change through urbanization (the world's population has grown from 1.5 to 6.5 billion people since 1900) and locally and regionally through land use changes like deforestation, forestation and irrigation. Consider for example United States temperatures cooled from the end of WWII in the 1940s to the late 1970s, warmed from 1979 to 1998 then leveled off and fell. That means 5 of the last 7 decades has seen cooling during the most rapid industrialization period, the post WWII boom. CO2 has increased the whole time. This does not give cause to believe CO2 is the primary climate driver as the alarmists want you to believe. We have shown you on this site many examples of how other factors like ENSO, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and cycles on the sun and volcanism are much better correlated with the observed temperatures than CO2 and are the real drivers.
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Attention

US: Earthquake Rattles Central New Jersey ... Again


NBC News
Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:49 UTC
For the second time in two weeks, a small earthquake has rattled an area of central New Jersey.

But like the last quake in Morris County, no significant damage or injuries were reported.
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Bizarro Earth

Strong quake hits off northern Peru coast


Associated Press
Sun, 15 Feb 2009 17:03 UTC
Lima - The U.S. Geological Survey is reporting a strong earthquake off the coast of northern Peru.

The magnitude 6.2 quake shook the region at 5:04 a.m. local time on Sunday (10:04 GMT, 5:04 a.m. EST) about 22 miles (35 kilometers) under the ocean floor.
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Bizarro Earth

Earth May Be Home to Unearthly Life

Tina Hesman Saey
Science News
Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:00 UTC
Scientists may not need to explore outer space to find 'alien' biology, cosmologist says.

When ET phones home, he may not have to make a long-distance call.

Forms of life different from the organisms humans are familiar with may exist on this planet already, says cosmologist Paul Davies of Arizona State University in Tempe. At a news conference on February 14 at the annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Science, Davies and other scientists interested in identifying alien life-forms called for a "mission to Earth" to discover "life as we don't know it."

Many scientists used to believe that life was statistically improbable. In recent decades that view has shifted, and many now think that life may exist all over the universe. If it is possible to find life on other Earth-like planets, then "weird" or "shadow" life might already exist on Earth, Davies says.
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