New study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles. Says that between 2030 and 2040 solar cycles will cancel each other out. Could lead to ‘Maunder minimum’ effect that saw River Thames freeze over. 

The new model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat.

It draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone.

Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645, according to the results presented by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.

The model predicts that the pair of waves become increasingly offset during Cycle 25, which peaks in 2022.

During Cycle 26, which covers the decade from 2030-2040, the two waves will become exactly out of synch and this will cause a significant reduction in solar activity.

Anti wind turbine campaigner Susan Crosthwaite is calling for an immediate and full independent investigation into the pollution of surface and groundwater of ALL Scottish windfarm developments sited on River Basin Districts.   The construction of giant wind turbines has led to the industrialisation of water catchment areas damaging water quality and public health. She demands that relevant legislation be adhered to vigorously to ensure complete protection of Scotland’s reservoirs, lochs and private water supplies can be restored.

Commenting from her home in South Ayrshire Susan Crosthwaite said:

“Windfarm development in Scotland is clearly breaching The Environmental Liabilities Directive and the Water Frameworks Directive. Developers and government bodies have allowed these developments to proceed in the full knowledge that there are risks to surface and groundwater. Authorities such as SEPA, Scottish Water, Councils and the Scottish Government have failed in their legal duty to protect the water environment. Public authorities should ensure the proper implementation and enforcement of the scheme provided for by this Directive.

“People wonder how windfarms can possibly contaminate our water. Firstly, most are constructed on areas of unspoilt moss, heather and deep peat, often with associated forestry. Construction vehicles churn up the ground to make access roads and clear the forests (approximately 3 million trees were cleared at Whitelee). Trees are pulled up, and the churned up peat is washed into the river systems by heavy rain, releasing excessive carbon which the water treatment works are not able to deal with.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy took a drumming yesterday when she refused to release the ‘secret science’ her agency used when drafting new regulations.
Testifying before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith (R) began the Q&A by asking McCarthy why she wouldn’t release the studies and data in which her regulations are based. Rep. Smith told McCarthy that his ‘secret science’ reform act would make the data public without interfering in the EPA’s primary job and maintain the confidentiality of third parties.

NOAA sounded the alarm yesterday that coral reefs are dying off at an unprecedented rate, even though a recent paper shows that these statements may be more alarmist than accurate. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said multi-yearwarm ocean temperatures are creating conditions that are causing corals to die off and turn white (bleached), and they believe that global warming is the culprit. But a new paper, published in Marine Biology in April 2015, shows that even though some corals appear bleached, it doesn’t mean they are dead, as conventional tracking methods can’t distinguish between white and bleached (dead) colonies.

The paper, by Cruz et al, says that “although bleaching leaves the coral skeleton visible under its transparent tissue, not all white coral colonies display this feature,” which “raises the question as to whether all ‘white’-shaded colonies are indeed bleached.” To answer that question of whether bleached coral is actually dead, Cruz et al studied different colored specimens of the coral M. cavernosa sampled off the east coast of Brazil, and found thatwhite corals exhibited the same lifelike features as their multi-colored cousins.

Simply put, white corals were physiologically healthy when compared to dark and light-brown colonies, which would lead to the “potential overestimation of coral bleaching” by nearly twice as much. One reason for this overestimation is that traditional coral monitoring is unable to detect between white and bleached (dead) colonies. Video transects from reef monitoring surveys off the coast of Brazil showed that the “proportion of bleached and white colonies is similar, thus suggesting that current coral reef surveys may be overestimating the bleaching of M. cavernosa by nearly twofold.”

There is an annual conference of Nobel Prize Laureates (NPL), commonly held on the picturesque island of Mainau in Lake Constance, Germany, (pictured). The 65th of such meetings, under the name Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings just concluded. 

