Without hot rock, much of North America would be underwater

“If you subtracted the heat that keeps North American elevations high, most of the continent would be below sea level, except the high Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific Northwest west of the Cascade Range,” says study co-author Derrick Hasterok, a University of Utah doctoral student in geology and geophysics.

“We have shown for the first time that temperature differences within the Earth’s crust and upper mantle explain about half of the elevation of any given place in North America,” with most of the rest due to differences in what the rocks are made of, says the other co-author, David Chapman, a professor of geology and geophysics, and dean of the University of Utah Graduate School.

From EurekaAlert

A bad explanation is better than none at all

This week Sydney had the perfect storm: the one that didn't happen. The Bureau of Meteorology said we should have been struck by a gale of 100kmh winds about 5am Wednesday. It didn't happen. The experts were wrong.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, says our lives are surrounded by a miasma of false predictions and forecasts. As a result, much of the medium- or long-term planning done by individuals, companies and governments is of dubious value.

Taleb, once a trader on the finance markets, now has one of the best job descriptions I've heard. He is a professor in the sciences of uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

From the Sydney Morning Herald

The world's habitable spaces are under pressure

"Once you cut off the water from the marshes, they die a slow death," Alwash said. "Saddam could not wait for the marshes to die slowly. He started burning the reeds to flush out the resistance and kill all the wildlife so people would not have an ability to survive."

Reflooding of some Iraqi wetlands began immediately after Hussein was ousted in April 2003, and local and international scientists started planning the reconstruction. This attempt has been more successful than anticipated; in December 2006, satellite photos revealed that nearly 50 percent of the marshes had been restored.

From Seed Magazine

Antarctic To Cover Global Water Shortage

" The WMO regards drinking water shortages among principal obstacles to sustainable development. Even now, one third of humanity experiences permanent water shortages. Two thirds will share the plight by 2025 if the trend persists."

" Antarctic ice offers a remedy..." From Terra Daily

84 Siberian Tigers Born at China Center

Fewer than 400 Siberian tigers -- also known as Amur, Manchurian or Ussuri tiger -- are believed to survive in the wild, about 20 of them in China and the rest in Russia.

From PhysOrg

Full moon’s light has a warming effect on Earth

"One explanation is that moonlight can warm the Earth slightly at full moon, although only at night, of course.

I'm speechless. No, wait, one word:

Lunatic.

From the Times of London

Surge in hurricane activity is only a return to normal: study

Okay. I am baffled.
Ten days ago we had Kerry Emanuel quoted as saying "There has been a large upswing in the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes, beginning in 1995," Emanuel said on his Web site, http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/anthro2.htm. "This corresponds to an upswing in tropical North Atlantic sea surface temperature, which is very likely a response to increasing anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gases." Source

Now PhysOrg has this " Investigators believe the greenhouse effect cannot be blamed for a surge in hurricane activity since the mid-1990s."
and
"The phase of enhanced hurricane activity since 1995 is not unusual compared to other periods of high hurricane activity in the record," they report on Thursday in Nature, the weekly British science journal.

Here's PhysOrg

Sediment core links monsoons to global climate evolution

"Monsoons, the life-giving, torrential rains of Asia and Africa, have an ancient, unsuspected connection to previous Ice Age climate cycles, according to scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at Kiel University in Germany."

Climate (along with Brain Science) is the most complex subject human beings have ever attempted to comprehend.

Remember the sequence: Data>Information>Knowledge>Wisdom.

I think we're at information or wisdom. I'm sure we're not at wisdom.

From UC Samta Barbara

El Nino And African Monsoon Have Strongly Influenced Intense Hurricane Frequency In The Past

“The processes that govern the formation, intensity, and track of Atlantic hurricanes are still poorly understood,” said Donnelly, an associate scientist in the WHOI Department of Geology and Geophysics. “Based on this work, we now think that there may be some sort of basin-wide ‘on-off switch’ for intense hurricanes.”

From ScienceDaily

And from Reuters by way of Planet Ark:

" Intense hurricanes hit when local sea surface temperatures were warm or cool. In fact, "the Caribbean experienced a relatively active interval of intense hurricanes for more than a millennium when local sea surface temperatures were on average cooler than modern," the study said."

