Still have doubts whether the climategate investigations were awhitewash? Then read this blistering condemnation by Clive Cook, senior editor at The Atlantic and a global warming advocate.
The third annual Lunar Science Forum is being held July 20-22 at the Ames Research Center in California. The list of papers, some of which are quite intriguing, can be found here. Fun quote from one abstract: “Purity levels of the ice suggest a degree of comingling of ice and regolith grains within the permanently shadowed crater.”
Steve Goddard has posted on Anthony Watt’s webpage a very detailed update on the state of the icecap covering Greenland. Surprise! There are no signs of it disappearing anytime soon. (Note that you might have to scroll to the right to see the text of Goddard’s post, as on some computers Watts’s webpage is unfortunately far too wide for the screen.)
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back some amazing pictures of some recently discovered caves on the Moon. I like this one the best.
Here’s a nice picture from the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, released July 7, showing the boulder tracks left by rocks bouncing down the escarpment of Kasei Valles in the low gravity of Mars. Fun quote:
Some of these blocks traveled downhill several hundred meters (yards) as they rolled and bounced, leaving behind a trail of indentations or poke marks in the surface’s fine-grained, light-toned soils. The raised borders in some of these poke marks indicate they are relatively recent features, unaffected by wind erosion, or that this soil has cohesive properties, such as if it was cemented.
Scientists are shocked, shocked, to discover that it doesn’t matter whether the Republicans or the Democrats are in power, governments like to interfere with the free flow of information and with scientific research.
On July 6, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) of the University of Colorado published its monthly report on the state of the polar ice caps. The Arctic ice cap, which this winter had been larger and more extensive than seen for many years, also shrank this spring at the fastest rate in years. (This chart, produced by data from the Japanese AMSR instruments on two research satellites, shows these trends very clearly.) Meanwhile, NSIDC reports that the ice cap in Antarctica is far larger than normal. Not unexpectedly, NSIDC immediately argues (quite unconvincingly if you ask me) that more ice in Antarctica is evidence for global warming.
From my perspective, the data continues to be inconclusive. We still do not really understand the long term trends of the Earth’s climate.
Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) is questioning the new cost overruns for building the James Webb Space Telescope.
Check out the Rosetta flyby images.
It appears that the chief investigator of the recently released climategate investigation of Phil Jones and the University of East Anglia never attended any of the investigation’s interviews of Phil Jones. What a strange way to do an investigation!
Today (July 10) is when the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft is scheduled to fly past asteroid 21 Lutetia. The webcast can be seen here, starting at 12 pm, Eastern time, including the release of the first pictures, beginning 5 pm Eastern.
Rosetta has sent back its first picture of the asteroid 21 Lutetia. The flyby is scheduled for July 10.
More questions are being raised about the various climategate investigations, this time in the UK Parliament. Key quote:
Climategate may finally be living up to its name. If you recall, it wasn’t the burglary or use of funding that led to the impeachment of Nixon, but the cover-up. Now, ominously, three inquiries into affair have raised more questions than there were before.
Water vapor detected in deep space, first near the carbon star V Cygni and second in two dark starless cores. The second detection is a first time water has been seen in these black clouds. Fun quote from the abstract of the first paper notes how the detection “raises the intriguing possibility that the observed water is produced by the vapourisation of orbiting comets or dwarf planets.”
The largest hoard of Roman coins, more than 52,000 total, has been found in Britain.
Icarus truly rising. A solar-powered plane has successfully flown for over 24 hours.
The University of East Anglia has been found in violation of the UK’s freedom of information law in connection with the climategate emails, suggesting again and strongly that the final conclusions of the investigation of Phil Jones was a whitewash.
On July 6 NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center published its monthly graph, showing the progress of the sun’s sunspot cycle in comparison with the consensis prediction made by the solar science community in May 2009.
The graph shows clearly that, despite press-release-journalism stories like this, the sun remains in a very quiet state, with the number of sunspots far less than predicted by the red line on the graph. If these trends persist (as they have for the last three years), the next solar maximum will either be much later than expected or far weaker. In fact, the upcoming solar maximum might very well be the weakest seen in almost two centuries. Note also that the prediction shown on this graph is a significant revision downward from the science community’s earlier prediction from 2007.
Update and bumped: More details have been released about what was inside the Hayabusa capsule. In total, two 0.01 millimeter particles have been found in the inner capsule, and about 10 large particles in the outer capsule.
