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· Meltwater plays only small role in glacier flow · Study casts doubt on 'lubrication' theory Fears that the rapid draining of water from the top of Greenland's ice sheet may be contributing to the rise of global sea levels have been allayed by new research. Though scientists confirmed that the water can drain away faster than Niagara Falls, it did not seem to accelerate the movement of the ice sheet into the ocean as previously thought. Receding ice sheets are of major concern to climate scientists because the melting water could lead to a rise in sea levels. In...

According to a new paper by Gerald E. Marsh (PDF), they do. If true, this has great implications for the debate over whether humans are causing global warming, or whether it is a natural phenomenon. More about Marsh here.Marsh says that changes in carbon dioxide levels simply can’t account for the differences in temperatures between interglacials, while changes in cloud cover caused by a change in galactic cosmic ray flux can.Changes in cosmic rays The conventional global warming explanation for the Ice Ages and interglacial periods (we are in one right now), is that a change in the Earth’s orbit...

I wrote this about six months ago, but never posted it. The version I've posted here doesn't have images. A link to an html version with images is here and a PDF version of the article is hereEnjoy. Is global warming caused by human activity? Paul Drallos, Ph.D. (Physics) A great number of facts and declarations are often presented with regard to global warming and Mankind's role in it. Most of these assertions are derived from the following clear and simple line of reasoning: Fact:   CO2 is a greenhouse gas whose presence in the atmosphere can cause Earth's temperature...

From the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona  a suggestion that ocean CO2 sequestration  is driven by iron laden dust blown into the oceans that cause phytoplankton blooms, resulting in the ocean as a CO2 sink. It’s another take on the proposed experiment from a  couple of years ago where a researcher wanted to drop a barge of powdered iron into the ocean to watch what happens. It was actually tried, and was reported to be a failure. Dust in the Mediterranean - Image NASA Climate in the past million years determined greatly by dust in the Southern OceanA group of scientists...

Nicola Scafetta sent me this paper yesterday, and I read it with interest, but I have a number of reservations about it, not the least of which is that it is partially based on the work of Landscheidt and the whole barycentric thing which gets certain people into shouting matches. Figure 9 looks to be interesting, but note that it is in generic units, not temperature, so has no predictive value by itself.Fig. 9. Proposed solar harmonic reconstructions based on four beat frequencies. (Top) Average beat envelope function of the model (Eq. (18)) and (Bottom) the version modulated with a...

The other day I went to a global warming presentation delivered by my friend, Mason Wilson (retired Professor Emeritus from the University of Rhode Island, College of Engineering). I was so impressed by the information he presented and by his organization of the material that I invited him to post it on my blog. He starts by explaining the difference between short range weather forecasting, based on real-time data – and longer range forecasting, based primarily on extrapolating historical data into the future. Next he points out the significance of the historical record of climate data on which there should...

Editor's Note: This story embargoed for release until 2 pm ET Wednesday, October 17, 2001, to coincide with publication in the journal Nature.) COLUMBUS, Ohio - An international team of scientists reported this week that a rock core drilled from the seafloor off the coast of Antarctica is the first to show cyclic climate changes in polar regions that are linked to cores taken from the ocean bottom in both temperate and tropical zones. These records show ice sheet advances and retreats that match Milankovitch cycles - variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun, in the tilt of the ...