Real Climate Science

The Guardian tries to blame the Polar Bear attack on global warming :

The threat that the bears pose to humans may have been growing, as an increasing number of visitors encroach on the animals’ domains and the bigger towns on the islands offer the temptations of easy food.

Another factor is that the prey the bears normally rely on – seals – has been harder to reach as the ice around the islands has shrunk in recent years. Spitsbergen harbour used to be icebound for most of the year; but recently the ice has been breaking up sooner and is thinner.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Nice story, but blithering nonsense. Here is what the American Consul at Bergen, Norway wrote in 1922 :

There were few seal in Spitzbergen waters this year, the catch being far under the average. This, however, did not surprise the captain. He pointed out that formerly the waters about Spitzbergen held an even summer temperature of about 3 Celsius; this year recorded temperatures up to 15°, and last winter the ocean did not freeze over even on the north coast of Spitzbergen.

http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/

In 1922, the harbor did not freeze at all – much less stay icebound for most of the year.

In 2005, Morgan and teams of scientists from Colorado State University and the University of Wyoming set out to simulate climate change on tiny plots of grassland at the USDA High Plains Grassland Research Station near Cheyenne by testing how grasses and weeds in the area react to higher levels of carbon dioxide and greater heat.

The results, so far, point to some good news for cattle growers in a changing climate, he said.

Morgan’s team has found that increased carbon dioxide levels increase the efficiency of how plants use water, reducing the amount of water grasses and weeds allow to escape into the soil.

The teams’ simulations of the warming and higher carbon dioxide levels expected later this century show no change in soil water and an increase in plant growth for warm-season grasses.

Carbon dioxide, he said, “helps this grassland community conserve water in it so they don’t dry out as much as they would otherwise.”

More good news, he said: “We think in maybe the central and northern Great Plains, we don’t see anytime soon a big drought, a big decrease in production because of this offsetting effect of CO2 because it actually boosts water use efficiency.”

http://www.coloradoan.com/

Horatio Chapple, 17, an aspiring medical student, was killed when the animal rampaged into the tent in which he and his friends were sleeping on a glacier in Svalbard, Norway. His friends, Patrick Flinders, 16, and Scott Smith, 17, were injured fighting off the bear, as were the expedition guides, Michael Reid, 29, and Andrew Ruck, 27.

Patrick is said to have punched the bear on the nose before it was shot dead by other members of the group. Horatio’s grandfather, Sir John Chapple, 80, was the head of the Army from 1989 to 1992, the former governor of Gibraltar and the former president of the British Schools Exploring Society, which organised the trip.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

August 5, 2011

SUMMIT COUNTY — NOAA issued its updated 2011 Atlantic hurricane season outlook today raising the number of expected named storms from its pre-season outlook issued in May. Forecasters also increased their confidence that 2011 will be an active Atlantic hurricane season.

http://summitcountyvoice.com/

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/

Measured maximum temperatures in Lincoln, Virginia have been declining since 1930 (blue line.) But through the magic of subtracting almost four degrees from 1930 temperatures, USHCN has been able to turn a strong downwards trend into an upwards trend.

The closest USHCN station to Washington DC is about 40 miles west in Lincoln, VA. July high temperatures have been declining in Lincoln for at least 80 years.

They said it was a really good plan.

 We also believe that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration agreed to this week falls short of the amount that we believe is necessary to stabilize the general government debt burden by the middle of the decade

http://www.standardandpoors.com/

http://trove.nla.gov.au/

Doh! Every idiot can see that rocks don’t move. Those seashells in Denver formed spontaneously. WTF was Wegener thinking of?

Wegener and his Critics

Since his ideas challenged scientists in geology, geophysics, zoogeography and paleontology, it demonstrates the reactions of different communities of scientists. The reactions by the leading authorities in the different disciplines was so strong and so negative that serious discussion of the concept stopped. One noted scientist, the geologist Barry Willis, seemed to be speaking for the rest when he said:

further discussion of it merely incumbers the literature and befogs the mind of fellow students.

Barry Willis’s and the other scientists wishes were fulfilled. Discussion did stop in the larger scientific community and students’ minds were not befogged. The world had to wait until the 1960’s for a wide discussion of the Continental Drift Theory to be restarted.

http://www.scientus.org/Wegener-Continental-Drift.html

“You can either be captain of the boat, or you can be the anchor”

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s served the Obama administration with notice Friday afternoon that it planned to downgrade the U.S. government’s AAA credit rating, an administration official told CNN.

But S&P has yet to make its ruling public, and the source told CNN that the agency is reconsidering after the administration challenged S&P’s analysis of the government’s finances.

The source, a senior official involved in the discussions, said the agency was off by “trillions” in its economic model and was now working to revise its analysis.

http://money.cnn.com/