Eminent scientists publish important new book about the fundamental components of solar physics, terrestrial geophysics and general climate issues.  Phenomena such as planetary influence on solar variability, the Sun’s irradiance and solar wind continue to fascinate members of the scientific community. Increasingly, we are realizing it is those overwhelming forces, not human influence, that dictate our planet’s climate. 

The new book, ‘Planetary Influence on the Sun and the Earth, and a Modern Book-Burning,’ is edited by internationally-renowned scientist, Nils-Axel Mörner (Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm, Sweden). He and many other independent experts condemn the ‘settled science’ mentality of government climate researchers intolerant of dissent from alarmist UN propaganda about man-made global warming.

What is more astounding is the way in which our planet reacts to those entirely natural occurrences; climate changes, sea levels, tides, ocean circulation and geomagnetism, all caused by the processes mentioned above, but which are too often glibly overlooked by self-serving, government-funded research. This new book analyzes and calculates the relationships between solar causation and terrestrial reaction.

This work begins with a foreword from Walter Cunningham, the famous Apollo 7 astronaut who in 1968 took part in the first manned space flight.

Section A is devoted to the concept of planetary-solar-terrestrial interaction and driving forces that represent a break-through in science. The book begins with a high-lightening of records indicating a planetary influence on solar activity and continues with multiple discussions of terrestrial variables. It concludes with an account of the physics behind the changes in the Sun and in the Earth.

Section B presents the remarkable decision to terminate the journal of pattern recognition in physics because the authors concluded that we are now on our way into a new grand solar minimum. This inspires doubt in an accelerating global warming. In the name of science and ethics, five papers respond to this “modern book-burning”.

Global warming is a hoax particularly when attributed to CO2 emissions and the goals of those advocating an anti-fossil fuel agenda are totally ineffective in reducing alleged global warming. If anything they are destructive of the environment and they most certainly hurt our economy! 

The president’s assertions on Earth Day of global warming and its effects are false and misleading! There has been no global warming in the last 17 years despite increases in CO2 concentrations and even the United Nations environmental experts had to admit that there was no relation between any global warming and severe weather occurrences.

I read with interest a recent article by Jim Crissman, leader of the Midland group of the Citizens Climate Lobby, in your Sunday, March 1, edition and some of the later letters published In your paper on global warming. Mr. Crissman asserts that there are 10,000 papers published every year supporting the concept of global warming as being caused by human activity, i.e., carbon dioxide emission. But what he fails to mention is that there have been an increasing number of statements by environmental scientists that either outright deny the existence of global warming or at least state it to be premature (climatedepot.com).

And it is easy to see why. Average global temperatures have been at about 0.5 to 0.60 C above the average global temperatures for the last century for at least the last seventeen years despite increasing concentrations of CO2. Most recent data indicate that the trend is continuing. In other words, there has been no significant global warming in this century. Whatever slight increases there have been have been no larger than average increases in temperatures over the last hundred years and are less than the experimental error inherent in such data. This trend has occurred despite increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. If you don’t believe me, just Google global temperature charts. When doing so disregard those generated by clearly biased organizations such as the EPA and rely more on those of scientific organizations such as NASA.

Attached is one that clearly shows the lack of global warming (Chart 1). Funny thing about most charts used by global warming advocates, i.e., warmists, is that they stop the charts at the year 2000 when it became obvious that the warming predictions were not holding true.

Most recently a hue and cry has been raised about the melting ice in West Antarctica as proof of global warming and the rise of the oceans as a result of that. But what is conveniently ignored is the record growth and size of sea ice in the rest of Antarctica, as measured by NASA, which exceeds by far the amount of ice melted. Warmists point to record high temperatures in various places but what about the record low temperatures we experienced this last winter? Clearly neither can be attributed to CO2.

The assertion by the president and others in his administration that increases in CO2 concentration are responsible for increased severe weather disturbances, such as tornadoes, can similarly be shown to be false. Even one of the greatest apostles of global warming, the UN, had to admit that weather disasters could not be attributed to changes in CO2 concentrations. ( 2012 Report on Extreme Weather Events by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

I wonder how many of the thousands of scientists alleged to support global warming are beholden to governments having ulterior motives in pushing global warming, none probably as extreme as our own federal government, which threatens to withhold FEMA funds to governors who do not agree with global warming. This is not surprising considering we have a president who blames global warming, i.e. CO2 emissions, for the asthma of his daughter.

