Science

Causes of Climate Change - Poll Results

Out of curiosity, I opened a few weeks ago a poll asking the visitors of this site, what do they think is the primary cause of global warming. 429 people answered the poll (thanks to all of you!).

The results can be summarized as follows.

First, the visitors of this site have the following background:
Background Fraction (Votes)
Layman 54.9% (232)
General Scientist 41.1% (174)
Climate Scientist 4.0% (17)

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On IPCCs exaggerated climate sensitivity and the emperor’s new clothes

A few days ago I had a very pleasant meeting with Andrew Bolt. He was visiting Israel and we met for an hour in my office. During the discussion, I mentioned that the writers of the recent IPCC reports are not very scientific in their conduct and realized that I should write about it here.

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Climategate 2.0

A few weeks ago, the hacker/whistleblower has done it again. A new release of a large amount of e-mails from the same source (University of East Anglia) has surfaced in Russia. It is most likely from the same original batch because the last of the new e-mails is from 2009. Here is my perspective of things. Here are my thoughts about it.

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Why don't I believe the that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light?

Three weeks ago I visited the underground laboratory of Gran Sasso near l'Aquila. Little did I know that it would make headline news so soon, for "discovering" particles moving faster than the speed of light. Since a few people asked me what did I think of it, I decided to write something about it here.

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Expert credibility in climate change?

I recently stumbled upon one of the most meaningless papers I have ever seen. The paper "proves" that the scientists advocating an anthropogenic greenhouse warming (AGW) are statistically more credible than the "unconvinced". Their main goal is to convince people that they should join the AGW bandwagon simply because it is allegedly more credible.

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A visit to Stromboli

Last May I had a conference in the island of Vulcano. During the conference I had a half day excursion to the Island of Stromboli, where I climbed the mountain and got to see one of the most impressive geological phenomena one can see... Here are my impressions, photos and even a movie of it.

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The oceans as a calorimeter


I few months ago, I had a paper accepted in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Since its repercussions are particularly interesting for the general public, I decided to write about it. It's called, using the "Oceans as a Calorimeter to quantify the solar radiative forcing".

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Touch and go - my worst landing ever


I recently returned from Lijiang (in Yunnan, China). One of my legs was a flight from Chengdu to Beijing, and it is certainly a flight I will never forget.

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Auroras in Lapland

I recently attended the 3rd Space Climate Symposium which took place in Saariselkä, about 250 km north of the arctic circle in Finnish Lapland. Because of the prolonged solar minimum, my hopes were for a high auroral activity, but my expectations were not. Luckily, it was my hopes which were fulfilled!

Here is a summary of the northern lights I have seen.

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Is the causal link between cosmic rays and cloud cover really dead??

Just recently, Sloan and Wolfendale published a paper in Environmental Research Letters, called "Testing the proposed causal link between cosmic rays and cloud cover". In the Institute of Physics Press Release, it said, "New research has deal a blow to the skeptics who argue that climate change is all due to cosmic rays rather than man made greenhouse gases". Did it really?

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More slurs from realclimate.org

Realclimate.org continues with its same line of attack. Wishfulclimate.org writers try again and again to concoct what appears to be deep critiques against skeptic arguments, but end up doing a very shallow job. All in the name of saving the world. How gallant of them. This time it is an ill-founded attack by Jahnke and Benestad.

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Open convection cells over the Negev?

OpenCellRadar Jerusalem was under siege, again. Last time it was Bush. This time, it was snow because of which we had two snow days. So, I didn't have to teach and instead could build a snowman with my kids. I could also look at the rain radar, which appeared to exhibit a few interesting phenomena.

One of the phenomena appears to be that of open-cell convection, i.e., air rising (and precipitating) on the cell boundaries.

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Corpuscular Rays in St. Peter's Basilica (the Vatican)

A few days ago, I stayed in the Vatican (more about this one day symposium in another post). During the stay, I naturally visited St. Peter's Basilica. Near Bernini's Altar, I saw corpuscular rays. It may seem like some godly thing (quite appropriate for the location), but from a physicists point of view, it is simply scattering by dust particles. Here is one can say about this holy dust with the help of a little envelope.

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A Nice Black Hole Merger Simulation

I recently stumbled upon a nice black hole merger simulation.
Since it is not in my habit of just regurgitating stuff I see on the internet, here is my added value. How can one estimate the quadrupole gravitational radiation of a binary? How close does the binary have to be for it to coalesce within the age of the universe?

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