Earth ChangesS

Fish

Heat Could Be Stifling Turtles' Swimming Abilities in Australia


Science Daily
Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:14 UTC
Turtle
© The University of QueenslandTurtle on Heron Island.
It seems we're not the only ones struggling to adapt to the summer weather - University of Queensland researchers have found the increased temperatures may be affecting turtles too.

Zoologist Dr David Booth, from UQ's School of Biological Sciences, said green turtle hatchlings from Heron Island weren't swimming as well as usual.

"The 2008-2009 green turtle nesting season on Heron Island has seen the highest nest temperatures recorded at this site, with many nests having average temperatures above 31 degrees, and experiencing temperatures above 35 degrees during the last week of incubation," Dr Booth said.

"Initial impressions are that hatchlings emerging from these hot nests are not as strong swimmers as hatchlings coming from cooler nests recorded in previous years.

"If climate change results in consistently high nest temperatures in the future, then the poorer swimming ability of hatchlings emerging from hot nests may have a negative impact on recruitment of hatchlings from coral cays because predation rate is thought to be related to swimming ability."
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Bug

Desert Ants Smell Their Way Home


PhysOrg
Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:00 UTC
Cataglyphis fortis
© Max Planck InstituteCataglyphis fortis
Humans lost in the desert are well known for going around in circles, prompting scientists to ask how desert creatures find their way around without landmarks for guidance. Now research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Frontiers in Zoology shows that Desert Ants input both local smells and visual cues into their navigation systems to guide them home.

Until now researchers thought that the Desert Ant Cataglyphis fortis, which makes its home in the inhospitable salt pans of Tunisia, was a pure vision-guided insect. But Kathrin Steck, Bill Hansson and Markus Knaden from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany used gas chromatography to verify that desert microhabitats do have unique odour signatures that can guide the ants back to the nest.
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Cloud Lightning

Severe storms hit Cyprus: one dead

Philip Turner
Famagusta Gazette
Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:13 UTC
Cyprus storm
© Unknown
A man was killed by lightning during a severe thunderstorm in the Cyprus capital Nicosia yesterday.

Police said the man, an immigrant worker, was struck while working in fields in the buffer zone, about 25 kilometres west of Nicosia.

He was taken to hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.
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Heart - Black

Gore business: 2340 climate lobbyists

Marianne Lavelle
Politico
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 06:46 UTC
Greenpeace global warming banners
© ReutersGreenpeace activists hold a banner during a rally outside the U.S. embassy for Hillary Clinton in Jakarta on Feb. 19.

After years of resistance from the Bush administration, global warming advocates are convinced the time has come for passage of major climate change legislation.

But even with a sympathetic White House and Congress, the years of delay might well have complicated their task as an army of lobbyists assembled to do battle over the issue.

A Center for Public Integrity analysis of Senate lobbying disclosure forms shows that more than 770 companies and interest groups hired an estimated 2,340 lobbyists to influence federal policy on climate change in the past year, as the issue gathered momentum and a bill came to a vote in Congress.

That's an increase of more than 300 percent in the number of global warming lobbyists since 2003, when Congress previously voted on climate change legislation, and means that Washington can now boast more than four climate lobbyists for every member of Congress.

It also means that 15 percent of all Washington lobbyists spent at least some of their time on global warming last year, based on a tally of the total number of influence peddlers on Capitol Hill by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The center estimates that lobbying expenditures on climate change last year topped $90 million. About 130 businesses and interest groups spent more than $23.5 million on lobbying teams solely focused on climate, but that vastly understates the money devoted to the effort.
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Snowman

'Snow bomb' brings record snowfall across New Brunswick


CBC News
Tue, 24 Feb 2009 06:16 UTC
The winter storm that swept across New Brunswick on Monday blew in record levels of snow in some parts of the province.

Some of the snowiest places following Monday's blizzard were McNamee, near Boiestown, which saw more than 65 centimetres of snow fall, as well, Kouchibouguac, on the province's east coast, witnessed 60 centimetres of snow fall.

New Brunswick snow
© Canadian Broadcasting CorporationA Fredericton resident cleans up on Monday after 48 centimetres of snow fell.
Bathurst residents were digging out from 55 centimetres of snow, which set a new record for the northern city in terms of snowfall in one day in February.

Bathurst Mayor Stephen Brunet said the cleanup is continuing from Monday's record-breaking snowfall, one of the worst winter storms he can remember.

"You're driving down the street and you're going down like a snake. You know, there's nothing straight on our streets at all because of the snow," Brunet said.

Additionally, 48 centimetres of snow fell on Fredericton, 37 centimetres on Saint John and 21 centimetres in Moncton.
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Igloo

Greenland's Ice Armageddon Comes To An End

Doug L. Hoffman
The Resilient Earth
Sat, 24 Jan 2009 05:41 UTC
Greaanland glacier
© unknown

One of the catastrophic results of global warming always cited by climate change alarmists is the melting of the ice sheets covering Greenland. Some even speculated that global warming had pushed Greenland past a "tipping point" into a scary new regime of wildly heightened ice loss and rapidly rising in sea levels. Now, from the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, comes word that Greenland's Ice Armageddon has been called off.

