tagged w/ Global Warming
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(NaturalNews) The latest scam to enter the debate about so-called "global warming" involves spending billions of dollars to spray the atmosphere with tiny particulate matter for the alleged purpose of reflecting sunlight back into space, and thus cooling the planet. But research into this controversial practice of "chemtrailing," which has actually already been going on for quite some time now, is largely funded directly by Mr. Vaccine himself, the infamous Bill Gates.
The U.K.'s Guardian paper reports that Gates, who is a huge advocate of global intervention programs that forcibly affect large people groups whether they like it or not, has been spending untold millions of dollars from his own personal fortune to fund research into geo-engineering programs. These funds are being used to study things like how much it will cost every year to blast the skies with tiny particles of sulfur dioxide, a toxic industrial byproduct linked to serious respiratory illnesses like asthma (http://www.epa.gov/air/sulfurdioxide/).
Gates and his small cadre of allies, which include co-founder of Skype Niklas Zennstrom and owner of the Virgin Group Sir Richard Branson, reportedly spend exorbitant amounts of cash every year trying to push geo-engineering initiative across the globe. They claim that if nations like the U.S. will not cut greenhouse gas emissions by tremendous amounts, the spraying of toxic poisons into the atmosphere will be necessary to thwart impending disaster.
The entire concept of geo-engineering to save the planet is utter hogwash, of course. This is true not only because "global warming" itself has proven to be a man-made scam, but also because literally blocking sunlight for the stated purpose of reflecting the warmth of its rays back into space makes no logical or scientific sense.
Geo-engineering does, however, give unprecedented control over the world's weather patterns to a select few, allowing them to manipulate the environment for their own gain in the name of saving the planet. And blocking the sun's rays with tiny particles also serves much more sinister purposes like preventing humans from absorbing much-needed ultraviolet B (UVB) rays from the sun, which are responsible for producing vitamin D in the body (http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/).
But while chemtrail advocates like Bill Gates act as though these poison plumes are a potential future intervention, evidence already points to the fact that chemtrails have already been in use for many years now. Be sure to check out the film What in the World are They Spraying? for more shocking information about chemtrails:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf0khstYDLA
Sources for this article include:
http://www.guardian.co.uk
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034906_Bill_Gates_geo-engineering_chemtrails.html#ixzz1lwAJIHMH(NaturalNews) The latest scam to enter the debate about so-called "global... more
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The total volume of water that has melted from all of the world's polar ice sheets, ice caps and mountain glaciers over the past decade would repeatedly fill Britain's largest lake, Windemere, more than 13,000 times, according to one of the most comprehensive studies of the Earth's frozen "cryosphere".
Using a unique pair of satellites that have monitored the disappearing ice over the entire surface of the globe, scientists estimated that some 1,000 cubic miles of ice has disappeared between 2003 and 2010 – enough to cover the US in one-and-a-half feet of water.
The survey found that the melting of the cryosphere has been responsible for raising sea levels by about half an inch over the same period, equivalent to a rise of about 1.5mm a year. This was on top of sea-level increases due to the thermal expansion of seawater caused by rising ocean temperatures.
Data gathered by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), a joint satellite project run by Nasa and the German government, also found that the amount of ice melting from the mountain glaciers and ice caps that were not in Greenland or Antarctica was actually significantly smaller than previous estimates had suggested.
Instead of contributing nearly 1mm of sea level rise per year as previously suggested, some of the Earth's glaciers and ice caps, especially in the Himalayas and other mountain ranges in Asia, were melting significantly slower than expected, contributing about 0.4mm of sea level rise per year – less than half the amount predicted.
One explanation for the previous overestimates could be that most of the glaciers that have been studied intensively are at lower altitudes and therefore more prone to melting. Higher glaciers are colder and less susceptible and yet only 120 glaciers out of 160,000 glaciers and ice caps have been directly measured from the ground.
The GRACE satellite experiment, however, covered the entire globe and found that all the world's glaciers and ice caps combined, apart for those in Greenland and Antarctica, had lost about 148 billion tonnes of ice, or about 39 cubic miles, annually between 2003 and 2010. The individual glaciers on the fringes of Greenland and Antarctic contributed an additional 80 billion tons over the same period, the study published in Nature found.
"This is the first time anyone has looked at all of the mass loss from all of the Earth's glaciers and ice caps with GRACE," said John Wahr, professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who was part of the research team that analysed the satellite data.
"The Earth is losing an incredible amount of ice to the oceans annually, and these new results will help us to answer important questions in terms of both sea-level rise and how the planet's cold regions are responding to global change."
Professor Jonathan Bamber, of Bristol University, said: "Melting glaciers are an iconic symbol of climate change... they seem to have been receding, largely uninterrupted, almost everywhere around the world for several decades."
1,000
Cubic miles of ice has disappeared between 2003 and 2010 from polar caps.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/billions-of-tons-of-water-lost-from-worlds-glaciers-satellite-reveals-6672129.htmlThe total volume of water that has melted from all of the world's polar ice... more
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The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.
