July 5, 2013
Sea levels in the past have been 10 m higher than today and 150 m lower than today.
Alarmism will have us believe that +5 cm ±15 cm in sea level that may actually happen by 2100 will threaten the very existence of humanity!
A new paper from Nils-Axel Mörner.
SEA LEVEL CHANGES PAST RECORDS AND FUTURE EXPECTATIONS
by Nils-Axel Mörner
ABSTRACT The history and development of our understanding of sea level changes is reviewed. Sea level research is multi-facetted and calls for integrated studies of a large number of parameters. Well established records indicate a post-LIA (1850–1950) sea level rise of 11 cm. During the same period of time, the Earth’s rate of rotation experienced a slowing down (deceleration) equivalent to a sea level rise of about 10 cm. Sea level changes during the last 40-50 years are subjected to major controversies. The methodology applied and the views claimed by the IPCC are challenged. For the last 40-50 years strong observational facts indicate virtually stable sea level conditions. The Earth’s rate of rotation records a mean acceleration from 1972 to 2012, contradicting all claims of a rapid global sea level rise, and instead suggests stable, to slightly falling, sea levels. Best estimates for future sea level changes up to the year 2100 are in the range of +5 cm ±15 cm.
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT, VOLUME 24 No. 3 & 4 2013
Tags: climate change, Current sea level rise, environment, Nils-Axel Mörner, Sea level
Posted in Alarmism, Climate | Comments Off on Disaster looms! Sea level may rise 5 cm by 2100
July 4, 2013
The Carbon cycle is far from being fully understood or quantified. The absorption and release of carbon dioxide by the oceans and from biological plants and fungii – both on land and in the ocean – are a long way from being established. The amount of Carbon locked up in the earths crust is equally subject to great uncertainty.
A new paper shows that deep soils hold much higher levels of carbon than is usually assumed.
R. J. Harper, M. Tibbett, The hidden organic carbon in deep mineral soils, Plant and Soil, July 2013, Volume 368, Issue 1-2, pp 641-648
Abstract: Current estimates of soil organic carbon (SOC) are based largely on surficial measurements to depths of 0.3 to 1 m. Many of the world’s soils greatly exceed 1 m depth and there are numerous reports of biological activity to depths of many metres. Although SOC storage to depths of up to 8 m has been previously reported, the extent to which SOC is stored at deeper depths in soil profiles is currently unknown. This paper aims to provide the first detailed analysis of these previously unreported stores of SOC. ….. Mean SOC mass densities for each of the five locations varied from 21.8–37.5 kg C m−2, and were in toto two to five times greater than would be reported with sampling to a depth of 0.5 m.
PhysOrg reports: Current estimates of soil organic carbon are based largely on measurements to depths of 30 cm. This approach has evolved in North America and Europe, where soil is generally more shallow.
However, many plant species have roots extending many metres deep, suggesting there is also carbon stored at such depth and inspiring researchers to explore the storage potential of deeper soils in older landscapes such as the Amazon or Australia. Researchers in the Amazon had previously sampled soils to 8 m.
The researchers took soil measurements from samples taken to almost 40 metres deep at a range of sites in south-western Australia. They found that small amounts of carbon were present throughout the soils all the way to the bedrock, and that deep soils store up to five times more carbon than is normally reported.
Lead researcher Professor Richard Harper, an expert in water management and sustainability at Murdoch University said the findings extend our concept of the amounts and potential of carbon stored in soils.
“This carbon has been previously overlooked, and this opens up several lines of inquiry – for example, what happens to this carbon with land use change such as deforestation and reforestation?” Professor Harper said.
“There is likely more carbon stored in the world’s soils than previously considered. What will happen to this carbon – that is, will it be released as a result of either land-use change or climate change – is unknown. This is what we are working on now,” he said.
Tags: Amazon, Australia, Carbon, Carbon cycle, carbon dioxide, Soil, Soil carbon
Posted in Climate, Science | Comments Off on Further uncertainties in the Carbon cycle
July 4, 2013
I grew up in a solar system which had nine planets.
