World Passes 400 PPM Threshold permanently

This entry was posted in Climate Change science and tagged 400ppm carbon dioxide Climate Change on by

September 2016 now marks the point at which the carbon dioxide levels failed to drop below the 400 parts per million (ppm) measurement for the first time ever. The Mauna Loa Observatory has been the official recorder of the the levels of carbon dioxide because they are located far out in the Pacific on Hawaii far from the centres of industrialisation, hence are ideally placed to make such atmospheric measurements. As explained on their website … Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO) is a premier atmospheric […]

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What Does Climate History reveal about our future?

This entry was posted in Climate Change science and tagged 2 million years Climate Change CO2 ice warming on by

A new and quite impressive paper has been published in Nature that lays out about two million years of climate history. What has happened in the past is a rather obviously valuable tool because it also enables us to understand the future we face. Prior to this specific paper only small windows of specific periods had been constructed. Nobody had previously composed a continuous reconstruction that spanned right across the various glacial periods and spanned an impressive two million years. […]

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Weird Weather Forecasts via the Daily Express

This entry was posted in People science Skeptic news Skepticism and tagged Exacta forecast James Madden UK Weather on by

Almost every Spring and Autumn for the past couple of years the UK’s Daily Express has run stories such as the above claiming that the season ahead is about to hit extremes. Instead of seeking guidance from a real meteorologist, their source is weather eccentric James Madden, forecaster for his one-man company Exacta Weather. Autumn is now more or less here and so of course the annual Autumn statement from The Express about blizzards in a few months arrives … Link […]

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Annual ice loss in Greenland is bigger than previously thought

This entry was posted in Climate Change science and tagged greenland ice loss on by

It has been known for some time that the annual ice loss during the seasonal melt in Greenland was large, but new calculations revel that it is even bigger than previously thought. The challenge of working out just how big that ice loss is has lacked data because nobody is there on the ground at key sites taking measurements. One solution to answering this is to examine the Glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). The what? If you pile a lot of ice on […]

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Is the Universe the same in every direction?

This entry was posted in cosmology science and tagged cosmological principle uniform universe on by

Many calculation made by cosmologists about the universe start with the assumption that it is uniform and is not stretched or distorted. If this assumption turned out to be false, then all such calculations would be invalidated, so is it true? The idea that it is uniform does not appear to be correct when you consider just how clumpy it appears to be, for example planets orbiting stars and then lots of empty space between stars. Scale up, and you have […]

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The #IgNobel awards have been announced

This entry was posted in Entertainment Humor People science and tagged 2016 awards IgNobel on by

This year’s Ig Nobel awards have been announced. No, not Nobel, but Ig Nobel, because these are spoof awards, but the research that gets an Ig Nobel is wholly real. The fact that the scientific community is prepared to both mock and laugh at itself is indeed both praiseworthy and truly entertaining as well. To qualify for an Ig Nobel you basically need to have conducted and published something that leaves everybody else thinking WTF! They do this properly with a […]

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