The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.
The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less then previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.
more at link...
Where's Nobel Prize Winning, IPCC Head, Rajendra Pachauri, who said there would be no ice in 25 years? That paid-off, propaganda spewing, carbon scamming, globalist quack should be charged with intellectual fraud and thrown in jail with his con-man, Ponzi-scheming crony, Al Gore.The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas... more
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GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – If you’ve been talking to friends about our Arctic weather, you should revise your description, for in recent days it’s been warmer in Svalbard, far north in the Arctic, than in Milan, Italy or Istanbul, Turkey, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva. Svalbard has seen 5C in recent days while Milan can expect -10 by the end of this week.
We’re currently in a “negative Arctic Oscillation” in Europe, says the WMO, based on reports coming in from its members, national weather services around the world.
The Arctic Oscillation “is the difference in pressure between Polar areas and mid-latitude areas (where most of the population in Europe lives). At the moment there is a negative Arctic Oscillation, which favors cold conditions in Europe and relatively warmer conditions in the Arctic.”
Our glacial temperatures are not even setting new records. “The long duration of the cold period, its relatively late onset and the extent of the cold area are noteworthy but not exceptional. The continental cold air extended even over the Balkan peninsula; slight ongoing frost was recorded even in northern Greece” in the past three weeks.
Meanwhile, Svalbard but also much of North America has benefited from mild air moving over the North Atlantic northwards over Iceland up to the Arctic region, according to the WMO.GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – If you’ve been talking to friends about our Arctic... more
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This is huge. More than I ever could have possibly imagined. And more is coming in the days ahead! The Bild piece was just the first of a series.
Mark this as the date that Germany’s global warming movement took a massive body blow.
Today, not one, but two of Germany’s most widely read news media published comprehensive skeptical climate science articles in their print and online editions, coinciding with the release of a major climate skeptical book, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun).
Germany has now plunged into raucus discord on the heated topic of climate change
What has set it all off? One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”
Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Well-connected to Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.
Conclusion: climate catastrophe is called offThis is huge. More than I ever could have possibly imagined. And more is coming in the... more
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A loss of sea ice could be a cause of the bitter winds that have swept across the UK in the past week, weather experts say
The bitterly cold weather sweeping Britain and the rest of Europe has been linked by scientists with the ice-free seas of the Arctic, where global warming is exerting its greatest influence.
A dramatic loss of sea ice covering the Barents and Kara Seas above northern Russia could explain why a chill Arctic wind has engulfed much of Europe and killed 221 people over the past week.
The death toll from Arctic blast has been particularly severe in the Ukraine, where many of the dead have been people sleeping on the streets. Heating and food tents have been set up to ease their hardship. In Romania 24 people are known to have died and 17 in Poland.
A growing number of experts believe complex wind patterns are being changed because melting Arctic sea ice has exposed huge swaths of normally frozen ocean to the atmosphere above.
In particular, the loss of Arctic sea ice could be influencing the development of high-pressure weather systems over northern Russia, which bring very cold winds from the Arctic and Siberia to Western Europe and the British Isles, the scientists believe. An intense anticyclone over north-west Russia is behind the bitterly cold easterly winds that have swept across Europe and some climate scientists say the lack of Arctic sea ice brought about by global warming is responsible.
"The current weather pattern fits earlier predictions of computer models for how the atmosphere responds to the loss of sea ice due to global warming," said Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "The ice-free areas of the ocean act like a heater as the water is warmer than the Arctic air above it. This favours the formation of a high-pressure system near the Barents Sea, which steers cold air into Europe."
Sea ice covering the Barents and Kara Seas has been exceptionally low this winter, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado. But air temperatures above the Barents and Kara Seas have been higher than average. The relatively mild westerly winds that have kept Britain from freezing much of this winter have been blocked by fierce high pressure over north-west Russia, centred on an area just south of the Barents Sea.
Studies by scientists at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research have confirmed a link between the loss of Arctic sea ice and the development of high-pressure zones in the polar region, which influence wind patterns at lower latitudes further south. Scientists found that as the cap of sea ice is removed from the ocean, huge amounts of heat are released from the sea into the colder air above, causing the air to rise. Rising air destabilises the atmosphere and alters the difference in air pressure between the Arctic and more southerly regions, changing wind patterns.
Professor Rahmstorf said the Alfred Wegener study confirms earlier predictions from computer models by Vladimir Petoukhov of the Potsdam Institute, who forecast colder winters in western Europe as a result of melting sea ice.
Dr Petoukhov and his colleague Vladimir Semenov were among the first scientists to suggest a link between the loss of sea ice and colder winters in Europe. Their 2009 study simulated the effects of disappearing sea ice and found that for some years to come the loss will increase the chances of colder winters.
"Whoever thinks that the shrinking of some far-away sea ice won't bother him could be wrong. There are complex interconnections in the climate system, and in the Barents-Kara Sea we might have discovered a powerful feedback mechanism," Dr Petoukhov said.
