Tag Archives: Press Release

Peer reviewed science: Polar bears of the past survived warmth

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“Peer reviewed science: Polar bears of the past survived warmth“: A University of Alaska article about a fossilized polar bear jawbone, called “Polar bears of the past survived warmth“, lets Anthony Watts show his sensitive tree-hugger side:

So next time you have somebody sniffling and tearing up over polar bears and sea ice, show them this research and hand them a Kleenex. Now, they can worry about the polar bears eating hippos in the future.

I guess he didn’t bother reading the article he’s waving around as surly proof:

“Refugia” are places that polar bears may survive without ice. The Svalbard Archipelago may have been one of those places. Biologists today think polar bears would have a difficult time living on land, because other species like the grizzly bear could outcompete them.

The warm period of the Eemian might have come at a time when the polar bear wasn’t such an ice specialist, Talbot says.

Is this what a denialist slam-dunk looks like? Anthony should stick to snickering over inaccurate polar bear illustrations created by graphic artists.

Earth’s thermosphere collapses – film at 11

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Layers of Earth's upper atmosphere. Credit: John Emmert/NRL.

Earth’s thermosphere collapses – film at 11: NASA releases a news report on how the thermosphere (the top 500K of Earth’s atmosphere) is affected by solar activity. This is Anthony Watts’ excuse to revive the hoary bogus claim that climate change is all driven by the sun and will swing back no matter what humans do. Also, NASA are a bunch of ‘Chicken Littles’, always worrying about things. Don’t ever listen to them!

Too bad these fluctuations (the “collapses” are the result of upper atmosphere cooling triggered by lower solar activity) don’t mirror anything that’s happening to Earth’s climate. If you want to get technical, the historical patterns suggest that last decade of declining solar activity should have been accompanied by minor global cooling, not record warming…

The paper that NASA’s summary is derived from is: Emmert, J. T., J. L. Lean, and J. M. Picone (2010), Record-low thermospheric density during the 2008 solar minimum, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L12102.

Of course Anthony also highlights the NASA author’s e-mail address for easy harassment.

Zooming In on an Infant Solar System

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“Zooming In on an Infant Solar System“. Steven Mosher dumps in an off-topic copy and paste of a University of Arizona press release,  Zooming In on an Infant Solar System. Anthony likes to see these posts occasionally because they can be pointed to as proof that his denialist website isn’t completely anti-science.

A protoplanetary disk visualization. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The UA scientists combined light from two Keck telescopes and further boosted the resolution using spectro-astrometry to observe a protoplanetary disk 500 light years from Earth. Matter accretes to a star in two possible ways; as it falls directly onto star, or following tangential paths constrained by magnetic fields that result in super-heated and ionized gas impacting the star at high speeds. After observing 15 protoplanetary disks, most seem to follow the latter pattern.

Scientists unmask ‘Ghost Mountains’ of Antarctica at last

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“Scientists unmask ‘Ghost Mountains’ of Antarctica at last“. Steven Mosher copy and pastes a report titled Scientists unmask ‘Ghost Mountains’ of Antarctica at last from Newsdesk.org. They’ve created a detailed map of the Gamburtsev Mountain Range of Antarctica, buried under kilometers of ice, using radar techniques.

To Anthony Watts’ readers this interesting development is ignorantly interpreted as “we don’t know so much about this planet we live on after all”. The comments, predictably, devolve into a series of complaints about government-sponsored “scientists” and phony scientists that leech off the taxpayers via the government. Another day, another pavlovian response.

Climate change: have we reached the irreversible stage?

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“Climate change: have we reached the irreversible stage?” Steven Mosher re-posts an Abs-Cbn news release about an Al Gore speech in the Philippines. His intellectual contribution is this juvenile graphic of Al Gore. Exceptional effort, Steven.

Now it’s more CO2 that will threaten crops

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“Now it’s more CO2 that will threaten crops“. But plants love CO2! Anthony Watts is confused by this UC Davis press release. Apparently “Rising CO2 levels threaten crops and food quality”. What’s confusing about this, Anthony:

…findings from previous research by Bloom and colleagues suggested that elevated levels of carbon dioxide decreased photorespiration and inhibited nitrate assimilation in plant shoots.

Oh, maybe that ‘whole CO2 is good thing’ isn’t going to stick, even though the partisans at CO2Science.org have an “amazing video”.