Purpose of the Meetings

The purpose of their meetings is found on their website:

Once every year, some dozens of Nobel Laureates convene at Lindau to meet the next generation of leading scientists: undergraduates, PhD students, and post-doc researchers from all over the world. The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings foster the exchange among scientists of different generations, cultures, and disciplines.

Undoubtedly, it’s a laudable intention and, who knows, there may well be future Nobel Laureates among the listeners. The assembled laureates also have become known for signing “declarations” of sorts that are supposed to warn the world of potential problems and consequences. This year was no exception. A total of 36 out of 65 Nobel Laureates signed the “Mainau Declaration 2015 on Climate Change;” available in six languages.  You may have noticed that’s just barely over one half of the attendees.

Magnetic Pole and Ice Caps move in Tandem: Looking at the two satellite pictures taken back in 1979 and in 2003 for the Arctic, we find a considerable erosion of the Ice Cap. However, upon closer inspection it seems that the melting of the Ice Cap is uneven along its perimeter.

In fact, when you look deeper at the area encircled in red, it is clear that the ice is building towards Siberia and is moving away from Canada. At the same time, the strength of the Earth’s magnetic shield has decreased 15{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} on average over the years  from 1850 to 2012. During the same period, the south magnetic pole, in the northern hemisphere, has wandered about 1,100 km (685 miles) into the Arctic Circle. “The rate of the magnetic pole’s movement has increased in the last  century compared with fairly steady movement in the previous four centuries”, said Joseph Stoner and the Oregon researchers.

Latest explorations of the sea around the Philippines have uncovered a slew of brand new marine life, of which more than 100 species are likely to be new to science. 

In the seven-week survey, California Academy of Sciences researchers collected countless marine specimens, including rare and new species of colourful sea slugs, barnacles, and delicate heart urchins.

The expedition, funded by the US National Science Foundation, focused on the biologically diverse Verde Island Passage, nestled between the Philippine islands of Luzon and Mindoro.

While previous expeditions in 2011 and 2014 explored life in the western and northern portions of this narrow passage, the most recent trip took researchers to lesser-known field sites at its southern end.

“The Philippines is jam-packed with diverse and threatened species … it’s one of the most astounding regions of biodiversity on Earth,” says Dr Terry Gosliner, senior curator of invertebrate zoology at the academy and a principal investigator of the expedition.

“Modern” European humans and Neanderthals may have interbred in the comparatively recent past, suggest Anthroboffins, with the latter contributing a much higher percentage of their stocky DNA to today’s humanity than had been thought. 

Detailed in a letter published in Nature, titled An early modern human from Romania with a recent Neanderthal ancestor, scientists from Harvard have found a much more prominent link between modern humans and Neanderthals than originally believed.

The boffins analysed the trace DNA that could be obtained from the specimen of a “modern human” found in Peștera cu Oase (meaning the cave with the bones) in Romania, dating from 35,000-40,000 BCE (Before Common Era).

They found that, while Neanderthals are thought to have disappeared in Europe approximately 39,000-41,000 years ago, and are considered to have “contributed 1-3 per cent of the DNA of present-day people in Eurasia”, the genome of the individual found in Peștera cu Oase is derived from Neanderthals on the order of 6-9 per cent, so “more than any other modern human sequenced to date”.

Three chromosomal segments of Neanderthal ancestry are over 50 centimorgans in size, indicating that this individual had a Neanderthal ancestor as recently as four to six generations back.

In an editorial published in Science magazine on July 3, Marcia McNutt, Editor-in-Chief of the Science Journals, removed all doubt concerning the direction that this once prestigious journal is taking. 

In “The beyond-two-degree inferno”, she wrote: “The time for debate has ended. Action is urgently needed.”

Then, she strongly supports the contrived effort of the European Union to keep “global warming” below 2°C above the preindustrial level – a number for which we have no rigorous measurement or logic.

