Almost ten years ago, when there were indications of stresses on honeybee populations (known as colony collapse disorder – CCD), different activists were jockeying for the right to claim this crisis for their campaigns.

Climate activists wanted to show bees were suffering because of warmer weather; biodiversity campaigners saw land-use issues as the source for the crisis; anti-GMO stalwarts wanted us to know there was something unknown in the pollen; anti-EMF  fear-mongers wanted to highlight the confusion bees suffered due to our love of mobile technology.

Above are recent examples of ‘cut and paste’ fake news. But  actual current Arctic sea ice extent compares extremely favourably with the very low recorded trough of 1930-1960. As we all know, the Arctic has been experiencing a heatwave this winter, with resultant massive ice melt. This is what the new ice free Arctic looks like now:

A robust sun-climate connection increasingly affirmed by scientists to confound earlier studies that place the emphasis on human emissions of so-called ‘greenhouse gases.’  2017 is already providing a rush of peer-reviewed studies giving scientific credence to President Donald Trump’s “hoax” claims over man-made global warming.

New research published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters describes how scientists have used the world’s largest array of seismic sensors to map a deep-Earth area of melting carbon covering 1.8 million square kilometres.

Situated under the Western US, 350km beneath Earth’s surface, the discovered melting region challenges accepted understanding of how much carbon Earth contains — much more than previously understood.

Although scientists have been able to levitate specific types of material, a pair of University of Chicago undergraduate physics students helped take the science to a new level.

Researchers in Cardiff have developed a new “highly-efficient” method of making disease-fighting compounds, including for an anti-malaria drug.

Sesquiterpenes can be found in spicy foods, plants and beer, and are used to battle colds, cancer and malaria. A Cardiff University team said it could synthesize them more quickly and cost-effectively than before.

NASA’s Juno probe will not venture any closer to Jupiter, and will stay in its current 53-day orbit for the remainder of its mission. That’s due to faulty helium valves in the propulsion system, space boffins announced today.

The spacecraft has been circling the gas giant since July 2016. NASA scientists had planned to fire the engine to reduce its orbit period to 14 days, bringing it closer to Jupiter’s surface to scrutinize the alien world. The more intimate the probe gets with the gas goliath, the more it can peek through the layers of clouds, and study the structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere of the planet.

The UK and US are in talks to extend their “special relationship” in science after the UK leaves the European Union, the BBC understands.

British institutions are in talks with their US colleagues to try to make it easier for scientists to travel, collaborate and share facilities. Research Councils UK said it would deliver benefits for both countries. UK research groups are currently marketing themselves at the US’s largest scientific meeting in Boston.

Organizers of a science rally to protest President Donald Trump in Boston Sunday expected to draw more 10,000 people, but only a few hundred actually showed up.

More than 10,000 people were interested in or signed up to attend the “Rally to Stand Up for Science,” according to the rally’s Facebook page, but The Boston Globe’s estimates of crowd size put the number of attendees in the hundreds.

One of the greatest scientific battles today is between which temperature measurements are most accurate. There are ground measurements maintained by NOAA, NASA GISS and the Hadley CRU, and then there are satellite measurements maintained by NASA UHA.

Dr. Roy Spencer maintains a blog reporting on the satellite measurements. In reality, there are really only 2 data sources for temperature data. Because of the incestuous relationship between the ground measurement facilities detailed in the ClimateGate emails, climate data can simply be broken into factions; ground and space.

Actual electrical output data from six largest nations committed to renewables proves that in spite of the massive promotion, subsidy and investment, these forms of energy make just a marginal contribution to the grid.

This note quantifies the actual, but limited scale of progress that has been made by Green-oriented thinking about electricity generation.  Progress has been quite limited in spite of the massive heavily subsidised investments and legal commitments made by Western governments in their probably futile efforts to avert “Climate Change”.

When is an internal combustion engine not an internal combustion engine? When it’s been transformed into a modular reforming reactor that could make hydrogen available to power fuel cells wherever there’s a natural gas supply available.

As President Trump downgrades the relevance of Obama era climate change and anti-fossil-fuel policies, many environmentalists are directing attention to “sustainable development.”

Like “dangerous manmade climate change,” sustainability reflects poor understanding of basic energy, economic, resource extraction, and manufacturing principles – and a tendency to emphasize tautologies and theoretical models as an alternative to readily observable evidence in the Real World. It also involves well-intended but ill-informed people being led by ill-intended but well-informed activists who use the concept to gain greater government control over people’s lives, livelihoods, and living standards.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

– Upton Sinclair

Government agencies like NOAA, NASA and NSIDC start their sea ice graphs in 1979, in order to make it look like there is a linear decline in sea ice.

Image copyright: AFP

You think you know your seven continents? Think again, as there’s a new contender hoping to join that club. Say hello to Zealandia, a huge landmass almost entirely submerged in the southwest Pacific.

It’s not a complete stranger, you might have heard of its highest mountains, the only bits showing above water: New Zealand. Scientists say it qualifies as a continent and have now made a renewed push for it to be recognised as such. In a paper published in the Geological Society of America’s Journal,researchers explain that Zealandia measures five million sq km (1.9m sq miles) which is about two thirds of neighbouring Australia.

Image copyright: UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Australian scientists have mapped the molecular structure of a protein that shields superbugs from antibiotics.

It could help develop new drugs for antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains, the University of Western Australia researchers said. The protein, EptA, allows some strains to shrug off colistin, an antibiotic used when all other treatments fail.