As I have stated publicly on many occasions, there is no definitive scientific proof, through real-world observation, that carbon dioxide is responsible for any of the slight warming of the global climate that has occurred during the past 300 years, since the peak of the Little Ice Age.  If there were such a proof through testing and replication it would have been written down for all to see.

The contention that human emissions are now the dominant influence on climate is simply a hypothesis, rather than a universally accepted scientific theory. It is therefore correct, indeed verging on compulsory in the scientific tradition, to be skeptical of those who express certainty that “the science is settled” and “the debate is over”.

But there is certainty beyond any doubt that CO2 is the building block for all life on Earth and that without its presence in the global atmosphere at a sufficient concentration this would be a dead planet. Yet today our children and our publics are taught that CO2 is a toxic pollutant that will destroy life and bring civilization to its knees. Tonight I hope to turn this dangerous human-caused propaganda on its head. Tonight I will demonstrate that human emissions of CO2 have already saved life on our planet from a very untimely end. That in the absence of our emitting some of the carbon back into the atmosphere from whence it came in the first place, most or perhaps all life on Earth would begin to die less than two million years from today.

Interview The life of physicist Freeman Dyson spans advising bomber command in World War II, working at Princeton University in the States as a contemporary of Einstein, and providing advice to the US government on a wide range of scientific and technical issues. 

He is a rare public intellectual who writes prolifically for a wide audience. He has also campaigned against nuclear weapons proliferation.

At America’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dyson was looking at the climate system before it became a hot political issue, over 25 years ago. He provides a robust foreword to a report written by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cofounder Indur Goklany on CO2 – a report published[PDF] today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

An Obama supporter who describes himself as “100 per cent Democrat,” Dyson says he is disappointed that the President “chose the wrong side.” Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere does more good than harm, he argues, but it is not an insurmountable crisis. Climate change, he tells us, “is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?”

When NOAA announced today that a global bleaching event is occurring, scientists took notice. When they wrote that it was the third-worst global coral bleaching event, headlines started blaring “devastating” and “dramatic.” But the facts about coral bleaching are usually set aside in the rush to make headlines, and when it comes to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), you really do have to pay attention to what they are declaring. Especially under this current administration.

As we first reported here, NOAA announced in early July that coral reefs are dying off at an unprecedented rate, even though a recently published paper showed that these statements are more alarmist than accurate. Coral reefs can turn white when the algae that surrounds them dies off from too warm (or too cold) water, and the satellites detect that thermal stress. But the paper published in Marine Biology showed that while even though some corals appear bleached, it doesn’t mean they are dead or even dying. Why?

Conventional tracking methods (like NOAA’s 5-km Coral Reef Watch Satellite Monitoring) can’t distinguish between white and bleached (dead) colonies. The paper, by Cruz et al, showed that “although bleaching leaves the coral skeleton visible under its transparent tissue, not all white coral colonies display this feature,” which “raises the question as to whether all ‘white’-shaded colonies are indeed bleached.” To determine whether bleached coral is actually dead, Cruz et al actually sampled coral off the east coast of Brazil, and found that white corals exhibited the same lifelike features as their multi-colored cousins.

Some dentists use Laughing Gas for its analgesic effects instead of local anaesthetics. It’s supposed to prevent pain when they get close to your nerves. I’ve never had the pleasure of such a treatment and my dentist prefers the modern “slight discomfort” version of the poke and needle variety. 

Of course, that’s miles ahead of the procedure I experienced in my early years when the dentist appeared to use a hammer drill to lay bare the live nerves of my teeth—without any analgesic at all.

But I’m getting sidetracked. This post is about the newest menace to the globe: Laughing Gas. Believe me this is not a laughing matter. Some activists think that this gas is another villain causing “climate change,” “global warming,” polar ice melting, rising ocean levels, droughts and floods, and all other calamities.

Obviously, the claims of carbon dioxide (CO2) causing every conceivable misfortune is running into some difficulties; it must be high time to find another culprit.

Laughing Gas

Laughing Gas (LG) is a simple chemical, composed of two nitrogen (N) atoms and one oxygen (O) atom, hence the chemical notation of N2O and name nitrous oxide. Of course you know that molecular nitrogen gas (N2) and molecular oxygen (O2) make up 99{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere on earth (disregarding water vapor). That new villain, LG, is present in the atmosphere at approximately 330 parts per billion, or 0.00003{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} in the atmosphere. What a menace!