And then poor Pluto was stripped of the honour of being a planet and we had only eight.
But then the “dwarf planets” were defined and Pluto joined this group of 5.
… the International Astronomical Union (IAU) defines a dwarf planet as a celestial body in direct orbit of the Sun that is massive enough for its shape to be controlled by gravitation, but that unlike a planet has not cleared its orbital region of other objects.
The IAU currently recognizes five dwarf planets in the Solar System: Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.
It is suspected that another hundred or so known objects in the Solar System are dwarf planets.
And we now have at least 13 known planets. Pluto is not only a dwarf planet it also has at least 5 moons and the last 2 have just been named. The 5 are Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.
Pluto and its moons: IAU
IAU:
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is announcing that the names Kerberos and Styx have officially been recognised for the fourth and fifth moons of Pluto, which were discovered in 2011 and 2012. The names were submitted to the IAU by the leader of the team responsible for the discovery, who had called for the help of the general public in an open contest that attracted a substantial number of participants.
The IAU is pleased to announce that today it has officially recognised the names Kerberos and Styx for the fourth and fifth moons of Pluto respectively (formerly known as P4 and P5). These names were backed by voters in a recently held popular contest, aimed at allowing the public to suggest names for the two recently discovered moons of the most famous dwarf planet in the Solar System.
The new moons were discovered in 2011 and 2012, during observations of the Pluto system made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3, and increasing the number of known Pluto moons to five. Kerberos lies between the orbits of Nix and Hydra, two bigger moons discovered by Hubble in 2005, and Styx lies between Charon, the innermost and biggest moon, and Nix. Both have circular orbits assumed to be in the plane of the other satellites in the system. Kerberos has an estimated diameter of 13 to 34 kilometres, and Styx is thought to be irregular in shape and is 10 to 25 kilometres across.
Tags: Dwarf planet, Hubble Space Telescope, IAU, Kerberos, Pluto, Solar System, Styx
Posted in Astronomy | Comments Off on Pluto is a planet with moons after all
July 4, 2013
The goings-on in Egypt and Gaza and North Africa where democratically “elected” leaders – albeit leaders who are undemocratic and Islamist – cannot get acceptance in the rest of the “democratic” world brings to mind the story of the Irish, socialist monarch.
Two Irishmen were sorting out the problems of the world in the pub – as one usually does in a pub.
After the sixth pint they had resolved the Irish Unification Issue, the Palestinian Issue, the Syrian Issue and the Chinese-Japanese Territorial conflict. But they were floundering when they came to the issue of Poverty and Starving Children. They could not agree even on what constituted Poverty. Could it be if or when you could not buy the fourth pint?
This led to the seventh pint. And the eighth and the ninth and then suddenly Sean’s face lit up.
“Begorrah Mick”, he exclaimed. “I have it now! The solushun is simpul. All the wurld has to do is to moik me the King of the World”.
“And how will that help?” asked a skeptical Mick.
“It’s reely simpul,” explained Sean. “If Oi was the King of the Wurld, I would collect all the monny there was or ever would be and Oi would distribut it equally – but equally – to evry living pershun – Cathlick or not”.
Mick was still marshalling his many cogent arguments against this vision of King Sean when Sean continued. “And when I had spent all moine, why I would just do it all over again”!
The Egyptian military would recognise the solution.
Democracy by “free and fair” elections is by far the best alternative – provided of course that you can have another “free and fair” election if you don’t like the result of the first one.
And so on ad infinitum till you get the result you want.
Tags: democracy, Egypt, Gaza, Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood
Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Trivia | Comments Off on The Egyptian Army as King Sean
July 3, 2013
I wrote this – following the words of the Bard – about something else
The quality of intelligence is not strain’d,
It may not be shaped or created or invented
to suit a man’s convenience. It is twice cursed:
It curses him who invents and curses the fool who believes.
and then realised it could easily be adapted to fit “hockey stick” climate science
The quality of climate science is not strain’d,
It may not be shaped or tricked into a hockey stick
to suit a Mann’s convenience. It is twice cursed:
It curses him who tricks and curses the fools who believe.
