Cartoonist Rick McKee of the Augusta Chronicle has captured the essence of the alarmist sentiments over our current hurricane situation where there’s a blame-a-minute coming from the left…because climate is weather and all that. While the cartoon may be funny to some, and not others, let it be said that in no way does it…
via Watts Up With That?
September 8, 2017 at 04:55PM
Image credit: NASA
We now know that Saturn’s rings share a process with spiral galaxies, and the unique co-orbital pattern of two of its moons get some attention.
This view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows a wave structure in Saturn’s rings known as the Janus 2:1 spiral density wave, reports Phys.org.
Resulting from the same process that creates spiral galaxies, spiral density waves in Saturn’s rings are much more tightly wound.
In this case, every second wave crest is actually the same spiral arm which has encircled the entire planet multiple times. This is the only major density wave visible in Saturn’s B ring.
Most of the B ring is characterized by structures that dominate the areas where density waves might otherwise occur, but this innermost portion of the B ring is different. The radius from Saturn at which the wave originates (toward lower-right in this image) is 59,796 miles (96,233 kilometers) from the planet.
At this location, ring particles orbit Saturn twice for every time the moon Janus orbits once, creating an orbital resonance. The wave propagates outward from the resonance (and away from Saturn), toward upper-left in this view.
For reasons researchers do not entirely understand, damping of waves by larger ring structures is very weak at this location, so this wave is seen ringing for hundreds of bright wave crests, unlike density waves in Saturn’s A ring. The image gives the illusion that the ring plane is tilted away from the camera toward upper-left, but this is not the case.
Because of the mechanics of how this kind of wave propagates, the wavelength decreases with distance from the resonance. Thus, the upper-left of the image is just as close to the camera as the lower-right, while the wavelength of the density wave is simply shorter.
This wave is remarkable because Janus, the moon that generates it, is in a strange orbital configuration. Janus and Epimetheus share practically the same orbit and trade places every four years. Every time one of those orbit swaps takes place, the ring at this location responds, spawning a new crest in the wave.
The distance between any pair of crests corresponds to four years’ worth of the wave propagating downstream from the resonance, which means the wave seen here encodes many decades’ worth of the orbital history of Janus and Epimetheus.
Continued here.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
September 8, 2017 at 04:54PM
A few weeks ago, Al Gore made the untrue claim that “climate-related extreme weather events have grown far more numerous and far more destructive” in the time between his original film and the sequel. This claim was widely reported, by the BBC, the Guardian, News24, and in Gore’s Conversation with Mark Maslin. Since then, I’ve been … Continue reading →
via Climate Scepticism
September 8, 2017 at 03:25PM
Billboard in Calgary Alberta gives rise to complaint to Canada’s Competition Bureau.
The vigilantes report on their setback in this National Observer article Feds halt probe of climate doubters. Some excerpts give the flavor of their perspective.
After more than a year of investigating, the Competition Bureau abruptly dropped its inquiry earlier this summer into three groups that had displayed information in public raising doubts about the international scientific consensus on climate change.
The groups put up websites and billboards that promoted statements like, “the sun is the main driver of climate change,” and “carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” according to an application filed with the bureau, a Canadian independent law enforcement agency.
Those views are contrary to mainstream climate science and the government of Canada itself, which states that “changes in solar irradiance have contributed to climate trends over the past century but since the industrial revolution, the effect of additions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere has been over 50 times that of changes in the sun’s output.”
From the Bureau letter to the Complainant:
The inquiry concerned allegations that Friends of Science Society, International Climate
Science Coalition and Heartland Institute made misleading representations regarding climate change on their respective websites and, in the case of Friends of Science Society, on billboards.
At this time, considering the available evidence, the assessment of the facts in this case, and
to ensure the effective allocation of limited resources, the Commissioner has discontinued the
inquiry.
A statement was provided to National Observer by Tom Harris, executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition, but was incompletely quoted in the article. The full statement posted at International Science Coalition is below:
“The complainants apparently think that they know the truth about the causes and consequences of climate change. But this makes no sense. This is not just because the science is enormously complicated with scientists holding at times radically different points of view. It is also because scientific hypotheses, and even scientific theories, are not truth; they can be, and often are, wrong. Truth applies to things like mathematics or chess in which we write the rules. But truth never applies to our findings about nature, which are merely educated opinions based on scientists’ interpretations of observations.”
“When authorities promote truth about science, progress stops. I am glad the Competition Bureau did not fall into this trap. Its time to open up, not shut down, the debate about climate change, one of the most complex and costly issues of our age.”
Summary
The complaint was filed by an “ecojustice” lawyer. Free speech about a matter of opinion is attacked as false advertising. Sad. We are still waiting for the evidence supporting global warming claims. Keep on firing away, Tom Harris and Friends of Science.
via Science Matters
September 8, 2017 at 03:00PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 