Not only is LG a natural trace constituent of air, mainly arising from soil bacteria and lightning, it is also commercially produced and used for a variety of purposes, some of which – I frankly admit – are beyond my comprehension. For example, Wikipedia mentions uses that include rocket fuel or additive, internal combustion engine fuel additive, propellant for such food items as whipped cream dispensers, recreational and medicinal uses.

Campbell and Ōmura win for their work on a therapy against roundworm, sharing the prize with Tu for her work on a therapy against malaria. 

 Three scientists from Ireland, Japan and China have won the Nobel prize in medicine for discoveries that helped doctors fight malaria and infections caused by roundworm parasites.

Tu Youyou discovered one of the most effective treatments for malaria while working on a secret military project during China’s Cultural Revolution.

The 84-year-old pharmacologist was awarded half of the prestigious 8m Swedish kronor (£631,000) prize for her discovery of artemisinin, a drug that proved to be an improvement on chloroquine, which had become far less effective as the malaria parasites developed resistance.

Two other researchers, 80-year-old Satoshi Ōmura, an expert in soil microbes at Kitasato University, and William Campbell, an Irish-born parasitologist at Drew University in New Jersey, share the other half of the prize, for the discovery of avermectin, a treatment for roundworm parasites.

Scientists have discovered a hitherto unknown cooling process which may pose a serious threat to man-made global warming theory. 

According to a study by the Institute of Catalysis and Environment in Lyon (IRCELYON, CNRS / University Lyon 1) and the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS), the oceans are producing unexpectedly large quantities of isoprene – a volatile organic compound (VOC) – which is known to have a cooling effect on climate.

Isoprene is a gas that is formed by both the vegetation and the oceans. It is very important for the climate because this gas can form particles that can become clouds and then later affect temperature and precipitation. Previously it was assumed that isoprene is primarily caused by biological processes from plankton in the sea water. The atmospheric chemists from France and Germany, however, could now show that isoprene could also be formed without biological sources in surface film of the oceans by sunlight and so explain the large discrepancy between field measurements and models. The new identified photochemical reaction is therefore important to improve the climate models.

The oceans not only take up heat and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, they are also sources of various gaseous compounds, thereby affecting the global climate. A key role is played by the so-called surface microlayer (SML),  especially at low wind speed. In these few micrometers thin layer different organic substances such as dissolved organic matter, fat and amino acids, proteins, lipids are accumulating as well as trace metals, dust and microorganisms.

Explaining his shocking resignation from the American Physical Society, Professor Emeritus of physics Hal Lewis of the University of California at Santa Barbara wrote:

“It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.” 

The renowned physicist further wrote:

“Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club.”

Dr. Lewis, who was also a former department chairman at the University of California, had been a member of the American Physical Society for 67 years.

The full resignation letter is as follows:

Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010

The not-quite-planet-but-jolly-big-for-an-asteroid Ceres continues to give up its secrets under the unwinking gaze of NASA’s Dawn probecraft, now in orbit about the planetoid.

New developments include the naming of various features on Ceres and the detection of a mysterious particle blast from the enigmatic dwarfworld.

“Ceres continues to amaze, yet puzzle us, as we examine our multitude of images, spectra and now energetic particle bursts,” said Chris Russell, Dawn’s principal investigator.

One new map of Ceres includes more than a dozen officially approved names for features.

The names, all eponymous for “agricultural spirits, deities and festivals from cultures around the world” include a mountain near Ceres’ north pole, with a diameter of 12 miles (20km) which has been dubbed Ysolo Mons, “for an Albanian festival that marks the first day of the eggplant harvest.”

A full list of features’ names is available here, and includes a crater dubbed Vinotonus, after the Celtic Briton god of vines, and another named Jaja, after the Abkhazian harvest goddess.

Arctic sea ice extent has increased over the last decade.  Satellite data confirms opposite of what global warming alarmists claim. 

Listening to the latest “climate doom” you’d think that the Arctic must just about be squeaky clean, not a drink-sized ice cube in sight anymore.  Well, I’ve some news that must be disconcerting to the warmists: The sea-ice extent is actually quite stable, perhaps even growing and the polar bears are just fine as well.

Sea-Ice in the Arctic

The sea-ice in the Arctic waxes and wanes in a regular fashion, sort of like the phases of the Moon.

At the height of the seasonal minimum (around mid-September) the Arctic sea-ice extent is in the order of 4-5 million square kilometers (SKM). That’s quite different from the maximum extent in the Arctic winter that is typically in the 14-15 million SKM range; in other words, its common seasonal range is approximately threefold or more.

