| |
|
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
|
|
IISD Reporting Services Blog: "Day 7 at Climate Meeting: Working with nature: water, wetlands, biodiversity and climate change linkages."
NewMexiKen: "CBS Evening News asks the Candidates about Global Warming. The answers from the candidates are actually rather interesting."
"2008 pres"
6:31:38 PM 
|
|
TPM Election Central: "The debate -- the last GOP event before the Iowa caucus -- was in many ways a total bust. It was dull, the candidates were not really put on the spot in tough ways, and moderator Carolyn Washburn, editor of the Des Moines Register, openly said they would avoid high-profile national issues like Iraq and immigration. It's hard to pick out a winner, but there was one surefire loser: Carolyn Washburn."
Captains' Quarters: "The winner of the most dull debate Is ..."
eyeon08.com, "The loser was clearly the moderator. What was Alan Keyes doing there? But I thought that Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson did well."
Political Wire: "'This last debate before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 might best be summed up with a shrug of the shoulders,' according to the New York Times. 'All the candidates pretty much stayed on script, broke no new ground and barely engaged with each other. They all looked exhausted.'"
"2008 pres"
6:09:17 PM
|
|
The DNCC has named Frank Conner the Director of Security for the convention, according to The Rocky Mountain News. From the article:
People had wondered what the lauded 34-year police veteran would do after retiring. Turns out he will head the security detail for the Democratic National Convention. "You don't go 60 mph your whole life and then come to a dead standstill," Conner, 55, said Tuesday with a smile after the announcement was made. "You have to wean yourself from work." His duties as director of security will include coordinating overall security inside the Pepsi Center, where the convention will be held Aug. 25-28, and working with the Secret Service and Denver police in developing a safety and security plan. He also will lead security efforts before and after the convention...
Conner was joined Tuesday by Jim Malone, who was named deputy director of security by Democratic National Convention Committee officials. Malone, 56, retired from the Denver Police Department in 2004 after more than 30 years on the force. He had worked as a detective investigating sex crimes and other crimes against children and spent time on the security details of Mayor John Hickenlooper and former Mayor Wellington Webb. For the past three years, Malone has been doing background checks for the city and county of Denver. Leah Daughtry, chief executive officer of the DNCC, said the two would be "ideal liaisons" between the committee and federal and city law enforcement officials.
"2008 pres"
7:06:49 AM
|
|
The Science Blog is running an article about the accuracy of current computer climate models at predicting historical conditions. From the article:
A new study comparing the composite output of 22 leading global climate models with actual climate data finds that the models do an unsatisfactory job of mimicking climate change in key portions of the atmosphere. This research, published on-line Wednesday in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology, raises new concerns about the reliability of models used to forecast global warming. "The usual discussion is whether the climate model forecasts of Earth's climate 100 years or so into the future are realistic," said the lead author, Dr. David H. Douglass from the University of Rochester. "Here we have something more fundamental: Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? It seems that the answer is no." Scientists from Rochester, the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and the University of Virginia compared the climate change "forecasts" from the 22 most widely-cited global circulation models with tropical temperature data collected by surface, satellite and balloon sensors. The models predicted that the lower atmosphere should warm significantly more than it actually did.
"Models are very consistent in forecasting a significant difference between climate trends at the surface and in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere between the surface and the stratosphere," said Dr. John Christy, director of UAH's Earth System Science Center. "The models forecast that the troposphere should be warming more than the surface and that this trend should be especially pronounced in the tropics. When we look at actual climate data, however, we do not see accelerated warming in the tropical troposphere. Instead, the lower and middle atmosphere are warming the same or less than the surface. For those layers of the atmosphere, the warming trend we see in the tropics is typically less than half of what the models forecast." The 22 climate models used in this study are the same models used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which recently shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore...
After years of rigorous analysis and testing, the high degree of agreement between the various atmospheric data sets gives an equally high level of confidence in the basic accuracy of the climate data. "The last 25 years constitute a period of more complete and accurate observations, and more realistic modeling efforts," said Dr. Fred Singer from the University of Virginia. "Nonetheless, the models are seen to disagree with the observations. We suggest, therefore, that projections of future climate based on these models should be viewed with much caution." The findings of this study contrast strongly with those of a recent study that used 19 of the same climate models and similar climate datasets. That study concluded that any difference between model forecasts and atmospheric climate data is probably due to errors in the data.
"The question was, what would the models 'forecast' for upper air climate change over the past 25 years and how would that forecast compare to reality?" said Christy. "To answer that we needed climate model results that matched the actual surface temperature changes during that same time. If the models got the surface trend right but the tropospheric trend wrong, then we could pinpoint a potential problem in the models."
This is a great illustration of the strong interaction between the physicists (modelers) and empiricists.
"2008 pres"
6:24:13 AM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/15/09; 1:50:40 PM.
|
|
|
