ABSTRACT: In any meaningful thermodynamic discussion it is necessary at the outset to clearly define the parameters of the “system” under study.  One of those parameters is whether or not the system is “closed”.

The typical explanation of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis pulls a slight of hand in this regard in that it starts out describing the thermodynamics of one “system” with an emphasis on the first law of TD, but then switches twice midstream to different “systems” altogether and asserts that the thermodynamics of the second and third systems mirror the thermodynamics of the first system.

If you are already confused you are not alone. The “greenhouse effect” hypothesis is itself very confused. Let’s explore.

First system

The first system is the Earth/atmosphere ensemble, whose “boundary” is space and whose two thermal energy sources are 1) incoming sunlight and 2) internal nuclear decay.

This is, indeed, a “closed” system in that for all practical purposes there is no movement of matter into or out of the system that would carry thermal energy with it into or out of the system.  (For the sake of this discussion we will neglect the energy added to the system by meteors and lost from the system by the outer atmosphere as it continually loses molecules blown out into space by the solar wind.)

In this system the thermal energy that crosses the “boundary” between the system and its surroundings is 100{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} electromagnetic. There is absorbed sunlight (insolation – albedo) in and long-waver IR radiation out. 

According to the first law of thermodynamics for this entire Earth/atmosphere ensemble system to be in thermal equilibrium the total energy contained within the sunlight absorbed must equal the total energy contained within the outgoing long-wave radiation.

There is a novel device to come to your kitchen counter: the “Unboil-the-Egg” machine. This Vortex Fuidic Device: VFD can slice carbon nanotubes into precise length, when combined with water, a solvent and lasers.

What, you think you need that like a hole in your head? Even with the knowledge that “Professor Colin Raston from Adelaide’s Flinders University invented the vortex fluidic device (VFD) after a[n] eureka moment on a trans-Pacific flight?” 

I surmise that everyone needs at least one of those things, whatever they are. The good professor explains it in more detail: “the VFD can slice carbon nanotubes into precise length, when combined with water, a solvent and lasers”—no doubt, a revolutionary invention.

Nanotubes

As you well know, nanotubes and anything else “nano-“prefixed has been of great interest in recent times. So has everything else that’s getting smaller and/or more powerful. Just look at the miniaturizing of electronic storage capacity. In the 1970s, when I bought one of the first personal computers at the research institute where I worked, an external hard drive with 20 MEGA-B storage capacity cost $6,000. Now, you get 10 million times that storage capacity on a miniscule thumb drive for less than $10.

The nanotubes are just another modern invention. Basically, they are small, really small, i.e. molecule-sized tubes that have (at least potentially) a multitude of applications, from medicines to electronics. In this instance, the critical term is “vortex.”

Of the many questions that vex humanity, there is one above all others.  It’s a question we’ve been asking ourselves since we realised we could ask ourselves questions.  There are a lot of people who think they know the answer, even though there are almost more answers than there are people.  Even so, we officially don’t know which of those many answers is the truth. 

The question is; where did life come from?

If we gloss over the various theological discussions such a question evokes – if only because we haven’t got that kind of time – we still end up with an encyclopedia volume’s worth of theories, hypotheses, suppositions, and crackpot ideas.  Primordial soup, panspermia and pseudo-panspermia, deep-hot-biosphere, the clay hypothesis, and several more.  All of those ideas and those unlisted are encompassed under a single term: abiogenesis – which is the idea that life can spontaneously manifest out of non-living components.  You might also hear the termbiopoiesis tossed about in this conversation, which is just a more specific reference to the three stages of the development of life.  But these fancy scientific words are such a small part of the question, it’s unfortunate so many people get hung up on them.

Climate scientist Daniel Alongi has been indicted by the Australian government on charges of defrauding taxpayers out of $556,000 in false expenses since 2008.

Alongi has already admitted to creating false invoices, credit card statements, and e-mails to cover his misappropriation of funds. 

Alongi’s indictment raises serious questions concerning the credibility of his research. During the period of Alongi’s alleged fraud, his research focusing on the impact of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef, coastal mangroves, and coastal ecosystems was published in numerous national and international journals.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts said in a post on his popular climate website Watts Up With That he’s concerned Alongi may have falsified scientific findings to justify his expenses. Alongi has published 140 scientific publications and his work has been cited 5,861 times by other researchers.

