From the NOAA “Oceans and Human Health Initiative” website and press release, comes this warning that the algae, Moroccan dust, desertification, bacteria, bad seafood, heavy rainfall, old sewers, climate change is gonna get ya.
Climate projections show human health impacts possible within 30 years
New studies demonstrate potential increases in waterborne toxins and microbes
A panel of scientists speaking today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) unveiled new research and models demonstrating how climate change could increase exposure and risk of human illness originating from ocean, coastal and Great Lakes ecosystems, with some studies projecting impacts to be felt within 30 years.
“With 2010 the wettest year on record and third warmest for sea surface temperatures, NOAA and our partners are working to uncover how a changing climate can affect our health and our prosperity,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “These studies and others like it will better equip officials with the necessary information and tools they need to prepare for and prevent risks associated with changing oceans and coasts.”
In several studies funded by NOAA’s Oceans and Human Health Initiative, findings shed light on how complex interactions and climate change alterations in sea, land and sky make ocean and freshwater environments more susceptible to toxic algal blooms and proliferation of harmful microbes and bacteria.
Climate change could prolong toxic algal outbreaks by 2040 or sooner
Using cutting-edge technologies to model future ocean and weather patterns, Stephanie Moore, Ph.D., with NOAA’s West Coast Center for Oceans and Human Health and her partners at the University of Washington, are predicting longer seasons of harmful algal bloom outbreaks in Washington State’s Puget Sound.
The team looked at blooms of Alexandrium catenella, more commonly known as “red tide,” which produces saxitoxin, a poison that can accumulate in shellfish. If consumed by humans, it can cause gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms including vomiting and muscle paralysis or even death in extreme cases.
Longer harmful algal bloom seasons could translate to more days the shellfish fishery is closed, threatening the vitality of the $108 million shellfish industry in Washington state.
“Changes in the harmful algal bloom season appear to be imminent and we expect a significant increase in Puget Sound and similar at-risk environments within 30 years, possibly by the next decade,” said Moore. “Our projections indicate that by the end of the 21st century, blooms may begin up to two months earlier in the year and persist for one month later compared to the present-day time period of July to October.”
Natural climate variability also plays a role in the length of the bloom season from one year to the next. Thus, in any single year, the change in bloom season could be more or less severe than implied by the long-term warming trend from climate change.
Moore and the research team indicate that the extended lead time offered by these projections will allow managers to put mitigation measures in place and sharpen their targets for monitoring to more quickly and effectively open and close shellfish beds instead of issuing a blanket closure for a larger swath of coast or be caught off guard by an unexpected bloom. The same model can be applied to other coastal areas around the world increasingly affected by harmful algal blooms and improve protection of human health against toxic outbreaks.
More atmospheric dust from global desertification could lead to increases of harmful bacteria in oceans, seafood
Researchers at the University of Georgia, a NOAA Oceans and Human Health Initiative Consortium for Graduate Training site, looked at how global desertification — and the resulting increase in atmospheric dust based on some climate change scenarios — could fuel the presence of harmful bacteria in the ocean and seafood.
Desert dust deposition from the atmosphere is considered one of the main contributors of iron in the ocean, has increased over the last 30 years and is expected to rise based on precipitation trends in western Africa. Iron is limited in ocean environments and is essential to most forms of life. In a study conducted in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey, Erin Lipp, Ph.D. and graduate student Jason Westrich demonstrated that the sole addition of desert dust and its associated iron into seawater significantly stimulates growth and persistence of Vibrios, a group of ocean bacteria that occur worldwide and can cause gastroenteritis and infectious diseases in humans.
“Within 24 hours of mixing weathered desert dust from Morocco with seawater samples, we saw a 10-1000-fold growth in Vibrios, including one strain that could cause eye, ear, and open wound infections, and another strain that could cause cholera ,” said Lipp. “Our next round of experiments will examine the response of the strains associated with seafood-related infections.”
Since 1996 Vibrio cases have jumped 85 percent in the United States based on reports that primarily track seafood-illnesses. It is possible this additional input of iron, along with rising sea surface temperatures, will affect these bacterial populations and may help to explain both current and future increases in human illnesses from exposure to contaminated seafood and seawater.
Increased rainfall and dated sewers could affect water quality in Great Lakes
A changing climate with more rainstorms on the horizon could increase the risk of overflows of dated sewage systems, causing the release of disease-causing bacteria, viruses and protozoa into drinking water and onto beaches. In the past 10 years there have been more severe storms that trigger overflows. While there is some question whether this is due to natural variability or to climate change, these events provide another example as to how vulnerable urban areas are to climate.
Using fine-tuned climate models developed for Wisconsin, Sandra McLellan, Ph.D., at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences, found spring rains are expected to increase in the next 50 years and areas with dated sewer systems are more likely to overflow because the ground is frozen and rainwater can’t be absorbed. As little as 1.7 inches of rain in 24 hours can cause an overflow in spring and the combination of increased temperatures — changing snowfall to rainfall and increased precipitation — can act synergistically to magnify the impact.
McLellan and colleagues showed that under worst case scenarios there could be an average 20 percent increase in volume of overflows, and they expect the overflows to last longer. In Milwaukee, infrastructure investments have reduced sewage overflows to an average of three times per year, but other cities around the Great Lakes still experience overflows up to 40 times per year.
“Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on urban infrastructure, and these investments need to be directed to problems that have the largest impact on our water quality,” said McLellan. “Our research can shed light on this dilemma for cities with aging sewer systems throughout the Great Lakes and even around the world.”
“Understanding climate change on a local level and what it means to county beach managers or water quality safety officers has been a struggle,” said Juli Trtanj, director of NOAA’s Oceans and Human Health Initiative and co-author of the interagency report A Human Health Perspective on Climate Change. “These new studies and models enable managers to better cope and prepare for real and anticipated changes in their cities, and keep their citizens, seafood and economy safe.”
On the Web:
Image Gallery: http://oceansandhumanhealth.noaa.gov/multimedia/ohh-climate.html
NOAA’s Oceans and Human Health Initiative: http://oceansandhumanhealth.noaa.gov
Georgia Oceans and Human Health Initiative at the University of Georgia: http://www.georgiaoceansandhealth.org
University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences: http://www4.uwm.edu/freshwater
I suspect the managers and water quality officers referred to can best prepare for the future by ignoring the modelling or by learning a useful trade. Get a job appears to be the most intelligent response to these tuners of models at the late great NOAA.
Being a non-scientist, maybe it’s just my imagination, but it seems like this new “advancement” in climate studies is a bit like a first year med student who, after reading textbooks, suddenly begins to develop symptoms of the diseases he/she studies. Suddenly, everything is trying to kill us (like it wasn’t trying to before computer models). Truly a fine example of “ignorance is bliss” … or perhaps “beware the person who has read but one book”. It just seems odd that there is never, ever, any good news from these people…
“More atmospheric dust from global desertification could lead to increases of harmful bacteria in oceans, seafood”
“Increased rainfall and dated sewers could affect water quality in Great Lakes”
How can we have GLOBAL DESERTIFICATION with INCREASED RAINFALL?
“In several studies funded by NOAA’s Oceans and Human Health Initiative, findings shed light on how complex interactions and climate change alterations in sea, land and SKY make ocean and freshwater environments more susceptible to toxic algal blooms and proliferation of harmful microbes and bacteria.”
Now we’re changing the SKY with our CO2 emissions?
Sarcasm = ON
Forgive me if I don’t get excited and run around crying, “It’s the end of the world!!!”
