Peer-reviewed global cooling

Post lifted from Lubos Motl

A large portion of physicists in Russia, especially solar physicists, have reached a "scientific consensus" - as others would call it - that the Earth will enter a period of global cooling in a couple of years and the temperatures will drop to the minimum sometime in the middle of this century.

If they're right, a period of deep freeze will start around 2055-2060 and last for 50 years or so. These predictions are based on a detailed analysis of internal dynamics of the Sun. 2007 is the International Heliophysical Year so you're not supposed to dismiss this science without reading it. Unfortunately, I cannot verify all these statements.

In the West, it has become popular for many activists such as Naomi Oreskes to claim that there is no peer-reviewed literature that contradicts the fashionable theory of the so-called global warming. Well, that's very far from reality as everyone who is familiar with basic research directions in this field knows very well. Whether or not we think that all these papers are right or not, it's a fact that there is even peer-reviewed literature that argues that we're gonna experience global cooling.

Because problems with similar statements are being looked for about 1,000 times more intensely by certain groups than problems with their own statements, I must offer you several links that would otherwise be unnecessary. ;-)

"Kinematics and Physics of Celestial Bodies" is a peer-reviewed journal that Springer translates from Ukrainian together with other journals in Russian (thanks for the correction, Gene!): click the Springer link, read the first sentence, and find the title of the journal. ;-) An article by Habibullo I. Abdussamatov in this journal published in 12/2005 discusses some of these solar cycles that are relevant for the climate. You may prefer another text about similar topics in conference proceedings published by Cambridge University Press. Other sources where similar articles were written include

• Bulletin of Crimea Observatory Vol. 103, pp. 122-127, 2006
• Proceedings of the All-Russian Conference in Troitsk, Izmiran, pp. 3-8, 2006

It's not just theoretical papers that are dedicated to these questions and explanations.

• Astrometria

is a project to measure the temporary variations of the shape and the diameter on the Russian segment of the International Space Station. The pages belong to the Central Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Pulkovo.

If you want to see how data about longer solar cycles is exctracted, see Nagovitsyn 2001. If you are already tired of Russian papers - the Russian Academy of Sciences opposed Kyoto protocol as scientifically ungrounded so the whole nation must be composed of ExxonMobil stooges, after all - you may prefer recent Western articles, see Renssen et al. 2006. The title says a lot about the dominant mechanisms:

• Coupled climate model simulation of Holocene cooling events: solar forcing triggers oceanic feedback

I guess you believe me that I could list lots of papers analyzing the sunspots. But most of them surely don't contradict global warming, do they? A global warming inquisitor would say that a heretic would have to find a recent peer-reviewed paper - from 2007 or later - that explicitly says that we will see cooling in the next 20 years. And it must say so in the title if the heretic wants to be treated as a human being at least for 3 seconds. ;-)

Well, the inquisitor should have been much more careful! A 2007 paper in Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics (Springer) is called

• Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years

Thanks to Timo Hämeranta for a message that included many more links and papers.

See also

• CLOUD, cosmic rays & climate
• SKY experiment
• Solar forcing

Goodbye Hoover Dam?

Post lifted from Hall of Record

No, Hoover Dam has not sprung a major leak. Neither have the Tennessee Valley Authority dams. And China's Three Gorges Dam which is due to start generating hydroelectric power in 2008 has not run out of water. These hydroelectric dams are damning us all... according to an article in Scitizen.

What had sparked the reaction was my calculation that Brazil’s Balbina Dam was worse than fossil fuels in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions (Fearnside, 1995). A Canadian group had also shown that northern reservoirs can release greenhouse gases (Rudd et al., 1993). This was only the beginning of the long debate that continues to this day. Large emissions from water passing through the turbines of tropical dams have been have confirmed by direct measurements of methane release immediately below the Petit-Saut Dam in French Guiana (April et al., 2005) and the Balbina Dam in Brazil (Kemenes et al., 2006). Dr Philip M. Fearnside

Are you beginning to get the sense that no option for human civilization is either politically-correct or global warming-correct? Well, actually, this tells me that the U.S. should earn CO2 credits by shutting down hydroelectric plants and building old-technology coal-powered plants.

Are you beginning to get the sense that none of this is making a whole lot of practical sense?

The other day, I pointed out that a rather mundane elimination of traffic signal inefficiency would have real benefits for both the environment (not just CO2 reduction, but a host of toxic gases) and all of us individually by reducing our driving cost and time.

What I don't see from those who are demanding reductions in CO2 or other "greenhouse gases" are practical approaches. Rather it's all about creating penalties. Raise taxes. Create fees. Force uneconomical changes in the name of "risk management."

Okay, who is going to tell the Chinese that they can't start operating their new hydroelectric dam that was "clean" until this study said it wasn't?