I wonder how many of these thousands of the global warming scientists developed and/or supported the warming model published in 1995 by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading agency for global warming, that predicted a rise of 2.780 C for the century and a rise of 0.70 C for the decade. This has been demonstrated to be absolutely wrong (see attached Chart 2) even though CO2 concentrations have continued to increase. Even the IPCC had to admit that they were wrong and modified its model in 2005 to show a significantly lower 10-year temperature rise of 0.170 C for the decade and a 1.670 C rise for the century.

Guess what? Even that modified model is way off base! The actual temperature rise has been 0.030 C or less in the last 10 years amounting at most to a 0.750 C rise for the century. So much for the reliability of the publications of 10,000 global warming scientists.

Not surprisingly, the president and his favorite agency, the EPA, continue to base their policies on the original erroneous predictions of these models. Thus Instead of being thankful to the fossil fuel technology and industry which now allows him to boast of accomplishing the current economic recovery, he is trying to throttle that industry. The most recent attempt by the Obama administration has been to force the NOAA to do something about the ever increasing evidence of lack of global warming. So after acknowledging the absence of global warming in the last 17 years but explaining it as a pause, the NOAA has “recalculated” its data and lo and behold discovered that there was global warming throughout that period. Critics claim that this was done by fudging and disregarding valid data.

Most recently, the president pledged arbitrarily and unilaterally to commit this country to a reduction in CO2 emissions of more than 25 percent by 2025 and more than 80 percent by 2050 without specific details on how this is to be accomplished. It is clear, however, given his anti-fossil fuel policies that he will in large measure force the utility industry to provide that reduction in CO2 emissions. The result will be tremendous cost increases in energy generation, unreliable energy supplies and energy rationing, all of which will be passed long to the consumer, you and me.

What is most upsetting is that essentially nothing will be accomplished by this program in so far as asserted global warming is concerned. In testimony before Congress, climate scientist Judith Curry stated that the president’s pledge is estimated to result in a reduction of about 0.030 C, hardly a drop in the bucket. Also administration officials in testimony before Congress indicated that the president’s clean power plan would reduce any sea level increase by less than half the thickness of a dime. The plan advocated to compensate the public for the increased cost in energy as a result of the anti-fossil fuel policies of the administration is a carbon tax on the use of fossil fuels which undoubtedly will be passed on to the consumer through increased prices in energy, however with subsidies for the “poor.” The president probably loves the idea since it is nothing more than another entitlement program where those who work for a living subsidize those who do not.

The anti-fossil fuel agenda proposed by warmists is also disastrous to the environment and human health as well. In particular using ethanol as an automotive fuel reduces little, if anything, in CO2 emissions, when considered from an overall production, and removes acreage that could be used for the production of edible crops to alleviate hunger and starvation. In Brazil, the use of ethanol is decimating the Amazon jungle, an environmental disaster. Preventing cheap fossil fuels to be used in Africa will force the continued use of wood fires for cooking in the simple homes prevalent there, that lack ventilation and cause continued disease and death as a result of smoke inhalation. Obviously the use of such wood will cause further deforestation.

What is most disturbing in this issue of climate change is the intolerance of those who believe in it against those who do not agree, not unlike religious extremism. Warming activists will not enter into any meaningful debate on the subject but try suppress the efforts of any scientist disagreeing with global warming. They maintain that debate is over and they have been saying this since about 2000 when they realized that they could no longer support their claim of global warming from CO2. They have gone so far as to lobby governments to stop funding such scientists, to prevent the publication of any paper contrary to their warming beliefs and ostracize them at meetings. (Seeclimatedepot.com) If I am wrong on these points I raised I suggest we have a televised debate on these issues involving both scientists who believe in global warming as a result of CO2 emissions and those who do not.

One of the worst recent decisions of the Supreme Court has been to define CO2 as a pollutant. The fact is that life could not exist without it. Its called a greenhouse gas because it is used in greenhouses to grow bigger, healthier plants faster. Clearly higher CO2 concentrations are beneficial in agriculture to result in better and bigger crops thus alleviating hunger and starvation. If the Supreme Court knew its basic biology for a minimum they should have required the government to define the point at which CO2 turns from a life giving substance into a pollutant.

Stop following the pied piper of global warming, his tune is false and he will lead us into an economic abyss.