More at the linkA loss of sea ice could be a cause of the bitter winds that have swept across the UK... more
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More than 100 dolphins have beached themselves along Cape Cod in the past month in what researchers are calling a "disturbing" event due to warmer waters off the Massachusetts coast. At least 81 dolphins have died or "died shortly after being discovered"...
http://veracitystew.com/2012/02/02/81-dead-dolphins-on-cape-cod-video/More than 100 dolphins have beached themselves along Cape Cod in the past month in... more
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[James Hansen is the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies who first warned the world about the dangers of climate change in the 1980s.]
The threat of human-made climate change and the urgency of reducing fossil fuel emissions have become increasingly clear to the scientific community during the past few years. Yet, at the same time, the public seems to have become less certain about the situation. Indeed, many people have begun to wonder whether the climate threat has been concocted or exaggerated.
Public doubt about the science is not an accident. People profiting from business-as-usual fossil fuel use are waging a campaign to discredit the science. Their campaign is effective because the profiteers have learned how to manipulate democracies for their advantage.
The scientific method requires objective analysis of all data, stating evidence pro and con, before reaching conclusions. This works well, indeed is necessary, for achieving success in science. But science is now pitted in public debate against the talk-show method, which consists of selective citation of anecdotal bits that support a predetermined position.
Why is the public presented results of the scientific method and the talk-show method as if they deserved equal respect? A few decades ago that did not happen. In 1981, when I wrote a then-controversial paper (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html) about the impact of CO2 on climate, the science writer Walter Sullivan contacted several of the top relevant scientific experts in the world for comments. He did not mislead the public by dredging up and highlighting contrarian opinion for the sake of a forced and unnatural “balance”.
Today most media, even publicly-supported media, are pressured to balance every climate story with opinions of contrarians, climate change deniers, as if they had equal scientific credibility. Media are dependent on advertising revenue of the fossil fuel industry, and in some cases are owned by people with an interest in continuing business as usual. Fossil fuel profiteers can readily find a few percent of the scientific community to serve as mouthpieces — all scientists practice skepticism, and it is not hard to find some who are out of their area of expertise, who may enjoy being in the public eye, and who are limited in scientific insight and analytic ability.
Distinguished scientific bodies such as national science academies, using the scientific method, can readily separate charlatans and false interpretations from well-reasoned science. Yet it seems that our governments and the public are not making much use of their authoritative scientific bodies. Why is that?
I believe that the answer, and the difficulty in communicating science to the public, is related to the corrosive influence of money in politics and to increased corporate influence on the media.
It is a tragic and frustrating situation, because when all the dots in the climate-energy story are connected it becomes clear that a common-sense pathway exists that would solve energy needs, stimulate the economy, and protect the future of young people. As I discussed in “Storms of My Grandchildren,” a gradually rising carbon fee should be collected from fossil fuel companies, with the money distributed uniformly to legal residents. This would stimulate the economy, making it more efficient by putting an honest price on fuels, incorporating their costs to society.
“Captains of industry” told me they would prefer such a course with knowledge of a steadily rising carbon price, which would stimulate innovations in efficiency and clean energies.
Despite the obstacles presented by the role of money in politics and by the huge advertising campaigns of the fossil fuel industry, the urgency of addressing the climate-energy issue demands that we do the best that we can to inform the public. One of the things we can do is try to expose how the public and our democracies are being manipulated for the benefit of those profiting from the public’s fossil fuel addiction.
For that purpose I provided the witness statement below in support of an effort to reveal the name of the seed funder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in the UK. GWPF is “successful” in casting doubt on the reality and significance of human-made climate change.
The newsletters of Benny Peiser, Director of GWPF, can be quite entertaining and sometimes include useful references. He pings the impracticality and costliness of an energy approach that relies excessively on renewable energies. But ultimately his purpose seems to be to persuade the public that climate science is flawed. I don’t know if GWPF is supported by the fossil fuel industry, but it seems to me that the public has the right to know. Ultimately, I hope and believe, the public will be able to appreciate how our democracies are being twisted by people with money for their own purposes. But that requires freedom of information.
Continued at link[James Hansen is the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies who... more
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A lot of folks have asked me to debunk the recent anti-truthful Wall Street Journal article with the counterfactual headline, “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” I’ll combine my debunking with the rapidly growing list of debunkings from scientists and others. And I’ll update this as new debunkings come in.
That the WSJ would publish an amateurish collection of falsehoods and half truths is no surprise. The entire global Murdoch enterprise is designed to advance the pollutocrat do-nothing agenda (see Scientist: “The Murdoch Media Empire Has Cost Humanity Perhaps One or Two Decades in Battle Against Climate Change”). As National Academy of Sciences member Peter Gleick explains in his evisceration of the piece, “Remarkable Editorial Bias on Climate Science at the Wall Street Journal“:
“But the most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal in this field is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a comparable (but scientifically accurate) essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down. The National Academy of Sciences is the nation’s pre-eminent independent scientific organizations. Its members are among the most respected in the world in their fields. Yet the Journal wouldn’t publish this letter, from more than 15 times as many top scientists. Instead they chose to publish an error-filled and misleading piece on climate because some so-called experts aligned with their bias signed it. This may be good politics for them, but it is bad science and it is bad for the nation.
