NASA-funded researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are tapping information found in the cells of all life on Earth, and using it to trace life’s evolution. 

by Anthony Bright-Paul

While misguided global policymakers debate in Paris this week over ‘fixing’ earth’s climate to two degrees of warming serious thinkers agree there is no such metric as an average earth temperature. 

 Anthony Bright-Paul writes: There is no such thing as a Global temperature, and everybody knows that this is the truth and yet both Warmists and some Skeptics keep up the charade of pretending that such an elephant exists.

If I were to ask you the temperature in Singapore, or Jakarta, or Perth Australia, or of Moscow, or Denver at this very moment, it is not impossible with a computer to look up the temperatures at about 1 – 1.5 metres above the ground in any of these places. Furthermore in every single one of these places the temperature will change or will have changed some 3,600 times within the hour.

Everyone, that is everyone who is not an absolute simpleton and has a modicum of knowledge, knows that the Earth is rotating on itself and is travelling round the Sun in an ellipse, so that it is sometimes, I am informed, some 91 or 95 million miles from the Earth. So our distance from the Sun varies by a matter of 4 to 5 million miles!

The fact that we are hurtling round the sun – if my memory serves me aright at some 66,000 miles per hour, and that the Earth is tilting – these facts are now common knowledge, and account for the Seasons. So everyone who has the slightest wit knows that there are seasons, that we in Europe look forward to the Spring with hopeful anticipation, and to the approach of Winter with apprehension.

by Dr. Tim Ball

In the 19th century, English-speaking universities comprised two faculties, The Natural Sciences and the Humanities.  The word scientist didn’t exist until the middle of the century. Naturalist was the general name for people we call scientists today. 

Darwin, as a naturalist, published The Origin of Species in 1859 as a theory, which it remains today. Over time, the science community used Darwin’s Theory of Evolution effectively to replace religion, especially in the public school system. The use of the Theory to counter religion prevented science testing it, as the scientific method requires. The science community automatically ostracizes any scientist challenging Darwin for giving comfort to creationism.

A side effect of effectively removing God from the academic world was ironical, the same challenge Darwin faced. Alfred Russell Wallace, who sent Darwin a copy of his version of the Evolutionary Theory before Darwin published and chided him for not explaining the vast difference between humans and all other animals including the other primates. Wallace proposed a form of intelligent design. In his follow-up book, The Descent of Man Darwin suggested other animals variously had all the abilities of humans. The confusion all this creates foolish comments such as this by David Suzuki.

Economics is a very species–chauvinistic idea. No other species on earth – and there are may be 30 million of them – has had the nerve to put forth a concept called economics, in which one species, us, declares the right to put value on everything else on earth, in the living and non-living world.

He is wrong about the number of species; there are millions more. He is also wrong about humans as the only ones who put a value on everything. All animals put a value on everything. “Can I eat it or not?” It doesn’t get more basic than that. Of course, he doesn’t even seem to realize his statement disproves his argument. No other species could think of economics or write about it.

Darwin and the removal of God had a dramatic impact on the academic world. Religious studies remained a part of the Humanities, but now it was a minor academic study of religions as a curiosity rather than an answer to fundamental questions of why we are here and clearly different. If God didn’t put us here and makes us dramatically different then what did?

One response of the academic world involved social Darwinism. This applied his rule of nature to human behavior and triggered Herbert Spencer’s famous phrase, “Survival of the fittest.” Darwin liked it so much he included it in the sixth edition of his Origin of the Species.

A much larger response developed based on the academic ability to try and answer questions nobody else is asking or are of any consequence. This is why the saying “it’s academic,” means it is irrelevant to the real world. Academia created an entire new discipline with the oxymoronic title, the Social Sciences.

The entire focus, from psychology, sociology, economics, political science and others is humans and their behavior. Transitional among these subjects is anthropology because it tries to reconstruct our evolutionary history. Along the way it created indicators of our difference from other primates and identified the characteristic that identified us as the humans at that stage. The fact we can do this exercise shows how very different humans are. The fact academics do it measures how far removed they are from reality.

The first name assigned to a characteristically human trait was arrogantly academic in Latin. We were Homo Erectus, the primate that walked upright. Other primates showed some bipedalism and it wasn’t a particularly distinguishing intellectual feature. We were smarter than those other primates, so they decided what made us different was the ability to make tools, hence the name Homo Habilis, Man, the toolmaker.