The ozone layer has gone away, Killer Bees are attacking, the Y2K Bug shut down all computers, swine flu has killed off almost everyone, and bird flu will get the rest. For those who survive this massive holocaust, GLOBAL WARMING will fry us to a crisp…
Sarcasm = OFF
I’m reminded of the story of, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. It seems like everything you turn around someone is crying that something horrible is about to happen.
Bob Diaz
My local High School did a similar experiment about 6 years ago. E. Coli. Postulated identically. They found out that 15 feet from shore out of a discharge of heavily contaminated water….yes, 15′, the bacteria had dispersed to an insignificant extent was being heartily EATEN by salt water forms that relished the taste. The local Board of Health was so impressed that they actually replicated the study, confirmed it, and told every one they were relieved.
Some interesting thoughts on Jane Lubchenco:
0:53 video with Joseph D’Aleo
So once again we hear our models predict that x will happen but they also say that if it doesn’t they are still right,
I have come to the conclusion that all of these learned doctors watched too many 70’s disaster movies….
‘Fess up. Are you going to reduce you[r] eating of seafood because of this report?
I live in the country. I get my drinking water from a shallow bore, full of lovely water full of campylobacter (Campylobacter causes 5-11 percent of all diarrhea in the United States). So I installed a filtration plant and ultraviolet cooking tube which gives those bad boys a nasty suntan. Of course, must have cheap electricity to run said plant. Luckily, my power comes from hydro – reliable, cheap and ‘sustainable’ (as long as the dam doesn’t break). So here’s a clue – provide everyone with cheap, reliable, sustainable power and problem solved! Instead of taxing everyone for energy, just make it more available and cheaper. It’s called Ad-Dapt-Tay-Shin. (If in fact there really is any increased risk).
– Seems like reason enough for House Republicans to cut funding for NOAA’s so-called “climate science” and its fruitless attempt to demonstrate global warming is something we should worry about. What a bunch of hot air.
They say we should worry about air-borne dust putting iron into the ocean.
In the past 20 years they have intentionally done numerous iron fertilization experiments covering 100s of sq. km. with iron dust in an attempt to remove co2 from the atmosphere. Who comes up with these ideas, Larry, Curly, or Moe?
Climate *always* changes and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
In fact, we have been doing detailed weather recording for such a short period of time that we have no idea of the bounds of natural variability. We do know, however, that climate can change from cold regimes to warm regimes in *very* short periods of time. The changes from MWP to LIA back to modern warm period happened over a very short period of time
Basing any policy decisions on what amounts to no data and a lot of hypothetical speculation is bad juju.
SJB kinda beat me to it, but:
Because of global warming 2010 was the wettest year ever
So we should be preparing for global desertification?
Rain causes deserts?
Followed by claiming that increased rainfall might overflow old sewer systems in the spring because the ground would still be frozen and unable to absorb the water.
So global warming increases rainfall and desertification, and causes earlier spring times so that the extra rain (the stuff that causes deserts) causes flooding because the only thing the global warming didn’t do in this study is make the globe warmer, which is why spring rains come earlier but the ground is still frozen as long as it was before.
Good thing we have top notch scientists working on this stuff because it really is counter intuitive.
Now about the iron. Have I got this right? The global warming causes increased precipitation which results in increased desertification, which results in more dust containing iron in the air from which it is scrubbed by the increased precipitation into the oceans by all the extra rain that causes deserts. This is thought to be bad because the extra iron in the oceans causes almost everything to grow, but if you do an experiment in the lab with only algae it makes the algae grow a lot. And everyone knows that algae in a petri dish with nothing else grows just the same as algae in the ocean surrounded by stuff that eats it. Like I said, counter intuitive.
Of course I wonder also why that very fine iron dust lands in sea water and doesn’t cause those reactions that extract CO2 and SO2 like they do in the lab. Is Morrocon iron dust more selective? Or maybe the CO2 the iron would normally react with isn’t there anymore because of global warming? That’s it! The global warming must have3 frozen the CO2 as well. Probably causes spontaneous fire extinguisher production.
Dr. McLellan may share with us the municipalities likely to suffer overflow conditions resulting in release of sewage into the Great Lakes. Are we dealing with small municipalities or large cities? Baring multiple very large municipalities dumping sewage the Great Lakes have a significant cleansing mechanism, it flows to the Atlantic Ocean in large volumes. Image: Niagra Falls and Horseshoe Falls. Zebra mussels cleared Eastern Lake Erie of algae and restored a fishing habitat. Before sewage regulations, all major cities and almost every shoreline municipalities dumped their sewage into the Great Lakes. Unless there is quantification of the excess rainfall that will not be handled by current municipalities, all that was speculated from modeling is still speculation, guess work, and plainly an expression of ignorance. The Great Lakes are a complex ecosystem. Adding more water to this fresh water reservoir will raise water levels to…. maybe 1986 levels. Or maybe there will be drought in which case the low water mark is 1964. Hmmmm. It seems that the Great Lakes has the ability to handle both large volumes of excess water as well as displaying a resilience in drought. Maybe Dr. McLellan just should label her work: “Speculative speculations on a non-established climate projection.” At least it would be honest; not interesting, but at least honest.
“A changing climate with more rainstorms on the horizon could increase the risk of overflows of dated sewage systems…”
OK, so here’s the deal… we don’t fix a few old pipes because of this prediction… oh, no. We fix the climate. Because we know soooo much more about fixing climate than pipes!
Madness…
Calamity Jane carved her niche by decrying marine “dead zones”. Now the problem is an abundance of life in the oceans. Both caused by gloooobal waaarming! And the identical default solution to both conflicting (imaginary) phenomena? More taxes of course!
Perhaps she should be remonikered “Broken Record” Jane.
Increased desertification? Are we seeing deserts expand around the world? Er..Nope! The computer models(runes) predict rising temps which the CAGW theology dictates will lead to more deserts, an IPCC prediction which has failed to materialize.
Not long ago the plan by the CAGW cult was to add iron to the oceans, this plan was pimped for several years as humanitys saviour, just another stupid mistake to add to the list with the research money utterly wasted.
Lets examine why so many stupid blunders and errors are made by the newest addition to the cult of stupid, here are some pointers:
“Understanding climate change on a local level and what it means to county beach managers or water quality safety officers has been a struggle,” said Juli Trtanj, director of NOAA’s Oceans and Human Health Initiative and co-author of the interagency report A Human Health Perspective on Climate Change. “These new studies and models enable managers to better cope and prepare for real and anticipated changes in their cities, and keep their citizens, seafood and economy safe.”
Understanding climate change at a local level has been a challenge has it? Natural climate change is easy to understand, it changes and historical records give a perfect road map and guide in how to deal with it and plan ahead for it.
The blunder begins when NOAA disregards historical wisdom and tries to impose its CAGW theology in the form of guidance and planning doctrines handed down to local planning and executive level, in effect orders are coming down the chain of command that have no value whatsoever. What you see is an ever increasing load of ill thought out gibberish and contradictory advice coming down the line to front line services who then rush about tying themselves into knots trying to execute this incoherent insanity.
There is a very good reason why the NOOA gang are struggling so much, their doctrines and models and ideas and theology are wholly wrong so any fix based on them will be wrong.