In the late 1990s, streams of ice flowing into the sea from the great Greenland ice sheet had begun speeding up. As the glacial ice faces receded global warming proponents pointed to the shrinking ice cap as proof that catastrophe lay just around the corner. But then came reports of a broad slowdown from a survey of glacier conditions across southeastern Greenland. Researchers reported in 2007 that two of the area's major outlet glaciers - Helheim and Kangerdlugssuaq - had slowed significantly by the summer of 2006. Then at the 2009 AGU meeting, glaciologist Tavi Murray and ten of her colleagues from Swansea University in the United Kingdom reported the results from their 2007 and 2008 surveys.
Greenland glacier
© Ian HowatHelheim Glacier's flow to the sea sped up in 2005, as evidenced by the 5-kilometer retreat of its leading edge, but by 2006 it had slowed back down.

"It has come to an end," Murray said during a session at the meeting. "There seems to have been a synchronous switch-off " of the speed-up, she said. Based on the shape and appearance of the 14 largest outlet glaciers in southeast Greenland, outlet glacier flows have returned to the levels of 2000 nearly everywhere. "There's a pattern of speeding up to maximum velocity and then slowing down since 2005," Murray reported. "It's amazing; they sped up and slowed down together. They're not in runaway acceleration."
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Radar

Disappearing Arctic Ice Is Latest Climate Falsehood

Doug L. Hoffman
The Resilient Earth
Thu, 19 Feb 2009 05:23 UTC
arctic icecap
© unknown
In May, 2008, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) predicted that the North Pole could be ice free during last years melt season. The disappearing northern sea ice has been pointed to by global warming alarmists as visible proof that the Earth was doing a melt down. Today, however, the NSIDC announced that they have been the victims of "sensor drift" that caused them to underestimate the Arctic ice extent by as much as 500,000 square kilometers. It turns out that the demise of the arctic ice was greatly exaggerated.

As with the NASA Russian temperature debacle last year and the forced recalculation of US surface temperatures for the last century in 2007, the latest problem was discovered after NSIDC received emails from puzzled readers, asking why obviously sea-ice-covered regions were showing up as ice free open ocean. A statement on the NSIDC web site, published February 18, 2009, explains the current faux pas this way:
As some of our readers have already noticed, there was a significant problem with the daily sea ice data images on February 16. The problem arose from a malfunction of the satellite sensor we use for our daily sea ice products. Upon further investigation, we discovered that starting around early January, an error known as sensor drift caused a slowly growing underestimation of Arctic sea ice extent. The underestimation reached approximately 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) by mid-February. Sensor drift, although infrequent, does occasionally occur and it is one of the things that we account for during quality control measures prior to archiving the data.
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Bell

Scientist Tells U.S. Congress: Earth in 'CO2 Famine'


Environment and Public Works Press Blog
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:57 UTC
Children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science

Washington, DC - Award-winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer declared man-made global warming fears "mistaken" and noted that the Earth was currently in a "CO2 famine now." Happer, who has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, made his remarks during today's Environment and Public Works Full Committee Hearing entitled "Update on the Latest Global Warming Science."

"Many people don't realize that over geological time, we're really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene (geologic epoch) - 280 (parts per million - ppm) - that's unheard of. Most of the time [CO2 levels] have been at least 1000 (ppm) and it's been quite higher than that," Happer told the Senate Committee. To read Happer's complete opening statement click here.
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Sun

First February 2009 Cycle 24 sunspot appears


An Honest Climate Debate
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:13 UTC
Solar Cycle 24 sunspot 1013 Feb 2009
© SOHO

Finally a new Cycle 24 sunspot has appeared high in latitude in the northern hemisphere. It has been numbered 1013. Pictures are below.

We will have to see if this thing decides to grow larger. This ends the spotless streak and is the first Cycle 24 spot since Jan 9th.
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Red Flag

Global warming may cause ice age: UN scientist blames humans

Scott Thill
Alternet
Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:32 UTC
Last week, the heaviest snowfall since the '90s blanketed the U.K., disrupting bus, rail and air transportation and costing areas like London a cool billion in lost revenue.

Meanwhile, in Australia, a punishing, record drought was worsened by the nation's worst heat wave and worst wildfires, wherein over 400 conflagrations killed over 200 people (and counting), torched a thousand homes and renewed calls for a country with its environmental head up its ass to finally launch its still-hibernating national warning system.

Those who would argue that these are isolated events do so at their own peril. The more time passes, the more both examples of extreme weather resemble two sides of the same fearsome coin known as catastrophic climate change.
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