The first photo from inside the Hayabusa capsule has been released, showing the presence of a tiny 0.01 millimeter particle. It is still unknown whether this is an asteroid particle or something captured on the return to Earth.
Apropos to the space war between Obama and Congress over the Obama administration’s willingness to ignore Congressional legislation mandating the continuing funding of the Constellation program is this story about the administration’s efforts to circumvent federal law in order to cancel the use of Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a nuclear waste site. The courts have now expressly ruled [pdf] that the Obama administration it cannot do this: the law is the law, and they have to follow it. The key quote from the legal decision:
Unless Congress directs otherwise, [the Department of Energy] may not single-handedly derail the legislated decisionmaking process.
What a concept: the President and his appointees must obey the law!
Another climategate whitewash? The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has reviewed the 2007 UN IPCC report and decided that, though the report did have some really embarrassing errors (including some new ones uncovered by the review), the IPCC’s conclusion — that global warming is happening and that it is caused by humans — must still be correct.
The reports of NASA administrator Charles Bolden’s al-Jazeera interview have so far focused mostly on Bolden’s claim that his “foremost” priority at NASA is to reach out to the Muslim world in order “to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”
Though this statement is both idiotic and condescending, I don’t think it was the most idiotic thing Bolden said. Instead, I think the prize-winner is this quote near the end of the interview (at around 21:30), where Bolden describes why we need to find out the make-up of all asteroids:
Is it sand or is it metal? If it is sand we’re not really worried that much about it because it’s probably going to impact the Earth and, you know, go away. Metal would be a bad day. We could have another ice age and instead of the extinction of the dinosaurs it would be the extinction of you and me.
Asteroids made of “sand” are merely going to “go away” if they hit the Earth? I would really like to see the scientific research Bolden is relying on for this statement.
The law of unintended consequences strikes again! We are going to run out of our supply of helium, and it is all because the government first tried to manage and control the resource in the early 20th century, and then decided in the 1990s to extricate itself from that management. For those of us following the continuing space war over NASA’s future, this story is most instructive in illustrating how difficult it is to get the government out of our lives, once we have let it in.
The Penn State University investigation report on Michael Mann might be a whitewash, but what is really a travesty is the way some so-called professional journalists have covered this story. First, go and read the these two news articles at the New York Times and the Washington Post. I’ll wait till you’re back.
All done? Okay. Note how both news articles say very little about the report itself, other than its conclusions. Instead, the news articles follow the same boring news formula for writing these kinds of stories:
Neither news article provides the reader with the slightest analysis of the investigation report itself. Neither bothers to describe its superficial nature and its almost obsessive desire to find Michael Mann innocent.
Finally, both news articles read as if the reporters barely read the report itself and knew little about the content of the East Anglia emails. Instead, their stories read as if they simply scanned the press releases about the report and worked from those.
Another example of press release journalism at its worst.
The investigation at Pennsylvania State University of Michael Mann and his behavior as revealed in the East Anglia emails was released today, clearing him of all but one minor charge. You can read the actually report here. I suggest you do, as you will be amazed by the absurdity of this so-called investigation.
First, the manner in which the university investigated and then cleared Mann of the main charges was a joke. The panel reviewed the East Anglia emails, then brought Mann in to answer questions. When he essentially told them he had done nothing wrong, they decided that was evidence enough, clearing him of three of the four main charges.
Then, on the one remaining minor charge, the sharing of other people’s unpublished manuscripts without permission, the panel brought in other scientists for independent opinions, though only one of which, Richard Lindzen, is a skeptic of Mann’s work. Lindzen’s reaction when he learned he was not being interviewed on any of the main charges is quite entertaining. To quote the report itself,
When told that the first three allegations against Dr. Mann were dismissed at the inquiry stage . . . Dr. Lindzen’s response was: “It’s thoroughly amazing. I mean these are issues that he explicitly stated in the emails. I’m wondering what’s going on?”
The Investigatory Committee members did not respond to Dr. Lindzen’s statement.
On this final charge, the committee decided only that Mann’s distribution without permission of other people’s unpublished manuscripts was “careless and inappropriate,” and then finished by essentially saying in very stern words: next time, ask first.
Not surprisingly, the New York Times report on the conclusions of the investigation is somewhat joyous.
Unfortunately, this whitewash will only do harm to the reputation of science and the modern scientific community, and will almost certainly increase the general public’s distrust of climate research (and the reporting of it by mainstream publications like the NY Times).
