Earth Science
Category archives for Earth Science
Breatkthrough at Lake Vostok
Posted by Greg Laden on February 8, 2012 Rumors have been in the air for days, but we now think it confirmed that Russian Scientsts have penetrated the liquid part of Antarctica’s Lake Vostok. The lake has been frozen over for something like 20 million years. Certainly there was life in it at the time. Is any of it still there? Has something…
Melting Ice and Sea Level Rise
Posted by Greg Laden on February 8, 2012 If all the water currently trapped in all the glaciers across the entire world melted, the sea level would rise far more than most people imagine. Almost everyone living anywhere in the world at an elevation of below about 500 feet with a direct drainage to the sea would be directly affected; The sea level…
Peter Gleick: Climate change is happening
Posted by Greg Laden on January 17, 2012 Gleick is the new board member of the National Center for Science Education.
study links climate to severe habitat loss
Posted by Greg Laden on January 7, 2012 In a world first, University of Queensland and CSIRO scientists have measured the relationship between current climate, climate change and habitat loss on plants and animals on a global scale. Their results, published recently in Global Change Biology indicate that areas with high temperatures and where average rainfall has decreased over time increase the chance…
The Inquisition of Climate Science
Posted by Greg Laden on December 7, 2011 I’m enjoying James Lawrence Powell’s book “The Inquisition of Climate Science” Powell’s book specifically addresses the clilmate change denialist movement and the global warming deniers themselves, and does so severely. He documents and discusses who is paying for climate change denialism documents the lack of scientific credenntials of the denialists, and outlines and describes in…
Hackers Release More Emails Stolen from Scientists …
Posted by Greg Laden on November 22, 2011 For now, a press release. More later:
Silent Summer: Global warming is real, folks
Posted by Greg Laden on November 14, 2011 Hot off the presses (stolen summarily from Here). This land temperature anomoly video showing both the growth of the global dataset and global warming was shown by the BEST group to Congress just a few moments ago.
A Republican and Climate Change Skeptic Talks About Climate Change
Posted by Greg Laden on November 11, 2011 Here’s the talk: And here’s the web site. Eventually, there will probably be a book.
Shawn Otto’s Book Launch Talk (with Don Shelby)
Posted by Greg Laden on October 26, 2011 You’ll remember that I recently wrote up Shawn Otto’s talk at The Loft. The talk was filmed and is now a major motion picture! Now that you’ve seen the talk, here’s your list of things to do: Buy the book here. Sign on to Science Debate.org here Sign the American Science Pledge here Join the…
Urban Heat Islands as Explanation for Hockey Stick Global Warming Curve
Posted by Greg Laden on October 20, 2011 Urban areas can be warmer than surrounding non-urban areas because there is a lot of combustion, pavement and other structure can collect solar heat and retain it for a while, and other factors. It is not uncommon to look at a weather map where conditions for precipitation are marginal, and everywhere but the urban zone,…
Science is always nonpartisan, but it is always political: Fool Me Twice
Posted by Greg Laden on October 19, 2011 Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America” was officially released last night in Minneapolis with appropriate fanfare and celebration. Everyone who gets to know Shawn likes him from the start and quickly learns to respect him and eventually hold him with a certain amount of well-earned awe, and like any book, we’ve…
Gobal Warming is Melting the Ice Caps
Posted by Greg Laden on October 10, 2011 My first job as an archaeologist in Boston (having moved there from New York) had to do with Deer Island, the northern of two islands that separate Boston’s Inner and Outer Harbors. The actual archaeology was uninteresting but the historical research was fascinating. Among the things I learned is that Boston’s Inner Harbor regularly froze…
Aquarius Yields NASA’s First Global Map of Ocean Salinity
Posted by Greg Laden on September 22, 2011 The first global map of the salinity, or saltiness, of Earth’s ocean surface produced by NASA’s new Aquarius instrument reveals a rich tapestry of global salinity patterns, demonstrating Aquarius’ ability to resolve large-scale salinity distribution features clearly and with sharp contrast. NASA/GSFC/JPL-Caltech One of NASA’s newest Big Sci machines has generated a high quality map…
How To Do Good Climate Science Instead Of Bad Climate Science
Posted by Greg Laden on September 19, 2011 In order to do good climate science, you have to understand and control for the sources of variation in the system. In any system that involvs metric change over time, there are four sources of variation:
A Proxy Indicator is Not What You Think It Is
Posted by Greg Laden on September 19, 2011 I want to say a word about what a proxyindicator is. And isn’t.
Cloud Gate Link Cloud!
Posted by Greg Laden on September 6, 2011 You all know about the latest dustups and new research related to climate change, including the resignation of the Editor-in-Chief of a major journal as well as some new papers about global warming. There has been so much activity over recent days that I thought a new link farm would be a good thing. So,…
Latest Research Shows That Clouds Do NOT Cause Global Warming
Posted by Greg Laden on September 6, 2011 The question of whether clouds are the cause of global warming has been settled: No, they are not.
