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“Scientists from the University of South Florida in Tampa have found a green sea slug is able to synthesize chlorophyll like a plant, which makes it the first animal known to be capable of the feat.”
—
“In 2007 scientists, including Pierce and his team, found genes related to photosynthesis in the slugs, and these genes, apparently originally from the algae, were even found in unhatched slugs that had never eaten algae. In the latest research Pierce found more algal genes, and some of them were for enzymes required for the chemical process manufacturing chlorophyll.”

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the web address for the article above is
http://www.abelard.org/news/science122009.php#chlorophyll_seaslug_200110

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where are those falling temperatures the deniers keep claiming?

I’ve been told on several occasions by the loonies that temperatures are now falling. On each occasion, I have asked for the time series.

Sadly, I have yet to be referred to such data, but I have now found this:

data source: Global Warming Policy Foundation

data source: Global Warming Policy Foundation graph source: timesonline.typepad.com (Note that the legend,“Mean Global Temperature (C)” should read “MGT Index”, 14° must be added to the Index to obtain the MGT [Mean Global Temperature]”)

“Mr Ward, flagged up the graph because the shape looked different to any of the standard global temperature patterns over this period. In particular, it appeared to show a stronger cooling trend. In an email to Dr Peiser he wrote:

"It does not appear to correspond to any of the official records of global average temperature published by the Met Office, NASA or NOAA and not even that of the University of Arizona at Huntsville. I am particularly intrigued by the graph's indication that 2003 was a warmer year than 2005, which none of the official records show."

“In response, Dr Peiser admitted there had been a "small error", which resulted in the 2003 temperature being plotted as cooler rather than hotter than 2005.”
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“The GWPF used a figure of 0.487 instead of 0.457 as the temperature for 2003. ” [Quoted from timesonline.typepad.com]

It’s wonderful what you can do with graphs if you are sufficiently creative. For more analysis on this charting problem.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation [GWPF] was recently set up by ex-UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson.

“The GWPF's primary purpose is to help restore balance and trust in the climate debate that is frequently distorted by prejudice and exaggeration” [Quoted from thegwpf.org]

‘Dr’ Peiser is the director of GWPF. “Benny Peiser is a social anthropologist and climate change skeptic.” How do you combine social anthropology (whatever that is) with climate change? It looks like Lawson’s GWPF is having to scape the barrel to find someone who will go along with their bad science.

And here, from another of the usual suspects, Monckton plays the same dishonest/ignorant game and worse: essentially, by carefully selecting very short time scales, and also by hiding the real-world, long-term time series.

A ludicrous .pdf by Monckton. Contained, clumsy elementary errors by Monckton are listed here.

In order to save me more hassle from the loonies, below is a typical, properly presented graph from temperature measurements since the 1880s. Where I posted this earlier on a news-group, I made the sarky comment, “As you can see, the last two years are lower than the year before, which proves that AGW is a crock and a swindling swizz”, only to receive the response, “Quite.” ROTFL!

Just in case you don’t see the joke, it is the long-term trend that matters, not the year-to-year variation. Such variations are normal in time-series data, and are usually called ‘random noise’. This is caused by constant natural variation in the real world, and by our amazing ablility to make errors. ☺

Ocean temperature data using NOAA (ocean) satellites system,
calibrated by CRU ground-based temperature measurements
(NOAA: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; CRU: Climate Research Unit]

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