A few years ago, film director James Cameron spent hours scouring the world’s deepest ocean canyon for any sign of life. He found a few bizarre animals, but it turns out the real action in the Mariana Trench happens beyond the reach of a submersible’s camera. 

Researchers from Japan discovered microscopic bacteria thrive in the canyon called Challenger Deep, which is the lowest point on Earth’s surface and the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, the team reports today (Feb. 23) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In particular, they found an unusual community of bacteria there called heterotrophs, or microbes that cannot produce their own food and must eat what they find in the water.  

Cameron found that larger life forms were scarce compared to shallow ocean waters. However, the heterotrophic life in Challenger Deep’s waters was relatively abundant, similar to that in untreated well water, said lead study author Takuro Nunoura, a microbiologist with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).

The average depth of the ocean floor is about 13,120 feet (4,000 meters); its deepest point is in the western Pacific’s Mariana Trench, where the Challenger Deep canyon bottoms out at more than 36,000 feet (nearly 11,000 m) below sea level. All kinds of microscopic life are found in the seafloor at this depth, from bacteria and archaea to yeast and viruses, according to this and other studies. [Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench]

The heterotrophs in the Challenger Deep likely derive food from sinking particles, such as dissolved fecal pellets or dust, or possibly from geologic processes such as earthquake-triggered landslides, which could send organic-rich sediments tumbling into the canyon’s depths, the researchers said.

Black rats may not have been to blame for numerous outbreaks of the bubonic plague across Europe, a study suggests. 

Scientists believe repeat epidemics of the Black Death, which arrived in Europe in the mid-14th Century, instead trace back to gerbils from Asia.

Prof Nils Christian Stenseth, from the University of Oslo, said: “If we’re right, we’ll have to rewrite that part of history.”

The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Black Death, which originated in Asia, arrived in Europe in 1347 and caused one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.

Over the next 400 years, epidemics broke out again and again, killing millions of people.

It had been thought that black rats were responsible for allowing the plague to establish in Europe, with new outbreaks occurring when fleas jumped from infected rodents to humans.

The solar photo-voltaic (PV) industry has another victim: Q-CELLS plant in Thalheim, Germany. As of March 1, 2015, the plant will cease production altogether and will only be selling PV panels made in Malaysia, 550 of its previous workforce of 800 will be laid off. Not that long ago, in 2007, the company had a workforce of 1700 and claimed to be the world’s largest producer of PV panels. 

Would you have thought of that?  The solution to a non-existing problem resides right on your kitchen shelf! 

As Nature World News reports, “It’s possible the solution to our world’s buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been sitting on our grocery shelves all along. Baking soda of all things may help to capture carbon dioxide, according to a new breakthrough study.” As that new report is authored by no less than 15 scientists it must carry some weight and be based on realistic experiments and knowledge. At least you’d be forgiven for thinking that.

The article notes further that “Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), in collaboration with researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Harvard University, have developed a new type of carbon capture medium made up of core-shell microcapsules, consisting of a polymer shell that is highly permeable. The shell contains a solution of sodium carbonate, which is the main ingredient of baking soda, and it can absorb carbon dioxide (CO2).”

Let’s begin with some Chemistry

Just for the (very) few Dear Readers unaccustomed to chemical thinking, baking soda also goes by the term “sodium hydrogencarbonate” or, more commonly, “sodium bicarbonate” (SBC), the salt of sodium hydroxide with “hydrogen-carbonic acid.”

From a chemical point of view, SBC is fully “saturated” or “loaded” with carbon dioxide and could not take up any more.

Therefore, the idea that sodium bicarbonate may be able to absorb more carbon dioxide (from whatever source) is simply nonsense. In fact, the opposite is true and that’s the sole reason for using baking soda at all.

Scientists say they have gained new insight into what lies at the very centre of the Earth. Research from China and the US suggests that the innermost core of our planet has another, distinct region at its centre. 

The team believes that the structure of the iron crystals there is different from those found in the outer part of the inner core.

The findings are reported in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Without being able to drill into the heart of the Earth, its make-up is something of a mystery. So instead, scientists use echoes generated by earthquakes to study the core, by analysing how they change as they travel through the different layers of our planet.

Prof Xiaodong Song, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said: “The waves are bouncing back and forth from one side of the Earth to the other side of the Earth.”

Prof Song and his colleagues in China say this data suggests that the Earth’s inner core – a solid region that is about the size of the Moon – is made up of two parts.

The seismic wave data suggests that crystals in the “inner inner core” are aligned in an east-to-west direction – flipped on their side, if you are looking down at our planet from high above the North Pole.

Those in the “outer inner core” are lined up north to south, so vertical if peering down from the same lofty vantage point.

Economic Systems: The alarmists keep telling us their concern about global warming is all about man’s stewardship of the environment. But we know that’s not true. A United Nations official has now confirmed this. 

At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.

Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”

With almost all media outlets “sold” on subscribing to the “man-is-evil and causing global warming and/or climate change and/or climate disruption” meme, what do you expect kids and ordinary folk to “know” about “global temperatures”? 

The latest alarmist propaganda piece by Bloomberg typifies the pattern, as penned by compliant (unthinking) author, Alex Nussbaum with his question to schoolkids: “Boys and girls, are global temperatures rising or falling?”

Bloomberg isn’t letting on about all those cherry-picked temperature stations –  with no less than 806 inconvenient ‘cold’ weather stations dropped from climate scientists’ official sampling. So it’s no wonder Nussbaum can disingenuously claim “scientists almost universally agree the world is warming.” His assertion, itself, is doubly misleading because science has also never depended on consensus.

Specific historical proof of the fallibility of this is the 1,400 year “consensus” that the sun revolved around the earth, as well as all the planets and stars – a position enforced by the Papal seat no less. There are many other examples, although none so extreme as to have lasted 14 centuries.

In those days scientists who went against that consensus were either burnt at the stake or confined to house arrest. Nowadays they lose their government funding an/or university tenures. No denial can be tolerated!

We have an identical situation now with the hype over human produced carbon dioxide (CO2), with even the current Pope adding his name to the charade and no debate is allowed – after all “the science is settled” – nothing is further from the truth!

The proverb that “they can’t see the forest for the trees” means, they are so consumed with detail, they don’t understand the larger situation. This is true of society in general and climatology in particular.  One book that at least addresses part of the problem as it relates to climate, is Essex and McKitrick’s Taken By Storm, in the chapter titled, “Climate Theory Versus Models and Metaphors”. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has exacerbated, amplified and exploited the problem because they are about politics, not science.

Shortly after appointment to Chair of the newly formed Assiniboine River Management Advisory Board (ARMAB), I called a meeting at the Fort Garry Hotel in Winnipeg. I invited people from Federal, Provincial and Municipal governments involved with as many aspects of the river basin as possible. It was amazing, in a Province of 1.2 million people, how few knew or communicated with each other. I knew communication between different levels of governments is bad, but was shocked to find, it was as bad within the same level of government. Worse, many didn’t know their part in affecting the interaction between the natural dynamics of the river basin and human activities.

People introduced themselves and explained why they were present. Some didn’t know. The Department of Highways representative said his department had nothing to do with water. I asked him if he knew that, a) they built and maintained drainage ditches on each side of a road, b) that some ditches are larger in flow capacity than many rivers and streams in the basin and, c) a majority cut across the natural drainage slope of the region? Of course, none knew the climate history of the basin. Some knew I had done climate studies, but nobody had ever consulted me or looked at the material.

What’s happening in Siberia’s thawing permafrost and Greenland’s melting glaciers sounds borderline supernatural. Ancient viruses, bacteria, plants, and even animals have been cryogenically frozen there for millennia—and now, they are waking up. 

The head of the United Nations climate change panel (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri, has stepped down amid sexual harassment allegations. 

A spokesman for Mr Pachauri informed the IPCC that he resigned from his position with immediate effect.

Indian police are investigating a complaint from a 29-year-old woman working in Mr Pachauri’s office in Delhi.

Mr Pachauri has denied the allegations.

Lawyers for the woman say the harassment included unwanted emails as well as text and phone messages.

On Monday, the 74-year-old had pulled out of a high-level IPCC meeting in Kenya because of “issues demanding his attention in India”, as an IPCC spokesman put it.

The IPCC has since confirmed that the meeting will instead be chaired by its vice-president Ismail El Gizouli.

Mr Pachauri had chaired the IPCC since 2002, since when it took the lead in the scientific assessment of the risks and causes of climate change.

Read more at www.bbc.co.uk

Ever since Climategate, the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has enjoyed just international renown as a world centre of data-fudgin’, scientific-method-abusin’, FOI-dodgin’, decline-hidin’, grant-troughin’, junk-science-endorsin’ global warming propaganda. 

But did you know that the chap who founded the institution, Hubert Lamb (pictured), was a committed sceptic who would without a shadow of doubt have been perfectly appalled by the way the CRU has since prostituted itself in the bankrupt cause of climate change alarmism?

No, of course you didn’t – and with very good reason.

Here, for example, is what one of the CRU’s subsequent directors, Trevor Davies, had to say when he wrote Lamb’s obituary in 1997:

“[Lamb experienced] the satisfaction of convincing the remaining doubters of the reality of climate variation on time-scales of decades and centuries.”

Here is what the Climatic Research Unit’s website says in its biography of its founder:

He did more than any other scientist of his generation to make the academic community aware of climate change. However, in the years after his retirement the emphasis of research shifted towards evaluating the role played by human activities. He was well acquainted with the pioneering works of Svante Arrhenius in Sweden, and G.S. Callendar in England, and wrote in 1997 that, ‘it is now widely thought that the undoubted warming of the world climate in the twentieth century is attributable to the increased concentration in the atmosphere of so-called greenhouse gases’

Yes, it’s true that the obituary goes on to mention that: “However, he always referred back to the instrumental record, and his attitude to greenhouse warming remained guarded.”