Cosmic Rays Do Not Cause Global Warming
Posted by Greg Laden on September 4, 2011 On the face of it, it is impossible. Cosmic rays vary over time, and climate varies over time, and the two variations do not correspond. Global temperature has been going up over the last century, in correspondence with increased of atmospheric CO2, and this makes sense because the physics says that CO2 is a greenhouse…
CloudGate: Denialism Gets Dirty, Reputations Are At Stake
Posted by Greg Laden on September 2, 2011 There has been a major dust-up in the climate denialist world. A study published in late July made false claims and was methodologically flawed, but still managed to get published in a peer reviewed journal. The Editor-in-Chief of that journal has resigned to symbolically take responsibility for the journal’s egregious error of publishing what is…
Hockey Stick Data Tampering Investigation Concludes
Posted by Greg Laden on August 22, 2011 The Inspector General of the National Science foundation has completed an investigation into falsifying research data, concealing or deleting emails or other data, misusing privileged information, and seriously deviating form accepted practices in relation to climate change research by climate scientist Michael Mann. This investigation, just completed, confirms what has been determined by other previous…
Minnesota AGW Denialist Jungbauer Disembowled by Respected News Anchor Don Shelby
Posted by Greg Laden on July 11, 2011 I woke up this morning and the world was slightly different than it was the night before. Well, it probably always is a little different each day, but there are certain times when you notice this. I’m not talking about the bits of siding, roofing, and trees scattered about the landscape because of the very…
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting faster.
Posted by Greg Laden on March 8, 2011 These masses of ice are now contributing more new meltwater to the world’s seas than all other melting ice combined. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study. The findings of the study — the longest to date of changes in polar ice…
How old is the earth, and how do we know?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2011 How old is the earth? Short answer: 4,540,000,00/H30 Earth-years, plus or minus 1%. Long answer: We don’t know exactly because direct dating of the earliest material on the surface of the Earth will only tell use a minimum age; Prior to that, the Earth’s surface was probably molten, and even after that, it may be…
Republican takeover of the House is much worse than you may have thought, no matter how bad you thought it was
Posted by Greg Laden on November 13, 2010 I am speaking of Representative John Shimkus, R-Ill, and the truly astonishing words he uttered before Congress demonstrated in a video that is constnatly being trolled off Google and YouTube by those who don’t want you to see it: Source and more information here. If God’s Word is infallible, unchanging, and perfect, then dinosaurs did…
The melting of the Arctic ice cap is a complex process
Posted by Greg Laden on November 10, 2010 You’ve heard that the Arctic ice cap has shrunk, and that there are sea lanes open in the northern summer that had not been open previously, and on and so forth. Since the start of the satellite record in 1979, scientists have observed the continued disappearance of older “multiyear” sea ice that survives more than…
What Happens to Habitats with Global Warming?
Posted by Greg Laden on November 9, 2010 As global warming progresses, habitats change in their suitability for various life forms. It may be that moose will not be able to live in Minnesota in the future; Of the two resident moose populations, the one that lives in the area more affected by global warming has pretty much died out probably due indirectly…
Stormier Arctic Seas Affects Sea Ice (which was melting anyway, but still…)
Posted by Greg Laden on October 29, 2010 Interesting to look back at this now that the Arctic Ice Cap is opening up and disappearing: A new NASA study shows that the rising frequency and intensity of arctic storms over the last half century, attributed to progressively warmer waters, directly provoked acceleration of the rate of arctic sea ice drift, long considered by…
Increased storminess with global warming may follow different patterns in N v S hemispheres
Posted by Greg Laden on October 28, 2010 Weather systems in the Southern and Northern hemispheres will respond differently to global warming … the warming of the planet will affect the availability of energy to fuel extratropical storms, or large-scale weather systems that occur at Earth’s middle latitudes. The resulting changes will depend on the hemisphere and season, the study found. More intense…
Global Warming Crisis Strands Thousands of Walruses
Posted by Greg Laden on October 11, 2010 This is astonishing. …Scientists and conservationists are expressing alarm at the appearance of thousands of walrus on Alaska’s northwest coast, a dramatic demonstration of the effects of diminished Arctic sea ice brought on by global warming…. source
Anthropogenic Climate Change: It’s for real.
Posted by Greg Laden on September 15, 2010 I’ve noticed that a lot of smart people who nonetheless “did not accept” AGW, or at least, denied the “A” part of it, have stoped talking about it lately. I’m speaking here of people I know personally. You know who you are, and you know you were wrong, and I just wanted to say that…
, which is now available for the 
