The NASA-launched Mars rover found evidence the Red Planet may once have been suitable for alien life. NASA scientists say the rover “hit a jackpot” of exposed mineral layers that reveal environmental conditions were nearly habitable for millions of years.

“We see all of the properties in place that we really like to associate with habitability,” Dr. John Grotzinger, a geologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who works with the rover, told Space.com. “There’s nothing extreme here. This is all good for habitability over time.”

Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner are German Physicists who proved that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can have no measurable impact on global temperatures.

In 2008 Hans Schreuder provided a non-technical layperson’s summary of that important landmark peer-reviewed paper refuting the so-called greenhouse gas theory of climate.  As the world has seen no rise in global temperatures this century this is an importune time to reflect on select excerpts of Schreuder’s helpful summary:

On 30 June 1908, an explosion ripped through the air above a remote forest in Siberia, near the Podkamennaya Tunguska river.

The fireball is believed to have been 50-100m wide. It depleted 2,000 sq km of the taiga forest in the area, flattening about 80 million trees. The earth trembled. Windows smashed in the nearest town over 35 miles (60km) away. Residents there even felt heat from the blast, and some were blown off their feet.

Fortunately, the area in which this massive explosion occurred was sparsely inhabited. There were no official reports of human casualties, though one local deer herder reportedly died after he was thrust into a tree from the blast. Hundreds of reindeer were also reduced to charred carcasses.

[graphic: Climate court: Michael Mann (left) is suing Tim Ball (right) in the most important science lawsuit since the Scopes Monkey Trial (1925)]

“I’ve waited 40 years for this moment.”

In a congressional meeting room, somewhere on Capitol Hill, one of the world’s leading sceptical climate scientists, Dr. Tim Ball, is toasting the advent of the Trump administration.

“I don’t want to use the phrase tipping point because that’s a phrase that has been abused in the scientific area. But I think we’re on the verge of a dramatic shift,” Ball tells the small invited audience of journalists, scientists, think-tankers, lawyers and DC politicos. He’s talking about the war on the Green Blob.

After almost 30 years of construction, an experimental French fusion reactor is finally about to be tested.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor’s (ITER) Tore Supra tokamak in France will start its first set of experiments this coming spring. It will heat gas to several million degrees Celsius and contain the plasma from the resulting reaction. Construction of the tokamak began in the 1980s.

These experiments are intended to collect scientific data that will ultimately allow researchers to create plasma which lasts for longer periods of time, a critical necessity for fusion power. The project is also intended to minimize the risk of future delays and cost overruns.

Image copyright: SPL

Cells in the amniotic fluid that surrounds a developing baby can revive ageing and weak bones, say UK scientists.

The discovery could help babies with genetic diseases, elderly people and even astronauts, they say. The findings in mice, published in Scientific Reports, showed cells in the fluid strengthened bone and cut fractures by 80%. Human clinical trials are planned within the next two years.

Brittle bones

The amniotic fluid protects the baby and helps it develop inside the mother’s womb. It also contains stem cells that are the building blocks of other tissues.

Image copyright: SPL

The researchers collected the amniotic stem cells from material left over from screening tests during pregnancy or collected immediately before birth.

The team at the Institute of Child Health – a collaboration of Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College London – injected the cells into diseased mice. The animals had brittle bone disease or osteogenesis imperfecta.

In people, the condition affects around one in every 25,000 births and can be fatal, with babies born with multiple fractures. Even those who survive face up to 15 bone fractures a year, brittle teeth, impaired hearing and growth problems.

Two fundamental tenets of the anthropogenic global warming narrative are (1) the globe is warming (i.e., it’s not just regional warming), and (2) the warming that has occurred since 1950 can be characterized as remarkable, unnatural, and largely unprecedented.  In other words, today’s climate is substantially and alarmingly different than what it has been in the past….because the human impact has been profound.

Well, maybe.  Scientists are increasingly finding that the two fundamental points cited above may not be supported by the evidence.

Western Siberia is currently stuck in a mini Ice Age as temperatures plummeted to nearly -80 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking all previous cold records. And meteorologists say that even icier weather is coming. Temps tumbled to -62 degrees Celsius (-79.6°F) at the Bolshoe Olkhovskoe oilfield in the Khanti-Mansi region this week. And the Kazym village in the Beloyarsky district showed a biting -58 degrees C (-72.4°F).

