Creating “a star in a jar” – replicating on Earth the way the sun and stars create energy through fusion – requires a “jar” that can contain superhot plasma and is low-cost enough to be built around the world. Such a device would provide humankind with near limitless energy, ending dependence on fossil fuels for generating electricity. 

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) say that a model for such a “jar,” or fusion device, already exists in experimental form – the compact spherical tokamaks at PPPL and Culham, England. These tokamaks, or fusion reactors, could provide the design for possible next steps in fusion energy – a Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF) that would develop reactor components and also produce electricity as a pilot plant for a commercial fusion power station.

In the aftermath of last Wednesday’s horror of the magnitude 6.2 earthquake that shocked Italy, a mass funeral has taken place for some of the 290 people killed in the tragedy at the town of Arquata. While the USGS estimates that several million earthquakes occur in the world each year, this begs the question – can science get us any closer to predicting the worst of such catastrophic events? 

Veteran science writer, Edsel Chromie, has studied this subject for decades and brings his own unique insight to this question. Chromie first directs our attention back to 1985 and a University of California, Berkeley conference, which saw researchers from Greece describing how they monitor Earth’s natural electromagnetic fields to predict quakes.

Summary: Solar variations affect the abundance of clouds in our atmosphere, a new study suggests. Large eruptions on the surface of the Sun can temporarily shield Earth from so-called cosmic rays which now appear to affect cloud formation.

[Photo: Cosmic rays are important for cloud formation. Credit: © determined / Fotolia]

 A team of scientists from the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU Space) and the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has linked large solar eruptions to changes in Earth’s cloud cover in a study based on over 25 years of satellite observations.

A Cambridge University professor has been accused of “crying wolf” by predicting the imminent disappearance of Arctic ice.

Peter Wadhams has been criticised by scientists who fear that he could undermine the credibility of climate science by making doom-laden forecasts. He repeatedly predicted that the Arctic would be “ice-free” by last summer, by which he meant it would have less than one million sq km of ice. His forecasts, reported around the world, turned out to be wrong.

Paper Reviewed: Wang, J., Liu, X., Zhang, X., Smith, P., Li, L., Filley, T.R., Cheng, K., Shen, M., He, Y. and Pan, G. 2016. Size and variability of crop productivity both impacted by CO2 enrichment and warming – A case study of 4 year field experiment in a Chinese paddy. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 221: 40-49.

Providing the rationale for their study, Wang et al. (2016) write that few studies have focused on the interaction between atmospheric CO2 enrichment and warming on crop growth, such that the combined effects of these two important variables “are still not well understood.” In an effort to advance our understanding in this area, the ten-member research team conducted an experiment examining the effects of these two variables on two important food crops: wheat and rice.

For years, skeptical scientists have been pointing at data that showed the the world started warming somewhere from 1700 – 1820. This has been known from glaciers, sea level studies, ice cores, boreholes, ocean heat content estimates, and more proxies than any climate-nerd cares to name.

Finally, expert climate modelers are “surprised” to discover this:

“…their study had detected warming in the Arctic and tropical oceans from around the 1830s, just 80 years after the Industrial Revolution started in England. “It was an extraordinary finding,” she said. “It was one of those moments where science really surprised us. But the results were clear. The climate warming we are witnessing today started about 180 years ago.”

How many grant dollars did it take to figure out what skeptical scientists have been saying for years?

Paper Reviewed: Viterito, A. 2016. The Correlation of Seismic Activity and Recent Global Warming. Journal of Earth Science & Climatic Change 7: 345. doi: 10.4172/2157-7617.1000345 

In this intriguing new study, Viterito (2016) shows that increasing seismic activity of the globe’s high geothermal flux areas (HGFAs) — which is indicative of increasing geothermal forcing — is “highly correlated with average global temperatures from 1979 to 2015,” while “the correlation between carbon dioxide loading and global temperatures for the same period is lower.” And he thus notes that “HGFA seismicity is a significant predictor of global temperatures.”

Russia has reached two more milestones in its endeavour to close the nuclear fuel cycle. Mashinostroitelny Zavod (MSZ) – part of Russian nuclear fuel manufacturer TVEL – has completed acceptance tests of components for its ETVS-14 and ETVS-15 experimental fuel assemblies with mixed nitride fuel for the BREST and BN fast neutron reactors.  MSZ has also announced the start of research and development work on the technical design of the “absorbent element” of the core of the BREST-OD-300 reactor.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is not being killed off because of “global warming” or any other allegedly man-made non-problem, the people who know the area best have confirmed. 

According to local newspaper The Courier-Mail [paywalled]

Teams of divers in a joint two-week expedition sponsored by Mike Ball Dive and Spirit of Freedom surveyed 28 sites on 24 outer shelf reefs along a 300km section of the hardest-hit part of the reef from Bathurst Head to Raine Island.

 Spirit of Freedom owner Chris Eade said reports of 93 per cent bleaching on the 2300km long Great Barrier Reef had made global headlines and damaged the reputation of the $5 billion reef tourism industry.

