You’ll have heard of it, COP-21, the latest United Nation conference on all things climate, coming to Paris (France) in December. Wouldn’t you know it, just in time for that “cataclysmic” event, nature does not want to play according to the organizers’ script.

Rather than the polar ice caps having shrivelled to mere remnants by now, forecast for many years by all climate modelling enthusiasts, the polar ice shields have been growing by leaps and bounds. For example, according to a recent report by NASA scientists HJ Zwally et al., the Antarctic ice shield has been growing for 15 years already, even at an alarming rate. Then we learn that near the earth’s opposite pole, in Greenland, the rate of ice accumulation is breaking new records too; see the figure below (source: Danish Met. Inst., Nov. 7, 2015) and, last not least, the seasonal growth of the sea ice extent in the Arctic is not far behind.

Consternation

It must come as total consternation to all those people who have claimed for years now that “climate change” or “global warming” as it used to be termed is about ready to “incinerate” all life on earth. For example, “climate modellers” like S. Rahmstorf at Germany’s PIK have claimed for years that the polar regions would be most sensitive to any warming and that the polar ice masses were going to recede in a great hurry and that the ocean levels would rise fast. In reality, none of that is the case.

In fact, the polar ice masses continue to grow, some reaching new all-time records in both ice extent and accumulated mass. Also ocean levels are NOT rising as previously predicted.

If you feel somewhat confused, please don’t shoot the messenger. As the lateAlan Caruba has claimed for years, the climate fear-mongering is nothing but an elaborate hoax. The fact that even Pope Francis subscribes to the climate gospel now does not cause the ice masses to shrink. Perhaps his Holiness’ recent encyclical letter “Laudato Si, on care for our common home”  may sway some folks’ views but even the Pontiff cannot dictate nature’s course. Just as an aside, the Vatican has never signed on to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 that was to limit carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

If the now two-decade long lack of lack of the prophesized warming and actually increasing ice masses at the earth’s poles are not enough to worry about, there are even more dire facts that may jolt you back to reality.

NASA is just days away from a flyby in which its Cassini space probe will fly through liquid plumes on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. 

The agency’s scientists said on Wednesday, October 28, its craft would fly down within 30 miles of the surface of the icy moon and attempt to pass through the plumes erupting from its south pole in hopes of determining whether the ocean moon has conditions suitable for life.

The hope, say NASA scientists, is to figure out if Enceladus has geothermic activity similar to that found in Earth’s ocean. The hot-water vents allow simple life forms such as bacteria to thrive in an otherwise inhospitable environment.

In its brief 19,000mph flyby, Cassini will collect little more than a droplet of liquid. While the craft lacks the instruments to detect microscopic life, the team believes Cassini’s hardware will at least be able to determine whether Enceladus has the hydrogen to suggest the conditions that could support life.

“This flyby can’t detect life, but it will provide valuable insights into how habitable the ocean in Enceladus might be,” said Cassini program scientist Curt Niebur.

“This is a very big step in a new era of exploring ocean worlds in our solar system, bodies with great potential to provide life.”

Rosetta has both delighted and upset astronomers after the probe sent back data that indicates the discovery of molecular oxygen on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. 

The scientists are excited because the O2, detected in the thin cloud of stuff surrounding the comet, is going to give them a pile of new science; and upset because it’s not really supposed to be there. After billions of years, most of the molecular oxygen was expected to have reacted with hydrogen to form water.

The fact that the oxygen has survived suggests the comet – and probably other bodies in the solar system – must have formed so gently that it never became hot enough to spark oxygen reactions.

The first detection of the oxygen molecules happened more than a year ago, but was so unexpected that the mission decided to monitor it rather than announcing it immediately.

Oxygen is plentiful – it’s the third most abundant element in the universe – but it’s also highly reactive, and usually turns up bound to other atoms and molecules (or with itself, as O3, ozone).

In data collected between September 2014 and March 2015, the mission found that O2 makes up 3.8 per cent of the cloud surrounding 67P, which is an order of magnitude greater than expected.

Viruses normally seem like evil little germs; they often invade our bodies’ cells and hijack their inner machinery to mass produce viral invaders, which eventually destroy their host cells as they bust out to besiege more cells. The process repeats ad nauseam. But what if that wicked master plan could be twisted to do our bidding? What if viruses only invaded cells we wanted them to kill—like cancer cells?

