Tag: climate

“Worldwide-temperature increase has not produced acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years”

2:15 pm

From Watts Up With That: New sea level data shows that there has been “no acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years,” despite the increase in temperatures. Key quote from the paper:

It is essential that investigations continue to address why this worldwide-temperature increase has not produced acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years, and indeed why global sea level has possibly decelerated for at least the last 80 years.

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A real scientist shows why the “hide the decline” crowd are frauds

9:01 am

Below is a video excerpt from a lecture by Richard A. Muller, a scientist at the University of California at Berkeley. He illustrates forcefully and clearly why frauds like Michael Mann, Phil Jones, and anyone who excuses the climategate scandal are not to be trusted with science. Or as he says,

I now have a list of people whose papers I won’t read anymore.

It is imperative that more scientists come forward like this and condemn these guys, as Muller does. Only then, can climate research begin to recover its reputation.

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Random variations are still too large for climate models

3:00 pm

The uncertainty of science: a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters has concluded that the the long term random variations of the climate, sometimes lasting as long as three or four decades, are large enough to hide any actual changes to the climate. In the quote from the abstract below, the term “random walk” is jargon for a long term random fluctuation having nothing to do with climate change.

This result indicates that the shorter records may not totally capture the random variability of climate relevant on the time scale of civilizations, for which the random walk length is likely to be about 30 years. For this random walk length, the observed standard deviations of maximum temperature and minimum temperature yield respective expected maximum excursions on land of 1.4 and 2.3°C and over the ocean of 0.5 and 0.7°C, which are substantial fractions of the global warming signal.

In other words, it might simply be too soon to be making predictions about the climate, based upon the presently available data.

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The icecaps of Greenland and Antarctica: are they melting?

11:04 am

NASA scientists have published a paper warning that there is growing evidence that the melting at the polar caps is accelerating. From the press release:

The pace at which the polar ice sheets are losing mass was found to be accelerating rapidly. Each year over the course of the study, the two ice sheets lost a combined average of 36.3 gigatonnes more than they did the year before. In comparison, the 2006 study of mountain glaciers and ice caps estimated their loss at 402 gigatonnes a year on average, with a year-over-year acceleration rate three times smaller than that of the ice sheets.

Several things to note after reading the actual paper:

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Climate science hearing changes nothing

11:17 pm

There was a hearing in Congress today on climate science, though it apparently changed nothing: the Republican leadership in the committee is going to proceed with legislation to try to roll back the EPA regulations relating to carbon dioxide imposed by the Obama administration.

The most interesting detail I gleaned from the above article however was this quote, written by the Science journalist himself, Eli Kintisch:

The hearing barely touched on the underlying issue, namely, is it appropriate for Congress to involve itself so deeply into the working of a regulatory agency? Are there precedents? And what are the legal and governance implications of curtailing an agency’s authority in this way?

What a strange thing to write. If I remember correctly, we are a democracy, and the people we elect to Congress are given the ultimate responsibility and authority to legislate. There are no “legal or governance implications.” If they want to rein in a regulatory agency, that is their absolute Constitutional right. That Kintisch and his editors at Science don’t seem to understand this basic fact about American governance is most astonishing.

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Water and ice at the bottom of the Antarctic Ice Sheet

11:27 pm

The uncertainty of science: Unexpectedly large amounts of flowing water and refrozen ice found at the bottom of the Antarctic icecap. Key quote:

It’s too early to know whether this new finding means that global warming will melt ice sheets slower or faster than scientists have predicted. But the work does suggest that current models of ice sheet dynamics are missing a huge factor, said glaciologist Donald Blankenship of the University of Texas, Austin. “The take-home message of this work is that [the bottom of ice sheets] can no longer be ignored” in the models, he says.

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Two High-priority Climate Missions Dropped from NASA’s Budget Plans

9:33 pm

Two high-priority climate missions dropped from NASA’s budget by the White House. And what’s most amazing: No one’s squealing!

“Removal of these missions was not what we desired and not what the administration desired, but it was a clear recognition and acknowledgement of the budget issues we face as a nation,” [said Steve Volz, associate director for flight programs at NASA’s Earth Science Division]. “It’s cleaner to be allowed to delete the scope that goes along with the dollars than to have to figure out how to do more with less.”

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