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Posted on: Former astronaut speaks out on global warming
at 11/27/2009 2:52pm

I disagree, completely. 3 or 4 generations is woefully brief when you start looking at some of the actual cycles ... more(+)

Eskie wrote:To understand what is really happening, you must know what was like a generation ago, and up to third and fourth generation.

I disagree, completely. 3 or 4 generations is woefully brief when you start looking at some of the actual cycles involved. We KNOW there are ocean cycles that take 30-60 years, we know there are the orbital cycles that take 20,000, 44,000 and 100,000 years. There are solar cycles that can last from 11 to several hundred years. We KNOW this. We KNOW the ice age cycles last for tens of thousands of years. Why in the world would you think, in a system that has cycles of such long duration that anything we can view in a generation or 4 is no more than noise? The problem is that our view of things is too brief, especially when you think you are taking the long-view and then only mention 3 or 4 generations! Way. Too. Short.

Just as an aside I spoke with my Grandfather about the weather back in "08 before he passed. One of the things he couldn't get over was how much warmer it was.............. BACK IN THE '30's and 40"s. he never really understood what all the fuss and bother was about today. Maybe thats where i get much of my skepticism. close(-)

Posted on: Flying Rods
at 11/26/2009 12:04am

"Flying Rods" are a visual anomally created when a video camera films something which is moving faster than ... more(+)

"Flying Rods" are a visual anomally created when a video camera films something which is moving faster than its native frame rate. A simple experiment with a normal video camera and a special high speed camera showed that this is an effect of the normal/slow speed camera trying to show something which is moving at a speed faster than is supported by its normal frame rate. The effect appears to be mutiple images overlaid in one frame, giving the appearance of the "Rod" type effect. So, in simple terms the "Flying Rods" are : bugs and birds or anything else which might fly through the cameras viewing area fast enought to create this effect. There was an interesting program about this on the Discovery channel last year, I suggest you go there and try to find it. close(-)

Posted on: The Future of the Climate Debate?
at 11/25/2009 11:43pm

<Sigh> I can see it is going to take some 'splainin to get through here. OK. Here goes.



Adding more than .5 ... more(+)

<Sigh> I can see it is going to take some 'splainin to get through here. OK. Here goes.

Somebody has still need to explain why these things are happening.
Arctic ice melting, sea level rising, weather getting wired, unprecedented draughts and floods, heat-waves in different regions including Europe, severer bush-fires - America, Australia, Europe, and the list can go on.

I actually thought about taking each of these in turn then realized, its not necessary. When confronted with stuff like this I use something called Occam's Razor. Whose basic idea is: the simplest answer is correct unless disproven. Basically another way of stating the NULL HYPOTHESIS which so many people forget SHOULD be the basic tenet of good science, is true until disproven either by observation or experimentation. In this case (as so many have forgotten!) the null hypothesis is simply this: THE CLIMATE CHANGES BY NATURAL VARIATIONS AS IT HAS DONE FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS. So your answer is: none of what we are seeing is in any way unusual, we just haven't seen it before. Artic ice has melted before. Sea level has risen in the past. Weather has been wired (sic) at other times and places. There have been floods. There has been drought. Heat-waves, cold-waves, waves of "normal" break out all over the place, all the time, somtimes worse than today sometimes not. Bush fires, forest fires, grass fires, nothing new here. Really. Look at the actual statistics-- (for example) fires in the US in 2009 were "normal", bush fires in Australia were also. The problem isnt with the climate, its with the damn people. Our view is so short, and so short sighted that we see actual trends when all we are seeing is the noise in the system. Unfortunately ALL of the current Greenhouse gas related modelling starts with a simple, unproven assumption: That CO2 causes feedbacks which lead to warming (lets not even go into all of the crazy end of civilzation nonsense this is supposed to lead to). So far noone has been able to show me ANY proof of this assumption! Not. One. Shred. Every cited paper or study has STARTED with the assumption of this system of feedbacks, none have offered any proof thereof. (Proof for me is actual measurements of the climate NOT "models", or "proxy" "data", or "reconstructions") Is there a human impact on climate? Oh I'm sure, but I am more inclined to looking at things like land use changes, deforestation, urbanisation--- things like that, which we are pretty sure have an impact. Of course we still really have NO IDEA how much. Anyone who claims otherwise is either misinformed or has an agenda.

The main point is
if not global temperature is assumed not rising, then what is causing the weather changes around the world?