Researchers got the initial idea of using viruses decades ago (PDF) and racked up a number of enticing anecdotes that suggested the idea could work. After all, cancer cells, in their altered state that allows them to replicate quickly and uncontrollably, often shut off their anti-viral defenses and are prone to infection. But scientists’ attempts at training viruses to be cancer assassins fell short in bigger trials—until now.

On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first viral-based cancer therapy. The virus, called talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC), is a genetically engineered herpes simplex virus that can help treat advanced melanoma. Its genetic tweaks make it incapable of usurping normal, healthy cells. Thus, it doesn’t cause herpes. But when it meets cancer cells, it initiates cellular carnage. The virus is also engineered to carry a gene encoding the GM-CSF protein, which triggers the immune system. As the virus ravages cancer cells, GM-CSF gets released, boosting a patient’s natural defenses.

So far, T-VEC isn’t a wonder drug, but it’s helpful. In a large clinical trial published in May in theJournal of Clinical Oncology, researchers found that the virus shrank tumors and extended patient survival by a median of 4.4 months. The results were just shy of showing a statistically significant benefit to overall health. Still, the researchers are hopeful that when the viral therapy is combined with traditional therapies, it could significantly boost survival rates in patients.

Top French mathematicians go public to condemn climate alarmism and join growing worldwide army of sceptical scientists. France’s Societe de Calcul Mathematique declare: “The battle against global warming is an absurd, costly and pointless crusade” in a 195-page PDF.

In a letter published below, Dr.  Bernard Beauzamy of the Societe de Calcul Mathematique, SA (SCM) is warmly praised by prominent American skeptic scientist, Dr Martin Hertzberg for his organization’s damning new White Paper, “The battle against global warming“  in which France’s top mathematicians condemn climate alarmism.

After conducting its own rigorous study SCM declares that the global warming cult has had an “impact on the entire field of scientific research” and “is particularly clear and especially pernicious.”

SCM was established in 1987 by University professor, Dr. Beauzamy. Dr Hertzberg is co-founder and key scientist at Principia Scientific International (PSI). Both bodies separately, studiously and impartially applied their skills to separate fact from fiction in the heated climate debate. Both find carbon dioxide (CO2) to be innocent and nothing more than a benign trace atmospheric gas.

Both SCM and PSI agree bad science and misrepresentation of data has led poorly-trained climate ‘experts’ to wrongly conclude there exists a dangerous human impact on earth’s climate requiring urgent global action.

As William Pentland reports at Forbes, there is a new type of battery on the horizon: the lithium-air battery. He refers to a new study published in Science by T. Liu et al. 

Pentland calls it a “breakthrough” and, therefore, thinks that gasoline-powered engines are doomed, though perhaps not now, nor soon—or ever. A similar report at the phys.org website has the title “New design points a path to the ‘ultimate’ battery.”

What’s New?

In his report, Pentland claims that lithium-air batteries have a theoretical energy density limit of roughly 11,000 Wh/kg. As Wikipediaexplains, that high energy density results from not requiring an oxidant within the battery itself, instead it is taking oxygen from the air. However, the graph accompanying Pentland’s glowing report, while certainly interesting, shows only a roughly 10-fold increase (in theoretical) capacity to approximately 3,000 Wh/kg for a secondary (rechargeable) battery. Undoubtedly, achieving that alone would be an enormous advancement.

A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers. 

The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed   to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

“We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,” said Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology. “Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.”  Zwally added that his team “measured small height changes over large areas, as well as the large changes observed over smaller areas.”

Scientists calculate how much the ice sheet is growing or shrinking from the changes in surface height that are measured by the satellite altimeters. In locations where the amount of new snowfall accumulating on an ice sheet is not equal to the ice flow downward and outward to the ocean, the surface height changes and the ice-sheet mass grows or shrinks. 

Independent British climate researcher, Derek Alker herein provides a fresh and readily-understandable re-analysis of the identifiable five-step history of climate modelling with his new paper, The Modelling History of Climatology. 

Alker guides the reader from the slide-rule and pencil era of Vilhelm Bjerknes (1904) to the computer age of Charney (1979) and Hansen (1988) and beyond. This welcome new research discredits the greenhouse gas ‘theory’ – the diseased heart of climate models – and refuted relentlessly by scientists at Principia Scientific International (PSI) since 2009.

But most crucially, Alker provides a most unorthodox conclusion from this study. He finds that:

“To the best of my knowledge I am the first to suggest that the atmosphere is a cold trap for liquid water at earth’s surface and that THAT changes everything (most notably surface heat capacity [the oceans] currently ignored by climatology) for the basis of current, and the future basis of climate science.”

