Just in time for Polar Bears International’s self-proclaimed fall Polar Bear Week (5-11 November 2017), here’s a new resource for cooling the polar bear spin.

I’ve updated my 2015 summary of reasons not to worry about polar bears, which is now more than two years old. In this new version, you will find links to supporting information, including published papers and fully referenced blog posts of mine that provide background, maps and bibliographies, although some of the most important graphs and maps have been reproduced here.

I hope you find it a useful resource for refuting the pessimism and prophecies of catastrophe about the future of polar bears. Please feel free to share it.

For more than thirty years NASA has maintained a policy of not accepting any scientific evidence pointing to an electro-magnetic explanation in planetary theory. With consensus science swamped with so much “unexplained” phenomena, Edsel Chromie shows why such scientists should re-think their anti-electric dogma.

Chromie writes:

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More than half of people in the UK can’t name a famous woman in science, a survey suggests. This week, BBC 100 Women aims to change that number.

A 2014 YouGov survey of almost 3,000 people, conducted on behalf of UK grassroots group ScienceGrrl, found that only 47% of those asked could name a famous woman scientist. Many identified Marie Curie. Others simply named a male scientist. Tuesday 7 November marks the 150th anniversary of Curie’s birth.

The extent of the dreaded “hole” in the Earth’s ozone layer over Antarctica is the smallest it’s been since government scientists began monitoring it nearly three decades ago.

Some attributed the shrunken ozone layer to the ratifying of the Montreal Protocol in the 1980s. In that agreement, countries agreed to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals over time.

Fission tracks are minute damage trails, or tracks, left by fission fragments in certain uranium-bearing minerals and glasses.

The linked article speaks of fission tracks observed in minerals from the PreCambrian Era (2.5 billion to 500 million years ago). Furthermore, the linked article speaks of fission tracks in enantiomorphic minerals as a key to the emergence of homochirality.

DWD: For the past there is no clear evaluation showing change in the strength and intensity of storms over Germany

Keeping tabs on carbon dioxide emitted from volcanoes can be valuable, both for forecasting potential eruptions and for determining how much deep carbon the volcano releases to the atmosphere. Some volcanoes, however, release more carbon dioxide as diffuse degassing along the flanks than through the main plume of the volcano. These volcanoes are difficult to study using a single monitoring station, complicating scientists’ attempts to monitor the “state and evolution” of volcanoes.

A new peer-reviewed paper by two highly-qualified Australian scientists shows official government predictions of extreme weather are being exaggerated by local panels. Professors Cliff Ollier and Albert Parker identify evidence from real sea level measurements that discredit UN IPCC climate models. [1]

Going all the way back to Carl Sagan’s original essay on the runaway warming greenhouse gas effects from CO2 making Earth into another Venus turned out the following:

New research finds that introverted students suffer disproportionately when it comes to practical science lessons in schools. Almost half of teachers consulted confirmed that introverted students were more likely to hold themselves back from taking part, rather than engage with hands-on experimentation, due to lack of equipment.

Mannian litigation gone wild. — Steve McIntyre. Details given by Michael Schellenberger in Environmental Progress:

Stanford University professor Mark Z. Jacobson has filed a lawsuit, demanding $10 million in damages, against the peer-reviewed scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) [link to published paper] and a group of eminent scientists (Clack et al.) for their study showing that Jacobson made improper assumptions in order to claim that he had demonstrated U.S. energy could be provided exclusively by renewable energy, primarily wind, water, and solar.

Jørgen Randers, professor of climate strategy at BI Norwegian Business School: “If people don’t want my preferred solution, then people are stupid, shouldn’t be allowed to decide their fate, and we should install a climate dictatorship instead.” – “The advantage is that once decision is made, everything goes quickly. There is no opposition fighting back” is representative of Jørgen Randers’ argument, but actually comes from the same article from Anders Wijkman, who’s spokesperson for the Club of Rome, of which Randers is member of their executive committee.

In recent years, particularly in the United States, we have seen a substantial change in public opinion regarding the production and distribution of energy, as well as its associated costs in the marketplace.

The HadCRUT4.5 temperature anomaly for September is 0.54C, a fall of 0.17C since August. Temperatures have seemingly returned to a long trend after the 2016 El Nino. —Clive Best blog, 29 October 2017

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Over-reliance on and misuse of antibiotics has led to warnings of a future without effective medicines. Why is it so difficult for scientists to discover new drugs?

It’s a tale of scientific discovery taught the world over: the serendipitous find of a mould that revolutionised modern medicine.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has touched its drill to the ground for the first time in 10 months, after a mechanical fault brought drilling to an abrupt halt at the end of last year.