Hate to do this, but...

More news on AGW... From Science Daily, it seems that only 20% of the world's actual climate data is accessible even to the climatologists. SAY WHAT?

Well, according to the lead author, Manola Brunet of the URV's Centre for Climate Change, published July 20 2011 in Climate Research, "Some climate data in Europe go back to the 17th Century, but not even 20% of the information recorded in the past is available to the scientific community." Now, what does that mean?

It means to me that the climatologists and computer geeks who program the climate change computer models that all this AGW Bru-Ha-Ha is based on only have about 20% of the data to use... I'd never accept a LAB report in Fizzix or Astro class from one of my students who only used 20% of the available data. DUH!

"If we had access to all the historical data recorded, we would be able to evaluate the frequency with which these phenomena are likely to occur in the future with a higher degree of certainty," the expert explains.

Dramatic Climate Change is Unpredictable...

Just to back up two recent posts so you don't think I'm that whacky, this study from Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen shows climate change is due to a series of chaotic parameters and as such is almost impossible to predict. It was published in Geophysical Research Letters in October 2010.
Two interesting statements from the study:

"For millions of years the Earth's climate has alternated between about 100,000 years of ice age and approximately 10-15,000 years of a warm climate like we have today." Hmm. So, do you think that the stuff that happened 100,000 years ago has anything to do with what is happening today? If you don't, you are ignoring a Bajillion years of paleoclimatology. Most folks just don't get it that the earth is "old" and it has done this heating and cooling thing way before we were even little splotches of gooey slime on a beach front somewhere. There are astronomical factors (Milankovitch Cycles and Hale (Sun) Cycles to name two big ones), localized earth based cycles (El Nino/Nina/Nota Oscillations, Pacific decadal oscillation, Arctic Oscillation, and both the North Atlantic & North Pacific Oscillations) and plenty of positive/negative feedbacks that the climatologists themselves argue about which comes first.

"The most pronounced climate shifts besides the end of the ice age is a series of climate changes during the ice age where the temperature suddenly rose 10-15 degrees in less than 10 years. The climate change lasted perhaps 1000 years, then -- bang -- the temperature fell drastically and the climate changed again. This happened several times during the ice age and these climate shifts are called the Dansgaard-Oeschger events after the researchers who discovered and described them. Such a sudden, dramatic shift in climate from one state to another is called a tipping point. However, the cause of the rapid climate change is not known and researchers have been unable to reproduce them in modern climate models."
Wow. Nice summary of real paleoclimatology. Let me emphasize a few individual points from this one paragraph...
1. The most pronounced climate shifts besides the end of the ice age is a series of climate changes during the ice age where the temperature suddenly rose 10-15 degrees in less than 10 years. So, in the past, temps suddenly rose 10-15 whole degrees within 10 years! And the AGW alarmists have been hand-waving and pounding their fists on the floor in tantrums over the mere 0.7 (+-0.4) degrees since 1880! C'mon. When are we going to stop blindly believing these 22 or so computer models that can't even fit the CURRENT climate data. It is to weep. 10-15 degrees within 10 years is a drastic life-altering change, to be sure. However, we really shouldn't get our panties in a bind over this current questionable 0.7 degrees in 130 years...
2. "...the cause of the rapid climate change is not known and researchers have been unable to reproduce them in modern climate models." What did I say in the preceding paragraph? These past dramatic climate change shifts are caused by something and the 22 or so computer models can't shed any light on them! One reason? ALL, let me repeat that just in case you went to the bathroom for a minute, ALL the computer models are stuck on inputs of man-made CO2 as the culprit and they won't even LOOK in other places... sigh...

The researchers, via he image above, explained the two scenarios they investigated. One was the "tipping point" scenario where some external factor (Yes, like increased CO2) would cause the climate to seesaw back and forth and finally tip over into a different climate. The other scenario - the climate is like a ball in a trench, which represents one climate state. The ball will be continuously pushed by chaos-dynamical fluctuations such as storms, heat waves, heavy rainfall and the melting of ice sheets, which affect ocean currents and so on. The turmoil in the climate system may finally push the ball over into the other trench, which represents a different climate state. What was their conclusion?

"Peter Ditlevsen's (a climate researcher at the Niels Bohr Institute) research shows that you can actually distinguish between the two scenarios and it was the chaos-dynamical fluctuations that were the triggering cause of the dramatic climate changes during the ice age. This means that they are very difficult to predict."

Ta Da...

Absolutely Gorgeous ALL Sky Photo Mosaic

From APOD (Astronomy Picture Of the Day). This is a great composite image of both the northern and southern skies. Cool stuff!

AMATEUR Astronomer Finds Really Cool Nebula!

I saw this image of a newly discovered nebula a week or so ago. What I didn't know was that it was discovered back in January by an AMATEUR, not a PRO! That is SO KEWL!

