Now and then new results appear that suggest that the idea of cosmic ray influence on clouds and terrestrial climate does not work. “Sun-clouds-climate connection takes a beating from CERN” is the latest news story which is based on a new paper from the CLOUD collaboration at CERN [1].

It is important to note that the new CLOUD paper is not presenting an experimental result, with respect to the effect of cosmic ray generated ions on clouds, but a result of numerical modeling. CLOUD is using their experimental measurements to estimate the typical nucleation of various aerosols of small size (1-3 nm). However, for an aerosol to affect clouds (and climate) it must first grow to 50-100 nm, to become cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). CLOUD then uses a numerical model to estimate the effect of cosmic rays on the growth process, and finds that the response of cosmic rays on the number of CCN over a solar cycle is insignificant.

Sunday’s early-morning quake near the town of Norcia is the biggest in Italy since the Magnitude-6.9 Irpinia event in the south of the country in 1980.

Back then, some 2,500 people died and more than 7,000 were injured. Thankfully, we are not expecting loss of life on that scale here.In part this is because of the strides made in recent years in improving readiness and reaction. But the fact that the population of central Italy is currently living on such an acute alert status also will have further limited any dreadful consequences.

We have now seen three Magnitude-6 tremors in Italy’s Apennines region in just three months.

How did life begin? There can hardly be a bigger question. For much of human history, almost everyone believed some version of “the gods did it”. Any other explanation was inconceivable.

That is no longer true. Over the last century, a few scientists have tried to figure out how the first life might have sprung up. They have even tried to recreate this Genesis moment in their labs: to create brand-new life from scratch.

So far nobody has managed it, but we have come a long way. Today, many of the scientists studying the origin of life are confident that they are on the right track – and they have the experiments to back up their confidence.

Image copyright: GETTY IMAGES [Scientists have transformed the humble spinach plant into a bomb detector.]

By embedding tiny tubes in the plants’ leaves, they can be made to pick up chemicals called nitro-aromatics, which are found in landmines and buried munitions.

Real-time information can then be wirelessly relayed to a handheld device.

The MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) work is published in the journal Nature Materials.

The scientists implanted nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes (tiny cylinders of carbon) into the leaves of the spinach plant. It takes about 10 minutes for the spinach to take up the water into the leaves.

To read the signal, the researchers shine a laser onto the leaf, prompting the embedded nanotubes to emit near-infrared fluorescent light.

Laboratory experiment devised by scientists in Ireland appears to demonstrate that the greenhouse gas theory of man-made global warming is wrong.

The theory states that adding more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere causes higher temperatures. But skeptics point to global thermometers that have been flat-lining this century – all despite ever-rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. This inconvenient truth, they claim, discredits the greenhouse gas theory (GHE), which is the scientific cornerstone of man-made global warming fears promoted by the United Nations and most western governments.

But now added to the debate comes a simple laboratory experiment developed by scientists in Ireland. This straight-forward test can even be performed by schoolchildren. It is causing a stir insofar as it appears to support the skeptics; it indicates (contrary to what climate scientists tell us) our gaseous atmosphere is likely the most efficient mode of cooling the planet. If correct, this is the exact opposite of the main claim of the GHE which tells us such atmospheric gases keep us “warmer than we would otherwise be.”

As the Daily Mail reports: “SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, wants to send a MILLION people to live in glass domes on Mars within ’40 to 100 years’.” I hope Elon lives long enough to partake of his dreams himself. What better way to get into the (future) history books than “leading the charge” oneself.

Of course, if the current projections as the size of world’s population by the year 2050 are even vaguely realistic, then there will already be close to 5,000 million people in Africa alone. That could then be approximately one third of the world’s population of, perhaps, 15,000 million. From that perspective, a million (more or less) inhabitants on Earth are not going to make a significant difference to the total of the human population on this planet.

In that alternative reality known as ‘Climate Science’ yet another junk paper gets past peer review. This time edited by Anny Cazenave and quickly getting itself published in the PNAS journal.

Titled “Hurricane Sandy’s flood frequency increasing from year 1800 to 2100,” [1] it opens:

A study estimates the frequency of future Hurricane Sandy-like floods in New York City. The storm surge due to Hurricane Sandy caused flooding nearly 3 m above high tide in New York City in October 2012. The frequency at which such flooding occurs varies with changes in sea level and storm surge climatology, and estimating changes in this frequency over time could be valuable for risk mitigation. Ning Lin and colleagues examined how the frequency of Sandy-level floods in New York City has changed from 1800 to the present, and estimated the frequency of future floods. The authors estimated past sea levels from historical data and future sea levels from probabilistic projections under moderate greenhouse gas emissions. Further, the authors used reanalysis data and global climate models to estimate the current and future frequency and severity of storms.

When a plan begins to fail, you either reconsider the plan or double-down by resorting to earlier successful actions.

The climate change argument is failing as evidence shows the science is wrong, all forecasts fail, polls show a lack of public concern and the Paris Climate Conference Agreement is collapsing. However, there is a bigger reason why it all fails…There was no problem in the first place.

However, there is a bigger reason why it all fails…There was no problem in the first place.