Of course the studies and models will be wrong, they will offer the wrong advice at the wrong time to the people who should do the opposite. Advice and planning guidance from NOAA? Anyone taking their gibberish on board will fail utterly in anything they try. The grand sounding title hides a sin of gigantic proportions, the basis of their entire report is to enshrine and enact CAGW cult ideology and theology in every part of the public administrative machine. The doctrines are wrong, the theories are wrong, the models are wrong, the subsequent strategic and tactical planning will be wrong. Far from enabling managers reports like this are going to set in motion a long term chain of events that have the capacity to cause immense and lasting damage.
NOAA is trying to lead the USA in the wrong direction and if they continue to be allowed to pump out their ill advised ill thought out contradictory nonsense they will hurt a great many people. the stupidity of the statement below needs to be fully examined.
“These new studies and models enable managers to better cope and prepare for real and anticipated changes in their cities, and keep their citizens, seafood and economy safe.”
Translation needed I think?
These new studies and models will confuse and confound and bamboozle managers so they will not be able to cope and prepare for actual and real changes in their cities and cause untold misery to their citizens, damage their seafood and smash their economy.
The plot of bacterial growth shows just how bad these scientists are. The “no dust” run showed no growth at all. Now, these bacteria are presumably capable of growth (an unusual life form that isn’t) so the “no dust” run was apparently under conditions which inhibit growth (the simplest would be lack of nutrients). Dust contains lots of things including, it seems, some essential nutrients.
U. of Washington used “cutting-edge technologies” in their study. In my experience that generally means, still buggy, but we have to get it out the door to meet the schedule.
U. of Wisconsin used “fine-tuned climate models” in their study. What did they do? Keep tuning the parameters until the researchers thought the results looked fine?
“Understanding climate change on a local level and what it means to county beach managers or water quality safety officers has been a struggle,” said Juli Trtanj, director of NOAA’s Oceans and Human Health Initiative and co-author of the interagency report A Human Health Perspective on Climate Change. “These new studies and models enable managers to better cope and prepare for real and anticipated changes in their cities, and keep their citizens, seafood and economy safe.”
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YUCK. If it were’t so pitiful….it would be actually funny.
Sounds alot like “NOAA understands and predicts the blah blah blah”.
Since when has it become OK for a publicly-funded bureaucrat….to have a private-funded ego ?
Oh, right. It’s not OK….in any known universe.
Time to light the torches.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
There as many possibilities for modelers as there modelers. As Amino above references, we were warned many years ago about what we might get if we did not heed Eisenhower’s words about rent seeking scientists. That prediction has unfortunately proved to be altogether too accurate.
the change in bloom season could be more or less severe than implied by the long-term warming trend from climate change.
Ain’t that the truth. It could be more or it could be less.
Saharan dust was a big problem in Florida back in the 1970s. In 1972, I was trying to varnish some brightwork on my sailboat and every day this red dust landed all over the boat and varnish . The only way not to have dust in the finish was to wait until the wind died at night before painting.
I am sure glad I was not trying to light my work back then with wind power as I would have been painting in the dark.
That’s energy security – you KNOW it’s not going to be there when you need it. It’s like socialism – equal poverty for all. Or that great education program – No Child Gets Ahead. What else can we make totally mediocre?
You cannot produce a reliable energy supply from an unreliable energy source.
“McLellan and colleagues showed that under worst case scenarios there could be an average 20 percent increase in volume of overflows, and they expect the [sewer] overflows to last longer. ”
Simple. When it looks like rain, everybody takes Kaopectate so the overflow will be clean. We’re done!
Ask yourself – what would be more effective and cost effecient:
(1) stop human CO2 emissions and push humanity back to the stone age.
(2) fix faulty sewerage systems everywhere.
(3) warn citizens not to go into the ocean or eat shellfish for a few days after major storms.
Then ask yourself – what would sound most exciting?
OK – let’s go for that.
They have already thrown their pride to the wind?
How about killer bees? Doesn’t climate change help spread killer bees too? I was sure there would be a computer model somewhere showing catastrophic risk from killer bees that can be blamed on climate change.
University of Washington, are predicting longer seasons of harmful algal bloom outbreaks in Washington State’s Puget Sound……..
Or could be—Nitrogen run off, from a few million new dark green lawns added in the last 30 years, that line Washington State’s Puget Sound. Yes people….not CO2.
Wow, they never give up do they? A good old dose of de-funding them would solve the problem.
These idiots could write the Movie Scary Story 15 -Climates Gonna Get you!
Now lest I be described as an armchair critic moaning and whining without offering any remedies let me offer up a couple of solutions, they are cheap and easy to enact and would work wonders.
All planning officials and engineers should be sent to the public records office to study past climate records and weather events to enable them to learn what will likely happen in the future. A call should be sent out to all old peoples homes/retirement communities/rest homes for all retired public health/service managers and engineers to attend each local government department to spread their wisdom and experience and actual knowledge to the modern generation of public service officials. Sack the entire NOAA high command and replace them with the old generation brought back into service
Only by learning from the past can we hope to manage the future, the cyclic nature of natural climate change means we need only look at previous cycles to see what awaits in the future.
We need to know all these things that a degree of warming will cause because it is well and truly known that it will never be cold again in Washington State.
What’s that you say? 6°F! No way.
Yes, way! Next Thursday.
WUWT?
“Brave New World”. We were warned so long ago yet still it is happening.
What does that say about us?
These funny climate `scientists’ are a hoot, are they not? Do they not have any sense of irony or all they all just incredibly obtuse? Look at my new model, and what doom it predicts. Good Lord …
What used to be a guess is now a ‘thought experiment’. What used to be a thought experiment is now a ‘plausible mechanism’. What used to be a plausible mechanism is now a ‘potential threat’. What used to be a potential threat is now …….. etc etc
Not to worry…apparently all the oysters will be gone in a few years due to global warming. And I have a model which indicates clams and mussels are teleconnected to oysters. Without these mollusks there is no problem with “red tides” and my model, which incidentially does not actually use bristlecones and is based on the data from one rock at the very south end of Vancouver Island, proves categorically that climate change impacts oysters and thereby clams and mussels.
Essentially, according to my model, the red tide problem will solve itself. (/sarc)
RiHo08 says:
February 19, 2011 at 9:48 pm
And given the geological evidence that the areas in and around the Great Lakes have continued to experience a “rebound” effect from the last great Ice Age 10,000 or so years ago, Great Lakes levels could end up lowering even more, leaving even more room for fresh water to fill in. Oh, those “finely tuned models.”
It wasn’t long a ago that the EPA (with Greenpeace) tried to ban chlorine (needed for sterilizing drinking water) with the result that many in Peru died from cholera. EPA was thankfully slapped down and their ban was overturned.
Combined flow sewage systems where it is possible for the flows of sanitary sewers and storm drains to commingle have been declining since the passage of the initial Clean Water Act. Smaller towns and cities are probably well ahead of major urban centers because they lacked the political pull to negotiate waivers that the big towns possessed.
In the early days little burgs that were not much more than a wide spot in the road were strong armed into doing expensive upgrades. I know because I worked on quite a few. Eventually even the large urban centers ran out out of slack and had to start addressing the problem. The process is by no means complete, but is still ongoing. The study references Milwaukee, so this story should be relevant
http://www.mkeriverkeeper.org/content/mmsd-studies-merits-increasing-sewer-overflow-capacity
Looks like they’re on top of the situation, if not yet in complete control, but with 50 years lead time they ought to be able to make significant progress. Maybe they can use some of money they can save on public employee compensation to speed it along a little.
SJB says:
February 19, 2011 at 8:57 pm
“More atmospheric dust from global desertification could lead to increases of harmful bacteria in oceans, seafood”
“Increased rainfall and dated sewers could affect water quality in Great Lakes”
How can we have GLOBAL DESERTIFICATION with INCREASED RAINFALL?
