Bubkes II – RC’s “rush hour”

2 07 2009

Like Waxman-Markey, where 300+ pages get added at 3:09AM that nobody has time to read or fully evaluate, Real Climate gets on the “hurry up bandwagon” in regards to climate change perception. Dr. Pielke takes them to task again. I ask “What’s the rush?” – Anthony

With sincere apologies to "Big Daddy" Roth

With sincere apologies to "Big Daddy" Roth

Response By Roger A. Pielke Sr. To The Real Climate Weblog “More Bubkes”

Filed under: Climate Science Misconceptions, Climate Science Reporting — Roger Pielke Sr. @ 9:11 am

Real Climate has posted a response titled “More bubkes” to my weblog of July 30 2009 titled  Real Climate’s Misinformation. First, it is clear they are (deliberately?) misinterpreting what I wrote on the weblog. Embedded in the personal attack comments that Real Climate permits be posted, there are several that recognize that the error in the original Real Climate post was their statement

”Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago”.

As I documented in my weblog of June 30 2009, their statement is clearly and documentably false (and is not a “wild allegation”).

They present a set of observational evidence regarding the longer term trends, and I have no disagreement with them on this. Indeed, in the past I posted a weblog that supported the retrospective skill of the GISS model in simulating upper ocean heat content increases at least until the last few years;

Comparison of Model and Observations Of Upper Ocean Heat Content.

I wrote in that weblog Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 134 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, fun_stuff, politics

Quote of the Week #11

21 06 2009

hydracable

Our QOTW comes from the newly minted Wikipedia page of the late, great Dr. Jack Eddy. Jack had a way with words, he liked them immensely and wielded them in ways that were not only profound but entertaining.

As a person who has worked on all sorts of meteorological and TV broadcast electronics systems in my career, this one quote from Dr. Eddy really hit home for me, and I think many of our readers will get the same great laugh and flash of understanding that I did from it. Then, you’ll understand the image I rendered above. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 32 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff, solar

Global cooling – hail to the chief!

21 06 2009

“He’ll stop the globe from getting warm; fuel your car with nuts and corn”
(h/t to Tom Nelson)

The link for the YouTube video is below. It is very well done. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 59 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff, politics

Getting crabby – another missing NASA GISS station found, thanks to a TV show

20 06 2009
Deadliest_catch

Gavin should watch this show - he might find his missing weather station

A couple of days ago, I located the “long lost” Honolulu Observatory GISS weather station on the Island of Oahu with just a couple of hours of digging. That one apparently got “lost” because the station name changed, and the inter-agency communications seemed to be the cause, and nobody at GISS bothered to look to see if there was still current data coming from the station.

Today I found one in under 5 minutes. I wasn’t even planning on looking for one, it happened by accident. I was watching the Discovery Channel TV show this afternoon “Deadliest Catch” where crab fishermen brave the worst imaginable weather to keep crab shacks running nationwide. They are based out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

While watching a scene where they were coming into the docks, I saw an ever so brief flash of what looked like a Stevenson Screen off in the distance near the docks. I hadn’t expected to see one and I wasn’t 100% sure, but I thought I’d check NCDC’s metadatabase (MMS) for Dutch Harbor, AK. Sure enough, they have a COOP station there with a Stevenson Screen there that is “current”. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 145 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff, weather_stations

Tom Nelson makes me laugh

13 06 2009

I busted out laughing when I saw this on Tom Nelson’s blog.

His title was “For climate hucksters, two inconvenient Google trends”.

I never think about this sort of stuff, but it was darn funny.


Comments : 51 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff

Mars Today widget now on WUWT

10 06 2009
click for larger image

click for larger image

In the discussion thread about CO2 and Antarctic cold, some references to CO2 ice in the ice caps of Mars were part of that discussion.

WUWT reader Lou Mackenzie sends word that we can now watch Mars ice caps and many other things ongoing with the planet with a  new NASA widget. You’ll find it now at the lower right on the WUWT widget panel.

Here are the details:

Mars Today, created by Howard Houben of the Mars Global Circulation Model Group, is a poster produced daily by the Center for Mars Exploration at NASA’s Ames Research Center. The updated poster depicts current conditions on Mars and its relationship to Earth in six panels. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 43 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff, space

Divining images in the clouds

31 05 2009

Everyone see things in the clouds. People, animals, Christ on the cross,  UFO’s, angels, and even schizophrenically imagined chemical attacks by contrails. You name it, somebody has seen it. So when I was prodded with a news item that said “new cloud type defined” I was thinking “uh oh, here we go again”. It is a lot like cyclomania, as humans tend to assign patterns to randomly ordered observations of nature. Looking for meanings in the clouds isn’t much different than looking for meanings in the alignments of the stars and planets.

From ChattahBox and The UK Telegraph:

Click for a larger image

(ChattahBox)—Meteorologists around the world have taken notice of a new storm cloud on the horizon, literally. And if they have their way the dark and choppy cloud will take its rightful place among its more famous cousins, cumulus, cumulus, cirrus and nimbus.

Cloud gazing Meteorologists first noticed the stormy and billowy formation floating over the Scottish Highlands and above Snowdonia, Wales. The unique gray storm cloud was also spotted over Australia, the cornfields of Iowa and high above the Arctic Sea off the coast of Greenland.

A group in England dedicated to cloud watching, the Cloud Appreciation Society, became quite excited when viewing numerous photos of the new storm cloud floating in the atmosphere.