Migratory Birds, Whales Confused by Warming, UN Says

We have achieved consensus.
Me, the whales and the birds.
As a non-migrator, I just sit, with a puzzled look on my face.
Or so I've been told.
Reporting from Bonn, ENN

Widespread 'Twilight Zone' Detected Around Clouds

"There seems to be something new under the sun..."
“The effects of this zone are not included in most computer models that estimate the impact of aerosols on climate,”

From PhysOrg

NOAA announces next solar storm cycle will likely start next March

From NASA:
In the cycle forecast issued Wednesday, half of the panel predicts a moderately strong cycle of 140 sunspots, plus or minus 20, expected to peak in October 2011. The other half predicts a moderately weak cycle of 90 sunspots, plus or minus 10, peaking in August 2012. An average solar cycle ranges from 75 to 155 sunspots. The late decline of Cycle 23 has helped shift the panel away from its earlier leaning toward a strong Cycle 24. Now the group is evenly split between strong and weak.

Solar Forecast: Sunny with Chances for Moderate Coronal Ejections

A sense of humor at Scientific American

There's more at Space Daily

Climate reporting "too balanced" say scientists

This is one of the oddest headlines I've seen in a while.
From Cosmos.

Jim Hansen

This is a rewrite of Mr. Hansen's National Press Club speech.

I am thinking of moving all Hansen related posts to the politics blog. I'll let you know if I do and explain why.
In the meantime I've been spending a lot of time at the Climateer Investing site.

IPCC WG II

All posts relating to the IPCC WG II release will be found at the Climateer Economics blog.

The Sheep Albedo Effect

From RealClimate

NASA's Hansen Admits Calculation Errors In Global Warming Research

From Thes Poof

California Might Restrict Vandenberg Rocket Launches

From EcoEnquirer

Extra Carbon Dioxide Causing Plant Attacks

From EcoInquirer

Global Warming at the reference frame

Professor Motl has been on a bit of a roll lately:

Borehole climate reconstructions & hockey stick revolution

James Hansen on scientific reticence (I had posted the paper below, this a.m.)

Role of mathematics in science

Numerical Models, Integrated Circuits and Global Warming Theory

I had trouble deciding whether to post this on the economics site or here, so I did both. I've been thinking about cumulative errors for a month, it's time to let it go. This is by a guy who seems to know his way around an abacus.

Cross posted at ClimateerEconomics

Global temperature change

From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/103/39/14288 seven page PDF

I'm encouraged that Mr. Hansen believes in publishing in open access forums like the PNAS and the arXiv (see below). This is the only paper I've ever seen wherein the author refers to his Senate testimony. I should probably start posting his stuff on the Politics and Economics blog.

Scientific reticence and sea level rise

From Prometheus

HT: Junkscience

Dust Storm in Northern China

From NASA's Earth Observatory:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/shownh.php3?img_id=14187

Global 'sunscreen' has likely thinned, report NASA scientists

From PhysOrg:

http://www.physorg.com/news93190359.html

Solar pulses suggest heavy Australia rain: scientist

From Reuters:

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyid=2007-03-19T050612Z_01_SYD25508_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-AUSTRALIA-WEATHER-DC.XML

It can't come soon enough.

Mysteries of Rain and Snow

From NASA:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/02mar_rainandsnow.htm

Winter warmth breaks all records

From the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6456897.stm

Arctic ocean may lose all its ice by 2040, disrupting global weather

From the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2035521,00.html

HT: WSJ Energy Roundup

"Klimaänderung und die Schweiz 2050"

Sorry, can't resist, it is the language of love.
From the OcCC:

http://www.occc.ch/products/ch2050/CH2050-bericht_d.html

Summary(English):
Swiss issue key climate report

Space tourism and carbon dioxide emissions

From The Space Review:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/813/1

Off-topic: The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS)

From Improbable Research:

http://people.aapt.net.au/marklot1/LFH/LFH.html

Does the Danube exist? Versions of reality given by various regional climate models and climatological datasets

From the ArXiv:

36 page PDF: http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0612/0612222.pdf

The ‘post-normal’ science of climate change

From Melanie Phillips:

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1469

HT: the reference frame

Cross-posted at Climateer Economics

Spacecraft to Study Clouds at Edge of Space Arrives at Vandenberg

From NASA:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/aim/index.html

Cluster Opens A New Window On Magnetic Reconnection In Near-Earth Space

From SpaceDaily:

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Cluster_Opens_A_New_Window_On_Magnetic_Reconnection_In_Near_Earth_Space_999.html

CryoSat-2 On The Road To Recovery

From SpaceMart:

http://www.spacemart.com/reports/CryoSat_2_On_The_Road_To_Recovery_999.html

The DO-climate events are probably noise induced:

