Global warming must be happening! A politician declares it!

Stop the presses! Expert climate scientist and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has used his extensive scientific research to determine, without a doubt, that the polar vortex that is presently freezing most of the country in record cold temperatures is unequivocally the result of global warming!

“The science is clear: Climate change makes extreme weather more frequent and more intense,” tweeted Mr. Bloomberg. “Americans are seeing this first hand from wildfires to hurricanes to the #PolarVortex in the Midwest. We need a climate champion in the WH who can lead us forward.”

I always go to politicians to get my science information. Don’t you? And in doing so, I immediately dismiss other details, such as the fact that the recent wildfires in California is mostly due to bad policy in clearing brush by California and the federal government, that there is no evidence of an increase hurricanes activity, and that back in the 1970s scientists linked the polar vortex to global cooling.

None of that actual data matters. A politician has spoken, and his word is always reliable. Moreover, this is a liberal politician, whose word is even more reliable, because he cares.

Finally, and maybe most important, he did this on twitter, that icon of thoughtful analysis and deep complex thought.

We should immediately shut down all fossil fuel operations, even if it means there will be no way to heat homes across most of the country and people will freeze to death. The world is being destroyed by those fuels, and we must save it!

Saturn’s polar hexagonal vortex might tower high above clouds

The uncertainty of science: A long term analysis of data from the probe Cassini suggests that Saturn’s north polar hexagonal vortex might tower many miles high above the planet’s clouds.

A new long-term study has now spotted the first glimpses of a northern polar vortex forming high in the atmosphere as Saturn’s northern hemisphere approached summertime. This warm vortex sits hundreds of kilometres above the clouds, in a layer of atmosphere known as the stratosphere, and reveals an unexpected surprise. “The edges of this newly-found vortex appear to be hexagonal, precisely matching a famous and bizarre hexagonal cloud pattern we see deeper down in Saturn’s atmosphere,” says Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester, UK, lead author of the new study.

“While we did expect to see a vortex of some kind at Saturn’s north pole as it grew warmer, its shape is really surprising. Either a hexagon has spawned spontaneously and identically at two different altitudes, one lower in the clouds and one high in the stratosphere, or the hexagon is in fact a towering structure spanning a vertical range of several hundred kilometres.”

There are many uncertainties here. For one thing, we have not yet even observed Saturn from up close through a complete year. We might be seeing random weather events having nothing to do with the gas giants overall planetary weather patterns.