What Does it Take to Be a Science Expert?

Source : Daily Mail

Parents, please encourage your children to become “science experts.”  The perks are excellent – prestige, travel, publicity, conferences – your fifteen minutes of fame.  And all you have to do is make bigger claims than the last expert.

Here are a few favorite gems :

March 10, 2006: It’s official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet.

This week researchers announced that a storm is coming–the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). “The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one,” she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10mar_stormwarning.htm

Dec. 21, 2006: Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one.

see captionSolar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 “looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. He and colleague Robert Wilson presented this conclusion last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/21dec_cycle24.htm

OSLO, Feb. 29, 2008 (Xinhua) — The polar cap in the Arctic may well disappear this summer due to the global warming, Dr. Olav Orheim, head of the Norwegian International Polar Year Secretariat, said on Friday.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/01/content_7696460.htm

27-Aug-2007

Will oceans surge 59 centimetres this century – or 25 metres?

When Al Gore predicted that climate change could lead to a 20-foot rise in sea levels, critics called him alarmist. After all, the International Panel on Climate Change, which receives input from top scientists, estimates surges of only 18 to 59 centimetres in the next century.  But a study led by James Hansen, the head of the climate science program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a professor at Columbia University, suggests that current estimates for how high the seas could rise are way off the mark – and that in the next 100 years melting ice could sink cities in the United States to Bangladesh

http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/news_repository/will-oceans-surge-59-centimetres-this-century-or-25-metres

Glaciers on Snowdon’ warning by climate expert

Jan 12 2010 by Rhodri Clark, Western Mail

THIS winter’s prolonged cold spell could be a taste of things to come for Wales – with glaciers a possibility within 40 years. That’s the chilly message from a leading Welsh climate expert who has warned that global warming could paradoxically trigger a collapse in temperatures in western Europe.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2010/01/12/glaciers-on-snowdon-warning-by-climate-expert-91466-25576951/

The Cooling World

Newsweek, April 28, 1975

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm

Proof of life on Mars by year-end, says NASA expert

According to David McKay, chief of astrobiology at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, the fact that Mars has bred life will be confirmed this year and the historic discovery will not be made on the Mars, but here on Earth using the chunks of the red planet.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/471015_Proof-of-life-on-Mars-by-year-end–says-NASA-expert

4 January 2007

2007 is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998, say climate-change experts at the Met Office. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2007/pr20070104.html

Hot summer on the way, predicts Met

Britain set to enjoy another sizzling summer after new evidence from the Met Office suggested above average temperatures for the season. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/apr/08/weather.theobserver

Climate could warm to record levels in 2010

10 December 2009

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091210b.html

From The Sunday Times  January 10, 2010

“This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/dominic_lawson/article6982310.ece

Jan, 2008

Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, even, you know, regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal powered plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydqg7ThZB04

November, 2009 GORE: It definitely is, and it’s a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy – when they think about it at all – in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, ’cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot …

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/11/18/al-gore-earths-interior-extremely-hot-several-million-degrees

Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past Monday, 20 March 2000  According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.  “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

1998 Was Warmest Year Of Millenium, Climate Researchers Report ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 1999) — WASHINGTON, D.C. — Researchers at the Universities of Massachusetts and Arizona who study global warming have released a report strongly suggesting that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium, with 1998 the warmest year so far. Researchers have also found that the warming in the 20th century counters a 1,000-year-long cooling trend. The study, by Michael Mann and Raymond Bradley of the University of Massachusetts and Malcolm Hughes of the University of Arizona, appears in the March 15 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union. The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/03/990304052546.htm

December 14, 2008 “The time for delay is over; the time for denial is over,” Obama said on Tuesday after meeting with former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. “We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/14/obamas-global-warming-cha_n_150947.html

March 24, 2006 London ‘under water by 2100’ as Antarctica crumbles into the sea http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article694819.ece

February 20th, 1969

NYT: Expert Says Arctic Ocean Will Soon Be an Open Sea http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/24/nyt-expert-says-arctic-ocean-will-soon-be-an-open-sea/

Arctic Ice Cap to Become an Open Sea in 10 years Oct 14, 2009 http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/280517

What are some of the reader’s favorites?

h/t to Steve Goddard