March 4, 2012
P. Gosselin reports on his blog that Norwegian scientists are already predicting that La Niña may come back for a 3rd year.
(Related: La Niña will last well into 2011 and could extend into 2012)
It wasn’t all that long ago when a number of climate scientists were projecting the Earth would soon fall into an almost permanent, increasing El Niño mode, where the surface temperatures of the equatorial Pacific would always be like what we saw in 1998 – all man-made.
Today a number of German-language papers are reporting that Norwegian scientist Tore Furevik of the Bjerknes Centre of the University of Bergen says he expects the opposite to happen at least this year. Furevik says that La Niña may come back for third straight year. “The situation is simlar to the previous year,” he says.
Die Welt here writes that “there are no signs that La Nina is going to disappear anytime soon” and that according to Norwegian experts “it will occur even more strongly than in 2011″.
The Wiener Zeitung of Vienna, Austria adds:
The La Niña phenomena has been persisting since 2010 and there are no signs of it going away. We had this strong cooling in 2010 and instead of getting warmer, we stayed in a long cold phase’, said Furevik. “And it appears as if an even stronger La Niña will occur.’”
Furevik’s La Niña forecast contradicts the experts’ forecast, where an ensemble of models show the trend towards an El Niño for the 2nd half of the year:
Tags: El Niño-Southern Oscillation, La Nina, Pacific Ocean, University of Bergen
Posted in Climate, Oceans | Comments Off on La Niña may come back for a third straight year
March 3, 2012
Scientific papers polished by PR writers are part of the basic marketing strategy for pharmaceutical companies. This accusation of ghost-writing of scientific papers by public relations firms on behalf of drug companies was made last August.
Ghost-writing did indeed take place, it was by employees of the drug company (GSK) but the investigation conducted by the University has cleared its psychiatrists of any research misconduct!! The researchers accused were not even reprimanded for their lack of judgement in using PR ghost writers let alone the subject of any strictures for their lack of writing skills.
I wonder how much research money comes to the University from GSK every year?
Tags: Ghostwriter, Glaxo Smith Kline, Pharmaceutical industry, Plagiarism, University of Pennsylvania
Posted in Academic misconduct, Business, Science, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »
March 2, 2012
The Age of Gas is not just dawning but is well and truly underway with China revealing reserves sufficient for 200 years. At 25 trillion cubic meters (875 trillion cubic feet) of recoverable reserves these could be almost twice the recoverable reserves in the US.
As shale gas comes into play all over the globe there is going to be a run on large gas turbines for power generation. Gas turbine manufacturers (and the big 4 are GE, Siemens, Alstom and MHI) can expect a sellers market within 2 or 3 years as the economic recovery pressurises generation capacity.
from Wikipedia
The Telegraph:
China is planning an investment blitz to unlock its vast reserves of shale gas, convinced it can match the energy revolution under way in the US and meet a significant part of its fast-growing fuel needs.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Age of Gas, China, dash for gas, gas glut, gas turbines, sellers market, Shale gas
Posted in China, Energy, Engineering, Gas | 2 Comments »
March 2, 2012
Sticking to science – and experimental science at that – while ignoring the politicisation and religious overtones of “climate science”, Henrik Svensmark continues to painstakingly build his cosmic theory of climate change.
Supernova remnants → cosmic rays → solar modulation of cosmic rays →variations in cluster and sulphuric acid production → variation in cloud condensation nuclei → variation in low cloud formation → variation in climate.
When experiments or observations show that model predictions are wrong it is time to ditch the falsified hypotheses and to build new hypotheses. Far too often in ” global warming science” the hypotheses and the models become “incontrovertible dogma” and rather than test the falsifiability of the hypothesis with observations and experiment, data are fudged to fit the dogma. Svensmark’s approach is an oasis of proper science in a desert of pseudo-science.
Nigel Calder reports:
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: climate change, Cloud condensation nuclei, cloud seeding, Cosmic ray, Henrik Svensmark, Nigel Calder, solar effects
Posted in Climate, Science, Solar science | 2 Comments »
March 1, 2012
I see that the EU and French authorities are getting all worked up about Google’s new privacy policy. But that by itself (the opposition by EU and French bureaucracy) makes me think it can’t be all bad. And if the Google dashboard truly reflects the information stored then it does not bother me.
BBC:
Internet company Google has gone ahead with its new privacy policy despite warnings from the EU that it might violate European law. ….
But I am not especially concerned . In fact I am somewhat hopeful that the quality of the ads directed towards me will improve! They surely cannot get any worse.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: advertisements, buying behaviour, Google, Privacy, Privacy policy
Posted in Business, Media, psychology, World Wide Web | Comments Off on New Google privacy policy does not bother me…….
February 28, 2012
An interesting paper from Curry et al. providing further evidence of a relationship between melting ice in the Arctic regions and widespread cold outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere. Forcing mechanisms are all the rage where feedback loops lead to runaway effects. In general – in my experience with things technical – natural feedback loops are most often self-correcting. Sometimes they may appear in the short-term to amplify effects but in the long-term they drive back to an equilibrium condition. If feedback mechanisms are not known or if the true cycle-time of the feedback is unknown then short-term effects can be misleading.