Tags: climate science, hockey stick, Quality
Posted in Climate, Science, Trivia | Comments Off on On constraining the quality of climate science
July 3, 2013
A new paper describing a Swedish study:
Sandin S et al. Autism and mental retardation among offspring born after in vitro fertilization. JAMA 2013 Jul 3; 310:75. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2013.7222)
Newswise — In a study that included more than 2.5 million children born in Sweden, compared with spontaneous conception, any in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment was not associated with autistic disorder but was associated with a small but statistically significantly increased risk of mental retardation, according to a study in the July 3 issue of JAMA. The authors note that the prevalence of these disorders was low, and the increase in absolute risk associated with IVF was small. …..
…… A total of 2,541,125 children were alive at 1.5 years of age and had complete data on all the covariates; 30,959 (1.2 percent) were born following an IVF procedure. Autistic disorder was diagnosed in 103 of 6,959 children (1.5 percent) and mental retardation in 180 of 15,830 children (1.1 percent) who were born after an IVF procedure. Cases had an average follow-up time of 10 years, median (midpoint) 14 years.
Analysis of the data indicated that compared with spontaneous conception, any IVF treatment was not associated with autistic disorder but was associated with a small but statistically significantly increased risk of mental retardation, although when restricted to singletons (single births), the risk for mental retardation was no longer statistically significant. “However, the results demonstrated an association between autistic disorder and mental retardation and specific IVF procedures with ICSI related to paternal origin of infertility compared with IVF without ICSI,” the authors write.
“The prevalence of these disorders was low, and the increase in absolute risk associated with IVF was small. These associations should be assessed in other populations.”
Tags: Autism, In vitro fertilisation, IVF, Mental retardation, Sweden
Posted in Medicine, Sweden | Comments Off on IVF with multiple births leads to small increased risk of mental retardation
July 3, 2013
“Intelligence” in the political sense is knowledge. But when “knowledge” is created or moulded or invented to suit a political purpose it loses its intelligence. Constrained intelligence is bad intelligence.
Following the Bard,
The quality of intelligence is not strain’d,
It may not be shaped or created or invented
to suit a man’s convenience. It is twice cursed:
It curses him who invents and curses the fool who believes.
The shameful subservience of European countries and their political classes to US “intelligence” when going to war in Iraq is now history. Of course Tony Blair was not merely subservient, he also helped to constrain the “intelligence” even further.
Reading this story about France and Portugal and Austria kowtowing to demands made – no doubt – by US “intelligence” while forcing down the Bolivian President’s plane yesterday, suggests that this subservience of their European counterparts still continues. The quality of the US “intelligence” that Snowden was on the plane was clearly very “strain’d”. The “constraining” of intelligence” to suit a political purpose will be with us for a long time and the poodle-like behaviour of the European countries is sometimes embarrassing to observe.
BBC: Bolivian President Evo Morales’s plane had to be diverted to Austria amid suspicion that US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden was on board, the Bolivian foreign minister has said.
Officials in both Austria and Bolivia said Mr Snowden was not on the plane.
France and Portugal reportedly refused to allow the Bolivia-bound flight to cross their airspace. Mr Snowden is reportedly seeking asylum in Bolivia and 20 other countries to avoid extradition to the US. Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca told reporters on Tuesday that France and Portugal had closed their airspace over the “huge lie” that Mr Snowden, 30, was on board.
“We don’t know who invented this lie, but we want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President Evo Morales,” he said.
Austrian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Schallenberg said Mr Snowden was not on board the Bolivian leader’s aircraft. The Bolivian defence minister, also on the flight, pilloried the US after the unscheduled landing. “This is a hostile act by the United States state department which has used various European governments,” Ruben Saavedra said.
The Falcon aircraft was reportedly allowed to refuel in Spain before the jet went on to Vienna. President Morales was said to be at the airport in Vienna discussing his return route to Bolivia early on Wednesday.