Then primatologist Jane Goodall’s observation of chimpanzees making tools eliminated the difference. Clearly, we needed something on a higher intellectual scale so they decided humans could think conceptually. This involves taking two separate ideas and linking to evolve a third idea – solving problems or conceptual thinking. The Latin word chosen was sapiens, which means wise, so we became Homo sapiens, the wise ape.

Another study of chimpanzees involved placing them in a large, high room with bananas hanging from the ceiling and a pile of boxes in the corner. It didn’t take the chimpanzees long to pile up the boxes and get the bananas. A conceptually thinking, problem-solving chimpanzee forced the need for another unique quality for humans. They decided that our ability to tell lies made us unique. Doesn’t that just make your human chest swell with pride? Lying requires a double thought process, the truth then a way to get round it – a doubly wise process made us Homo sapiens sapiens, the doubly wise primate.

Again another study dismissed this claim to distinction. Researchers watching gorillas through a one-way glass noticed that one broke one of the toys. The gorilla was trained in American Sign Language (AMSLAN) so they asked him who broke the toy. Almost without hesitation the gorilla pointed at a fellow gorilla.

Over the years, I discussed these issues with anthropologists, but especially cultural anthropologist Professor Mel Holstein. He said the latest thinking involved the ability to think of, or be aware, of death. I described video showing elephants lingering over bones and carrying them around for some time that appear to indicate an awareness of death. We agreed this suggested some awareness of death. However, he said anthropologists considered thinking about death in the concept of an afterlife.

At that point, we agreed this brings us full circle. Concern about an afterlife is central to religion. Elimination of God and religion as the explanation for human presence and the difference is where the Social Sciences began. Essentially the Social Sciences amount to 100 years of human navel gazing. They add little to our understanding of life or death. Sociology is a good example because some say they try to prove scientifically what everybody already knew. The Social Science faculties are vast factories of bizarre ideas about people and society that they inflict on society through the schools and government, all without any moral responsibility.

**This article first appeared on The Rebel website.

– See more at: http://drtimball.com/2015/academics-going-round-in-circles/#sthash.TYJtUBUl.dpuf

by Carl Blesch-Rutgers, Rutgers

RUTGERS (US) — Scientist have described the process that allows corals to form skeletons, and they say water acidity doesn’t affect the process. 

Those skeletons—destined to become limestones—form massive and ecologically vital coral reefs in the world’s oceans.

In a publication in Current Biology, Tali Mass and colleagues at the Rutgers Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences show that specific proteins produced by corals can form limestones in test tubes.

These proteins, secreted by corals, precipitate carbonate that forms the corals’ characteristic skeleton.

“This is a first step toward understanding how coral build their skeleton,” says Mass, a postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study.

Water acidity does not affect the process, which suggests that these organisms will survive in coming centuries when the world’s oceans are predicted to become more acidic. That also potentially bodes well for the health of the world’s coral reefs, which support ecosystems essential to marine diversity that in turn support fisheries.

“The good news is that the change in acidity will not stop the function of these proteins,” says Mass.

Einstein has been proven wrong, yet again – at least on one thing. Second paper proves ‘spooky action at a distance’ is real, contrary to Einstein’s view. The theory riled Einstein as it suggested data could travel faster than light. 

In quantum physics, entangled particles are connected despite distance. This means the action of one will instantly change behaviour of the other. But NIST showed it was possible by separating photon pairs and sending them by fiber optic cable to detectors in distant rooms 184 metres apart. 

Einstein called it “spooky” and was referring, specifically, to entanglement – the idea that pairs of sub-atomic particles can be invisibly connected in a way that transcends time and space.

This offended Einstein, since passing information between two points in space faster than the speed of light is supposed to be impossible.

In 1964, the scientist John Stewart Bell devised an experiment designed to rule out hidden variables that could offer a non-weird explanation for ‘action at a distance’.

But all the ‘Bell tests’ performed still contained ‘loopholes’ that, according to critics, could invalidate proof of entanglement. 

Now a new paper, which appears in the Physical Review Letters, has provided the most solid proof yet that entanglement does indeed exist. 

As the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season winds down, NOAA is fear mongering again even as Atlantic hurricane activity has dropped a whopping 80 percent from 10 years ago. 

