Dictionary.com defines junk science as: “faulty scientific information or research, especially when used to advance special interests.” Junk science is going strong. Many junk science enterprises are deeply embedded in universities, the federal government and the public consciousness.

Some junk science is very bad science that is just wrong and can be easily dismissed. For example, the theories that vaccines cause autism or that power lines cause cancer. Some junk science lacks scientific support but catches the public imagination and is used by special interests to make money. An example is organic food. Organic food is food grown by methods popular prior to 1930.  The theory is that the old ways were somehow more pure and noble than modern methods. This is only carried so far. The shoppers at Whole Foods aren’t wearing homespun clothes. The government has generated regulations defining organic food and thus has bestowed legitimacy on a fad with little scientific basis. Next our representatives may be licensing psychics and promulgating standards for snake oil. If you want to have a laugh, or get some natural herbs to supposedly improve your sex life, browse the quack medicine aisle at any Whole Foods market.

 

A joint UK-US-led expedition has got under way to drill into the Chicxulub Crater off the coast of Mexico.

This is the deep scar made in the Earth’s surface 66 million years ago by the asteroid that scientists believe hastened the end of the dinosaurs.

Today, the key parts of the crater are buried beneath 600m of ocean sediment.

But if researchers can access its rocks, they should learn more about the scale of the impact, and the environmental catastrophe that ensued.

University of Adelaide’s Michael Chen sent a very strange email last Friday night, insulting a man who challenged Einstein’s relativity theory.

Stephen Crothers, from Queensland, has long been a denier of Einstein’s theory and sent a research paper to academics, including Dr Chen.

Mr Crothers then received a number of email responses from Dr Chen, which he has since posted to Facebook.

Summary

• Electricity generation by using gas-fired installations is significantly cheaper than Renewables in terms of both installation capital cost and Operation and Maintenance  costs, even when accounting for the cost of fuel.
• The € 1.1 trillion capital costs already spent on Renewables in Europe would have been sufficient to re-equip the whole 1,000 Gigawatt European electricity generating fleet with Gas-fired power stations producing electricity for the grid effectively at ~90{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} capacity.
• The European Renewable fleet with a nominal nameplate output of ~ 212 Gigawatts only contributes ~ 38 Gigawatts to the European Grid, a capacity percentage at about 18{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}.
• The installation of the Renewables fleet as of 2014 has already lead to a 60 year lifetime financial commitment amounting to about €3.1 trillion:  this is equivalent to the annual GDP of Germany.
• 60 year life-time costs of Onshore wind power range from 10 – 13 times more expensive than Gas-fired generation.
• 60 year life-time costs of Offshore wind power and Solar power range from 40 – 50 times more expensive than Gas-fired generation.
• during the 60 year life-time Gas-fired generators have a full-time productive capacity of about 90{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}  whereas the combined capacity figures for Renewable Energy of only about 18{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} is achieved across all European Renewable installations.
• These notes make estimates of:
  • the likely capital expenditure over 60 years
  • the running costs including fuel costs, if applicable, over that time period
  • the likely combined 60 year costs overall
  • the ratios of Renewable financial performances compared to Gas-fired electricity generation.

 Introduction

This article is concerned with the two main forms of weather-dependent Renewable Energy, Wind Power (Onshore and Offshore) and Photovoltaic solar power.

In the UK this amounts to ~75{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of all installed Renewable Energy.  The other Renewable Energy  inputs are traditional Hydro power ~8{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} and the remainder are other sources such as biomass, waste and landfill gas amounting to ~17{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}:  they are not considered here.

Introduction

This article is concerned with the two main forms of weather dependent Renewable Energy, Wind Power (Onshore and Offshore) and Photovoltaic solar power.  In the UK this amounts to ~75{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of all installed Renewable Energy.  The other renewable energy  inputs are traditional Hydro power ~8{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} and the remainder are other sources such as biomass, waste and landfill gas amounting to ~17{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}.

The capacity percentage of any power generating installation is calculated as the actual electrical output achieved divided by the nominal Nameplate output.  This article uses both stated estimates from the USA  EIA and real measures of capacity in Europe as of 2014. It thus provides reasonably correct comparisons of the efficacy of Renewable installations.

A decade has passed since TIME magazine published a famous cover and report on “global warming,” and even though one organization says TIME got it right, another says it couldn’t be further from the truth.

In 2006, TIME published a “special report” on global warming. The cover showed a polar bear standing on a patch of ice and snow while gazing down at a large span of water. TIME went on to argue that, among other things, “climate change” is not some vague future problem, claiming that it is already damaging the planet at an alarming pace.

