In The News

[BornFromTheVoid]

The Heartland Institute demonstrates its objective, scientific method once more....

http://www.guardian....-warming-murder

Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world's most notorious criminals say they "still believe in global warming" – and ask viewers if they do, too…The billboard series features Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Charles Manson, a mass murderer; and Fidel Castro, a tyrant. Other global warming alarmists who may appear on future billboards include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010).

These rogues and villains were chosen because they made public statements about how man-made global warming is a crisis and how mankind must take immediate and drastic actions to stop it.

Why did Heartland choose to feature these people on its billboards? Because what these murderers and madmen have said differs very little from what spokespersons for the United Nations, journalists for the "mainstream" media, and liberal politicians say about global warming. The point is that believing in global warming is not "mainstream," smart, or sophisticated. In fact, it is just the opposite of those things. Still believing in man-made global warming – after all the scientific discoveries and revelations that point against this theory – is more than a little nutty. In fact, some really crazy people use it to justify immoral and frightening behavior.

Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants.

The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren't scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen

[knocker]

The Heartland Institute demonstrates its objective, scientific method once more....

http://www.guardian....-warming-murder

It's really unbelievable. It's now pulled the billboard.

2. Why did Heartland choose to feature these people on its billboards?

Because what these murderers and madmen have said differs very little from what spokespersons for the United Nations, journalists for the “mainstream†media, and liberal politicians say about global warming. They are so similar, in fact, that a Web site has a quiz that asks if you can tell the difference between what Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, wrote in his “Manifesto†and what Al Gore wrote in his book, Earth in the Balance.

The point is that believing in global warming is not “mainstream,†smart, or sophisticated. In fact, it is just the opposite of those things. Still believing in man-made global warming – after all the scientific discoveries and revelations that point against this theory – is more than a little nutty. In fact, some really crazy people use it to justify immoral and frightening behavior.

Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants. But the Climategate scandal and the more recent Fakegate scandal revealed that the leaders of the global warming movement are willing to break the law and the rules of ethics to shut down scientific debate and implement their left-wing agendas.

Scientific, political, and public support for the theory of man-made global warming is collapsing. Most scientists and 60 percent of the general public (in the U.S.) do not believe man-made global warming is a problem. (Keep reading for proof of these statements.) The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.

http://climateconfer...our-billboards/

Edited May 4, 2012 by Weather Ship

[BornFromTheVoid]

Just focusing on the statement that 60% of Americans don't believe AGW is a problem...

http://thinkprogress...ues-rebounding/

And that is despite this...

http://mediamatters....ch/201204160010

A

Media Matters

analysis finds that news coverage of climate change on ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX has dropped significantly since 2009. In 2011, these networks spent more than twice as much time discussing Donald Trump as climate change.

Sunday Shows Feature Twice As Many Republicans As Democrats On Climate Change

Sunday Shows Featured More Republicans Than Democrats On Climate Change. In total, 68% of the political figures interviewed or quoted by the Sunday shows were Republicans, and 32% were Democrats. In 2011, the only people interviewed or quoted about climate change on the Sunday shows were Republican politicians. Fox News Sunday was the most skewed, featuring eight Republicans and only two Democrats over the three years.

Scientists Were Shut Out Of Climate Change Discussions On Sunday Shows. Our study finds that the Sunday shows consulted political and media figures on climate change, but left scientists out of the discussion. Of those hosted or interviewed on climate change, 50% were political figures -- including elected officials, strategists and advisers -- 45% were media figures, and none were scientists. By comparison, 32% of those interviewed or quoted on the nightly news programs were political figures, and 20% were scientists.

Almost Every Mention Of Climate Change Was About Politics. Our results show that on the Sunday shows, 97% of stories mentioning climate change in the past three years were about politics in Washington, DC or on the campaign trail. One story -- on Fox News Sunday -- was driven by extreme weather, and none were driven by scientific findings.

[knocker]

Clive Hamilton covers this subject very well in his book, Requiem for a Species.

