Ben Hur “a la moderne.” That’s what the new technology of “autonomous cars” is promising. How long until “Hollywood” is providing an updated version of the epic movie? Movie star Charles Heston (RIP) would probably have to take “driving lessons” on autonomous chariots for that too; the unplanned non-autonomous kind of chariot experience was scary enough, see picture nearby.

Screenshot of the chariot race in the 1959 movie Ben Hur—actor Charles Heston (or stunt double ?) barely managed to hang on (it wasn’t planned to be that way).

The modern chariots come with additional benefits like “back-seat comfort” while you text your significant other and so forth. But that’s nothing in the grand scheme of modern civilisation, where your every step is recorded for eternity by cameras at every intersection, drones in the sky to scrutinize your every move, recording and analysis of your email and phone conversation, internet searches, etc. Of course, it’s all solely for your comfort, convenience and—most importantly—safety.

Scientists think they have spotted the remains of two huge tsunamis on Mars caused by asteroids striking the planet back when it still had water.

In a paper published in Nature Scientific Reports, the boffins say pictures from the imaging and radar satellites orbiting Mars show the effects of two separate asteroid strikes on what was once a vast ocean in the northern hemisphere of the Red Planet, 3.4 billion years ago.

“For more than a quarter century, failure to identify shoreline features consistently distributed along a constant elevation has been regarded as inconsistent with the hypothesis that a vast ocean existed on Mars approximately 3.4 billion years ago,” said lead author J. Alexis Palmero Rodriguez from the Planetary Science Institute.

We routinely read from fellow skeptics that they wish Dr. Murry Salby’s research could be made available in written form, or perhaps in a peer-reviewed paper.

Indeed we do have access to his Youtube lecture research (at least a written summary of it) from an even better source than peer-reviewed paper: Dr. Murry Salby’s 2012 university-level textbook: Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate.

Here is a pdf link to the full textbook written by a world-renown expert on atmospheric physics (he’s published several dozen papers in the scientific literature on the subject). We therefore can effectively say that a skeptical view of the CO2-dominated climate paradigm is actually textbook science, not “fringe” science for the “3 percent”.

Below I’ve compiled a short list of some of the written statements from the textbook (emphasis added):

(a) temperature changes occur first and lead to CO2 emission from natural sources (e.g., more ocean outgassing upon warming, more CO2 retention as the ocean cools), indicating that warmer temperatures are driving up CO2 concentrations significantly more than human activity or fossil fuels;

Ever dreamt of hiking over the landscape and finding a mineral vein rich with ores, perhaps even silver or gold glittering in the sunshine, like in the Hand of Faith vein in Australia? How about joining the gold rush fever – without trekking up the Chilkoot Pass as thousands of prospectors did well over 100 years ago?

The chances of finding a “mother lode” are slim, even when trying hard. They are similar to winning the jackpot in a big lottery. But don’t give up just yet; there is a new “horizon” for your exploration activity—the new frontiers are way up in the outer space and deep down in the oceans (the latter to be the subject of another post)!

The Outer Space

That’s where one modern Klondike Gold Rush is heading. No more drudging in the wilderness, just go out into the intergalactic space and simply collect the golden marbles afloat in space without direction. To top it off, no biting insects or other menacing critters to worry about there either; in short, any prospector’s dream come true!

The floating portion of Totten Glacier in East Antarctica may be melting from warm sea water swirling beneath it, making it more vulnerable than previously thought to future melting. That’s according to a new study by scientists at the Imperial College London and institutions in Australia, the US, and New Zealand, and published yesterday in Nature. The study’s team found that a part of the Totten Glacier that floats on warm sea water is losing some ice, even while total ice cover in Antarctica continues to expand.

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) is relatively stable compared to West Antarctica, which sits on an enormous fault zone. However, the region of the Totten Glacier studied sits on ocean water heated from geothermal activity, which explains the possibility that it could progressively melt.

As the naturally occurring El Niño of 2015-2016 wends down, NOAA is forecasting this week that conditions in the Pacific Ocean will likely flip from an El Niño to a La Niña, lowering temperatures worldwide this fall and winter.