Concerning the “dangerous levels” of food prices, World Bank chief Robert Zoellick declared: (see http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/15/us-worldbank-food-idUSTRE71E5H720110215 )
“Catastrophic storms and droughts have hurt the world’s leading agriculture-producing countries, including flooding and a massive cyclone in Australia, major winter storms in the United States, and fires last year in Russia.”
In September 2010, the World Bank released a report emphasizing “the World Bank confirms that large-scale farmland deals whereby industrialised and emerging economies acquired land in developing countries amounted to around 45 million hectares last year – an increase of more than 10-fold on the average for the previous decade of just four million hectares a year.
The report attributes this land grab to recent food price volatility and the increased demand for land that has resulted from biofuel targets in the US and EU. Specifically, it notes that “biofuel mandates may have large indirect effects on land use change, particularly converting pasture and forest land.
(http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/1805151/world-bank-biofuel-mandates-fuelling-land-grabs )
Has the World Bank a very short memory?
“With 2010 the wettest year on record and third warmest for sea surface temperatures, NOAA and our partners are working to uncover how a changing climate can affect our health and our prosperity,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D
Maybe NOAA should do some science on what caused the SST warmth and precip.
The extra rain is due to low solar activity causing specific humidity at the tropopause to fall in response to diminished ionisation.
The warm sea is due to excess energy leaving the oceans due to low solar activity causing an energy flow reversal. Big el nino’s occur at low sunspot counts.
If these facts were acknowledged by NOAA, the reaction to the rest of what they have to say here wouldn’t be so negative. It’s actually pretty interesting stuff. It’s notable that the element carbon gets no mention, though this is because NOAA assumes its readers will accept co2 driven change as ‘a given’.
@Cassandra King
The kind of thing that you are referring to has happened repeatedly in the UK as documented in the book Scared To Death. The book goes chapter by chapter over all the potential disasters of several decades, non of which eventually happened. In every case the real harm was caused by expensive and ill advised government action. The real tradgedy is the inability to learn from such errors, new scares pop up with predictable regularity and the usual panic measures inevitably follow.
Contrary to what the above referenced article implies the evidence suggests that ice ages are much drier than interglacials. The level of dust in the atmospeere is higher during ice ages.
http://www.climatedata.info/Impacts/Impacts/dust.html
The reason for increased desertification at the moment is anthropogenic – not due to increases in CO2 but by overgrazing in the countries bordering the Sahara.
It is also generally accepted that an increase in iron in the oceans is a good thing; phytoplankton, which take in CO2 need iron in which the oceans are generally deficient. Indeed one form of bioengineering proposed dumping iron filings in the ocean.
I guess its all possible …. but doesn’t this catastrophism ignore the fact that those parts of the world where life is most prolific and which have been successfully populated by humans for thousands of year are the hot wet tropics ??? I mean, its not as if India and Indonesia are uninhabitable !
There has been a fair amount of research on Saharan dust deposition in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. They have all come to the conclusion that the amount of dust is a good proxy for climate at higher latitudes. The relationship is:
More dust = Colder climate
The only “projection” that matters is that we’ll get more and more third rate “scientists” coming out with alarmist, shroudwaving BS computer models in the hope of squeezing out the last drops of taxpayers’ money.
Along with taxpayers, the victim in all of this is science. There actually are honest scientists that don’t invent stories of ever increasing doom and gloom to secure their funding. The problem is that governments and citizens have allowed themselves to be stampeded by fear mongering and it is giving honest scientists a bad name.
It is time to replace fear mongering scientists with scientists that offer practical, economical solutions to problems. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge already demonstrated what happens when try and turn back the clock and eliminate technology in the name of ideology. In Cambodia it killed millions. Globally it will kill billions. There are some in high office that may see this as a solution.
Life is full of hazards. We discover new ones every day. Starting with the domestication of fire, what sets humans apart is technology. Rather than looking at problems as disasters waiting to happen, we look at them as opportunities to develop solutions. Those with the best solutions gain the most advantage. This has allowed us to settle and thrive almost everywhere in almost any climate, with wealth and abundance that could not have been dreamed only a few generations ago.
The greatest technological advance in human history has occurred during a time of global warming. The question we should be asking is this: was the warming the cause or the result of our advancement? If warming was the cause of our advancement, then we may well be shooting ourselves in the foot (or the head) if we try and stop it.
Here is some interesting reading from Wikipedia about Obama’s science czar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holdren
Eight years later, President Barack Obama nominated Holdren for his current position as science advisor and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in December 2008, and he was confirmed on March 19, 2009, by a unanimous vote in the Senate.[6][7][8][9] He testified to the nomination committee that he does not believe that government should have a role in determining optimal population size[10] and that he has never endorsed forced sterilization.[11][12][13]
Overpopulation was an early concern and interest. In a 1969 article, Holdren and co-author Paul R. Ehrlich argued that, “if the population control measures are not initiated immediately, and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come.”[21] In 1973 Holdren encouraged a decline in fertility to well below replacement in the United States, because “210 million now is too many and 280 million in 2040 is likely to be much too many.”[22] In 1977, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich, and Holdren co-authored the textbook Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment; they discussed the possible role of a wide variety of solutions to overpopulation, from voluntary family planning to enforced population controls, including forced sterilization for women after they gave birth to a designated number of children, and recommended “the use of milder methods of influencing family size preferences” such as access to birth control and abortion.[12][23]
John Holdren was involved in the famous Simon-Ehrlich wager in 1980. He, along with two other scientists helped Paul R. Ehrlich establish the bet with Julian Simon, in which they bet that the price of five key metals would be higher in 1990. The bet was centred around a disagreement concerning the future scaricity of resources in an increasingly polluted and heavily populated world. Ehrlich and Holdren lost the bet, when the price of metals had decreased by 1990.[5]
NOAA, you should have stuck to weather.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/20/water-poverty-uk-scarcity-bills
How about this from the Guardian.. Water scarcity in England. The definition of Drought ion England is 15 days with rain. The bets bit though is this line:
Water poverty is expected to be acute in “urban heat islands” – built-up environments that retain heat more than surrounding areas.
Total nonsense of course. The main point being that the Authors did not read the Jones paper.
What a total bunch of jerks.
I got to models and knew from there that this was CRAP!! MODELS=GIGO!!!!!!!!!
pat says:
February 19, 2011 at 9:10 pm
My local High School did a similar experiment about 6 years ago. E. Coli. Postulated identically. They found out that 15 feet from shore out of a discharge of heavily contaminated water….yes, 15′, the bacteria had dispersed to an insignificant extent was being heartily EATEN by salt water forms that relished the taste. The local Board of Health was so impressed that they actually replicated the study, confirmed it, and told every one they were relieved.
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Hi Pat !!!!
Interesting observation.
Some of our best surfing breaks at Gunnamatta, on the Mornington Peninsula are located near an outfall discharging sewage treated to secondary standard. Moderately contaminated you might say.
Since the outfall started operating in 1975 the incidence of ear ,nose and throat infections, not to mention gastric problems has gone from zero to commonplace.
E coli cannot tolerate salt water but, given the fact we surf no closer than 1000 meters from the outfall, leads me to believe your 15 feet is bullshit.
I’m getting pretty exasperated by all these computer models which seem to be taking the place of experimental science.
