Real Climate Science

A little brisk?

How will the homeless Pine Beetles survive?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk

They want to snip reindeer to make them better able to cope with the extra  thick ice caused by global warming.

TROMSOE, Norway (Reuters/Alister Doyle) – Indigenous Sami peoples in the Arctic may have found a way to help their reindeer herds cope with climate change: more castration.

Research by Sami experts shows that sterilized males can grow larger and so are better at digging for food — as Arctic temperatures vary more, thawing snow often refreezes to form thick ice over lichen pastures.

Neutered males are more able to break through ice with their hooves or antlers, and seem more willing than other males to move aside and share food with calves that can die of starvation in bad freeze-thaw winters like 2000-01.

“To make herds more resilient in the future, we need to re-learn the traditional knowledge of castration,” said professor Svein Mathiesen, coordinator of the University of the Arctic’s Institute of Circumpolar Reindeer Husbandry.

More castration “could be useful to adapt to climate change,” he told Reuters in the Arctic city of Tromsoe. “These animals are very good diggers for the small calves in the most critical period of the winter.” Pasture this year is good.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

New research led by researchers at the California Institute of Technology, Caltech, have discovered new details that support the idea that the mass extinction that took place approximately 450 million years ago, known as the Late Ordovician mass extinction, was linked to a cooling climate.

During the Late Ordovician mass extinction more than 75 percent of marine species died, but left very little evidence to help us understand how or what happened.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/31/idUS375272019520110131

Honeywell Receives U.S. EPA Acceptance for New Low-Global-Warming Blowing Agent for Foam, Aerosols

Agency allows Honeywell’s non-flammable product to be used in products sold in the U.S.

MORRIS TOWNSHIP, N.J., Jan. 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Honeywell (NYSE: HON) announced today that its new low-global-warming-potential product HFO-1234ze has been accepted for use in foam and aerosol applications by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

http://www.prnewswire.com/

MP reveals fading dreams of a white Christmas

Lewes MP and Lib Dem Shadow Environment Secretary Norman Baker has uncovered new government figures that show that dreams of a White Christmas are increasingly unlikely to become a reality. Since 1957 there have been 25 instances of a white Christmas anywhere in the country, yet because of global warming the future chances of snow on Christmas Day will drop by a third by 2010 and by over two thirds by 2050. London, which has only seen snow on Christmas Day six times in the last 45 years, will be even less likely to see snow in future, and coastal areas such as the Lewes constituency will also suffer.

Commenting on this, Norman said:

“Britons will soon be left with only dreams of a white Christmas, as the chances of it actually happening become more remote. Global warming is the main reason for this shift in seasonal weather and is responsible for changing the world as we know it.

http://www.cix.co.uk/~normanbaker/pr/2004/041214_white_christmas.htm

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/everydaylife/climate_class.html

Hansen wouldn’t tell kids this stuff if it weren’t true.

Ministers secretly advised Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan regime how to secure the successful early release of the Lockerbie bomber, documents obtained by The Daily Telegraph have disclosed.

A Foreign Office minister sent Libyan officials detailed legal advice on how to use Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s cancer diagnosis to ensure he was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds.

The Duke of York is also said to have played a behind-the-scenes role in encouraging the terrorist’s release.

The Libyans closely followed the advice which led to the controversial release of Megrahi – who was convicted of the murder of 270 passengers on Pan Am Flight 103 – within months of the Foreign Office’s secret intervention.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk