NOAA deletes an “inconvenient” kids science web page

3 11 2009

Hadley CRU isn’t the only government agency that deletes web content related to climate. NOAA/NWS Southern Region Headquarters has gotten into the act. An interesting thing happened today. NOAA deleted an educational web page about an experiment you can do with CO2.

Ordinarily such a thing would go unnoticed, especially since it doesn’t impact anything particularly important like policy, or climate data. It’s just an experiment for kids in the classroom.

Fortunately, I still had the web page open in my browser. I had been looking at it yesterday, and I had been thinking I might try the experiment myself with a datalogging thermometer, just for fun.

Here’s the web page as it was open in my browser:

SRH_jetstream_CO2_page

click for full size image

And here is what the same URL looks like now: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 143 Comments »

Categories : education, ridiculae

Spencer on Lindzen and Choi climate feedback paper

3 11 2009

Some Comments on the Lindzen and Choi (2009) Feedback Study

by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/erbe/erbssat.gif

The ERBE satellite

I keep getting requests to comment on the recent GRL paper by Lindzen and Choi (2009), who computed how satellite-measured net (solar + infrared) radiation in the tropics varied with surface temperature changes over the 15 year period of record of the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS, 1985-1999).

The ERBS satellite carried the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) which provided our first decadal-time scale record of quasi-global changes in absorbed solar and emitted infrared energy. Such measurements are critical to our understanding of feedbacks in the climate system, and thus to any estimates of how the climate system responds to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

The authors showed that satellite-observed radiation loss by the Earth increased dramatically with warming, often in excess of 6 Watts per sq. meter per degree (6 W m-2 K-1). In stark contrast, all of the computerized climate models they examined did just the opposite, with the atmosphere trapping more radiation with warming rather than releasing more. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 238 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate data

Guardian: Senate to delay climate debate 5 weeks – no deal before Copenhagen

3 11 2009

US puts climate debate on hold for five weeks despite plea by Merkel

• Senate delay means no bill likely before Copenhagen
• German leader makes historic Congress address
• UN Chief says deal in Copenhagen not likely either (VOA News)

Angela Merkel adresses Congress on Capitol Hill, Washington DC, USA, 3 Nov 2009

Merkel delivers remarks to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill, Washington DC, USA, 03 Nov 2009. Photograph: Rainer Jensen/EPA

Chancellor of Germany Angela

by Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Damian Carrington in UK

International negotiators lost one of the key elements to a successful deal on global warming today after Democratic leaders in the US Congress ruled out passing a climate change law before 2010. In the latest obstacle on the road to the UN summit in Copenhagen next month, Senate leaders ordered a five-week pause to review the costs of the legislation.

The delay, which would push a Senate vote on a climate change bill into next year, frustrates a last-minute push by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to get America to commit itself at home to cut greenhouse gas emissions before the Copenhagen meeting. World leaders – and US officials – have repeatedly said US legislation is crucial to a deal on global warming. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 90 Comments »

Categories : politics

Big crack in Ethiopia: beachfront property soon to be available

3 11 2009

I’m sure we’ll see some emails from beachfront land speculators in Nigeria and Ethiopia soon.

On the serious side, University of Rochester researchers have found evidence that Earth, doing what it darn well pleases despite our protestations, is making a new ocean in the African desert.

Ethiopian_rift

click for very large image (2.4MB)

African Desert Rift Confirmed as New Ocean in the Making

Geologists Show that Seafloor Dynamics Are at Work in Splitting African Continent

In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial.

Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world’s oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea.

The new study, published in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that the highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of little by little as has been predominantly believed. In addition, such sudden large-scale events on land pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events, says Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 108 Comments »

Categories : earth

Report: Climate confidence falls worldwide

3 11 2009

A survey report titled Climate Confidence Monitor commissioned in part by the Earthwatch Institute, World Wildlife Fund, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute shows that confidence that we can actually manage climate change has been falling for the last two years in most countries:

Climate_confidence_graph

Click to enlarge

The question was: “I believe we will stop climate change”.

They cite in the report:

A fall in optimism and low levels of confidence in leaders suggest that people are becoming more pessimistic about the scale of the challenge that climate change presents.

I suppose that is one way to spin it. Here’s some other findings from the report. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 84 Comments »

Categories : Opinion, climate_change