“If Alongi falsely claimed to have spent half a million dollars on radioisotope testing, it would look pretty strange if he didn’t produce any false test results, to justify the expenditure of all that money,” wrote Watts. 

Last week I wrote what has quickly become the most read piece of writing I have ever written. It told the tale of how one researcher — Alexandra Elbakyan — has made nearly every scientific paper ever published available for free online to anyone, anywhere in the world.

This is part two, but it’s OK; this is a story that, just like Star Wars, you can read backward. The moment I started working on this story last October I knew it was a huge story.  I knew it deserved to be read not just by the hundreds of thousands of people who are now reading and sharing it. I knew it deserved to be in newspapers around the world. 

A newly discovered Anglo-Saxon settlement in England is surrounded by dry land today, but once was an island oasis amidst marshland. And at least some of its inhabitants were literate.

The long-ago island was inhabited continuously between at least A.D. 680 and A.D. 850, during the Middle Anglo-Saxon era, archaeologists from the University of Sheffield report in the April 2016 issue of Current Archaeology. Among the tantalizing discoveries in the area were 16 silver styluses for writing and a tablet inscribed with the female name “Cudberg” — perhaps a coffin plaque for a long-ago resident. 

The site is in Lincolnshire parish near the village of Little Carlton, an area of grassy fields, marshes and small forests. The first hint that something intriguing might be buried in this bucolic setting came in 2011, when a metal detector hobbyist named Graham Vickers discovered a silver writing stylus featuring decorative carvings.

Chinese scientists have used stem cells to regrow eye lenses and implanted the results in a dozen children.

The pioneering procedure developed at Sun Yat-sen University and the University of California means hope for some of the 20 million cataract suffers estimated to constitute half of all cases of blindness and a third of visual impairment around the world – most notably in adults in Africa and South America. 

Patients can presently receive artificial intra-ocular lenses to replace degraded lens that no longer focus light on the retina.

Operation success rates are high, at about 90 per cent, with minimal complications.

No need to check your pulse, it’s about pulses, also known as legumes. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has declared 2016 as the Year of the Pulses. That means seeds like peas, beans, lentils and related pulses commonly consumed by mankind (as opposed to those used for animal fodder). 

Indeed, such seeds are grown and consumed in large quantities all over the world and they are nutritious and tasty—by most accounts.

A President’s Palate

President Bush is quoted as saying he didn’t like broccoli. Now, really, everyone is entitled to have his or her preferences in that, last not least the Prez.

Of course, broccoli may not be the most desirable veggie for your palate either. What about peas then? No, they are not your most favorite choice of pulse either? Then, I guess, it must be lentils.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Wednesday that she has explored ways to “take action” on turning climate-change denial into a federal crime. 

Get the details on Obama’s activities in “The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against the Obama Administration.” 

Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse used a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to liken companies that refute certain environmental studies to the tobacco industry once downplaying the correlation between smoking and cancer. The Rhode Island senator then asked Lynch why the Obama administration has “done nothing” to civilly pursue energy companies in court.

“This matter has been discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on,” Lynch replied, CNS News reported Wednesday.

Whitehouse said something must be done about the so-called “mischief” of the energy industry and the “climate-denial apparatus” it has created.

ABSTRACT: The authors evaluate the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “consensus” that the increase of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is of anthropogenic origin and is causing dangerous global warming, climate change and climate disruption. They conclude that the data do not support that supposition.

Most of the currently accepted scientific interpretations are examined and the given impression that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will increase the earth’s surface and/or air temperature is questioned.

Analysis According to the head of ARPA-E – the research arm of the US Department of Energy – a number of breakthroughs in battery technology have been achieved, with huge implications on the use of renewable energy and electric cars. 

Speaking at an ARPA-E event in Washington DC this week, director Dr Ellen Williams (pictured) told an interviewer: “I think we have reached some holy grails in batteries … we can create a totally new approach to battery technology, make it work, make it commercially viable, and get it out there.”

The research agency has been working for a number of years on completely re-evaluating battery technology from their materials to their designs to their size and weight in an effort to identify new breakthroughs.

Dr Williams claims that has now happened. A number of the projects that the agency has been working on since its creation in 2009 have come to fruition and are lined up to receive private sector funding, she said. She later told The Guardian that energy storage is the “one area where we have delivered big time,” talking about “grid-scale” technology.