I never said there WASN'T an increase in global temperature. As I think my previous paragraph states pretty clearly, my OPINION is that it is due to natural variation in the climate of the planet. The exact mechanism of which we are still unclear. Of course I am also of the opinion that the temperature records that so much of this "science" depends upon are suspect. A simple example is here:



Adding more than .5 degrees to the modern temp readings? No wonder we are "warmer than ever recorded". close(-)

Posted on: Former astronaut speaks out on global warming
at 11/25/2009 11:00pm

I must admit I was skeptical, but I am now completely convinced that Man is responsible for the reported increase in ... more(+)

Eskie wrote:Did he used to work here?

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

That website has so many problems I do not know where to start. I suggest you get some ACTUAL data about things like Antarctic ice (we had the HIGHEST amount EVER recorder this year!), and current rates of sea level rise (flat for the past 5 years), as well as what has been going on with ocean SST's and the Argo system. And of course there is the .75 degree rise in temps, which is.....gasp accelerating! Kinda like this:


I must admit I was skeptical, but I am now completely convinced that Man is responsible for the reported increase in temperatures! Of course, who knew it took so few actual people and NO CO2. close(-)

Posted on: The Future of the Climate Debate?
at 11/25/2009 10:08pm

The caption to the photo on the NiWA site reads:

From NIWA's web site — Figure 7: Mean annual temperature over New ... more(+)

Savino wrote:Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia.


And, everybody knows, it is the only Climate Research facilitie in the world.

Not sure what your point is. Hadley/CRU and NASA/GISS are the 2 "products" most of the current climate research is based upon. Looked at from that angle then yes it is one of the two MOST INFLUENTIAL climate labs in the world. I wouldn't be surprised if more than 2/3 of current "peer reviewed" papers used its data. It is also the primary entity responsible for the creation of the IPCC reports! There is another story just breaking today as well:
http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/breaking-nzs-niwa-accused-of-cru-style-temperature-faking.html

The New Zealand Government's chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn't there.

The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain's CRU climate research centre.

In New Zealand's case, the figures published on NIWA's [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century:



The caption to the photo on the NiWA site reads:

From NIWA's web site — Figure 7: Mean annual temperature over New Zealand, from 1853 to 2008 inclusive, based on

between 2 (from 1853) and 7 (from 1908) long-term station records. The blue and red bars show annual differences from the

1971 – 2000 average, the solid black line is a smoothed time series, and the dotted [straight] line is the linear trend over 1909

to 2008 (0.92°C/100 years).

But analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just turned up a very different result:



Gone is the relentless rising temperature trend, and instead there appears to have been a much smaller growth in warming, consistent with the warming up of the planet after the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850.

It is interesting to note that the former head of NIWA (Dr. Salinger) was also employed at Hadley/CRU, and was instrumental in the creation of the disputed information. This just emphasizes the fact that we need complete openess as far as data, code and methods are concerned. This is not something that is confined only to NZ either. Check this out:




Yes dear reader, NOAA adds an "adjustment" onto each temperature it reports! So.......how much was it going to warm this century? Of course, at least NOAA lets everyone KNOW they are doing this, even though most people will completely ignore this fact! I must admit I am now a convert to the idea of Anthropogenic Global Warming. I just didn't realize it took so few people to make it happen!

PS..... the REALLY funny bit is that when the first satellites started measuring temps they couldn't figure out why they weren't reporting in line with surface station temps (about 2 degrees lower on average). Hmmmm. Of course the solution was to ADD a "CORRECTION" to the satellite reports as well.....whoohoo problem solved!! close(-)

Commented on: Orwellian or Green? Carbon Taxes on Indi
at 2009-11-20 20:37:48

"Taxing American businesses, or not providing free national health care for American workers, drags American businesses ... more(+)

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Commented on: Record Highs Outpace Record Lows
at 2009-11-17 14:07:16

Enough said:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_b5jZxTCSlm0/Sv31ZY99ioI/AAAAAAAAD38/zHZkCLYg590/s1600-h/image017.png

It's ... more(+)

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Commented on: Permanent Arctic Ice Nearly Gone
at 2009-11-08 22:51:17

The only part of this article I read was the title. Then I wondered when Sea Ice became permanent and decided it wasn't ... more(+)

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Commented on: Kilimanjaro Ice Fields Set to Disappear
at 2009-11-03 14:35:03

Yuo have discovered the "fly in the ointment" of this hypothesis. The more likely culprit has nothing to do with ... more(+)

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Commented on: Kilimanjaro Ice Fields Set to Disappear
at 2009-11-03 14:25:01

The more likely culprit is deforestation. see the peer-reviewed studies ... more(+)

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2009-10-21 | in Health | by Dan Peterson">Dan Peterson

Music Benefits Exercise, Studies Show
Exercising to some tunes may make for a better workout.

2009-10-14 | in Technology | by LiveScience Staff

Military Fuel-Cell Aircraft Sets Record
The Navy has built a fuel cell-powered aircraft that can fly all day.