The now-dissipating El Niño is part of ENSO, or the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a natural climate pattern where the tropical Pacific Ocean’s sea surface temperatures (SSTs) swing between warmer-than-normal (El Niño) and colder-than-average (La Niña) temps. This recent El Niño is the primary reason we saw above-normal temperatures for the latter months of 2015 and first few months of 2016.

Earth’s naturally occurring ENSO, NOAA writes, can influence everything from “wind, air pressure, and rain throughout the tropics” and “can havecascading side effects around the whole globe.” It also impacts the “mid-latitude jet streams that guide storms towards the United States.”

Is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere a bad thing?  Not according to horticulturalists. They are the experts when it comes to getting the best yield on greenhouse-grown plants. For generations cultivators have filled their greenhouses with carbon dioxide (CO2), specifically to boost plant growth. 

Likewise, more CO2 in the atmosphere means a greener, cleaner, healthier planet. As an example, below is an extract about the Johnson CO2 Generator, successfully used by greenhouse growers since 1901. Plant growers understand how crucial more (not less!) CO2 in our carbon-starved atmosphere is good for us all.

Are politicians willing to learn from greenhouse operators? Such knowledge will enable them to challenge the climate-change alarmist propaganda, which wrongly classifies carbon dioxide as a pollutant. 

The advertisement (link here : http://www.johnsongas.com/industrial/CO2Gen.asp) for the Johnson CO2 generator reveals that:

Carbon dioxide is one of the essential ingredients in green plant growth, and is a primary environmental factor in greenhouses. CO2 enrichment at 2, 3 or 4 times natural concentration will cause plants to grow faster and improve plant quality.

NASA boffins have crunched 34 million weather observations collected by the Curiosity rover its two full Martian years trundling about the red planet.

The basics are pretty simple: Mars is reliably cold, dry and windy, while the thin atmosphere means not much heat is retained so air temperature “usually plummets by more than 100 Fahrenheit degrees (55 Celsius degrees) between the afternoon high and the overnight low.”

NASA’s analysis also shows that the atmosphere is so thin that air pressure fluctuates seasonally as atmospheric carbon dioxide freezes into Mars’ ice caps.

Sea level rise and threats to small Pacific islands are back in the news, like the recent concern about five Pacific islands. Part of the alarmist strategy is that as the global warming claim loses traction, they resurrect stories that were successful in the past. Climate alarmists got a lot of media coverage and emotional reaction from small island stories such as the Maldives and Tuvalu. A 2009 story titled “Rising sea levels threaten small Pacific island nations” is typical,

The ocean could swallow Tuvalu whole, making it the first country to be wiped off the map by global warming.

The article identifies the level of speculative alarmism.

“Entire Pacific islands disappearing from inundation is indeed dramatic,” said Asterio Takesy, director of the Pacific Regional Environment Program, an intergovernmental organization based in Apia, Samoa. “But a complete loss of livelihoods from decreased fisheries, damaged coral reefs, tourism affected by dengue epidemics, and agriculture destroyed because of changing rain patterns – surely these are just as worthy of our attention.”

Misaligned mirrors are being blamed for a fire that broke out yesterday at the world’s largest solar power plant, leaving the high-tech facility crippled for the time being. It sounds like the plant’s workers suffered through a real hellscape, too.

A small fire was reported yesterday morning at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) in California, forcing a temporary shutdown of the facility. It’s now running at a third of its capacity (a second tower is down due to scheduled maintenance), and it’s not immediately clear when the damaged tower will restart. It’s also unclear how the incident will impact California’s electricity supply.

Putting out the blaze was not easy task, either. Firefighters were forced to climb 300 feet up a boiler tower to get to the scene. Officials said the fire was located about two-thirds up the tower. Workers at the plant actually managed to subdue the flames by the time firefighters reached the spot, and it was officially extinguished about 20 minutes after it started.

Virtual Reality (VR) has been with us for many decades – at least as an idea – but the technology has now come of age.

And it’s not just gamers who are benefiting from the immersive possibilities it offers.

Four experts, including Mark Bolas – former tutor of Palmer Luckey, who recently hand-delivered the first VR handset made by his company Oculus Rift – talked to the BBC World Service Inquiry programme about the future of VR.