Read more at www.ourmidland.com

SUBJECT: Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter Laudato Si, On care for our common home,  (ENC): Respected Academician,

There is a widespread view that the Academicians of The Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) will have had substantial input to the scientific aspects expressed in Papal Encyclical Letters like the ENC and that such encyclicals do reflect the deliberations, views and opinions expressed by the PAS as a whole and by the majority of its individual members. However, this common assumption may be incorrect and, therefore, I have some questions to you which I hope that each of you is willing and able to provide a simple YES or NO answer to.

No doubt you are aware of the significance of the ENC for the future, especially its influence on the development of poorer nations and their people.

My questions are not just out of my personal curiosity but to help the world at large to better understand the ENC and what it means for the people who are presently deprived of many of the energy-driven amenities of the developed countries.

My questions to you:

1. To my knowledge, it is widely considered to be a scientific fact that the trace gas carbon dioxide (CO2) is the basis for all life on earth. Without CO2 in the atmosphere, neither plants or animals, nor human life would exist on earth. DO YOU AGREE?

2. To my knowledge, it is widely considered to be a scientific fact that for most of its 4.5 billion year history, the earth’s atmosphere contained much higher levels of CO2 than today. DO YOU AGREE?

3. To my knowledge, it is widely considered to be a scientific fact that the process of photosynthesis transformed the then-abundant atmospheric CO2 to “organic matter” with commensurate reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere.DO YOU AGREE?

4. To my knowledge, it is widely considered to be a scientific fact that the entire oxygen (O2) in the earth’s atmosphere has been produced from CO2 by the natural photosynthesis process. DO YOU AGREE?

5. To my knowledge, it is widely considered to be a scientific fact that the oceans and most fresh water are alkaline, the opposite of acidic. The same photosynthetic process that converts the CO2 to organic matter also increases the alkaline property of neutral or acidic water. DO YOU AGREE?

Effective immediately, the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC), a leader in climate prediction, has dropped the US government’s ground based global temperature data from its list of reliable sources. 

This significant step has been made by the SSRC after extensive review of the US government’s ground temperature data and its wide divergence from more reliable sources of climate data, namely satellite systems.

The SSRC has found multiple flaws that it says render the US government’s climate data virtually unusable. The SSRC has further observed that the US government and specifically, President Barack Obama, have routinely deceived the people regarding the true status of the Earth’s climate, its causes, and where the global climate is heading.

In the past, the SSRC has used five global temperature data sets, three ground based (NOAA, NASA and HADCRUT) and two satellite data sets (RSS, UAH). These data sets are analyzed and an integrated picture of all five allows the SSRC to produce its semi-annual Global Climate Status Report (GCSR). HADCRUT is a combined set from two UK science groups.

As of today, the SSRC will no longer use the ground based data sets of NASA and NOAA because of serious questions about their credibility and allegations of data manipulation to support President Obama’s climate change policies. Use of HADCRUT will also be suspended on similar grounds.

According to SSRC President, Mr. John L. Casey, “It is clear that during the administration of President Barack Obama, there has developed a culture of scientific corruption permitting the alteration or modification of global temperature data in a way that supports the myth of manmade global warming.

Officially published scientific evidence proves that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is not as strong as predicted. Thus alarmist claims about man-made global warming have no basis in fact. 

A professor famous for predicting the imminent demise of the human race at regular intervals since the 1970s has predicted the imminent demise of the human race. 

Paul Ehrlich, who is the Bing Professor of Population Studies at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, says it’s definitely on this time. In a tinned statement issued on Friday, the arm-waving prof lays it on the line:

There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity’s existence … the window of opportunity is rapidly closing …

“[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event,” Ehrlich said …

“If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on,” said lead author Gerardo Ceballos.

The idea is that humanity is causing lots of species of animals, plants etc to become extinct and this will develop into a runaway death snowball in which we ourselves will disappear – for example, because crops are no longer being fertilised by bees, or similar.

The doom scenario is laid out in a paper by Ehrlich, Ceballos and their colleagues in the journal Science Advances. You can read it for free.

If we do all die off reasonably soon in a runaway biodiversity loss doom event, it will be good news for Professor Ehrlich’s credibility.

