Earth ChangesS


Bell

Richard Courtney in Weblog Debate on Cooling

Dr. Richard Courtney
IceCap
Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:25 UTC
My comments in a web debate after Booker's article on the Daily Telegraph's web site responding to a reasonable question from another commenter named Vaughn.

You ask me: "You quote: '...the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020.' Do you take this to mean that there is no global warming?"

Let me be clear. I say
1. It is obvious that there is no global warming while the globe is cooling.
2. The globe has cooled over the last decade.

Slioch's (a cooling denialist commenter) linear trends and 5-year averages do not change these simple and obvious truths.

It is an empirical fact that the Earth has now been experiencing global cooling for such a long time that the cooling is even admitted by RealClimate. And, as I state above, to admit the existence of global cooling is to deny the existence of global warming.
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Question

Alaska: Huge Blob of Arctic Goo Floats Past Slope Communities

Don Hunter
Anchorage Daily News
Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:44 UTC
mysterious goo off Alaskan coast
© North Slope Borough A mysterious glob of unknown material up to 12 miles long has appeared off Alaska's northern coast. Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says, "It's certainly biological. It's definitely not an oil product of any kind."

It's not oil: No one in the area can recall seeing anything like it before.

Something big and strange is floating through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow.

Hunters from Wainwright first started noticing the stuff sometime probably early last week. It's thick and dark and "gooey" and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters, according to Gordon Brower with the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department.

Brower and other borough officials, joined by the U.S. Coast Guard, flew out to Wainwright to investigate. The agencies found "globs" of the stuff floating miles offshore Friday and collected samples for testing.
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Better Earth

Global warming: Our best guess is likely wrong - Unknown processes account for much of warming in ancient hot spell

Jade Boyd
Rice University Press Release
Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:48 UTC
No one knows exactly how much Earth's climate will warm due to carbon emissions, but a new study this week suggests scientists' best predictions about global warming might be incorrect.

The study, which appears in Nature Geoscience, found that climate models explain only about half of the heating that occurred during a well-documented period of rapid global warming in Earth's ancient past. The study, which was published online today, contains an analysis of published records from a period of rapid climatic warming about 55 million years ago known as the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM.

"In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," said oceanographer Gerald Dickens, a co-author of the study and professor of Earth science at Rice University. "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."
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Better Earth

Tsunami warning after 7.8 quake off New Zealand


Associated Press
Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:42 UTC
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A tsunami warning was issued by the U.S. Geological Survey after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck off New Zealand's western coast Wednesday.

The quake's epicenter was 100 miles (161 kilometers) west of Invercargill, off the west coast of New Zealand's South Island at a depth of 21 miles (33 kilometers). It hit at 0922 GMT on Wednesday, the USGS said.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii sent an e-mail alert warning of a possible tsunami in New Zealand.

"An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines in the region near the epicenter within minutes to hours," the warning center said.
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Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: US: Wherefore art thou, summer?

Lee Coleman
The Daily Gazette
Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:46 UTC
Summer Lake George
© Barry SloanNick Guilder of Hudson Falls and his 10-month-old son Nicholas enjoy Lake George's Million Dollar Beach despite Monday's cooler-than-normal temperatures.

Get out the sweat shirt and forget the shorts.

The low temperature this morning is expected to be near the record low temperature for the day: 49 degrees set in 1940.

Lower than normal temperatures have dominated the first 13 days of July, keeping swimmers out of area pools and forcing people to wear sweat shirts or jackets in the early morning and evening hours.

Ingrid Amberger, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albany, said the jet stream of cool air coming out of the north has remained farther south than it usually is in July.

"It hasn't retreated north," Amberger said. "It usually goes up into Canada."

The first 12 days of July were, on average, nearly 5 degrees cooler than normal, Amberger said.
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Che Guevara

Canada: You call this summer?

Jenna Mc Murray
Calgary Sun
Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:43 UTC
In what is typically the hottest month of the year, Calgary is still suffering from a dismal seven-month trend of temperatures well below seasonal averages, Environment Canada said yesterday.

