Earth ChangesS


Binoculars

Who is Really Making Up the Facts?

In a Time/CNN story by Michael Grunwald "Steven Chu, A Political Scientist" on Chu's mission to China, attempting to convince them to cooperate on emissions reductions in the December Copenhagen UN conference to discuss the next step after Kyoto (the Chinese are laughing all the way to the bank because they know our pain would be their gain).

Grunwald noted "When I asked Chu about the earth-is-cooling argument, he rolled his eyes and whipped out a chart showing that the 10 hottest years on record have all been in the past 12 years and that 1998 was the hottest. He mocked the skeptics who focus on that post-1998 blip while ignoring a century-long trend of rising temperatures: "See? It's gone down! The earth must be cooling!" But then he got serious, almost plaintive: "You know, it's totally irresponsible. You're not supposed to make up the facts.""

I agree with the very last sentence. NOAA, NASA GISS and Hadley though are guilty of exactly that. They have created or enhanced man-made global warming by careless and possibly fraudulent methods. They started by dropping 80% of the world's stations from their calculations, most rural, by not ensuring the instruments are not improperly sited (90% of the approximately 1000 surveyed and photographed by Anthony Watt's team of volunteers do not meet the government's own published standards), by not adjusting properly for the urbanization warming that has taken place as the world's population rose for 1.6 to 6.7 billion people since 1900 (in the case of the US data, actually removing a very good urban adjustment), by employing and using instruments not really meant for precision temperature measurements or with warm biases, and most recently by eliminating ocean data sources like satellite or not using promising new sources like the Argo buoys because they are showing a cold 'bias' or cooling when the goal is to show warming in agreement with the models and their forecasts.

Target

Where is the global warming A-Team?

Those apparently tasked with carrying the standard for anthopogenic global warming are increasingly resembling the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. This has huge implications for the political struggle for resources to reduce emissions and convert our energy base to greener technologies. So what follows will look like piling on--but it isn't. We really need to get better measurements, better analysis and better communications or our efforts to control global warming will go the same way as Australia's, where they recently voted down their version of Cap and Trade.

First up is Phil Jones from East Anglia University in the UK, where he is charged with collating, smoothing and computing average temperatures from thousands of measurement stations around the world. When served with Freedom of Information requests by climate skeptics, the response from Dr. Jones and East Anglia was more or less that they lost it. Steve Macintyre from Climate Audit, who made one of the FOI requests, reports on it here. Roger Pielke Jr., who also filed one request, talks about the implications of their inability to archive data here. Key quote:"Can this be serious? So not only is it now impossible to replicate or reevaluate homogeneity adjustments made in the past -- which might be important to do as new information is learned about the spatial representativeness of siting, land use effects, and so on -- but it is now also impossible to create a new temperature index from scratch. CRU is basically saying, "trust us." So much for settling questions and resolving debates with empirical information (i.e., science)."

Cloud Lightning

Hurricane Bill now Category 3 storm in Atlantic

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© AP Photo/NOAAA false color satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows Hurricane Bill at 12:15 a.m. EDT Tuesday Aug. 18, 2009 in the Atlantic Ocean. Forecasters say the first hurricane of this year's Atlantic season has increased to a Category 2 storm with winds whipping at 100 mph.
Miami - The National Hurricane Center says Hurricane Bill has become a Category 3 storm far out in the Atlantic.

A hurricane hunter plane found that winds had increased to near 125 mph Tuesday night, making Bill a major hurricane, the first of the Atlantic season.

The National Hurricane Center says people in the Leeward Islands should monitor Bill's progress.

As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, Bill was centered about 635 miles east of the Leeward Islands, moving west-northwest near 16 mph.

The most significant threat the storm seemed to pose was to Bermuda, which it could pass in three or four days. But it also could move directly between Bermuda and the eastern coast of the U.S. without making landfall.

Bizarro Earth

US: USGS: No record of reported Nevada quake

A Nevada earthquake monitoring station reported a moderate jolt early Sunday, but the U.S. Geological Survey and a Utah station say they have no record of such a temblor.

A report by the Nevada Seismological Laboratory said a magnitude-4.2 quake struck early Sunday about a dozen miles east-southeast of Rock House, near the Idaho line.

Richard Buckmaster, a USGS geophysicist stationed in Golden, Colo., told The Associated Press late Sunday that his agency had no record of any quake approaching 4 magnitude in Nevada, and none around Rock House.

