NASA scientist Peter Schultz in the “Science” program titled “Stellar Gold Rush” (March 30, 2016) showed why science is never settled and why observed phenomena still baffles us. Schultz and other NASA scientists have long been at a loss to explain an odd electrical glow over earth’s moon.

This mystery was first reported in 1978 television program about the Surveyor 7 space mission. Shultz had become fascinated about a report of “Moon Glow” that could not be explained. At the time of the event Dr. Bill Barnes, author of “Space Wars” had said: “There’s a light that’s overhead that shouldn’t be there.”

In my book, The Honest Broker, I describe four modes of engagement by scientists and other experts. They are ideal types and shown in the figure above. The different modes are a function of how we think about democracy and how we think about the proper role of science in society. The book gets into some more detail, of course, on the theoretical background. Here I respond to a few recent requests to provide a high level overview of the different roles, motivated by a workshop I attended last week at the National Academy of Sciences organized by their roundtable on Public Interfaces of the Life Sciences — on Twitter #NASinterface. I also list some thoughts based on my experiences engaging experts on these roles over the past several years.

NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt, who has come under fire for being more activist than scientist, sent out a tweet yesterday predicting that 2016 would be the hottest year on record and said he was 99 percent sure of that claim. According to land-and-sea-based temperature stations, July 2016 was 0.1 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1950 to 1980 timeframe. But when compared to the 1930s, July still is not a record breaker. But only if you don’t rely on an adjusted temperature dataset.

Schmidt, a director for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS), is disseminating a chart on Twitter from a dataset that has been heavily adjusted to show a much larger warming trend than is actually occurring.

One of my students—my heart soars like a hawk!—sent me the video linked below. I’ll assume you’ve watched it, as my comments make reference to it.

About the dismal effects of p-values, the video already does a bust-up job. Plus, we’re sick of talking about them, so we won’t. I’ll only mention that the same kinds of mistakes are made using Bayes factors; only BFs aren’t used by most researchers, so few see them.

Their Research: I had truly forgotten just how much work Mr. Watts had done in helping prove the Slayer’s position that there is no greenhouse effect.  The following 3 articles are all tied together but the 2nd article is where Anthony and a friend of his actually did some experimentation which ended up totally supporting the Slayers position that there is no greenhouse effect as depicted in climate alarm science:

Climate boffins believe the UK’s topsy-turvy climate is in for a chilly twist within the next few years as three major forms of climate change trigger “substantial cooling”. Drastic changes in ocean conditions, greenhouse gases and a weakening of the sun threaten increasingly worsening winters of blistering blizzards and severe snowstorms for years to come.  Another major factor in the predicted cool down could be the switch from an usually strong El Nino to a La Nina weather front in the pacific ocean. Meteorologist for AccuWeather Tyler Roys told Daily Star Online La Nina could contribute to the chilly mix. The Met Office said the onset of La Nina from 2017 is likely to “buck the trend” in terms of record-breaking global temperature averages, predicting a cool down across the globe. –Joshua Nevett, Daily Star, 14 August 2016

Is there any way the first Americans migrated south along the Pacific coast through an ice-free corridor? No, say scientists. 

For decades, archaeologists thought they knew how the story went: Humans migrated from Siberia to Alaska over the Bering land bridge during the last Ice Age, but were stuck there until a corridor opened up between the eastern and western ice sheets covering much of what is now Canada. Then, the Clovis people – thought to be the first to spread across the Americas – took that new path down to the rest of the continent.

But when fresh evidence poured in suggesting people were in the Americas long before the distinctive Clovis spearpoints showed up, the Clovis-first model was discredited.

It is hard to imagine now, but Britain once led the nuclear revolution. Ernest Rutherford first broke the nuclei of atoms at Manchester University in 1917. Our Queen opened the world’s first nuclear power plant in 1956 at Calder Hall.

Such were the halcyon days of British atomic confidence, before defeatism took hold and free market ideology was pushed to pedantic extremes.

Most of Britain’s ageing reactors will be phased out over the next decade, leaving a gaping hole in electricity supply. By historic irony the country has drifted into a position where it now depends on anailing state-owned French company to build its two reactors at Hinkley Point, with help from the Chinese Communist Party.

Thin clouds at about 5 km altitude are more ubiquitous in the tropics than previously thought and they have a substantial cooling effect on climate.  This is shown in a recent study by researchers from Stockholm University and the University of Miami published in Nature Communications. The cooling effect of mid-level clouds is currently missing in global climate models.

Celebrity British television scientist, Brian Cox, is exposed promoting fraudulent NASA temperature graph to a live Australian audience. In an attempt to discredit fellow panellist Aussie climate skeptic, Malcolm Roberts,  Cox waved his dodgy piece of paper boldly declaring “I’ve brought the graph” (see photo) to a hand-picked audience.

But after the show informed critics were quick to back the skeptic speaker who cut through Cox’s flim-flam to pinpoint precisely the fakery on display.

While oxygen first appeared in Earth’s atmosphere 2.4 billion years ago, it took another two billion years to reach the levels we breath in today.

Now a researchers believe they have identified what helped lead to this dramatic increase in oxygen on our planet – moss.

Scientists at the University of Exeter suggest moss-like plants were among the first to colonise the land and triggered oxygen in the atmosphere to increase.

The UK government has confirmed that funding for science and technology research will not be affected by the country’s decision to leave the European Union, promising that EU-agreed funding will continue even after Brexit is finalised. 

Some of the facilities that will benefit include the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre in Manchester, the Thames Valley Science Park and Cornwall’s Carluddon Technology Park.

Chancellor Philip Hammond said: “Structural and investment funds projects signed before the Autumn Statement, and Horizon research funding granted before we leave the EU, will be guaranteed by the Treasury after we leave.”

The conceptualization of “global warming” has become so entrenched in the lexicon that few give much thought to its dubious derivation.

Many assume that “global warming” actually means that all or nearly all of the globe is warming as a consequence of the “well-mixed” greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (i.e., CO2 concentrations have indeed reached right about 400 parts per million from the Arctic to Antarctica, or all across the globe).  In reality, however, only parts of the globe have been warming.  Large regions of the Earth have seen stable or falling temperatures in recent decades, or even dating back to the mid-20th century, when anthropogenic emissions have been claimed to have caused most climate changes.

Northern Europe was hit with some weird August weather in the past week, as summer snows fell in Sweden and a city in Saxony experienced its coldest temperature on record. 

Åre, Sweden was hit with summer snow Thursday, and while temperatures across Sweden are expected to stay between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit, ski resort owners were thrilled to see the snow.

“Of course not everyone thinks, as we do, that snow in August smells like longing for winter and skiing. We love the winter even in summer,” Marie Lithén, who owns restaurant Bistrologiskt, told The Local.

Lithén’s colleague Anton filmed snow coming down at their mountaintop restaurant and posted it to Facebook Thursday. By Friday afternoon, the video was seen by more than 303,000 people.