Think equator, the place on earth where each day has 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night, no winter or summer seasons, just a tropical paradise on earth. Except for the higher elevations, where there are glaciers. Yes, real natural ice right there on the ground courtesy of Mother Nature. 

Equatorial Glaciers

Let’s look at the glaciers near the earth’s equator and you’ll find some on each continent that straddles the equator, i.e. Asia, Africa, and South America. They are:

• Carstensz Glacier, near the peak of Puncak Jaya, Indonesia, island of New Guinea;04°05’S, 137°11’E; elevation ~4,700 m.
• Furtwängler Glacier (Mt. Kilimanjaro), Tanzania, Africa; 03°04.3’S, 37°21’E; elev. ~5,700 m.
• Cayambe Glacier, Ecuador, South America; 0°00’N, 78°00’W; elevation ~5,000 m.

If you want to find them on Google Earth, just copy the bold coordinates (e.g., 04°05’S, 137°11’E) into the search field and it will take you right there. The screenshot (above) is taken from the satellite imagery of the Furtwängler Glacier, as available on Google Earth on Feb. 26, 2015. The information on the bottom of the image (not shown) says “Image © 2015 Digital Globe.”

Of course, climate alarmist prophecies predicted the Furtwängler Glacier to have long disappeared by now. After all, according to Wikipedia, its size was only six hectares in the year 2000. Surely, the additional umpteen ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere since then should have made it disappear entirely by now. What’s the hold-up?

Scientists have unearthed the jawbone of what they claim is one of the very first humans. The 2.8 million-year-old specimen )pictured right) is 400,000 years older than researchers thought that our kind first emerged.  

The discovery in Ethiopia suggests climate change spurred the transition from tree dweller to upright walker.

The head of the research team told BBC News that the find gives the first insight into “the most important transitions in human evolution”.

Prof Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas said the discovery makes a clear link between an iconic 3.2 million-year-old hominin (human-like primate) discovered in the same area in 1974, called “Lucy”.

Could Lucy’s kind – which belonged to the species Australopithecus afarensis – have evolved into the very first primitive humans?

“That’s what we are arguing,” said Prof Villmoare.

But the fossil record between the time period when Lucy and her kin were alive and the emergence of Homo erectus (with its relatively large brain and humanlike body proportions) two million years ago is sparse.

The 2.8 million-year-old lower jawbone was found in the Ledi-Geraru research area, Afar Regional State, by Ethiopian student Chalachew Seyoum. He told BBC News that he was “stunned” when he saw the fossil.

“Wind power is devastating populations of rare birds and bats across the world, driving some to the point of extinction.” –Clive Hambler [1]  

Laced with lies and fueled by delusional dreams of a return to Shangri-La, modern environmentalists and green energy gurus are creating a crisis of epic proportions with the wholesale slaughter of birds and bats under the guise of fighting global warming. In their war to destroy affordable energy, modern environmentalists sacrifice birds and bats to the tune of tens of millions every year. The slaughter is so bad that in Germany, the yearly butchery of 200,000 bats is depleting the population up to 2,000 miles away.

When did the wholesale slaughter of birds and bats become acceptable to those sworn to save the earth? There is mounting evidence that many of these birds and bats are in danger of becoming extinct. Yet the western governments and the green energy zealots continue to ignore the body count and push for more wind mills and solar farms. Why will they not learn from history that you cannot continue to destroy nature and have it constantly rebound? Just like the central planners did to the Aral Sea in the 1950’s under Nikita Khrushchev, [2] we are creating an ecological disaster of epic proportions through deliberate choices, unintended consequences and just plain bad science.

Recent global climate variation is entirely within natural cyclical variation, cooling trend now underway and is likely to continue to 2030’s, according to best data.

Until the early to mid 2000s, global temperatures were more than a degree Fahrenheit warmer when compared to the overall 20th Century mean. From August of 2007 through February of 2008, the Earth’s mean reading dropped to near the 200-year average temperature of 57 degrees. 

Since that time, the mean reading has been fluctuating. But, the recently expired winter of 2013-14 was the coldest and snowiest in modern times in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, including the U.S., Canada and Japan.

We, Cliff Harris and Randy Mann, believe that the warming and even the cooling of global temperatures are the result of long-term climatic cycles, solar activity, sea-surface temperature patterns and more. However, Mankind’s activities of the burning of fossil fuels, massive deforestations, the replacing of grassy surfaces with asphalt and concrete, the ‘Urban Heat Island Effect,’ are making conditions ‘worse’ and this will ultimately enhance the Earth’s warming process down the meteorological roadway in the next several decades.

From the late 1940s through the early 1970s, a climate research organization called the Weather Science Foundation of Crystal Lake, Illinois, determined that the planet’s warm, cold, wet and dry periods were the result of alternating short-term and long-term climatic cycles. These researchers and scientists also concluded that the Earth’s ever-changing climate likewise has influenced global and regional economies, human and animal migrations, science, religion and the arts as well as shifting forms of government and strength of leadership. (See Long-Term Chart).

