Wry Heat

Of all the mammals in the desert, the kangaroo rat is perhaps the best adapted to arid conditions: it never needs to drink, nor eat fresh vegetation; it can metabolize water directly from dry seeds.

The diet is almost exclusively seeds, and it prefers seeds high in carbohydrates rather than seeds high in fat or protein. That’s because metabolizing fatty seeds produces heat, and metabolizing protein-rich seeds requires more water to get rid of nitrogen-rich waste products.

The K-rat stores seeds in its burrow where they absorb any humidity, thereby giving the rat some extra moisture. The K-rat has no sweat glands through which to lose water.

The kangaroo rat minimizes moisture loss during respiration with its specialized nasal passages which function as counter-flow heat exchangers. These passages warm the air during inhalation, then cool the air and extract moisture during exhalation.

The kangaroo rat can conserve water by producing urine about 5 times more concentrated than human urine. The rat also produces very dry feces pellets with about one-fifth the water content of a white lab-rat’s pellets.

The kangaroo rat is 4- to 5 inches long with a tail up to 10 inches long. It prefers to hop on its hind legs. It can jump 10 feet and change direction immediately upon landing, something that helps it avoid nocturnal predators.

Although the rat has tiny external ears, the middle ear chamber is highly developed and may be bigger than the braincase itself. This allows the rat to hear low intensity and low frequency sounds such as an owl flying or a rattlesnake ready to strike. This, together with its ability to jump 10 feet, helps it avoid predators.

The December issue of Consumer Reports (page 54) contains an article on Bisphenol A (BPA) which is used in plastic bottles and food-can liners. CR tests found BPA in almost all canned food tested. The question is how much, if any, has adverse health effects.

The FDA currently puts the daily upper safe limit of exposure to BPA at 50 micrograms per kilogram of body weight. Consumer Reports says that standard is based on experiments done in the 1980s and that more recent tests show abnormalities in animals at much lower exposures.

Consumer Reports recommends that manufacturers and government “should act to eliminate the use of BPA in all material that come into contact with food.” Consumer Reports fails to cite the new studies referred to.

The Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University takes Consumer Reports to task:

“Consumer Reports made so many factual errors in presenting its data on BPA in canned goods that no-one could have possibly read the actual research. A call for a ban on the chemical puts the public at risk from deadly food borne pathogens.”

“Consumer Reports have come out with a purported investigation into the chemical Bisphenol A that shows scant familiarity with any of the risk assessments of the chemical. Given that BPA is used to prevent food spoilage in cans, and given that food spoilage can lead to bacterial infection putting people at risk from botulism, and given that there is no safe and effective alternative as yet for BPA, these errors and exaggerations and omissions are not trivial. Consumer Reports seems to be oblivious to the extensive research on BPA carried out by the European Union, the Environmental Protection Agency, and others, all of which refutes the magazine’s claims about the chemical. ”

The STATS article goes on to list specific reasons why they think CR did a bad job. The STATS article also provides links to recent research from Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, and the U.S. which conclude that BPA does not pose a hazard.

Read the STATS article and make up your own mind. http://tinyurl.com/yg5zhrw

Note: I am a subscriber to Consumer Reports

Mice will eat just about anything, but most prefer plant parts. The grasshopper mouse, however, is a ferocious carnivore. It eats grasshoppers, beetles, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, worms, lizards, scorpions, snakes, and other mice. It hunts like a cat and defends its territory by howling – it is the mouse that roars.

There are several species and most inhabit the grasslands of the great plains, but at least one species is a desert dweller. The Northern Grasshopper mouse has a range from Canada to Mexico, and California to Minnesota; the Southern Grasshopper mouse has a range that includes parts of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. The southern species is gray-brown- to cinnamon colored with a short white-stripped tail. Most grasshopper mice are relatively stout compared to other mice. The head and body is 3.5″- to 5″ and the tail is 1″ to 2.5″ long.

Usually a male-female pair live together and defend a territory. It marks the territory with musk.

Grasshopper mice have very strong jaw musculature required for killing prey. And they learn quickly how to deal with various prey. One observer describes how the mouse dealt with a 3-inch scorpion in Arizona: ” The mouse would first nip the tail so that the stinger was ineffective. It would then stand the scorpion on end, holding it with its front paws, and methodically eat the writhing creature head first.”

The grasshopper mouse is a nocturnal hunter, a good climber, and active year round. In some areas, scorpions account for almost their entire diet, which might be surprising because the mice are not known to have any immunity to scorpion venom.

