As President Trump downgrades the relevance of Obama era climate change and anti-fossil-fuel policies, many environmentalists are directing attention to “sustainable development.”

Like “dangerous manmade climate change,” sustainability reflects poor understanding of basic energy, economic, resource extraction, and manufacturing principles – and a tendency to emphasize tautologies and theoretical models as an alternative to readily observable evidence in the Real World. It also involves well-intended but ill-informed people being led by ill-intended but well-informed activists who use the concept to gain greater government control over people’s lives, livelihoods, and living standards.

Researchers in Cardiff have developed a new “highly-efficient” method of making disease-fighting compounds, including for an anti-malaria drug.

Sesquiterpenes can be found in spicy foods, plants and beer, and are used to battle colds, cancer and malaria. A Cardiff University team said it could synthesize them more quickly and cost-effectively than before.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

– Upton Sinclair

Government agencies like NOAA, NASA and NSIDC start their sea ice graphs in 1979, in order to make it look like there is a linear decline in sea ice.

NASA’s Juno probe will not venture any closer to Jupiter, and will stay in its current 53-day orbit for the remainder of its mission. That’s due to faulty helium valves in the propulsion system, space boffins announced today.

The spacecraft has been circling the gas giant since July 2016. NASA scientists had planned to fire the engine to reduce its orbit period to 14 days, bringing it closer to Jupiter’s surface to scrutinize the alien world. The more intimate the probe gets with the gas goliath, the more it can peek through the layers of clouds, and study the structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere of the planet.

Image copyright: AFP

You think you know your seven continents? Think again, as there’s a new contender hoping to join that club. Say hello to Zealandia, a huge landmass almost entirely submerged in the southwest Pacific.

It’s not a complete stranger, you might have heard of its highest mountains, the only bits showing above water: New Zealand. Scientists say it qualifies as a continent and have now made a renewed push for it to be recognised as such. In a paper published in the Geological Society of America’s Journal,researchers explain that Zealandia measures five million sq km (1.9m sq miles) which is about two thirds of neighbouring Australia.

The UK and US are in talks to extend their “special relationship” in science after the UK leaves the European Union, the BBC understands.

British institutions are in talks with their US colleagues to try to make it easier for scientists to travel, collaborate and share facilities. Research Councils UK said it would deliver benefits for both countries. UK research groups are currently marketing themselves at the US’s largest scientific meeting in Boston.

Image copyright: UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Australian scientists have mapped the molecular structure of a protein that shields superbugs from antibiotics.

It could help develop new drugs for antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains, the University of Western Australia researchers said. The protein, EptA, allows some strains to shrug off colistin, an antibiotic used when all other treatments fail.

 

Climate Central just ran this piece, which the Washington Post picked up on. They claimed the US was “overwhelmingly hot” in 2016, and temperatures have risen 1,5°F since the 19th century.

The U.S. Has Been Overwhelmingly Hot This Year | Climate Central

The first problem with their analysis is that the US had very little hot weather in 2016. The percentage of hot days was below average, and ranked 80th since 1895. Only 4.4% of days were over 95°F, compared with the long term average of 4.9%. Climate Central is conflating mild temperatures with hot ones.

Yesterday, we posted some excerpts from the Background section of our submitted Comment on the draft report on climate and health from the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP).

In that section, we argued that the USGCRP was overlooking (ignoring?) a vital factor that shapes the influence of climate change on the health and well-being of Americans—that is, that the adaptive process is actually spurred by climate change itself. Without recognition of this fact, projections are often alarmist and pessimistic.

PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) called out over junk climate ‘science’ paper refuse to run detailed rebuttal letter from skeptic.

The publication at issue, ‘Centuries of thermal sea-level rise due to anthropogenic emissions of short-lived greenhouse gases,’ (PNAS January, 2017) is carefully dissected and disproved in a letter to PNAS submitted by Dr Albert Parker, a peer-reviewed expert debunking similar such claims. But because PNAS operates a closed door policy towards climate skeptic experts we are delighted to post Dr Parker’s detailed takedown below.

Many messages emanating from the world of science are entirely bogus. After eight years in which my focus has been mostly on climate matters, I’ve lately pulled back the lens to take another look at science’s bigger picture. In this respect, a 2001 book by Daniel S. Greenberg, a journalist who spent more than 40 years covering US science, is an eye-opener.

It provides mountains of evidence that the leaders, advocates, spokespeople, lobbyists, and public relations personnel of the science world have long promoted narratives that are fundamentally incorrect.

NASA intends to send astronauts to orbit the moon in 2018 at the apparent request of President Donald Trump, potentially saving taxpayers $10 billion dollars.

Robert Lightfoot, NASA’s acting administrator, sent a letter to the space agency’s employees saying they should “explore the feasibility” of sending astronauts to orbit the moon in 2018, apparently at the request of the Trump administration. Speeding up NASA’s plans to orbit the moon with astronauts could save money in the long term.

Biologists have known for decades that enduring a short period of mild stress makes simple organisms and human cells better able to survive additional stress later in life.

Now, scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) have found that a cellular process called autophagy is critically involved in providing the benefits of temporary stress. The study, published in Nature Communications, creates new avenues to pursue treatments for neurological disorders such as Huntington’s disease. 

Image copyright: THINKSTOCK

Vitamin D supplements could spare more than three million people from colds or flu in the UK each year, researchers claim.

The sunshine vitamin is vital for healthy bones, but also has a role in the immune system. The analysis, published in the British Medical Journal, argues food should be fortified with the vitamin. But Public Health England (PHE) says the infections data is not conclusive, although it does recommend supplements. These, it says, should be taken for improved bone and muscle health.

Award-winning scientist, who has spent the last three years devoted to studying real temperature readings globally, finds that government climate researchers created a fake metric that “has no physical meaning.” 

Dr Darko Butina won Britain’s prestigious Queen’s Award for science during a successful career with Glaxo Research. He writes:

“This report is designed to encourage readers to look for temperature patterns on our planet in the datasets that are based on calibrated thermometers and not theoretical models that have nothing to do with reality. It also sets the scene for two new papers of mine that will  have summaries for the general public once published.”