ROCKY REX'S SCIENCE BITES

It seems to be a common saying..... but it's very misleading. " Why are scientists talking about global warming?  In the 1970s they were warning us an Ice Age was coming.   They can't expect to be taken seriously if they keep changing their minds ."     It's not as simple as that....and science has learned a lot since the 1970s. Muir Glacier, Alaska. Left: August 13, 1941. Right: August 31, 2004. Credit: 1941 photo taken by Ulysses William O. Field; 2004 photo taken by Bruce F. Molnia. Courtesy of the Glacier Photograph Collection, National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology. So why does this story keep appearing in so many places? The magazine "New Scientist" has looked at this myth…. 1970s "ice age myth" From the article - A survey of the scientific literature has found that between 1965 and 1979, 44 scientific papers predicted warming, 20 were neutral and just 7 predicted cooling. So while pr...

The Chinese spaceprobe Chang'e 5 took this photograph from space in October 2014. This photograph was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe, which is in orbit around Saturn. The dot marked with an arrow is Earth. To see the Earth turning in space is an amazing thing - click here for a video. Finally, an image taken by the Galileo spaceprobe  - the Earth and Moon.

Animals and plants are reacting to climate change very quickly. Scientists from the University of York  found that, on average, living things have "moved uphill" at 12.2 metres per decade. They are moving away from the equator at 17.6 kilometres per decade. Project leader Chris Thomas, Professor of Conservation Biology at York ,  said:  “These changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the Equator at around 20 cm per hour, for every hour of the day, for every day of the year.  This has been going on for the last 40 years and is set to continue for at least the rest of this century. ” The comma butterfly has moved 220 kilometres northwards from central England to Edinburgh, in only two decades.

Speleothems are cave features formed by  minerals.  The word speleothem comes from the Greek words spelaion meaning "cave" and thema meaning "deposit".  The most well-known speleothems are stalactites and stalagmites.  Stalactites grow down from the cave ceiling. Stalagmites grow up from the cave floor.  It’s easy to remember which is which: Stalactites have a "T" for top and stalagmites have a "G" for ground. Caves, stalactites and stalagmites are caused by chemical reactions.

There have been very inaccurate stories on various websites claiming ...... "Volcanoes are the main reason for ice melting in Antarctica." This is not the case. The volcanoes story is a misreading of new research on the Thwaites glacier. This is the actual paper on this research...... "Evidence for elevated and spatially variable geothermal flux beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet"                   http://www.pnas.org/content/111/25/9070.full The Thwaites Glacier is behaving more like a warm-based glacier. Warm-based glaciers are usually found in temperate regions like the Alps. Most polar glaciers are cold-based glaciers. The geothermal heat from under the Thwaites glacier is small compared to the overall warming happening around Antarctica. “It is true that there are active volcanoes in West Antarctica, and so there may have been some local changes, but in most cases, at most times, volcanoes ar...

Mars is smaller than Earth, but some things are familiar. In this photograph, the great canyon called 'Mariner Valley' is clear. There are a number of round features, which are volcanoes. One of the Martian volcanoes, Olympus Mons, is the biggest volcano in the solar system. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano  624 km (374 mi) in diameter.  That's about the same size as France, or the state of Arizona Olympus Mons is 25 km (16 mi) high, and is rimmed by a 6 km (4 mi) high scarp.  A crater 80 km (50 mi) wide is located at the summit of Olympus Mons.  In comparison, the largest volcano on Earth is Mauna Loa on Hawaii. Mauna Loa is a shield volcano 10 km (6.3 mi) high and 120 km (75 mi) across.  The volume of Olympus Mons is about 100 times larger than that of Mauna Loa. 

An event that warmed Earth’s climate almost 56 million years ago resembled modern, human-caused global warming much more than previously believed. The PETM involved two pulses of carbon to the atmosphere, University of Utah researchers and their colleagues found. The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM, can provide clues to the future of modern climate change.  The good news: Earth and most species survived.  The bad news: It took many thousands of years to recover from the event, when temperatures rose by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (9 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit). The warming took tens of thousands of years, and then the Earth took over 100,000 years to recover. The big difference is that the PETM took a long time, but the current production of gaseous carbon compounds is happening over a few hundred years. To look at the climate in the PETM, University of Utah researchers drilled down more than 1,200 feet in Wyoming's Big Horn Basin and extracted cylindrical...