[knocker]

Climatic effects of a solar minimum

A grand solar minimum and the climate response recorded for the first time in the same climate archive highlights the need for a more differentiated approach to solar radiation

An abrupt cooling in Europe together with an increase in humidity and particularly in windiness coincided with a sustained reduction in solar activity 2800 years ago. Scientists from the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ in collaboration with Swedish and Dutch colleagues provide evidence for a direct solar-climate linkage on centennial timescales. Using the most modern methodological approach, they analysed sediments from Lake Meerfelder Maar, a maar lake in the Eifel/Germany, to determine annual variations in climate proxies and solar activity.

The study published online this week in Nature Geosience (06/05/2012) reports the climatic change that occurred at the beginning of the pre-Roman Iron Age and demonstrates that especially the so-called Grand Minima of solar activity can affect climate conditions in western Europe through changes in regional atmospheric circulation pattern. Around 2800 years ago, one of these Grand Solar Minima, the Homeric Minimum, caused a distinct climatic change in less than a decade in Western Europe.

The exceptional seasonally laminated sediments from the studied maar lake allow a precise dating even of short-term climate changes. The results show for a 200 year long period strongly increased springtime winds during a period of cool and wet climate in Europe. In combination with model studies they suggest a mechanism that can explain the relation between a weak sun and climate change. "The change and strengthening of the tropospheric wind systems likely is related to stratospheric processes which in turn are affected by the ultraviolet radiation" explains Achim Brauer (GFZ), the initiator of the study. "This complex chain of processes thus acts as a positive feedback mechanism that could explain why assumingly too small variations in solar activity have caused regional climate changes."

Albeit those findings cannot be directly transferred to future projections because the current climate is additionally affected by anthropogenic forcing, they provide clear evidence for still poorly understood aspects of the climate system, emphasizes Achim Brauer. In particular, further investigations are required with a focus on the climatic consequences of changes in different wavelengths of the solar spectrum. Only when the mechanisms of solar-climate links are better understood a reliable estimate of the potential effects of the next Grand solar minimum in a world of anthropogenic climate change will be possible. In this respect, well-dated annually laminated lake sediments are also in future of crucial importance for these studies.

Therefore, scientists from the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) and other institutions search for such archives around the world in order to to obtain a more accurate approach to the solar-climate relationship and the different regional responses.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/haog-ceo050412.php

[BornFromTheVoid]

A very interesting study Weather Ship.

It kinda sounds the opposite of what I'd thought a prolonged solar minimum would do. I would have thought it was associated with increased blocking in the N. Atlantic, reduction in westerlies and drier conditions. This study seems to suggest a wetter and windier climate. Hopefully a free copy of the study will appear somewhere soon!

[knocker]

A very interesting study Weather Ship.

It kinda sounds the opposite of what I'd thought a prolonged solar minimum would do. I would have thought it was associated with increased blocking in the N. Atlantic, reduction in westerlies and drier conditions. This study seems to suggest a wetter and windier climate. Hopefully a free copy of the study will appear somewhere soon!

I assume you can access it via your uni. BFTV? Not that you can copy and paste it of course due to ©.

[BornFromTheVoid]

I assume you can access it via your uni. BFTV? Not that you can copy and paste it of course due to ©.

Nope. Can't access Nature Geoscience unfortunately.

[Gray-Wolf]

It's just difficult to 'imagine' AGW's impacts on such?

It's like the milding of the PDO and the 'suggested' impacts on the ENSO cycle. We have witnessed a 'milding' of the Nina state but also an emergence of a differing Nino type (as well as the 'super-Nino'?) instead of just slipping into ocean surface temps 'mimicking' a Nino with 'super nino's every few years.

From earlier in the week we had the German study on Arctic ice retreat and mans 'confirmed' role in it but how does further AGW impact the Arctic? Is the AO a state influenced by 'open water'?

I think , all in all, we expect the unexpected due to the impacts of the unknown unknowns!

[knocker]

I can hear the drums beating now.

May 7, 2012

New research brings satellite measurements and global climate models closer

By Nancy Gohring

News and Information

One popular climate record that shows a slower atmospheric warming trend than other studies contains a data calibration problem, and when the problem is corrected the results fall in line with other records and climate models, according to a new University of Washington study.

