The BBC is being investigated by television watchdogs after a leading climate change sceptic claimed his views were deliberately misrepresented. Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, says he was made to look like a ‘potty peer’ on a TV programme that ‘was a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming’. Read more here.
Archives for September 2008
Carbon Emissions Scaling Record Peaks
A new report by a research consortium called the Global Carbon Project has confirmed that China leapfrogged the United States in 2006 as the world’s biggest carbon emitter and India is heading for third place. The report also claims global greenhouse gas levels are “scaling record peaks”. Read more here.
The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Consensus
“A pervasive myth has taken hold in the public consciousness: That there was a consensus among climate scientists of the 1970s that global cooling or a full-fledged ice age was imminent.”
At least that is according to Thomas Peterson, William Connolley and John Fleck writing in the proceedings of the 20th Conference on Climate Variability and Change, held in New Orleans in January this year. Their paper goes a long way to dispel that myth while at the same time providing a good overview of the development of current global warming theory including key milestones.
It did perhaps all begin with the Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, who in 1896 suggested that by doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide global temperature may rise 5-6C.
The establishment of the station atop Mauna Loa in the Pacific in 1957 was another key event. According to Peterson et al by 1965 this data was sufficient to show an unambiguous trend of increasing carbon dioxide and showed an increase that exceeded Arrthenius’s 70-year old estimate.
By 1967 the first seminal modelling results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Team were published concluding that a doubling of carbon dioxide would raise the temperature by 2C. By 1975 based on new modelling results Wallace Broecker asked “Are we on the brink of pronounced global warming?” in a paper published in the journal Science (Vol 189, pgs 460-463).
So, how did the myth of a consensus on global cooling take hold?
According to Peterson et al, when the myth of the 1970s global cooling scare arise in contemporary discussion, it is not to citations in the scientific literature but to news and media coverage at that time. Furthermore they indicate that contemporary quoting of the media articles is often selective and out of context.
In their survey of the scientific literature from 1965 to 1983 Peterson et al found only seven articles indicating cooling compared to 42 indicating warming.
It is a fascinating little paper, have a read:
http://ams.confex.com/ams/88Annual/techprogram/paper_131047.htm
[link from Luke Walker]
Dying, I’m Not: A Poem from the Murrumbidgee
I begin as a trickle, of melting snowflakes,
High in the mountains as Springtime awakes.
I ooze from the sedges, and springs neath the ground.
Drawn by gravity, it’s downward I’m bound.
I’m one of the elements of antiquity,
The basis of life, I begin clear and free.
It’s water I am, the compound H two O.
They say I am scarce, but it’s really not so.
Most abundant I am on this wonderful earth,
Without me nature, would have been a stillbirth.
As I gurgle along, in my search for the sea,
I’ve been given a name, the Murrunbidgee.
Over rocks past Kiandra, I flow clear and free,
Then I nurture all life in our own A.C.T.
Because that is my votive, my reason for being,
The lifeblood of life, for everything living.
So sing in the rain, but save my runoff,
Lest in the future the rainfall’s far-off.
Though perpetual I am, I’m not here to waste,
For all life depends on my aquatic embrace.
With the Goodradigbee I rest, in old Barren Jack,
Before meandering through our arid outback.
‘Cross the Riverine plains, where for millions of years,
I’ve laid down a profile of rich earth veneers,
Just needing my lifeblood to grow and to bloom,
With the food for this world, before I resume,
My journey to where I’m joined by my brothers
That’s Lachlan and Murray, before nature ushers
Into our fold, the Darling, our sister you see;
For our journey of destiny, to our Mother the sea.
But now I am ailing, but dying I’m not.
So what ailment afflicts me I now hear you ask?
Well believe not those, who all seem to bask,
In the self serving glory of media headlines.
Of pillage and plunder that always maligns,
Those who care most for my health and welfare.
These green charlatans all, who seem not to care,
That I’ve been infected with the terrible cancer,
Of European carp and they have not the answer.
For this ecological disaster that is ailing me so,
Now turbid and muddy, my reed beds don’t grow.
