Since the early 1980s, grave concerns have been raised about the process by which scientific evidence gets produced.

Two months ago, I embarked on a research project that veered off in unexpected directions, metamorphosing into a more time-consuming and labour-intensive exercise than anticipated.

Along the way, I learned a great deal about how science gets practiced in the real world – as opposed to the idealized “Science” of my imagination. Yes, I’d known full well that climate science was a mess. Rather than inspiring confidence, legions of its practitioners act as though they’re selling something. On the one hand, they’re quick to dismiss alternative perspectives. On the other, they grasp at every half-baked rationale available to advance their own worldview. And yes, I’d already begun to notice parallels to the scientific debate concerning cholesterol, dietary fat, and heart disease.

But my recent adventure has persuaded me that the scientific enterprise, as it is now conducted in government-funded universities, is far more dubious than I had hitherto appreciated. I’m currently reading a book that was published in 1982, the year I left high school. William Broad and Nicholas Wade, two New York Times journalists, had figured out 34 years ago something with which I am only now coming to terms: the reality of science is so far removed from the ideal that vast swaths of what we think we know may be nonsense.

Online researcher William Kay provides a comprehensive new list of 356 Enviro-Critical and/or Climate-Sceptical Websites; 78 Funded Enviro-Critical Organizations; 115 Philanthropic Donors to the Enviro-Critical Movement and 2 Concluding Criticisms.

Kay writes: The starting place for compiling this list were the “blogrolls” or “links” sections of the better known climate-sceptical and/or enviro-critical websites. Many of the websites listed there have blogrolls of their own, which were also surveyed. Overall, about 100 such lists were perused. Only websites appearing on these lists were selected for the list below. 

About 20 blogrolls contain over 100 entries each but there is a lot overlapping content. Moreover, the lists tend to be poorly maintained and thus include many broken links and dud sites. They also include websites with little enviro-content.

The Lord Monckton Foundation website has an impressive 300 hyperlinks, but over half of these link not to websites but to individual articles, papers, and data-sets, or to pro-global warming sites including one that calls Lord Monckton a “purple crested crackpot.” In fairness to Lord Monckton, he is not advertising his list as being exclusively a roll call of enviro-critical/climate-sceptical sites. Only about 70 of his entries fit this definition, which still makes it one of the longest such lists on the Internet.

The long-controversial notion that there’s an as-yet-undiscovered “ninth planet*” has had a boost from the best kind of science: a prediction of its effects, borne out by observation.

The boffins that re-opened the debate in January this year, Caltech’s Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, are feeling vindicated after a presentation (video below story) by astronomer Michelle Bannister at the SETI Institute.

That presentation included a slide showing an as-yet-uncatalogued Kuiper Belt object (KBO) with an alignment Batygin and Brown say fits with their predictions.

New study of previously overlooked U.S. government records from World War Two of data of human emissions of industrial (war-time) carbon dioxide (CO2) casts further doubt on the ‘greenhouse gas’ theory promoted by climate alarmists.

Independent research by Seldon B. Graham Jr. analysed the known and vastly-increased output of industrial CO2 emissions during World War Two, as obtained via the U.S. Energy Information Administration (“EIA”) to determine its impacts on climate. By comparing the data with the known levels of CO2 in the atmosphere it is shown there was neither any increase on global temperatures nor (surprisingly) any increase in measured atmospheric CO2 levels.

These findings are at odds with claims routinely made by alarmist academic climate experts who say more human emissions equals more ‘dangerous’ heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere leading to higher global temperatures.

That is what the mainstream theory of a supposed ‘enhanced’ greenhouse gas effect (GHE) due to raised emissions of industrial CO2 tells us. But no such outcome is detected for the entire wartime decade, according to NASA.

The facts continue to discredit the left’s fraudulent “consensus of experts.” This time, it is in the form of a recent survey of climate scientists by George Mason University. More than four thousand American Meteorological Society (AMS) members were recently asked about their positions on global warming (or ‘climate change,’ now that we know zero actual warminghas occurred for decades). And the results predictably fly in the face of everything we have been told.

Approximately one-third acknowledged that global warming “is not occurring, is mostly natural, or is at most half-natural and half man-made … or simply think we ‘don’t know.'” This number explodes to the vast majority once climate scientists are asked about catastrophic global warming—the absurdly hysterical Al Gore branch of alarmist fear-mongering, in which liberals relentlessly insist that their ideological war on science is about a full-blown crisis that somehow urgently threatens all of humanity.

 The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has dominated debate on Global Warming (later Climate Change) since its creation by the United Nations in 1988. Brady’s book is largely an analysis of how they did it, and the ‘mirrors and mazes’ of the title refers to the tools used by magicians to trick their audience. He covers the scientific information and a lot more besides. I have read many books on climate change, but I found much new material here.