Tags: bad intelligence, Evo Morales, Intelligence, snowden, United States
Posted in Behaviour, Europe, Politics, US | 1 Comment »
July 2, 2013
It was always too grandiose for its own good. The economics were never sound but it was “visionary” and it was riding the fashionable “renewables wave”. It seemed to be much more of a public relations exercise to win brownie points than any real project. Domestic German politics and positioning of German companies in North Africa and the Middle East was of more interest than any real commitment to the project itself.
The concept was to generate solar and wind power in the worlds deserts and the transfer them by HVDC links to populous regions upto 3000 km away! The Desertec Foundation started in January 2009 and the Desertec project consortium (Dii gmbh) was established in October 2009 to handle the specific project for generating solar and wind power in North Africa and the Middle East for export to Europe. Now the Desertec Foundation has left the consortium and it is likely that the project and the consortium will quietly disappear into the sand.
PV Magazine: Uncertainty shrouds the future of the Desertec project to generate energy from the world’s deserts after the foundation which developed the idea announced it had withdrawn from the scheme.
The Desertec Foundation was founded in January 2009 with the idea of generating solar and wind energy from the world’s deserts. The founding principle of the foundation is to use high voltage DC current – which loses only 3% every 1,000km it travels – to bring power to the 90% of the global population living within 3,000km of deserts.
In October 2009, the Dii GmbH consortium was founded in Munich to bring the concept to life using the deserts of the Middle East and north Africa, with the aim of supplying up to 15% of Europe’s energy from renewables by 2050.
But in an extraordinary press release, the Desertec Foundation has announced its withdrawal from the consortium, citing ‘irresolvable disputes’ with its partners over strategy, obligations, communications and ‘last but not least, the managerial style of Dii’s top management.’
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Desertec, DESERTEC Foundation, Dii, North Africa, RWE, Siemens
Posted in Business, Energy, Politics, Renewable Energy | Comments Off on Desertec Foundation deserts the Desertec project consortium
July 2, 2013
This is a project by the IKEA Foundation together with the UNHCR. The target is to produce these refugee shelters for less than $1000 each. Each flat-pack includes a solar panel which powers a built-in lamp and a USB outlet. Each shelter takes 4 hours to assemble, would house 5 people and last 3 – 5 years compared to the 6 months of a conventional refugee tent.
The shelter as a flat pack: image via Fast Company
The Ikea refugee shelter via gizmag.com
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: IKEA, IKEA Foundation, Refugee shelter, refugee tent, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Posted in Design, Engineering | Comments Off on IKEA’s flat-pack refugee shelter
July 1, 2013
Hendrick Avercamp – Frozen River with Skaters
Andrew McKillop has a new article posted at The Market Oracle.
Global cooling began at the end of the so-called Medieval Warm Period, by or before the year 1300, and was preceded by at least 200 years, and as long as 350 years, of warming on the same variable and unpredictable basis. Measurement problems include the type of proxies used – ice cores, tree rings, corals and shells, others – but at least as important, the ideological bias of climate science leads to extreme variations in reconstructed climate data for the same region, same period. One flagrant example is IPCC treatment of Medieval Warming Period data – as published by the IPCC in different editions of its reports and studies. Before year 2000, IPCC studies include papers showing Warm Period temperatures in certain high latitude locations at certain dates around 950-1200 as several full degrees celsius above present day temperatures.
That is, despite 213 years of anthropogenic global warming if with the IPCC we use a start date of 1800 for human “carbon pollution of the atmosphere”, we have in no way matched this natural warming. Which needed zero assistance from human-source CO2.
This is the global cooling fear
Flooding in the low countries in Europe was a common feature which accompanied the global cooling which succeeded the Medieval Warm Period. The cooling period he writes, lasted 450 years.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: global cooling, global warming, IPCC, Little Ice Age, Low Countries, Medieval Warm Period
Posted in Alarmism, Climate | Comments Off on Beware Global Cooling
The k2p blog 