The finding is important because it helps confirm that models that simulate global warming agree with observations, said Stephen Po-Chedley, a UW graduate student in atmospheric sciences who wrote the paper with Qiang Fu, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences.

They identified a problem with the satellite temperature record put together by the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Researchers there were the first to release such a record, in 1989, and it has often been cited by climate change skeptics to cast doubt on models that show the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming.

In their paper, appearing this month in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, Po-Chedley and Fu examined the record from the researchers in Alabama along with satellite temperature records that were subsequently developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Remote Sensing Systems.

http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/new-research-brings-satellite-measurements-and-global-climate-models-closer

[Gray-Wolf]

http://nsidc.org/news/press/20110216_permafrost.html

this is why I do not think we will avoid the high end of temp predictions. If I'm proved correct then we can expect further warming from 'extra' melted permafrost/hydrates.

[Coast]

Owwwww, farting dinosaurs!!!!

Dinosaur gases 'warmed the Earth'

Giant dinosaurs could have warmed the planet with their flatulence, say researchers.

British scientists have calculated the methane output of sauropods, including the species known as Brontosaurus. By scaling up the digestive wind of cows, they estimate that the population of dinosaurs - as a whole - produced 520 million tonnes of gas annually. They suggest the gas could have been a key factor in the warm climate 150 million years ago.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17953792

[BornFromTheVoid]

The latest methane hydrate "breakthrough"

http://newenergyandf...cess-developed/

http://www.jogmec.go...ease_120502.pdf

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Steven Chu contributed a statement to an announced breakthrough in research into tapping the vast fuel resource of methane hydrates that could eventually bolster already massive U.S. natural gas reserves...

...For experts the methane hydrates resource is the largest reserve of hydrocarbons in the planetary crust. So far humanity has not devised a process to economically harvest this immense energy wealth. Today’s DOE announcement may point the way to a new era in abundant energy to build out a bigger and better world economy.

[knocker]

Biodiversity loss ranks with climate change and pollution in terms of impacts to environment

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– A recent study published by an international research team working at UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) has found that loss of biodiversity impacts the environment as significantly as climate change and pollution. The study, titled, "A global synthesis reveals biodiversity loss as a major driver of ecosystem change," was published May 2 in the journal Nature.

"For the past 15 years, ecologists have built a rich understanding of the consequences of humans driving species extinct. What we didn't know before this paper is whether those impacts of species loss rank up there with those from the major drivers of environmental change," said Jarrett Byrnes, a postdoctoral fellow with NCEAS.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/uoc--blr050912.php

[knocker]

Possibly a step towards using hydrogen as a sustainable energy solution?

Nanosheet Catalyst Discovered to Sustainably Split Hydrogen from Water

Low-cost non-noble electrocatalyst efficiently generates hydrogen gas for fuel

UPTON, NY – Hydrogen gas offers one of the most promising sustainable energy alternatives to limited fossil fuels. But traditional methods of producing pure hydrogen face significant challenges in unlocking its full potential, either by releasing harmful carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or requiring rare and expensive chemical elements such as platinum.

Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new electrocatalyst that addresses one of these problems by generating hydrogen gas from water cleanly and with much more affordable materials. The novel form of catalytic nickel-molybdenum-nitride – described in a paper published online May 8, 2012 in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition – surprised scientists with its high-performing nanosheet structure, introducing a new model for effective hydrogen catalysis.

http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=1414

[knocker]

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS PROJECTS FUTURE TEMPERATURES IN NORTH AMERICA

COLUMBUS, Ohio - For the first time, researchers have been able to combine different climate models using spatial statistics - to project future seasonal temperature changes in regions across North America.

They performed advanced statistical analysis on two different North American regional climate models and were able to estimate projections of temperature changes for the years 2041 to 2070, as well as the certainty of those projections.

The analysis, developed by statisticians at Ohio State University, examines groups of regional climate models, finds the commonalities between them, and determines how much weight each individual climate projection should get in a consensus climate estimate.

