Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

At least 15 earthquakes hit Taiwan's Hualien region in single day

At least 15 earthquakes hit the Hualien region of East Taiwan Sunday, with the heaviest measuring 5.6, the Central Weather Bureau said. The most serious tremor hit at 5:34 p.m. and was felt across most of Northern Taiwan, though no immediate damage was reported.

A total of 14 quakes had their epicenter located at a distance roughly between 16 and 21 kilometers northeast of the Hsiulin Earthquake Monitoring Station. An additional temblor, at 5.52 p.m., hit 21.4 kilometers south of Nan'ao in Ilan County, in an area on the east coast not so far from the Hualien area.

The Central Weather Bureau explained the high number of quakes as a rarely seen series of small quakes leading up to the main tremor, and followed by aftershocks.

Einstein

Flashback Best of the Web: Global Warming Pathology: How we know they know they are lying

Image
© Unknown
It is to some extent forgivable when people adopt extreme positions out of misapprehension or delusion. It is quite another matter if they mislead others by deliberate falsehood. Politicians, of course, treat the lie as part of their professional equipment. Indeed, in some circumstances they are obliged to use it (when, for example, telling the truth about the economy would cause a run on the currency). In science, up to recent times, there is no circumstance in which a deliberate falsehood is justifiable. It requires at a minimum being drummed out of one's learned society.

All that has changed with the rise of authoritarian government. In Britain this took the form of nationalisation of the universities, begun under Thatcher and completed under Blair. In the USA it took the form of new state-funded bureaucracies, such as the EPA, who maintained control by the monopoly of funding. The global warming religion changed everything.

There is a contrast in the behaviour of people who speak from conviction and those who speak from convenience. This enables us to uncover those who are lying deliberately and distinguish them from the merely deluded. As M. Maigret once remarked "It is always the clever ones who leave a clue."

Fish

Australia: Migaloo - Rare White Humpback Whale

Albino humpback whale
© Unknown
Migaloo, a 45.9 feet (14-meter), 34.4 ton (35-ton) pure white humpback whale, is seen here swimming along the east coast off Australia, near Coffs Harbour with another whale, Tuesday, June 15, 2005. (Sea Experience Charters, Greer Atkinson).

Migaloo is a rare white male humpback whale first spotted in 1991. Experts believe he is now about 21 to 23 years old.

Slipping silently past his biggest fans along the Gold Coast of August - during the dead of night - the big white whale did it again.

Sun

Heatwave set to be declared as UK temperatures soar

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© Manchester Evening News SyndicationChildren cooling off in the fountains at Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester.
An official heatwave is likely to be declared in Britain today, with temperatures in the south likely to hit 33C (91.4F) later this week.

If officials raise the threat level from amber to red, measures including putting social services and hospitals on alert for a wave of casualties of scorching days and sleepless nights will come in to force.

Temperatures on the outskirts of London hit 30C yesterday, remained in the low 20s overnight in some areas and are expected to top that today.

Torrential downpours have been predicted to hit the north, along with scattered thundery showers in the south, but without any relief from the heat until the weekend.

Bizarro Earth

Sarychev Peak Volcano Eruption Earlier This Month Affecting Sunsets (and Weather?)

Sarychev Peak Eruption, Kuril Islands
© NASA Earth ObservatorySarychev Peak Eruption, Kuril Islands
Thanks to Spaceweather.com for coverage of this eruption.

Perfect timing. On June 12th, just as Russia's Sarychev Peak volcano was erupting for the first time in 20 years, the International Space Station flew directly overhead. Astronauts had their camera ready and snapped one of the most dramatic Earth-science photos ever taken from space.

Researchers are studying this rare photo to learn about the early stages of powerful volcanic eruptions. A few phenomena stand out.

(1) The volcano erupted with such force, the plume actually punched through the atmosphere. Note how clouds around the volcano have parted in a circular ring--that is a result of a shock wave produced by the upward blast.

(2) The plume is a mixture of brown ash and white steam. A "dirty thunderstorm" complete with lightning could be in progress within the roiling cloud.

(3) The smooth white bubble on top of the plume is probably a mass of water condensing from air shoved upward by the rising ash column. If so, it is akin to the iridescent pileus clouds sometimes featured on spaceweather.com.

Bell

US: CEI Releases Global Warming Study Censored by EPA

Washington, D.C. - The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration's agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.

The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations' 2007 "Fourth Assessment" report, is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments. Those developments include a continued decline in global temperatures, a new consensus that future hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense, and new findings that water vapor will moderate, rather than exacerbate, temperature.

Bulb

US: Two EPA Staffers Question Science Behind Climate 'Endangerment' Proposal

Two U.S. EPA career employees detailed their concerns about the science underpinning the agency's "endangerment" finding in a report released last night by a conservative think tank.