From Climates of the Past:

http://www.clim-past.net/3/129/2007/cp-3-129-2007.pdf

Here's Comes The Sun:

International Heliophysical Year To Examine Sun-Earth Relationship
From ScienceDaily:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070221113556.htm

Political Corruption of the IPCC Report

From The Meridian Programme:

http://www.meridian.org.uk/_PDFs/IPCC.pdf

HT: Junkscience

Richard Armstrong describes an alternative method of dating

Lichens, Lichenometry and Global Warming
From The Society for Applied Microbiology:

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/Microbiology/pdfs/lichens.pdf

SFAM home

Increasing your Carbo Footprint

Global Warming's Strange Harvest
From: The Tyee

http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/07/26/StrangeHarvest/

Climate findings suppressed: researchers

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/climate-findings-suppressed-researchers/2007/03/09/1173166991649.html

Space Weather Now

From NOAA:

http://www.sec.noaa.gov/SWN/

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NOAA:

http://www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/mag223.htm

A Doubling of the Sun's Coronal Magnetic Field during the Last 100 Years

From the World Data Centre C-1 for STP, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, England, UK:

http://www.wdc.rl.ac.uk/wdcc1/papers/nature.html

GREATER SOLAR ACTIVITY MAY BRING U.S. MORE GRAY DAYS

From NASA:

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20010712cloudcover.html

Huge 'Ocean' Discovered Inside Earth

From LiveScience:

http://www.livescience.com/environment/070228_beijing_anomoly.html

Rain and Snow: Scientists Don't Know How Much Falls

From Live Science:

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/070302_precip_mysteries.html

HT: Junkscience

Polar bears 'thriving as the Arctic warms up'

More on polar bears
From the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/09/wpolar09.xml

Build your own 3D glasses

The STEREO Solar Mission
From NASA:

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/classroom/glasses.shtml

HINODE SEES ECLIPSE

The Solar-B (Hinode) joint U.S.-Japan-UK mission.
From the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan:

http://solar-b.nao.ac.jp/index_e.shtml

India’s “wet desert” hit by global climate change

From the Khaleej Times:

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2007/March/subcontinent_March87.xml&section=subcontinent

Cosmoclimatology: a New Theory Emerges

By Henrik Svensmark in Astronomy&Geophysics
From the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition:

http://www.climatescience.org.nz/assets/2007371711530.SvensmarkClimatology.pdf

HT: JunkScience

Oops, we may have misunderstood our satellite data

From Head in a Cloud:

http://atoc.colorado.edu/~seand/headinacloud/

Network Analysis of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

From MIT:

http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Engineering-Systems-Division/ESD-342Spring-2006/9D2EDECD-1EBF-44F6-AED2-A349283CCF99/0/rep_team_struct.pdf

Jochen is a leftist, of course, but he claimed that Gore looked repulsive, unhuman, and evil.

Lubos Motl on CO2 & temperature: ice core correlations
at the reference frame

From Icehouse To Hothouse: Melting Ice And Rising Carbon Dioxide Caused Climate Shift

From ScienceDaily:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070220011358.htm

Clouded Research

From the National Post:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/archives/story.html?id=975f250d-ca5d-4f40-b687-a1672ed1f684

HT: Junkscience

Missing: a huge chunk of the earth's crust

From Reuters:

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2007-03-05T162239Z_01_L0572954_RTRUKOC_0_US-BRITAIN-EXPEDITION.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C3-scienceNews-2

Alaska governor questions science of polar bear listing

From the Seattle Times:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003600883_webpolarbear04.html

Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says

From National Geographic:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html

Errors covertly corrected by the IPCC after Publication

By Christopher Monckton:

http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070226_monckton.pdf

Happy Belated Birthday-SORCE is four (i.e. this many, IIII)

From SORCE:

http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/sns/2007/sns_jan_2007.pdf

Scientists Ready Big Study of North and South Poles

From the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/science/26polarcnd.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Freeze 'condemned Neanderthals'

From the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6341987.stm

Living Reviews in Solar Physics

From Sami Solanki, Max Planck Institute:

http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/


Sami's homepage:

The father of climate change

From The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1517938,00.html#article_continue

SCIENTISTS PREDICT SOLAR DOWNTURN, GLOBAL COOLING

From NewScientist:

http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060920/20060920_13.html

THE CHILLING STARS

From the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/6362407.stm

A new open-access journal serving the whole environmental science research community

From Institute of Physics Publishing:

http://www.iop.org/EJ/erl

Belief and knowledge—a plea about language

From Physics Today:

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-60/iss-1/8_1.html

Wait, the Earth is cooling?

