bush

SSS I really do not know what you are spluttering about. This has happened before. So what is the big deal now? Who gives a penny about the views of a particular journalist? This has happened before and will happen again.

If I am correct we should be deep into the PDO-ve 'phase' but most of this has been 'milded out' GW if you have a look at http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/ you will notice that the cyle does not remain consistently cold but can even move into a warm state for short periods.

Dev just peruse these two paragraphs . The team compared the results from this technique with a similar method using two different isotopes. And instead of assuming that one method was more accurate than the other, and that the Earth formed at a steady rate, they modelled all of the different ways that the process could have happened. "If correct, that would mean the Earth was about 100 million years in the making altogether," Dr. Rudge said. "We estimate that makes it about 4.467 billion years old - a mere youngster compared with the 4.537 billion-year-old planet we had previously imagined." But never mind that:- "The 'Late Heavy Bombardment' was a phase in the impact history of the Moon that occurred 3.8–4.0 Gyr ago, when the lunar basins with known dates were formed1, 2. But no record of this event has yet been reported from the few surviving rocks of this age on the Earth. Here we report tungsten isotope anomalies, based on the 182Hf–182W system (half-life of 9 Myr), in metamorphosed sedimentary rocks from the 3.7–3.8-Gyr-old Isua greenstone belt of West Greenland and closely related rocks from northern Labrador, Canada. As it is difficult to conceive of a mechanism by which tungsten isotope heterogeneities could have been preserved in the Earth's dynamic crust–mantle environment from a time when short-lived 182Hf was still present, we conclude that the metamorphosed sediments contain a component derived from meteorites" In other words the crust contains varying amounts of tungsten that cannot be explained except perhaps by meteoritic contamination. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v418/n6896/abs/nature00923.html Or maybe reading this http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=foLRISkt9gcC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=tungsten+in+meteorites&source=bl&ots=-rzNz6w1D0&sig=38Oa-AxDq0eccK2R7J2Rp2Mr4bg&hl=en&ei=Ofw9TKulNdjPjAfz4eH5Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=tungsten%20in%20meteorites&f=false would help understanding the uncertainties.

When I was a youngster in South Africa we had serious problems with sinkholes in a town called Carltonville. Whole blocks and houses would be swallowed by these. The cause was water being pumped out of the ground because of mining operations and the resulting voids or caverns collapsing.

So that means the earth is .015% younger than first thought ( comparative youngster?). So what is the error margin in the calculations then? Nothing involving isotopic dating can be done with such precision especially considering the speculation that the meteor subjects compared with are just presumed to be the same age as the solar system. More junk science. Sorry but just fed up with this sort of thing.

Grant motivated science at its best. The term "newly detected" being the first clue. There are are five factors that govern sea level, the first and least important being the rotation of the earth that moves the mass towards the equator but is not relevant because it is pretty much a constant. The second and most notable is the gravitational effect of the moon and sun and that is the most obvious and dramatic- resulting in our tides. The third is wind and this can and does produce measurable differences in regional sea levels as do four and five which are ocean currents and air pressure. The implication that the warming of the Indo Pacific Warm Pool is partly to be blamed on greenhouse gasses is not verifiable or scientific but pure speculation at best or bull-dust at worst. The use of the words- appear at least partly, likely is amplifying, may aggravate, could have, primarily caused by human-generated increases of greenhouse gases (going out on a limb here), imply that if, may experience, may also etc. further erode any credibility of any scientific worth. They do of course then go on to say that these rises are weather driven and that of course a rise here results in a fall there. See this paper http://palaeoworks.anu.edu.au/pubs/Gaganetal04.pdf to understand better the uncertainties involved. None of the oscillatory ( warm pools and currents as they all are) are not static and change all the time on various and variable time scales. If one is going to blame greenhouse gasses on the warming in one instance what would you then blame in the case of cooling as in the developing La NINA or the now established PDO? All of these are not fully or poorly understood. Of course they end with the obligatory more research is needed plea. Worthless.

There are some really peculiar trends developing now with extent and area in the arctic. Could this be a reflection of cooler temperatures up north and a portent of a bad winter to come?. Check out the rather scary drop in the sea surface temperatures (specifically the rapid developement of La Nina and the cooling waters in the region affected by the PDO. The northern Atlantic is also cooling down now. Could be a serious problem for the northern hemisphere this coming winter.