That’s according to a new analysis released yesterday by Dr. Roy Spencer, a meteorologist and team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. To blunt this historical news, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced yesterday that global warming could be to blame for an active hurricane season last year around Hawaii. Meanwhile, as the Atlantic hurricane season finishes out its eleventh year, there hasn’t been a category 3 or higher hurricane to hit landfall in over a decade.

With the upcoming UN-sponsored Paris Climate Talks in early December, NOAA’s scientists have instead released a new report saying that global warming may have played a role in the increased hurricane activity around Hawaii last year. To hammer home its point, NOAA reiterated that “tropical storm Iselle slammed into the Big Island in August 2014 and was one of three tropical disturbances that approached Hawaii last year, making it the third largest number” since recordkeeping began.

Dear Science, Mathematics (and other) Teachers of Australia, 

The Australian education system is broken, and it is doubtful that it can be salvaged.  I have not heard or seen any teachers association in Australia object to the demonstrable nonsense that is peddled nowadays as science, in our schools, technical colleges, universities, textbooks, and by celebrity Authorities (some with a Nobel Prize) on television and radio programmes. 

Having taught in Australian high schools, TAFE colleges, and universities, I am dismayed and appalled by the apathy and ignorance of Australian teachers at large.

by hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk

Even the “lukewarmer” position on anthropogenic global warming has become untenable on the basis of both observations and theory: 

1. Lindzen (pictured) & Choi papers based on ERBE satellite observations showed sensitivity (to doubled CO2 levels) of only ~0.18C

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/01/new-paper-confirms-findings-of-lindzen.html

2. Dr. David Evans has shown, using the same flawed radiative model of the IPCC as the basis, that  “The ECS might be almost zero, is likely less than 0.25 °C”

http://joannenova.com.au/2015/11/new-science-18-finally-climate-sensitivity-calculated-at-just-one-tenth-of-official-estimates/

by Lester Haines, theregister.co.uk

The European Space Agency’s LISA Pathfinder spacecraft is due to blast off tomorrow from Kourou, French Guiana, on its mission to “test the technology needed to develop future space-borne gravitational wave detectors”. 

The launch date is not arbitrary. It celebrates the 100th anniversary of the publication of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity – the work which predicted the existence of the gravitational waves which have to date eluded scientific observation.

Now, boffins hope, they can finally take the first step in unmasking the ripples of energy which, according to Einstein, are produced by events such as stars collapsing to form black holes.

The LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) Pathfinder will be carried aloft by a Vega rocket – ESA’s “small” lifter for payloads up to 2,000kg – and ultimately enter a Lissajous orbit* around Lagrange point L1 after an eight-week trip.

by P Gosselin, notrickszone.com

Veteran award-winning journalist Günter Ederer reports of a shocking new global warming data fraud in NASA’s global temperature data series, as relied on by the UN and government climate scientists.  The data has been carefully analysed by a respected data computation expert Professor Dr. Friedrich Karl Ewert and is being made publicly available for independent verification.

Professor Ewert’s findings seem to show NASA has intentionally and systematically rigged the official government record of global temperatures to show recent global warming where none would exist without the upwards ‘revisions.’

The astonishing results are now available online to the public.  P Gosselin of notrickzone.com reports:

Ederer reports not long ago retired geologist and data computation expert Professor Dr. Friedrich Karl Ewert began looking at the data behind the global warming claims, and especially the datasets of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS).

Ewert painstakingly examined and tabulated the reams of archived data from 1153 stations that go back to 1881 – which NASA has publicly available – data that the UN IPCC uses to base its conclusion that man is heating the Earth’s atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. According to Ederer, what Professor Ewert found is “unbelievable”:

From the publicly available data, Ewert made an unbelievable discovery: Between the years 2010 and 2012 the data measured since 1881 were altered so that they showed a significant warming, especially after 1950. […] A comparison of the data from 2010 with the data of 2012 shows that NASA-GISS had altered its own datasets so that especially after WWII a clear warming appears – although it never existed.”

Ederer writes that Ewert particularly found alterations at stations in the Arctic. Professor Ewert randomly selected 120 stations from all over the world and compared the 2010 archived data to the 2012 data and found that they had been tampered to produce warming.