She advocates the political position of the Administration in forcing reductions in carbon dioxide emission (CO2) by stating “The United States has pledged reductions of 26 to 28{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} below 2005 levels by 2025…” Of course, there is no such pledge by the American people and its representatives in Congress. The Administration’s pledge is arbitrary and authoritarian. Ms. McNutt concludes with a description of the nine circles of Hell found in Dante’s Inferno.

Ms. McNutt continues a trend established in the Science journals by Donald Kennedy (2000-2008), who declared while he is editor, Science would no longer accept articles contradicting the pronouncements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on global warming, later termed climate change, regardless of the empirical data presented.

The IPCC reports featured glaring deficiencies such as the falsely named distinct human fingerprint, a hot-spot over the tropics, which no one can empirically find; Mr. Mann’s hockey-stick, based on sparse data, from which contradicting data was deleted; and global climate models, which greatly overestimate warming, as current measurements demonstrate. The logic behind this editorial policy can be described as selective ignorance.

Bogus biofuel trading costs us millions – while the absurd biofuel program costs us billions. Two notorious crooks are helping us wrap up another sordid episode in the saga of the United States biofuel mandates, while further highlighting how bungled and long past its expiration date the program is.

Congress concocted the mandates over fears that US gasoline demand would rise forever and keep the United States dependent on foreign oil, as America’s supposedly limited reserves were depleted. The mandates currently require that we blend 15 billion gallons of ethanol with gasoline every year, and produce over a billion gallons of biodiesel. They hammer us consumers every time we fill our tanks.

Turning corn into ethanol requires vast amounts of land, fertilizers, pesticides, tractor and truck fuel, and natural gas for distillation. It enriches some farmers but raises animal feed prices and thus the cost of beef, pork, chicken, eggs, fish and international food aid. Biodiesel from restaurant waste oil makes some sense, but making it from palm oil or soybeans has similar negative ecological impacts.

The ethanol mandate encourages farmers to plow wildlife habitats and fallow fields to grow corn, releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide. Ethanol gets one-third less mileage per gallon than gasoline, so motorists get fewer miles per tank and per dollar. It produces ozone, attracts water and corrodes car and small engine components, forcing us to spend billions on repairs.

Internationally renowned Chemical Engineer, Pierre R Latour, details why government academics have failed to successfully model the planet’s climate.  Showing precisely where climate scientists have ignored specialists from industry, Latour herein expertly signposts the way to a better understanding of that complex atmospheric thermostat.

Situation. Climatologists, astrophysicists and UN IPCC scientists have taken a piecemeal approach^{1, 2, 3} to forecasting sensitivity of temperatures to CO2, emphasizing data correlations (that cannot prove causality), radiation absent radiant energy transfer laws, ad hoc atmospheric feedbacks, and the simplifying black body radiator assumption, emissivity = 1. So far they estimate global warming, 0.5C < CS < 2.2C, where CS is temperature change for a doubling of CO2 from current 400 to 800 ppmv. The consensus is CS < 0 is impossible, without proof.

Engineering approach. Here is how chemical process control systems engineers model a chemical process to determine the effect of CO2 on Earth’s temperatures. This is needed to design a temperature controller, thermostat, for any system.

Simplify complex three-dimensional system of Navier-Stokes partial differential equations which is known to be difficult to solve⁴, with a uniform, well-mixed (lumped-parameter) system.

Start with instantaneous mass and energy conservation laws for atmosphere and surface; four equations.

Rate of accumulation in system + output rate = input rate

These four coupled ordinary differential equations give the relationship and response of T and [CO2] for atmosphere and surface to any change in specified inputs or forcing functions: solar, volcanoes, combustion, de-forestation, clouds. S(t), V(t), C(t), DF(t). Inputs may be any functions of time, like step, ramp, sine, exponential, impulse or actual.

Eminent scientists publish important new book about the fundamental components of solar physics, terrestrial geophysics and general climate issues.  Phenomena such as planetary influence on solar variability, the Sun’s irradiance and solar wind continue to fascinate members of the scientific community. Increasingly, we are realizing it is those overwhelming forces, not human influence, that dictate our planet’s climate. 

