John Hinderaker at PowerLine found more evidence of science tampering with the numbers in order to get the results that support their political position. One of the issues is Global Warming.
This is a good read: Power Line: A Bad Mix
Global Warming
Earth’s Oceans – A Mesozoic Hot Tub
Attention alarmists! Here is more evidence that Global Warming is not an artifact of mankind contaminating the environment:
From the Science Blog:
Ancient Oceans Warmer than a Hot Tub
Scientists have found evidence that tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures may have once reached 107°F (42°C) – about 25°F (14°C) higher than ocean temperatures today and warmer than a hot tub. The surprisingly high ocean temperatures, the warmest estimates to date for any place on Earth, occurred millions of year ago when carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere were also high, but researchers say they may be an indication that greenhouse gases could heat the oceans in the future much more than currently anticipated. The study suggests that climate models underestimate future warming.
Right: a rendition of a super-croc that thrived in very warm waters near land masses during the Mesozoic (Picture credit: Walking With Dinosaurs, BBC)
“These temperatures are off the charts from what we’ve seen before,” said Karen Bice, a paleo climatologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Bice reported the findings Feb. 17, 2006, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in St. Louis and is also lead author of a study to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Paleoceanography, published by the American Geophysical Union.Bice and a multi-institutional team of scientists studied three long columns of sediment cored from the seafloor in 2003 off Suriname, on the northeast coast of South America, by the drillship JOIDES Resolution, operated by the international Ocean Drilling Program.
The sediments contained an unusually rich and well-preserved accumulation of both carbon-rich organic matter and the fossilized shells of microscopic marine organisms that had settled and piled up on the seafloor over tens of millions of years. The deeper down in the core the scientists analyzed, the further back in time they went.
The team analyzed the shells isotopic and trace element chemistry, which changes along with temperature changes in the surface waters where they lived. They determined that ocean temperatures in the region ranged between 91° and 107°F (33° and 42°C) between 84 million and 100 million years ago in an era when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Temperatures range between 75° and 82°F (24° and 28°C) in the same region now. The approximate uncertainty in the paleotemperature estimates is ~2°C.
Using organic matter from the sediments, the group also estimated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations during the same time span. They were 1,300 to 2,300 parts per million (ppm), compared with 380 ppm today.
Notice that last little tidbit about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. How could the levels possibly be 4 to 8 times greater than their present values? Natural phenomena is the correct answer: Solar x-ray flares, magnetic storms, mass coronal ejections, lightning, forest fires, volcanic eruptions, earth impactors, whatever . . . and certainly not anything from humans since we weren’t invented then.
Solar X-Flares and Hurricanes
Of course, the left will ignore the hard science and embrace the “blame US industry” and “blame Bush” for not signing up for the flawed Kyoto Accord.
Unusually high solar “X-flare” activity may explain the unusually intense 2005 hurricane season. The numbers and intensity of the flares since the last solar maximum have relentlessly bombarded the Earth with high-energy particles and magnetic flux. The effect of these flares includes a high number of hurricanes, and lightning in the eyewalls of the most intense storms.
First, the cause:
[On September 7, 2005] a huge sunspot rounded the sun’s eastern limb. As soon as it appeared, it exploded, producing one of the brightest x-ray solar flares of the Space Age. In the days that followed, the growing spot exploded eight more times. Each powerful “X-flare” caused a shortwave radio blackout on Earth and pumped new energy into a radiation storm around our planet. The blasts hurled magnetic clouds toward Earth, and when they hit, on Sept 10th and 11th, ruby-red auroras were seen as far south as Arizona. (Photo: the skies above Payson AZ on Sept. 11, 2005. Photo credit: Chris Schur.)
. . .
“That’s a lot of activity,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Compare 2005 to the most recent Solar Max: “In the year 2000,” he recalls, “there were 3 severe geomagnetic storms and 17 X-flares.” 2005 registers about the same in both categories. Solar minimum is looking strangely like Solar Max.
One unusual effect:
January 9, 2006: The boom of thunder and crackle of lightning generally mean one thing: a storm is coming. Curiously, though, the biggest storms of all, hurricanes, are notoriously lacking in lightning. Hurricanes blow, they rain, they flood, but seldom do they crackle.
Surprise: During the record-setting hurricane season of 2005 three of the most powerful storms–Rita, Katrina, and Emily–did have lightning, lots of it. And researchers would like to know why.
