Brainy Quote of the Day

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Data vs. Dogma...


It could be argued that paleoclimatology is not physics.  However:

Physics (Greek: physis – φύσις meaning "nature") is a natural science that involves the study of matter, R. P. Feynman, R. B. Leighton, M. Sands (1963), The Feynman Lectures on Physics

Part of that study is the measurement and assessment of a change in temperature, either in your room, globally and/or globally over a period immense time involving statistical models.

I'm not nearly as conserned about dogma as I am about the viability of the human species:

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—Sediments taken from the bottom of a lake on the Tibetan Plateau suggest that changes in wind patterns caused by global warming may be making the area dustier. That trend could accelerate the melting of crucial glaciers in the Himalayas and affect already imperiled water supplies.

Jessica Conroy, a graduate student in paleoclimatology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and colleagues collected sediment cores from the bottom of Kiang Lake in southwestern Tibet using equipment suspended from rafts. The cores track the history of climate in the region back to 1050 C.E. According to Conroy, who presented the data here at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union on 15 December, the amount of fine-grained dust in the lake sediment increased over the 20th century. Finer dust arrives from distant desert regions hundreds of kilometers away, suggesting stronger winds with the power to deliver the material.


Link: Is Global Warming Making Tibet Dustier?

Link: National Oceonic and Atmospheric Administration: Paleoclimatology

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