Chapter 1 sets the scene and reviews the climate debate. The present is not unprecedented, either in climate or alarm. 360 years ago there was panic in Europe over advancing glaciers, and in the 1970s the big scare was the coming Ice Age. The Modern panic started with increasing greenhouse gases and how it may lead to runaway Global Warming. On the way it was mixed with conservation issues, such as reducing CO2 (or even carbon) by reducing use of fossil fuel (especially coal) and introducing alternative energy. We are reminded that Warren Buffet invested billions of dollars into alternative energy, as there are tax credits to offset against other businesses. Alternative energies have failed so far because there is no suitable battery technology. Despite no warming since 1998 the alarmist message is still to curtain global warming by reducing CO2. The warming scenario is supported by charismatic prophets warning of catastrophe (floods, droughts, extinctions), who are never held responsible for failed predictions.

Now here  is a trick question for you, and so that you won’t be tricked I am going to reveal the trick so that you won’t be deceived.

If I asked you ‘Can any object heat itself?’ you might be puzzled as to what I meant. So to clarify, ‘Can a slab of cold iron heat itself and make itself into a horseshoe?’ Well, of course, your answer must be No. You know very well that the blacksmith has to heat his forge to high degree and make the iron red hot before he can shape it into a horseshoe. If someone suggested otherwise, would you not think that they were somewhat simple or even plain stupid?

So if I filled a pan with cold water and put some potatoes in and on a hob, would the water come to the boil all by itself?  Of course not, you would declare. You must light the gas or turn the electric current on in order to boil the water and cook the potatoes. But if someone put the pan on the stove and failed to light the gas or switch the electricity on, would you not think they were somewhat dim-witted?

The Paris Agreement and, more generally, climate change policy, almost perfectly illustrate the contradictions of the post-modern industrialized world risk society, characterized by perceived threats confirmed by politicized science and governed by sub-politics beyond democratic control. – Lucas Bergkamp

The Journal of Environmental Risk has a special issue related the Paris Agreement [link].  There are two articles by Lucas Bergkamp, which are highlighted here.

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change:  A Risk Regulation Perspective.  Excerpts:

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which was concluded at COP-21 in December 2015, . . . has been called the ‘world’s greatest diplomatic success’ and a ‘historic achievement,’ but also an ‘epic failure’ and even a ‘fraud’ and ‘worthless words.’  Disappointed with the Paris Agreement, a group of eleven climate scientists signed a declaration stating that it suffers from “deadly flaws” and gives “false hope;” they argue that the time for “wishful thinking and blind optimism” is over, and “the full spectrum of geoengineering” should be considered.

Scientists in Japan have successfully transplanted mice with lab-grown skin that has more of the organ’s working parts in place than ever before.

Starting with stem cells made from a mouse’s gums, they managed to craft skin with multiple layers – as well as hair follicles and sweat glands.

When implanted into a “nude mouse” with a suppressed immune system, it integrated well and sprouted hairs.

Researchers say this success will take 5-10 years to translate into humans.

But eventually, the team hopes their system will lead to perfectly functioning skin that can be grown from the cells of burns victims and transplanted back on to them.

Few people cherish the idea of having to spend time at a laundromat to clean their undies. Rejoice, help is nigh – in the form of “self-cleaning laundry.” Two days ago, even the American Chemical Society chirped in with a post about the new laundry’s environmental effects.

Needless to say, the textilian Laundromat Index on the stock exchange is already in freefall.

This revolutionary development comes to you thanks to the invention of “nano”-technology. Nano, of course, is a scientific term, a common prefix, based on the ancient Greek word for dwarf and generally describing something that is one billionth (10^-9) of the reference unit.

Down to Nitty-Gritty

So, for example, a “nano-mile” (a mile being roughly 1,600 meter) would be around 1.6 micrometer.  As the average thickness of a strand of human hair is only 0.00394 inches ( or 100 micrometer) that would equate a nano-mile to approximately 0.00006 inches or 1/70th the diameter of a human hair. In other words, anything “nano” is small, very small! Now, how does that relate to your laundry?

Many ancient civilizations came up with lime-based cement like materials to use as mortar in construction, from the gypsum-based plaster used on the pyramids in Egypt to sticky rice/lime mortar employed in parts of the Great Wall of China, but it was the Greeks and Romans who got lucky by adding locally abundant volcanic ash to their cement mix. This formula resulted in a mortar that not only set up quickly and with great strength but could also harden under water and then survive 2,000 years of crashing seas, as the seawall in Italy’s Pozzuoli Bay has. When the Romans mixed in bits of brick and gravel, they got opus caementicium, which we now know as concrete from the Latin,concretus, which means “to grow together.” Ever visited the Pantheon in Rome? That amazing freestanding dome with a 142-foot diameter is made of the stuff. Unreinforced. It has survived 1,890 years and multiple earthquakes with little or no maintenance. So why can’t our roads and bridges survive a tiny fraction as long?