From Head in a Cloud:

http://atoc.colorado.edu/~seand/headinacloud/index.php/2007/02/18/wait-the-earth-is-cooling/#more-91

Science and NASA

From NASA:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/157382main_griffin-goddard-science.pdf

Solar storm satellites launched from Florida

From Reuters:

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyid=2007-02-17T233604Z_01_N17469610_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-SPACE-SATELLITES-DC.XML

From NASA:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/main/index.html

STEREO Sends Back First Solar Images

From NASA:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/news/first_light.html

ANTARCTIC TEMPERATURES DISAGREE WITH CLIMATE MODEL PREDICTIONS

From The Ohio State University:

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

New evidence of the link between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change in boreal ecosystems

From Purdue University

New evidence of the link between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change in boreal ecosystems

http://www.cs.purdue.edu/icds/DBSeminar/Kevin%20Gurney%201%2031%202007.pdf

The insides of clouds may be the key to climate change

From the University of Michigan:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/uom-tio011907.php

http://aoss.engin.umich.edu/go/index1.php?id1=10&id2=1&id3=34/

Nasa aurora probe launch delayed

From The BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6370625.stm

Reflections of a Climate Sceptic

From the center for Science and Technology Policy Research:

http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Tennekes/reflections_sceptic.html

Detailed Chronology of Late Holocene Climatic Change

From Emporia State University:

http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/lec19/holocene.htm

About That Polar Bear Picture

From Ann Althouse:

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/02/polar-bears-on-melting-ice-cap-photo.html

See this: http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/mammals/PolarBear.HTM

and this: http://www.geol.umd.edu/~candela/pbevol.html

Why is 100,000 years ago relevent?

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0080-4622(19770817)280%3A972%3C143%3AICACC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6

Viewpoint: Global Warming Natural, May End Within 20 Years

From The Ohio State University:

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

Finding Hydroxyl

Radioactive carbon monoxide is used to trace key atmospheric "cleanser"

From Chemical and Engineering News:

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/83/i34/8334notw1.html

Climate Change 2007

By Vincent Gray:

http://www.climatescience.org.nz/assets/20072141112360.SPM07GrayCritique.pdf

HT: climateaudit

Scientists To Focus On Climate Change And Energy At AAAS Meeting

From Terra Daily:

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Scientists_To_Focus_On_Climate_Change_And_Energy_At_AAAS_Meeting_999.html

THEMIS Launch Now Set for Feb 16

From Space-Travel.com:

http://www.space-travel.com/reports/THEMIS_Launch_Now_Set_for_Feb_16_999.html

Cargo Cult Science

By Richard Feynman:

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/02/CargoCult.pdf

Thanks Cal Tech

Solar Cycle Progression

From NOAA:

http://www.sec.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/

End of all quiet alert from the SIDC/RWC Belgium

Solar Activity to Increase:

http://sidc.oma.be/products/quieta/

2006 was the Fifth Warmest Year in the Last Century

From NASA:

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070208/

Kaufman, D.S., et al., 2004. Holocene thermal maximum in the Western Arctic (0 to 180W).

http://www.life.uiuc.edu/hu/Kaufman_et_al._2004.pdf

A critique on Veizer’s Celestial Climate Driver

From RealClimate:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/on-veizers-celestial-climate-driver/

Celestial Climate Driver: A Perspective From Four Billion Years of the Carbon Cycle

By Jan Veizer:

http://www.friendsofscience.org/documents/veizer2.pdf

From: Friends of Science

Carbon Dioxide or Solar Forcing

By: Nir J. Shaviv:

http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar

Comments on "CO2 Change Lags Temperature Change"

From RealClimate:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13

Temperature and CO2 Concentration over the past 400,000 years

From the United Nations Education Program:

http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/02.htm

Remember: Correlation does not equal causation. Just because it appears that temperature rise precedes CO2 rise, don't assume that it has anything to do with the diminished CO2 load carrying capacity of warmer water. Or partial pressures. Anyway, the resolution of the charts isn't fine enough.

The Carbon Cycle

From NASA:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/CarbonCycle/Images/carbon_cycle_diagram.jpg

Global warming cleared on ice shelf collapse rap

From The Register (UK):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/24/ice_shelf_collapse/