RedShift
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Currently;
Temp: 1.2C
Dew Point: -2.1C
Wind-chill: -0.4C
Windspeed: 1.4 m/s from NW
RH 78.9%
Pressure 997 mBar
7/8 low cloud cover but no showers
Snowed for ~30 mins at 02:00 this morning giving a covering of 0.00005 microns...
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Near Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, at my workplace;
Temperature (°C)
Highest daily maximum: 13.3C (14th)
Lowest daily maximum: -0.2C (30th)
Average daily maximum: 8.4C
Highest daily minimum: 11.2C (14th)
Lowest daily minimum: -5.4C (30th)
Average daily minimum: 3.4C
Mean daily temperature: 5.9C
Number of air frosts: 5
Number of ice days: 1 (30th)
Total rainfall: 77.6mm
Wettest day: 21.2mm (14th)
Rain days: 23
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James Hansen, NASA scientist, will be beaming into your living room laptops from the Palace of Westminster, Wednesday, in a climatic debate with the UK Government.
The 45 trillion dollar question : is 80% safe ? Will Carbon cuts in the region of 80% save the world from Climate Change meltdown and fry-up ?
Top NASA scientist James Hansen and researcher Tim Helweg-Larsen of the Public Interest Research Centre go head-to-head with Professor John Beddington and Professor Robert Watson, both Chief Scientific Advisers to the UK Government.
It's going be one humdinger of a debate. Watch it LIVE from the Palace of Westminster. Kick off is Wednesday 26th November 2008 at 2.30pm
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/VideoPla...?meetingId=2908
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Just a few notes on the above two posts.
this generation doesn't even have the stomach to find Osama bin Laden in a cave, let alone defeat a vast and organized enemy intent on our destruction.
To me, the "wonders of the modern age" are just a joke, and a bad one at that.
I really hesitate to reply to this and add to the entire off-topicness - but, Roger, would you care to tell that to the families who have lost sons/daughters/brothers/sisters fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq? Your right-wing, christian fundamentalist dogma is beyond a joke. Could you explain what a 'multicultural zoo' is ?
Your entire rant tonight leaves me feeling disappointed that your weather predictions are taken seriously here. You are clearly bitter towards the scientific community for some past rejection, could you tell us why? Your resentment is oozing from every word you type.
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Currently;
Temp: 5.3C (Wind-chill 2.9C)
Dew Point: -1.8C
Wind direction: NNW
Wind speed: 3.71 m/s gusts to 6.7 m/s
5/8 cloud cover - no rain since early morning
Pressure: 1013 mB
Feeling raw
Yesterday: Mean temp: 3.3C
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Currently 8.8C (windchill 5.8C)
Dewpoint 3.0
Wind WSW gusting at 7.75 m/s
7/8 Mid level cloudcover
Dry
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What is the difference between global warming and climate change?
What proof is there of the former and of the latter?
Why do supporters of the former always predict 50 years ahead
when they won't be around?
I am new and naive and need to be treated acccordingly
Welcome Toby,
Since the early-Twentieth Century, the mean temperature of the Earth’s near surface and oceans has been increasing (by about 0.75C). In most sensible quarters the temperature is projected to continue rising. That is what global warming is – it does exactly what it says on the tin.
What is the difference between global warming and climate change? This is actually a good question, but it requires (as do many aspects of global warming) an understanding of the timescales involved. A very important point is that global warming does not mean that every year, or every two or every three or four years will be warmer than the last. What is does mean is that the Earth’s surface temperature will, on average, continue to rise. It does not mean that there will never be a cold winter in the UK again – but that warm periods will be warmer and cold periods less so. Climate change, again, means simply that the climate (i.e. the ‘average weather’) will, over a long(er) period of time, change – be it warmer, cooler, drier, wetter, windier. Key point, again, is timescales. Climate change, as far as I understand it, can operate on longer timescales. Things that drive climate change can include; Milankovitch cycles (i.e. the orbit and motion of the Earth round the Sun), plate tectonics, long-term changes in ocean circulation – the list is endless really.