(sssshhh... nuclear power the French were right)





"NOBLE SAVAGES" WIPED OUT LOTS OF SPECIES

They were not the nature-loving sages the Green/Left fantasize about

A lengthy, newly compiled fossil record of Australian mammals bolsters the notion that humanity's arrival on the island continent led to the extinction of many large creatures there. Archaeological evidence suggests that people arrived in northern and western Australia about 50,000 years ago (SN: 3/15/03, p. 173: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030315/note10.asp). By 5,000 years later, about 90 percent of the continent's mammals larger than a house cat had gone extinct, says Gavin J. Prideaux, a paleontologist at the Western Australian Museum in Perth. Casualties of that era include several species of kangaroos and wombats as well as marsupials that filled the ecological niches elsewhere populated by lions, hyenas, hippos, and tapirs.

By unearthing and cataloging specimens from a group of fossil-rich caves about 300 kilometers southeast of Adelaide, Prideaux and his colleagues assembled a nearly complete record of the past 500,000 years. Most of the 62 species of nonflying mammals on the list fell into the caverns via sinkholes, but some remains were brought in by owls that roosted there.

Scientists had compiled a long-term climate record for southeastern Australia by analyzing the caves' stalactites. Those structures formed and grew when rainfall was plentiful but not during dry spells.

During most of the past 500,000 years, the number and diversity of mammal fossils found in the Australian caves decreased only during intervals when the local climate was dry. When moisture returned, so did the animals. The only exception is the die-off of mammals between 50,000 and 45,000 years ago, the team reports in the January Geology.

Those extinctions occurred at least 25,000 years before the most recent ice age began. "The climate was stable then, and mammals really shouldn't have been going extinct," says coauthor Richard G. Roberts, a geochemist at the University of Wollongong in Australia. "The only thing that's new during that period is people," he adds.

Scientists are debating how people might have caused the extinctions. Some researchers argue that the new inhabitants drastically altered Australian ecosystems by burning the landscape (SN: 7/23/05, p. 61: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050723/note11.asp). However, large species may have died off gradually when people preyed on the mammals' offspring faster than the animals reproduced, says Roberts.

The fossil record compiled by Prideaux and his colleagues shows that "the mammal fauna was resilient through time, despite climate fluctuations," says David W. Steadman, a paleontologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Changes in mammal populations during times of climate change "were nothing like those that occurred after people showed up," he notes. "To think climate caused these extinctions is [now] untenable," comments Gifford H. Miller, a geologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Source





GREENIE LOGIC: Possums are in pest proportions in Australia and New Zealand but are still "endangered"



In New Zealand there are so many millions of possums that the New Zealanders kill them on sight if they can. And everywhere in Australia they live in cities along with the people. They THRIVE in cities. I live in an inner-city area but I see them nightly walking along the broadband cable above the street in front of my house. And I certainly hear them at night on my roof!

To some they're just pests that make a racket in the roof at night. But possums are an important part of Sydney's ecology and one that appears to be under stress from increasing urban sprawl and population density. [BOTH of those?? Both fewer people and more people are bad??]

A study by a Sydney academic suggests the marsupials are dying on northern Sydney roads at a rate that could eventually impact on the viability of their populations. Macquarie University's Tracey Adams found close to one possum per day was perishing on one 40 km stretch of road alone, a death toll which was worsened by the impact of cats, dogs and foxes.

She has successfully lobbied for the introduction for the creation of two trial bridges to allow urban possums to cross major roads. ``I wouldn't think that these kinds of losses would be sustainable in the longer term,'' said Adams, a research officer with Macquarie's Department of Biological Sciences and a Masters Degree student. ``Possums play a role in pruning the trees, adding to the newgrowth and in seed dispersal.''

Adams was motivated to study the impact of vehicles on suburban possums after noticing the high number of dead marsupials by the side of the road during her daily commute. She decided to scientifically log the number of fatalities that occured along both sides of a 40km stretch of road in the Ku-ring-gai area. Specific roads studied included Lady Game Drive, the Comenarra Parkway, Bobbin Head Road and Ryde and Mona Vale Roads. She was surprised at the high rate of deaths. Over two years she logged 585 possum corpses by the roadside. She said she believed the actual death toll from the roads was likely to be higher as some possums probably crawled off to die or had their bodies taken by predators before they could be counted. Counts were conducted twice weekly.

Her research suggested the majority of possums were killed close to street lighting. Adams said as well as having an impact on the local ecology the sight of a dead possum was upsetting for some motorists. Tourists visiting area national parks frequently use the roads involved in the study. Adams successfully lobbied groups including the Wildlife Information and Rescue Service (WIRES), Macquarie University and Ku-ring-gai council for funds to construct two possum bridges in East Linfield.

Source

***************************************

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Comments? Email me here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************