Real Climate Science

“STABLE CLIMATE OF PAST 12,000 YEARS?” HARDLY

A @DailyBeast story By Sharon Begley, besides claiming a link between this epic tornado season and global warming, also includes this unsupported line: “From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone.”
Separate from the tornado non-issue, anyone positing that we’re entering a new period of uniquely freaky climate conditions after an equable Holocene Epoch hasn’t looked at any lake beds. A couple examples:

– Sub-Saharan Africa’s multi-millennium pattern of mega-super-uber-droughts beyond anything experienced in recent centuries.

– The northeastern United States’ lake-bed record of unbelievably astounding super-deluges, which make the epic flooding events of recent history look mild by comparison. In other words, the “flood of record” for Vermont, in November 1927 (amazing video), appears to be 10 times less powerful than truly epic gullywashers occurring with some regularity in recent millenniums.

The last 200 years have been pretty comfy, but the last few thousand – let alone 12,000 – hardly!

The overstatements are unfortunate because the story makes some important points about the lack of focus on building resilience to climate extremes — a no-brainer already and particularly important as building greenhouse gases jog the system (and as human numbers crest).

Global warming will surely tip the odds toward some unpleasant surprises, but recent human history has barely tasted what nature can serve up.

http://revkin.tumblr.com/post/5986838354/stable-climate-of-past-12-000-years-hardly

Our classy president described her as “lipstick on a pig.”

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

According to US Navy PIPS2 data, the area of ice thicker than 2.5 metres is 230% of what it was three years ago.

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent.png

A sliver of missing ice around Newfoundland spells certain doom for the planet.

Six days after 9/11, Osama was convicted after a lengthy trial held by President Bush

September 17, 2001

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Osama bin Laden is the “prime suspect” in last Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and the United States wants to capture him , President Bush said Monday.

Speaking with reporters after a Pentagon briefing on plans to call up reserve troops, Bush offered some of his most blunt language to date when he was asked if he wanted bin Laden dead.

“I want justice,” Bush said. “And there’s an old poster out West… I recall, that said, ‘Wanted, Dead or Alive.'”

Adding to the adminstration’s steely stance Monday were growing rumors that the United States might seek to alter a number of long-held practices governing its overseas activities, including prohibitions on undercover activities that could interfere in the internal affairs of another nation. The nation, for example, has complied with an executive order issued during the Ford administration that bans the U.S. for assassinating national leader or other prominent overseas figures.

“The American people were appalled and outraged at last week’s attacks, as were Muslims from across the world,” Bush said. “The face of terror is not the true face of Islam. Islam represents peace.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/17/bush.powell.terrorism/

The execution was carried out ten years later in front of his children by newly discovered military hero Barack Obama.

April 7, 2009

Scientists have begun debating how soon the Arctic will lose its summer ice altogether, with some saying it could happen as early as 2015. White House science adviser John P. Holdren told the crowd at the State Department that the total disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic “may be far, far closer” than scientists thought just a few years ago.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

The guy in the Google Earth picture working next to the West Side Highway has a special sea level tracking device.  When his weed eater can no longer spin due all the water, it is time to evacuate.

At current sea level rise rates, this could happen sometime in the next 3,000 years.

http://www.wlsam.com/Article.asp?id=2189757

Arnie was lecturing us about CO2 morality while knocking up the maid.

Is this the beginning of some actual science from the “climate science” community?

Wind farms: Britain is ‘running out of wind

According to government figures, 13 of the past 16 months have been calmer than normal – while 2010 was the “stillest” year of the past decade.

Meteorologists believe that changes to the Atlantic jet stream could alter the pattern of winds over the next 40 years and leave much of the nation’s growing army of power-generating turbines becalmed.

The Coalition has drawn up plans to open more wind farms in an effort to meet Britain’s European Union target of providing 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.More than 3,600 turbines are expected to be installed in offshore wind farms over the next nine years.

But statistics suggest that the winds that sweep across the British Isles may be weakening. Last year, wind speeds over the UK averaged 7.8 knots (8.9mph), a fall of 20 per cent on 2008, and well below the mean for this century, which stands at 9.1 knots (10.5mph).

Usually Britain has warm, wet and windy winters, thanks to Caribbean air carried here by the Atlantic jet stream, a fast-flowing current of air.

But the last two winters have featured exceptionally low temperatures and were remarkably still when they should have been the windiest seasons of all, as high pressure diverted the jet stream from its normal position.

Meteorologists have found that the position of the jet stream has been influenced by the lower levels of activity on the Sun. This decline in sun-spot activity is expected to continue for the next 40 years, with potentially serious consequences for the viability of wind farms.

Professor Mike Lockwood, from Reading University, said: “Changes in the jet stream will change the pattern of winds that we get in the UK. That, of course, is a problem for wind power.

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