Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #1 Tom, Dick and Harry explain a statistical method. The mysterious Voynich Manuscript. A simple analysis of a sufficiently large text can reveal much about the topic of that text, if the language is known. If the text, as in the case of the Voynich Manuscript, is written in an unknown script, then the same simple analytical method can point the way to the underlying language, or language group.
Arctic Ice July - Update #5The sharp decline in ice extent slowed somewhat during July. Some people are claiming this as a sign of recovery.If you are going downhill at full throttle and you take your foot off the gas you will slow down. A bit. But if the brakes aren't working you are in for an exciting time.Loss of ice extent has slowed down. A bit. In plain language: loss of ice continues to be a lot more rapid than has been considered normal historically.Almost the entirety of the main Arctic Ocean ice cover shows substantial amounts of open water. The ice is freely mobile in most areas. Both the North West Passage and the Northern Sea Route, aka North East Passage seem to be easily navigable by icebreakers.
Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier Retreat ScaremongeringA guest post by my friend Lai Ying at the Greenwich Institute of Toxicology.Global warming is a get-rich-quick scam invented by Al Gore when he was cold and hungry, sleeping in a doorway and penniless. Stories that Al Gore was rich before he invented the CO2 scam are lies propagated by his cronies and acolytes.That being so, it follows that all "evidence" in support of the global warming THEORY has either been faked or is the outcome of self-delusion by warmist agendists.
Arctic Ice July - Update #4Once again my focus is on Nares Strait. This time I want to show how glaciers can be affected indirectly by sea ice.There are two major glaciers in the Nares Strait - Petermann and Humboldt. Both are primed for calving.
Biotransport and ocean mixingBefore I get into the 'bio' aspect of this article I want to put it in context by pointing to a means of ocean mixing that is not as well known as it deserves to be. And to put that, in turn, in context: a new report from NSIDC confirms that there is a lot of open water in the central pack near the North Pole. That open water was noted by one of my readers, Lord Soth in a comment.Here is an abstract from the NSIDC report for July 20 2010:
Bridges That Build ThemselvesThe two oldest types of bridge are the arch bridge and the corbel bridge. It takes a lot of time and effort to build them, but they can last for thousands of years.Rockfalls can make natural bridges over streams, but the 'design' is very inefficient. The water channels are easily blocked, with resultant flooding of the adjacent banks.If I told you that a tornado could pick up rocks and drop them across a river so as to form a perfect arch bridge, you wouldn't believe me. I hope. The only way to build a stone arch bridge is to set up a type of scaffolding, shuttering, or former - more properly known as centering.
Jakobshavn Glacier Second Calving ?The calving front of Jakobshavn glacier has retreated dramatically since about 1850, to the point that the two main outflow ice streams can be seen as separate calving fronts, Jakobshavn North and South.Jakobshavn North recently calved a large floe which was widely reported by Arctic watchers and then picked up by the news media - and hyped up. For a non-hyped report I recommend http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/.../jakobshavn...
Arctic Ice July 2010 - Update #3An update and a bit of Arctic history.Despite the extensive cloud cover over much of the Arctic it is possible to see some interesting patterns of behavior.Around the Siberian side of the Arctic the ice has already retreated from shore or is in process of retreating. The same goes for the Alaskan and Canadian shores as far as Prince Patrick Island. Ice in the fjords and passages from the Beaufort Sea to Nares Strait is melting.
Arctic Heroes #2 - North Pole 1The first ever weather station on an ice floe was North Pole 1, set up May 21 1937 by a team of Russians and manned by four heroes. The record of that event shows that there was more ice in 1937 than today, it was thicker, and it extended down the entire east coast of Greenland. But thick or not, once the floe moved into the Fram Strait it was in danger of breaking up.Arctic conditions at the time were so bad that no less than five icebreakers were involved in a chain of events when three of them got trapped in the ice. The Malygin, Sedov and the Sadko - formerly SS Lintrose - became trapped in ice in a region near the New Siberian Islands.
What Price Freedom Of Information ?There has been a great deal of fuss over a few emails and the topic of freedom of information in relation to the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit.At the core of the debate is the issue of whether or not specific information about a few tree rings and weather stations was already available - if you knew where to look - or was being deliberately kept back contrary to law.I have yet to see even one blogger or commenter pick up on the fact that if the data had been provided it would have been provided on request at a price. By law.
Arctic Ice July 2010 - Update #2Something strange is going on. Arctic watcher blogs are abuzz with talk about the behaviour of graphics which are supposed to show ice extent, area or volume. many of these graphics seem to show that the Arctic melt has stopped. Which it hasn't.Historically, the main pack was always thick multi-year ice. Ice would be lost at the edges in summer, and the new winter ice would be pressed into the main pack by the various drift motions. As ice motion opened a new lead it would rapidly freeze over - even in summer. As the ice expanded by cracking it actually made new ice. Summer melt would nibble at the ice margins, but the losses would be made good in winter.
The Rise Of The Time MachinesDo you own a time machine? The chances are that if you are reading this, then you own a time machine. They are fairly cheap nowadays. Like so many things, the first time machine was built for the military and cost a lot of money.What do you think happened to the first person to claim to be able to predict the future using a machine built on scientific principles? You may think he was treated with scorn, treated as a crank. In fact he was given lots of money.His invention was funded, not because the government of the day went to school with him, but because he was able to validate his method. Scientists using the same method were able to predict future events with great accuracy.
Arctic Ice July 2010 - Update #1Before I write another line about ice, I want to thank all of my readers. Whether or not you leave comments, whether or not you link in other blogs, just knowing that I have so many readers gives me the encouragement to keep going: to keep up the standards I have set myself.One of the standards I set for myself is to always remember just how much I don't know. We have much still to learn about the Arctic. Just when we think we know all there is to know, you can be sure that nature will remind us most harshly of our blind ignorance.Arctic ice July update #1