If true, the impact could be enormous. Currently, a significant factor holding back renewable energy sources like solar and wind is the fact that energy storage is often inefficient and expensive. When the sun stops shining or the wind stops blowing, that energy source is cut off. With better energy storage, however, the economics of the entire industry would change.

The Hubble Space Telescope may be old enough to rent a car, but the aging orbital lab is still making new discoveries, the latest being the furthest-recorded object ever spotted.

Scientists with the European Space Agency (ESA) said that they have detected the light from GN-z11, which had been an infant galaxy when its light was emitted around 400 million years after the Big Bang. 

The galaxy is believed to be at least 13.4 billion light years from Earth, and the detection gives astronomers a look at what they believe was the first generation of galaxies to form after the Big Bang.

The result is also a tribute to Hubble’s longevity. Launched in 1990 and serviced by the since-retired NASA space shuttle fleet, Hubble is ancient by modern technological standards, though it has been given significant hardware upgrades over the years.

Scientists previously thought that such distant objects would be detectable only by newer telescopes such as the soon-to-be-launched James Webb Space Telescope.

“New robot shows off human-like qualities” says the headline. The media think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. My dearest is excited too: finally, she will no longer have to remind me of my chores, that the (yet to be acquired super-duper) robot with its well-programmed memory and a mind of its own will perform without being asked—and even without any snarky comments on the side.

And here comes the latest news: “Artificial intelligence, human brain to merge in the 2030s, says futurist Kurzweil.” I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work but I’ll give it the benefit of doubt. Presumably, it’s not just the physical work I can then palm off to the robots, but the thinking as well! What a relief, no work, no complaints and nothing but bliss; what could possibly go wrong?

Indeed, what could possibly go wrong?

Computers are already running major parts of the communication networks, travel schedules, and other infrastructure controls of much of the world. Even many manufacturing processes, from the cutting of clothes to assembling whole cars are already done by robots of sort. Such specialized machines became of age with the era known as the Industrial Revolution (IR). At first, the IR made short shrift of the most laborious aspects of creating textiles.

NEW YORK – A physician in Miami has developed a Federal Drug Administration-approved highly effective treatment for prostate cancer that does not require surgery, radiation therapy or chemotherapy. 

The High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound treatment, or HIFU, directs acoustic energy into the body and destroys cancerous cells in the prostate.

It was developed by George M. Suarez, M.D., F.A.C.S., F.A.A.P., a Board-certified urologist and a former faculty member of the University of Miami Department of Urology.

“I became interested in the HIFU technology back in 2001,” Suarez told WND in a telephone interview. “The technology was first used in 1999, in Europe. While the technology has been approved for medical use in Europe for some 15 years now, when I first became interested in the technology, it did not have FDA approval here in the United States.”

Three key scientific studies that would reveal possible risks to human and environmental health from the use of the herbicide chemical glyphosate have been held back in the name of ‘trade secret protection.”

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has been asked to reveal all the possible original elements of these studies that allowed the agency to call glyphosate an ‘unlikely’ human carcinogen. Members of the European Parliament are also being asked to reject the Trade Secrets Directive in the April 2016 plenary vote on the final text.

The data withheld in these scientific documents is what the European Commission used to grant market authorization for the sale of glyphosate. Greenpeace Netherlands, and Pesticide Action Network have been fighting for full disclosure since 2011 at the European Court of Justice.

Water is essential for all life, and happily it is abundant on our blue watery planet. However, salty oceans cover 70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of Earth’s surface and contain 97{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of Earth’s water.  Salt water is great for ocean dwellers but not directly useful for most life on land. Another 2{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of Earth’s water is tied up in ice caps, glaciers and permanent snow, leaving just 1{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} as land-based fresh water.

To sustain life on land, we need to conserve and make good use of this rare and elusive resource.

Luckily, our sun is a powerful nuclear-powered desalinisation plant. Every day, solar energy evaporates huge quantities of fresh water from the oceans. After a stop-off in the atmosphere, most of this water vapour is soon returned to earth as dew, rain, hail and snow – this is the great water cycle. Unfortunately about 70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of this precipitation falls directly back into the oceans and some is captured in frozen wastelands.