In the province of Nadym, the bone-shattering cold pushed past the -50 degrees C (-58°F) mark, forcing schools to shut down. In provinces like Yakutia, schools stayed open despite a bone-chilling -52 degrees C (-61.6°F). While these arctic temperatures are commonplace in eastern Siberia, it rarely gets this frigid in the west.

Real science again showing that CO2 is best plant fertilizer. Spanish peer-reviewed biological study proving that the more carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere the more we see benefits to plant growth and food production:

Paper Reviewed
Pérez-López, U., Miranda-Apodaca, J., Muñoz-Rueda, A. and Mena-Petite, A. 2015. Interacting effects of high light and elevated CO2 on the nutraceutical quality of two differently pigmented Lactuca sativa cultivars (Blonde of Paris Batavia and Oak Leaf). Scientia Horticulturae 191: 38-48.

Enhancing crop nutritional value has long been a goal of the agricultural industry. Growing plants under less than optimal conditions for a short period of time generally increases their oxidative stress. To counter such stress, plants will usually increase their antioxidant metabolism which, in turn, elevates the presence of various antioxidant compounds in their tissues, compounds that are of great nutritional value from a human point of view.

Do big-brained creatures steal energy for them from other organs or eat more to supply this expensive tissue? New work in large-brained fish suggests skimping elsewhere is not enough to meet the energy demands of an extreme brain.

The brain of Gnathonemus petersii is larger in proportion to its body than a human’s. To keep up with the energy demands of its big brain, it has evolved a Schnauzenorgan, a chin appendage covered with electroreceptors that helps it locate prey (calories).

Credit: David Kilper/Washington University

“Science” is perhaps the most abused word in the English language.

The word used to name the method of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein has also been used to rationalize some of the most destructive political policies in human history, such as socialism and population control. The Nazis invoked the once-renowned “science” of eugenics to justify a Holocaust of “scientifically inferior” races.

How do we protect ourselves against such abuses of science? By knowing the one key difference between real scientists and science abusers. Science abusers treat science as an infallible authority to be blindly obeyed by the public. Real scientists treat science as a method to be carefully explained to the public.

According to Gavin Schmidt at NASA, global warming didn’t begin until the mid-1970s. His graph below shows that the 1970’s were barely warmer than 1880, with only minor fluctuations in temperature between 1880 and 1970.

If President-elect Donald Trump is looking for places to cut costs, he might want to take a look at the National Weather Service’s seasonal forecasting unit.

Yesterday at the Daily Update over at Weatherbell Analytics, veteran meteorologist Joe Bastardi looked at the season forecasts, generated by billion dollar super-computers,  recently put out by NCEP. Turns out they were totally wrong. You have to pity the poor persons who placed their bets on them.

The first example is the forecast for North America made by NCEP in November for December:

Fortunately, the Titanic only sunk once because engineers and navigators did not continue to make the same mistakes over and over.

But “experts” and climate models provide a never-ending loop of sinking and re-floating of a wide assortment of climate change predictions, forecasts and scenarios. The weather/climate researchers seem unable to embrace the humility and reality that their computer simulation predictions rarely stay afloat for any length of time before being sent down to deep and cold watery graves.

A recent noteworthy example of a failed prediction is the Hurricane Matthew event.

In order to understand the workings of the thought-police there is no better place to start than with the Trial of Galileo.

It is well worthwhile taking twenty minutes or so to read the story of Galileo. Here was a brilliant scientist and mathematician, considered by many to be the founder of modern Physics, who feared for his life, because he accepted the theory of Copernicus that the Earth was not the centre of the universe and stayed still, but that the Earth revolved upon its own axis as it travelled round the Sun.

Since nobody today has any qualms about accepting such a notion it is difficult to believe that in 1597 Galileo wrote to Johannes Kepler to say that he dared not bring into the open his support for the Copernican theory. Why? Because the Catholic Church considered that it was against Holy Writ and the very idea that the Earth was not still and the centre of the Universe was considered absurd.

Image copyright: ESA

Scientists say they have identified a remarkable new feature in Earth’s molten outer core.They describe it as a kind of “jet stream” – a fast-flowing river of liquid iron that is surging westwards under Alaska and Siberia.

The moving mass of metal has been inferred from measurements made by Europe’s Swarm satellites. This trio of spacecraft are currently mapping Earth’s magnetic field to try to understand its fundamental workings. The scientists say the jet is the best explanation for the patches of concentrated field strength that the satellites observe in the northern hemisphere.

“This jet of liquid iron is moving at about fifty kilometres per year,” explained Dr Chris Finlay from the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU Space).