Science is pervasive directly and indirectly in every phase of modern life. While the majority are not directly involved in science, they need to understand science and how it works. It is increasingly the underlying control of social, political, and economic decisions made by them or for them. They need to understand how it works, even if they don’t make it work. This knowledge must be a fundamental part of any school curriculum.

Climate skeptics struggle with getting the majority of people to understand the problems with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) anthropogenic global warming (AGW) story. It was the theme of my presentation at the first Heartland Climate Conference in New York and many articles and presentations since. The problem is much wider because it relates to the lack of scientific abilities among a majority of the population. Based on teaching a science credit for science students for 25 years, giving hundreds of public presentation and involving myself in education at all levels from K-12, to graduate, and post-graduate, plus the transition to the workplace, I believe a fundamental mandatory change in thinking and curricula are required.

I believe abilities are an example of the ongoing nature/nurture argument. People can learn an ability, but can only achieve a high level of competence with an innate ability. For example, most people can learn the mechanics of teaching, but only a few are ‘gifted’ teachers. These concepts are particularly true of certain abilities, such as music, art, languages and mathematics. From my experience, I learned that most people with these gifts struggled with understanding why other people cannot do as they do. Often, they do not even see their ability as unique, and some deride those without their ability. On a larger scale than just mathematics, which philosophically is an art, is the distinction of abilities between those who are comfortable with science and those who are not.

Three and a half billion years ago, a mega asteroid slammed into Earth, triggering massive tsunamis and leaving craters bigger than many U.S. states. It was the second oldest and one of the largest impacts known to have hit the planet.

Now, for the first time, remnants of that impact have been uncovered in ancient sediments in Australia, and they’re revealing more intriguing details about the Earth at that time.

The mega asteroid that battered the primeval Earth was likely between 12 and 19 miles (20 to 30 kilometers) across, dwarfing the space rock that caused the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub impact, the research suggests. [Crash! The 10 Biggest Impact Craters on Earth].

“The impact would have triggered earthquakes orders of magnitude greater than terrestrial earthquakes; it would have caused huge tsunamis and would have made cliffs crumble,” study co-author Andrew Glikson, a planetary scientist at the Australian National University, said in a statement.

From the outside, Elidir Mountain looks like an old industrial site that has returned to nature. The slopes facing the Llyn Peris reservoir have been hacked into terraces by slate quarrying – this was once the second-biggest quarry in the world, with 3,000 workers – but they are now peaceful.

Only a few buildings at ground level and a road leading into the mountain provide a clue that there is still something going on.

A longer look would reveal that Llyn Peris has a habit of rising all day, then falling back overnight. The smaller and higher Marchlyn Mawr reservoir up in the hills does the reverse, dropping as much as 121ft (37 metres) during the day.

The dodgy scientists who wrote to President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch demanding that RICO laws be used to prosecute climate skeptics just got even more badly screwed.

Already one of them — George Mason University professor Jagadish Shukla — is under Congressional investigation for what has been described as the “largest science scandal in US history.”

Now the background to their footling conspiracy has been exposed thanks to a FOIA request by the Competitive Enterprise Institute which has forced them to release their private letters and emails.

Like Climategate, it makes for some fascinating reading, mainly because — yet again — it shows the climate alarmist establishment in such a terrible light.

Like werewolves and vampires, bacteria have a weakness: silver. The precious metal has been used to fight infection for thousands of years — Hippocrates first described its antimicrobial properties in 400 bc — but how it works has been a mystery. Now, a team led by James Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University in Massachusetts, has described how silver can disrupt bacteria, and shown that the ancient treatment could help to deal with the thoroughly modern scourge of antibiotic resistance. The work is published today in Science Translational Medicine.

“Resistance is growing, while the number of new antibiotics in development is dropping,” says Collins. “We wanted to find a way to make what we have work better.”

Collins and his team found that silver — in the form of dissolved ions — attacks bacterial cells in two main ways: it makes the cell membrane more permeable, and it interferes with the cell’s metabolism, leading to the overproduction of reactive, and often toxic, oxygen compounds. Both mechanisms could potentially be harnessed to make today’s antibiotics more effective against resistant bacteria, Collins says.