"Science magazine – perhaps the nation’s most important journal on scientific issues – published the letter from the NAS members after the Journal turned it down.”
A tad more surprising is that 16 admittedly non-leading scientists would choose to soil their reputations by stringing together a collection of long-debunked falsehoods. What is surprising is that these falsehoods are more easily debunked than the typical disinformer clap-trap because they are so out-of-date!
Guys, if you’re going to push disinformation, you have to do better than this:
“Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: ‘The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t‘….
“The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause.”
Well, as the chart above shows, the last 10 years were easily the hottest on record. As the Union of Concerned Scientists debunking notes, “2011 was the 35th year in a row in which global temperatures were above the historical average and 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record.” Doh!
And apparently these guys missed the news that last year’s Koch-Funded and Skeptic-Led Study Finds Recent Warming “On the High End” and Speeding Up. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) concluded:
“… we find that the global land mean temperature has increased by 0.911 ± 0.042 C since the 1950s…. our analysis suggests a degree of global land-surface warming during the anthropogenic era that is consistent with prior work (e.g. NOAA) but on the high end of the existing range of reconstruction.”
Double Doh!
Then again, what do you expect from a list of 16 scientists that include:
~Richard Lindzen, one of the most debunked climate scientists in the world (see Lindzen debunked again: New scientific study finds his paper downplaying dangers of human-caused warming is “seriously in error”: Trenberth: The flaws in Lindzen-Choi paper “have all the appearance of the authors having contrived to get the answer they got”). See also Kerry Emanuel slams media, asserts Lindzen charge in Boston Globe is “pure fabrication.”
~William Happer, physicist, Chairman of the Board of a leading disinformer think-tank George Marshall Institute, heavily funded by Exxon Mobil and other anti-science funders.
~Roger Cohen, Former manager for Strategic Planning and Programs ExxonMobil Corporation, now a George Marshall Institute ‘expert’.
~Harrison H. Schmitt, geologist and astronaut, who believes enviros and climate scientists like Holdren are communists.
This gang that couldn’t shoot straight assert “it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.” In fact, as Fatih Birol, the chief economist for the International Energy Agency explained last year, the world is on pace for 11°F warming, and “Even School Children Know This Will Have Catastrophic Implications for All of Us.”
Yes, even school children know more than these guys!
They utterly misrepresent the work of serious climatologists like Kevin Trenberth. Anybody who is actually paying attention to real science knows Trenberth explained 2 years ago that the way the disinformers were quoting him was nonsense, and they know recent analysis has done a good job of identifying where the “missing” warming went — the deep oceans (see my 9/11 post “Hottest Decade on Record Would Have Been Even Hotter But for Deep Oceans — Accelerated Warming May Be On Its Way“). Let’s go through this one more time.
As Trenberth explained back in 2009, we have a vast amount of evidence that “global warming is continuing”:
“But Trenberth, who acknowledged the e-mail is genuine, says bloggers are missing the point he’s making in the e-mail by not reading the article cited in it. That article – An Imperative for Climate Change Planning (.pdf) — actually says that global warming is continuing, despite random temperature variations that would seem to suggest otherwise.
“’It says we don’t have an observing system adequate to track it, but there are all other kinds of signs aside from global mean temperatures — including melting of Arctic sea ice and rising sea levels and a lot of other indicators — that global warming is continuing,’ he says.”
In the paper, Trenberth posited the very recent surface temperature data might not be keeping up with the other data showing global warming because of a variety of reasons, most significantly “Was it because the heat was buried in the ocean and sequestered, perhaps well below the surface?” The answer to that appears to be “yes.”
The key point from recent observation is that whatever slight slowing in global warming some groups may have observed in the past decade, it was primarily in the surface temperature data set. The oceans kept warming.
Links and more at websiteA lot of folks have asked me to debunk the recent anti-truthful Wall Street Journal... more
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The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.
The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.
Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.
We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.
Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an... more
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"That's very unusual for this time of year," NWS meteorologist Mark Wiley said.
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A tornado hit Austin, Texas, and thunderstorms pounded San Antonio, Dallas and Houston on Wednesday, bringing the parched Lone Star State drenching rains and destructive winds that knocked out power, flooded streets and kept emergency workers busy rescuing drivers stranded in high water.
The tornado touched down early Wednesday in northeast Austin, tearing across U.S. 290 and into a subdivision, damaging homes along a road called Happy Trail, according to the National Weather Service.
Springlike moisture from the Gulf of Mexico dropped the heaviest rainfall - 6-8 inches - on an area east of Austin and San Antonio and extending south into Houston, it added.
"That's very unusual for this time of year," NWS meteorologist Mark Wiley said. "It was just so much rain in such a short period of time. In so many areas, the ground is still fairly dry, but it was just so fast that it didn't have anywhere to go, especially in the urban areas."