But it would, I think we can agree, be very easy to read both those obituaries and come away with the impression that Hubert Lamb was, to all intents and purposes, one of the founding fathers of “climate change” theory and that he would largely have been on the side of the current scientific “consensus” on the global warming.

However, as a fascinating new paper produced by Bernie Lewin for the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals, nothing could have been further from the truth.

Lamb’s big thing during his period as a climate scientist was “natural variation.” It’s thanks largely to Lamb’s seminal work Climate: Present, Past & Future that we know about the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age.

Vint Cerf, a “father of the internet”, says he is worried that all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost. 

Currently a Google vice-president, he believes this could occur as hardware and software become obsolete.

He fears that future generations will have little or no record of the 21st Century as we enter what he describes as a “digital Dark Age”.

Mr Cerf (pictured right) made his comments at a large science conference in San Jose.

He arrived at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science stylishly dressed in a three-piece suit. This iconic figure, who helped define how data packets move around the net, is possibly the only Google employee who wears a tie.

I felt obliged to thank him for the internet, and he bowed graciously. “One is glad to be of service,” he said humbly.

His focus now is to resolve a new problem that threatens to eradicate our history.

Our life, our memories, our most cherished family photographs increasingly exist as bits of information – on our hard drives or in “the cloud”. But as technology moves on, they risk being lost in the wake of an accelerating digital revolution.

“I worry a great deal about that,” Mr Cerf told me. “You and I are experiencing things like this. Old formats of documents that we’ve created or presentations may not be readable by the latest version of the software because backwards compatibility is not always guaranteed.

The climate-change movement is being rocked by another major ethical scandal that journalists and some climate scientists say could serve to expose the movement as “one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time.” 

The latest blow against the credibility of the of those demanding urgent, sweeping political change in response to human activity allegedly threatening the sustainability of earth appeared in Saturday’s edition of the London Daily Telegraph. Columnist Christopher Booker cites the work of Paul Homewood on his “Not A Lot of People Know That” climate blog.

Two weeks earlier, Booker noted that Homewood compared the original temperatures recorded at weather stations in Paraguay over a 60-year period with the numbers now being used in climate reports.

“In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming,” wrote Booker.

In the new piece, Booker reports on Homewood’s research into the original and revised data at many other South American weather stations.

“In each case he found the same suspicious one-way ‘adjustments,’” reported Booker.

According to Booker, Homewood is now studying similar data from arctic stations from Canada to Siberia.

“Again, in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded,” he wrote.

When the wind is whipping a wall of snow in a horizontal direction and the GPS signal is completely attenuated by the stuff in the air between the satellite and your car, it’s time to take matters into your own hands and hang onto the steering wheel–provided there still is one at all.

You’ll have seen pictures of the “concept cars” of the future; driving without you or anyone else behind the steering wheel. Cameras, global positioning devices and computers do all the work. Just sit and relax, read the newspaper, tap on your i-something, or simply take a nap.

What is Insulation, And what Does it Do? People (well, the climate alarmists) don’t seem to understand what “insulation” is. They think that it means that it makes heat “pile up” inside the source of heat, or in the medium between the insulation and source of heat, so that the source of heat and/or the medium will get hotter than the source of heat and power input. 

There is no such thing as “heat pile up”. This is a non-existent concept. You can think of it, like you can think of a unicorn, but it doesn’t exist.  Heat does not pile up, it readily and freely flows into whatever is around it.

Insulation is something that only works in a gaseous environment – it is all about a gaseous environment. Insulation, a blanket, a greenhouse, all work the same way, and that way is preventing convective cooling and air circulation.  Insulation in the form of a blanket, a sweater, a greenhouse enclosure, home insulation, etc., is about reducing and eliminating convective cooling, i.e. the loss of warm air.  A blanket, or insulation, etc., is about doing the opposite of what the atmosphere does!

In your house, insulation helps prevent the furnace-heated air from escaping your house and being replaced with cold air from outside. It doesn’t make the furnace burn hotter.  In your water heater, it helps the water retain its temperature after it has been heated.  It doesn’t make the water hotter than the heater.

You can wrap a heat source with as much insulation as you want.  All that will happen is that the insulation will reach the temperature of the heat source, and the heat source will not rise in temperature.  Insulation is just matter, just material like anything else.  When exposed to heat, it will warm, and will conduct that heat outward via diffusion.

New peer-reviewed study casts doubt on the validity of Max Planck’s famous theory of radiation. It is shown that Planck misrepresented Kirchhoff’s Law such that the behavior of nature is not properly accounted for.

Below is an excerpt from the new study titled, ‘‘The Theory of Heat Radiation” Revisited: A Commentary on the Validity of Kirchhoff’s Law of Thermal Emission and Max Planck’s Claim of Universality’