Torrential rains triggered landslides and flash floods killing six people and stranding half a million in their homes in Bangladesh, officials said on Saturday. The landslides occurred near Habiganj district town, some 200 km (125 miles) northeast of the capital Dhaka Saturday, burying all six members of a family.
Officials said the situation had worsened at three other nearby districts, with some 500,000 people stranded at their homes as the rivers Surma and Khusiara, flowing into Bangladesh from northeastern India, burst their banks following incessant rains over the last four days.
Earth Changes
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Let's break down the case for human-caused global warming logically:
- There is plenty of evidence that global warming has been occurring recently.
- There is ample evidence that carbon emissions causes warming and that the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing.
- But there is no evidence that carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of the recent global warming.
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A graph taken from Alan Carlin’s report. The solid line illustrates global temperatures were decreasing during this period, while the dotted line shows carbon dioxide levels were increasing.
A graph taken from Alan Carlin’s report. The solid line illustrates global temperatures were decreasing during this period, while the dotted line shows carbon dioxide levels were increasing.
Washington - Global warming may not be occurring primarily because of carbon dioxide emissions, according to a report suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Alan Carlin, who has worked for the EPA for more than 35 years and has a bachelor's degree in physics and a doctorate degree in economics from Massachusetts Institution of Technology, co-wrote a report for "Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act." According to the report, there are some inconsistencies with the theory that humans have caused global warming because of increased carbon dioxide emissions.
"The problems become particularly evident when one examines the downtrend period from roughly 1940 through the early 1970s," Carlin stated in the report. "There does not appear to be any relationship between carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures."
This report was written before a controversial climate change bill, also known as cap and trade, was discussed in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill was designed to limit the amount of carbon dioxide industries released into the air, and would be one of the largest tax increases in U.S. history. But Al McGartland, director of the EPA National Center for Environmental Economics, decided not to release the information publicly and censored the report from lawmakers before they cast their vote.
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Leif Svalgaard has been saying for sometime now that Solar Cycle 24 seems to be getting underway. Seeing sunspot group 1024 today, I'm tending to agree.
The magnetic polarity (seen on the SOHO magnetogram) of the spot group combined with the middle latitude indicates it is a cycle 24 spot.
From Spaceweather.com:
The most active sunspot of the year so far is emerging in the sun's southern hemisphere: movie. Sunspot 1024 has at least a dozen individual dark cores and it is crackling with B-class solar flares. This morning, amateur astronomer David Tyler caught one of the flares in action from his backyard solar observatory in England:
Henrik Svensmark et al have a new GRL paper in press entitled: 'Cosmic ray decreases affect atmospheric aerosols and clouds'
The Abstract states:
Close passages of coronal mass ejections from the sun are signaled at the Earth's surface by Forbush decreases in cosmic ray counts. We find that low clouds contain less liquid water following Forbush decreases (FDs), and for the most influential events the liquid water in the oceanic atmosphere can diminish by as much as 7%. Cloud water content as gauged by the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) reaches a minimum around 7 days after the Forbush minimum in cosmic rays, and so does the fraction of low clouds seen by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and in the International Satellite Cloud Climate Project (ISCCP). Parallel observations by the aerosol robotic network AERONET reveal falls in the relative abundance of fine aerosol particles which, in normal circumstances, could have evolved into cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Thus a link between the sun, cosmic rays, aerosols, and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale.
The Abstract states:
Close passages of coronal mass ejections from the sun are signaled at the Earth's surface by Forbush decreases in cosmic ray counts. We find that low clouds contain less liquid water following Forbush decreases (FDs), and for the most influential events the liquid water in the oceanic atmosphere can diminish by as much as 7%. Cloud water content as gauged by the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) reaches a minimum around 7 days after the Forbush minimum in cosmic rays, and so does the fraction of low clouds seen by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and in the International Satellite Cloud Climate Project (ISCCP). Parallel observations by the aerosol robotic network AERONET reveal falls in the relative abundance of fine aerosol particles which, in normal circumstances, could have evolved into cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Thus a link between the sun, cosmic rays, aerosols, and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale.
You've probably all heard of Svensmark and the Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) to cloud cover modulation theory by now. Lot's of warmists say it is "discredited". However, CERN in Switzerland isn't following that thinking, and after getting some encouraging results in the CLOUD06 experiment, they have funded a much larger and more comprehensive CLOUD09 experiment. I figure if it is "discredited", a bunch of smart guys and gals like CERN wouldn't be ramping up the investigation. There's also word now of a new correlation:
I get so many tips now it is hard to choose, but this one is a gem. If you look at nothing else this month, please take the time to download the slide show from CERN's Jasper Kirkby at the end of this article.