There were no reports of injuries.
By Wednesday afternoon, the storms were pushing into Louisiana and were expected to head into Mississippi and Alabama on Thursday, the NWS said.
In Bastrop, an area east of Austin heavily damaged by Labor Day weekend wildfires, schools canceled classes on Wednesday. In Pflugerville, north of Austin, school buses were delayed Wednesday morning because the school district's bus barn was damaged overnight, the district website said. And the Houston Independent School District canceled after-school activities.
Wind toppled an 18-wheeler in on IH-45 in Madison County, between Dallas and Houston, officials said. More than 30 flights were canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Wednesday morning.
In San Antonio, lightning hit an apartment complex on the city's north side as storms blew through, sparking a fire that forced people into the driving rain and destroyed four apartments, officials said.
Between Austin and Houston, in Brenham, high winds twisted trees and tore the roofs off a couple of buildings in the downtown area, said Ricky Boeker, fire chief and emergency management coordinator.
"It sounded like the world was coming apart -- I'm not going to lie," Boeker told Reuters.
The severe weather in Texas follows damaging storms and tornadoes that swept through Arkansas and Alabama earlier in the week.
In Texas, "while most of the region is still in the grips of a severe drought and very much needs the rain, too much rain too quickly can do more harm than good," AccuWeather.com meteorologist Mark Miller said in a Wednesday report. "Still, the rain will go a long way in helping to reduce the severity of the drought in exceptionally dry locations."
Last year was the driest year on record in Texas and the second-hottest, according to the NWS.
CPS Energy, the South Texas electric utility, reported more than 30,000 customers without power as wind snapped electric power lines and knocked out traffic signals during the morning rush hour in San Antonio. In Austin, some 5,000 customers of Austin Energy lost power, the company said. As many as 5,000 homes and businesses in the Dallas area also lost power, according to Oncor Delivery.
As San Antonio resident Johnny Grant surveyed damage to homes in his northwest San Antonio neighborhood on Wednesday, he said of the storm: "It sounded like a freight train to me. It was something terrible.""That's very unusual for this time of year," NWS meteorologist Mark... more
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President of American Gas Association, 1981: “In fact, gas energy — currently America’s largest domestically produced fuel — could prove to be the keystone to solving the nation’s energy crisis by serving as the ‘bridge fuel’ to the next century’s renewable energy technologies.”
VP of AGA, 1988, “refers to natural gas as a bridge fuel — the least harmful alternative while the world looks for other, longer-lasting solutions to the ‘greenhouse’ effect,” the Washington Post reported.
Chair of AGA, 2008: “Natural gas will be the bridge fuel to the future…. The electric industry is expected to turn to natural gas as a bridge until clean coal and nuclear generation are available.”
It’s the longest bridge in history! Heck, the Golden Gate Bridge only took 4 years to build!
The President will be touting natural gas in his State of the Union address tonight, according to sources. Nothing wrong with touting gas — if you also tout a rising carbon price, which the president once did but no longer does.
Way back in June 2009, I pointed out the value of gas in the context of a climate bill with a rising CO2 price — see “Why unconventional natural gas makes the 2020 Waxman-Markey target so damn easy and cheap to meet.” But the key point of that post was that you could put gas in existing, underutilized plants to replace existing coal power cheaply to meet the key 2020 target Obama.
Building lots of new gas plants doesn’t make much sense since we need to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next few decades if we’re to have any chance to avoid catastrophic global warming. We don’t want new gas plants to displace new renewables, like solar and wind, which are going to be the some of the biggest, sustainable job creating industries of the century.
Late last year, some of the leading (center-right) economists in the country — Nicholas Z. Muller, Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus — concluded in a top economic journal that the total damages from natural gas generation exceed its value-added at a low-ball carbon price of $27 per ton! At a price of $65 a ton of carbon, the total damages from natural gas are more than double its value-added!
For the record, stabilizing at 550 ppm atmospheric concentrations of CO2, which would likely still be catastrophic for humanity, would require a price of $330 a metric ton of carbon in 2030, the International Energy Agency (IEA) noted back in 2008.
The fact that natural gas is a bridge fuel to nowhere was in fact, first demonstrated by the IEA in its big June 2011 report on gas — see IEA’s “Golden Age of Gas Scenario” Leads to More Than 6°F Warming and Out-of-Control Climate Change. That study — which had both coal and oil consumption peaking in 2020 — made abundantly clear that if we want to avoid catastrophic warming, we need to start getting off of all fossil fuels.
Then came a remarkable new study by Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) that concluded:
In summary, our results show that the substitution of gas for coal as an energy source results in increased rather than decreased global warming for many decades.
More at the linkPresident of American Gas Association, 1981: “In fact, gas energy —... more
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Former fellow of George Soros’ Open Society and current Stanford University scholar Evgeny Morozov has called on Google and other search engines to become thought crime enforcers, by providing warnings about websites that contain “conspiracy theories” such as the belief, held by a majority of Americans, that global warming is not primarily man-made.
