In the wake of last month’s marches for science and climate in Washington and around the country, Americans are divided in their support of the events’ goals and their sense of whether it will make a difference. In particular, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that most Democrats and younger adults are convinced that these public events will help the causes of scientists.

Obviously it can’t be both. If you are surprised it means you didn’t predict it would happen. And then to call the surprise “inevitable” means the only thing you are certain of is that you can’t predict climate.

I (Duane Thresher) was a contributor to the National Academy book “Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises”. So was Dr. Gavin Schmidt, leading global warming spokesperson and current head of NASA GISS (anointed by former head Dr. James Hansen, father of global warming). Unlike Schmidt, I questioned the whole premise but was just a graduate student at the time so didn’t speak up.

It is good to see constructive dialog among colleagues. To further such discussion it is necessary to keep to PSI’s commitment to open public debate, when the science demands it. John O’Sullivan – https://principia-scientific.com

Well said John. Your point was exemplified in the traditional math exam instructions “Show your work.” In fact it is more important in real science because without it reproducible results are not possible. 

Recently, I gave a seminar on “fake news” to professors and grad students at a large public university. Early in my talk, I polled the audience: “How many of you believe climate change is the world’s #1 threat?”Silence. Not a single person raised his or her hand.

Was I speaking in front of a group of science deniers? The College Republicans? Some fringe libertarian club? No, it was a room full of microbiologists.

Viewers may question much of what they hear and read about scientific and medical studies after watching the latest “Full Measure” cover story. It’s a cautionary note issued by respected industry leaders who say unseen interests are exerting enormous control over research and what is—or isn’t—published. Their startling claim: that a large percentage of articles in prestigious medical journals are simply not to be believed.

A new haul of ancient human remains has been described from an important cave site in South Africa. The finds, including a well-preserved skull, bolster the idea that the Homo naledi people deliberately deposited their dead in the cave.

Evidence of such complex behaviour is surprising for a human species with a brain that’s a third the size of ours. Despite showing some primitive traits it lived relatively recently, perhaps as little as 235,000 years ago. That would mean the naledi people could have overlapped with the earliest of our kind – Homo sapiens.

So, you keep hearing about the Paris Climate Agreement but still don’t know anything about it?  That’s OK.  There’s a lot of hot air but not really much to know.

Ostensibly the agreement is about countries reducing their carbon emissions to fight global warming.  But the most important thing to know is that the only agreement in the Paris Climate Agreement — by both climate change warriors and global warming skeptics — is that it will have little, if any, effect on global warming.

Scientists associated with the UN’s IPCC predicted that the huge consumer/industrial emissions of the modern era would cause not only “unprecedented” global warming but also dangerous “runaway” warming, which would then produce “tipping point” climate change.

In recent months global temperatures have plummeted by more that 0.6 degrees: just as happened 17 years ago after a similarly strong El Niño.

Inevitably, when even satellite temperatures were showing 2016 as “the hottest year on record”, we were going to be told last winter that the Arctic ice was at its lowest extent ever. Sure enough, before Christmas, a report from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was greeted with such headlines as “Hottest Arctic on record triggers massive ice melt”.

The biggest cowards in America today can be found in colleges and universities; they are the administrators, followed closely by a large number of their faculty. They have and continue to allow our institutions to be taken over by a monolithic world view that is increasingly totalitarian and antithetical to the diversity of opinion on which the search for truth depends.

Image copyright: GETTY IMAGES

Microsoft has released an urgent update to stop hackers taking control of computers with a single email. The unusual bug, in Microsoft anti-malware software such as Windows Defender, could be exploited without the recipient even opening the message. Researchers working for Google’s Project Zero cyber-security outfit discovered the flaw at the weekend. The fix has been specially pushed out hours before the software giant’s monthly Tuesday security update.

The biggest mistake made by supporters of the ‘consensus’ for man-made climate alarm is believing that government climate science has standing in the wider scientific community. It doesn’t. Below we explain why.

First, most people do not realize that the history of climate science – as taught in schools and universities and spoken about in a quiescent press – is less science, more propaganda. The narrative sold is that climate research is a long-established, prestige discipline which is composed of elite experts espousing long-accepted scientific proofs on how our climate works. This myth is not only laughable but is readily exposed when the diligent reader performs their own research.

Perhaps, that will be better—or not; time will tell. Of course, I’m talking about the plant Cannabis sp., known as marijuana, the new “vice of choice.” As Money Morning reports:

Over half of the country, or 28 states, have legalized marijuana in some form. You see, the marijuana craze is sweeping the nation …