The Modelling History of Climatology shows we have been living in a misguided era of carbon dioxide (CO2) demonization that began in earnest with Charney (1979). For over a generation an over-simplified steady state climate model with constant solar input has dominated academic reasoning. Charney et al’s ‘greenhouse science’ version of planet earth was fixed as a crude two parallel plane barren and inorganic model. Climate modelers chose this flawed mathematical solution absent key thermodynamic elements in denial of the reality of our wet, three-dimensional living and breathing organic planet.

Respected skeptic of his country’s institutionalized climate alarm, Malcolm Roberts, makes public hard evidence of disturbing bias by his alma mater, the University of Queensland, Australia. Readers are provided with a complete body of written correspondence that appears to show university staff engaged in systematic misrepresentation and false claims to the press and public.

Posted prominently at www.climate.conscious.com.au/empiricaloh.html  Roberts insists:

This page aims to help restore integrity and objectivity to science and to the rule of law.

Objectivity is vital. Without it, we invite the powerful to rule using physical force, financial and industrial might, emotional intimidation, propaganda, lies, corrupt politics, …

History shows that science’s objectivity is essential for freedom, efficiency, prosperity, progress and fairness.

My complaints present conclusions from the statements and claims of university staff and from observations of their behaviour. My complaints raise allegations discussed in various ‘complaint forms’ and supporting documents.

Jump down to each complaint:

• Board of Professional Engineers of Queensland
• University of Queensland Complaint Management System/Queensland State Ombudsman
• Australian Research Council (ARC)
• University of Queensland Chancellor and Senate

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg’s behaviour became a concern after he misrepresented science on ABC-TV in October 2010. My concern deepened after his email replies.

It deepened further in 2013 after learning that he manages the university’s John Cook who helped make up a false claim that there is a consensus of climate scientists sharing his boss’ misrepresentations of human carbon dioxide.

My concern deepened considerably after learning of Professor Hoegh-Guldberg’s testimony under oath/affirmation on 7 April 2015 in the Queensland Land Court and in which he contradicted empirical evidence.

It further deepened as a result of subsequent correspondence with our university’s Vice Chancellor.

I sincerely believe the impacts of their misrepresentations include serious damage globally to our natural environment and to humanity, particularly in poorer nations.

I believe that Australians will suffer from damage to industry, our economy and prosperity unless we hold such behaviours accountable.

An excellent webcast{jcomments off} from the LaRouche group posted last week.  An absolute must-see! 

A new peer-reviewed study refutes Gov. Jerry Brown’s assertion that global warming is behind California’s drought, indicating that climate change neither makes droughts more likely to occur nor exacerbates them. 

The study, published this week in the Journal of Climate, shows that the “net effect of climate change” has made California’s agriculture drought “less likely” to happen and that the “current severe impacts of drought on California’s agriculture” has not been exacerbated by long-term climate changes. This is another stinging indictment that Gov. Brown’s belief that global warming is causing California’s drought is bordering on wish fulfillment.

As first reported here, two earlier studies also show that natural variability, and not global warming, are behind California’s four-year-long drought. An untimely combination of natural events is occurring, but unfortunately for Brown, they have nothing to do with global warming.

This hasn’t stopped Gov. Brown from blaming the drought, and wildfires, on climate change and making it one of his key talking points during press events and educational summits. More puzzling, Brown’s drought statements have gotten more forceful and extreme, even as the science is telling a far different story. Even the NY Times jumped on the bandwagon,quoting one climate scientist who said global warming has made the drought even worse, but admitting that without climate change, it would be a “fairly bad drought no matter what.”

This most recent study looked at how global radiative forcing (the difference between how much sunlight is absorbed by the Earth and radiated back to space.) influences long-term climate change in California, specifically on its drought. Using observations and computer models, the simulations show that increased “radiative forcing since the late 19th Century induces both increased annual precipitation and increased surface temperature over California.” This, they write, is consistent with observed long-term changes (what is actually measured) and previous computer model studies (what is expected to happen).

What the authors found was “no material difference in the frequency of droughts” defined using various, multiple indicators of “precipitation and near-surface (10 cm) soil moisture.” That’s because shallow soil moisture is more responsive to “increased evaporation driven by warming,” which makes up for the “increase in the precipitation.” Conversely, when using deep soil (~1 meter), “droughts become less frequent” because deep soil moisture is more responsive to “increased precipitation.”