According to Space.com and Sky & Telescope Mag, this "Soccer Ball" nebula "Kronberger 61, 'Kn 61' for short, is named after its discoverer, Austrian amateur astronomer Matthias Kronberger, who found the object after poring over data provided by the Digital Sky Survey. Kronberger and other amateur skywatchers were encouraged by professional astronomers to look specifically in the star field covered by Kepler [NASA's planet-seeking satellite]." It was found near Cygnus, The Swan, if that's interesting to you.

Ain't Astronomy grand!

Another Body Blow To AGW Alarmists

Oh, wait! You mean we need real observable DATA when we make a scientific claim? What a novel approach to science! In still another gaping hole blown into the Global Warming Machine, NASA's own data shows the computer models that all the AGW hype is based on and keep screaming doom and gloom and we're all gonna die are... well... how should I say?... terribly wrong!

Roy Spencer, principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, and colleague Dr. Danny Braswell "...oompared what a half dozen climate models say the atmosphere should do to real honest-ta-goodness NASA satellite data showing what the atmosphere actually did during the 18 months before and after warming events between 2000 and 2011." [Quote from Science Daily] Emphasis added mine. Notice this scientific paper dares actually compare the computer model predicted "what should happen" to actual NASA satellite "what really happens". How dare anyone question the powerful computer models? Well, I've been screaming of this for years...

Spencer's original paper (a good read is you have nothing to do with a few billion neurons today), available here, points to a much more efficient heat release mechanism our atmosphere has than the mechanism proposed and predicted by the computer models. Why such a huge difference? Well, according to Spencer, the computer models treat the atmosphere as a closed system where the Ideal Gas Law (PV=nRT, beloved equation for all high school Chem kids) holds dominion. As any high school Chem kid knows, the atmosphere first is NOT A CLOSED SYSTEM and the Ideal Gas Law is ONLY TRUE for... ready?... IDEAL gases! The atmosphere is anything but 'ideal'.

Along with the aerosol problem research I posted earlier this weak, AGW has a couple black eyes and a few cracked ribs now... What's missing in the computer models? Aerosols, cloud formation, THE SUN, real science data, and the LAWS of Thermodynamics. Yeah, good model...

Yet Another Cellphone Study Says "NO"!

When Will People Get It? Cellphone use DOES NOT cause any physical harm to humans or any other known carboniferous life form! In yet another of a Bajillion real scientific studies, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, University of Basel reports, "We did not find that young mobile phone users have an increased risk for brain tumors when regularly using mobile phones..." and "We did not see that the risk increased after five years or more since the first use of mobile phones."
The study is published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.


There have been no, let me repeat that for the slow readers, NO scientific link found between cellphone use and cancer. None. Nota. Zilch. Goose Egg. Empty Set. There's a huge difference between 12 idiots on a jury awarding BIG $$$ to a grieving widow of a guy who dies from brain cancer who just happened to also use a cellphone and having a real scientific conclusion. A jury decision is usually not indicative of scientific thought; as seen recently in the Casey Anthony trial. Sheeze! Remember what the forman of the OJ trial said after they let him go? "I never heard of this DNA stuff before and I'm not sure I believe in it." BELIEVE in DNA?

Meanwhile, back on planet earth...

Hubble Bubble Popped!

According to PhysicsWorld.com, cosmologists from US and China have dispelled the Hubble Bubble alternative to Dark Energy.

This "Hubble Bubble" was proposed to explain away the strange teeth-grinding hair-pulling Tums-popping world of Dark Energy, DE. DE is the mysterious force that is causing the Universe to expand at an accelerated rate, beating up on the better understood gravity. The Bubble was a supposed large "area" around the earth that was proposed to be expanding at a constant rate, but slightly slower than the rest of the Universe was expanding. This would give the appearance that the far away parts of the U were moving away faster thus the illusion of an accelerating expansion overall.

So, RIP Hubble Bubble.

Aerosols & Anthropogenic Global Warming

Paper in Science Magazine finally addresses the atmospheric aerosol problem in global warming, GW. It's been known for a long time that the predictions made by the GW alarmists are based solely on computer models and not on any reliable scientific data. This is the primary reason I'm a semi=proud AGW skeptic. Not "denier". Skeptic. These computer models do not include parameters like aerosols (dust and large molecules) and cloud formation and have minimal sun effects.

According to the authors, "Climate model projections neglecting these changes would continue to overestimate the radiative forcing and global warming in coming decades if these aerosols remain present at current values or increase."

So, paraphrasing, the computer models have been and will continue to exaggerate any AGW effects because they simply do not include enough parameters. Climate change, yes, climate changes, is so complex it simply cannot be accounted for yet. Paper is a nice read if you want your head to hurt.

Why do we do what we do in science?

This guy is nuts! Watch till the end... YIKES!



Stolen from Phil Plait's BadAstronomy Blog.