Right: An infrared GOES 11 satellite image of Hurricane Emily. Yellow + and – symbols mark lightning bolts detected by the North American Lightning Detection Network. The green line traces the path of the ER-2 surveillance aircraft.
Lightning has been seen in hurricanes before. During a field campaign in 1998 called CAMEX-3, scientists detected lightning in the eye of hurricane Georges as it plowed over the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The lightning probably was due to air forced upward — called “orographic forcing” — when the hurricane hit the mountains.
“Hurricanes are most likely to produce lightning when they’re making landfall,” says Blakeslee. But there were no mountains beneath the “electric hurricanes” of 2005—only flat water.
For more about our opinions on global warming and for more reference articles, see this article.
Clinton Heats Up Climate Conference
Bill Clinton has no more business addressing the UN Climate Conference than he has for educating teenage girls about sex.
Montreal (CNSNews.com) – Former President Bill Clinton is expected to address the U.N. Climate Change Conference on Friday, the final day, after the Sierra Club reportedly raised the money to pay for Clinton’s trip.
Clinton’s visit is intended to help draw more media attention to the U.N. meeting and to pressure the U.S. delegation to make more concessions on climate issues, according to the Canadian Press.
Bush administration officials reportedly were “annoyed” that Clinton chose to come on the last day of the conference to try to influence the negotiations, according to the Associated Press.
Read Bill Clinton Heats Up UN Climate Conference — 12/09/2005 at CNS News.
Also read Flat Earth, Hurricanes and Global Warming for our perspectives on this issue.
SOHO Marks 10th Year
One of my top 10 things to be thankful for is technology, which gives mankind insights into the unknown. One of these technological wonders is SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite located at Earth’s inner Lagrangian point.
From SpaceWeather.com:
10 YEARS OF SOHO: Where would we be without SOHO? The orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) keeps a ’round-the-clock eye on the sun and is crucial to space weather forecasting. Thousands of our readers have witnessed auroras only because SOHO spotted an incoming CME [coronal mass ejection] in time for us to issue an alert.
So it is with pleasure and appreciation that we wish a happy 10th anniversary to the SOHO team, whose spacecraft was launched on Dec. 2nd, 1995. Originally planned as a two year mission, SOHO is now entering its second decade. Amazing.
And an article from Astronomy Picture of the Day indicates that operations are planned to continue until 2007, at which time SOHO will have been in position to observe a complete 11-year solar cycle (which, as we all know, is responsible for climate change and other phenomena – not the puny efforts of mankind who the moonbat left blame for the mythical global warming).
Flat Earth, Hurricanes and Global Warming
Damsel knows why the earth is flat – at least around the Gulf and Southeastern U.S. “The hurricanes have kept it mowed flat for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years!” she exclaims, “And ‘Global Warming’ hasn’t got anything to do with hurricanes! It’s obvious to me, and I’m not a science person.”
Image: St. Andrew Bay Entrance Channel to Perdido Pass, Florida Gulf Coast (USGS)
I agree with her; and I am a science person. When I was supporting a project in Florida, I learned that the highest elevation in the state was only 300 feet above sea level – the entire state. Similarly, low-elevation terrain is characteristic throughout the Caribbean, the Southeastern U.S. and the Gulf of Mexico – the precise area where hurricanes strike after they develop.
Some misguided scientists claim they can model global warming trends using tree ring evidence combined with only 20th century atmospheric evidence; this produces the leftist-touted ‘hockey-stick’ curve that seemingly proves the guilt of mankind in his reckless production of carbon dioxide. However, the errors of this analysis method are proven by David Legates in his article ‘Global warming smear targets’ in the Washington Times.
So if the ‘hockey stick’ hypothesis is incorrect, it must be discarded. Then, what actually caused global warming in the last few hundred years? The increase in so-called ‘greenhouse gasses’ in the atmosphere? No, apparently not; it seems to be our own SUN. And that makes sense too – the sun is the main driver for all Earth weather patterns. Arthur and Zachary Robinson prove this with real data in their article ‘Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth‘ originally published in 1997 in the Wall Street Journal. They even go on to make a case that increased carbon dioxide is having a beneficial effect on the environment!
Unfortunately, moonbat celebridiots such as Barbra Streisand, and politically-driven, uninformed politicians like John McCain and Hillary Clinton continue to perpetuate the lies by vacuously making public statements about things they are obviously not qualified to evaluate. See GOP Bloggers article ‘John & Hill Show Take Global Warming Myth on the Road‘ for more about them.
Additional reading: ‘The Myth of Catastrophic Global Warming‘ by Steven Brockerman.