Earth ChangesS


Cow

Now it's CowGate: claims that livestock causing global warming are bovine excrement

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© Bok
It is becoming difficult to keep pace with the speed at which the global warming scam is now unravelling. The latest reversal of scientific "consensus" is on livestock and the meat trade as a major cause of global warming - one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to eco-vegetarian cranks. Now a scientific report delivered to the American Chemical Society says it is nonsense. The Washington Times has called it "Cowgate".

The cow-burp hysteria reached a crescendo in 2006 when a United Nations report ominously entitled "Livestock's Long Shadow" claimed: "The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents). This is a higher share than transport." This led to demands in America for a "cow tax" and a campaign in Europe at the time of the Copenhagen car crash last December called Less Meat=Less Heat.

Arrow Down

Russia's top weatherman says winter in Siberia may be coldest on record

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A cyclone extends Eastern Siberia's freezing winter into its coldest in modern Russian history
In a new blow to the climate change lobby, Russia's top weatherman today announced that the winter now drawing to a close in Siberia may turn out to be the coldest on record.

'The winter of 2009-10 was one of the most severe in European part of Russia for more than 30 years, and in Siberia it was perhaps the record breaking coldest ever,' said Dr Alexander Frolov, head of state meteorological service Rosgidromet.

Statistics are still being analysed in detail, but it is known that in western Siberia the mean temperature was minus 23.2C, with more colder days than in previous years.

Some 63 days were colder than minus 25C and 39 days below minus 30C.

For this part of Siberia, this represents the coldest conditions in 40 years and the second harshest winter in 110 years.

Equivalent statistics for colder eastern Siberia have not been issued yet.

The coldest recorded temperature in the recent winter is believed to have been minus 57.4C degrees in Oymyakon on 20 January.

The remote town in eastern Siberia is the coldest inhabited community in the world.

'When we say that this winter in Siberia was record breaking, we are aware that temperatures on some days of other years may have gone lower, but in the most recent winter the substantial cold was staying longer than usual and over larger regions than usual,' said Dmitry Kiktev, deputy head of Rosgidromet.

Igloo

Our glaciers are growing, not melting: More falsehoods from Al Gore

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Glaciers: Relentless growth
"Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting - and seas are rising," said Al Gore in an op-ed piece in the New York Times on February 27.

Both parts of Gore's statement are false.

Never mind that Mr. Gore makes only passing reference to the IPCC's fraudulent claims that the Himalayan glaciers will all melt by 2035. ("A flawed overestimate," he explains.)

Never mind that Mr. Gore dismisses the IPCC's fraudulent claims that the oceans are rising precipitously. ("Partly inaccurate," he huffs.)

Never mind that Mr. Gore completely ignores the admission by the CRU's disgraced former director Phil Jones that global temperatures have essentially remained unchanged for the past 15 years.

Snowman

Snow prompts Ski Santa Fe to extend season

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Some might bemoan the end of the brief spring weather, but skiers will enjoy a longer season, thanks to the continued precipitation.

Ski Santa Fe says it is extending its 2009-10 season by an additional week, to April 11. The string of El Niño-related storms has left a 126-inch-deep snowpack at the ski area.

Spring hours start March 22. Chair lifts will open at 9:30 a.m. and close at 4:30 p.m. The ticket, rental, skier services, snow sports school and Wintermill Sports Shop will open on full days from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Half days will be 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., or 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Ski New Mexico announced last week that many ski areas were expanding their seasons in light of the heavy snowfall this year. Ski New Mexico is the nonprofit trade organization that promotes the ski industry in the state.

Igloo

IPCC scientist: We've entered 30 years of global cooling

According to IPCC scientist Mojib Latif the weather we've seen marks the beginning of a "mini-ice age". He claims that ocean currents have more to do with the trend than man-made greenhouse gas emmissions.


Bizarro Earth

Bay of Bengal: Disputed island disappears into sea

Lost Indian island
© unknown
For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island's gone.

New Moore Island, in the Sunderbans, has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said.

"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.


Comment: As it turns out, not exactly global warming, but global climate calamity due to cosmic threat and global cooling.


Scientists at the School of Oceanographic Studies at the university have noted an alarming increase in the rate at which sea levels have risen over the past decade in the Bay of Bengal.