Research just released in February by MIT, Georgetown University, the French National Center for Scientific Research, and the Concrete Sustainability Hub aims to provide some answers. For all these millennia, nobody has fully understood the atomic-level crystal grain structure of this miraculous material that upon adding water becomes a paste that can flow into complex forms and then harden into a strong solid in a matter of hours or weeks depending on the formula used.

The life of a climate skeptic is no holiday. We battle against a well-entrenched public misconception that is supported by most of the media and politicians. When we are invited to lecture on our “heresy” or to debate somebody that supports the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we have to be prepared with ironclad arguments and equipped with scientific sources beyond reproach—and still we are frequently perceived as loonies. To wit, there is little fun in a skeptic’s career (but, to quote Gimli the Dwarf: “Certainty of death, small chance of success … What are we waiting for?”)—and one of the highlights of mine was being invited to contribute to the Slayer volume.

Recently (in October 2010) I published a considerably less ambitious skeptic’s book of my own in Slovenian: Podnebna prevara (The Climate Fraud, www.orbis.si). I was in the final editing process when news of the forthcoming Slayer book was announced, so I sought to establish contact with the authors to get a sneak peak at the material; I wanted to check whether I had made any blatant errors in my own work (I did not). After my book was already in print, I happened to come across the following little piece of “scientific consensus” that the IPCC flies by, so my first thought was to share it with Claes Johnson.

My involvement with the isotopic argument started when a fellow skeptic from the US became involved in a debate about the causes of global warming (a.k.a. climate change) and his opponent advanced the argument that CO2 from human activity—such as coal combustion—can be distinguished from “natural” carbon dioxide even far away from its emission, citing the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) as the source.

Fraud: While the global warming alarmists have done a good job of spreading fright, they haven’t been so good at hiding their real motivation. Yet another one has slipped up and revealed the catalyst driving the climate scare.

We have been told now for almost three decades that man has to change his ways or his fossil-fuel emissions will scorch Earth with catastrophic warming. Scientists, politicians and activists have maintained the narrative that their concern is only about caring for our planet and its inhabitants. But this is simply not true. The narrative is a ruse. They are after something entirely different.

If they were honest, the climate alarmists would admit that they are not working feverishly to hold down global temperatures — they would acknowledge that they are instead consumed with the goal of holding down capitalism and establishing a global welfare state.

News outlets are reporting the Arctic is getting very warm and the surrounding sea ice is taking a hit. Temperatures are 15 degrees higher than normal, glaciers are retreating, and the north shore of Svalbard has no visible ice. There’s only one problem: that was in 1922, not 2016. So it’s surprising to read breathless accounts today of the Arctic experiencing the same issues as nearly a hundred years ago. Tony Heller, who writes regularly on the Arctic and runs the popular climate site Real Science, calls this cherry picking your data.

According to Mark Serreze, director for the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), there has never been such a “warm, crazy winter in the Arctic.” He also adds the heat has been relentless and that global warming is to blame. That’s true, Heller writes, if you consider -20 degrees Celsius ‘hot’ or overlook the historical record that goes back to when “fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers” sailed the Arctic seas (see PDF).

Sea ice extent is when the Arctic normally reaches its highest coverage, and so far it’s on track with previous years (see slideshow). With one exception being the Barents Sea, which is slightly under the mean average for 1979 to the present (when satellite tracking began). But as Heller correctly observes, the 1990 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)report included “satellite ice records back to the early 1970s – when ice extent was low.”

It’s a damp, freezing cold day in January, and I’m at the bottom of a massive hole in the ground. This is one of a pair of 41-meter-deep shafts in a part of east London called the Limmo peninsula, a spit of land on the banks of the River Thames. From a drone’s-eye view, it looks as though a giant hole punch has taken two neat circles out of the silty earth.

Back in late 2012, two enormous tunnel-boring machines were lowered into these shafts. Workers fired up the 1,000-metric-ton behemoths (named Elizabeth and Victoria), and their rotating cutting heads slowly gouged their way westwards. When they finally reached Central London in May 2015, it marked the completion of the tunneling work on Crossrail, a new underground railway system that spans London.

Crossrail will be fully operation by the end of 2019, with an expected 200 million passengers carried through its arteries every year. For now, it is Europe’s biggest construction project, with a budget of £14.8 billion (about US $21 billion).

OSLO (Reuters) – Reports of a historic dip in China’s carbon dioxide emissions in the past two years are premature because of uncertainty over data showing the pace of a decline in coal use by the world’s biggest consumer, a study showed on Monday.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has been among those saying that energy-related carbon dioxide emissions by China, the biggest emitter, fell in 2015 and 2014 in what it hailed as a shift to cleaner energy after years of fast growth.

“Headlines about falling emissions may be misinterpreting the numbers,” the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, Oslo, (CICERO) said in a statement of a report published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

China has promised to peak its carbon dioxide emissions by around 2030 as part of a 195-nation plan agreed in Paris in December to combat climate change, blamed for stoking more downpours, heatwaves and rising sea levels.