These mice will eat seeds, grasses, and grains, and cache them, like other mice, but about 90% of their diet is animal matter. The strangest part of their diet is sand. Biologists think the mice eat sand to aid in digestion, just like some birds ingest gravel. And that’s not all that is strange about their digestive system. As described in an article by Mary Ingle: “A pouch attached to the underside of the stomach opens into it via an aperture too small for large food particles to pass through. The pouch contains all of the gastric glands that contribute to the breakdown of food and are normally found in the stomach of other mammals.” Ingle speculates that the pouch exists because the insect diet would be too rough and damaging for delicate gastric glands to function normally.

The grasshopper mouse digs four kinds of burrows: nesting, retreat/sleeping, caching, and the bathroom.

The mice have several vocalizations. You may have heard their territorial proclamation and mistaken the high-frequency sound for that of an insect. So now, when you are out at night, listen for the mouse that roars.

For a video of a battle between a grasshopper mouse and a very large centipede check here: http://tinyurl.com/ylyme9w Note that centipedes are venomous.

The greatest danger we face from global warming is that politicians think they can do something about it.

On December 6, negotiations will begin in Copenhagen for a new agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The hope is these talks will produce commitments from each nation that, collectively, would keep temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. That will require deep cuts in emissions, as much as 80 percent among industrialized nations, by mid-century.

In his Sep. 22 speech to the UN’s Global Warming Summit, President Obama said:

“That so many of us are here today is a recognition that the threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing. Our generation’s response to this challenge will be judged by history, for if we fail to meet it – boldly, swiftly, and together – we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe.”

Reality check: Global temperatures have been steady or falling since 2000, and the lack of activity on the sun portends further cooling. Also civilizations flourished in previous warm cycles. Where is the empirical evidence that climate change is ” serious, urgent, and growing?”

See the “WryHeat” blogs:

Your Carbon Footprint Doesn’t matter And Natural Climate Cycles

Obama: “Rising sea levels threaten every coastline.”

Reality check: Sea levels have been rising on and off since the end of the last glacial epoch13,000 years ago. The rate of sea level rise has not increased in recent decades over the nineteenth and twentieth century average. See: Sea Level Rising?

Obama: “More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.”

Reality Check: There is no upward global trend in storms or floods. Besides, increased storminess is associated with colder climates. Clarke, M.L. and Rendell, H.M. 2009. The impact of North Atlantic storminess on western European coasts: a review. Quaternary International 195: 31-41.

Obama: “More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict in places where hunger and conflict already thrive.”

Reality Check: The geologic record and other proxies show that in North America, droughts equal or greater in magnitude to those of the Dust Bowl period were a common occurrence during the last 2000 years. Studies in other parts of the world show no evidence that warming increases the frequency or severity of droughts. (CO2Science.org database)

It seems that President Obama is long on flowery rhetoric and short on facts. And he seems to be ignoring the costs.

A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report “The Economic Effects of Legislation to Reduce Greenhouse-Gas Emissions” ( http://tinyurl.com/mou685 ), shows just how weak the case for the proposed cap-and-trade plan really is. In fact, the CBO demonstrates that the theoretical benefits of Waxman-Markey to the United States fall far short of its costs. Also, the CBO report reveals that the costs borne by the U.S. may exceed the benefits to the entire world. The CBO estimates that even a pessimistic estimate of the danger posed by climate change is 3 percent of GDP, which won’t occur until 2100. At the same time, CBO estimates the hit to the U.S. economy from H.R. 2454 is in the range of 1.1 to 3.4 percent of GDP by the year 2050.

By the logic of the climate bill, we will be spending current dollars in the hope of saving future discounted dollars. The effect of carbon restrictions in the U.S. will be further discounted if other countries don’t go along with their own restrictions. See

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/15010 for an analysis of the CBO report.

Of course, if Congress fails with Cap & Trade, the EPA is set to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant based on some fantasy data, mainly from the IPCC.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change. If the EPA denies the request, as expected, the chamber plans to take the fight to federal court.

Why are many politicians pushing for carbon control? Some may be doing it through ignorance or hope of political gain, but others realize the controlling carbon controls energy, the life-blood of industry. With government control of energy, governments will control the means of production, and that is the definition of socialism.

It is time to ask all our senators and representatives: “where is the evidence.” I’ve asked that question in letters to President Obama several times so far, but he must be too busy to respond, or maybe John Holdren is still looking for it.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its “2500 scientists” are oft cited as The Authority on climate change science. Yet, this group is a political organization rather than a scientific one. This was signaled by Sir John Houghton, first co-chair of the IPCC and lead editor of the first three Reports, “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”

Considering that global warming hysteria is driving the most dangerous misdirection of effort and resources in human history, it is well to look more closely at the IPCC.