Morozov, whose biography confirms him as a well-connected insider, decries in a Slate piece how the Internet is a useful tool for “People who deny global warming” as well as “the anti-vaccination movement,” calling on Google to provide a “socially responsible curated treatment” that would marginalize such beliefs by amending search results.
His solution is to, “Nudge search engines to take more responsibility for their index and exercise a heavier curatorial control in presenting search results for issues like “global warming” or “vaccination.” Google already has a list of search queries that send most traffic to sites that trade in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories; why not treat them differently than normal queries? Thus, whenever users are presented with search results that are likely to send them to sites run by pseudoscientists or conspiracy theorists, Google may simply display a huge red banner asking users to exercise caution and check a previously generated list of authoritative resources before making up their minds.”
Morozov describes the potential that such a move will be judged as Google “shilling for Big Pharma or for Al Gore” as “a risk worth taking”.
This represents a similar argument to Cass Sunstein’s “cognitive infiltration,” an effort by Obama’s information czar to slap government warnings on controversial websites (including those claiming that exposure to sunlight is healthy). In a widely derided white paper, Sunstein called for political blogs to be forced to include pop ups that show “a quick argument for a competing view”. He also demanded that taxes be levied on dissenting opinions and even suggested that outright bans on certain thoughts should be enforced.
Giving companies like Google, which has grown to virtually become the gatekeeper of the entire Internet itself and is already engaging in SOPA-like acts of censorship, the power to denote which political and scientific positions are acceptable and which are fringe “conspiracy theories” is an insult to free thinking and smacks of Chinese-style thought control.
Morozov’s argument is also completely undermined by the fact that the two so-called fringe “conspiracy theories” he forwards as being in need of Google’s thought crime control, skepticism about global warming and the dangers of vaccines, are views held by millions of Americans and are not “fringe” at all.
According to the most recent polls, less than half of Americans now believe that global warming is caused by human activity, a number that has been slipping for the past several years.
FULL STORY HERE:
http://www.infowars.com/soros-mouthpiece-calls-on-google-to-police-conspiracy-theories/Former fellow of George Soros’ Open Society and current Stanford University... more
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The expected reduction in the Sun's activity will not have a big impact on global temperatures, Met Office research showsA reduction in the Sun's activity is expected this century, but is unlikely to do much to slow global warming due to greenhouse gases, scientists said on Monday.
link:http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/24/sun-changes-global-warmingThe expected reduction in the Sun's activity will not have a big impact on global... more
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UK scientists have detected a huge dome of freshwater that is developing in the western Arctic Ocean.
The bulge is some 8,000 cubic km in size and has risen by about 15cm since 2002.
The team thinks it may be the result of strong winds whipping up a great clockwise current in the northern polar region called the Beaufort Gyre.
This would force the water together, raising sea surface height, the group tells the journal Nature Geoscience.
[snip]
Of interest to future observations is what might happen if the anticyclonic winds, which have been whipping up the bulge, change behaviour.
"What we seen occurring is precisely what the climate models had predicted," said Dr Giles.
"When you have clockwise rotation - the freshwater is stored. If the wind goes the other way - and that has happened in the past - then the freshwater can be pushed to the margins of the Arctic Ocean.
"If the spin-up starts to spin down, the freshwater could be released. It could go to the rest of the Arctic Ocean or even leave the Arctic Ocean."
If the freshwater were to enter the North Atlantic in large volumes, the concern would be that it might disturb the currents that have such a great influence on European weather patterns. These currents draw warm waters up from the tropics, maintaining milder temperatures in winter than would ordinarily be expected at northern European latitudes.
[snip]
The creation of the Beaufort Gyre bulge is not a continuous development throughout the 15-year data-set, and only becomes a dominant feature in the latter half of the study period.
This may indicate a change in the relationship between the wind and the ocean in the Arctic brought about by the recent rapid decline in sea-ice cover, the CPOM team argues in its Nature Geoscience paper.
It is possible that the wind is now imparting momentum to the water in ways that were not possible when the sea-ice was thicker and more extensive.
"The ice is now much freer to move around," said Dr Giles.
"So, as the wind acts on the ice, it's able to pull the water around with it. Depending on how ridged the surface of ice is or how smooth the bottom of the ice is - this will all affect the drag on the water. If you have more leads, this also might provide more vertical ice surfaces for the wind to blow against."
One consequence of less sea-ice in the region is the possibility that winds could now initiate greater mixing of the different layers in the Arctic Ocean.
Scientists are aware that there is a lot of warm water at depth.
At present, this deep water's energy is unable to influence the sea-ice because of a buffer of colder, less dense water lying between it and the floes above.
But if this warm water were made to well up because of wind-driven changes at the surface, it could further accelerate the loss of seasonal ice cover.
(click on the link for the complete article)UK scientists have detected a huge dome of freshwater that is developing in the... more
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An amazing insight into Global Warming and the Artic, by a man who I respect immensely!
