A joint UK-US-led expedition has got under way to drill into the Chicxulub Crater off the coast of Mexico.

This is the deep scar made in the Earth’s surface 66 million years ago by the asteroid that scientists believe hastened the end of the dinosaurs.

Today, the key parts of the crater are buried beneath 600m of ocean sediment.

But if researchers can access its rocks, they should learn more about the scale of the impact, and the environmental catastrophe that ensued.

University of Adelaide’s Michael Chen sent a very strange email last Friday night, insulting a man who challenged Einstein’s relativity theory.

Stephen Crothers, from Queensland, has long been a denier of Einstein’s theory and sent a research paper to academics, including Dr Chen.

Mr Crothers then received a number of email responses from Dr Chen, which he has since posted to Facebook.

Summary

• Electricity generation by using gas-fired installations is significantly cheaper than Renewables in terms of both installation capital cost and Operation and Maintenance  costs, even when accounting for the cost of fuel.
• The € 1.1 trillion capital costs already spent on Renewables in Europe would have been sufficient to re-equip the whole 1,000 Gigawatt European electricity generating fleet with Gas-fired power stations producing electricity for the grid effectively at ~90{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} capacity.
• The European Renewable fleet with a nominal nameplate output of ~ 212 Gigawatts only contributes ~ 38 Gigawatts to the European Grid, a capacity percentage at about 18{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}.
• The installation of the Renewables fleet as of 2014 has already lead to a 60 year lifetime financial commitment amounting to about €3.1 trillion:  this is equivalent to the annual GDP of Germany.
• 60 year life-time costs of Onshore wind power range from 10 – 13 times more expensive than Gas-fired generation.
• 60 year life-time costs of Offshore wind power and Solar power range from 40 – 50 times more expensive than Gas-fired generation.
• during the 60 year life-time Gas-fired generators have a full-time productive capacity of about 90{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}  whereas the combined capacity figures for Renewable Energy of only about 18{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} is achieved across all European Renewable installations.
• These notes make estimates of:
  • the likely capital expenditure over 60 years
  • the running costs including fuel costs, if applicable, over that time period
  • the likely combined 60 year costs overall
  • the ratios of Renewable financial performances compared to Gas-fired electricity generation.

 Introduction

This article is concerned with the two main forms of weather-dependent Renewable Energy, Wind Power (Onshore and Offshore) and Photovoltaic solar power.

In the UK this amounts to ~75{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of all installed Renewable Energy.  The other Renewable Energy  inputs are traditional Hydro power ~8{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} and the remainder are other sources such as biomass, waste and landfill gas amounting to ~17{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}:  they are not considered here.

Introduction

This article is concerned with the two main forms of weather dependent Renewable Energy, Wind Power (Onshore and Offshore) and Photovoltaic solar power.  In the UK this amounts to ~75{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of all installed Renewable Energy.  The other renewable energy  inputs are traditional Hydro power ~8{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} and the remainder are other sources such as biomass, waste and landfill gas amounting to ~17{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}.

The capacity percentage of any power generating installation is calculated as the actual electrical output achieved divided by the nominal Nameplate output.  This article uses both stated estimates from the USA  EIA and real measures of capacity in Europe as of 2014. It thus provides reasonably correct comparisons of the efficacy of Renewable installations.

A decade has passed since TIME magazine published a famous cover and report on “global warming,” and even though one organization says TIME got it right, another says it couldn’t be further from the truth.

In 2006, TIME published a “special report” on global warming. The cover showed a polar bear standing on a patch of ice and snow while gazing down at a large span of water. TIME went on to argue that, among other things, “climate change” is not some vague future problem, claiming that it is already damaging the planet at an alarming pace.

Over the past week, ThinkProgress.org hailed the cover and said the main story was an accurate portrayal.

“[The TIME story presents a] very solid, even prescient, piece of reporting – warning about polar ice loss, sea level rise, severe drought, and other extreme weather,” ThinkProgress stated.

Meanwhile, Marc Morano of Climate Depot says TIME’s 10-year-old was mere doom and gloom.

By 2014 European Union countries had invested approximately €1.1 trillion, €1,100,000,000,000, in large scale Renewable Energy installations.

This has provided a nominal nameplate electrical generating capacity of about 216 Gigawatts, or nominally about ~22{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the total European generation needs of about 1000 Gigawatts.

The actual measured output by 2014 from data supplied by the Renewables Industry has been 38 Gigawatts or 3.8{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of Europe’s electricity requirement, at a capacity factor of ~18{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} overall.

Since the early 1980s, grave concerns have been raised about the process by which scientific evidence gets produced.

Two months ago, I embarked on a research project that veered off in unexpected directions, metamorphosing into a more time-consuming and labour-intensive exercise than anticipated.

Along the way, I learned a great deal about how science gets practiced in the real world – as opposed to the idealized “Science” of my imagination. Yes, I’d known full well that climate science was a mess. Rather than inspiring confidence, legions of its practitioners act as though they’re selling something. On the one hand, they’re quick to dismiss alternative perspectives. On the other, they grasp at every half-baked rationale available to advance their own worldview. And yes, I’d already begun to notice parallels to the scientific debate concerning cholesterol, dietary fat, and heart disease.

But my recent adventure has persuaded me that the scientific enterprise, as it is now conducted in government-funded universities, is far more dubious than I had hitherto appreciated. I’m currently reading a book that was published in 1982, the year I left high school. William Broad and Nicholas Wade, two New York Times journalists, had figured out 34 years ago something with which I am only now coming to terms: the reality of science is so far removed from the ideal that vast swaths of what we think we know may be nonsense.

Online researcher William Kay provides a comprehensive new list of 356 Enviro-Critical and/or Climate-Sceptical Websites; 78 Funded Enviro-Critical Organizations; 115 Philanthropic Donors to the Enviro-Critical Movement and 2 Concluding Criticisms.

Kay writes: The starting place for compiling this list were the “blogrolls” or “links” sections of the better known climate-sceptical and/or enviro-critical websites. Many of the websites listed there have blogrolls of their own, which were also surveyed. Overall, about 100 such lists were perused. Only websites appearing on these lists were selected for the list below. 

About 20 blogrolls contain over 100 entries each but there is a lot overlapping content. Moreover, the lists tend to be poorly maintained and thus include many broken links and dud sites. They also include websites with little enviro-content.

The Lord Monckton Foundation website has an impressive 300 hyperlinks, but over half of these link not to websites but to individual articles, papers, and data-sets, or to pro-global warming sites including one that calls Lord Monckton a “purple crested crackpot.” In fairness to Lord Monckton, he is not advertising his list as being exclusively a roll call of enviro-critical/climate-sceptical sites. Only about 70 of his entries fit this definition, which still makes it one of the longest such lists on the Internet.

Does carbon dioxide have the physical properties of heat trapping/delayed cooling as alleged by climate scientists? Well, according to experiments conducted by experts in the ‘hard’ sciences at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory CO2 just doesn’t do what climate science says it does.

For three decades now academics have been warning governments and scaring the bejesus out of policymakers about the ‘dangerous’ warming properties of CO2 and other ‘greenhouse gases’ if we allow human emissions to build up in the atmosphere.

But in their study Berkeley laboratory test experts Reilly, Arasteh and Rubin revealed something truly remarkable when setting out to apply those assumed properties of carbon dioxide – enshrined in climate change theory – to create better performing insulated double-glazing window manufacture.

What was discovered was that under stringent lab conditions it can be shown that regular air delays/traps heat better than greenhouse gases such as CO2!

Carbon is the Great Satan of the environmental movement. They all worry about their carbon footprint, want to impose carbon taxes on it and even have schemes to capture the poor thing and imprison it down holes in the ground. Oh the humanity. For such a supposedly caring bunch, they can be so cruel at times. 

If I were in their position, then I’d do what I always do to size up the opposition; I’d learn about it. If that means getting a bit close, even to the point of hopping into the sack with them for a while, well, that’s not a problem. A little bit of recreational rumpty pumpty never hurts, especially with one of those bad bad girls your Momma warned you all about. No offence intended to those nice girl next door elements out there, but sin as we all know has a certain delicious tinge of pure badness about it.

So, let’s put that other hat on and learn about their elemental enemy. The thing is, I’ve found the alarmists actually don’t do science but like all good scenario explorations, we’ll lose that little detail as part of simplifying the exercise. Let’s get down and boogie up real close to her sexy satanic majesty, Ms. Kickass Carbon. She has a certain ballsy attitude I kinda like.

Abstract

 Atmospheric profiles in North America during the period 2010-2011, obtained from archived weather balloon radiosonde measurements, were analysed in terms of changes of molar density (D) with pressure (P). This revealed a pronounced phase change at the tropopause. The air above the troposphere (i.e., in the tropopause/stratosphere) adopted a “heavy phase”, distinct from the conventional “light phase” found in the troposphere. This heavy phase was also found in the lower troposphere for cold, Arctic winter radiosondes. Reasonable fits for the complete barometric temperature profiles of all of the considered radiosondes could be obtained by just accounting for these phase changes and for changes in humidity. This suggests that the well-known changes in temperature lapse rates associated with the tropopause/stratosphere regions are related to the phase change, and not “ozone heating”, which had been the previous explanation. Possible correlations between solar ultraviolet variability and climate change have previously been explained in terms of changes in ozone heating influencing stratospheric weather. These explanations may have to be revisited, but the correlations might still be valid, e.g., if it transpires that solar variability influences the formation of the heavy phase, or if the changes in incoming ultraviolet radiation are redistributed throughout the atmosphere, after absorption in the stratosphere. The fits for the barometric temperature profiles did not require any consideration of the composition of atmospheric trace gases, such as carbon dioxide, ozone or methane. This contradicts the predictions of current atmospheric models, which assume the temperature profiles are strongly influenced by greenhouse gas concentrations. This suggests that the greenhouse effect plays a much smaller role in barometric temperature profiles than previously assumed.

