Would you have thought of that?  The solution to a non-existing problem resides right on your kitchen shelf! 

As Nature World News reports, “It’s possible the solution to our world’s buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been sitting on our grocery shelves all along. Baking soda of all things may help to capture carbon dioxide, according to a new breakthrough study.” As that new report is authored by no less than 15 scientists it must carry some weight and be based on realistic experiments and knowledge. At least you’d be forgiven for thinking that.

The article notes further that “Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), in collaboration with researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Harvard University, have developed a new type of carbon capture medium made up of core-shell microcapsules, consisting of a polymer shell that is highly permeable. The shell contains a solution of sodium carbonate, which is the main ingredient of baking soda, and it can absorb carbon dioxide (CO2).”

Let’s begin with some Chemistry

Just for the (very) few Dear Readers unaccustomed to chemical thinking, baking soda also goes by the term “sodium hydrogencarbonate” or, more commonly, “sodium bicarbonate” (SBC), the salt of sodium hydroxide with “hydrogen-carbonic acid.”

From a chemical point of view, SBC is fully “saturated” or “loaded” with carbon dioxide and could not take up any more.

Therefore, the idea that sodium bicarbonate may be able to absorb more carbon dioxide (from whatever source) is simply nonsense. In fact, the opposite is true and that’s the sole reason for using baking soda at all.

Vint Cerf, a “father of the internet”, says he is worried that all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost. 

Currently a Google vice-president, he believes this could occur as hardware and software become obsolete.

He fears that future generations will have little or no record of the 21st Century as we enter what he describes as a “digital Dark Age”.

Mr Cerf (pictured right) made his comments at a large science conference in San Jose.

He arrived at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science stylishly dressed in a three-piece suit. This iconic figure, who helped define how data packets move around the net, is possibly the only Google employee who wears a tie.

I felt obliged to thank him for the internet, and he bowed graciously. “One is glad to be of service,” he said humbly.

His focus now is to resolve a new problem that threatens to eradicate our history.

Our life, our memories, our most cherished family photographs increasingly exist as bits of information – on our hard drives or in “the cloud”. But as technology moves on, they risk being lost in the wake of an accelerating digital revolution.

“I worry a great deal about that,” Mr Cerf told me. “You and I are experiencing things like this. Old formats of documents that we’ve created or presentations may not be readable by the latest version of the software because backwards compatibility is not always guaranteed.

Scientists say they have gained new insight into what lies at the very centre of the Earth. Research from China and the US suggests that the innermost core of our planet has another, distinct region at its centre. 

The team believes that the structure of the iron crystals there is different from those found in the outer part of the inner core.

The findings are reported in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Without being able to drill into the heart of the Earth, its make-up is something of a mystery. So instead, scientists use echoes generated by earthquakes to study the core, by analysing how they change as they travel through the different layers of our planet.

Prof Xiaodong Song, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said: “The waves are bouncing back and forth from one side of the Earth to the other side of the Earth.”

Prof Song and his colleagues in China say this data suggests that the Earth’s inner core – a solid region that is about the size of the Moon – is made up of two parts.

The seismic wave data suggests that crystals in the “inner inner core” are aligned in an east-to-west direction – flipped on their side, if you are looking down at our planet from high above the North Pole.

Those in the “outer inner core” are lined up north to south, so vertical if peering down from the same lofty vantage point.

The climate-change movement is being rocked by another major ethical scandal that journalists and some climate scientists say could serve to expose the movement as “one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time.” 

The latest blow against the credibility of the of those demanding urgent, sweeping political change in response to human activity allegedly threatening the sustainability of earth appeared in Saturday’s edition of the London Daily Telegraph. Columnist Christopher Booker cites the work of Paul Homewood on his “Not A Lot of People Know That” climate blog.

Two weeks earlier, Booker noted that Homewood compared the original temperatures recorded at weather stations in Paraguay over a 60-year period with the numbers now being used in climate reports.

“In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming,” wrote Booker.

In the new piece, Booker reports on Homewood’s research into the original and revised data at many other South American weather stations.

“In each case he found the same suspicious one-way ‘adjustments,’” reported Booker.

According to Booker, Homewood is now studying similar data from arctic stations from Canada to Siberia.

“Again, in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded,” he wrote.

Economic Systems: The alarmists keep telling us their concern about global warming is all about man’s stewardship of the environment. But we know that’s not true. A United Nations official has now confirmed this. 

At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.

Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”

When the wind is whipping a wall of snow in a horizontal direction and the GPS signal is completely attenuated by the stuff in the air between the satellite and your car, it’s time to take matters into your own hands and hang onto the steering wheel–provided there still is one at all.

You’ll have seen pictures of the “concept cars” of the future; driving without you or anyone else behind the steering wheel. Cameras, global positioning devices and computers do all the work. Just sit and relax, read the newspaper, tap on your i-something, or simply take a nap.

With almost all media outlets “sold” on subscribing to the “man-is-evil and causing global warming and/or climate change and/or climate disruption” meme, what do you expect kids and ordinary folk to “know” about “global temperatures”? 