Jiping Liu, Judith A. Curry, Huijun Wang, Mirong Song, and Radley M. Horton. Impact of declining Arctic sea ice on winter snowfall. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 27, 2012 DOI:10.1073/pnas.1114910109
Newswise:
Since the level of Arctic sea ice set a new record low in 2007, significantly above-normal winter snow cover has been seen in large parts of the northern United States, northwestern and central Europe, and northern and central China. During the winters of 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, the Northern Hemisphere measured its second and third largest snow cover levels on record.
“Our study demonstrates that the decrease in Arctic sea ice area is linked to changes in the winter Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation,” said Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. “The circulation changes result in more frequent episodes of atmospheric blocking patterns, which lead to increased cold surges and snow over large parts of the northern continents.”
Tags: Arctic, atmospheric blocking, feedback mechanisms, ice melting, Northern Hemisphere, Polar Regions, Sea ice, self-correction
Posted in Climate, Science, Weather | Comments Off on Self-correcting feedback mechanisms? When warming leads to cooling
February 27, 2012
Thai show elephants
The Thai Government relies heavily on the $2 billion tourist industry which in turn uses elephants as a focus for attracting tourists. But most of these “show” elephants (estimated to be 100- 200 per year) are captured as young calves by poachers who kill their mothers when trying to protect their calves. But the Thai Government which makes all the politically correct noises about protecting elephants is reluctant to disturb the poachers and the tourist industry. So when poachers are threatened the Thai Government (ironically through its National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department) rushes to their defence.
The Age: A partly Australian-funded wildlife rescue foundation whose chief spoke out about the illegal poaching of baby elephants in Thailand has been raided and had 103 animals taken away by Thai parks officials. … witnesses say many of the animals, including endangered species, were injured during the raids on the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand centre by up to 100 armed men, some of whom wore balaclavas to hide their identities.
The raids over four days followed claims by the organisation’s founder and director, Edwin Wiek, that more than half the elephants in tourist camps across Thailand had been illegally caught in the wild when they were young, sometimes by poachers who shot their mothers or other members of their herd that tried to protect them. …….
Thailand’s National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department said the animals were seized because the foundation failed to produce paperwork showing they were being kept legally. “We need to enforce Thai laws that have been issued to protect those animals,” said the department’s director-general, Damrong Pidech.
Ironically many of the animals seized were originally rescued from government centres and will now find themselves back in these centres.
Tags: elephant poaching, Poaching, Thailand, Tourism
Posted in Business, Corruption, Environment, Thailand | Comments Off on Thai Government rushes in to protect elephant poachers
February 27, 2012
Patrick Dunleavy (Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science) and Chris Gilson (Managing Editor of the EUROPP blog) discuss social scientists’ obligation to spread their research to the wider world and how blogging can help academics break out of restrictive publishing loops.
Five minutes with Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson
One of the recurring themes (from many different contributors) on the Impact of Social Science blog is that a new paradigm of research communications has grown up – one that de-emphasizes the traditional journals route, and re-prioritizes faster, real-time academic communication in which blogs play a critical intermediate role. They link to research reports and articles on the one hand, and they are linked to from Twitter, Facebook and Google+ news-streams and communities. So in research terms blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now.
But in addition, social scientists have an obligation to society to contribute their observations to the wider world – and at the moment that’s often being done in ramshackle and impoverished ways, in pointlessly obscure or charged-for forums, in language where you need to look up every second word in Wikipedia, with acres of ‘dead-on-arrival’ data in unreadable tables, and all delivered over bizarrely long-winded timescales. So the public pay for all our research, and then we shunt back to them a few press releases and a lot of out-of-date academic junk.
Blogging (supported by academic tweeting) helps academics break out of all these loops. It’s quick to do in real time. It taps academic expertise when it’s relevant, and so lets academics look forward and speculate in evidence-based ways. It communicates bottom-line results and ‘take aways’ in clear language, yet with due regard to methods issues and quality of evidence. …..
(my emphasis)
Tags: Blog, Research, Social science
Posted in Media, Science, Social Science | Comments Off on LSE on Blogging: “Blogging is .. one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now”
February 26, 2012
Fakegate enriches language!
gleick, n, a vain and inept person
to gleick, v, to forge ineptly
Peter was a gleick, Peter is a gleick, Peter will always be a gleick.
Peter gleicked, Peter is gleicking, Peter will gleick.
It trips of the tongue very nicely.
Fakegate and Peter Gleick’s inept (but “heroic”) escapades are the source of much amusement over at Climate Audit. One reader, a Dr. UK has found a very apposite quotation from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Bottom (wearing the head of an ass): Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.
Titania:Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.
But there are many contenders for the role of Titania! Monbiot and Laden lead the list.
To gleick, or not to gleick ..
Peter (soliloquy):
To gleick, or not to gleick, that is the question:
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Heartland,
Or to take Fakes against a Sea of Truths,
And by publishing end them:
(with apologies to WS)
Tags: Climate Audit, climate change, ethics, Fakegate, global warming, Heartland Institute, Laden, Monbiot, Peter Gleick
Posted in Academic misconduct, Alarmism, Corruption, Ethics, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »
February 26, 2012
A stone car with two axles and 4 wheels dating from about 7,500 years ago has been found near the North Kurdish town of Qoser. It would seem to be earliest known evidence of a wheeled vehicle.
7,500 year old stone car from Qoser
Tags: earliest wheeled vehicle, Kızıltepe, Neolithic, Stone Age, stone car, Wheel
Posted in Anthropology, Archeology | Comments Off on Earliest evidence of the wheel? 7,500 year old toy “car” found