The new book, ‘Planetary Influence on the Sun and the Earth, and a Modern Book-Burning,’ is edited by internationally-renowned scientist, Nils-Axel Mörner (Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm, Sweden). He and many other independent experts condemn the ‘settled science’ mentality of government climate researchers intolerant of dissent from alarmist UN propaganda about man-made global warming.

What is more astounding is the way in which our planet reacts to those entirely natural occurrences; climate changes, sea levels, tides, ocean circulation and geomagnetism, all caused by the processes mentioned above, but which are too often glibly overlooked by self-serving, government-funded research. This new book analyzes and calculates the relationships between solar causation and terrestrial reaction.

This work begins with a foreword from Walter Cunningham, the famous Apollo 7 astronaut who in 1968 took part in the first manned space flight.

Section A is devoted to the concept of planetary-solar-terrestrial interaction and driving forces that represent a break-through in science. The book begins with a high-lightening of records indicating a planetary influence on solar activity and continues with multiple discussions of terrestrial variables. It concludes with an account of the physics behind the changes in the Sun and in the Earth.

Section B presents the remarkable decision to terminate the journal of pattern recognition in physics because the authors concluded that we are now on our way into a new grand solar minimum. This inspires doubt in an accelerating global warming. In the name of science and ethics, five papers respond to this “modern book-burning”.

Global warming is a hoax particularly when attributed to CO2 emissions and the goals of those advocating an anti-fossil fuel agenda are totally ineffective in reducing alleged global warming. If anything they are destructive of the environment and they most certainly hurt our economy! 

The president’s assertions on Earth Day of global warming and its effects are false and misleading! There has been no global warming in the last 17 years despite increases in CO2 concentrations and even the United Nations environmental experts had to admit that there was no relation between any global warming and severe weather occurrences.

I read with interest a recent article by Jim Crissman, leader of the Midland group of the Citizens Climate Lobby, in your Sunday, March 1, edition and some of the later letters published In your paper on global warming. Mr. Crissman asserts that there are 10,000 papers published every year supporting the concept of global warming as being caused by human activity, i.e., carbon dioxide emission. But what he fails to mention is that there have been an increasing number of statements by environmental scientists that either outright deny the existence of global warming or at least state it to be premature (climatedepot.com).

And it is easy to see why. Average global temperatures have been at about 0.5 to 0.60 C above the average global temperatures for the last century for at least the last seventeen years despite increasing concentrations of CO2. Most recent data indicate that the trend is continuing. In other words, there has been no significant global warming in this century. Whatever slight increases there have been have been no larger than average increases in temperatures over the last hundred years and are less than the experimental error inherent in such data. This trend has occurred despite increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. If you don’t believe me, just Google global temperature charts. When doing so disregard those generated by clearly biased organizations such as the EPA and rely more on those of scientific organizations such as NASA.

Attached is one that clearly shows the lack of global warming (Chart 1). Funny thing about most charts used by global warming advocates, i.e., warmists, is that they stop the charts at the year 2000 when it became obvious that the warming predictions were not holding true.

Most recently a hue and cry has been raised about the melting ice in West Antarctica as proof of global warming and the rise of the oceans as a result of that. But what is conveniently ignored is the record growth and size of sea ice in the rest of Antarctica, as measured by NASA, which exceeds by far the amount of ice melted. Warmists point to record high temperatures in various places but what about the record low temperatures we experienced this last winter? Clearly neither can be attributed to CO2.

The assertion by the president and others in his administration that increases in CO2 concentration are responsible for increased severe weather disturbances, such as tornadoes, can similarly be shown to be false. Even one of the greatest apostles of global warming, the UN, had to admit that weather disasters could not be attributed to changes in CO2 concentrations. ( 2012 Report on Extreme Weather Events by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

I wonder how many of the thousands of scientists alleged to support global warming are beholden to governments having ulterior motives in pushing global warming, none probably as extreme as our own federal government, which threatens to withhold FEMA funds to governors who do not agree with global warming. This is not surprising considering we have a president who blames global warming, i.e. CO2 emissions, for the asthma of his daughter.