Dr. Timothy Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, has written a series of articles on the IPCC (CanadaFreePress.com). He contends that UN structures were designed to prove human CO₂ emissions were responsible for global warming, with the political purpose of causing the demise of industrialized nations. In the following, unless otherwise noted, quotes are from Ball’s articles.

“Science creates theories based on assumptions that are then tested by other scientists performing as skeptics. The structure and mandate of the IPCC was in direct contradiction to this scientific method. They set out to prove the theory rather than disprove it.”

“The IPCC made sure the focus was on human caused change and CO₂ as the particular culprit. They’d already biased the research by using a very narrow definition of climate change in Article 1 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a treaty produced at that infamous ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio in 1992. Climate Change was defined as ‘a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over considerable time periods.’” This makes the human impact the primary purpose of the research and predetermines the results. Before one can assess the impact of human CO₂ emissions, one must determine the range of natural variations.

“The IPCC is a political organization and yet it is the sole basis of the claim of a scientific consensus on climate change. Consensus is neither a scientific fact nor important in science, but it is very important in politics. There are 2500 members in the IPCC divided between 600 in Working Group I (WGI), who examine the actual climate science, and 1900 in working Groups II and III who study ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’ and ‘Mitigation of Climate Change’ respectively. Of the 600 in WGI, 308 were independent reviewers, but only 32 reviewers commented on more than three chapters and only five reviewers commented on all 11 chapters of the report. They accept without question the findings of WGI and assume warming due to humans is a certainty. In a circular argument typical of so much climate politics the work of the 1900 is listed as ‘proof’ of human caused global warming. Through this they established the IPCC as the only credible authority thus further isolating those who raised questions.”

“The manipulation and politics didn’t stop there. The Technical Reports of the three Working Groups are set aside and another group prepares the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM). A few scientists prepare a first draft, which is then reviewed by governments and a second draft is produced. Then a final report is hammered out as a compromise between the scientists and the individual government representatives. It is claimed the scientists set the final summary content, but in reality governments set the form. The SPM is then released at least three months before the science report. Most of the scientists involved in the technical or science report see the Summary for the first time when it is released to the public. The time between its release to the public and the release of the Technical Report is taken up with making sure [the Technical Report] aligns with what the politicians/scientists have concluded. Here is the instruction in the IPCC procedures. ‘Changes …made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) or the Overview Chapter.’ Yes, you read that correctly. This is like an Executive writing a summary and then having employees write a report that agrees with the summary.”The IPCC’s much touted “2500 scientists” are actually mostly bureaucrats rather than scientists. MIT professor Richard Lindzen, former member of the IPCC said, “It is no small matter that routine weather service functionaries from New Zealand to Tanzania are referred to as ‘the world’s leading climate scientists.’ It should come as no surprise that they will be determinedly supportive of the process.” The IPCC’s emphasis was on getting people from 100 countries to pad the numbers rather than on getting qualified scientists.

Lindzen summarizes the IPCC process: “It uses summaries to misrepresent what scientists say; uses language that means different things to scientists and laymen; exploits public ignorance over quantitative matters; exploits what scientists can agree on, while ignoring disagreements, to support the global warming agenda; and exaggerates scientific accuracy and certainty, and the authority of undistinguished scientists.”

Ball continues: “The Wall Street Journal of June 12th 1996 contained an article by Professor Fredrik Seitz, former chairman of the American Science Academy identifying interference with the process, to raise the scare level. He pointed the finger directly at IPCC co-chair Bert Bolin. This was the first major public scandal to strike the IPCC process and occurred over the Second Assessment Report. Not surprisingly it involved changes to the Technical Report to make it accommodate the statements and sentiments of the Summary for Policy Makers.

“In 1995, to the consternation of many and as disclosed by Seitz, Chapter 8 lead author Benjamin Santer made changes to accommodate the SPM rule that says, ‘Changes …made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) or the Overview Chapter.’ What became known as the ‘Chapter 8 controversy’ involved the most important part of all IPCC reports, namely, the evidence for implication of a human signal. Chapter 8 didn’t have specific evidence or even strong indirect evidence. The original draft submitted by Santer said, ‘Finally we have come to the most difficult question of all: When will the detection and unambiguous attribution of human-induced climate change occur? In the light of the very large signal and noise uncertainties discussed in the Chapter, it is not surprising that the best answer to this question is, We do not know.’ So Santer was asked to change his comment. He made the change claiming it was not a significant change: ‘The body of statistical evidence in Chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points toward a discernible human influence on global climate.’ It is a very significant change. Also notice it is statistical evidence not actual evidence, but that is a subtlety the media and most of the public would miss. Compare it with the comment in the 1990 IPCC report before the political manipulating became dominant: ‘…it is not possible at this time to attribute all, or even a large part, of the observed global-mean warming to (an) enhanced greenhouse effect on the basis of the observational data currently available.’ The issue hadn’t changed in 5 years and that is still true today, but that wasn’t what was needed.”

