Entire Sukhoi sales team killed in superjet crash

May 10, 2012

A Sukhoi Superjet SSJ100 crashed into mountains in Indonesia while on a sales tour of Asia. All 45 people on board were killed and it is thought that the entire Sukhoi sales team perished in the crash. The SSJ 100 development was plagued by delays and the first commercial aircraft was delivered in February 2011.

Voice of Russia:

Fitch Ratings agency expects that the recent Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ-100) crash in Indonesia during its demonstration flight will negatively affect the popularity of this jet brand in the short-term but won’t undermine the overall rating of its manufacturer, the Sukhoi Civil Aircraft. 

The SSJ-100 with 40 people on board slammed into a Salak Mount slope in Indonesia on May 9.

Indonesian rescuers have found no survivors at the site of Russia’s Sukhoi Superjet 100 crash on Java’s Salak Island, a rescue official reports. According to him, the bodies will be evacuated from the site by helicopters as it is located 1,500 meters above sea level.

The jet with 45 passengers went off radar during its demonstration flight in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on May 9. Eight Russians and citizens of five countries were on board

A rescue helicopter found the jet’s fragments on the Salak peak, 65 km of Jakarta.

Russian police are investigating.

Related: Huge blow to Russia’s aviation industry

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Posted in Aviation, Russia | Comments Off on Entire Sukhoi sales team killed in superjet crash

Solar effects on climate – evidence mounts that the Little Ice Age was a global event

May 9, 2012

And another paper showing that the Little Ice Age was a global event.It is highly probable that the LIA was related to the solar effects which gave a dearth of sunspots during the Maunder Minimum.

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L09710, 7 PP., 2012, doi:10.1029/2012GL051260

Little Ice Age cold interval in West Antarctica: Evidence from borehole temperature at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide

by

Anais J. Orsi , Bruce D. Cornuelle, Jeffrey P. Severinghaus – Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA

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“Single currency needs a single government” and a single European government would be a monster

May 9, 2012

Finally, David Cameron actually voiced what all politicians in Europe know but will not voice publicly. And they will not voice it publicly because a single European Government – in the current state of European politics – would be a many-headed monster – of bureaucracy, of over-represented fanatic fringes, of minority oppression, of waste, of scams and inefficiency.

Reuters:

A successful euro zone requires a single government if it is to work properly, British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a newspaper interview on Wednesday.

“There’s nowhere in the world that has a single currency without having more of a single government,” Cameron told Britain’s Daily Mail.

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Karachi University decides that plagiarism is not misconduct – drops charges

May 8, 2012

It does seem that plagiarism is not considered a very serious matter at Universities in Pakistan.

Karachi University has found a novel way to drop plagiarism charges against 4 academics against whom plagiarism charges were established by an independent committee. They charged the academics with misconduct, took up the matter formally at a Syndicate meeting and then dismissed their own charges since misconduct does not apparently include plagiarism under the University Act!

Karachi University was founded in 1951 and is considered one of the top 3 universities in Pakistan.

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Dinosaur flatulence caused global warming

May 7, 2012

Oh dear!

It sounds like a calculation a 10 year old could have made – given a few assumptions.

And this is what passes for peer-reviewed science ……… and for science reporting.

BBC Nature:

Giant dinosaurs could have warmed the planet with their flatulence, say researchers.

British scientists have calculated the methane output of sauropods, including the species known as Brontosaurus.

By scaling up the digestive wind of cows, they estimate that the population of dinosaurs – as a whole – produced 520 million tonnes of gas annually.

They suggest the gas could have been a key factor in the warm climate 150 million years ago. 

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Posted in Trivia | 1 Comment »

New study shows solar minimum does cause climate cooling

May 7, 2012

A new paper in Nature Geoscience shows that solar grand minima do indeed cause cooling of the climate in Europe. Around 2800 years ago, one of these Grand Solar Minima, the Homeric Minimum, caused a distinct climatic change in less than a decade in Western Europe. The forcing mechanisms still remain unclear but the evidence that solar effects are significant and cannot be ignored are mounting and persuasive. Now as we enter (or have already entered) a new solar minimum it remains to be seen as to whether this (Landscheidt?) Minimum will be a grand minimum to compare with the Maunder Minimum. In any event a period of global cooling seems likely.

In contrast, the evidence for any anthropogenic effects on climate is still non-existent though political and alarmist theories abound. There is as yet no direct evidence that man-made carbon dioxide emissions has any significant effect on global warming.

Regional atmospheric circulation shifts induced by a grand solar minimum by Celia Martin-Puertas, Katja Matthes, Achim Brauer, Raimund Muscheler, Felicitas Hansen, Christof Petrick, Ala Aldahan, Göran Possnert & Bas van Geel

Nature Geoscience (2012) doi:10.1038/ngeo1460

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Solar science | 12 Comments »

More turmoil awaits Europe as Sarkozy loses and Greeks vote against Europe

May 6, 2012

Sarkozy has lost in France according to Belgian and Swiss sources though the exit polls in France are not yet out. Hollande is expected to win by 5%.

The exit polls are also out in Greece.

In Greece, the only two parties supporting the Eurozone bailout and the austerity measures – PASOK and New Democracy – will probably not be able to form the next government. And that means that the chances of Europe leaving the Euro are greatly enhanced. In the short term this will cause massive turbulence in the Eurozone.

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Supermoon today and a chance to observe the moon illusion

May 5, 2012

A “supermoon” is the coincidence of a full moon (or a new moon) with the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit, or perigee, leading to the technical name for a supermoon of the perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system. The association of the Moon with both oceanic and crustal tides has led to claims that the supermoon phenomenon may be associated with increased risk of events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. However, the evidence of such a link is widely held to be unconvincing.

A supermoon will occur today, Saturday 5th May.

A “supermoon” typically happens once a year and at perigee it is 14 per cent larger than an average full moon, but not much larger than the full moons that precede and follow the supermoon. The closeness of the supermooon does cause higher tides but only about 2 or 3 cms higher than average levels.

Moon Illusion

The moon illusion refers to the moon seeming larger when it is near the horizon than when it is high in the sky. Some people judge it to be as much as twice as large, but the average estimate is 50% to 75% larger. But this is only an optical illusion.

Physical and cognitive explanations do not yet explain the illusion or why some people cannot observe it. The debate goes on.

The so-called “moon illusion” or “moon effect” has perplexed people since earliest historical times, at least as early as the 7th century BCE. It is described in early Greek and Chinese writings. Aristotle mentions it in 350 BCE.

No tidal waves or other catastrophic effects are expected.

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Posted in Art, Astronomy, Science | 2 Comments »

Intimidation works – some blog posts deleted

May 5, 2012

Following Cease and Desist notices and the subsequent removal of some blog posts at another site which I had linked to, I have also removed some blog posts from this site.

Trying to reach those posts will probably give a 404 error. I suspect the posts themselves were largely accurate, but..

Intimidation works.

Posted in Behaviour | Comments Off on Intimidation works – some blog posts deleted

With gas from methane hydrates added to shale and natural gas, the world has gas for a thousand years

May 3, 2012

Methane hydrates represent the largest source of hydrocarbons in the earth’s crust.

Methane clathrate (CH4•5.75H2O), also called methane hydrate, hydromethane, methane ice, fire ice, natural gas hydrate, or gas hydrate is a solid clathrate compound (more specifically, a clathrate hydrate) in which a large amount of methane is trapped within a crystal structure of water, forming a solid similar to ice. Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the Solar System where temperatures are low and water ice is common, significant deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of Earth. 

The worldwide amounts of carbon bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth.

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