What did scientists do before computing power increased to such an extent that this type of gratuitous data processing was possible? In the early decades of computing, because computer time was a scarce resource and processing time was comparatively slow. A lot of thought was needed to firstly define a problem correctly and then determine the objectives. Similarly, a lot of thought was needed to code the analysis efficiently (using machine and assembler code because of the ability to optimise this far better than any compiled code) and then it had to be entered onto punched cards or punched paper tape, before submitting to the computing department to be scheduled and run. When I was at university in the early 60s, I recall that programs which needed serious computing power had to be sent to one of the only three (if I recall correctly) Atlas computer labs in the UK.
Some time later your results would appear and if there were errors in the program you would have to repeat the process until some sensible output was received.
The key point is that because of the timescales involved, scientists had time to think properly about all aspects of the process, and had the incentive to do so because of the potential delays to their projects if they got intermediate steps wrong.
Jump forward to today’s almost unlimited computing power, where even desk top computers can perform massive iterative processes within realistic timescales and you have the means to test even the most stupid proposition. You can continuously change parameters until you get closer to the answer you want. Having got the answer you wanted you can then go back to the parameters that you changed and work out some sort of theory that allows you to justify those changes.
This calls for far less blue sky thinking where you would come up with a theory and then devise an experiment to test it. Now you come up with an answer and then devise a theory to fit it, aggressively challenge doubters to prove you wrong and do all you can to undermine the credentials of those challenging you.
If you think I’m being cynical, ask yourselves about the motives of the scientists involved and their acolytes, who have persuaded themselves that they are the saviours of mankind.
Geoff Sherrington says:
February 19, 2011 at 9:24 pm
‘Fess up. Are you going to reduce you[r] eating of seafood because of this report?
============================================================
Hi Geoff !!!
Er………….No.
But its more to do with the fact that oyster and mussel beds for example, are monitored, and any contaminated product does not reach the market.
This has the dual benefit of preventing you from dropping your guts all over the lounge room floor, and saves the supplier the trauma of being sued by people just like you.
Happy shucking !!!
These “experts” apparently have no other interests in life other than doom and
gloom, and making everyones life a bloody misery on a daily basis at our own expense.
Enough I say!
So if you add weathered Moroccan dust (which is known to contain a lot of iron) to seawater containing Vibrio bacteria (which need iron to thrive), the bacteria multiply rapidly. That’s a surprise – the authors should submit a paper to a mainstream journal immediately. I’d be happy to peer-review it. This is definitely one piece of quality research which should be protected from the GOP axe.
Gotta rush – I’m going down to my local shop to get a few things. I’ll be going through the local park, which is already showing signs of desertification – the grass is short and there are no leaves on the trees.
Did anyone actually pay for this study ??
Even my 3 year old daughter knows not to swim in, or drink from polluted water. After all that’s all the study is talking about, and yes, we must be mindful of the pollutants that we do tip into ALL our waterways. Surely these ‘Experts’ could turn their hand to coming up with better ways to the disposing of human pollutants rather than give us this stupid study.
SJB says increduously up above, “How can we have GLOBAL DESERTIFICATION with INCREASED RAINFALL?”
Logically. That increased rainfall has to come from somewhere; and where it comes from gets desertified. (sarc off)
I noted the same contradiction. It’s like the gradations from global warming to climate change to sever climate disruption. My bet is that the next prediction will be that “In between reportable climate events, we predict long periods in which nothing of real interest happens anywhere.” By including this prediction, all possibilities are covered and all forecasts will be correct – in hindsight.
*puts head in hands*
No! No! No! Not more computer models, not more ‘coulds’, ‘maybes’ and ‘mights’.
Please someone make it stop.
This “new evidence” will be used by someone I argue with in the next couple of weeks to “prove” to me that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is “real”. This has been a recurring pattern for sometime now – I point out the dearth of evidence, even cases of falsification and failures of such models to even hindcast, then someone makes a new model and tells me it is “evidence”.
NOAA AGW department from NOAA is in desperate need of an overhaul.
Just a few other publications like this and nobody will take them serious anymore.
I’m sure the King of Morocco will take the NOAA report very seriously since a healthy climate is an absolute priority in a country where open tuberculoses still is a major health risk.
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/open-source-tb-megaproject-yields-first-fruits.html
That sounds like an idea. Could the House of Representatives vote to cut off money for this like they did for the climate ‘initiatives’ at NASA?
Dr Lubchenko must be poorly informed or has a short memory,
During 2010, I watched Univ-Bremen’s M.V. Polarstern on AMSR-E sea ice maps, do many circles in a small area of the Southern Atlantic, over a few days, a bit higher in latitude than the Falkland Islands. It was presumed to be a test run of iron sulfate (?) to generate an increase in algae and absorb CO2, to feed the plankton that would die and carry the carbon to the ocean floor. It was reported that the experiment failed, as the nice juicy plankton were consumed by fish further up the food chain.
Maybe this wind blown iron bearing desert sand could increase fish stock and decrease CO2 (whatever that is – LOL )
These guys and the public should be constantly reminded of the litany of failed predictions that they have come up with. With such a track record, how could any sane person take them seriously?
“Using cutting-edge technologies to model future ocean and weather patterns….”
Yet more wrong computer models. No need to read any further. But I did anyhow…sadly I was right…I should have stopped at that sentence.
As an experimental scientist, why do I continue to torture myself with this bogus “research” of computer models?
I give Lipp and Westrich credit, though, for actually doing an experiment! More AGW “scientists” should consider such a fantastic feat for themselves.
Someone should tap into the bottomless pit of AGW funding and conduct a study to determine which is more accurate: Tarot cards or AGW computer models. The null hypothesis is neither is more accurate. The alternate hypothesis is that Tarot cards are more accurate.
Could also expand the study to Ouija boards, tea leaves, etc.
Put down that model, place your hands on your head and walk away from it.
THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING! PUT DOWN THAT MODEL…
The weak shall inherit climate science.
Meanwhile when the going gets tough, the tough get going in Bangladesh. Low lying swamp lands in Bangladesh inundated by sea water in last years cyclone has created an opportunity for farmers fattening crabs that can grow as heavy as 4kg and fetch up to $5 each.
Off course this regular flooding occurence over the centuries of salt water flooding these lowlands leads the BBC to call the area “polluted” but thats another story all together.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12046805
All the do gooder bs’ers in the West and all the money poured into NGO’s did nothing, it’s the farmers themselves that came up with a solution. Climate scientists need to stop using Bangladesh as their personal toy for their propaganda machine and let the people get on with their lives.
The problem is in disentangling what is our fault in climate change from is what not our fault; a task impossible of satisfactory solution for reasons related to the Uncertainty Principle. But since it’s getting colder we can safely assume that we aren’t contributing much to warming the globe with CO2 and get on with solving problems rather than assigning blame. We’re up to here in alligators and they don’t know nuthin’ about first causes.
=========
The word model / models is used 5 times above. Too much for me.
Below are 2 studies regarding snow in the Great Lakes:
Less snow in Great Lakes
More snow in Great Lakes
Too much speculation for my liking.
Sounds like a good way to increase ocean productivity – Vibrios and other bacteria (and algae) are simply at the bottom of the food chain. We’ve always had dust storms and I’m sure they’ll wax and wane just like other climatic events, including rainfall and even desertification.
On one hand we’ve had the human population increased for many, many decades, and increasingly pumping poorly treated sewage into rivers and oceans – never mind the storm/sewer overflow events when there is high rainfall, on the other hand we’ve improved our sewage treatment in the last few decades and are continuing to do so. It is necessary to make the point though that sewage treatment tends to focus on the organic loading and ‘oxygen demand’ of the sewage. We have only recently started to focus on reducing the nutrients (N and P) in the discharges. The nutrients around our coasts have the potential to increase algal blooms, and evidence suggest this has increased in recent decades. Increased water temperatures may be a factor, although part of it may simply be our increased ability to detect blooms and toxins.