Sea-Ice in the Arctic

The sea-ice in the Arctic waxes and wanes in a regular fashion, sort of like the phases of the Moon.

At the height of the seasonal minimum (around mid-September) the Arctic sea-ice extent is in the order of 4-5 million square kilometers (SKM). That’s quite different from the maximum extent in the Arctic winter that is typically in the 14-15 million SKM range; in other words, its common seasonal range is approximately threefold or more.

For example, the number of days with air temperature above freezing (0 C) at latitude 80 N and higher have been recorded for 55 years now.  These data are readily available from theDanish Meteorological Institute (DMI). On the basis of such observations, they have also calculated a 50-year mean of temperatures above freezing. It has not changed in that time and you can follow it daily as well as all daily records over the past, year by year. What’s important in these data is the number of days above freezing each year. Except for 2013, where that number was one half of the long-term mean of 90 days, it hardly changed from year to year. 

These data not only show a very stable climate up north, they also indicate that the claims of a “thinning” ice-cover must be false. You cannot possibly have the ice thinning and the air warming and the ice-cover being unaffected decade after decade. If the ice were getting thinner, it would melt earlier, the number of days above freezing would increase and the re-freezing would happen later in the season; none of which is happening. Now let’s look at the ice cover itself.

Minimum Sea-Ice Extent

What everyone is watching with beady eyes is the seasonal MINIMUM sea-ice extent. That occurs around mid-September and, obviously, varies more strongly as it’s influenced by a variety of natural and man-made effects than at the time of maximum extent when there isn’t much activity. For example, the brief Arctic summer is the time when submarines tend to surface near the Pole, when research vessels try to explore the Arctic, when commercial vessels may attempt to cross the Northwest or Northeast Passages, when companies are exploring for natural resources, whenbuccaneers try to reach the North Pole by foot, when cruise ships go on Arctic voyages, when you can go hot-air-ballooning there, and more.

Much of that brief seasonal activity still requires the accompaniment (and, frequently, rescue) by ice-breakers from the Arctic riparian countries. For example, Russia alone has about 50 of such vessels, including nuclear-powered Class-4 or higher ice-breakers. The U.S. Coast Guard Icebreaker Healy made it to the North Pole just earlier this month (see photo from Sep. 7, 2015).

Although that photo shows the North Pole covered with solid ice, there have been other times when open water was seen right there. For example, the USS Skate surfaced there in 1958 and had repeatedly observed open water in the high Arctic.

Maximum Sea-Ice Extent

To begin with, hardly a soul ever mentions the MAXIMUM seasonal sea-ice extent in the Arctic. In truth, it hasn’t changed much for many decades. The reasons are easy to understand. With most of the year (see Air Temperatures, above) being well below freezing, the annual ice build-up is affected more by wind and currents than anything else. Therefore, it reaches a maximum at around mid-March that barely varies between years. In that context, it should also be noted that, by most accounts, the “Arctic” sea-ice count extends south to latitude 45 N, or even further towards the equator. Still, the maximum ice extent barely changes, so, no need to mention it further. 

Also, there are few visitors to the high Arctic in winter. Not only is it dark for many days then, the temperatures aren’t exactly suited for frolicking either. At MINUS 40 C, even the (male) polar bears that are not hibernating are beginning to shiver.  In my humble opinion, it’s a pity that the many famous climate modellers from PIK and other institutions don’t want to visit then. The local government may even provide free accommodation then (with a minimum stay of four-weeks) in tents or igloos, visitors’ choice. What could be more relaxing than a few weeks in an igloo when a blizzard rages on the outside? If need be, they can bring along a portable windmill to charge their i-thing or laptop.

As you can imagine, any daily measurement of that is only possible with sophisticated instrumentation and associated software from a long distance away. Satellite recognisance is what is deployed for that purpose. 

There are the widely used daily satellite surveys of Arctic sea-ice published by the Nansen Environmental & Remote Sensing Center at Bergen, Norway. These satellite observations have changed repeatedly in terms of instrumentation and computer algorithms used. Therefore earlier measurement series (i.e. before 2000 or so) are not fully compatible with later ones.

Another widely used series of measurements is that of sea-ice in the northern hemisphere by theNational Snow & Ice Data Center at Boulder, CO.  In addition, the DMI also provides daily graphs on the Arctic sea-ice extent.

