Real Climate Science

Elusive subatomic particle may not exist after all

Scientists chasing a particle they believe may have played a vital role in creation of the universe indicated last week that they were coming to accept that it might not exist after all.

But they stressed that if the so-called Higgs boson turns out to have been a mirage, the way would be open for advances into territory dubbed “new physics” to try to answer one of the great mysteries of the cosmos.

http://www.washingtonpost.com

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LiB2ojZRO8]

h/t to latitude

This makes about 15,000 ice-free summers in a row which the bears have survived.

Within a short time the hustle and bustle of polar bear season will be upon us…

http://churchillpolarbears.org/blog/

New York City is clanking back to life as its train, buses and airports slowly return to service, and communities from North Carolina to Vermont are toting up the damage, which is believed to be in the billions of dollars, making it the tenth billion dollar storm of 2011.

http://abcnews.go.com/

To put this in perspective, the US Government increases the national debt by a billion dollars every six hours. Hurricane Barry is vastly more expensive than $1 billion in total tropical storm costs over the last 35 months.

Another stillborn gust of wind, during a record gust naming season.

As Hurricane Irene whimpers off to Canada, earlier suggestions that it and predictions of a harsh 2011 hurricane season can be linked to global warming are being slammed in a new report from skeptical scientists.

Just like the hyped predictions of disaster to the East Coast from Irene over the weekend, the new report says that models used by global warming scientists “over-estimate” the the warming trends of the globe to back up their warnings of future droughts, killer storms, and famine. [See a slide show of 10 reasons Americans aren’t talking about climate change.]

As for hurricanes, like Irene, the skeptical scientists report that storm frequency does not track with global temperature fluctuations and they add that historical trends show that storms were worse during the Medieval period of about 950–1250 AD.

The scientists who headed the project are well-known in their field and are led by global warming critic Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.

http://www.usnews.com/

Steven Oracle says:

August 29, 2011 at 5:15 pm

I received two E-mails from friends in New England today

The hurricane was unremarkable (where we are) in terms of wind, but we got a lot of water in a short period of time and some found its way to our basement damaging our books etc.

it was more or less a non event… Lots of rain and some wind, tree limbs down and short power outages, but no big deal.

In his own particular nasty, small-minded way.

CNN‘s Anderson Cooper was quoted telling a weather expert after learning that the peak of Irene’s mild fury had passed Manhattan. “It’s an annoying rain but it isn’t even a sideways rain.”

Today, some experts are wondering whether Irene media overkill will lead to similar inaction the next time a storm barrels up the Atlantic – even if it really does prove to be a major hurricane.

Jarvis said bluntly last night that his warning to many journalists is that “you’ve ruined your credibility. The next time when it is a Category 5 storm . . . it’s going to sound like this one.”

http://www.philly.com/