Now – the question is have humans altered the Earth’s climate. For me the term global warming refers to the recent climate change we have experienced for the last ~100 years, and it does seem highly likely that our output of greenhouse gases has had, at the very least, a significant impact.
What proof is there? Well – we have measured the temperature, and the mean temperature has risen. This does not mean that everywhere on Earth the temperature has risen by the same amount at the same rate – in some places it has risen more, some less. Anthropogenic gas concentrations have been measured, and are increasing. The thermal effects of greenhouse gases have been understood since the nineteenth century, and crucially, there is no other reasonable ‘non-human’ explanation which accounts for the entire observed rise. For sure natural cooling factors have come into play, but the overall trend is upwards.
Why the 50 year ahead predictions? Well I guess because we want to try and infer what the climate will be doing in the future…makes sense doesn’t it?
Anyway, I have rambled on for too long. Just be wary of the rhetoric you see on here. Various posters will repeat certain key words (e.g. hoax, taxes, Gore, Hansen, cooling, cycles, natural) over and over in the hope of appealing to the audience and winning the debate. Try and understand the science behind this issue, and remember that scientists are not always the best communicators; they revel in, and are comfortable with margins of error and uncertainties - non-scientists aren’t. As Churchill once spoke...
‘These professional intellectuals who revel in decimals and polysyllables…’
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A recent flawed theory which has a thirty year history is Hawkins theory of Black Holes. His original theory said Black Holes do not leak, they suck in all that goes over the event horizon, nothing escapes. His theory was peer reviewed and accepted as the standard. Later he then had to bow down to the pressure of a fellow scientist (John Preskill) who questioned this "non leakiness". He had to concede that they do indeed leak radiation over time thus altering the whole view of how the universe works and backing up string field theory. The bet he made at the time was a complete Encyclopaedia Britannica which he duly gave to the other scientist in question. So yes, recent peer reviewed theories have been wrong in very fundamental ways.
I think the current mainstream climate change theory is similarly flawed, and at some point possibly soon, certain parts of it will have to be reworked as new data and mechanisms are found and those new mechanisms are found to influence a larger degree than first thought. CO2 will be a factor, but not as first thought.
The whole climate change theory is an experiment in progress, the results will not be in for decades so again I say how can mainstream science, media etc keep saying its all done and dusted and that warming is now a given and no variation from it will occur? This in my view is being closed minded, not open to new theories coming along, as once said to a theoretical scientist regarding string theory, "The theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?". Therefore with a subject as diverse and complex as the climate of our planet, the theory to cover all parts must equally be "crazy" and not just focused on one single part (CO2).
Sorry SB but I can’t let this go…
First, Stephen Hawking, never ever claimed that black holes ‘do not leak’. He, along with some Soviet scientists, developed the idea of Hawking radiation in the 1970s, where black holes do indeed emit radiation and lose mass. The discussion you are referring to is the Thorne-Hawking-Preskill bet. This was not about the ‘leakiness’ of black holes themselves, but of the ‘leakiness’ of information from a black hole. Say if you fell into a black hole, you would add to its mass but eventually be emitted through Hawking radiation. The question was...would a black hole remember that it was you (or what was left of you) it was now radiating? Turned out that Hawking was wrong – information cannot be lost by a black hole, it will remember (and he gave Preskill a baseball encyclopedia).
Second, to call Hawking’s thoughts ‘wrong in very fundamental ways’ beggars belief. This was/is cutting edge astrophysics which I would seriously doubt anyone in this forum could comment on meaningfully. This is how science works at such a theoretical level, there is always more than one answer to a problem. Hawking was, for a few years, wrong…but what is wrong with being wrong sometimes? Hawking has earned the right to be wrong. The process worked, he is now publishing papers on information loss in black holes.
If parts of climate science thoughts are shown to be wrong and have to be reworked as new data arrive...so what? This shows that science is flexible enough to adapt.
Peer review will, ultimately, root out poor thinking. Publishing e-books won't.
