Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

Best of the Web: The Coming Ice Age

Short of a catastrophic asteroid impact, the greatest threat to the human race is the onset of another ice age.... Global warming predictions by meteorologists are based on speculative, untested, and poorly constrained computer models.... our knowledge of ice ages is based on a wide variety of reliable data, including cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. ... By reducing our production of carbon dioxide, we risk hastening the advent of the next ice age. Even more foolhardy and dangerous is the Obama administration's announcement that they may try to cool the planet through geoengineering. Such a move in the middle of a cooling trend could provoke the irreversible onset of an ice age. It is not hyperbole to state that such a climatic change would mean the end of human civilization as we know it.


Comment: The above remarks from this thoughtful article provoke the unavoidable speculation that the PTB are TRYING to induce another ice age with their global warming nonsense. Who needs WMDs when you can kill billions by starvation and freezing cold?


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Our near future?
Those who ignore the geologic perspective do so at great risk. In fall of 1985, geologists warned that a Columbian volcano, Nevado del Ruiz, was getting ready to erupt. But the volcano had been dormant for 150 years. So government officials and inhabitants of nearby towns did not take the warnings seriously.

On the evening of November 13, Nevado del Ruiz erupted, triggering catastrophic mudslides. In the town of Armero, 23,000 people were buried alive in a matter of seconds.

For ninety percent of the last million years, the normal state of the Earth's climate has been an ice age. Ice ages last about 100,000 years, and are punctuated by short periods of warm climate, or interglacials. The last ice age started about 114,000 years ago. It began instantaneously.

Igloo

Arctic Britain falls to -16C as Christmas getaway descends into chaos

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© AFP/Getty ImagesTractors remove snow from the ground at Manchester Airport
  • Temperatures plunge to -16C in Scotland and -9C in England
  • 12million drivers expecting to begin Christmas getaways today
  • AA attends about 3,000 breakdowns since midnight across the UK
  • EasyJet cancels at least 20 flights in and out of London airports
  • Nine weather-related deaths reported across Britain since Monday
Nine people have died and millions face Christmas travel chaos as Britain endures freezing temperatures colder than Alaska.

The mercury plunged to -16C overnight in Tulloch, Aberdeenshire - the coldest place in the UK - while the Hampshire village of Odiham recorded England's lowest temperature of -9.6C.

The continuing freezing weather comes as 12million drivers in the UK are expected to attempt to travel to family and friends for Christmas, staggered over today and tomorrow.

Igloo

A True Inquiry Into Climate And Weather, Parts 1 & 2

Part 1: A Hot Potato

Very few of us understand climate or weather. Most of us have taken a blind faith approach to researching these subjects. Unfortunately, this will be to the great detriment of all of humanity.

This broadcast segment is about the urgent need for verifiable facts about climate and weather that have been unable to make their way in a cohesive, understandable way to a good-natured, trusting public. The first in a multi-part series, this show features Bob Felix, author of Not by Fire, But By Ice and Magnetic Reversals & Evolutionary Leaps. Bob has spent considerable amount of time researching climate, extinctions, magnetic reversals and ice ages. His books present staggering evidence that we are, in fact, experiencing a global cooling that suggests an impending ice age. He thinks that it could happen at any moment (i.e. NOW!).

Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: Science Scandal of the Century

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© H Payne
The World's Most Influential Climate Scientists Get Caught "Fudging" the Data

Climategate is shaping up to be the biggest science scandal in a generation. Given that the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is being used to argue for radical changes in the economic and energy policies of every government on earth, affecting literally trillions of dollars of tax and economic policy, the stakes literally could not be higher. And the scientists involved in the scandal are the world's top climate scientists; the driving forces behind the UN's IPCC (Inter Governmental Panel on Climate change).

In mid-November, someone anonymously uploaded a ZIP file to the internet containing over a thousand e-mails and other data and program source code files totaling over 61MB lifted from the servers of the top British Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. It is not clear if the leak is the work of an outside hacker or the work of a whistle-blower from within.

While the leak was immediately a big story on the internet, most corporate-controlled media outlets initially attempted to downplay the controversy. For the first few weeks, the major TV outlets wouldn't even report the story. In fact, the BBC received the leaked documents first in October, but decided to sit on the story. The one outlet that did promote the story was FOX News, probably because the story fit their existing editorial slant and GOP talking points.

Most corporate print and on-line sources, such as Time, Huffington Post, The Atlantic, and many others have attempted to downplay the controversy, attributing the seemingly damning quotes from the e-mails to "innuendo and smear campaigns" or saying that they were "taken out of context". White House spokesman Gibbs even characterized the flap as "silly".

Unfortunately for them, the archive of over 1000 e-mails provides ample context for the damning quotes and you don't need to be a scientist to recognize when people are discussing the fudging of results, destruction of data and underhanded manipulation of the peer-review process. Also unfortunately for them, the more you do know about the science, the more damning the revelations become. This controversy is not going away.

Comment: Subject: Climategate - Science Scandal of the Century
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 2009 22:14:51 +0100
From: Arkadiusz Jadczyk
To: editor@RockCreekFreePress.com

Dear Dr Sullivan,

In your article on Climategate you wrote:
"That's just not the way science works. No scientific theory is ever "settled". "
But you keep repeating:
"There is not even much dispute about the current direction of change; the climate does appear to be getting warmer."
This doesn't sound very scientific. "Getting warmer"? Taking into account which set of data? From what period? From where? How reliable are these data? How they are being processed? Which selection criteria are being used?

