Last October, the New York Times published this dire op-ed on ocean acidification, supposedly authored by NOAA chief Richard Spinrad and his UK counterpart Ian Boyd.

Curious, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to NOAA for the e-mail related to the development and publication of the op-ed. I received 443 pages of e-mail in return.

First, the op-ed was actually written by NOAA staff Madelyn Applebaum, not Spinrad or Boyd. The purpose was to tout NOAA not inform the public about ocean acidification.

According to the IPCC (2013),  global sea levels rose by less than two-tenths of a meter (0.19 m) between 1901 and 2010.  Considering the scientific record of long-term sea level trends from locations across the globe, this small <0.2 m change in sea levels over the course of the last 110 years does not even fall outside the range of natural variability.

Sea levels have commonly risen and fallen at amplitudes much greater than two-tenths of a meter.   As Harris et al. (2015)  confirm, “relative sea-level variations of ∼1 m were common throughout the Holocene.”

“The Greenhouse Conspiracy” is a documentary film broadcast by Channel 4 in the United Kingdom on 12 August 1990, as part of the Equinox series, which criticised the theory of global warming and asserted that scientists critical of global warming theory were denied funding.

There are three primary sources of material amounts of energy on Earth. The word material means an amount of energy greater than 2 {154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of total worldwide energy demand combining all sectors of transportation, industrial, commercial residential, agricultural, potable water production and its movement. Energy sources such as thermal piles, batteries and the like are not considered material.

Professor Oliver K Manuel has been a pioneer of the theory that the Sun’s core is neutron-rich. In his new paper ‘Neutron Repulsion: Powers Beyond the Dreams of Scientific Fiction’ he seeks to share experimental evidence of neutron repulsion with others – and to show graphically why elusive neutron  repulsion was overlooked as the likely source of “powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction” in the development of nuclear energy – before neutron repulsion is presented for public discussion at the London GeoEthics Conference on Climate Change on September 8-9, 2016.

Criticism of Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity has been taboo among serious scientists for almost a century. But in recent years, mainly due to the rise of the internet, serious researchers have been tackling some of the apparent flaws in Einstein’s physics. 

For some time the main critics of Einstein were from Eastern countries, in scientific communities of China and Russia, whereas in Europe and USA Einstein’s legacy has been too powerful to question.

Nonetheless, Italian researcher, Alberto Miatello has published a paper which is a radical attack on Einstein’s relativism. Miatello expounds a new theory of unification based on the Principle of universal inertia by Ernst Mach in ‘Gravitational Waves: Great Discovery or Blunder?’ [1]

The Italian researcher advises, “For readers seeking a ready insight of the content of my paper which is quite long (76 pages), I suggest they first read the final “summary” (published below).

No Heat Trap: CO2 does not trap heat. In fact nothing traps heat and that entire concept which comes from climate alarmism is false. Here is the definition of heat:

“Heat is defined as the form of energy that is transferred across a boundary by virtue of a temperature difference or temperature gradient. Implied in this definition is the very important fact that a body never contains heat, but that heat is identified as heat only as it crosses the boundary. Thus, heat is a transient phenomenon. If we consider the hot block of copper as a system and the cold water in the beaker as another system, we recognize that originally neither system contains any heat (they do contain energy, of course.) When the copper is placed in the water and the two are in thermal communication, heat is transferred from the copper to the water, until equilibrium of temperature is established. At that point we no longer have heat transfer, since there is no temperature difference. Neither of the systems contains any heat at the conclusion of the process. It also follows that heat is identified at the boundaries of the system, for heat is defined as energy being transferred across the system boundary.”

from G. J. V. Wylen, Thermodynamics

 

On June 14, 2016, Swiss flagship daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) reported on an imminent record ice melt in the Arctic:

Record ice melt in the Arctic: ‘heat wave ‘ over Greenland
Arctic sea ice is headed for a new record summer minimum. The disappearance of the ice sheet can initiate decisive climatic events. Arctic sea ice is currently melting faster than the record 2012 year. According to data from the Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) the polar ice cover this May (completely frozen or with a sea ice concentration of at least 15 percent) was about 580,000 square kilometers less than 2004; that corresponds to the size of France. The total sea ice area is still at 12 million aquare kilometers, or about one and half times the area of Australia. A new minimum is forseeable.”

 

Man’s nearest star is less active after scientists noticed a plunge in the number of sunspots. As a result, some say, global temperature levels will not rise as much as predicted, while others insist this will do little to slow climate change. 

ABU DHABI // August may be its usual sweltering self in the UAE, but it’s not business as usual with the source of that heat.

Something strange is happening to the Sun, and scientists are getting hot under the collar about it.

According to some, the Sun’s activity is dropping to levels last seen during a mini ice age that gripped the northern hemisphere 350 years ago. Others accept that the effect is real, but say global warming will still rule our future.