Enjoy!An amazing insight into Global Warming and the Artic, by a man who I respect... more
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A westerly storm is expected to engulf the state of Washington, bringing up to 2ft (61cm) of snow, the National Weather Service (NWS) says.
Mountainous areas already hit by a weekend storm will be hardest hit, with areas of Oregon also seeing deep snow.
Seattle officials fear the storm could bring the heaviest snow at the city's airport since 1985.
Travel could become dangerous or impossible in the region, weather forecasters said.
The NWS described the upcoming snow storm as a "classic overrunning scenario" seeing an approaching warm front drawing cool air down from British Columbia, across the border in Canada.
AdvertisementBBC Weather's Laura Tobin gives details of the approaching storm
Most of the Washington lowlands will receive 5-10in (13-25cm) of snow overnight on Tuesday and into Wednesday, the NWS said - equivalent to the city's annual snowfall in one day.
Other forecasters suggested the snow levels could be even higher.A westerly storm is expected to engulf the state of Washington, bringing up to 2ft... more
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For the Washington area, no snow in sight in a winterless winter
This has been a winterless winter, a season that can’t make it past lunchtime without busting out in a springtime melody. Every time cold weather shows up, it catches a flight back north the next day. Snow this year is a thing of myth and legend.
Tuesday was typical of Winter 2012 here: chilly and damp in the morning, but Frisbee weather by mid-afternoon. The calendar insisted, implausibly, that it was Jan. 17.
This is the heart of meteorological winter, experts claim. The coldest period in the Washington area is from Jan. 12 to Jan. 23, according to the National Climatic Data Center’s 30-year “climate normals.”
But abnormality is apparently this year’s normal: The National Weather Service’s outlook shows more of the same snowless weather through the rest of January.
A cold front is blowing into town, and a few snowflakes may make a cameo appearance here and there. At some point there may even be a sighting of the famous “wintry mix.” But by Sunday the mild weather is expected to return.
The snowless winter of 2012 is a national phenomenon. Outside of Alaska (brutally cold and buried in snow), the Pacific Northwest and the Arizona mountains, America is strikingly snow-starved.
In the mid-Atlantic, winter has become a boom-or-bust phenomenon. For two straight years, the Interstate 95 corridor was clobbered by historic snowfalls. The Richmond-to-Philadelphia stretch got it two years ago — including Washington’s Snowmaggedon of Feb. 5, 2010 (32.4 inches of snow at Dulles International Airport) — and then the Philadelphia-to-Boston stretch took the brunt of it last year.
This year, there’s enough moisture around, generally, to produce snow in the East, just not enough cold. This appears to be part of a long-term trend. Snow has become gradually scarcer in the Washington region in recent decades, according to an analysis by Jason Samenow of The Post’s Capital Weather Gang. Average annual snowfall at the region’s three major airports has been declining by roughly an inch per decade, Samenow found.
Blame for this year’s snow deficit can be assigned in layers, from the meteorological to the climatological, from the simple to the complex and on to the speculative.
As always, one must start with the jet stream. The jet stream has gone zonal on us.
“The jet stream has been persistently to our north and in what we call a zonal flow pattern, where it goes pretty much straight west to east instead of having those dips and ridges, those troughs and crests,” said David Robinson, the state climatologist of New Jersey and a professor of geography at Rutgers who specializes in the study of snow cover in North America.
This straight-line jet stream keeps cold air in the frozen north rather than dragging it into the temperate south. Fairbanks, Alaska, had an average January temperature of 25.9 degrees below zero through Jan. 16, which is 18 degrees below the 30-year average. Valdez, Alaska, had recorded 26.5 feet — feet — of snow by Jan. 12.
The jet stream has confounded airlines that ply the North Atlantic airways, with some of the smaller jetliners from Europe forced by headwinds to refuel in Newfoundland on their way to the United States.For the Washington area, no snow in sight in a winterless winter
This has been a... more
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The year 2011 was the tenth warmest year on record for the globe, but the warmest year on record when a La Niña event was present (Ricky Rood has a discussion of this in his lastest post.) Seven nations and one territory broke all-time hottest temperature records.
This is a far cry from 2010 (which tied for the warmest year on record), when twenty nations (plus one UK territory) set all-time hottest temperature records. One all-time coldest temperature record was set in 2011; this was the first time since 2009 one of these records was set. The all-time cold record occurred in Zambia, which ironically also set an all-time hottest temperature record in 2011. Here, then, are the most most notable extreme temperatures globally in 2011, courtesy of weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera:
Hottest temperature in the world in 2011: 53.3°C (127.9°F) in Mitrabah, Kuwait, August 3
Coldest temperature in the world in 2011: -80.2°C (-112.4°F) at Dome Fuji, Antarctica, September 18
Hottest temperature in the Southern Hemisphere: 49.4°C (120.9°F) at Roebourne, Australia, on December 21
Coldest temperature in the Northern Hemisphere: -67.2°C (-89°F) at Summit, Greenland, March 18. This is also the coldest March temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere.