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I have no idea what the weather has been doing in Blighty for the last few weeks - nor what it will do in CET land, but as I sit in a very warm Cypriot internet cafe my guess is
8.9
please
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07.5 please
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7) No real increase in global temperature over the past 10 years.
8 ) Cooling of the North Atlantic ocean temperature. (not to mention our lucky contingent of Scots who are enjoying (I trust!) snow aplenty!)
Noggin, I continue to be at a loss to understand the reasoning behind point 7) if you take a look at this...
As for point 8, North Atlantic SSTAs are still up, have a look in the Free Data centre if you don't believe me. And, as one of the lucky contingent of Scots, there seems to be a view that all of Scotland has been a frozen wasteland, home to many a happy polar bear, this winter. The ski centres have done well, yes, but much of the rest of the country has seen the odd snowy day but not much else. January temperatures currently running between +0.2 and +0.8 above normal for the various regions (courtesy of http://www.climate-uk.com/page2.html © Philip Eden).
To answer your question, no.
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04.9C
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A tiny part of the world i know, but despite much chitter-chatter on here about CET cooldowns, it's going to take a cold December for Scotland not to record its warmest year on record (i.e. Areal series, since 1914) http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/ser...cs/scottemp.txt
Warmest year on record was erm...last year at 8.26, which is 1.06 above 71-00 mean and 1.29 above 61-90 mean. After 11 months this time last year we were at 94.2 cumulative degrees, after 11 months this year we are at 94.8 cumulative degrees, but this December certainly colder than last December, will be interesting to see.
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Redshift 06.1c, 153
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It's nice to see a thread like this started and with such a lenghty erudite post as by white xmas.
Is there a quote of the year competition here on NW? If not there should be.
Since when has copying and pasting from Ken Rong been deemed 'erudite'?
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I think a special mention here should go to Thomas Midgley Jr., In 1921 he discovered that adding lead (or tetra-ethyl lead) to gasoline prevented knocking, then he discovered dichlorodifluoromethane, a CFC, which was used in household refrigerants. So not only did he pollute the air with lead he also helped make huge holes in the ozone layer.
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Wrong time of the year I know but I came across this topic at a first-aid training course the other day. Since 1994 the UK government has adopted the Australian model of sun protection policy i.e. avoid direct exposure to sunshine between 11-00am and 3-00 pm, cover up and avoid tanning. Whilst the benefits of this policy should reduce skin cancer, does it ignore the benefits of vitamin D? This vitamin is obtained through some foods, but ~90% of it is obtained from sunlight.
One third to a half of children in the UK has vitamin D deficiency, which can be linked to the increasing level of diseases such as diabetes type I and II, obesity and high blood pressure.
‘There is no such thing as a healthy tan’ says the government policy, but is there? Should (sensible) sun-bathing be promoted?
Link here Sunlight robbery
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Things here are just getting very silly now...slaps on the back for whitexmas copy and pasting vast tracts from Rong Ken's website, is this the best we can come up with?
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I thought the tilt and orbit of the Earth was the main cause of Ice Ages, I thought a high anomaly of volcanic eruptions and solar activity was the casues of mini ice age events likr the last Little Ice Age anbd it peak called the maunder minimum. To get a actual ICe Age where ICe sheets advance notably you would need the tilt and orbit to change, called Milancovitch Cycle or simialr isn't it.
It’s almost correct. I would argue that the main driver of ice ages is plate tectonics. There have been four, maybe five ice ages that we know of in the Earth’s history. We are currently in one. It seems that when the continents are in a position to block the oceans carrying heat from the equator to the poles you get an ice age. Presently we have a large landmass over the South Pole and an almost land-locked ocean basin over the North Pole.
India colliding with Asia also helped, it threw up a huge amount of rock (i.e. the Himalayas) to be weathered by weakly acidic rainwater. It also started the monsoon with intensified this effect. Rock weathering draws down CO2 from the atmosphere. Milankovitch cycles will cause a regular pattern of glacials and interglacials…(though there is still some debate about their precise timing)…but they also work in an ice-free world too. The geological record is full of cycles which probably correspond to Milankovitch Cycles.