As I said years ago, “The Kyoto Protocol is a political solution to a non-existent problem without scientific justification.”

Emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in 2009 exposed the corrupt science and forced a Kyoto replacement, the Green Climate Fund.

Donna Laframboise has a great piece in the Spectator – How Many Scientific Papers Just Aren’t True? – about why so much science research these days is bunk because the whole “peer-review” process is broken. She means climate science especially, of course.

Someone should tell the guys at green propaganda site CarbonBrief.

Thousands of peer-reviewed academic papers are published about climate change every year. These articles form the bedrock of climate science, underpinning the assessment reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

And also, enviro-activist Ed Begley Jr who went postal on TV in this mega-rant about the vital importance of “peer-review”

And this smug, simpering tosser, John Oliver.

And so on.

Everyone on the Alarmist side of the argument is forever invoking “consensus” and “peer-review” because the Appeal to Authority is all they’ve got. Their science is tainted beyond redemption and the only hope they’ve got of persuading the world that it’s not is to hide the facts behind barriers of supposed expertise: “You little people cannot possibly be expected to understand these complex matters. Instead you must take on trust the expertise of the climate scientists who have written all these learned papers. And the reason you can take on trust the expertise of their learned papers is that they have been carefully assessed by other climate experts in the process we call ‘peer-review’”.

Except, of course, as Donna Laframboise points out, these papers often haven’t been vetted at all.

What a wonderful environmental parable is now unfolding around a meeting of 150 countries held last week in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, to discuss an international ban on yet another ‘greenhouse gas’, to aid their wish to halt global warming.

Back in 1987, when there was a huge panic over the hole opening up in the ozone layer over the Antarctic, 197 countries signed the Montreal Protocol, the world’s first major environmental treaty, agreeing to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in everything from refrigerators to hair-sprays, which were supposedly causing the ozone to disappear.

How far this has actually been responsible for the fact that the ozone hole has recently been shrinking is still a matter of scientific dispute. But CFCs have been widely replaced by hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), used in refrigeration and air-conditioning, which, because they are short-lived, were viewed not to be damaging to the ozone layer.

However the penny has finally dropped that these HFCs are even more powerful greenhouse gases than the CFCs. So the Montreal Protocol must now be amended to ban these wicked “pollutants” as soon as possible, not least in light of last December’s Paris agreement that supposedly pledged the world to prevent global temperatures rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

According to the IPCC (2007), changes in climate occur as a consequence of variations in the Earth’s radiation budget (solar energy absorbed by versus leaving the surface).  Changes in the Earth’s radiation budget occur for 3 primary reasons; two of those three reasons involve solar forcing.

IPCC AR4:

“Global climate is determined by the radiation balance of the planet. There are three fundamental ways the Earth’s radiation balance can change, thereby causing a climate change:

(1)  changing the incoming solar radiation (e.g., by changes in the Earth’s orbit or in the Sun itself),

(2)  changing the fraction of solar radiation that is reflected (this fraction is called the albedo – it can be changed, for example, by changes in cloud cover, small particles called aerosols or land cover), and

(3)   altering the longwave energy radiated back to space (e.g., by changes in greenhouse gas concentrations).”

Government funding is leading to scientific research that can’t be replicated, according to a new report detailing growing problems in the scientific community.

Published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the report illustrates how scientific research is susceptible to bias when it is funded by the government and how a considerable number of scientific studies cannot be replicated or reproduced. As a result, government policy based on the research isn’t based on scientific methods and cannot be accepted as fact.

“Medical research, psychology, and economics are all in the grip of a ‘reproducibility crisis.’ A pharmaceutical company attempting to confirm the findings of 53 landmark cancer studies was successful in only six instances, a failure rate of 89{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}. ” Donna Laframboise, a journalist who authored the report, said in a statement. “Government policies can’t be considered evidence-based if the evidence on which they depend hasn’t been independently verified, yet the vast majority of academic research is never put to this test.”

Leonardo DiCaprio claims his new film will illustrate the dangers of climate change. Before the Flood is a new “documentary” that chronicles DiCaprio’s carbon-spewing journey across the planet, where he relies on natural disasters to prove that global warming is occurring and catastrophic.

The Oscar-winning actor speaks to scientists, politicians, and academics who provide dramatic soundbites about man-made global warming, but he fails to include a single quote from the thousands of scientists, politicians, and academics who vehemently disagree with these soundbites.

The United Nations has made frequent use of the Hollywood star in an effort to demonize fossil fuel use. The result? DiCaprio’s new film is something the actor claims will “scare the hell” out of people.

A new study in Nature says #Climate Change may force the polar vortex to dip down more often, triggering bone-chilling winters in Europe and North America. Many of the claims of an overheated Earth dissipate during winter as temperatures plummet and heating bills rise. Yet the authors write that as the Arctic warms and more sea ice melts, additional ocean water is exposed, absorbing the sun’s warmth. 

The excess warmth then gets released over a longer time period, interrupting the polar vortex and pushing it down into lower latitudes. Sea ice, however, reflects the sun’s rays back into space, causing temperatures to plummet during the winter. That’s what happened in early 2014 and 2015 when Arctic air bullied its way toward more temperate regions.