He does a superb job of tying it all together. I found Kirkby's slide show quite interesting, and I've grabbed some slides for our WUWT readers. He proposes a GCR to cloud droplet mechanism, which to me, makes sense meteorologically. He also touches on the possibility that the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) may have been shifted due to GCR modulation during the LIA/Maunder Minimum. This ties in with Willis Eschenbach's theories of the ITCZ being a "thermostatic mechanism" for the planet with some amplification effects. - Anthony
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Correlation recently reported between solar/GCR variability and temperature in Siberia from glacial ice core, 30 yr lag (ie. ocean currents may be part of response)
Correlation recently reported between solar/GCR variability and temperature in Siberia from glacial ice core, 30 yr lag (ie. ocean currents may be part of response)
I get so many tips now it is hard to choose, but this one is a gem. If you look at nothing else this month, please take the time to download the slide show from CERN's Jasper Kirkby at the end of this article.
He does a superb job of tying it all together. I found Kirkby's slide show quite interesting, and I've grabbed some slides for our WUWT readers. He proposes a GCR to cloud droplet mechanism, which to me, makes sense meteorologically. He also touches on the possibility that the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) may have been shifted due to GCR modulation during the LIA/Maunder Minimum. This ties in with Willis Eschenbach's theories of the ITCZ being a "thermostatic mechanism" for the planet with some amplification effects. - Anthony
© NASA
A satellite view of the ITCZ. Note the clusters of broken clouds aligned just north of the equator (central/eastern Pacific region) in this image.
A satellite view of the ITCZ. Note the clusters of broken clouds aligned just north of the equator (central/eastern Pacific region) in this image.
New research from the University of Washington indicates that the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), which is a persistent band of showers and heavy thunderstorms that produces heavy rainfall near the equator, has been creeping northward for more than 300 years now. The zone, on average, has been moving northward at just less than 1 mile a year.
The ITCZ normally fluctuates between 3 and 10 degrees north of the equator, depending on the time of the year.
Researchers believe that global warming is probably the reason for this northward trend.
There has been a change in direction by the alarmists, as shown by their new "Synthesis Report." The independent scientists noticed it during the Wong-Fielding meeting.
The alarmists have abandoned air temperatures as a measure of global temperature, because the air temperature graphs are just too hard to argue with (like the second figure below, from the Skeptics Handbook). Instead they've switched to ocean temperatures, which they often disguise as ocean heat content (a huge number like 15×10²² Joules sounds much more scary than the warming it implies of 0.003° C/year).
All three pages of the Synthesis Report that deal with 'evidence' are about factors or trends that tell us nothing about whether or not the warming is due to carbon emissions. If God put the galaxy in a toaster, sea levels would rise, ocean heat content would increase, and ice would melt.
Notice how the graph above from the Synthesis Report that came out this month doesn't include the last six years of data? Carrier pigeons from the remote worldwide network of Argo buoys make it back to base eventually, but the world's leading team of climate researchers seem to have trouble googling "argo". Not coincidentally, measurements of ocean heat capacity from 2003-2009 aren't the numbers Team AGW were looking for. Indeed Craig Loehle has calculated the ocean has lost about 10% of the gain listed above since since 2003. (More info here).
The alarmists have abandoned air temperatures as a measure of global temperature, because the air temperature graphs are just too hard to argue with (like the second figure below, from the Skeptics Handbook). Instead they've switched to ocean temperatures, which they often disguise as ocean heat content (a huge number like 15×10²² Joules sounds much more scary than the warming it implies of 0.003° C/year).
All three pages of the Synthesis Report that deal with 'evidence' are about factors or trends that tell us nothing about whether or not the warming is due to carbon emissions. If God put the galaxy in a toaster, sea levels would rise, ocean heat content would increase, and ice would melt.
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Notice how the graph above from the Synthesis Report that came out this month doesn't include the last six years of data? Carrier pigeons from the remote worldwide network of Argo buoys make it back to base eventually, but the world's leading team of climate researchers seem to have trouble googling "argo". Not coincidentally, measurements of ocean heat capacity from 2003-2009 aren't the numbers Team AGW were looking for. Indeed Craig Loehle has calculated the ocean has lost about 10% of the gain listed above since since 2003. (More info here).
© PA
400 metre long naked "Green Goddess", which was designed by artist Charles Jencks, and will be carved into the Northumberland landscape.
400 metre long naked "Green Goddess", which was designed by artist Charles Jencks, and will be carved into the Northumberland landscape.
Dubbed the "Goddess of the North", Northumberlandia will be made from two million tonnes of earth dug out from an open cast mine in Cramlington, and tower 112ft into the northern sky.
Los Angeles - June was especially gloomy in Southern California, with temperatures in Los Angeles below normal every day of the month.
The National Weather Service says the region has gone through "a fairly noteworthy stretch of cool weather."
June's average daily high in downtown Los Angeles was 74.5 degrees, five degrees below normal.
The downtown daily high only reached the 80-degree mark or higher twice in June. The last time it was that cool was in June 1982, when there was only one 80-degree or higher day.
The National Weather Service says the region has gone through "a fairly noteworthy stretch of cool weather."
June's average daily high in downtown Los Angeles was 74.5 degrees, five degrees below normal.
The downtown daily high only reached the 80-degree mark or higher twice in June. The last time it was that cool was in June 1982, when there was only one 80-degree or higher day.