A few years ago, film director James Cameron spent hours scouring the world’s deepest ocean canyon for any sign of life. He found a few bizarre animals, but it turns out the real action in the Mariana Trench happens beyond the reach of a submersible’s camera. 

Researchers from Japan discovered microscopic bacteria thrive in the canyon called Challenger Deep, which is the lowest point on Earth’s surface and the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, the team reports today (Feb. 23) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In particular, they found an unusual community of bacteria there called heterotrophs, or microbes that cannot produce their own food and must eat what they find in the water.  

Cameron found that larger life forms were scarce compared to shallow ocean waters. However, the heterotrophic life in Challenger Deep’s waters was relatively abundant, similar to that in untreated well water, said lead study author Takuro Nunoura, a microbiologist with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).

The average depth of the ocean floor is about 13,120 feet (4,000 meters); its deepest point is in the western Pacific’s Mariana Trench, where the Challenger Deep canyon bottoms out at more than 36,000 feet (nearly 11,000 m) below sea level. All kinds of microscopic life are found in the seafloor at this depth, from bacteria and archaea to yeast and viruses, according to this and other studies. [Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench]

The heterotrophs in the Challenger Deep likely derive food from sinking particles, such as dissolved fecal pellets or dust, or possibly from geologic processes such as earthquake-triggered landslides, which could send organic-rich sediments tumbling into the canyon’s depths, the researchers said.

Black rats may not have been to blame for numerous outbreaks of the bubonic plague across Europe, a study suggests. 

Scientists believe repeat epidemics of the Black Death, which arrived in Europe in the mid-14th Century, instead trace back to gerbils from Asia.

Prof Nils Christian Stenseth, from the University of Oslo, said: “If we’re right, we’ll have to rewrite that part of history.”

The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Black Death, which originated in Asia, arrived in Europe in 1347 and caused one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.

Over the next 400 years, epidemics broke out again and again, killing millions of people.

It had been thought that black rats were responsible for allowing the plague to establish in Europe, with new outbreaks occurring when fleas jumped from infected rodents to humans.

The solar photo-voltaic (PV) industry has another victim: Q-CELLS plant in Thalheim, Germany. As of March 1, 2015, the plant will cease production altogether and will only be selling PV panels made in Malaysia, 550 of its previous workforce of 800 will be laid off. Not that long ago, in 2007, the company had a workforce of 1700 and claimed to be the world’s largest producer of PV panels. 

Would you have thought of that?  The solution to a non-existing problem resides right on your kitchen shelf! 

As Nature World News reports, “It’s possible the solution to our world’s buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been sitting on our grocery shelves all along. Baking soda of all things may help to capture carbon dioxide, according to a new breakthrough study.” As that new report is authored by no less than 15 scientists it must carry some weight and be based on realistic experiments and knowledge. At least you’d be forgiven for thinking that.

The article notes further that “Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), in collaboration with researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Harvard University, have developed a new type of carbon capture medium made up of core-shell microcapsules, consisting of a polymer shell that is highly permeable. The shell contains a solution of sodium carbonate, which is the main ingredient of baking soda, and it can absorb carbon dioxide (CO2).”

Let’s begin with some Chemistry

Just for the (very) few Dear Readers unaccustomed to chemical thinking, baking soda also goes by the term “sodium hydrogencarbonate” or, more commonly, “sodium bicarbonate” (SBC), the salt of sodium hydroxide with “hydrogen-carbonic acid.”

From a chemical point of view, SBC is fully “saturated” or “loaded” with carbon dioxide and could not take up any more.

Therefore, the idea that sodium bicarbonate may be able to absorb more carbon dioxide (from whatever source) is simply nonsense. In fact, the opposite is true and that’s the sole reason for using baking soda at all.

As the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) gears up for its revamped second run, hurling particles together with more energy than ever before, physicists there are impatient. They want this next round of collisions to shake their discipline to its core. 

“I can’t wait for the switch-on. We’ve been waiting since January 2013 to have our proton beams back,” says Tara Shears, a particle physics professor from the University of Liverpool.

Prof Shears is raising her voice over the occasional noise of fork-lift trucks and tools, as well as the constant hum of the huge experimental apparatus behind her: LHCb, one of four collision points spaced around the LHC’s 27km circumference.

All this noise reverberates because we are perched at the side of an imposing cavern, 30 storeys beneath the French-Swiss border.

The other three experiments – Atlas, CMS and Alice – occupy similar halls, buried elsewhere on this famous circular pipeline.

As of March this year the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) is under investigation for possible maladjustment of its data by an Independent Advisory Forum. The BoM scientists  say they follow Worlds Best Practice, but all over the world Meteorological Agencies are coming under scrutiny. 

The world will be watching Australia. The public submission by Drs Judy Ryan and Marjorie Curtis to the Minister for the Environment Greg Hunt and the Technical Advisory Forum sets out the historical context which facilitated what the evidence is suggesting is a politically driven global scam.

Their submission emailed on 4th March 2015 was CC’d to more than 360 national and international media, political and other interested entities. It was BCC’d to many more. They find that the public email is a powerful tool and encourage others all over the world to use it.

