Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

Almost EVERY email I get from those who think climate change is a hoax or a conspiracy to take their gun has a mention of Al Gore in the first paragraph. Usually in the first sentence! It’s actually helpful. Nothing I say or write will make any difference, so I can use my time to better purposes.

Click image to read the NYT Op ed. by vice President Al Gore.

Has Al Gore helped or hurt getting the message out?

Without doubt he has helped. His movie an Inconvenient Truth is very accurate and powerful. The hatred he engenders is proof positive of that. It is one of the two most powerful images of climate change.

I am lucky to have met Al Gore in the White House when he was Vice President. I was invited along with other TV mets. to a weekend seminar on climate change. I told my wife afterwards that I thought he had missed his calling. He loves science far more than politics. I could tell and I still think so.

Mr. Gore (Vice President Gore I should say) has written a very good piece today in the Sunday New York Times. It is well worth a read. He has citations with it.

The other most powerful image of climate change is also just as hated and for the same reason. Here it is below.

Micheal Mann et. al Reconstruction of global temps over the past 1000 years. Click image to read the paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

A quick search on the web will find hundreds of web sites calling it fraudulent and bogus. So much so that congress ask that the mot prestigious science body in America to investigate and issue a report.

They did.

In short: Good Science.

It is probably the most investigated scientific conclusion in the past 50 years. Every time it passes with flying colors.

It is a vivid picture of the dramatic warming of the last century. It also dispels in once glance the so called medieval warm period that some people have tried to use to claim the warming is natural. (It would not matter at all if there was one or not, but the warming was likely localised to the Northern Hemisphere.)

A picture is worth a thousand words and that is why it is such a hated piece of good science. So much so that Senator Laughing Stock is wanting to put Dr. Mann in jail.

What strange times we live in. Galileo would understand it well I think. Recant Mr. Mann and they will just sentence you to house arrest for the rest of your life!

It’s a bargain too good to pass up!

This is the broadband seismogram from Virginia Tech. It is set to record distant quakes. It speaks for itself. Keep in mind the distance between Chile and Blacksburg Virginia. The Earth rang like a bell last night.

Any questions?

Image of Seismogram at Nevada Seismic Lab in Nevada. The quake in Chile was so strong it is pegging the meters on seismograms world wide this morning.

An 8.8 Magnitude quake has hit Chile. It was recorded at a depth of only 35km. This is very shallow and likely means that  catastrophic damage is possible. Large aftershocks are already being recorded.

Data and images from USGS- about 300,000,000 people were close to the quake. 6 million felt a magnitude 7 quake.

The quake hit when most people were in bed asleep.

The USGS says this quake occurred 230 km north of the location of the 9.5 quake of May 1960. That quake holds the record for the largest magnitude quake measured with instruments. It killed over 1600 people.

Update Saturday afternoon:

A Tsunami Warning remains in effect for many areas of the Pacific. The BBC web site as usual has the best coverage world wide. The pictures of roads and bridges in Chile are frightening. We live on a very dynamic planet. It’s easy to forget that sometimes.

Here are just a few of the things I see on the high res. GOES image today…

One of the best science blogs out there is Skeptical Science. It is written by Aussie John Cook. His background is solar physics, among other things, and he does a fantastic job of showing the silliness of some of the wild things certain people say about climate science.

Click the image to get it.

This can come in handy of you find yourself at a party full of people who gets all their news from talk radio and haven't been in a bookstore in years.

A few months back I was given the Woody Guthrie Award for a Thinking Blogger by Mike Kaulbars at Greenfyre’s. The recipient is supposed to pass it on to someone he feels is worthy of it.

So, after enjoying the award for a bit longer than I should have, I hereby award it to John Cook of Skeptical Science. Much deserved for many reasons, but his iPhone App. alone makes him worthy.

You should really get it. It is free and based on real science. Not the silliness put out everyday by Inhofe,  Morano and the like.

Something else I read this week that I wanted to pass on.

It’s regarding the polls that show the public is now more skeptical of climate change. These are based mainly on false accusations labeled again Phil Jones and other at the University of East Anglia.

Same accusations against Dr. Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore Labs. (Ben Santer I call a friend. He has more knowledge in his little finger than these people will ever accumulate).

Scientific Facts Live Independently of Public Opinion.

Not sure where I saw it, but it is very well put.

Later,
Dan

ps Good grief I misspelled the title. Fixed now!