Until 2000, the sea levels rose about 3 millimeters (0.12 inches) a year, but over the last decade they have been rising about 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) annually, he said.

Comment: Sea levels are not rising, not even in this low-lying region:
"There is absolutely no sea-level rise in Tuvalo," Mörner insists. "There is no change here, and there is zero sea-level rise in Bangladesh. If anything, sea levels have lowered in Bangladesh."
This island's disappearance could indicate that the land is subsiding along the Indian-Asian Subduction line where the Indian plate meets the Eurasian one.


Bizarro Earth

Global cooling: What happens if the Iceland volcano blows

Volcano
© Science FairIceland's Volcano
The potential eruption of Iceland's volcano Katla would likely send the world, including the USA, into an extended deep freeze.

"When Katla went off in the 1700s, the USA suffered a very cold winter," says Gary Hufford, a scientist with the Alaska Region of the National Weather Service. "To the point, the Mississippi River froze just north of New Orleans and the East Coast, especially New England, had an extremely cold winter.

"Depending on a new eruption, Katla could cause some serious weather changes."

Eyjafjallajokull, the Icelandic volcano that has continued to belch lava, ash and steam since first erupting last weekend, isn't the direct problem. It's Katla, the noisier neighbor, that's the concern. If lava flowing from Eyjafjallajokull melts the glaciers that hold down the top of Katla, then Katla could blow its top, pumping gigantic amounts of ash into the atmosphere.

Cloud Lightning

Perth, Australia in shock as month's worth of rain falls in a few hours and city is battered by golfball-sized hail

A severe storm has battered western Australia causing widespread flooding and mudslides. It's also left tens of thousands of people without power in one of the world's most isolated cities, Perth. Homes and cars have been damaged by hail stones the size of golf balls and a number of schools have closed. Winds reached more than 120 kilometres per hour, while almost a month's worth of rain fell in just a few hours. Insurance claims 'catastrophic' damage with of over $100 million.


Smiley

Satire - New Study Suggests News Climate Is Warming

A new study suggests that the IPCC is losing 10% of it's credibility mass every month, and could have completely disappeared by Christmas.

"It's shrinking faster that we thought" said Anthony Watts the renowned skeptical blogger, who led a small team of dedicated bloggers, analysing over 10,000 news articles and blogs on the Internet. "Not one of them contained the phrase 'The IPCC is innocent'", explained Mr. Watts, "Not even their unofficial web-site RealClimate.org"

Intrepid Spoof reporters sought comments worldwide. Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, the eminent Himalayan glacier expert, was interviewed as he emerged from his hairdresser's salon in downtown Delhi. "It's a travesty!" he exclaimed, "I have newspaper cuttings and a 1988 photograph to prove it".

Dr. Pachauri posed for photographs before he continued. "There was just one small error" he explained. "They wrote their reports in English. If they'd used Sanskrit, none of this would have happened".

Magic Hat

Climate Change - GISScapades

Inspired by this thread on the lack of data in the Arctic Ocean, I looked into how GISS creates data when there is no data.

GISS is the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a part of NASA. The Director of GISS is Dr. James Hansen. Dr. Hansen is an impartial scientist who thinks people who don't believe in his apocalyptic visions of the future should be put on trial for "high crimes against humanity". GISS produces a surface temperature record called GISTEMP. Here is their record of the temperature anomaly for Dec-Jan-Feb 2010 :

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© Goddard Institute of Space StudiesFigure 1. GISS temperature anomalies DJF 2010. Grey areas are where there is no temperature data.
Now, what's wrong with this picture?

The oddity about the picture is that we are given temperature data where none exists. We have very little temperature data for the Arctic Ocean, for example. Yet the GISS map shows radical heating in the Arctic Ocean. How do they do that?

The procedure is one that is laid out in a 1987 paper by Hansen and Lebedeff In that paper, they note that annual temperature changes are well correlated over a large distance, out to 1200 kilometres (~750 miles).

("Correlation" is a mathematical measure of the similarity of two datasets. It's value ranges from zero, meaning not similar at all, to plus or minus one, indicating totally similar. A negative value means they are similar, but when one goes up the other goes down.)