Wednesday, November 10, 2004

DEPLETED URANIUM HALFLIFE

A reader has sent me a probable explanation of why halfwitted Greenies often get the halflife of DU so wrong. As my post of 7th below notes, Greenies and their media allies often give the halflife as 109 years:

"U-238 has a half-life on the order of 4.5 x 10 to the 9th power years; the mathematically illiterate seem unable to comprehend the way the number is written. 10 superscript 9 gets reduced to 109 and they lose the 4.5 x completely. Clueless, but that's where that number comes from, I'll bet.




ISRAEL: THE GREENEST STATE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Or, more precisely, the ONLY Greenie country in the Middle East

Israelis have a tradition of nature conservation and rehabilitation going back over a hundred years. Rishon-Rishon has the details. You would think that the Green/Left would be great supporters of Israel in that case, wouldn't you. No such luck! It once again shows that the real Greenie agenda is anti-people rather than pro-nature.




WINDFARM SKIT

There is not much that is funny about a windmill but the windfarm industry can be very funny indeed. There is a skit here (or here) on the subject written by someone involved in the Australian windfarm industry.




ARCTIC DISSENT

Arctic sea ice not melting: new research

By BOB WEBER-- The Canadian Press

IQALUIT, Nunavut (CP) -- A Canadian scientist is pouring cold, unfrozen water on the notion that global warming is melting arctic sea ice like a Popsicle at the beach. Greg Holloway galvanized an international meeting of arctic scientists Tuesday by saying there is little evidence of a rapid decline of the volume of ice in the northern oceans. Despite breathless media reports and speculation of an ice-free Northwest Passage, he suggests that it's far more likely that the ice has just been moved around in the cycles of Arctic winds. "It's more complicated than we thought," said Holloway, a scientist with the Institute of Ocean Science in Victoria.

The original theory was based on declassified records from the trips of U.S. submarines under the ice. Satellite pictures have clearly shown that the surface area of the ice has decreased about three per cent a year for the last 20 years. But the question was, How thick was it? The submarine data generated headlines and cover stories from the New York Times to Time Magazine when it seemed to indicate that ice volume had decreased by 43 per cent between 1958 and 1997. The evidence seemed good. There were only eight different voyages, but they had generated 29 different locations across the central Arctic where there were enough readings to make comparisons.

Holloway, however, couldn't make that conclusion jibe with any of his computer models. "We couldn't understand how the reduction could be so rapid," he said. "My first thought was, What is it we don't understand?" Holloway knew that there was a regular pattern of sea ice being blown into the North Atlantic. He decided to examine if the wind patterns across the circumpolar North could have had something to do with the missing ice. Wind patterns blow across the Arctic in a 50-year cycle. At different points in the cycle, ice tends to cluster in the centre of the Arctic. At other points, the ice is blown out to the margins along the Canadian shorelines, where the subs were not allowed to go because of sovereignty concerns.

When Holloway lined up the submarine visits with what he knew about the wind cycles, the explanation for the missing ice became clear: "The submarine sampled ice during a time of oscillation of ice toward the centre of the Arctic. They went back during a time when ice was oscillating to the Canadian side."

Holloway had found the missing ice. "I believe it is most probably explained with the shifting ice within the Arctic locations," he said to applause from scientific delegates from Norway to China. If the submarines had made their first visit one year earlier and their return one year later, Holloway says they would have found no change in the thickness of the sea ice at all.

Holloway cautions that his research doesn't force a total re-evaluation of the theory of global warming. Temperatures on average are rising around the world, he says. It does, however, deflate excitement about the possibility of an ice-free Northwest Passage. The chance of a year-round northern shipping route has thrilled commercial shippers, worried environmentalists, and concerned those worried about Canada's ability to enforce sovereignty in those waters. "At this time, we do not have the basis to predict an open Northwest Passage," said Holloway.

It also calls into question some of the findings and recommendations of the International Panel on Climate Change, which accepted the 43 per cent hypothesis in its report to various governments. More data is coming in as further reports from American and British submarines are released. But the furore over the first results contains a lesson for both scientists and the public, Holloway says. "It's a very small amount of time and a very limited number of places those submarines could go," he said. "The cautionary tale to all this is the undersimplifying of a big and complex system."

"Who knows what's going on out there?"

The above article is reproduced in full from Canoe because Canoe advise that: "information on CANOE is changed frequently. In some sections, such as our newspapers, content is removed after 24 hours."




BUT THE NONSENSE GOES ON

Below is an excerpt from the latest "news" report about the recent ludicrous Arctic study. I have already dealt with this study on 3rd and so has Louis Hissink. Briefly: The Greenland ice is NOT melting; Arctic ice is sea ice so if it all melted sea-levels would not change; Because it is sea-ice there are NO glaciers there; and if the Arctic is melting twice as fast as elsewhere and the Antarctic is not melting at all the effect is not a GLOBAL warming effect but a local effect of some kind

"Global warming is melting the Arctic ice faster than expected, and the world's oceans could rise by about a meter (3 feet) by 2100, swamping homes from Bangladesh to Florida, the head of a study said on Tuesday. Robert Corell, chairman of the eight-nation Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), also told a news conference there were some hints of greater willingness by the United States, the world's top polluter, to take firmer action to slow climate change. Speaking at the start of a four-day scientific conference in Reykjavik, Corell said global warming was melting the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic glaciers from Alaska to Norway quicker than previously thought. "Greenland will play a much bigger role in sea level rise than anticipated," said Corell, a scientist at the American Meteorological Society. He said a 2001 U.N. report forecast world ocean levels would rise by 20-90 cms by 2100. He said some U.N. forecasts assumed melting Greenland ice would cause just 4 mm of the rise.

At the other end of the globe from the Arctic, the thicker Antarctic ice is expected to stay more stable, like a deep freeze

The ACIA report was funded by Arctic nations the United States, Canada, Russia, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland and is the biggest survey to date of the Arctic climate, by 250 scientists. It says Arctic temperatures are rising by twice the global average and are set to rise by a further 4-7 Celsius (7-13 Fahrenheit) by 2100".






UN rejects population doom fears

If the UN says it, then it MUST be right!

United Nations figures just released challenge fears that the human race may drive itself to extinction through over-population. The figures suggest an eventual equilibrium as people in poorer countries come to understand the need for smaller families. If fertility levels continue to fall, global population will stabilise three centuries from now at about 9 billion - a far less alarming figure than many have predicted. The latest calculation is based on "medium-level" expectations that fertility rates will decline significantly - to about two children per woman - even in developing nations, and then rise again slightly.....

The 300-year period covered by the report is twice as long as any previously attempted by the UN. Figures are not forecasts but extrapolations of what would happen if current trends continued. Given continued progress in extending life expectancy, the report says people could expect, on average, to live more than 95 years by 2300. Japan, the global leader in life expectancy today, is projected to have a life expectancy of more than 106. Longer lives could greatly extend retirement periods, with dire implications for pension schemes....

China, India and the United States are projected to remain the world's three most populous countries for the next three centuries, although India will have overtaken China by 2050, with a population of 1.53 billion. Pakistan, now seventh, could move up to fourth place by 2050, while Russia, sixth today, may drop to 18th. Two smaller countries expected to enter the population top 20 are Uganda and Yemen which, by 2300, are shown to occupy 11th and 12th places....

The report suggests the world's population will always grow slightly over time because life expectancy will continue to rise, but by smaller and smaller margins.

More here


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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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