Over the past week, ThinkProgress.org hailed the cover and said the main story was an accurate portrayal.

“[The TIME story presents a] very solid, even prescient, piece of reporting – warning about polar ice loss, sea level rise, severe drought, and other extreme weather,” ThinkProgress stated.

Meanwhile, Marc Morano of Climate Depot says TIME’s 10-year-old was mere doom and gloom.

By 2014 European Union countries had invested approximately €1.1 trillion, €1,100,000,000,000, in large scale Renewable Energy installations.

This has provided a nominal nameplate electrical generating capacity of about 216 Gigawatts, or nominally about ~22{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the total European generation needs of about 1000 Gigawatts.

The actual measured output by 2014 from data supplied by the Renewables Industry has been 38 Gigawatts or 3.8{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of Europe’s electricity requirement, at a capacity factor of ~18{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} overall.

The new film Vaxxed (trailer) highlights one whistleblower, researcher William Thompson, who publicly admitted he and his CDC colleagues lied, cheated, and committed gross fraud in exonerating the MMR vaccine and pretending it had no connection to autism.

Now we have another: Dr. Peter Fletcher. The Daily Mail has the story (3/29/16): “Former [British] science chief: ‘MMR fears coming true’”. 

“A former Government medical officer responsible for deciding whether medicines are safe has accused the Government of ‘utterly inexplicable complacency’ over the MMR triple vaccine for children.”

“Dr Peter Fletcher, who was Chief Scientific Officer at the Department of Health, said if it is proven that the jab causes autism, ‘the refusal by governments to evaluate the risks properly will make this one of the greatest scandals in medical history’.”

“He added that after agreeing to be an expert witness on drug-safety trials for parents’ lawyers, he had received and studied thousands of documents relating to the case which he believed the public had a right to see.”

If you’ve ever used a Hydro Flask, you are probably as enamored with this product as I am.  Hydro Flask makes the claim that their containers will keep your chilled beverage cold for up to 24 hours and your heated beverage warm for 6-12 hours.  By my experience, this is not an exaggeration.  Imagine the pleasure of indulging in 40 ounces of ice cold beer at the end of a six hour hike into desert wilderness.  In fact, don’t imagine it, do it!  So good!

In this paper, I am going to reveal the secret of the Hydro Flask.  In order to do so, I must subject you to a fair bit of science.

To understand what it takes to keep things hot for 6-12 hours compared to keeping things cold for 24 hours requires a basic understanding of thermodynamics.  Sadly, much of this may be new to you.  This knowledge will also serve you well in understanding the natural forces which really do affect our climate.

Heat can only flow in one direction, from warmer to cooler.  It’s never the other way around. To do otherwise would violate the Laws of Thermodynamics. There are four methods by which heat can flow and each method has its own efficiency and hierarchy which is dependent on the environment in which it operates.  These four methods are evaporation/condensation, conduction, convection and radiation.

Does carbon dioxide have the physical properties of heat trapping/delayed cooling as alleged by climate scientists? Well, according to experiments conducted by experts in the ‘hard’ sciences at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory CO2 just doesn’t do what climate science says it does.

For three decades now academics have been warning governments and scaring the bejesus out of policymakers about the ‘dangerous’ warming properties of CO2 and other ‘greenhouse gases’ if we allow human emissions to build up in the atmosphere.

But in their study Berkeley laboratory test experts Reilly, Arasteh and Rubin revealed something truly remarkable when setting out to apply those assumed properties of carbon dioxide – enshrined in climate change theory – to create better performing insulated double-glazing window manufacture.

What was discovered was that under stringent lab conditions it can be shown that regular air delays/traps heat better than greenhouse gases such as CO2!

Carbon is the Great Satan of the environmental movement. They all worry about their carbon footprint, want to impose carbon taxes on it and even have schemes to capture the poor thing and imprison it down holes in the ground. Oh the humanity. For such a supposedly caring bunch, they can be so cruel at times. 

If I were in their position, then I’d do what I always do to size up the opposition; I’d learn about it. If that means getting a bit close, even to the point of hopping into the sack with them for a while, well, that’s not a problem. A little bit of recreational rumpty pumpty never hurts, especially with one of those bad bad girls your Momma warned you all about. No offence intended to those nice girl next door elements out there, but sin as we all know has a certain delicious tinge of pure badness about it.

So, let’s put that other hat on and learn about their elemental enemy. The thing is, I’ve found the alarmists actually don’t do science but like all good scenario explorations, we’ll lose that little detail as part of simplifying the exercise. Let’s get down and boogie up real close to her sexy satanic majesty, Ms. Kickass Carbon. She has a certain ballsy attitude I kinda like.