Hottest undisputed 24-hour minimum temperature in world history: A minimum temperature of 41.7°C (107°F) measured at Khasab Airport in Oman on June 27
New country hottest temperature records set in 2011
Iraq recorded its hottest temperature on record on August 3, 2011 in Tallil (Ali military airbase), when the mercury hit 53°C (127.4°F). The previous record was 52.3°C recorded at Diwanya FOB airbase a few days before.
Armenia recorded its hottest temperature on record on July 31 in Meghri, when the mercury hit 43.7°C (110.7°F). The previous record was 43.1°C in Meghri on July 17, 2005.
Iran recorded its hottest temperature in its history on July 28, 2011, when the mercury hit 53°C (127.4°F) at Dehloran. The previous previous record was set just one day earlier at Omidieh and Shoshtar, when the mercury hit 52.6°C (126.6°F). Older hotter temperatures have been measured in Iran using automated stations, but these temperatures have been found to be overestimated.
Kuwait recorded its hottest temperature on record on August 3, 2011, when the mercury hit 53.3°C (127.9°F) at Mitrabah. The previous record was 53.1°C in Sulaibiya on June 15, 2010. The Kuwait Meteorological Center confirmed the reading as authentic, though the temperature sensor had problems between 2009 and July 2010. Some temperatures as high as 53.5°C measured at the Kuwait City Airport during 2011 were in error. The 53.3°C (127.9°F) at Mitrabah thus represents:
1) The hottest temperature measured on Earth in 2011
2) New official national record for Kuwait
3) Second highest (undisputed) temperature ever recorded in Asia
4) Highest temperature ever recorded in an Arabic country
5) Third hottest location in the planet together with Lake Havasu City, AZ (after Death
Valley, CA and Moenjodaro, Pakistan)
6) A new world record for August
China broke its national heat record for both uninhabited and inhabited locations on July 14, 2011, when the temperature soared to 50.2°C (122.4°F) at a automatic station near Adyngkol Lake (just south of Turfan), and 49.4°C (120.9°F) at the town of Tuyoq. A higher reading of 50.7°C at Aydingkol Mirabilite on 23 July 1986 has not been verified as official by the Chinese.
Republic of the Congo set a new all-time extreme heat record on March 8, 2011, when the temperature hit 39.2°C (102.6°F) at M’Pouya. Congo’s previous all-time hottest temperature was 39.0°C (102.2°F) at Impfondo on May 14, 2005.
Zambia set an all-time national heat record of 109.0°F (42.8°C) at Mfuwe, on October 26, 2011, breaking the previous national record of 108.1°F (42.3°C) also set at Mfuwe, on November 17, 2010. A no longer functioning station at Lusitu, Zambia measured a higher temperature in November 1990, but surrounding stations were all about 10°C cooler, so the Lusitu 1990 reading is considered unreliable.
The French Southern and Antarctic Lands Territory tied its all-time hottest temperature record when Europa Island recorded 35.6°C (96.1°F) on November 12, 2011. The previous record was set at Juan de Nova Island on March 31, 1997.
New country coldest temperature records set in 2011
For the first time since 2009, a new national extreme cold temperature record was set.
Zambia set an all-time national cold record of -9°C (16°F) at Choma on June 27, 2011, breaking the previous national record of -8°C (18°F), set on July 10, 1898, at Nalisa Western Province.
Special mention:
Russia had its hottest temperature on record at a regular synoptic reporting staion on July 30, 2011, when the mercury hit 44.3°C (111.7°F) at Divnoe in Russia’s Kalmykia Republic. Three hotter temperatures have been recorded at automated stations: 45.4°C in 2010 at a hydrological station at Utta, plus readings of 45°C at El’ton and 44.5°C at Verhjnky Baskunkak in August 1940.
Weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera is the primary source of the weather records listed here and has worked tremendously hard to research them. He maintains a comprehensive list of extreme temperature records for every nation in the world on his website. If you reproduce this list of extremes, please cite Maximiliano Herrera as the primary source of the weather records.
– Dr. Jeff Masters, in a Wunderblog repostThe year 2011 was the tenth warmest year on record for the globe, but the warmest year... more
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Cass Sunstein wrote a paper in 2008 advocating thought and speech control through goverment enforcement titled Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures.
In it, Sunstein recommends a number of bizarre ways in which the government could "ban conspiracy theories including “infiltrating” social network websites, chat rooms and message boards; called "cognitive infiltration,”
The find comes as a government document reportedly relates the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s command center routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report.
Sunstein said government agents “might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.”
Sunstein defined a conspiracy theory as “an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.”
Some “conspiracy theories” recommended for ban by Sunstein include:
•“Holocaust denial"
•“Anti-Israel sentiments"
•“9/11 Truth"
•“The theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud”
•“The view that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy”
•“The 1996 crash of TWA flight 800 was caused by a U.S. military missile”
•“The Trilateral Commission is responsible for important movements of the international economy”
•“That Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by federal agents”
•“The moon landing was staged and never actually occurred”Cass Sunstein wrote a paper in 2008 advocating thought and speech control through... more
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