At www.physorg.com/print219842545.html there is a story, 'Chasma Boreale, Mars' with an image supplied by NASA. The chasm is a long flat floored valley that cuts deep into the Mars polar ice cape. Its walls rise up 4600 feet and it seems the ice has retreated as sheets of sand are emerging that accumulated in earlier ice free periods. The depiction comes from images taken between 2002 and 2005 by the Thermal Emissions Imaging System onboard the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Melting ice on Mars appears to replicate melting mountain glaciers on the earth - why?
Climate change news
Disappearing the contrarians
Although this story was flying around the blogosphere a few weeks ago it never reached much of a drama - and it is still quite low key. However, the day may well be coming when Google loses its golden shine and that aura of all things bright and wonderful.
Ozone and Meltdown
A couple of doomsayings - or what might be called some mischief making from environmentalists. Apparently, an ozone hole has developed this week over the Arctic and is said to be a big problem - blamed on unusually cold temperatures in the Arctic. Firstly, you may note the disappearance of ozone coincides with a couple of very big solar flares and auroral displays at the Poles but that is of no consequence, it seems (see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/15/my-morning-double-take-arctic-on-t... ).
Household Lighting and the Earth Hour
An interesting post at http://colinmcinnes.blogspot.com/2011/03/dimming-light-of-human-ingenuity.html is all about the history of lighting houses over the last couple of hundred years. It progresses from candles to oil lamps fueled by cooking whales. The discovery of fossil oil was a reprieve for the whale but was closely followed by the discovery of electricity and the much maligned light bulb, the object of derision by more extreme elements of AGW enthusiasm.
New Paper - Arctic Sea Ice Rebounds
At www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110204092149.htm ... a paper in Geophysical Research Letters 2011: 38 claims that recovery mechanisms of Arctic summer sea ice shows that no tipping point is likely to exist as far as the loss of Arctic sea ice is concerned. In the summer it melts by varying amounts, sometimes more and sometimes less. However, each winter the sea ice recovers - and always will.
Hide the Decline
At http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/ ... if you never understood what the fuss was about in 'hiding the decline' in the Climategate emails read this piece by a climate scientist fed up with the small number of other climate scientists who have exagerated the warming trend. The comments at the end of the piece are approaching 2000 in number - she has bit the bullet and people are squirming on one side, and are elated on the other.
Lake Baikal and the weather
At www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110217091132.htm Lake Baikal, the worlds biggest lake, we learn is cold and deep and is giving up some of its secrets. A study in PLoS One (February 2011) by Russian scientists has found that water temperatures in the past correlate with El Nino indices and actually reflect sea surface temperatures in the Pacific - yet Lake Baikal is in Siberia.
Bananas and radiation
At http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/16/going-bananas-over-radiation/ there is a nice post from Anthony Watts on bananas containing radiation. Apparently, several foods are naturally radioactive and bananas in particular due to potassium-40. The point is that fear of radiation leaking from nucleur power stations has been over-hyped as there is a lot of radiation out there in the human world - especially if you live somewhere like Cornwall.
Random Walks
At http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/14/pielk-sr-on-the-30-year-random-walk-in-surface-temperature-record/ ... this is a guest post by lukewarmer Roger Pielke Senior with an amusing title on a paper by Fraudrich, Kirk, Schubert and Zhu (2011), 'Random Walk lengths of about 30 years in global climate'. They examine the choice of 30 year data sets which goes back to the early 20th century.
The Revision of History
AGW proponents not only adjust temperature readings from the recent past in order to draw a more prominent warming trend they are now revising history itself in order to saddle the wicked human race with further angst. According to the new history of the world the Roman Empire, the Black Death, and the colonisation of the Americas had a significant impact on climate - largely it seems by chopping down trees.