Republican lawmakers have blasted EPA for failing to release the document, accusing the Obama administration of suppressing dissenting views for political purposes. But EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says the agency considered a broad range of opinions and maintained an open and transparent process in developing the proposed finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

Dissent on the proposal was expressed in a March 16 report (pdf) by Alan Carlin and John Davidson of EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics. They raise questions about data that EPA used to develop the proposed finding. The Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute posted the document on its Web site last night.

"While we hoped that EPA would release the final report, we're tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its administrator has been talking transparency since she took office," said CEI attorney Sam Kazman. "So we are releasing a draft version of the report ourselves, today."

Compass

The Critical Importance of Solar Cycles

Total Solar Irradiance 1611 - 2001
© unknown

Introduction

The sun was dismissed by the IPCC as a contributor to the apparent warming of the Earth's climate during the period from 1975 to 2000.

It seems to be accepted that the warming that occurred in the early part of the 20th Century was more likely solar induced but it is asserted that in the late 20th Century man made influences took over and forced a rise in global temperatures that would not otherwise have happened naturally. However it is notable that the highest recorded US mainland temperatures were recorded in the 1930s and not the 1990s. That interesting fact was obscured until recently when the data was investigated and the records corrected.

I have already dealt with the likelihood that the IPCC was in error regarding solar influence in my article for climaterealists.com and which can be found here:

The Death Blow to Anthropogenic Global Warming

For the purposes of this article I will ignore the Urban Heat Island effect that seems to have contaminated the surface station record as a result of poor recording site management and surrounding development over many years. Suffice it to say that the more recent satellite recordings do confirm a warming of the air until recently, albeit less than suggested by surface records and far less than that anticipated by climate models.

The concern about the human effects on global climate as opposed to local effects is now reaching a crescendo with energy control, pricing and rationing measures being pushed through in many parts of the Western world and especially in the USA and the UK.

Energy costs are critical to modern civilisations and their abilities to advance whilst providing adequately for their citizens, especially the poorest, so anything that significantly affects such costs or indeed energy availability is of the utmost importance.

If the sun is primarily responsible for observed global air temperature changes (even if heavily modulated by ocean behaviour as I contend elsewhere) then we need to know sooner rather than later otherwise a misdiagnosis of the causes of climate change could cause unimaginable disruption and hardship through the imposition of incorrect remedies.

The sun and it's cycles seem to have undergone a sharp change in behaviour in recent years hence the importance of concentrating specifically on the solar cycles 24 and 25 which taken together are likely to tell us much of what we need to know about climate change and thus the right measures we need to adopt in order to adapt to it. I do not believe we can ever adequately control natural climate swings.

Eagle

US Climate bill offers (costly) non-solutions to problems that don't even exist

The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed global warming bill (219-212 vote) is being hailed by many as "historic" or "landmark" or "The Bill of the Century."

But the passage of this bill does not signify any great "green revolution" or "growing" climate "awareness" on the part of Congress. Instead, the methods and manner that the Pelosi led House achieved final passage, represents nothing more than unrestrained exercise of raw political power, arm-twisting, intimidation and special interest handouts. (See: Pay offs: 'Florida Democrat won $50 million pledge of support for proposed hurricane research facility in his district')

The House of Representatives passed a bill it did not read, did not understand. A bill that is based on crumbling scientific claims and a bill that will have no detectable climate impact (assuming climate fear promoters are correct on the science and the bill is fully implemented - both implausible assumptions).

Proponents of the bill made spectacular claims in their efforts to impress the urgency of the bill on their colleagues. To illustrate just how delusional these claims became, imagine if in 1909 the U.S. Congress passed a bill attempting to predict climate, temperature and the energy mix powering our national economy in the year 2000. (not to mention sanctimonious claims about "saving the Earth.") Any such attempt would have been ridiculed, but somehow in 2009, attempting to control the economy and climate of the year 2100 is seen as reasonable by many.

Sun

Sun spot cycle impacting global warming and cooling

The sun has been very quiet, with a decreasing number of sunspots and flarings since January 2002, and predictions of a return to the higher cycle seen at the end of the 20th century have not verified. But there have been some recent signs of increased sunspots as of early to mid June, but it's too soon to tell if it will prove meaningful.

The calm on the surface of the sun ultimately will have some say in the course of weather across the Earth. For one, if the sunspot pattern does not revitalize soon, and continues for the next few months or years, it is conceivable that a more volatile pattern of trough formation and cold intrusions could occur, with the polar ice caps undergoing some growth and global sea surface temperatures less prone to rise in critical areas.

For instance, with an emerging El Nino the lack of solar energy influx may provide a critical boost of equatorial SSTs from going into the "strong" +ENSO designation. A weak to moderate El Nino episode, against what appears to be a neutral PDO configuration, may mean better capacity for -EPO and +PNA ridge development against an invigorated storm track running close to 30 N Latitude.

That, in combination with better-organized snow and ice fields in northern Canada, may well mean that the character of the upcoming autumn and winter could be far different (yes, longer-lasting and more frequent cold advection cases) than the past three NDJFM periods. The sun has been very quiet, with a decreasing number of sunspots and flarings since January 2002.