This is absured, but true: Australia’s use of coal and carbon emissions policies are guaranteeing the “destruction of much of the life on the planet”, a leading NASA scientist has written in a letter to Barack Obama. Read more here.
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Care about the Environment? Vote Now.
Those who know me well know that I care deeply about the natural environment and that I can be very competitive.
Learning by Candlelight
As I waited night after night for the electricity to return, candlelight kept teaching me about moving air’s talent for removing heat, hampering any effort to keep warmth “down here” by constantly sending it up and away. Read more here.
Sea-surface Temperatures along the Great Barrier Reef
We’re often told that the sea temperature along the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is increasing and that soon the coral will be bleached and the reef be destroyed. But what’s the real story according to the data?
The USA’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a web page with recent data and maps, along with links to archived data of sea surface temperatures since 1982. The data is matched to grid cells of 1 degree Latitude and 1 degree longitude and from it I extracted the data applying to the GBR Marine Park and calculated the average across the park for each month.
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Global Warming Unlikely Reason for Slow Coral Growth
“Researchers in Australia say the growth of coral on the country’s iconic Great Barrier Reef (GBR) has fallen since 1990 to its lowest rate in 400 years,” variations of this message have been repeated around the world from South Korea to London with global warming, and the associated acidification of oceans, claimed to be the cause.
These reports are repeating claims in an Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) media release made just last Friday to coincide with the publication of research findings in the journal Science [1].
The media release also claimed the research to be “the most comprehensive study to date on calcification rates of GBR corals”.
Having followed GBR issues for many years I was surprised to hear global warming associated with slow coral growth rates, indeed AIMS’s researchers Janice Lough and David Barnes have published detailed studies concluding that coral growth rates increase significantly with an increase in annual average sea surface temperature [2]. Furthermore growth rates actually decrease from north to south along the GBR as this corresponds with a cooling temperature gradient of 2-3 degrees C.
[Read more…] about Global Warming Unlikely Reason for Slow Coral Growth
Beware Thermometer Temperature Data
In the next week/s the institutions responsible for collecting and collating thermometer temperature data will complete their analysis for December 2008 thus enabling a comparison of the entire year with other years typically back to the 1860s.
There will be much discussion about how warm the year 2008 was, relative to other years in Australia, North America, and globally.
While this news will no doubt grab mainstream media headlines it is unlikely there will be any discussion in the same media about how reliable the information actually is.
Meteorologist and blogger, Anthony Watts, has been surveying official weather stations in the US since May 2007 and his findings often make incredible reading. Indeed, many official weather stations are very poorly located – including one beside a barbeque and others immediately above air conditioner exhausts.
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.