On February 28, Roof was arrested for drug possession at a mall in Columbia, where he was searched by officers after storekeepers complained that he was acting unusually and asking questions about opening hours and the number of staff on the premises. The Wall Street Journal reports a police incident document said Roof was found to have strips of Suboxone, a pain drug sometimes used to treat opiate addiction. He did not have a prescription for the drug, which is commonly sold illegally on the street.
(Source: The Daily Beast)

Suboxone is a powerful psychoactive drug which is utilized in breaking heroin and narcotic pain reliever addictions.  Just like methadone*, suboxone has it downside risks and adverse side effects. It is a medication which contains two primary ingredients — buprenorphine and naloxone. Buprenorphine is a synthetic opiate; naloxone is drug that blocks feelings of euphoria.

*Methodone is such a dangerous drug that dedicated clinics were set up around the country because patients could not be trusted with more than one day’s dose at a time; hence, the daily visit to the methadone clinic. Methadone is actually more dangerous than all prescribed narcotic painkillers and can threaten a patient’s life with each dose. As a matter of fact, a methadone user doesn’t have to be addicted to methadone to die from it—the very first dose can kill, unlike both heroin and morphine (this last claim has been legitimately questioned by some).

These two ingredients — buprenorphine and naloxone –work in tandem assisting the addicted drug user in their intention to break a very strong habit.  Like any drug that can successfully replace heroin, it is quite powerful and has some serious side effects.

On March 24, Mark Maslin, like the other members of Scientific Reports’ editorial board, received an email with huge ramifications. The message—from the academic journal’s publisher, Nature Publishing Group—told Maslin that his publication was doing a pilot project for a new article-evaluation process. For $750, authors could now fast-track papers through peer review and get a yay-or-nay verdict from a paid pool of third-party reviewers within three weeks.

Maslin, a climatology professor at University College London, was taken aback, not because of the short time span—peer review, an anonymous and voluntary inevitability of academic life, is a notoriously protracted procedure—but for its implications.

“This wasn’t how I thought the journal, or any journal, should operate,” he says, arguing that fast-tracking would exacerbate existing inequality: Well-funded labs could buy their way into the express lane to get published sooner (and, with more titles to their names, increase their odds of securing funding and grants), while cash-strapped universities and poorer researchers in low-income countries, particularly in Asia, would have to wait. Moreover, Maslin thought that tapping a limited group of reviewers—rather than being able to seek out the most qualified people worldwide—would diminish the quality of the review. So, he quit.

Then, roughly 150 other Scientific Reports editors threatened to do the same (the journal has more than 2,700 editorial board members) if concerns were not addressed. Two followed through. The month-long pilot, now complete, had intended to fast-track just 40 biology papers. Instead, it ignited a firestorm.

There is an annual conference of Nobel Prize Laureates (NPL), commonly held on the picturesque island of Mainau in Lake Constance, Germany, (pictured). The 65th of such meetings, under the name Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings just concluded. 

Purpose of the Meetings

The purpose of their meetings is found on their website:

Once every year, some dozens of Nobel Laureates convene at Lindau to meet the next generation of leading scientists: undergraduates, PhD students, and post-doc researchers from all over the world. The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings foster the exchange among scientists of different generations, cultures, and disciplines.

Undoubtedly, it’s a laudable intention and, who knows, there may well be future Nobel Laureates among the listeners. The assembled laureates also have become known for signing “declarations” of sorts that are supposed to warn the world of potential problems and consequences. This year was no exception. A total of 36 out of 65 Nobel Laureates signed the “Mainau Declaration 2015 on Climate Change;” available in six languages.  You may have noticed that’s just barely over one half of the attendees.

Magnetic Pole and Ice Caps move in Tandem: Looking at the two satellite pictures taken back in 1979 and in 2003 for the Arctic, we find a considerable erosion of the Ice Cap. However, upon closer inspection it seems that the melting of the Ice Cap is uneven along its perimeter.

In fact, when you look deeper at the area encircled in red, it is clear that the ice is building towards Siberia and is moving away from Canada. At the same time, the strength of the Earth’s magnetic shield has decreased 15{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} on average over the years  from 1850 to 2012. During the same period, the south magnetic pole, in the northern hemisphere, has wandered about 1,100 km (685 miles) into the Arctic Circle. “The rate of the magnetic pole’s movement has increased in the last  century compared with fairly steady movement in the previous four centuries”, said Joseph Stoner and the Oregon researchers.

Latest explorations of the sea around the Philippines have uncovered a slew of brand new marine life, of which more than 100 species are likely to be new to science. 

