Environment

Arctic Ice May 2010 - Update In a recent article - Arctic Ice May 2010 - I predicted that Arctic sea ice would be lower by the end of the month than at the same time in 2007.  The extent as shown by the NSIDC is now touching the 2007 extent line on the graph. image source NSIDC 20 May 2010.http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ Arctic sea ice is on track to recede to a record low this year, suggesting that northern waters free of summer ice are coming faster than anyone thought. The latest satellite information shows ice coverage is equal to what it was in 2007, the lowest year on record,…

Data from the ESA's Envisat radar satellite shows that the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill has entered the Loop Current, a powerful conveyor belt that flows clockwise around the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida. "With these images from space, we have visible proof that at least oil from the surface of the water has reached the current," said Dr Bertrand Chapron of Ifremer, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea. Dr Chapron and Dr Fabrice Collard of France's CLS have been combining surface roughness and current flow information with Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR)…

In India mass scale cutting of trees along the roadside, increasing urbanisation, rampant destruction of trees on private land, forest land, panchayat land. has taken place. Cutting trees and selling them at high costs is the only alternative left to landless labourers. People collect wood each day to burn for making food and jungles are bing destroyed. Neo rich demand more and more precious woods. Forest department in place the Indian forest cover has been reduced from 37 percent during British Rule to less than 10 percent and in my openion or observation there are hardly dense forests to be…

Using NASA satellite data and Google Earth, a Purdue University researcher has found evidence that North Korea is logging in the Mount Paekdu Biosphere Reserve, a 326,000-acre forest designated by the United Nations as a protected forest preserve. Mount Paekdu - together with an adjacent biosphere in China - has the world's highest plant biodiversity in a cool, temperate zone and is the habitat for many wildlife species, including the endangered Siberian tiger. Since many researchers are unable to visit North Korea, the research was conducted using remote sensing data. Results were published…

Grazinglands represent one of the largest land resources in the world, and they also serve as greenhouse gas sinks, taking gases like methane and nitrous oxide out of the atmosphere. A team of scientists lead by Mark Liebig at the USDA-ARS Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory estimated net global warming potential for three grazing management systems located in central North Dakota. The grazing management systems represented two native vegetation pastures under medium and high grazing pasture management, and a heavily grazed seeded crested wheatgrass pasture receiving supplemental…

Geologists led by Brown University say Lake Tanganyika, the second oldest and the second-deepest lake in the world, has experienced unprecedented warming during the last century, and its surface waters are the warmest on record. The finding is important because the warm surface waters likely will affect fish stocks upon which millions of people in the region depend. The results of the study were published in Nature Geoscience. The team took core samples from the lakebed that laid out a 1,500-year history of the lake's surface temperature. The data showed the lake's surface temperature, 26…

A global Warming Skeptic Clouds The Issues This article is written in response to Dr. Roy Spencer's claims about cloud albedo effects in an article by Cameron J English: Interview With A Global Warming Skeptic: Dr. Roy Spencer. One of the most common arguments used by deniers of AGW is that computer models are unreliable. “Climate models are only as good as the assumptions that go into them. And they have hundreds of assumption. All it takes is one assumption to be wrong for the forecast to be way off.”Roy Spencer.http://www.newsofinterest.tv/video_pages_flash/gw/ggws/computer_model_pr...…

Mathematician Ludwig Schläfli talks to us about objects in the fourth dimension and shows us a procession of regular polyhedra in dimension 4, strange objects with 24, 120 and even 600 faces! Watch the video simply by clicking on the image: The fourth dimension Jos Leys, Étienne Ghys, Aurélien Alvarez

Economics And Climate Change I am confident that global climate change is real. I am also confident that over-complicated knee-jerk legislation and taxation will make matters worse.  Problems get solved by rational actions, not panic attacks. Either economics stands on science or it stands on quicksand. The principles of taxation are not founded in science.  But they could be. The world is faced with a problem in need of a solution.The problem is this: CO2 is known to be a greenhouse gas. We have been using the atmosphere as a dumping ground for CO2 ever since coal and peat were…

Carbon Fudgeprints It seems that everyone has a carbon footprint.  The idea is that everything you do puts CO2 into the atmosphere or if it doesn't then it jolly well ought to so let's work out the carbon equivalent by just making stuff up. No calculation could be simpler. I go to the shop and I buy a loaf of bread. The bread was delivered by truck to the shopfrom the baker who got the grain by truck from the farmwhich got the seed and fertiliser by truck from ... Stop it, please!  William of Ockham wouldn't like it. It is absolutely impossible for anyone to measure in any…