I wonder how many of these thousands of the global warming scientists developed and/or supported the warming model published in 1995 by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading agency for global warming, that predicted a rise of 2.780 C for the century and a rise of 0.70 C for the decade. This has been demonstrated to be absolutely wrong (see attached Chart 2) even though CO2 concentrations have continued to increase. Even the IPCC had to admit that they were wrong and modified its model in 2005 to show a significantly lower 10-year temperature rise of 0.170 C for the decade and a 1.670 C rise for the century.

Guess what? Even that modified model is way off base! The actual temperature rise has been 0.030 C or less in the last 10 years amounting at most to a 0.750 C rise for the century. So much for the reliability of the publications of 10,000 global warming scientists.

Not surprisingly, the president and his favorite agency, the EPA, continue to base their policies on the original erroneous predictions of these models. Thus Instead of being thankful to the fossil fuel technology and industry which now allows him to boast of accomplishing the current economic recovery, he is trying to throttle that industry. The most recent attempt by the Obama administration has been to force the NOAA to do something about the ever increasing evidence of lack of global warming. So after acknowledging the absence of global warming in the last 17 years but explaining it as a pause, the NOAA has “recalculated” its data and lo and behold discovered that there was global warming throughout that period. Critics claim that this was done by fudging and disregarding valid data.

Most recently, the president pledged arbitrarily and unilaterally to commit this country to a reduction in CO2 emissions of more than 25 percent by 2025 and more than 80 percent by 2050 without specific details on how this is to be accomplished. It is clear, however, given his anti-fossil fuel policies that he will in large measure force the utility industry to provide that reduction in CO2 emissions. The result will be tremendous cost increases in energy generation, unreliable energy supplies and energy rationing, all of which will be passed long to the consumer, you and me.

What is most upsetting is that essentially nothing will be accomplished by this program in so far as asserted global warming is concerned. In testimony before Congress, climate scientist Judith Curry stated that the president’s pledge is estimated to result in a reduction of about 0.030 C, hardly a drop in the bucket. Also administration officials in testimony before Congress indicated that the president’s clean power plan would reduce any sea level increase by less than half the thickness of a dime. The plan advocated to compensate the public for the increased cost in energy as a result of the anti-fossil fuel policies of the administration is a carbon tax on the use of fossil fuels which undoubtedly will be passed on to the consumer through increased prices in energy, however with subsidies for the “poor.” The president probably loves the idea since it is nothing more than another entitlement program where those who work for a living subsidize those who do not.

The anti-fossil fuel agenda proposed by warmists is also disastrous to the environment and human health as well. In particular using ethanol as an automotive fuel reduces little, if anything, in CO2 emissions, when considered from an overall production, and removes acreage that could be used for the production of edible crops to alleviate hunger and starvation. In Brazil, the use of ethanol is decimating the Amazon jungle, an environmental disaster. Preventing cheap fossil fuels to be used in Africa will force the continued use of wood fires for cooking in the simple homes prevalent there, that lack ventilation and cause continued disease and death as a result of smoke inhalation. Obviously the use of such wood will cause further deforestation.

What is most disturbing in this issue of climate change is the intolerance of those who believe in it against those who do not agree, not unlike religious extremism. Warming activists will not enter into any meaningful debate on the subject but try suppress the efforts of any scientist disagreeing with global warming. They maintain that debate is over and they have been saying this since about 2000 when they realized that they could no longer support their claim of global warming from CO2. They have gone so far as to lobby governments to stop funding such scientists, to prevent the publication of any paper contrary to their warming beliefs and ostracize them at meetings. (Seeclimatedepot.com) If I am wrong on these points I raised I suggest we have a televised debate on these issues involving both scientists who believe in global warming as a result of CO2 emissions and those who do not.