I used to enjoy collecting/cooking mussels from the shore and was always careful to avoid taking them from “polluted areas”, however, having done extensive consultancy work for a shellfish company about 10 years ago I realised the error of my ways. The toxins from algae that you really need to worry about at that time could only be tested for reliably by a mouse bioassay which took up to 72 hours. Commercially this means the batch of harvested shellfish has to be processed while the test on that batch is underway – a huge waste if the batch then has to be condemned. More rapid testing is now available :
however it still takes time to send to a lab; an ‘instant’ bioassay is under commercialisation: http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Food-Safety/New-technology-promises-to-revolutionise-shellfish-safety-regime
As for Vibrio, there is an excellent description of the ecology here (it is most associated with estuaries): http://www.medicalecology.org/water/cholera/cholera.htm It should also be noted:
1. Not all strains of Vibrio cholerae are pathogenic – there are genetic elements carried on plasmids (non-genomic DNA) that are passed from cell to cell.
2. Cholera (development of the illness) requires ingestion of a certain ‘bacterial load’ as explained in the link above, and the ecto-symbiont nature of Vibrios facilitates this. Just having unspecified strains detected in the water column will not necessarily increase risk.
I so dislike this fearmongering.
There is a very interesting paragraph in the link above related to Cholera:
Sound familiar?
Has Al set up a “Dust Credit” exchange yet?
Desert dust deposition from the atmosphere is considered one of the main contributors of iron in the ocean
=========================================
and also Iron for all the land plants and rain forests……….
what dimwits
“…longer seasons of harmful algal bloom outbreaks in Washington State’s Puget Sound.”
I’m not sure if any of the investigators here are ecologists, but it doesn’t seem likely. Dinoflagellate blooms are dependent on a whole bunch of stuff, one of which is the temperature of the water.
These guys go into a “suspended animation” phase in the winter when the water is too cold, but also do so in the summer. The summer suspended animation phase is poorly understood, to say the least, and may be due to nutrient availability or predation. Thus the blooms may commence earlier and go on later but the gap in the middle might get larger, for no net change.
I can’t find any data for Alexandrium catenella, but for Alexandrium tamarense, which is better studied, there is a spike in abundance in spring, a disappearance in summer and a lesser spike in abundance in autumn.
Phytoplankton are not on their own in a bucket: they experience competition from other phytoplankton (other dinoflagellates and diatoms, etc) as well as predation from copepods and others. There is a succession through the year where different species are dominant. In UK waters (and elsewhere) this is related to the development of a discontinuity layer (due to storminess, warmth) and subsequent depletion of surface nutrients.
Therefore to say the least predicting changes in the abundance of any one organism is fraught with difficulties, implying as it does that only one factor is limiting their abundance at present (climate) and assuming that climate change is certain to improve the conditions for the species in question.
@Verity
Is it possible for mortals to post images too?
[Reply: Mortals may post images. But unfortunately, not on WUWT. However, you may post image links.☺ ~dbs, mod.]
I think one of the problems with these increasing numbers of groups of people who are so over- the-top with their ridiculous climate modelling is to get their name on the paper as Authors or Co. Authors, and in this case Graduate Students. That way it will improve their CVand receive better recognition from the gullible, and those believing in the cult, which will most certainly lead to more funding, leading to more ridiculous climate modelling than this utter rubbish.
“With 2010 the wettest year on record and third warmest for sea surface temperatures, NOAA and our partners are working to uncover…” new ways to SCARE y’alls so we can gits us sum MO MONEY! MO MONEY! MO MONEY!!!
[Reply: Please use correct grammar: “…new ways to SCARE all y’alls…” ‘Y’alls’ is singular in Southern. All y’alls is plural.☺ ~dbs, mod.]
Desert dust deposition from the atmosphere is considered one of the main contributors of iron in the ocean
================================================
I thought someone was trying to put more iron in the oceans, so the oceans would take up more CO2………………..
More desert = more African/Saharan dust = more iron = more CO2 sequestered
So does this prove that NOAA learns more and more about less and less until it knows everything about nothing or that NOAA learns less and less about more and more until it knows nothing about everything?
Monty says: (February 19, 2011 at 10:48 pm0
“Or could be—Nitrogen run off, from a few million new dark green lawns added in the last 30 years, that line Washington State’s Puget Sound. Yes people….not CO2.”
HIVES ….. Human Induced Variations in Ecological Systems.
No doubt the AMA, the ABA, the NFL, the NHL, the AFL-CIO, the.. (well there’s just too many to list here) will soon be warming to the idea of warning about all this and making recommendations for new studies vis-a-vis the impacts too. Didn’t the population of the World suffer through terrible Plagues a just few years ago? During the shortlived Modern Climate Optimum (MCO). Weren’t these scourges on mankind also the result of manmade climate changes? It seems we really do need to layoff the majority of these NOAA people so we have enough money to hire more MD’s, lawyers, football players, hockey players, and union organizers, etc. We really should design an appropriate certificate for these tireless climatologists. Something they can hang on their wall. Something they can xerox to include in their resumes.
As mentioned, “Using fine-tuned climate models developed for Wisconsin” says it all. We’ve seen how GCMs can make flying, singing Dumbos with all the free parameters they have to play with!
Baxter75 writes:
“It wasn’t long a ago that the EPA (with Greenpeace) tried to ban chlorine (needed for sterilizing drinking water) with the result that many in Peru died from cholera. EPA was thankfully slapped down and their ban was overturned.”
Hmm, if you are referring to the cholera outbreak in Peru in the early 90’s, then it seems that the problem was that they had insufficient supplies of chlorine, equipment that wasn’t working, and an unreliable power supply. Because of this only 12% of tested water had any residual chlorine. The locals also tended to store tap water in containers with wide openings, which allowed contamination during storage.
Actually wet years/decades that cause a greening of the planet are necessary for the huge dust storms that follow. The longer cycles of plenty and famine depend on this relationship.
Wet years/decades are not a sign of AGW. Wet years grow ground cover that during years of drought become the very necessary dusty reseeding of oceans. I am hoping that Africa is increasing its dust storms. Why? I happen to like seafood.
Boomer says: February 20, 2011 at 4:59 am
“Has Al set up a “Dust Credit” exchange yet?”
The link from a post on Tips and Notes
son of mulder says:
February 20, 2011 at 1:12 am http://wattsupwiththat.com/tips-notes-to-wuwt/#comment-602857
“Mystery bug ate up BP oil spill
provides a link to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
where various projects are also undertaken for developing nations.
“…..The scientists are working not only to create a more efficient stove specific for use in Ethiopia, but to finance the project by selling carbon credits on the world carbon market”
http://www.lbl.gov/LBL-Programs/energy-health-solutions.html
Any research to determine the results of climate change can be looked at with suspicion of political motivation. Why because politicians need and want and are attempting to use the claim of climate change for their legislation, regulation and in general abuse of office. They don’t need proof, just the prediction.
Climate change research always predicts the future and is always bad news. There is good in research that should be limited to what it can provide and not stretched into something it is not.
The North-African Sahara desert formed during the 300-year long “8K” event when the climate “cooled” about 5-degreess-F. Also, the ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland show higher dust levels during extremely cold ice-age periods for the past 500,000 years. So, how does warm equal more global dust? So many questions – so few answers – now that is “real” science.
