Real Climate Science

The Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) has summoned Lampre-ISD team leader Damiano Cunego and team manager Giuseppe Saronni for questioning as they continue to investigate alleged doping offences after as a consequence of the police investigation centred on a Mantova pharmacy.

Cunego, who recently finished seventh overall and was the best-placed Italian rider at the Tour de France, has been summoned for 11:00am on September 7. Saronni has been scheduled for questioning an hour later.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/

This is almost as rare as climate scientists fudging data.

Texas is the US leader in wind power, when the wind blows.

(Reuters) – The Texas power grid operator has scrambled this week to meet soaring electricity demand in the face of a brutal heat wave, and residents of the second most populous U.S. state are one power plant shut-down away from rolling blackouts.
Power demand for Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc, or ERCOT, which runs the power grid for most of the state, hit three consecutive records this week as Texans cranked up air conditioners to escape one of the hottest summers on record.

The grid operator on Thursday cut power to some big industrial users, and businesses and households face a repeat of the rolling blackouts they faced in February, when a bitter cold snap interrupted power supplies.

Though ERCOT has done a good job balancing supply and demand, “You always have to expect the unexpected can happen,” said Arshad Mansoor, senior vice president at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). “A unit can shut. The wind may not blow.”

http://www.reuters.com/

BS ALERT

It’s been a year of extreme weather for the Lone Star State, already suffering from the worst drought on record.

Nice try. The droughts in the 1950s were more widespread and much longer lasting.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH7FZVbqkH8]

In mid-July, as Prime Minister Gillard began to stump the countryside selling her carbon package, a conference at the University of Melbourne considered the prospect of climate policy failure

For three days, scientists, bureaucrats and members of the public examined the impacts of a four degree world on Australia’s environment, society and economy. It is the world of dramatic consequences that the carbon tax debate has so far neglected.

Snow cover would fall to zero in most alpine regions.

http://theconversation.edu.au/

These people are as nutty as the Aztecs.

Climate scientists are sure that they understand the climate, except for every couple of weeks when they admit that they underestimated the effects of aerosols, solar cycles, Methane, Ozone, clouds, soot, jet contrails, cow farts, ocean currents, ocean salinity ……..

One of my favorite SNL skits was after George HW Bush (Dana Carvey) lost his reelection bid, and was complaining about being another Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately I can’t find it on YouTube.

Looks like we have a new Jimmy Carter.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (MarketWatch) — The stock market is poised today to do something it has not done in over 33 years: Decline for nine straight sessions.

The last time the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA -4.31%    did that, in fact, was Feb. 22, 1978, when Jimmy Carter was president and the country was struggling to come to grips with a period of anemic economic growth and high inflation.

http://www.marketwatch.com/

 

In 2005, the ratio was 2:1. In 2011, the ratio is NaN.

It was hot, with high CO2 levels during the Triassic. Yet shellfish were huge. Dr. Chicken Little tells us that sea shells dissolve at 500 ppm.

“when temperatures than they are today”

Scientists say current concerns over a tipping point in the disappearance of Arctic sea ice may be misplaced.

Danish researchers analysed ancient pieces of driftwood in north Greenland which they say is an accurate way to measure the extent of ancient ice loss.

Writing in the journal Science, the team found evidence that sea ice levels were about 50% lower 5,000 years ago when temperatures than they are today.

They say changes to wind systems can slow down the rate of melting.

They argue, therefore, that a tipping point under current scenarios is unlikely.

While modern observations by ship and by satellite give us a very accurate picture of the recent state of the ice, historic information is limited. The ice comes and goes without leaving a permanent record.

But a Danish team believes it has found an indirect method that gives a clear picture of the ice loss dating back 11,000 years.

Dr Svend Funder from the Natural History Museum of Denmark led several expeditions to inhospitable regions of Northern Greenland. On these frozen shores the Danish team noticed several pieces of ancient driftwood. They concluded that it could be an important method of unlocking the secrets of the ancient ice.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14408930

h/t to J Calvert N

The University of Tennessee bookstore in Knoxville has decided to stop selling packages of breath mints poking fun at President Obama after a Democratic lawmaker complained.

The product is called, “Disappoint-mints” and features a blue and red picture of the president on the label.

State Rep. Joe Armstrong told The Knoxville News Sentinel he found the breath mints offensive.

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Somalia is suffering its worst drought in 60 years.

It’s always difficult to tell what might be driving extreme weather events like the Horn of Africa drought. Climate change is often fingered as the culprit, but the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change actually predicted that East Africa would receive more rainfall as temperatures warmed, not less.

Most immediately, the current drought seems connected to severe drying conditions resulting from the La Nina phenomenon that lasted from June of last year to this May in the Pacific Ocean, and which be connected to record-breaking drought in Texas as well. But according to a new study published today in Science, La Nina—and the its warm counterpart El Nino—has affected the climate of faraway East Africa for at least 20,000 years. A group of scientists from Germany, Switzerland, the U.S., the Netherlands and Belgium examined sediments that have built up over thousands of years in Lake Challa, at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Kenya, drilling into the ground—much as climate researchers use ice cores in Greenland or Antarctica to reveals details about the state of the climate in the Earth’s past.

http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/