The Cloud appreciators describe the cloud as “…a bit like looking at the surface of a choppy sea from below,” said Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, and the first man to identify the new cloud. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 86 Comments »

Categories : earth, fun_stuff, weather

Guess the Weather Station City and Country

25 05 2009

You may have noticed that I have been absent from WUWT for a few days. The stories have been on scheduled automated posting, and the WUWT team of moderators has held down the fort (thank you).

The reason is that I have been traveling on business. While I was traveling I was invited to photograph the weather station at what I think is probably the most visually stunning and technologically advanced meteorology center in the world today:

mystery_weather_station

Can you guess what city and country this is in?

Hints below.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 90 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff, weather_stations

Roll ‘em Roll ‘em Roll ‘em…keep that snow a rollin!

20 05 2009

Some of our younger readers may not get the title, and may never have seen a TV show in black and white. The answer is at the end of the article. Here’s an interesting weather phenomenon on the prairie – snow rollers!

From the NWS in Spokane, WA

(h/t to Mike D)

Snow Rollers on the Camas Prairie

March 31 2009

On the evening of March 31st, 2009, Tim Tevebaugh was driving home from work east of Craigmont in the southern Idaho Panhandle (see map below). Across the rolling hay fields, Tim saw a very unusual phenomenon. The snow rollers that he took pictures of are extremely rare because of the unique combination of snow, wind, temperature and moisture needed to create them. They form with light but sticky snow and strong (but not too strong) winds. Some snow rollers are formed by gravity (i.e. rolling down a hill), but in this case, the snow rollers were generated by the wind.

These snow rollers formed during the day as they weren’t present in the morning on Tim’s drive to work.

Based on estimations from Tim as well as the blades of grass in the picture, most of the snow rollers were about 18″ in height, while the largest rollers were about 2 feet tall.

Click on the thumbnails below for a full-size image.

Snow Rollers - Click for larger image Snow Rollers - Click for larger image

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 63 Comments »

Categories : Science, fun_stuff, weather

New Honda Hybrid: “to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer”

19 05 2009

http://img.alibaba.com/photo/10245424/Table_Top_Meat_Slicer_Ham_Slicer_.jpgDon’t get me wrong, I like new technology, and improved fuel economy too, but I just had to show this auto review excerpt from the Sunday Times because, well, it’s just so darn funny.

BTW to the potential hate mail senders, I drive an electric car myself to/from work most days. It costs me about five cents a mile to operate.

Sure, with any combo gas-electric technology, you likely won’t get the same performance, but I don’t have these sorts of problems alluded to in the article. – Anthony

(h/t to Kate at SDA)

Times Online Logo 222 x 25

From The Sunday Times
May 17, 2009
Jeremy Clarkson

Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid


Honda Insight

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days.So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place.

So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.

The biggest problem, and it’s taken me a while to work this out, because all the other problems are so vast and so cancerous, is the gearbox. For reasons known only to itself, Honda has fitted the Insight with something called constantly variable transmission (CVT).

It doesn’t work. Put your foot down in a normal car and the revs climb in tandem with the speed. In a CVT car, the revs spool up quickly and then the speed rises to match them. It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.

And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 212 Comments »

Categories : Technology, fun_stuff

Caption this photo

12 05 2009

Roo_snow

WUWT reader David Summers sends this photo along taken a few days ago in 2007 in Australia from a colleague that “returned there for the summer”. I thought it might make a fun photo caption exercise.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 220 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff

Quote of the week #7

11 05 2009

qotw_cropped

Image from WUWT reader “Boudu”

WUWT commenter “philincalifornia” writes about Lockwood’s comment in National Geographic about the state of our sun and predictions of a quiet period and possibly a cooling trend, but adds an interesting twist: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 46 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff

Quote of the Week #6

3 05 2009

qotw_cropped

Image from WUWT reader “Boudu”

Speaking about Australia and Kevin Rudd’s turnabout in delaying a carbon trading scheme, this quote from WUWT commenter “hareynolds” comes to mind:

In this case, we’ve apparently had a global genocide of common sense, with the last remaining bits taking up residence in Australia. I guess that’s why it’s God’s Country.

True dat.


Comments : 43 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff

WUWT Poll: What should we call the current solar minimum?

22 04 2009

Solar state: cue ball quiet

Although we’ve been covering this quiet sun issue for over a year on WUWT, the light bulb seems to have gone on for mainstream media right about now.

There is growing press coverage about the current state of the sun, most recently from Charles Osgood of CBS News as well as the BBC and other major outlets. While the sun slumbers deeper and has missed its cyclic snooze alarm, our media is finally waking up to the solar somnolence.

Here is a short roundup of news articles on this subject today:

‘Still Sun’ baffling astronomers

Scientists warn sun has dimmed

Sun ‘at its quietest for 100 years’

Has the sun gone in? Earth’s closest star ‘dimmest it’s been for a century’

So the question arises, now that this has been identified, what should we call it? Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 543 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff, solar

Quote of the week #4

19 04 2009
qotw_cropped

Image from WUWT reader “Boudu”

This QOTW is from Pen Hadow, leader of the now farcical Catlin Arctic Ice Survey:

“It’s never wise to imagine that either man or technology has the upper hand in the natural world.”

That’s probably the only true statement  published from the expedition. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 62 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff

Quote of the Week #2

5 04 2009

From “Pragmatic”, on the Lindzen on negative feedback thread:

“What most alarmists don’t seem to fathom is that real people want balance in their decision/learning process. Balance arrives on the wings of debate.”

Art By Geoff Sharp, other artwork submissions will also be used on a rotating basis, thanks to all who submitted. – Anthony


Comments : 33 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff

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