Put simply, the study shows how different land surfaces and depths respond to climate changes, which is most pertinent for “near-surface moisture exchange and for root zone moisture availability.” Moisture availability for roots is the most important as the deep layer determines “moisture availability for plants, trees, and many crops.” In the end, it shows that “climate change has made agricultural drought less likely, and that the current severe impacts of drought on California’s agriculture has not been substantially caused by long-term climate changes.”

This should come as good news to Gov. Brown, who fundamentally believes that climate change is causing the severe drought in his state, even though historical records indicate that long-running droughts have occurred in California for millennia. The last multi-year drought happened in 1976, except climatologists blamed that drought, and the subsequent wildfires, on global cooling, not global warming.

The current drought, though, has been made worse by one thing that nature has little control over: man-made interference in the state’s poorly regulated water system that favors agriculture over availability. Another factor is the much-hyped delta smelt, a tiny fish that environmentalists claimed was endangered and successfully had it listed on the Endangered Species Act in 1993. Since that time, many scientists have concluded that listing the delta smelt was premature and not based on factual evidence.

According to Examiner.com’s Lorraine Yapps Cohen, “Legislation that diverted water into San Francisco Bay was intended to protect the delta smelt mini fish from water pumps.” Because environmentalists were able to get the smelt listed as an endangered species, millions of gallons of agricultural water are dumped into the ocean, in a misguided attempt to save a fish at the expense of people’s livelihoods.

This new study was led by Linyin Cheng of the University of Colorado/Boulder and published in the Journal of Climate, a publication of the American Meteorological Society. Other authors listed are from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences/Boulder, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/Boulder, and the University of California/Irvine.

Read more at www.examiner.com

Scientists have seen huge, extra-powerful particles shooting out of the sun, in what they have described as a brand new solar phenomenon. 

Researchers have for the first time ever spotted what they describe as “large-scale” waves being thrown out of the sun, together with energetic particles that seem to be thrown out by the waves. The scientists have long known that such particle emissions were happening — but couldn’t explain how they were making their way into space.

The sun is continually throwing out huge, violent bursts of emissions into space. Some of those are well-known, such as coronal mass ejections, but the new waves are of a new and are little understood.

“The new phenomenon is like a kind of explosion,” said Radoslav Bucík, who led the research team.

Those waves are likely bringing with them particle flows that are much more rich in a light form of helium, helium-3, than normal.

“We believe that the blast waves accelerate the helium-3”, Davina Innes, from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), said in a statement.

Outspoken Australian academic publishes telling new book exposing the Vatican for promoting junk science claims about man-global warming.  The Encylical Letter of Pope Francis Laudato Si “care for our common home” was influenced by atheists, communists and green activists, claims Professor Ian Plimer, a world-renowned climate critic.

In Heaven and Hell Professor Plimer, a successful geologist and long-time critic of climate alarmists, takes Pope Francis to task, looking purely at the science rather than the theology.  Plimer shows the failure of the current Pope in his understanding of the real issues causing poverty, especially in Third World countries.

Plimer’s is a trusted voice in the heated climate debate and, as in his previous books, his new publication again shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact.

“The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology,” says Plimer, and while his thesis is not new, you’re unlikely to have heard it expressed with quite such vigour, certitude or wide-ranging scientific authority.

 Professor Plimer tells Principia Scientific International that he “hops into Naomi Klein in this book.” (Klein is a trumpeter for the alarmist movement and recently admitted that man-made climate change is not about the science). The book is on general release from October 23, 2015.

{jcomments off}

Anon: “From your latest”:

“Do you want to take down scientific materialism, the scientific anti-philosophical paradigm?  Do you want philosophy to use mathematics and physics better than science can, and to make philosophy once more reign supreme in intellectualism and to assert its supremacy over science?  Perhaps something more current, more part of the social zeitgeist, will help.  Unless you have an event more interesting.”

Anon:  “So I came across this reference to Pythagoras:”

{jcomments off}

Joseph Fourier’s discovery of the greenhouse effect is discussed and is compared to the modern conception of the greenhouse effect. It is confirmed that what Fourier discovered is analogous to the modern concept of the greenhouse effect. 

However, the modern concept of the greenhouse effect is found to be based on a paradoxical analogy to Fourier’s greenhouse work and so either Fourier’s greenhouse work, the modern conception of the greenhouse effect, or the modern definition of heat is incorrect. The solution to this problem is not feigned to be given here.