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Is it? Absolute humidity varies greatly with temperature. How about a link. Oh I forgot you never provide evidence.
I personally would find it impossible to measure but I an given to understand that there is considerable variation depending on time, temperature and even height and latitude.
But he does fly at 30 mph ...
Quite likely, but I think there are far more than just that one scheme
I'm thinking more of the water that is let down from reservoirs to keep the rivers below them flowing and healthy. Cow Green just over the hill has a pipe about 1m in dia full of water coming out a fair lick all the time. The head is about 80' depending on how drawn down the reservoir is. Cow Green's primary purpose is water supply to Teeside, so at the end of a dry summer it can be pretty low. There is probably 1 or 2MW to be had from that 24/7 (excluding maintenance), over the tops towards Weardale there are other reservoirs in sequence. I wouldn't be surprised to find 10 or more suitable sites around here OK 10 to 20MW isn't a great deal but it is enough for "10 to 20,000 homes" and would be relatively cheap to install, small generator house the size of large garage plus the set and a grid connection. The grid connection for Cow Green would be expensive, the nearest 11kV line is probably several miles away but not over in Weardale.
nightjar Despite what Americans believe, the USA is not the world. The global picture
The Independent today (24/9) has an article claiming that the Greenland ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheet are both melting faster than previously thought. The source of the information is the journal Nature. Article apparently published on-line today but I haven't managed to find an on-line reference.
The measurements come for a Nasa satellite - ICESat (Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite) High-resolution laser measurement rather than radar.
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It's a newspaper. It has to publish something sensational in order to sell copy and make money nowadays, so it publishes something which sounds like a major disaster. But what does the sentence above _really_ say? Well, it says that the information you were given before is now thought to be wrong. However, most people believed that, didn't they? I expect most people will believe this too. Until the next sensation...
People are being bombarded with lots of single data points, which alone mean nothing, and very many of which are incorrect anyway. Of course, you only get bombarded with the sensationalist data points - the most something since records began, the highest something else in the last 10 years. Data points which aren't scary don't make the press. You only get told of errors when that's sensationist, i.e. it's even worse than we scared you last time.
So how come there are so many scary records being broken? Well, we've started monitoring a large number of data points over the last 100 years. What happens when you do this? Suppose you start monitoring a million data points 100 years ago (actually it was more gradual and mostly within last 10 years, but it's simpler to consider a single starting date.) If what you're monitoring is in steady state with noise imposed (typical of many natural systems), in year 1, you will break a million records "since records began", and half a million of those will be in scary directions. In year two, you'll break half a million records again, and a quarter of these will be in scary directions. In year 100 (today), you'll break 10,000 records, with 5000 being in scay directions, and that's still well over 10 a day for the press to find and quote sensationally. So even in a steady state system, you can see that there's no shortage of sensationalism for the press to get their mits on.
So when you read press articles, you really need to think carefull and try and put the science back in which got stripped out in the sensationalism process. Trained a scientist, I was trained to look at issues in that way. Working as a computer systems analyst much of the time, same rules apply - I need to see all the evidence when investigating an issue, and one data point is pretty useless. I was interested when listening to an interview with Michael Mansfield QC on radio 4 last week, where as a lawyer his automatic instict when listening to a piece of evidence is to ask "Who benefits?" as he questions the validity of each piece evidence in his own mind. Slightly different take, but same idea - don't simply take things for granted.
Oh, BTW, last winter was the coldest winter on record, since records began 9 years ago in my back garden...
It certainly wasn't the coldest in MY living memory.
Didn't know you've ever been in my back garden.
That was the point.
I believe global warming/climate change doesnt mean a gradually warming everywhere but climate chaos - very cold spells, very hot spells, huge winds as the effects of chopping down 90% of the forests as burning thousands of years of fossil fuels and introducing thousands of manmade chemicals into the air destablises the atmosphere.
[g]
Yup. That's what the Neanderthals said, and probably they were right.
Don't shoot the messenger. Why not at least read the article first before damning yourself by behaving exactly like a dyed in the wool denier.
Even better track down the article in Nature.
It is not an error as such. Just the result of more detailed (and accurate) information that was not previously available which should, but won't, put an end to claims that ice is really building up and there is nothing to worry about.
I followed up Colin's post because he had posted the link suggesting that Antarctic sea ice was increasing. Faster glaciers is a valid explanation for that even when ice bulk is decreasing.
So let us be clear. Are you saying that all the recent temperature changes (since the start of the Industrial Revolution) are mere background noise?
Well I was trained as an engineer where the emphasis is (or at least was
40 or more years ago) more on practicality.As for Mansfield, he is a barrister. A member of a profession where the most respected are those who engineer the greatest miscarriages of justice. He might say "Who benefits?" but he is really thinking 'What do I have to do to turn this to my clients advantage?'. He won't care one jot about the validity of any evidence provided it remains to his client's advantage.
It is typical of the hardened sceptic to take one isolated piece of untypical data and pretend it has great significance in the wider world. (Which is one of the reasons I am gradually coming off the fence in favour of those who believe in global warming).
For better of for worse what happens in Antarctic and, to a lesser extent, in Greenland is of great significance to most of us. How far above mean sea level is that back garden of yours Andrew?
I looked again, but I can't see where I said that.
I asked you whether that was what you meant by the paragraph that you decided not to quote and which I have repeated below.
"So how come there are so many scary records being broken? Well, we've started monitoring a large number of data points over the last 100 years. What happens when you do this? Suppose you start monitoring a million data points 100 years ago (actually it was more gradual and mostly within last 10 years, but it's simpler to consider a single starting date.) If what you're monitoring is in steady state with noise imposed (typical of many natural systems), in year 1, you will break a million records "since records began", and half a million of those will be in scary directions. In year two, you'll break half a million records again, and a quarter of these will be in scary directions. In year 100 (today), you'll break 10,000 records, with 5000 being in scay directions, and that's still well over 10 a day for the press to find and quote sensationally. So even in a steady state system, you can see that there's no shortage of sensationalism for the press to get their mits on."
Seems perilously close to being a straw man to me. First you make a number of dubious generalisations. Then you arbitrarily categorise some of the events as "scary". And your final thought can only be intended to suggest that the world really is "a steady state system" and anyone who suggests otherwise is scaremongering. That's not science, it's propaganda.
I made a comment on how to be careful about interpreting single data points you find turned into scare stories in the scientifically naive press, i.e. look past the propaganda to find the actual science. I can only suggest you read it again without trying to find a hidden message in it, because I didn't put one in there.
I deliberately didn't comment on my views on climate change. That would take up too much space on uk.d-i-y, be even more wildly OT, and commit me to at least a couple of weeks of writing followup articles, which I haven't got time to do. If you want to know my views, I have mentioned them a couple of times that I can recall in the last few years, which you can probably find with google.
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You made the comment in the context of your venomous attack on one of our saner papers which had an article based on a report in the scientific journal Nature. What's more you appeared to be betting blind, not having even looked at the Independent, let alone the original report. You immediately labelled it a scare story. Since when has reporting inconvenient facts been a scare story?
After what you have just said I don't think I will need to google to understand your views on the subject.
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I still haven't found a direct link to even a synopsis of the Nature article but I have found the link below which gives more detail than the Independent.
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