Climate models wrong: Arctic melts *faster* than forecast

Now, in my critique of the XTRONICS web page, I had defended the idea of climate modelling. One would think, in light of the news story by the BBC reporting that the Arctic ice mass is melting faster than predicted, that all these models are so much poppycock.

While a "perfect" model would account for all independent variables in a system, this in all likelihood be impossible to achieve in the real world. However, would argue that once that all the important independent variables have been taken into account, it the model would accurately forecast future climate trends.

What is apparent to me in this story, is that we still have not identified all the important independent variables.

It's interesting to note in this is the third time in the last few months that studies have suggested the IPCC's latest major global climate analysis, the Fourth Assessment Report, is too conservative.

Now, Bush / Harper, are you paying attention???

Bad news for migraine sufferers

While taking a break from recycling my shed (read: tearing it down and dissassembling the pieces), I thought I'd catch up with the world.

To my dismay, I found this little article waiting for me. It appears that migraines are linked to brain damage. Not good news for me, as I average a migraine (with aura) about once a month. I know this doesn't compare to the more frequent sufferers, such as Louise who averages one about every 2 or 3 days, but just the same, it's alarming.

A critique of XTRONIC's "global warming" webpage

I got tired of writing my critique of XTRONIC's "global warming" webpage, so I thought I would publish what I've written to date. Given the length of the original article, it will take me several weeks of regular work before I finish. Rather than to wait and publish a complete opus (I'm too impatient for that), I figure that I'd get the first part out of the way.

Maybe I'll publish weekly. Stay tuned.

Funny how things happen...

I mentioned in a previous post a discussion I had with a clan member regarding global warming and Kyoto. He referred me to a site entitled "Is man caused Global Warming a Scientific fact?"

Now, I work as a program administrator for a science scholarships program. Though I have training as a scientist, I abandoned that career path more than 20 years ago when I realized that I neither had the productivity nor the persistence to become a hardcore scientific researcher. So the skills I learned in grad school have pretty much been inactive since I finished my postdoc.

I read through the Xtronics web page on global warming, my gut reaction was: "This is wrong. There's lots of stuff that's wrong here." But then I realized that I didn’t have any arguments based on fact to compare with what I was reading.

I resolved then to write a critique of the Xtronics web page. So, I started reading carefully the Xtronics page, and consulting on-line resources regarding climate change and the issue of global warming. I won’t write here about my findings, since I will publish that on my personal website when it’s finished. However, from the way things are going, my response will be at least as long as the Xtronics article, if not longer.

But what is important to me, and why I’m blogging about it now, is the fact that I have started using some long-unused brain cells related to my past science career: unused for the past 20 years. I thought that such a long time would have made me rusty, and for sure the more technical knowledge aspects of what I am writing about has escaped me. But what has astonished me is how I have kept the “scientific mindset” (for lack of a better term) that I had in me all along and which got sharpened 20 years ago. I find that those things really didn't change for me.

As I was researching my response, I found it refreshing and fun to read, and write of things scientific – and I don’t just mean trying to distill concepts into lay terms, but to actually study and think and write critically, the way I did when I was a grad student writing my thesis or when I'd draft a publication. It’s the kind of thing where you know that whatever you are going to write is going to be examined by people who’ve done a lot more research than you, or are very familiar with the subject area, and will ask probing questions.

Cheryl found me last night writing and researching, and when I explained what I was doing, she asked me: “Why are you wasting your time?” (Being pragmatic, she was wondering why I was spending time doing this than doing something constructive, like paying the taxes or arranging for a load of gravel to be delivered.) I have no answer to her question other than to say I feel compelled to do it. I guess what irks me is to read something on the web or in the newspaper that I suspect is not true, and discover that people read the same thing and take it as truth. So I feel obliged to correct things.

Anyway, this blog entry is taking time away from my critique… Back to work!

Canada's emissions plan misses Kyoto deadline by years

This is a sad day for Canada - the public acknowledgement that we will miss our Kyoto commitments by 8 to 13 years.

To be fair to the current Conservative government, the 8 to 10 years of Liberal government inaction on Kyoto did not help.

See the CBC story entitled: Baird's 'real' emissions plan misses Kyoto deadline by years

Our universe harbors no more than 512 vampires

I’d meant to blog this a long time ago, what with one thing or another getting in the way, I finally got around to it…

In his blog, Clive Thompson reports on an article entitled “Ghosts, Vampires and Zombies: Cinema Fiction vs Physics Reality” written by C.J. Efthimiou and S. Gandhi, and accessible online at the Cornell University Library.

To make a long story short, these physicists prove that (1) vampires don't exist, because if they did, we would have been overrun by them at least 200 years ago; and (2) in a steady-state "Buffy universe," there would be no more than 512 vampires.

Clive’s writeup is a very enjoyable read; take the time to look at his blog.

Kryptonite finally discovered!

The BBC newsite reports that Kryptonite has finally been discovered in a mine in Serbia. It seems that the mineral identified as sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide by Dr Chris Stanley, a mineralogist at London's Natural History Museum, had been reported in the literature – that is, comic book literature, not scientific. The mineral’s atomic structure was conclusively identified thanks to the analytical facilities at Canada's National Research Council and the assistance and expertise of two of its researchers, Dr Pamela Whitfield and Dr Yvon Le Page.

Isn’t it fun when fantasy meets reality?