As the graphs produced by each institute have their own spatial resolution and/or definition of what constitutes “sea-ice” versus water, they give different absolute numbers; by and large though the graphs show similar trends.

There is one ice measurement that has yet to see widespread use, namely the annual sea-ice average as computed from all daily data (from one source). Such an analysis is available from theScience Matters website. It has just published that for the last ten years. That graph actually shows a slightly increasing trend of the Arctic ice extent in that period (see graph).

Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser — Bio and Archives

Michael Shermer is a self-proclaimed sceptic and an Adjunct Professor of Economics. His scepticism is however somewhat selective since he is evidently sceptical only of those who are sceptical of the Authorities of whom he is not himself sceptical.

It seems that he is only sceptical of sceptics. The question arises as to whether or not a self-proclaimed sceptic is actually a sceptic when he is only sceptical of sceptics of Authorities that he is not sceptical of. Perhaps that is one for linguists to answer, or maybe a sceptic of a persuasion different to that of Shermer.

In any event, Shermer’s scepticism is short on facts and long on unsubstantiated allegations, as his recent article in the October 2015 issue of Scientific American attests. Shermer reports there on his attendance at the Electric Universe Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, in June 2015, and in his fashion is sceptical of people he heard speak there. Shermer presented an invited talk at that conference, in the morning session on Monday 29^th June.

I too presented an invited talk on the same day as Shermer, in the afternoon session. In his article in Scientific American Shermer singles me out for particular mention. He also ‘sceptically’ reported on conversations he said he had with Wallace Thornhill and David Talbot, two other speakers at the conference. However, in my case, he reports without evidence.

In an open letter to G20 governments at upcoming summit critics of the multi-trillion dollar ‘green’ energy boondoggle urge energy ministers to heed calls of “astronomical” waste made by philanthropist and entrepreneur, Bill Gates, among others. 

Mark Duchamp (World Council for Nature) and other campaign groups have released the following open letter plea:

Nearly every single climate model prediction, projection or whatever else they want to call them has been wrong. Weather forecasts beyond 72 hours typically deteriorate into their error bands. The UK Met Office summer forecast was wrong again. 

I have lost track of the number of times they were wrong. Apparently, the British Broadcasting Corporation had enough as they stopped using their services. They are not just marginally wrong. Invariably, the weather is the inverse of their forecast.Short, medium, and long-term climate forecasts are wrong more than 50 percent of the time so that a correct one is a no better than a random event.

Global and or regional forecasts are often equally incorrect. If there were a climate model that made even 60 percent accurate forecasts, everybody would use it. Since there is no single accurate climate model forecast, the IPCC resorts to averaging out their model forecasts as if, somehow, the errors would cancel each other out and the average of forecasts would be representative.

Short term climate forecasts no better than the Old Farmers Almanac

Climate models and their forecasts have been unmitigated failures that would cause an automatic cessation in any other enterprise. Unless, of course, it was another government funded, fiasco. Daily weather forecasts are improved from when modern forecasting began in World War I. However, even short term climate forecasts appear no better than the Old Farmers Almanac, which appeared in 1792, using moon, sun, and other astronomical and terrestrial indicators.

I have written and often spoken about the key role of the models in creating and perpetuating the catastrophic AGW mythology. People were shocked by the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), but most don’t know that the actual instructions to “hide the decline” in the tree ring portion of the hockey stick graph were in the computer code. It is one reason that people translate the Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO) acronym as Gospel in, Gospel Out when speaking of climate models.

The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (pictured), commonly known as “PIK” has been among Germany’s foremost climate doomsayers, oops, I mean prognosticators. 

Hardly a day goes by without one or the other PIK press releases telling the world that “we’ll all die if we do not … [decarbonize, or whatever]”. Some of their pronunciations even want you to think “we’ll all die, even if we do… [decarbonize, or whatever]” and that has nothing to do with the coming “Blood Moon” of Sep. 27/28, 2015, supposedly portending that the end of the world is nigh.

What are the poor schmucks like you and me to do in such a no-win situation?

PIK

The PIK is led by its founder and current president, Prof. Dr. HJ Schellnhuber, recently nominated member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, etc. Another outspoken doomsayer of the PIK is Prof. Dr. S. Rahmstorf. Actually, I think he’s running much of the daily doom-and-gloom show. From the (not exactly) melting Arctic sea-ice and the (not exactly) drowning polar bears, to the (not exactly) disappearing Antarctic ice shield and the (not exactly) dieing penguins, Rahmstorf and/or Schellnhuber have a finger-wagging answer for everything.