Abstract

 Atmospheric profiles in North America during the period 2010-2011, obtained from archived weather balloon radiosonde measurements, were analysed in terms of changes of molar density (D) with pressure (P). This revealed a pronounced phase change at the tropopause. The air above the troposphere (i.e., in the tropopause/stratosphere) adopted a “heavy phase”, distinct from the conventional “light phase” found in the troposphere. This heavy phase was also found in the lower troposphere for cold, Arctic winter radiosondes. Reasonable fits for the complete barometric temperature profiles of all of the considered radiosondes could be obtained by just accounting for these phase changes and for changes in humidity. This suggests that the well-known changes in temperature lapse rates associated with the tropopause/stratosphere regions are related to the phase change, and not “ozone heating”, which had been the previous explanation. Possible correlations between solar ultraviolet variability and climate change have previously been explained in terms of changes in ozone heating influencing stratospheric weather. These explanations may have to be revisited, but the correlations might still be valid, e.g., if it transpires that solar variability influences the formation of the heavy phase, or if the changes in incoming ultraviolet radiation are redistributed throughout the atmosphere, after absorption in the stratosphere. The fits for the barometric temperature profiles did not require any consideration of the composition of atmospheric trace gases, such as carbon dioxide, ozone or methane. This contradicts the predictions of current atmospheric models, which assume the temperature profiles are strongly influenced by greenhouse gas concentrations. This suggests that the greenhouse effect plays a much smaller role in barometric temperature profiles than previously assumed.

1 Introduction

 In this paper (Paper I), together with two companion papers (henceforth, Paper II and Paper III), we develop a new approach for describing and explaining the temperature and energy profiles of the atmosphere. This approach highlights a number of flaws in the conventional approaches, and appears to yield simpler and more accurate predictions. In the current paper (Paper I), we will analyse weather balloon data taken from public archives, in terms of changes of molar density with pressure, and related variables. By doing so, we discover a phase change associated with the troposphere-tropopause transition, which also occurs in the lower troposphere under cold, polar winter conditions. We find that when this phase change is considered, the changes in temperature with atmospheric pressure (the barometric temperature profiles) can be described in relatively simple terms. These descriptions do not match the radiative physics-based infra-red cooling/radiative heating explanations used by current models. We present theoretical explanations of these simple descriptions from thermodynamic principles.

Periodic mass extinctions on Earth, as indicated in the global fossil record, could be linked to a suspected ninth planet, according to research published by a faculty member of the University of Arkansas Department of Mathematical Sciences.

Daniel Whitmire, a retired professor of astrophysics now working as a math instructor, published findings in the January issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society that the as yet undiscovered “Planet X” triggers comet showers linked to mass extinctions on Earth at intervals of approximately 27 million years.

Though scientists have been looking for Planet X for 100 years, the possibility that it’s real got a big boost recently when researchers from Caltech inferred its existence based on orbital anomalies seen in objects in the Kuiper Belt, a disc-shaped region of comets and other larger bodies beyond Neptune. If the Caltech researchers are correct, Planet X is about 10 times the mass of Earth and could currently be up to 1,000 times more distant from the sun.

What follows are the 3 newly published papers and their abstracts which flat out conclude IPCC alarmist science may be fatally flawed. Hat-tip Kenneth Richard.

The main points are emphasized in bold print.

1. Trends in Extreme Weather Events since 1900 – An Enduring Conundrum for Wise Policy Advice

“It is widely promulgated and believed that human-caused global warming comes with increases in both the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. A survey of official weather sites and the scientific literature provides strong evidence that the first half of the 20th century had more extreme weather than the second half, when anthropogenic global warming is claimed to have been mainly responsible for observed climate change. The disconnect between real-world historical data on the 100 years’ time scale and the current predictions provides a real conundrum when any engineer tries to make a professional assessment of the real future value of any infrastructure project which aims to mitigate or adapt to climate change. What is the appropriate basis on which to make judgements when theory and data are in such disagreement?

Our desire for must-have gadgets is leading to ‘fertility decline’

Keeping up with the Jones’ by spending on flashy status symbols is pushing down childbirth rates, new research claims.

Striving for a new car, house, or the latest must-have gadget is the main reason why many people in the West are delaying having even one child – or abandoning the idea altogether.   

Our brains – which evolved to live in much smaller societies – are now ‘misfiring’ as we ‘overinvest’ in accumulating high-status items, it is claimed. 

Paul Hooper, an anthropologist at Emory University, Atlanta, developed a mathematical model to simulate the effect growth of striving for material goods has on fertility.