In our Galaxy, we are used to the idea that even the nearest stars are light years away from the Sun. But a team of scientists led by Professor Pavel Kroupa of the University of Bonn think things were very different in the early Universe.
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Two satellites, one Russian and one American, have collided some 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia, the Russian and U.S. space agencies, said Thursday.
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Scientists say a minus-50 reading in northwestern Maine last month was accurate, making it the coldest temperature ever recorded in the state.
The Arizona Department of Public Safety is calling it the worst snowstorm it has ever had to deal with in the northern part of the state.
Mount Redoubt in southern Alaska is puffing a little steam and emitting volcanic gases but still hasn't erupted.
Studies of seasonal influenza have long found indications that flu spreads better in dry air.
A detective who was investigating a western Pennsylvania man's disappearance happened upon the missing man's body during an afternoon jog through a field.
A female koala nicknamed "Sam" is said to be doing fine after being rescued by a firefighter. David Tree says the koala was moving gingerly on scorched paws, crossing the blackened landscape, clearly in pain. It stopped when it saw Tree following behind.
The leader of the Australian state devastated by wildfires says the death toll will exceed 200.
The advertisements urged people to reduce energy consumption and cut carbon dioxide output. He argued that they were “giving people the impression that by turning off the standby light on their TV they could save the world from melting glaciers and being submerged in 40ft of water”. He said that was “patent nonsense”.
The price of carbon has lost almost two-thirds of its value in the past six months, threatening future investments in the energy sector and undermining confidence in the second phase of Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). An EU permit to emit one tonne of CO2 cost 10.15 Euros (8.86 Pounds) at the end of last week, down from 28.50 Euros in mid-2008 and a far cry from forecasts of up to 40 Euros.
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Extended Discussion
This transition started in 2000 and it is expected to end around the maximum of cycle 24, foreseen for 2014...At that time a period of lower solar activity will start. That period will be one of regular oscillations, as occurred between 1730 and 1923. The first of these oscillations may even turn out to be as strongly negative as around 1810, in which case a short Grand Minimum similar to the Dalton one might develop.
There are signs our weather is taking a time machine ride back to the regimes of the 1960s or even the late 1700s early 1800s. Our climate operates in cycles, which favors different regimes of weather. We have come out of a few decades that thanks to a warm Pacific resulted in a dominance of El Ninos and its typical southern storm tracks and warm, dry western North America. The Pacific has cooled and now favors La Ninas, which have dominated the last two winters. This has resulted in a more northern storm track (and as we reported in earlier stories (here and here and here), record monthly or seasonal snows). The Atlantic is cooling too. The AMO has declined from its 2004/05 peak. The sum of the PDO and AMO we have shown correlates well with US annual temperatures. Longer term the sun is behaving like it did in the last 1700s and early 1800s, leading many to believe we are likely to experience conditions more like the early 1800s (called the Dalton Minimum) in the next few decades. That was a time of cold and snow. It was the time of Charles Dickens and his novels with snow and cold in London (hmmmm). During these cold modes, more La Nina winters like this occur, El Ninos occasionally develop, tend to be briefer and weaker and thus colder and snowier than the El Ninos of the warm eras. If a major volcano occurs, the cold deepens.
I am appalled at the selection of James Hansen as this year’s recipient of the AMS’s highest award - the Rossby Research Medal. James Hansen has not been trained as a meteorologist. His formal education has been in astronomy. His long records of faulty global climate predictions and alarmist public pronouncements have become increasingly hollow and at odds with reality. Hansen has exploited the general public’s lack of knowledge of how the globe’s climate system functions for his own benefit. His global warming predictions, going back to 1988 are not being verified. Why have we allowed him go on for all these years with his faulty and alarmist prognostications? And why would the AMS give him its highest award? Instead of organizing meetings with free and open debates on the basic physics and the likelihood of AGW (anthropogenic - manmade - global warming) induced climate changes, the leaders of the society (with the backing of the society's AGW enthusiasts) have chosen to fully trust the climate models and deliberately avoid open debate on this issue. For a long time I have wanted a forum to express my skepticism of the AGW hypothesis. No such opportunities ever came within the AMS framework. The climate modelers and their supporters deny the need for open debate of the AGW question on the grounds that the issue has already been settled by their model results. They have taken this view because they know that the physics within their models and the long range of their forecast periods will likely not to be able to withstand knowledgeable and impartial review. They simply will not debate the issue. A type of McCarthyism against AGW skeptics has been in display for a number of years.
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