Seitz wrote in reference to the 1995 report, “I have never before witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.”

The IPCC’s Third Assessment Report of 2001, also had its problems. This was the report which contained the now infamous “Hockey Stick Graph.” That graph showed global temperatures as relatively level for 1,000 years suddenly spiking in the last half of the 20^th century, a very scary scenario. It failed to show the well-documented Medieval Warm period of 1,000 years ago nor the Little Ice Age. A few years later, independent researchers showed that both the data and the computer algorithms used to construct the graph were wrong. The Hockey Stick did not appear in the Fourth Assessment report of 2007.

Again from Ball’s articles:

“While the Hockey Stick was exposed and rejected, it drew attention away from a more insidious piece of ‘human signal’ evidence in the 2001 IPCC. This was the claim by P.D. Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that the global average annual temperature increased 0.6 C ± 0.2 C in some 130 years. It was claimed the increase was beyond any natural increase with the strong implication it was caused by humans. The data are simply not adequate to make this conclusion. The first problem is the huge error factor of ± 0.2 C or 66%, which essentially makes the number meaningless. Imagine a political poll saying it was accurate plus or minus 33%. Besides, there are so many problems with the global data, many consider it impossible to calculate the global temperature. Some of the problems explain why.”

“There are very few records of 130 years, indeed, few over 100 years.”

“The number of these stations is not representative of the world; they were even less so as you go back in history. Most stations are still concentrated in eastern North America and Western Europe as the Global Historical Climate Network shows. This was even truer as you go back in time. Then, whole continents were excluded or at best represented by a single station. There are virtually no measurements for the oceans, the forests, deserts, mountains or Polar Regions.”

“Most of the older stations are the ones most affected by the Urban Heat Island Effect. This is an artificial increase in temperatures as a city expands around a weather station. There is considerable disagreement over how much adjustment is necessary.”

“There are serious questions and proven limitations of many of the stations.”

“Two US authorities, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) produced different global annual averages for the year 2007. GISS claimed it was the second warmest year on record while NOAA said it was the seventh warmest year, both ostensibly using the same data.”

“In 1999, the US National Research Council Report, expressed serious concern about the data: ‘Deficiencies in the accuracy, quality and continuity of the records place serious limitations on the confidence that can be placed in the research results.’ In response to the report, Kevin Trenberth [head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research] said, ‘It’s very clear we do not have a climate observing system…This may be a shock to many people who assume that we do know adequately what’s going on with the climate, but we don’t.’ It has not improved. In fact, there are fewer global weather stations now than in 1960.”

Dr. Roger Pielke Sr (of Climate Science and the University of Colorado) tested the IPCC’s 2007 Report, “To evaluate the IPCC’s claim to be comprehensive, we cross-compared IPCC WG1 references on near-surface air temperature trends with the peer-reviewed citations that have been given in Climate Science.” Pielke found, “the IPCC WG1 Chapter 3 Report clearly cherry-picked information on the robustness of the land near-surface air temperature to bolster its advocacy of a particular perspective on the role of humans within the climate system. As a result, policymakers and the public have been given a false (or at best an incomplete) assessment of the multi-decadal global average near-surface air temperature trends.”

The Fourth Assessment Report published by the IPCC in May, 2007, claimed they were 90% certain that human CO₂ emissions were causing unprecedented warming. That statement was based on computer models which made the following assumption: as CO₂ increased, it produced more atmospheric water vapor (a much more powerful greenhouse gas) which enhanced the warming effect. The IPCC models assumed a positive feedback. However, real-world data show that increased water vapor produces a negative feedback because more water vapor produces more clouds which reflect solar radiation back into space.

According to the computer models, temperature trends (rate of warming, not absolute temperature) should increase by 200-300% with altitude, peaking at around 10 kilometers – a characteristic “fingerprint” for green house warming. However, the data from weather balloons and satellites show the opposite result: no increasing temperature trend with altitude. In other words, the model-predicted “fingerprint” of anthropogenic, greenhouse warming is absent in nature.

The IPCC’s “science” is crumbling under the weight of real-world data, and so is its supposed consensus. The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine announced that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.

The Petition states simply:

The climate hysteria is based on the smoke and mirrors of computer models. There is no physical evidence that human carbon dioxide emission play a significant role.