Polar Bears listed as threatened - now comes the lawsuits

Bear down! - Send an ambulance and a lawyer!

The big green machine has finally successfully lobbied enough FUD to get the thriving polar bear listed as a threatened species. Never mind the fact that the arctic sea ice has melted before in the last 100 years. See the news release from the Department of the Interior here:

http://www.doi.gov/issues/polar_bears.html

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced on May 14, 2008 that he is accepting the recommendation of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  The listing is based on the best available science, which shows that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat. 

So what happens if sea ice grows? Let’s see how well that “best available science” holds up. According to the full DOI press release, computer model scenarios figured heavily into the decision.

Now come the lawsuits for everything under the sun that may potentially affect sea ice and those poor bears. Yep, fire up that big lawsuit engine, let’s get ready to ruuummmmble!

(h/t MattN)

Update: The Sierra Club is not happy about this, because the “decision is riddled with loopholes, caveats, and backhanded language that could actually undermine protections for the polar bear and other species”. You just can’t please some people.

Update 2: If you really want to see green stupidity in action, try the Polar Bear Brainwashing Parking game:
http://www.gamesfree.ca/other_games/810/Polar_Bear_Parking.html

Play the game and watch the “education” at the end. Note to intellectually challenged game designers: Penguins don’t inhabit the arctic.

 

FTP access for Climate Reference Network Data

The CRN station at Mauna Loa, HI - I’m guessing the concrete pad was needed due to the cinders not being a stable anchoring medium.  So this station gets a CRN 5 rating. OTOH, as some readers point out, it is probably cooler than the cinders.

A couple weeks ago I promised that I’d post the ftp address where CRN data can be downloaded when it was made available to me, so here it is. Have at it lads.

Please read the details on the file format and caveats related to the data file timestamps.

NCDC provides ftp access to data from the Climate Reference Network (CRN) via anonymous ftp at the address

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/products/hourly01 
(you can open this with most browsers)

here is a sample data file:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/products/hourly01/ftpsample.txt

That directory contains a separate subdirectory for each year that the ftp data have been available, starting with 2005.  Each such subdirectory contains a collection of ASCII files named according to the following convention:

More Tiny Tims and Cycle 23 solar crackles

The sun recently displayed some impressive prominences, and at the same time produced another “tiny tim” cycle 24 spot that seems to have escaped notice. Michael Ronayne helps with a blink comparator image that helps spot it.

No number has been assigned as yet but he had an interestig exchange about it with Dr. Leif Svalgaard, on the message board of solarcycle24.com. Here is what Dr. Svalgaard answered with when queried about the tiny tim spot and the random missed updates of solar MDI images from NASA:

1: the tiny spot didn’t get a region number, so doesn’t count.
2: MDI images are not unreliable. It is just the people that are lazy putting them on the Web. You may have noted that they often are not updated on weekends.
3: No backup needed. What is needed [and not available] is money to pay someone to process the data and to make them available. You must learn one thing about NASA: it is not about science, but about funneling money from taxpayers to hardware manufacturers.

Meanwhile, a crackly region near the sun’s equatorial area, a solar cycle 23 region, has been trying to form a spot:

Lately, this is the sound the sun has been making as it tries to get cycle 24 started.