1 Introduction

 In this paper (Paper I), together with two companion papers (henceforth, Paper II and Paper III), we develop a new approach for describing and explaining the temperature and energy profiles of the atmosphere. This approach highlights a number of flaws in the conventional approaches, and appears to yield simpler and more accurate predictions. In the current paper (Paper I), we will analyse weather balloon data taken from public archives, in terms of changes of molar density with pressure, and related variables. By doing so, we discover a phase change associated with the troposphere-tropopause transition, which also occurs in the lower troposphere under cold, polar winter conditions. We find that when this phase change is considered, the changes in temperature with atmospheric pressure (the barometric temperature profiles) can be described in relatively simple terms. These descriptions do not match the radiative physics-based infra-red cooling/radiative heating explanations used by current models. We present theoretical explanations of these simple descriptions from thermodynamic principles.

Periodic mass extinctions on Earth, as indicated in the global fossil record, could be linked to a suspected ninth planet, according to research published by a faculty member of the University of Arkansas Department of Mathematical Sciences.

Daniel Whitmire, a retired professor of astrophysics now working as a math instructor, published findings in the January issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society that the as yet undiscovered “Planet X” triggers comet showers linked to mass extinctions on Earth at intervals of approximately 27 million years.

Though scientists have been looking for Planet X for 100 years, the possibility that it’s real got a big boost recently when researchers from Caltech inferred its existence based on orbital anomalies seen in objects in the Kuiper Belt, a disc-shaped region of comets and other larger bodies beyond Neptune. If the Caltech researchers are correct, Planet X is about 10 times the mass of Earth and could currently be up to 1,000 times more distant from the sun.

What follows are the 3 newly published papers and their abstracts which flat out conclude IPCC alarmist science may be fatally flawed. Hat-tip Kenneth Richard.

The main points are emphasized in bold print.

1. Trends in Extreme Weather Events since 1900 – An Enduring Conundrum for Wise Policy Advice

“It is widely promulgated and believed that human-caused global warming comes with increases in both the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. A survey of official weather sites and the scientific literature provides strong evidence that the first half of the 20th century had more extreme weather than the second half, when anthropogenic global warming is claimed to have been mainly responsible for observed climate change. The disconnect between real-world historical data on the 100 years’ time scale and the current predictions provides a real conundrum when any engineer tries to make a professional assessment of the real future value of any infrastructure project which aims to mitigate or adapt to climate change. What is the appropriate basis on which to make judgements when theory and data are in such disagreement?

Our desire for must-have gadgets is leading to ‘fertility decline’

Keeping up with the Jones’ by spending on flashy status symbols is pushing down childbirth rates, new research claims.

Striving for a new car, house, or the latest must-have gadget is the main reason why many people in the West are delaying having even one child – or abandoning the idea altogether.   

Our brains – which evolved to live in much smaller societies – are now ‘misfiring’ as we ‘overinvest’ in accumulating high-status items, it is claimed. 

Paul Hooper, an anthropologist at Emory University, Atlanta, developed a mathematical model to simulate the effect growth of striving for material goods has on fertility.

Scientists in Japan have successfully transplanted mice with lab-grown skin that has more of the organ’s working parts in place than ever before.

Starting with stem cells made from a mouse’s gums, they managed to craft skin with multiple layers – as well as hair follicles and sweat glands.

When implanted into a “nude mouse” with a suppressed immune system, it integrated well and sprouted hairs.

Researchers say this success will take 5-10 years to translate into humans.

But eventually, the team hopes their system will lead to perfectly functioning skin that can be grown from the cells of burns victims and transplanted back on to them.

Few people cherish the idea of having to spend time at a laundromat to clean their undies. Rejoice, help is nigh – in the form of “self-cleaning laundry.” Two days ago, even the American Chemical Society chirped in with a post about the new laundry’s environmental effects.

Needless to say, the textilian Laundromat Index on the stock exchange is already in freefall.

This revolutionary development comes to you thanks to the invention of “nano”-technology. Nano, of course, is a scientific term, a common prefix, based on the ancient Greek word for dwarf and generally describing something that is one billionth (10^-9) of the reference unit.

Down to Nitty-Gritty

So, for example, a “nano-mile” (a mile being roughly 1,600 meter) would be around 1.6 micrometer.  As the average thickness of a strand of human hair is only 0.00394 inches ( or 100 micrometer) that would equate a nano-mile to approximately 0.00006 inches or 1/70th the diameter of a human hair. In other words, anything “nano” is small, very small! Now, how does that relate to your laundry?