Through maps on the statisticians’ website, people can see how their own region’s temperature will likely change by 2070 - overall, and for individual seasons of the year.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/modelcombo.htm

[knocker]

UMD Finding May Hold Key to Gaia Theory of Earth as Living Organism

Discovery ultimately could lead to better climate understanding and prediction

COLLEGE PARK, Md. Is Earth really a sort of giant living organism as the Gaia hypothesis predicts? A new discovery made at the University of Maryland may provide a key to answering this question. This key of sulfur could allow scientists to unlock heretofore hidden interactions between ocean organisms, atmosphere, and land -- interactions that might provide evidence supporting this famous theory.

The Gaia hypothesis -- first articulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970s -- holds that Earth's physical and biological processes are inextricably connected to form a self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.

http://newsdesk.umd.edu/uniini/release.cfm?ArticleID=2698

[BornFromTheVoid]

A plastic eating fungus?

http://www.fastcoexi...at-your-plastic

The group of students, part of Yale’s annual Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, ventured to the jungles of Ecuador. The mission was to allow "students to experience the scientific inquiry process in a comprehensive and creative way." The group searched for plants, and then cultured the microorganisms within the plant tissue. As it turns out, they brought back a fungus new to science with a voracious appetite for a global waste problem: polyurethane

The journal article abstract here http://aem.asm.org/content/77/17/6076

[knocker]

1,000 years of climate data confirms Australia's warming

In the first study of its kind in Australasia, scientists used 27 natural climate records to create the first large-scale temperature reconstruction for the region over the past 1,000 years.

http://phys.org/news/2012-05-years-climate-australia.html

[BornFromTheVoid]

An update on the atmospheric CO2 increase. Found the rate of increase recently to be much more than I'd though was.

http://www.esrl.noaa...nds/weekly.html

[laserguy]

An update on the atmospheric CO2 increase. Found the rate of increase recently to be much more than I'd though was.

http://www.esrl.noaa...nds/weekly.html

Are you having a larf? Four parts per million. Say it slowly now. Does this mean we can expect global meltdown,finally? Actually it's me that's having a laff; never stopped since all this AGW malarkey was invented.

[BornFromTheVoid]

Are you having a larf? Four parts per million. Say it slowly now. Does this mean we can expect global meltdown,finally? Actually it's me that's having a laff; never stopped since all this AGW malarkey was invented.

Melt down? No need to panic LG! Also, I said the rate of increase, not absolute increase. Say it slowly if you're having trouble keeping up

[Gray-Wolf]

i think we have to remember that not only are our emissions rising certain of the planets sinks are failing and ,over time ,will become net producers of CO2.

We also have to remember that we are seeing a net increase in CH4 emissions across the Arctic Tundra regions as the 'meltdown' (just for you L.G.) there continues and increases. This CO4 will also eventually add to our CO2 burden as it degrades over time.

As for Global meltdown? Well lets see how long the Planet can 'absorb' our forcing before it has to 'flip' state to one more suited to the then 'mix' of atmospheric gasses.( remember our oceans are a huge energy sink and that we know less about our oceans, and their processes, than we do about our Moon......we do know that we have been able to add a great deal of energy into them over the last 150yrs!)

[knocker]

Earth's water cycle intensifying with atmospheric warming

A clear change in salinity has been detected in the world’s oceans, signalling shifts and an acceleration in the global rainfall and evaporation cycle.

• 26 April 2012
  

In a paper published today in the journal Science, Australian scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, reported changing patterns of salinity in the global ocean during the past 50 years, marking a clear fingerprint of climate change.

http://www.csiro.au/en/Portals/Media/Earths-water-cycle-intensifying-with-atmospheric-warming.aspx

[knocker]

Toxic mercury, accumulating in the Arctic, springs from a hidden source

Cambridge, Mass. - May 21, 2012 - Environmental scientists at Harvard have discovered that the Arctic accumulation of mercury, a toxic element, is caused by both atmospheric forces and the flow of circumpolar rivers that carry the element north into the Arctic Ocean.

While the atmospheric source was previously recognized, it now appears that twice as much mercury actually comes from the rivers.

The revelation implies that concentrations of the toxin may further increase as climate change continues to modify the region's hydrological cycle and release mercury from warming Arctic soils.

http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/press-releases/toxic-mercury-accumulating-in-the-arctic-springs-from-a-hidden-source