One of the worst recent decisions of the Supreme Court has been to define CO2 as a pollutant. The fact is that life could not exist without it. Its called a greenhouse gas because it is used in greenhouses to grow bigger, healthier plants faster. Clearly higher CO2 concentrations are beneficial in agriculture to result in better and bigger crops thus alleviating hunger and starvation. If the Supreme Court knew its basic biology for a minimum they should have required the government to define the point at which CO2 turns from a life giving substance into a pollutant.

Stop following the pied piper of global warming, his tune is false and he will lead us into an economic abyss.

Read more at www.ourmidland.com

SUBJECT: Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter Laudato Si, On care for our common home,  (ENC): Respected Academician,

There is a widespread view that the Academicians of The Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) will have had substantial input to the scientific aspects expressed in Papal Encyclical Letters like the ENC and that such encyclicals do reflect the deliberations, views and opinions expressed by the PAS as a whole and by the majority of its individual members. However, this common assumption may be incorrect and, therefore, I have some questions to you which I hope that each of you is willing and able to provide a simple YES or NO answer to.

No doubt you are aware of the significance of the ENC for the future, especially its influence on the development of poorer nations and their people.

My questions are not just out of my personal curiosity but to help the world at large to better understand the ENC and what it means for the people who are presently deprived of many of the energy-driven amenities of the developed countries.

My questions to you:

1. To my knowledge, it is widely considered to be a scientific fact that the trace gas carbon dioxide (CO2) is the basis for all life on earth. Without CO2 in the atmosphere, neither plants or animals, nor human life would exist on earth. DO YOU AGREE?

2. To my knowledge, it is widely considered to be a scientific fact that for most of its 4.5 billion year history, the earth’s atmosphere contained much higher levels of CO2 than today. DO YOU AGREE?

3. To my knowledge, it is widely considered to be a scientific fact that the process of photosynthesis transformed the then-abundant atmospheric CO2 to “organic matter” with commensurate reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere.DO YOU AGREE?

4. To my knowledge, it is widely considered to be a scientific fact that the entire oxygen (O2) in the earth’s atmosphere has been produced from CO2 by the natural photosynthesis process. DO YOU AGREE?

5. To my knowledge, it is widely considered to be a scientific fact that the oceans and most fresh water are alkaline, the opposite of acidic. The same photosynthetic process that converts the CO2 to organic matter also increases the alkaline property of neutral or acidic water. DO YOU AGREE?

Effective immediately, the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC), a leader in climate prediction, has dropped the US government’s ground based global temperature data from its list of reliable sources. 

This significant step has been made by the SSRC after extensive review of the US government’s ground temperature data and its wide divergence from more reliable sources of climate data, namely satellite systems.

The SSRC has found multiple flaws that it says render the US government’s climate data virtually unusable. The SSRC has further observed that the US government and specifically, President Barack Obama, have routinely deceived the people regarding the true status of the Earth’s climate, its causes, and where the global climate is heading.

In the past, the SSRC has used five global temperature data sets, three ground based (NOAA, NASA and HADCRUT) and two satellite data sets (RSS, UAH). These data sets are analyzed and an integrated picture of all five allows the SSRC to produce its semi-annual Global Climate Status Report (GCSR). HADCRUT is a combined set from two UK science groups.

As of today, the SSRC will no longer use the ground based data sets of NASA and NOAA because of serious questions about their credibility and allegations of data manipulation to support President Obama’s climate change policies. Use of HADCRUT will also be suspended on similar grounds.

According to SSRC President, Mr. John L. Casey, “It is clear that during the administration of President Barack Obama, there has developed a culture of scientific corruption permitting the alteration or modification of global temperature data in a way that supports the myth of manmade global warming.

Officially published scientific evidence proves that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is not as strong as predicted. Thus alarmist claims about man-made global warming have no basis in fact.