2015 is the make-or-break year for climate alarmism, with a crucial battle planned for Paris in November. So we can expect regular bursts of global warming propaganda. 

The year started on cue with a breathless announcement from the US National Climate Data Centre: “2014 was Earth’s warmest year on record” (their records start in 1880).The Little Ice Age ended in about 1880.

Therefore it is no surprise that global temperatures have generally risen since then. And it reveals nothing about the cause of the warming.Moreover the announcement hides more than it reveals.

Firstly the alleged new peak temperature is just 0.04℃ higher than 2010. Who are they kidding? No weather recording station can measure to that accuracy. Once the likely error bars are added to the averaged data, the story changes to “recent global temperatures remain flat”.Secondly, what does “average” mean?

Almost every place on Earth has a different average temperature, and the averages range from 34℃ to -58℃, a range of 92℃. With very large daily and seasonal variations, an unevenly scattered and variable set of temperature recording stations, plus frequent “adjustments” to the raw figures, their calculated “global average” is probably a manipulated and meaningless number.Trends are more important than spot values.

What’s happening in Siberia’s thawing permafrost and Greenland’s melting glaciers sounds borderline supernatural. Ancient viruses, bacteria, plants, and even animals have been cryogenically frozen there for millennia—and now, they are waking up. 

The head of the United Nations climate change panel (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri, has stepped down amid sexual harassment allegations. 

A spokesman for Mr Pachauri informed the IPCC that he resigned from his position with immediate effect.

Indian police are investigating a complaint from a 29-year-old woman working in Mr Pachauri’s office in Delhi.

Mr Pachauri has denied the allegations.

Lawyers for the woman say the harassment included unwanted emails as well as text and phone messages.

On Monday, the 74-year-old had pulled out of a high-level IPCC meeting in Kenya because of “issues demanding his attention in India”, as an IPCC spokesman put it.

The IPCC has since confirmed that the meeting will instead be chaired by its vice-president Ismail El Gizouli.

Mr Pachauri had chaired the IPCC since 2002, since when it took the lead in the scientific assessment of the risks and causes of climate change.

Read more at www.bbc.co.uk

Ever since Climategate, the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has enjoyed just international renown as a world centre of data-fudgin’, scientific-method-abusin’, FOI-dodgin’, decline-hidin’, grant-troughin’, junk-science-endorsin’ global warming propaganda. 

But did you know that the chap who founded the institution, Hubert Lamb (pictured), was a committed sceptic who would without a shadow of doubt have been perfectly appalled by the way the CRU has since prostituted itself in the bankrupt cause of climate change alarmism?

No, of course you didn’t – and with very good reason.

Here, for example, is what one of the CRU’s subsequent directors, Trevor Davies, had to say when he wrote Lamb’s obituary in 1997:

“[Lamb experienced] the satisfaction of convincing the remaining doubters of the reality of climate variation on time-scales of decades and centuries.”

Here is what the Climatic Research Unit’s website says in its biography of its founder:

He did more than any other scientist of his generation to make the academic community aware of climate change. However, in the years after his retirement the emphasis of research shifted towards evaluating the role played by human activities. He was well acquainted with the pioneering works of Svante Arrhenius in Sweden, and G.S. Callendar in England, and wrote in 1997 that, ‘it is now widely thought that the undoubted warming of the world climate in the twentieth century is attributable to the increased concentration in the atmosphere of so-called greenhouse gases’

Yes, it’s true that the obituary goes on to mention that: “However, he always referred back to the instrumental record, and his attitude to greenhouse warming remained guarded.”

But it would, I think we can agree, be very easy to read both those obituaries and come away with the impression that Hubert Lamb was, to all intents and purposes, one of the founding fathers of “climate change” theory and that he would largely have been on the side of the current scientific “consensus” on the global warming.

However, as a fascinating new paper produced by Bernie Lewin for the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals, nothing could have been further from the truth.

Lamb’s big thing during his period as a climate scientist was “natural variation.” It’s thanks largely to Lamb’s seminal work Climate: Present, Past & Future that we know about the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age.

Vint Cerf, a “father of the internet”, says he is worried that all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost. 

Currently a Google vice-president, he believes this could occur as hardware and software become obsolete.

He fears that future generations will have little or no record of the 21st Century as we enter what he describes as a “digital Dark Age”.

Mr Cerf (pictured right) made his comments at a large science conference in San Jose.

He arrived at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science stylishly dressed in a three-piece suit. This iconic figure, who helped define how data packets move around the net, is possibly the only Google employee who wears a tie.

I felt obliged to thank him for the internet, and he bowed graciously. “One is glad to be of service,” he said humbly.

His focus now is to resolve a new problem that threatens to eradicate our history.

Our life, our memories, our most cherished family photographs increasingly exist as bits of information – on our hard drives or in “the cloud”. But as technology moves on, they risk being lost in the wake of an accelerating digital revolution.

“I worry a great deal about that,” Mr Cerf told me. “You and I are experiencing things like this. Old formats of documents that we’ve created or presentations may not be readable by the latest version of the software because backwards compatibility is not always guaranteed.