The latest alarmist propaganda piece by Bloomberg typifies the pattern, as penned by compliant (unthinking) author, Alex Nussbaum with his question to schoolkids: “Boys and girls, are global temperatures rising or falling?”

Bloomberg isn’t letting on about all those cherry-picked temperature stations –  with no less than 806 inconvenient ‘cold’ weather stations dropped from climate scientists’ official sampling. So it’s no wonder Nussbaum can disingenuously claim “scientists almost universally agree the world is warming.” His assertion, itself, is doubly misleading because science has also never depended on consensus.

Specific historical proof of the fallibility of this is the 1,400 year “consensus” that the sun revolved around the earth, as well as all the planets and stars – a position enforced by the Papal seat no less. There are many other examples, although none so extreme as to have lasted 14 centuries.

In those days scientists who went against that consensus were either burnt at the stake or confined to house arrest. Nowadays they lose their government funding an/or university tenures. No denial can be tolerated!

We have an identical situation now with the hype over human produced carbon dioxide (CO2), with even the current Pope adding his name to the charade and no debate is allowed – after all “the science is settled” – nothing is further from the truth!

What is Insulation, And what Does it Do? People (well, the climate alarmists) don’t seem to understand what “insulation” is. They think that it means that it makes heat “pile up” inside the source of heat, or in the medium between the insulation and source of heat, so that the source of heat and/or the medium will get hotter than the source of heat and power input. 

There is no such thing as “heat pile up”. This is a non-existent concept. You can think of it, like you can think of a unicorn, but it doesn’t exist.  Heat does not pile up, it readily and freely flows into whatever is around it.

Insulation is something that only works in a gaseous environment – it is all about a gaseous environment. Insulation, a blanket, a greenhouse, all work the same way, and that way is preventing convective cooling and air circulation.  Insulation in the form of a blanket, a sweater, a greenhouse enclosure, home insulation, etc., is about reducing and eliminating convective cooling, i.e. the loss of warm air.  A blanket, or insulation, etc., is about doing the opposite of what the atmosphere does!

In your house, insulation helps prevent the furnace-heated air from escaping your house and being replaced with cold air from outside. It doesn’t make the furnace burn hotter.  In your water heater, it helps the water retain its temperature after it has been heated.  It doesn’t make the water hotter than the heater.

You can wrap a heat source with as much insulation as you want.  All that will happen is that the insulation will reach the temperature of the heat source, and the heat source will not rise in temperature.  Insulation is just matter, just material like anything else.  When exposed to heat, it will warm, and will conduct that heat outward via diffusion.

The proverb that “they can’t see the forest for the trees” means, they are so consumed with detail, they don’t understand the larger situation. This is true of society in general and climatology in particular.  One book that at least addresses part of the problem as it relates to climate, is Essex and McKitrick’s Taken By Storm, in the chapter titled, “Climate Theory Versus Models and Metaphors”. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has exacerbated, amplified and exploited the problem because they are about politics, not science.

Shortly after appointment to Chair of the newly formed Assiniboine River Management Advisory Board (ARMAB), I called a meeting at the Fort Garry Hotel in Winnipeg. I invited people from Federal, Provincial and Municipal governments involved with as many aspects of the river basin as possible. It was amazing, in a Province of 1.2 million people, how few knew or communicated with each other. I knew communication between different levels of governments is bad, but was shocked to find, it was as bad within the same level of government. Worse, many didn’t know their part in affecting the interaction between the natural dynamics of the river basin and human activities.

People introduced themselves and explained why they were present. Some didn’t know. The Department of Highways representative said his department had nothing to do with water. I asked him if he knew that, a) they built and maintained drainage ditches on each side of a road, b) that some ditches are larger in flow capacity than many rivers and streams in the basin and, c) a majority cut across the natural drainage slope of the region? Of course, none knew the climate history of the basin. Some knew I had done climate studies, but nobody had ever consulted me or looked at the material.

New peer-reviewed study casts doubt on the validity of Max Planck’s famous theory of radiation. It is shown that Planck misrepresented Kirchhoff’s Law such that the behavior of nature is not properly accounted for.

Below is an excerpt from the new study titled, ‘‘The Theory of Heat Radiation” Revisited: A Commentary on the Validity of Kirchhoff’s Law of Thermal Emission and Max Planck’s Claim of Universality’

The latest news, as per the Canada Journal: Oceans are warming so fast that readings are now off the chart, Report. There you have it: from now on it’s gonna be fried or steamed fish only.

To make the point, the article has a convincing graph, see right: 

That ought to get your attention: 15×10^22 Joules or more of additional ocean heat energy, all in the last 30 years or so. The fish must just about be jumping out of the water and into the (presumably cooler) frying pan.

Perhaps though, some sobering thoughts may be appropriate. Let’s start with small freshwater lakes. The kind you have all over the Ontario, Quebec, and some States in the U.S., a vast area of rather impermeable granite. Snow melt and rain water there collects in every dimple. If those dimples are large and deep enough not to have their contents evaporate in the summer’s heat, they are called LAKES.