 “Scientists had written off that entire northern section as a complete white-out,’’ Mr Eade said.

 “We expected the worst. But it is tremendous condition, most of it is pristine, the rest is in full recovery.

 “It shows the resilience of the reef.’’

   Mike Ball Dive Expeditions operations manager Craig Stephen, who conducted a similar survey on the remote reefs 20 years ago, said there had been almost no change in two decades despite the latest coral bleaching event.

  “It wasn’t until we got underwater that we could get a true picture of what percentage of reef was bleached,’’ Mr Stephen said.

   “The discrepancy is phenomenal. It is so wrong. Everywhere we have been we have found healthy reefs.

    “There has been a great disservice to the Great Barrier Reef and tourism and it has not been good for our industry.”

On August 23rd, 2016 Roy Spencer wrote an article in which he states that observational evidence gathered at Desert Rock, Nevada, affirms the existence of a radiative “greenhouse effect”.  In that article he makes several assertions that I would like to address. 

Let’s start with his definition of the “greenhouse effect” from the article, “the ‘greenhouse effect’ is usually expressed [as] the increase in surface temperatures caused by greenhouse gases compared to if those gases did not exist.”  Just to be clear, the “increase in surface temperatures caused by greenhouse gases” according to the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis are overall average temperatures seen within a location, a region or the entire globe over time—the course of an entire day, an entire year, an entire decade or an entire Century.  They are not just the nighttime temperatures that Spencer was studying and commenting on.  As such his data is too limited to properly evaluate the existence or non-existence of a radiative “greenhouse effect” even as he has defined it.

There is no disputing that the world is facing an energy crisis of vast proportions. But this could have been avoided. For more than five decades, scientists, engineers, energy planners, policy makers, and, at times, even the public at large, have known what the ultimate alternative is to our finite energy resources–nuclear fusion. This energy, which powers the Sun and all of the stars, and can use a virtually unlimited supply of isotopes of hydrogen,available from sea water, has been visible on the horizon for years, but seemingly never close at hand. Why?

Legend has it that there are more problems in attaining controlled nuclear fusion than scientists anticipated, a nd that little progress has been made. “Fusion is still fifty years away, and always has been” has become the common refrain of skeptics. But the reason that we do not have commercially available fusion energy is not what is commonly believed.

Russian officials announced a pair of major technological breakthroughs that will turn spent nuclear waste into fuel for reactors. If true, the new technology could change the world’s energy landscape in the next decade. 

Testing has already begun on components needed to reprocess waste into fuel, as has the construction of reactors to use it. The first of the new reactors should be completed by 2025.

Russia’s new reactors are theoretically capable of eliminating the production of radioactive waste, achieving a “closed loop” of nuclear power generation where waste would fuel other reactors. The country currently operates 35 nuclear reactors, getting about 19 percent of its electricity from them. The country already planned to build 20 new reactors and sell many more to other countries, according to the World Nuclear Association. The new breakthrough caused the Russian government to announce plans to build another 11 reactors.

Paper Reviewed: Varner, J., Horns, J.J., Lambert, M.S., Westberg, E., Ruff, J.S., Wolfenberger, K., Beever, E.A. and Dearing, M.D. 2016. Plastic pikas: Behavioural flexibility in low-elevation pikas (Ochotona princeps). Behavioural Processes 125: 63-71. 

Behavioral plasticity is the ability of a species to alter its behavior in response to changes in climate. It is an adaptive mechanism that allows species to persist in regions outside their normal climate envelope to which they are generally constrained and therefore represents a means by which they might persist in the face of ongoing climate change. However, behavioral plasticity is an understudied subject and there is much that remains to be learned about this topic.

It’s not very often we get to talk about a revolution in understanding and treating depression and yet now doctors are talking about “one of the strongest discoveries in psychiatry for the last 20 years”.

It is based around the idea that some people are being betrayed by their fiercest protector. That their immune system is altering their brain. The illness exacts a heavy toll on 350 million people around the world, among them Hayley Mason, from Cambridgeshire:

“My depression gets so bad that I can’t leave the bed, I can’t leave the bedroom, I can’t go downstairs and be with my partner and his kids.

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. has a message for anyone linking #Climate Change with the Louisiana floods: it’s irresponsible and not based on #Science. He even produced multiple graphs showing a downward trend for these heavy precipitation events.

A professor in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado, Pielke has been at the forefront of the global warming debate for over a decade. As a climate expert, he’s even testified before Congress on extreme weather events and written a book on disasters and climate change.

Steve Milloy, Dr. John Dunn & and Dr. Stan Young versus EPA before the National Academy of Sciences over EPA’s illegal human experiments. August 24 at 1pm ET via webinar. You can listen in. Instructions below.

Summary of Event

EPA secretly hired the National of Sciences (NAS) to whitewash its program of illegal human experimentation. When Milloy learned of the EPA’s plans, Milloy exposed them and compelled the NAS to re-open the virtually concluded process and have apublic meeting, which will take place on Aug. 24 at 1pm ET. A more detailed explanation is in Milloy’s July 24 commentary in the Washington Times (also reprinted below).