Two of the largest volcanic events of recent history (and I use the word ‘recent’ in a geological context) are the K-T boundary Deccan Traps and the Permian-Triassic Siberian flood basalts…mass extinctions maybe, ice ages no.
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For you mere mortals out there...
(from www.Nature.com/nature)
I have just had a quick glance at the paper…it appears to be saying:
1) With more CO2, plants stomata will open less and reduce transpiration (i.e. the evaporation of excess water from plants); 2) There will be more water at ground surface; 3) Double CO2 levels and this effect will increase by ~6%; 4) Future droughts may not be quite so severe, but the paper does say
‘However, reduced precipitation is not completely negated by physiological forcing, so some regions may still experience increased drought.’;
5) Rather than only radiative forcing, greenhouse gases can influence climate in other ways.
I have read no criticism of, or disagreement with, the IPCC, only a suggestion that the UNFCCC should consider point 5).
Daily Mail....pah!
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Ugh
New Scientist is a journal. Not a mag.
Oh...and don't poo poo my thread. Its not hilarious, its serious. Darwinian evolution is purely based on conjecture, and to espouse it as scientific fact is not only an arrogance but..at best...only a partial truth. Like cause and effect.
New Scientist is a magazine, not a journal. It does not publish original research as say, Science or Nature does, it just reports on what other journals are publishing. After many of their articles they will give the 'journal reference' of a particular topic.
Go to the New Scientist website and you will be met with links to 'subscribe to magazine'.
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Roger, please tell us you were in a playful mood when you wrote this reply.
First of all, the major flaw in evolution, I believe, is the part that asks us to believe that the human race evolved from the higher primates. This suggests a very gradual process that should surely be occurring in given cases nowadays. We don't see any individual higher primates suddenly developing human characteristics. Why not? They stay higher primates as always, even though they are now surrounded by millions of role models for human behaviour unlike before when they managed to evolve into homo sapiens.Palaeontological and biological evidence does indeed suggest that the hominids evolved from other primates, but not the primates we see around us today…we share common ancestors. Why should other primates ‘develop’ human characteristics? They have done very well in the game of life without them. Human role models? Are you suggesting that evolution occurs because species want it to happen? Other primates ‘stay’ as other primates because they are well suited to their current environment, and hence are successful in reproducing…only when some major environmental change comes into play will natural selection act on the raw material of genetic mutations and over time changes will occur. Individuals do not ‘evolve’, populations ‘evolve’.
That is, unless God used evolution to create homo sapiens, which I suppose is possible.I will leave this to Mark Twain…
‘Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is. I dunno. If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world’s age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle knob at its summit would represent man’s share of that age, and anybody would perceive that the skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.’.
so if one chooses to be a scientist and a believer, one is pretty much out of luck and heading for the doors of academia in this generation.A common misconception… surveys published in Nature (1997) report ~4 out of 10 Scientists believe in a god.
Source: Larson, J.E. and Witham, L. Scientists still keeping the faith. Nature, 386, 435-436
Absolutely no reason why you can’t believe in a god, indeed one of the recent palaeontological heavyweights, Stephen Jay Gould was deeply religious. And I personally know several geological researchers who are religious.
My research also points me in the direction of intelligent design -- the way our planet has just the right set-up for life to be sustained and not destroyed by weather too intense, or unchallenged by weather too bland, has the feel of intelligent design to it. And the way that these weather patterns are created seems less than random to me.What evolutionary research? Perhaps you could share with us?
For the life of me I just cannot see why so many people, both here, judging by past threads, and in the public at large, cast so much doubt on Darwin’s ideas. What he was looking for were patterns, not mechanisms, the structure of the DNA molecule was but a twinkle in Darwin’s eye. ‘It’s just a theory’ I have seen and heard too many times. Just a theory? Well yes, but one that has stood the test of time, and has support in the fossil record…go see mammal-like reptiles (or therapsids) and lower jaw bones, go see theropods to birds, go see the transitions in the human fossils record.
