Sharing photos, videos, vintage images I've discovered, and -- occasionally -- commentary and thoughts from retired life and travels.

January 2010

Maybe it’s not as bad as they thought

January 31, 2010

More of “Maybe we didn’t get it quite right,” from the science-is-settled crowd.

It seems that part of the “settled science” related to absorption of CO2 by oceans and forests is off the mark – that less CO2 will be absorbed than previously thought, but that the resulting warming will also be less than they thought.

Huh????

An online BBC article says:

image 

The most alarming forecasts of natural systems amplifying the human-induced greenhouse effect may be too high, according to a new report.

The study in Nature confirms that as the planet warms, oceans and forests will absorb proportionally less CO2.

It says this will increase the effects of man-made warming – but much less than recent research has suggested.

The authors warn, though, that their research will not reduce projections of future temperature rises.

Of course, they go on to say that this doesn’t change their concern about anthropogenic global warming man-made climate change.

Read the rest of the BBC article.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

US analyst says UK report misused his study

January 31, 2010

Robert Muir-Wood says that his work was misused in linking severity of weather related disasters by the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, released in October, 2006. According to the UK Times Online:

image 

LORD STERN’S report on climate change, which underpins government policy, has come under fire from a disaster analyst who says the research he contributed was misused.

Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a US-based consultancy, said the Stern report misquoted his work to suggest a firm link between global warming and the frequency and severity of disasters such as floods and hurricanes.

The Stern report, citing Muir-Wood, said: “New analysis based on insurance industry data has shown that weather-related catastrophe losses have increased by 2% each year since the 1970s over and above changes in wealth, inflation and population growth/movement.

Read the rest of the UK Times Online article.

from Wikipedia:

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is a 700-page report released on October 30, 2006 by economist Nicholas Stern for the British government, which discusses the effect of global warming on the world economy. Although not the first economic report on climate change, it is significant as the largest and most widely known and discussed report of its kind.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

IPCC used more sources outside of the peer reviewed scientific literature

January 31, 2010

The newest discovered sources were a student dissertation and a mountaineering magazine article, which were used as the bases for claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops, according to a UK Telegraph article.

image 

The IPCC’s remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.

In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

Read the rest of the UK Telegraph article.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

UN climate chief writes a racy novel

January 31, 2010

As the UN’s Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deals with continuing questions on the accuracies of portions of its fourth assessment report, AR4, and revelations that some information was from non-scientific or non-peer reviewed sources, there comes word that the UNs climate chief, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has written a rather racy romance novel.

According to the UK Telegraph:

image

image image 

Some might even suggest Dr Pachauri’s first novel is frankly smutty.

Return to Almora, published in Dr Pachauri’s native India earlier this month, tells the story of Sanjay Nath, an academic in his 60s reminiscing on his "spiritual journey" through India, Peru and the US.

On the way he encounters, among others, Shirley MacLaine, the actress, who appears as a character in the book. While relations between Sanjay and MacLaine remain platonic, he enjoys sex – a lot of sex – with a lot of women.

In breathless prose that risks making Dr Pachauri, who will be 70 this year, a laughing stock among the serious, high-minded scientists and world leaders with whom he mixes, he details sexual encounter after sexual encounter.

The book, which makes reference to the Kama Sutra, starts promisingly enough as it tells the story of a climate expert with a lament for the denuded mountain slopes of Nainital, in northern India, where deforestation by the timber mafia and politicians has "endangered the fragile ecosystem".

Read the rest of the UK Telegraph article.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Water Lily bud with dragonfly

January 31, 2010

water lily bud and dragon fly, Petir Jean State Park, Arkansas

Lake Bailey, Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas, July 26, 2008

Information: Petit Jean State Park and Petit Jean Mountain

Gallery: Petit Jean State Park and Petit Jean Mountain

See more of our Image Galleries at Haw Creek.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Surface Temperatures – A Question of Policy?

January 30, 2010

What would the implications be if the world’s historical temperature records had been manipulated in a way that results in a warming bias?  A new report shows that this may, in fact, be the case.  At the very best, the January 27, 2010 report, Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?, suggests that global temperature databases are badly flawed and should not be used for the basis for making policy.  Twelve “case studies in data manipulation” are included in the report.

image 

There has clearly been some cyclical warming in recent decades, most notably 1979 to 1998. However, the global surface-station data is seriously compromised. First, there is a major station dropout and increase in missing data in stations that remained which occurred suddenly around 1990; about the time the global warming issue was being elevated to importance in political and environmental circles. A clear bias was found towards removing cooler higher elevation, higher latitude, and rural stations during this culling process though leaving their data in the base periods from which ‘averages’ and anomalies are computed.

The data also suffers contamination by urbanization and other local factors such as land-use/land-cover changes and improper siting. There are uncertainties in ocean temperatures; no small issue, as oceans cover 71% of the earth’s surface.

These factors all lead to significant uncertainty and a tendency for overestimation of century-scale temperature trends. A conclusion from all findings suggest that global data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or rankings or validate model forecasts. And, consequently, such surface data should be ignored for decision making.

The in-depth report was co-authored by Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts for the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI).

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

← Previous Entries