The fact that they are more wrong than right is immaterial, at least in their view – spare me with details. Actually, you can count yourself lucky to even get an answer to any question you may have about their numerous proclamations of climate doom and related items; presumably they are too busy to crack the whip over their new supercomputer to spit out the “correctly” prognosticated scenarios for 10,000 years from now or so. Just too bad that none of them will be around by then to be held accountable for their wrong predictions.

As of late, PIK’s messages of doom appear to be getting bolder and more deceptive than ever before.

As reported here last week, we exposed how 20 scientists sent a letter to President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, which urged them to jail climate skeptics using provisions in the RICO Act. Today, three more climate scientists have chimed in on the affair at the popular climate site, NoTricksZone, and their responses to the now-infamous global warming RICO letter are both shocking and revealing. 

The letter, dated Sept. 1, argued that the “systemic efforts to prevent the public from understanding climate change resembles the investigation undertaken against tobacco” and called for jailing individuals and organizations involved in providing more balanced coverage in the climate change arena. After the letter was outed by both Politico and Climate Depot, a firestorm on both sides of the climate debate quickly erupted. Here is what three climate experts had to say about the silencing of the scientists:

Professor Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech who once argued for the disbandment of the IPCC, shared what she thought of the letter at the websiteNoTricksZone: “I am astonished by the naiveté of these scientists, who are damaging their reputation by their naive meddling in a complex policy debate.” Noting that the U.S. would be picking a new president in 2016 and who could very well be Republican, she seemed amazed they didn’t “realize that the tables could easily be turned on them if the political winds change.”

Not only that, but those political winds would affect the “green advocacy groups and the scientists that engage with them.” As a climate scientist, Curry also writes that the “science is sufficiently uncertain to allow several rational narratives for what has caused 20th century warming and how the 21st century climate will evolve.” Aside from the damage they are inflicting on their own reputations, they are also damaging the public’s “perception of scientists as trustworthy sources of information.”

Her biggest concern, though, is that the “coercion of scientists implied by this letter will discourage objectivity in scientific research and will discourage scientists from entering/staying in the field of climate research.” She also writes on her blog that what these scientists did with this letter is the “worst kind of irresponsible advocacy, which is to attempt to silence scientists that disagree with you by invoking RICO. It is bad enough that politicians such as Whitehouse and Grijalvi are playing this sort of political game with science and scientists,” she says, “but I regard it as highly unethical for scientists to support defeating scientists with whom you disagree by such methods.”

Another climate expert, Dr. Sebastian Lüning, considers the whole affair to be unprofessional. He writes that, “Rather than criminal lawsuits, we urgently need an objective ‘scientific court’ where arguments of both IPCC and skeptic sides are technically and open-mindedly discussed.” Dr. Lüning thinks it is “undemocratic and unprofessional to silence scientists by legally threatening them if they do not subscribe to the official interpretation / party line.”

Gifted scientist quits post at Duke University in “disgust” over unprecedented scale of corruption among academics. The Canadian-American brain researcher, Jean-François Gariépy posted a heartfelt condemnation on his Facebook page, shown below. 

Dr Gariépy (pictured) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University. He is interested in how the brain generates social behaviors. Gariépy, who received the Next Generation Award from the Society for Neuroscience for his efforts in communicating science to the general public, says he was so disgusted with the poor standards of “research” in the social sciences that he resigned my tenured university teaching job at age 39.

He writes:

This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University with no intent to solicit employment in state-funded academic research positions in any foreseeable future. Many reasons have motivated this choice, starting with personal ones: I will soon be a father and want to be spending time with my son at home.

Other reasons have to do with research academia itself. Throughout the years, I have been discovering more and more of the inner workings of academia and how modern scientific research is done and I have acquired a certain degree of discouragement in face of what appears to be an abandonment by my research community of the search for knowledge. I found scientists to be more preoccupied by their own survival in a very competitive research environment than by the development of a true understanding of the world.

By creating a highly-competitive environment that relies on the selection of researchers based on their “scientific productivity,” as it is referred to, we have populated the scientific community with what I like to call “chickens with no head,” that is, researchers who can produce multiple scientific articles per year, none of which with any particularly important impact on our understanding of the world. Because of this, science is moving forward similarly to how a headless chicken walks, with no perceivable goal.