It’s ailing I am, but dying I’m not.
As I flow on to the lake, called Alexandrina.
I hereby refute what is claimed in the media.
My great river gums, are not dead or dying.
Of those who profess this, well frankly they’re lying.
These gnarled old eucalypts, survive without floods.
They’ve done so for decades, on just a few scuds.
It is only Mother Nature, can send floods so great.
That my dry lakes and wet lands begin to gestate,
With a food chain of plenty, that may last for years.
Until drought once again, brings back the tears.
It’s ailing I am, but dying I’m not.
I now join my Mother the source of all life;
I’m cleaned and refreshed, away from lands strife.
Subsumed in the bounteous source of the clouds,
I begin a new journey as one of the shrouds.
Those cumulonimbus, cirrus, strata and all;
We race over the sea and become a snowfall,
On a high mountain pass I softly alight.
As a protective blanket, all fluffy and white.
I begin as a trickle, of melting snowflakes,
I’m now in the Andes as springtime awakes.
Pikey
Murrumbidgee Valley
New South Wales, Australia
Solar Wind At 50-Year Low: NASA
WASHINGTON — Data from the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint NASA-European Space Agency mission, show the sun has reduced its output of solar wind to the lowest levels since accurate readings became available. The sun’s current state could reduce the natural shielding that envelops our solar system.”The sun’s million mile-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system. It influences how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our solar system where it meets the galaxy,” said Dave McComas, Ulysses’ solar wind instrument principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “Ulysses data indicate the solar wind’s global pressure is the lowest we have seen since the beginning of the space age.”
The sun’s solar wind plasma is a stream of charged particles ejected from the sun’s upper atmosphere. The solar wind interacts with every planet in our solar system. It also defines the border between our solar system and interstellar space.
This border, called the heliopause, surrounds our solar system where the solar wind’s strength is no longer great enough to push back the wind of other stars. The region around the heliopause also acts as a shield for our solar system, warding off a significant portion of the cosmic rays outside the galaxy.”Galactic cosmic rays carry with them radiation from other parts of our galaxy,” said Ed Smith, NASA’s Ulysses project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance the heliosphere will diminish in size and strength. If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part of our solar system.”
Galactic cosmic rays are of great interest to NASA. Cosmic rays are linked to engineering decisions for unmanned interplanetary spacecraft and exposure limits for astronauts traveling beyond low-Earth orbit.
In 2007, Ulysses made its third rapid scan of the solar wind and magnetic field from the sun’s south to north pole. When the results were compared with observations from the previous solar cycle, the strength of the solar wind pressure and the magnetic field embedded in the solar wind were found to have decreased by 20 percent. The field strength near the spacecraft has decreased by 36 percent.
“The sun cycles between periods of great activity and lesser activity,” Smith said. “Right now, we are in a period of minimal activity that has stretched on longer than anyone anticipated.”Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment over the sun’s poles. Data Ulysses has returned have forever changed the way scientists view our star and its effects. The venerable spacecraft has lasted more than 18 years, or almost four times its expected mission lifetime. The Ulysses solar wind findings were published in a recent edition of Geophysical Research Letters.
The Ulysses spacecraft was carried into Earth orbit aboard space shuttle Discovery on Oct. 6, 1990. From Earth orbit it was propelled toward Jupiter, passing the planet on Feb. 8, 1992. Jupiter’s immense gravity bent the spacecraft’s flight path downward and away from the plane of the planets’ orbits. This placed Ulysses into a final orbit around the sun that would take it over its north and south poles.
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Researchers at the Danish National Space Centre claim cosmic rays can influence the Earth’s climate through their effect on cloud formation. Earlier this year I reported on a lecture that I attended given by Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen, the Centre’s Director.
Sun Baking on Low: New Data from Solar Probe Ulysses
The solar wind — a stream of charged particles ejected from the sun’s upper atmosphere at 1 million miles per hour — is significantly weaker, cooler and less dense than it has been in 50 years. And for the first time in about a century, the sun went for two months this summer without sunspots, said NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. Read more here.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.