Now it’s lizards going extinct due to climate change

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“Now it’s lizards going extinct due to climate change“. Anthony Watts has found another press release, in this case Study documents widespread extinction of lizard populations due to climate change from Villanova University, to which he adds some dumb photos (unless you agree with Anthony that posting Godzilla photo is clever) and even dumber remarks. Anthony scratches his head over the puzzler of how warmer might not be ‘gooder’ for a lizard. Too bad he lost interest before the fourth paragraph:

Although the lizards normally bask in the sun to warm up, higher temperatures exceeding their physiological limits keep them in the shade, restricting their activity and preventing them from foraging for food. The researchers used these findings to develop a model of extinction risk based on maximum air temperatures, the physiologically active body temperature of each species, and the hours in which its activity would be restricted by temperature. The model accurately predicted the disappearance of Mexican lizards and was then extended globally to lizards in 34 different families on five continents and validated by comparing the predicted results with actual local extinctions.

Oh, maybe Anthony should have kept quiet on this one. The comments are full of idiotic remarks about how many lizards are in this or that backyard. Deep thinking going on over there.

The Union of Concerned Scientists tackles gardening to save the planet

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“The Union of Concerned Scientists tackles gardening to save the planet“. Anthony Watts pastes in another press release this time from the Union of Concerned Scientists. They’re offering practical climate-friendly advice to gardeners:

  1. Minimize Carbon-Emitting Tools and Products.
  2. Use cover crops.
  3. Plant Trees and Shrubs Strategically.
  4. Expand Recycling to the Garden.
  5. Think Long and Hard about Your Lawn.

“Seventy percent of Americans garden, and they can have a positive impact. Our guide shows them how.”

Anthony’s snarky response is that “we can just garden our way to carbon nirvana, that is, if the bugs don’t eat it.” It can’t be much fun being so miserable all the time.

Gavin’s sensitive side

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“Gavin’s sensitive side“. Anthony Watts does a copy and paste of a NASA press release about research into climate sensitivity (Daniel J. Lunt et al., 2010. “Earth System Sensitivity Inferred from Pliocene Modelling and Data,” in Nature Geoscience, Vol. 3, No. 1), but turns the post title into a childish personal dig at leading NASA climatologist Dr. Gavin Schmidt…

The research attempts to infer ancient climate sensitivity to CO2. Current models don’t work well on geological timescales:

Earth’s climate is also influenced by other, much slower processes. These include changes in ice sheets, vegetation and aerosols, for example, that take place over hundreds and thousands of years. Because of their complexity and long timescales, these processes are almost impossible to integrate into today’s climate computer models.

This sounds like grist for the denialist mill. “We can’t trust no dang ‘puter models! Garbage in, garbage out!” Why would Lunt break the conspirator’s agreement to hide problems? Maybe, shockingly, they’re trying to learn and improve?

The team found that it took much lower concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide to recreate the Pliocene’s warm climate than current models — which consider only the relatively fast-adjusting components of the climate — predict. Pliocene carbon dioxide levels are estimated to have been around 400 parts per million by volume (ppmv), while according to current simulations it would take 500 to 600 ppmv of carbon dioxide to bring about the warm temperatures of the Pliocene. As a result, the researchers estimate that Earth’s response to elevated concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide is 30 to 50 percent greater than previously calculated. In other words, the climate is more sensitive to carbon dioxide than we thought.

Ooh, those sneaks! They learned something!

AGW to reach…”The Edge of Wetness”…

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AGW to reach…”The Edge of Wetness”… Super-hip Anthony Watts references the Johnny Carson Show to attempt a put down a press release about a paper (An Adaptability Limit to Climate Change Due to Heat Stress) that suggests the following:

Despite the uncertainty in future climate change impacts, it is often assumed that humans would be able to adapt to any possible warming. Here we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such adaptation.

Maximum wet-bulb temperatures from a climate scenario with mean temperature 12°C warmer than 2007. Land areas >~34°C exceed the wet-bulb limit of potentially lethal heat stress. (Purdue University/Matthew Huber)

Here’s Anthony’s snappy comeback in its entirety: “Apparently it’s not just the heat, but the humidity too.” Now that’s what I call critical thinking. How is considering the possible impact of a particular level of warming a bad thing?