Evolution, like gravity, is both fact and theory, we know it happens, but we’re not 100% sure how it happens. Darwin’s natural selection ideas were/are a brilliant piece of scientific thought. I think people who struggle with it do so because i) the vast time-scales involved and ii) evolution through natural selection is undirected, there is no grand plan, or design involved.
For me it is real, not because of the perfections of natural forms, but quite the opposite, because of the imperfections. Why is a Kiwi’s egg so large? Why do humans suffer backache, hernias? Why do bats fly? Why do porpoises swim? Why do the bones in my arm have the same structure as those of bats and porpoises?
If there is a designer involved…he/she is not very good.
I must also point out that I find darwinist evolution a dangerous ideology. It suggests that I was borne merely out of the whim of selfishness and 'competition'; rather than the result of natural adaption to your environment and harmonious interaction with other species. Competitive advantage is only an apparent thing, and to use as an important 'rule' within nature provides excuses for the cruel, selfish neo-liberalist capitalist world that we find ourselves in....the dog-eat-dog mentality. You know...the world where altruism comes after profits...not before.PP – That requires either a long and detailed reply or a very short one, as, with the greatest of respect, that statement makes me bewildered, confused…but most of all very sad. A dangerous ideology?
You are confusing Darwin’s work with ‘Social Darwinism’. Darwin was concerned with populations, Social Darwinism, developed by Herbert Spencer (and others) tries to apply natural selection to competition between individuals and into the realm of society and economics - or that horrible phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ (coined by Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin). Social Darwinism's only relationship to Darwin is the name.
And yes, you and I are here because ancestral hominids were very well adapted to our environment, we have adapted as a social species and interaction/cooperation with other individuals increases our chances of survival and reproduction (eg childcare, hunting, ganging up on predators) Same thing can be seen in chimps, ants, big cats. Cooperation and symbiosis can be an evolutionary force, not at all inconsistent with Darwin’s ideas.
Perhaps you have PP, and apologies if you have, but sometimes I wonder how many people have actually read The Origin of Species
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Erm, I challenge you to show me CO2 isn't a ghg.
Simply put you can't!
So, whether CO2 has led or fedback warming in the past matters not a jot to the reality of now when CO2 is clearly being pumped into the atmosphere by the giga tonne by us (along with quanties of other ghg's) - and causing warming.
Add ghg and you get a warming effect - period. Get used to it
Dead, 100%, spot on right imo! Sceptics play nit and pick with the residuals of AGW theory but the fact is it's done a damn good job explaining what is happening, and predictions based on it are right on the money.
Whoaaa - good work Devonian! Posts like that cut through alot of the 'which side are you on?' nonsense on here. The debate on climate change isn't (or shouldn't be) about 'isms' or 'ists' - but rather how to cut our GHG emissions. It really is that simple.
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BLIZZARD ALERT!
Organised ramping of snow reports in central areas of England this afternoon:
1. Cambridgeshire reports conditions "like a blizzard" although it appears that no snow actually settled;
2. From Kidderminster we have a report of a "5 minute blizzard" resulting in 0.5cm snow (depth of drifts not given);
3. Meanwhile Burton on Trent has endured a "temporary blizzard" (as opposed, presumably, to the more usual semi-permanent blizzards that the Midlands can expect at this time of the year);
4. Finally an "almost blizzard" has been reported from north Warwickshire (accompanying photographic evidence does not appear to show settling snow let alone drifting snow...).
Reports from Telford eagerly awaited.
No reports as yet of "sleet blizzards".
Regards
ACB
Update...
Blizzard and 'Blizzard like' and 'almost blizzard like' conditions reported from the northwest, Derbyshire and the midlands. Few seem to involve any lying snow.
Rampometer needle still strangely quiet over Peterborough.
ABINGDON ALERT!!!
2 veering to 3 Abingdons reported from Bristol.
Todays Weather Reports And Chat
in Weather reports
Posted
Currently;
Temp: 2.2C
Dew Point: -0.1C
Windchill: 1.5C
Pressure: 972 mBar
Wind: 1.63 m/s from SW.
Overcast, very light drizzle, no overnight precipitation.