Watts Up With That?

From the Now I’ve Heard Everything department. First it was polar bears, now it is sheep guts.

The Telegraph.co.uk
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent

Haggis is at risk of dying out due to of global warming.

The meat pudding is known to children as a rare tartan creature found only in the Highlands but the rise of the common parasite lung worm, which is thriving due to global warming, is putting it at risk.

Haggis is made from a sheep’s stomach, which is stuffed with oatmeal and minced intestines. But butchers are finding it more and more difficult to get hold of the principle ingredient of sheep’s lung, as so many are infected with lung worm.

Dr Sandy Clark, the vetinary centre manager at the Scottish Agricultural College in Thurso, said the parasite was thriving because it is able to survive in grazing all year round in the warmer climate.

Although lung worm will not necessarily show up in a healthy sheep or affect all the meat, it will make the lungs of the animal unfit for human consumption.

“Lung worm has been at a very low level and did not cause serious problems in sheep but with the changing climate and availability of the parasite it is becoming a problem,” he said.

Read the rest of this entry »

From ABC News, Australia

Astronomers are calling for more funding to watch southern skies, after an asteroid took sky-gazers by surprise and entered the earth’s atmosphere over Africa yesterday.

Yesterday morning astronomers in Arizona reported seeing a tiny asteroid, which they described as a new but routine fast-moving object.

Before long, scientists at the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (MPC) in Massachusetts had calculated the object was likely to pass within one Earth’s radius of the centre of the planet.

That means it would have struck the surface of the Earth if had been big enough.

Gareth Williams, associate director of the MPC, spoke to AM shortly before the asteroid entered the earth’s atmosphere.

“We estimate that it’s about two meters across with a probable range of one to five metres. Something that small will not survive passage through the atmosphere intact,” he predicted. Read the rest of this entry »

GISS (Goddard Institute of Space Studies) Surface Temperature Analysis (GISSTemp) released their monthly global temperature anomaly data for September 2008. Following is the monthly global ∆T from January to September 2008:

Year J  F  M  A  M  J  J  A  S
2007 85 61 59 64 55 53 53 55 50
2008 14 25 62 36 40 29 53 50 49


Here is a plot of the GISSTemp monthly anomaly since January 1979 (keeping in line with the time period displayed for UAH). I have added a simple 12-month moving average displayed in red.

For those astute readers of this blog, you will note how the addition of September data warmed our summer months:


GISS 2008  J  F  M  A  M  J  J  A  S
As of 8/08 14 25 60 42 40 28 50 39 ..
As of 9/08 14 25 62 36 40 29 53 50 49


In other words, when GISS closed the books on August, the summer average (JJA) was 0.39 C. Upon closing the books on September, the summer average increased to 0.44 C.