I recently attended a class/lecture series by a senior World Bank official. You could sum up the presentation in one sentence: “Climate change is going to cause lots of problems for lots of people and we need lots of money to help them.” One slide he showed had 2 different precipitation scenarios for IPCC’s A2 modeling run–one wet and one dry. If the dry one happens it will cost $70B to adapt; if the wet one happens it will cost $100B. Now presumably, the adaptations that will work best in the dry scenario are different than the adaptations that will be needed in the wet scenario. So what to do?
There are lots of things that are possible in the future. Some of those things are probable. But only one scenario will play out when it actually happens in the place that it happens. It is a huge waste of time and money to try to adapt to every possible catastrophe before it happens. So deal with the here and now, and be cautiously prepared for the future. We can’t afford otherwise.
Bob Diaz says:
February 19, 2011 at 9:03 pm
‘Sarcasm = ON
Forgive me if I don’t get excited and run around crying, “It’s the end of the world!!!”’
Yeah, if you really want to be scared, search The New Yorker magazine for articles about New York City’s water supply. The pipes are so old and have been “repaired” so many times that the water basically seeps from the mountains into NYC kitchens. (Maybe you have to love NYC to find this frightening.)
When I was growing up, coming of age, people understood that the world, even your own little part of the world, is one accident from disaster. It did not bother us at all.
Jeez, the efficient stoves financed by selling carbon credits almost makes me think such credits have a value. But not quite.
Speaking of the Sahara, it’s re-greening itself.
Even National Geographic had to admit it:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara_2.html
“[Reply: Please use correct grammar: “…new ways to SCARE all y’alls…” ‘Y’alls’ is singular in Southern. All y’alls is plural.☺ ~dbs, mod.]”
The ‘s’, is optional. I never use it.
I do use an ‘s’ in the possessive. “Is that y’all’s stuff?”
Bye, See y’all; see all y’all.
Based on NOAA models all the “could” happen. Sound a lot like the NOAA model that showed the Gulf oil spill “could” reach a far as North Carolina, only difference is the timeline was short enough then it was quickly disproved.
JeffT says:
February 20, 2011 at 3:43 am
“Dr Lubchenko must be poorly informed or has a short memory,”
Back in her OSU days, she was convinced that Ocean productivity
particularly Salmon Runs, were being affected due to human activity.
That Salmon will never return in numbers. Well guess what?
Some old fisherman in Port Orford knew more than she did.
“The Salmon come and go, they are like everything else: Cyclical.”
Jack Gruien , once the oldest commercial fisherman in the USA
@92 he just died at 102. Also the Salmon have come back.-
feeding the Sea Lion population as we speak. Few of the government
scientists ever actually talk to or listen to people who have stood on the
deck of a fishing boat , Or sit in the cab of a tractor or the saddle of a cow horse,
(yes the old west ain’t dead yet.) ….
Having checked out the article provided by Brian H, I see that half of the models predict a wetter future for the Sahel region, and half predict a drier. As I become more immersed in this climate stuff, I think I am beginning to detect a trend regarding all of these models. Based upon my own thought processes, I think I can now predict with 100% certainty that there is a 50/50 chance of something happening. Or not. Would that be accurate?
sarc on
With all that dust in the oceans there are going to be too many pearls, and then there will be a glut of pearls.
Sell short pearls.
sarc off
Considering that the expulsion of dust from Morocco depends on the strength of the Harmattan, a fierce trade wind which intensity is related to the power of the MPHs i.e. high pressure anticyclones and agglutinations, i.e. rapid mode of circulation one can see that the increase of dust is a good proxy for a general cooling rather than warming!
http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/2/32/25/79/Leroux-Global-and-Planetary-Change-1993.pdf
[Reply: Please use correct grammar: “…new ways to SCARE all y’alls…” ‘Y’alls’ is singular in Southern. All y’alls is plural.☺ ~dbs, mod.]
1) Obviously written by a yankee then incorrectly corrected by another yankee.
Pitiful, just plumb pitiful.
2) There is no such word in proper southern as y’alls. The only form is the possessive as Theo Goodwin correctly remarked.
3) The correct phrase would be ” … new ways to SCARE y’all”
4) Bless your heart. I understand you are doing the best you can with what you have.
Yes!
The first is how my Dad defined an expert — someone who learned more about less and less until he knew everything about nothing.
Larry
richard verney says:
February 20, 2011 at 3:43 am
“These guys and the public should be constantly reminded of the litany of failed predictions that they have come up with. With such a track record, how could any sane person take them seriously?”
I think its time for a knowledgeable person to write a book on the failed predictions since 1950 (I want to include the Club of Rome in here) and to highlight any predictions that came true. Using this statistic, it should be possible to make a credible forecast of what percent of the fear industry’s predictions will not come true. Many, like Ehrlich and Schneider changed horses from imminent ice age back in the 1970s, to a firey hell on earth for this century. They of course can say that they were right eventually. Also we would have to be aware of the rationalizations and re-interpretations that skewed Nostradamus’s predictions to fit history – the straw graspers will be studying this too.
And few scientists ventured up the Lostine River this past fall to see it choked with H..U..G..E Salmon for the first time in a generation. These Salmon are not land-locked. They made it over the dams and up this remote rugged river by the dozens, congregating in pools now too small to hold them all.
Where are you seeing that? Weathebug shows a high of 37 for my neck of the woods (North Whidbey Island) on Thursday, with a low of mid to high 20s overnight.
Douglas DC says:
February 20, 2011 at 8:03 am
JeffT says:
February 20, 2011 at 3:43 am
“Few of the government scientists ever actually talk to or listen to people who have stood on the deck of a fishing boat , Or sit in the cab of a tractor or the saddle of a cow horse,(yes the old west ain’t dead yet.) ….”
That would be beneath them, as John Kerry would say.
Latitude says:
February 20, 2011 at 6:00 am
I thought someone was trying to put more iron in the oceans, so the oceans would take up more CO2………………..
More desert = more African/Saharan dust = more iron = more CO2 sequestered
————————–
Ya know Latitude, that’s what makes this so much damn fun, the circular logic!
davidmhoffer says:
February 19, 2011 at 9:47 pm
SJB kinda beat me to it, but:
Because of global warming 2010 was the wettest year ever
So we should be preparing for global desertification?
Rain causes deserts?
So, by the warmists logic if we win the battle against global warming, we will have dry years and the deserts will turn to rainforests.
So what is the plural possessive form of y’all? I pondered this for 10 years while I lived in Texas. It often comes out pronounced as “yawls” and this sounds like a disease of cats. They also had quaint colloquial conjunctive phrases such as “global warming might could kill ya if y’all ain’t careful”.
Interestingly, one does not need exotic Moroccan desert dust to stimulate the growth of vibrio. Plain ol’ coastal sewage does the trick nicely. This is why one does not consume raw oysters in the summer. Oysters are best in the Fall and winter.
As I read the article the only thought going through my mind was how many millions of taxpayer dollars are these agenda driven bureaucratic fraudsters pounding down a rat hole?
While America slept for 30 years, these twisted socialist perverts have infiltrated and corrupted some of the most important institutions to our Democracy. God please dont let it take another 30 years to get rid of them.
Yes. It is very simple. They are making us an offer we can’t refuse. Pay up and do as we say, or you will all die. It is called extortion.
We’re back to the Sun God days but on a global scale.