Calls to the Nevada Seismological Laboratory went unanswered Sunday but the lab's Web site carried no reports of such a quake.

Jim Pechmann, a seismograph for the University of Utah, also was unable to verify the report.

"We would certainly have picked that up," Pechmann said.

Red Flag

A Plague of Plastic

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In the North Pacific Gyre, lost or abandoned fishing nets catch plastic and other debris.

What we do on land affects even the most remote parts of our planet including our oceans. In the North Pacific Gyre, a rotating body of ocean currents roughly 1,000 nautical miles northeast of the Hawaiian Islands, the magnitude of human impact is powerfully clear. Trash, notably plastic waste, is accumulating here and turning our oceans into a synthetic soup. Everything from tiny plastic fragments to fully intact car tires litter the water column.

Ladybug

Herbs 'Can Be Natural Pesticides'

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Common herbs and spices could help protect crops against pests
Common herbs and spices show promise as an environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional pesticides, scientists have told a major US conference.

They have spent a decade researching the insecticidal properties of rosemary, thyme, clove and mint.

They could become a key weapon against insect pests in organic agriculture, the researchers say, as the industry attempts to satisfy demand.

Bizarro Earth

US: Swarm of 18 earthquakes hits near Borrego Springs, CA

A swarm of 18 small earthquakes hit near Borrego Springs and Desert Shores between 6:47 p.m. and 9:10 p.m. Monday, according to U.S. Geological Survey reports.

The quakes ranged in magnitude from 1.0 to 2.9.

Most of the temblors occurred 8 miles NNW of Borrego Springs.

Between 10:53 p.m. Monday and 6:37 a.m. today, there have been four more quakes near the area, ranging in magnitude from 1.1 to 1.5.

Bizarro Earth

US: 2 earthquakes strike Colorado 1 day apart

Craig - The second earthquake to hit Colorado in two days has rattled the northwest corner of the state, but no damage has been reported.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the 3.7-magnitude quake struck at 8:50 p.m. on Monday. The epicenter was 11 miles north of Craig and 150 miles west of Denver.

Jeana Weber, a dispatcher for the State Patrol who lives about seven miles northwest of Craig, says she was reading in bed when her house began shaking.

She says her dogs were spooked and pictures on the walls shook.

Magnify

Journalists Show Bias on Global Warming Issues

Read these quotes:
"As scientific evidence has accumulated that the planet is warming and that humans are behind it, many previous skeptics have been won over. There remains a vocal cadre of critics, however, at least some of whose arguments have shifted over the last several years from outright denial that the earth is warming to insisting it's unrelated to human activity - and even if it is, likely nothing much to worry about."

"Some of the most vocal skeptics have done relatively little recent peer-reviewed scientific research on the topic, and some have had their voices amplified via financial support from industries opposed to any government regulation or taxation of greenhouse gas emissions."

"Others do have training and experience, at least in some aspects of the wide-ranging issue, and are not bankrolled by industry. But overall, their number represents a distinctly minority position in the ongoing and normal colloquy among scientists about the evidence of climate change and its likely impacts."
The paragraphs above are taken from the website of the Society of Environmental Journalists section on "Skeptics and Contrarians."

Their choice of words and the structure of these comments disclose their preference and prejudices of the global warming issues. They also show a remarkable lack of what science is and how it proceeds. These are the self-appointed journalists who view themselves as final arbiters and reporters of what science is. They haven't a clue.

Fish

Water Quality Improves After Lawn Fertilizer Ban, Study Shows

Huron River
© University of MichiganThe Huron River. In an effort to keep lakes and streams clean, municipalities around the country are banning or restricting the use of phosphorus-containing lawn fertilizers, which can kill fish and cause smelly algae blooms and other problems when the phosphorus washes out of the soil and into waterways.
In an effort to keep lakes and streams clean, municipalities around the country are banning or restricting the use of phosphorus-containing lawn fertilizers, which can kill fish and cause smelly algae blooms and other problems when the phosphorus washes out of the soil and into waterways.

But do the ordinances really help reduce phosphorus pollution? That's been an open question until now, says John Lehman, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan.

"It's one of those things where political organizations take the action because they believe it's the environmentally conscious thing to do, but there's been no evidence offered in peer-reviewed literature that these ordinances actually have a salutary effect," Lehman said.