U.S. tornadoes hit 60-year record low in 2013 — ‘Normally we’d see 1221 tornadoes in the USA, so far for 2013, only 716 have been reported’
2013 is a record low year for U.S. tornadoes | Watts Up With That?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/19/2013-is-a-record-low-year-for-u-s-tornadoes/…
2013 is a record low year for U.S. tornadoes | Watts Up With
2013 is a record low year for U.S. tornadoes | Watts Up With That?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/19/2013-is-a-record-low-year-for-u-s-tornadoes/…
Did an ice sheet collapse 120,000 years ago pushing sea levels up to 9m higher than today? — ‘Proving that nature can outdo anything humans have done’
Did an ice sheet collapse 120,000 years ago pushing sea levels up to 9m higher than today?
Proving that nature can outdo anything humans have done, a new paper shows that sea-levels off Western Australia may have risen as high as 9 m above the current level during the last warm period over a hundred thousand years ago. The authors (O’Leary et al) conclude that seas were 3-4 m higher for most of the last warm period (known as the Eemian) but towards the end of the period a large sudden rise occurred. They suggest that an ice shelf collapsed in Antarctica or Greenland or both, causing a 5m rise (17 feet). The point of the paper was this double spiked shape of the sea level rise during the last warm interglacial known as the Eemian. The Age interviewed O’Leary who said “he was confident that the 17-foot jump happened in less than a thousand years – how much less, he cannot be sure.” Figure 3 j Relative sea-level curve for Western Australia. Ageomorphically defined palaeoMSL datum of C2:5m 120 kyr ago (Fig. 1c) anchors a predicted relative sea-level curve at Red Bluff, which includes a GIA signal based on the test calculation (see Methods) plus the following ESL history: ESL jumps from 0 to 3.4m […]Rating: 10.0/10 (2 votes cast)
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New paper finds tree-ring proxy temperature data is ‘seriously compromised’ — Published in Climate of the Past
…Polar Bear expert: ‘Polar bears have not been harmed by sea ice declines in summer – the evidence’
Polar bears have not been harmed by sea ice declines in summer – the evidence
The polar bear biologists and professional activists of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) continue to insist that since 1979 increasingly smaller amounts of Arctic sea ice left at the end of summer (the September ice minimum) have already caused harm to polar bears. They contend that global warming due to CO2 from fossil fuels (“climate warming” in their lexicon) is the cause of this decline in summer ice.
In a recent (2012) paper published in the journal Global Change Biology (“Effects of climate warming on polar bears: a review of the evidence”), long-time Canadian PBSG members Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher (both of University of Alberta) summarized their position this way:
“Climate warming is causing unidirectional changes to annual patterns of sea ice distribution, structure, and freeze-up. We summarize evidence that documents how loss of sea ice, the primary habitat of polar bears (Ursus maritimus), negatively affects their long-term survival”
I’ve spent the last year examining their evidence of on-going harm, but in addition, I’ve looked at the evidence (much of it not mentioned in the Stirling and Derocher paper1) that polar bears have either not been harmed by less sea ice in summer or have thrived in spite of it.
This is a summary of my findings. I’ve provided links to my original essays on individual topics, which are fully referenced and illustrated. You are encouraged to consult them for complete details. This synopsis (pdf with links preserved, pdf with links as footnotes) complements and updates a previous summary, “Ten good reasons not to worry about polar bears” (pdf with links preserved; pdf with a forward by Dr. Matt Ridley, with links as footnotes).
1) Polar bear numbers overall have increased, despite the appearance of a ‘stable’ global population since 2001 and significant declines in Arctic sea ice coverage in summer. The global population estimate generated by the PBSG (20,000-25,000 bears, as of July 2013) has been virtually unchanged since 2001, giving the impression that declines in some subpopulations have been offset by increases in others. However, adjustments to a few subpopulation estimates (primarily changing estimates that had formerly been included in the total to zero (0), without adjusting the total downward) suggest that the actual numbers must have increased by 2650 to 5700 bears since 2001. These increases in total …