Man-made carbon dioxide is generally thought to produce global warming. However, in a recent article entitled “Does Carbon Dioxide Drive Global Warming?” I presented several major reasons why carbon dioxide is probably not the primary cause.¹ But if carbon dioxide is not the cause, then what is? Evidence is accumulating that cosmic rays associated with fluctuations in the sun’s electromagnetic field may be what drives global warming. A new theory called cosmoclimatology that proposes a natural mechanism for climate fluctuations has been developed by Henrik Svensmark,² Head of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Center.

Brian Cox says the graph he was photographed with above, was made by the people who put men on the moon – and therefore must be correct. His claim is ridiculous and unscientific at many levels, but particularly for these three reasons :

1. The small group of people at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) who made that graph, have nothing to do with the space program.
2. Many of the NASA people who did actually put men on the moon have expressed concern about the quality of the work at GISS.
3. Most importantly, the graph is incorrect. Wildly incorrect – as I will show below.

The current version of GISS land temperatures shows a slight warming from 1940 to 1970.

Creating “a star in a jar” – replicating on Earth the way the sun and stars create energy through fusion – requires a “jar” that can contain superhot plasma and is low-cost enough to be built around the world. Such a device would provide humankind with near limitless energy, ending dependence on fossil fuels for generating electricity. 

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) say that a model for such a “jar,” or fusion device, already exists in experimental form – the compact spherical tokamaks at PPPL and Culham, England. These tokamaks, or fusion reactors, could provide the design for possible next steps in fusion energy – a Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF) that would develop reactor components and also produce electricity as a pilot plant for a commercial fusion power station.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is not being killed off because of “global warming” or any other allegedly man-made non-problem, the people who know the area best have confirmed. 

According to local newspaper The Courier-Mail [paywalled]

Teams of divers in a joint two-week expedition sponsored by Mike Ball Dive and Spirit of Freedom surveyed 28 sites on 24 outer shelf reefs along a 300km section of the hardest-hit part of the reef from Bathurst Head to Raine Island.

 Spirit of Freedom owner Chris Eade said reports of 93 per cent bleaching on the 2300km long Great Barrier Reef had made global headlines and damaged the reputation of the $5 billion reef tourism industry.

 “Scientists had written off that entire northern section as a complete white-out,’’ Mr Eade said.

 “We expected the worst. But it is tremendous condition, most of it is pristine, the rest is in full recovery.

 “It shows the resilience of the reef.’’

   Mike Ball Dive Expeditions operations manager Craig Stephen, who conducted a similar survey on the remote reefs 20 years ago, said there had been almost no change in two decades despite the latest coral bleaching event.

  “It wasn’t until we got underwater that we could get a true picture of what percentage of reef was bleached,’’ Mr Stephen said.

   “The discrepancy is phenomenal. It is so wrong. Everywhere we have been we have found healthy reefs.

    “There has been a great disservice to the Great Barrier Reef and tourism and it has not been good for our industry.”

In the aftermath of last Wednesday’s horror of the magnitude 6.2 earthquake that shocked Italy, a mass funeral has taken place for some of the 290 people killed in the tragedy at the town of Arquata. While the USGS estimates that several million earthquakes occur in the world each year, this begs the question – can science get us any closer to predicting the worst of such catastrophic events? 

Veteran science writer, Edsel Chromie, has studied this subject for decades and brings his own unique insight to this question. Chromie first directs our attention back to 1985 and a University of California, Berkeley conference, which saw researchers from Greece describing how they monitor Earth’s natural electromagnetic fields to predict quakes.

On August 23rd, 2016 Roy Spencer wrote an article in which he states that observational evidence gathered at Desert Rock, Nevada, affirms the existence of a radiative “greenhouse effect”.  In that article he makes several assertions that I would like to address. 

Let’s start with his definition of the “greenhouse effect” from the article, “the ‘greenhouse effect’ is usually expressed [as] the increase in surface temperatures caused by greenhouse gases compared to if those gases did not exist.”  Just to be clear, the “increase in surface temperatures caused by greenhouse gases” according to the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis are overall average temperatures seen within a location, a region or the entire globe over time—the course of an entire day, an entire year, an entire decade or an entire Century.  They are not just the nighttime temperatures that Spencer was studying and commenting on.  As such his data is too limited to properly evaluate the existence or non-existence of a radiative “greenhouse effect” even as he has defined it.

Summary: Solar variations affect the abundance of clouds in our atmosphere, a new study suggests. Large eruptions on the surface of the Sun can temporarily shield Earth from so-called cosmic rays which now appear to affect cloud formation.

[Photo: Cosmic rays are important for cloud formation. Credit: © determined / Fotolia]

 A team of scientists from the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU Space) and the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has linked large solar eruptions to changes in Earth’s cloud cover in a study based on over 25 years of satellite observations.