Freshwater Lakes

A good part of the year these lakes are covered by a layer of ice, one meter (approx. 3 ft.) deep. In the spring, when it finally gets warmer, that ice slowly starts to melt. Only 100 miles north of the metropolis Toronto (Ontario), that time arrives between mid-April and mid-May. However, even when the ice is gone, it’s not time to go frolicking in the water. For that, you have to wait another month or two, or three, like to the end of July. Then the surface water temperature gets to be pleasant, like 20-25 °C (70+ °F); however that’s very close to the surface only.

An ancient solar system similar to our own has been discovered by scientists. Scientists at the University of Birmingham described the solar system as a “miniature version” of our own. 

Studying data from the Kepler telescope, the team, led by the University of Birmingham, found a star orbited by five planets similar in size to Earth.

The system, 117 light years away, is the oldest known of its kind, formed 11.2 billion years ago.

Dr Tiago Campante said it could provide a clue to “the existence of ancient life in the galaxy”.

“By the time the Earth formed, the planets in this system were already older than our planet is today,” he said.

“This discovery may now help to pinpoint the beginning of what we might call the era of planet formation.”

Researchers said the star, named Kepler-444, and its planets were two and a half times older than earth and dated back to the “dawn of the galaxy”.

Link found between infrasound emitted by wind turbines and complaints of “unbearable sensations” by residents.  In a groundbreaking study at Pacific Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater windfarm in the state of Victoria, Australia’s leading acoustical engineer Steven Cooper found that a unique infrasound pattern, which he had labelled “Wind Turbine Signature” in previous studies, correlates (through a “trend line”) with the occurrence and severity of symptoms of residents who had complained of often-unbearable “sensations”.

These include sleep disturbance, headaches, heart racing, pressure in the head, ears or chest, etc. as described by the residents (symptoms generally known as Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS), or the euphemism “noise annoyance” – ed). (1)

The acoustician also identified “discrete low frequency amplitude modulated signals” emitted by wind turbines, and found the windfarm victims were also reacting to those.

The Wind Turbine Signature cannot be detected using traditional measuring indexes such as dB(A) or dB(C) and 1/3 Octave bands, concludes his study. Narrowband analysis must be used instead, with results expressed in dB(WTS).

He suggests medical studies be conducted using infrasound measurements in dB(WTS) in order to determine the threshold of what is unacceptable in terms of sound pressure level.

The findings are consistent with the official Kelley studies published in the US more than 30 years ago, which showed that infrasound emitted by early, downwind turbines caused sleep disturbance and other WTS symptoms (2). These studies were shelved, upwind turbines were designed, and the regulatory authorities simply trusted the wind industry’s assertion that the new models did not emit dangerous infrasound. The Cooper study now proves they were wrong.

Space scientist Shrinivas Aundhkar, director of India’s Mahatma Gandhi Mission at the Centre for Astronomy and Space Technology, says declining sunspot numbers in the last two solar cycles could mean a “mini ice age-like situation” is around the corner, says this article in theDaily Caller. (Also in the Times of India.) 

“The sunspots that can be seen on the sun have comparatively less temperature compared to other surfaces on it,” Aundhkar announced at a lecture entitled “Get Ready for Little Ice Age.” The recently concluded solar cycle “was the longest and quietest minimum phase in the past 100 years.”

For years now, more and more scientists have been warning that fewer observed sunspots could mean the Earth is heading for a cooling period.

At the end of 2013, for example, German scientists* predicted a century of global cooling based on declining solar activity and ocean oscillation cycles.

Earlier that year, Professor Mike Lockwood of Reading University told BBC News that declining solar activity has set the stage for global cooling.

Solar activity falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years

“By looking back at certain isotopes in ice cores, [Lockwood] has been able to determine how active the sun has been over thousands of years,”the BBC reported. “Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.”

Aundhkar’s explanation for harsh winters runs counter to the explanation given by White House science czar John Holdren, who said that global warming was driving freezing and snowy winters.

Current scenario almost the same

But Aundhkar disagrees. He argues that Earth is heading for another mini-ice age period similar to the 17th century, when sunspots on the Sun were absent. This led to a drop in northern hemisphere temperature by 2-3 degrees. “The current scenario is almost same. Such climatic conditions might affect the agricultural pattern and health and trigger disasters in the worst scenario,” he added.

So the results are in. No significant warming, since at least 2005. The main US global-temperature scorekeepers – NASA and the NOAA – say that last year was definitely the hottest year on record.  But they’ve been contradicted by a highly authoritative scientific team, one actually set up to try an establish objective facts in this area.

On the face of it, there’s no dispute. The NASA and NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) statement says:

The year 2014 ranks as Earth’s warmest since 1880, according to two separate analyses by NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists.

Open and shut, right?

But in fact, detecting a global average temperature rise – of less than a degree since the 1880s, as all sides agree – among thousands upon thousands of thermometer readings from all over the world and spanning more than a century is no simple matter. The temperature at any given location is surging up and down by many degrees each day and even more wildly across a year. It can be done, across a timescale of decades, but trying to say that one year is hotter or colder than the next is to push the limits of statistics and the available data. This sort of thing is why the battle over global temperatures tends to be so hotly debated.