“Giant glaciers buried under the surface of Mars at much lower latitudes than any previously known ice…”If there is life on Mars, this kind of ice would likely preserve ancient organisms and DNA,”…”Just one of the features we examined is three times larger than the city of Los Angeles, and up to one-half mile thick, and there are many more,”…Many scientists doubted that giant reservoirs of ice could exist on Mars so close to the equator, but calculations suggest these regions were once much colder than they are now, due to variations in the tilt of Mars’ rotational axis….” Full Slice

Even less reason not to go now

Some climate scientists query us :

“Confusion has continued regarding trends in global temperatures. The misconception ‘the global warming has stopped’ still lives on in some minds…The confused argument hinges on one data set - the HadCRUT 3V - which is only one of several estimates, and it is the global temperature record that exhibits the least change over the last decade. Other temperature analyses suggest greater change (warming). Thus, one could argue that the HadCRUT 3V represents the lower estimate, if a warming could be defined for such a short interval.

A comparison with other temperature analyses…Thus, this is probably not the final word on the matter. At least, I’m not convinced about the attribution yet. The whole boils down to insufficient amounts of empirical data (i.e. observations), GCM limitations at the high-latitudes, and too large data gaps. But the pronounced changes in the Arctic are consistent with AGW. The irony seems to be that the real world shows signs of more dramatic changes than the GCMs project, especially if you look at the sea-ice extent….” Full Slice

The debate goes on

But just how shall we interpret what it is telling us ?

“A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia…The byproduct of automobiles, slash-and-burn agriculture, wood-burning stoves and coal-fired power plants, these plumes of carbon dust rise over southern Africa, the Amazon basin and North America. But they are most pronounced in Asia, where so-called atmospheric brown clouds are dramatically reducing sunlight in many Chinese cities and leading to decreased crop yields in swaths of rural India…the scientists who worked on the report said the blanket of haze might be mitigating the worst effects of greenhouse gases, by absorbing solar heat or reflecting it away from the earth…The brownish haze, sometimes more than a mile thick and clearly visible from airplanes, stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to the Yellow Sea. During the spring, it sweeps past North and South Korea and Japan. Sometimes the cloud drifts as far east as California…“We used to think of this brown cloud as a regional problem, but now we realize its impact is much greater…When we see the smog one day and not the next, it just means it’s blown somewhere else.”…” Full Slice

nature’s going by a descending frequency
modulo its playing of unenumerated instruments
shows a propensity towards sequential emanation

beauty selfselects

but the newtonian faeces, ever present
the neural cold
the low level phase change
far, far away, unpredictable, tantalizes, hypnotizes

to “add fuel to the fire”

“If climate disasters are to be averted, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) must be reduced below the levels that already exist today, according to a study…by a group of 10 scientists…who…assert that to maintain a planet similar to that on which civilization developed, an optimum CO2 level would be less than 350 ppm…” Full Slice

“…researchers…have uncovered surprising effects of climate patterns on social upheaval and the fall of dynasties in ancient China…the study showed that the dry period at the end of the Tang Dynasty coincided with a previously identified drought halfway around the world, in Meso-America, which has been linked to the fall of the Mayan civilization.

The study also showed that the ample summer rains of the Northern Song Dynasty coincided with the beginning of the well-known Medieval Warm Period in Europe and Greenland…A second major finding concerns the relationship between temperature and the strength of the monsoons….” Full Slice

“…Over these 65 million years, the Earth has undergone several major warming and cooling episodes, which were largely mitigated by the expansion and contraction of sea ice in the Arctic…Currently, the Earth is in the midst of an interglacial period, characterized by retracted ice sheets and warmer temperatures.

In the past three decades, changes in Arctic climate and ice cover have led to several reorganizations of northern ocean circulation patterns….” Full Slice

So how strong might be the connection(s) if there are any ?

And a FAQ on climate models and some discussion.

“…”This proof-of-principle study leads us one step closer to the ultimate reprogramming of general cells to pluripotent cells in a completely chemically defined manner without genetic manipulation…In conjunction with our earlier published studies, it offers definitive proof that we can make cell reprogramming technology much more practical than it has been.”…” Full Slice