Nice to know where your tax dollars are going.
smacca,
So for 36 years you and your fellow surfers have been going to a place where you say ENT and gastric conditions etc have become commonplace. Yet you keep coming back for more it seems. Are you dumb or exaggerating?
If you go way down south, in fact downunder, you’d be saying “youse” for the plural (not sure of the “e” is required, few using the ‘strine’ language actually write….). I’ve often wondered if the two languages should be merged, and produce something like “yousall”.
It is sharks you need to fear in the ocean:
http://www.uib.no/rg/mm/artikler/2009/01/viruses-and-bacteria
Viruses exist everywhere life is found, and also in the sea. An estimate of their abundance is 10^7 (10 million) viruses per mL sea water. Viruses have the capacity to infect everything from bacteria to blue whales and play therefore crucial roles in the processes going on. For example, they may be important in termination of algal blooms, and they are important in nutrient cycling. In the research group we have several ongoing projects related to viruses infecting algae.
Also bacteria are found everywhere in the ocean and in great quantity – roughly 105 to 10^7 cells per mL. And there is a great amount of diversity, and estimate is 1,000 to 10,000 types per mL seawater. However, only a tiny fraction seems to be active at a given moment. And different strains of bacteria thrive under different conditions.
We’re all doomed in 30 years? Oh no lets quickly let all school children know they have no future! Let’s even Tax those children’s parents for the next 30 years Oh no, Oh no!!
/sarc
Any good news from “climate change” lately? No! it’s all Crap.
“With 2010 the wettest year on record and third warmest for sea surface temperatures, NOAA and our partners are working to uncover how a changing climate can affect our health and our prosperity,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D.,
She better start to pay better attention to recent trends. Bob Tisdale today reports that recent SST’s adjacent to the US have dropped to lows not reached since 1972.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/
Her own website, NOAA’s CLIMATE AT A GLANCE now reveals that US winter temps have dropped at the rate of 30 degrees per century since 1998.
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
I hope to see her discuss these recent results in front of congress.
Y’all just don’t git it. The models are right. Unless the global climate is EXACTLY as it was on September 22, 1973, everyone reading this post today will be dead within the next hundred years. If we have more rain, we’ll be dead. If we have more drought, we’ll be dead. If it gets colder or warmer, we’ll be dead. All of us. And when it happens, Gore will be really mad, ’cause it’s gonna really be hot for him. He’ll finally understand what a warm climate is. But we’ll all still be dead. Dang climate.
I see the public health community bending this stuff all the time….increased rates of Hantavirus transmission from infected rodents, geographic spread of malaria as the planet warms, etc. etc.
Dr. Richard Lindzen really nailed it when he addressed members of Congress on Nov. 17, 2009 during his testimony before the House Subcommittee on Technology and Science:
“Perhaps we should stop accepting the term ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. The current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible.”
“African dust keeps Amazon blooming”
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100809/full/news.2010.396.html
Basically this seabed dust from Lake Chad which may have minerals more accessible than sandy Saharan dust.
“A hypothesis we are investigating at the moment is that because it’s coming from the lakebed, this iron is going to be more bioavailable than if it were coming from the deeply weathered surface of the Sahara.”
So who says dust is bad? The amazon would suffer without it perhaps.
Note on use of “youse”
It seems that no waitress will be hired in Saint John (NB) unless she says “yez” to her customers, as in “What would yez like to order?” I have not encountered a waitress in 17 years who did not say it!
IanM
Dave Andrews says:
February 20, 2011 at 2:19 pm
smacca,
So for 36 years you and your fellow surfers have been going to a place where you say ENT and gastric conditions etc have become commonplace. Yet you keep coming back for more it seems. Are you dumb or exaggerating?
============================================================
Hi Dave!!!!
Neither. It has some of the best beach breaks going. You have to pick your time; for example I don’t surf it after heavy rains and currents and wind direction also play a part, but it is no guarantee. Personally I won’t surf there again until the treatment plant is upgraded to tertiary standard in 2012. Some others are a bit more enthusiastic about the place than me.
You can read a bit more about it here, just scroll down the page a bit.
http://www.cleanocean.org/
And here : http://www.cleanocean.org/index_general.asp?menuid=040.030
Cheers.
“Personally I won’t surf there again until the treatment plant is upgraded to tertiary standard in 2012. ”
What about the studies that show the increase in allergies may be caused by isolating children from infections. That exercise is good for the immune system, as it is for the body and mind.
Ear infections from swimming in salt water are very common, regardless of sewage. Mostly it is “swimmers” ear and easy to treat with topical alcohol and 1% boric acid, so long as you use it religiously.
We sailed with an ex military doctor that was tasked with keeping the navy divers operational. He said that in nam, swimmers ear took out way more divers than did the cong.
JER0ME at 2:32 pm:
“[Reply: ‘Y’alls’ is singular in Southern. All y’alls is plural.☺ ~dbs, mod.]” If you go way down south, in fact downunder, you’d be saying “youse” for the plural (not sure of the “e” is required, few using the ‘strine’ language actually write….).”
Just to add that “you’s” as in “you’s guys” was in common usage in the Dundalk area of Baltimore, Maryland, 30+ years ago. I grew up on the opposite side of Baltimore and no one ever used it there. If you heard someone say it, almost guaranteed they were from Dundalk.
“Increased rainfall and dated sewers could affect water quality in Great Lakes”.
The left loves to scold the rest of us on the topic of “sustainability”, yet their schemes to rescue society are never economically sustainable. Case in point: government’s approach to making sure that sewage infrastructure is economically sustainable so it never gets “dated”.
Government typically uses cash accounting and funds large sewer-related projects like it funds schools: the monthly costs are in one budget and supported by one set of direct taxation (like property taxes). Large capital projects, like a new sewage treatment plant or school building are financed with bond issues, thus kicking that can down the road and out of sight by shunting those costs into a different tax that is obscure to most voters.
So, screw up the sewers like you screw up the public schools, and then attempt use the failure that naturally comes as a means to make government even larger and more tax-grubbing. What a plan!
Governments do this on a massive scale. But when individuals do it they’re prosecuted. The government brooks no competition in the AGW scam.
jtom says:
February 20, 2011 at 7:30 pm
…”Unless the global climate is EXACTLY as it was on September 22, 1973, everyone reading this post today will be dead within the next hundred years.”….
Regardless, I think that with a few exceptions, we’ll all be dead within the next hundred years.
There’s potassium in that dust, too.
The very rainy island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands is one of the greenest places on earth. But without the annual addition of potassium carried in loess dust blown from northern China-Mongolia, it would be a bleak desert, and instead of filming ‘South Pacific’ there, it would have been a good set for ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’
There hasn’t been a case of cholera on Kauai for 100 years or so.
jtom says:
February 20, 2011 at 7:30 pm
…”Unless the global climate is EXACTLY as it was on September 22, 1973, everyone reading this post today will be dead within the next hundred years.”….
Regardless, I think that with a few exceptions, we’ll all be dead within the next hundred years.
—————————-
We will be dead ONLY if the climate is NOT exactly as it was on 9/22/1973. We all die if we don’t stablize the climate to the climate of that particular time. If the climate becomes wetter, people will be die. Drier, people die. Warmer, colder, people die. It doesn’t matter if people died in the past; it’s all due to climate change, now. That’s what my models show. Prove me wrong, denier.
(actually I had added sarc tags before and after, but put them between symbols that resulted in their being deleted).
jtom
February 21, 2011 at 6:52 pm
(sarc)?
Works for me, but I still think that with a few exceptions, we’ll all be dead within the next hundred years.