Senior climatologist David Phillips said Calgary's temperatures have been sagging below average since November of 2008 and this July is no exception.

"For seven months, it's really been a long bout of cold weather; in all the months since last November conditions have been consistently lower than normal," he said.

"It's disappointing it's been cold for so long -- normal this time of year should be a high of 23 degrees and you've been lucky if you get 16."

The afternoon temperatures for July have been about two degrees cooler than they should be, said Phillips, adding Calgarians were also doused with rain each day for 11 days straight June 30 through July 10.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Giant squid wash ashore after quake


FOX 5 San Diego
Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:09 UTC
San Diego, CA - Dozens of giant squid washed ashore over the weekend after an earthquake
giant squid
© Unknown
struck offshore from La Jolla.

The magnitude 4.0 earthquake struck at 7:34 a.m. Saturday and was centered 19 miles west of La Jolla in the ocean. Residents said the rattling lasted 15 to 20 seconds, but there were no reports of injuries or damage, according to the San Diego Fire Department.

The temblor was felt throughout the county, and residents are used to getting jolted by earthquakes. But what happened next was more unusual. Dozens of Humboldt squid, three to four feet long and weighing close to 40 pounds, began showing up on La Jolla Shores beach, lifeguards reported.

"It's like their equilibrium is all messed up and they don't know what they're doing and they can't back out there," Bill Baumann told the San Diego Union-Tribune. "It was like they got -- I don't know -- all shook up."
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Binoculars

Hurricane Carlos strengthens far off Mexico coast


Associated Press
Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:28 UTC
Miami - Hurricane Carlos strengthened to a Category 2 storm as it moved farther out into the open Pacific and had a distinct small eye.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami Tuesday said the storm's winds had increased to near 100 mph. Some strengthening is possible in the next day.
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Bizarro Earth

Possible evacuation of Mayon Volcano vicinity

John Carlo M. Cahinhinan
Manila Bulletin
Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:04 UTC
The National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) on Monday recommended the possible evacuation of more than 15,000 families along radius of Mayon Volcano in Albay if the volcanic activity worsened in the next few days.

In the statement released by NDCC Administrator Retired Maj. Gen. Glenn Rabonza, the primary objective of the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council (PDCC) of Albay led by Gov. Joey Salceda is to have zero casualties once the situation of the volcano worsens even more. The Alert Level 2 raised by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) in still in effect.

According to plan submitted by the PDCC-Albay, once the alert level is raised to level 3, around 1,785 families living inside the six kilometer radius permanent danger zone will be immediately evacuated by the provincial government. These include some barangays in the cities Tabaco and Ligao, and Municipalities of Camalig, Malilipot, Guinobatan and Daraga.
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Cow Skull

Iraq Suffers as the Euphrates River Dwindles

Campbell Robertson
The New York Times
Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:59 UTC
Euphrates drought
© Moises Saman / The New York TimesBashia Mohammed, 60, gathered salt in a drainage pool on the outskirts of Diwaniya. It is her family’s only source of income now that its rice farm has dried up.
Rice farmers surveyed their dry field near a village on the outskirts of Najaf. Iraq is now importing more and more grain.

"Maaku mai!" they shout, holding up their rusty sickles. "There is no water!"

The Euphrates is drying up. Strangled by the water policies of Iraq's neighbors, Turkey and Syria; a two-year drought; and years of misuse by Iraq and its farmers, the river is significantly smaller than it was just a few years ago. Some officials worry that it could soon be half of what it is now.

The shrinking of the Euphrates, a river so crucial to the birth of civilization that the Book of Revelation prophesied its drying up as a sign of the end times, has decimated farms along its banks, has left fishermen impoverished and has depleted riverside towns as farmers flee to the cities looking for work.

The poor suffer more acutely, but all strata of society are feeling the effects: sheiks, diplomats and even members of Parliament who retreat to their farms after weeks in Baghdad.
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