Using appropriate selection criteria you can prove any thesis. So, first of all selection criteria must be made explicit - then you can say:

"There is not even much dispute given these selection criteria" - which may be the case or may not be the case. The point is that because YOU do not know of any disputes, that does not necessarily mean that there are no disputes whatsoever. Are you sure you know the opinions of all experts all over the world during the last, say, 50 years? I would rather doubt it.

Moreover, even if there is really no dispute given your selection criteria, there may be a dispute concerning the chosen criteria, which may lead to the dispute of the final conclusion - if there CAN BE a final conclusion.

What I want to highlight is the fact that there are a number of experts who have been warning of the far more disastrous event of a coming ice age for some time now and, looking out the window and checking the thermometer seems to support that view rather better than the "global warming" idea. See, for example, this article from Time magazine back in 1974, Another Ice Age?

and then David Deming's article here: The Coming Ice Age Consider also the experts here: IceAgeNow and here: IceCap

Kind regards,

Arkadiusz Jadczyk
http://arkadiusz-jadczyk.org/


Igloo

More than half of the U.S. now covered with snow

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© National Ice Center (NIC)More than half the US is covered in snow
Snow and Ice Program

The National Ice Center (NIC), a tri-agency operational center, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Navy, and the United States Coast Guard, prepares a daily Northern Hemisphere Snow and Ice chart. This chart, prepared on a polar stereographic projection is centered on the North Pole with a 60 degree latitude of true scale, provides information on the areal coverage of the snow and ice. The visible and Near-infrared imagery of the polar orbiting satellites (POES) and geostationary orbiting environmental satellites (GOES) are the primary tools for the analysis of this snow and ice cover. Low resolution visible data are augmented whenever possible by the visible high resolution imagery and visible GOES, GMS, MTSAT, and METEOSAT data. In addition, ground weather observations, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), microwave scatterometer returns, numerical weather prediction, sea ice models, buoys, reconnaissance flights, and various DMSP visible and microwave products are incorporated into the daily Snow and Ice chart.

Igloo

Dallas, Texas: Rare white Christmas causes travel problems

Dallas snowstorm
© Star-Telegram/Paul Moseley Heavy snow brought poor visibility to drivers on Interstate 30 in west Fort Worth around 11:30 a.m. Thursday.
A Christmas Eve blizzard made a mess of holiday travel plans, stranding motorists, forcing flight cancellations, canceling church services and raising concerns about roadways on Christmas morning.

Bridges to D/FW Airport terminals were reported closed early today due to the icy road conditions, Fox 4 News said. The National Weather Service said the icy roads would persist into the mid- to late-morning hours, making for hazardous driving conditions, especially on bridges and under overpasses. The airport was hoping to reopen bridges by noon, Fox 4 said.

Despite the winter weather havoc, many North Texans were excited about waking up to a very rare event: a white Christmas. Snow fell heavily through the day and early evening Thursday, and overnight temperatures in the 20s made it possible for the fluffiness to stick around. Sunny skies and higher temperatures should melt the snow away by late-morning, the weather service said today.

More than 2 inches of snow was recorded at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport on Thursday, according to the weather service. Areas to the northwest were walloped, with 8 inches falling in Nocona in Montague County and 5 to 6 inches in Wichita Falls.

Cloud Lightning

Flashback Best of the Web: CNN Segment Warns of Coming Ice Age


If you're fortunate enough to have it - don't sell that oceanfront property for fear that the icecaps will melt, and rising seas swamping your property. A segment on CNN's Jan. 13 Lou Dobbs Tonight explored the possibility that earth isn't warming, but is, in fact, cooling.

Arrow Down

Heavy snow, cold temperatures hit many parts of Japan

Very cold air swept through large swaths of areas along the Sea of Japan on Thursday, causing record accumulations of snow and record-low temperatures for December in northern parts of the country, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Local observatories measured 93 and 86 centimeters of snow in Tsuruoka, Yamagata Prefecture, and Akita, respectively, in the morning for a record accumulation for the month at each location.

The first snowfall of the winter was observed in some warmer places, including Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, Hiroshima and Fukuoka.

Arrow Down

India shivers in unusually low temperatures

New Dehli - Delhiites shivered despite the sunshine Tuesday as the national capital recorded the season's lowest temperature of 6.4 degrees Celsius.

"The minimum temperature recorded early this morning was two degrees below the average, at 6.4 degree Celsius. While it is natural for temperatures to drop in December, the snowfall in Jammu and Kashmir is adding to the chill here," an official of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) told IANS.

Though there was a shallow fog in the morning, the visibility did not fall very much. According to the IMD, the visibility early Tuesday was 1,000 metres and there were no flight delays reported.

The maximum temperature is expected to hover around 21 degrees Celsius.

Igloo

Flashback Best of the Web: Science: Another Ice Age?

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© TimeCover of Time magazine from December 1979
Comment: This article was originally published in Time Magazine on June 24, 1974. Now, considering the revelations about "Climategate", perhaps we need to return to what was known before greed and manipulation took over science?

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone's recollection.

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.