The old data showed regular cycles of warming and cooling over the period, even as atmospheric CO2 concentration rose from 0.03{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} to 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}. According to the original NASA datasets, Ederer writes, the mean global temperature cooled from 13.8°C in 1881 to 12.9°C in 1895. Then it rose to 14.3°C by 1905 and fell back under 12.9°C by 1920, rose to 13.9°C by 1930, fell to 13° by 1975 before rising to 14°C by 2000. By 2010 the temperature fell back to 13.2°C.

But then came the “massive” altering of data, which also altered the entire overall trend for the period. According to journalist Ederer, Ewert uncovered 10 different methods NASA used to alter the data. The 6 most often used methods were:

• Reducing the annual mean in the early phase.
• Reducing the high values in the first warming phase.
• Increasing individual values during the second warming phase.
• Suppression of the second cooling phase starting in 1995.
• Shortening the early decades of the datasets.
• With the long-term datasets, even the first century was shortened.

University of Vermont climate study of sedimentary cores shows periods of extreme storminess occurred thousands of years before any human influence. 

Previous periods of extreme storminess: A 13,000 year scientific study of lake sediments by the reliable method of drilling and retrieving cores reveals that the climate of the United States has been through numerous periods of more extreme climate. The research explains:

   “ Storm magnitude, as estimated by average terrigenous layer thickness, was greatest at 11,800, 10,800, and 1,200 years before present, when New England climate was cool and moist.”

   “Storminess reached variable maxima lasting ~1,500 years, centered at approximately 2,600, 5,800, 9,100, and 11,900 years ago, and appears to be presently increasing toward another peak.”

https://www.uvm.edu/cosmolab/people/noren/noren_ms_thesis.pdf

Here we see the periods of greatest climate variation from the established normal happen when conditions are “cool and moist,” which runs contrary to current climate alarmism theory which states that a warmer, drier climate will result in more extreme events.

The research points out that the USA is “increasing towards another peak” in storminess therefore the peaks of extreme climate were larger before the industrial revolution that started in 1851.

David Siegel of medium.com ran the article,  ‘What I Learned about Climate Change: The Science is not Settled‘ about his conversion from global warming alarmist to climate skeptic. 

Siegel’s article has now been read 9,000 times and suggests 46{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of alarmists are now climate skeptics.

More specifically the survey at the bottom of the article asked readers: If you were a supporter of decarbonization before reading this essay, please state your new view on climate change …  a large proportion of respondents indicated that:  “I found it very convincing and will try to have conversations with others about this.”  Brilliant right?

Meanwhile, Siegel has this follow-up  written on WUWT and he summarized his climate odyssey on climatecurious.org. He also has a follow up article giving a three-step recipe on how  “climate change” can be solved:

1. We must focus on liberal media outlets to get them to learn how biased they are and why they are buying the wrong story. It’s a huge challenge because they associate decarbonization with doing good for the environment, and to them, anyone who says otherwise is a hardcore conservative bent on destroying the future. It’s hard for them to admit they are wrong. The media parrots what the PR people tell them to say. Ask hard questions. Do what you can to influence liberal media, blogs, journalists, and others. Simply having conversations, asking questions, and sending people my essay will help.
2. I would like to target a small number of well-known people to convert and then they will spread the message naturally. The people on my list are influential liberals: Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Jeff Skoll, Jon Stewart, Elan Musk, George Clooney, Mike Bloomberg, George Soros, Thomas Steyer, etc. My goal is to put together a very small, very exclusive event where a few of such people can spend a day with the people I list in my article and learn what’s really going on in climate science. Then people can use verifiable science and influence to help us put the environmental movement (and climate science) back on track. If you can help me reach them, I hope to make this event a reality.

by Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

New European Union (EU) law intending to be ‘green’ by limiting electricity power usage in domestic vacuum cleaners turns out to be more wasteful in energy. Scientists and consumers baffled by Brussels lawmakers’ faux pas.

North Americans, don’t be afraid, your old vacuum cleaner is just fine but if you feel like buying a new one anyway, no problem either.

If you live across the pond in the EU, however, you might just want to hang on to your old vac. The good bureaucrats of the EU have prescribed a new ‘greener’ standard: new vacuum cleaners have been limited to a maximum energy use of 1.6 kW (as of September 2014) and 0.9 kW as of September 2017. That’s a major change in energy consumption, mandated by EU law; needless to say, some manufacturers are not happy and the consumers—they’ll have to find out.