In the seven-week survey, California Academy of Sciences researchers collected countless marine specimens, including rare and new species of colourful sea slugs, barnacles, and delicate heart urchins.

The expedition, funded by the US National Science Foundation, focused on the biologically diverse Verde Island Passage, nestled between the Philippine islands of Luzon and Mindoro.

While previous expeditions in 2011 and 2014 explored life in the western and northern portions of this narrow passage, the most recent trip took researchers to lesser-known field sites at its southern end.

“The Philippines is jam-packed with diverse and threatened species … it’s one of the most astounding regions of biodiversity on Earth,” says Dr Terry Gosliner, senior curator of invertebrate zoology at the academy and a principal investigator of the expedition.

“Modern” European humans and Neanderthals may have interbred in the comparatively recent past, suggest Anthroboffins, with the latter contributing a much higher percentage of their stocky DNA to today’s humanity than had been thought. 

Detailed in a letter published in Nature, titled An early modern human from Romania with a recent Neanderthal ancestor, scientists from Harvard have found a much more prominent link between modern humans and Neanderthals than originally believed.

The boffins analysed the trace DNA that could be obtained from the specimen of a “modern human” found in Peștera cu Oase (meaning the cave with the bones) in Romania, dating from 35,000-40,000 BCE (Before Common Era).

They found that, while Neanderthals are thought to have disappeared in Europe approximately 39,000-41,000 years ago, and are considered to have “contributed 1-3 per cent of the DNA of present-day people in Eurasia”, the genome of the individual found in Peștera cu Oase is derived from Neanderthals on the order of 6-9 per cent, so “more than any other modern human sequenced to date”.

Three chromosomal segments of Neanderthal ancestry are over 50 centimorgans in size, indicating that this individual had a Neanderthal ancestor as recently as four to six generations back.

Blink your eyes and it’s long gone. Carbonic acid exists for only a tiny fraction of a second when carbon dioxide gas dissolves in water before changing into a mix of protons and bicarbonate anions.

Despite its short life, however, carbonic acid imparts a lasting impact on Earth’s atmosphere and geology, as well as on the human body.

However, because of its short lifespan, the detailed chemistry of carbonic acid has long been veiled in mystery. Researchers with Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley are helping to lift this veil through a series of unique experiments. In their latest study, they’ve shown how gaseous carbon dioxide molecules are solvated by water to initiate the proton transfer chemistry that produces carbonic acid and bicarbonate.

Scientists say they have the best evidence yet that there is hot lava spewing from the surface of Venus. 

The planet was known to have an active volcanic history but this is the best evidence yet for ongoing eruptions.

Four “hotspots” in a rift region of the planet’s northern hemisphere were seen to rise and fall dramatically in temperature over several days in 2008, suggesting an active lava flow.

The observations were collected by the Venus Express probe.

Lines of evidence

This European Space Agency mission arrived at the planet in 2006 and its findings had already hinted in 2010 that Venus might still be volcanically active.

That evidence was compiled from infrared measurements, because the planet’s surface is shrouded by a thick and swirling atmosphere. A distinct dark region towards the planet’s south pole suggested lava deposits that were less than 2.5 million years old.

Then in 2012 Venus Express researchers reported a spike in the sulphur dioxide content of the Venusian atmosphere, which happened in 2006-7 and declined gradually afterwards.

Electric cars are quick and quiet, with a range more than long enough for most commutes. If you want a car with extremely fast acceleration, the Tesla Model S is hard to beat. And, of course, electric vehicles avoid the pollution associated with conventional cars, including emissions of carbon dioxide from burning gasoline. Yet they account for a tiny fraction of automotive sales, mainly because the batteries that propel them are expensive and need to be recharged frequently.

A better battery could change everything. But while countless breakthroughs have been announced over the last decade, time and again these advances have failed to translate into commercial batteries with anything like the promised improvements in cost and energy storage. Some well-funded startups, most notably A123 Systems, began with bold claims but failed to deliver (see “What Happened to A123?”).

The Powerhouse, a new book by journalist Steve LeVine, chronicles the story behind one of the most dramatic battery announcements of recent years and explains how it came to nothing (see “The Sad Story of the Battery Breakthrough that Proved Too Good to Be True”).

The announcement was made in February 2012, at a conference in Washington, D.C., where a crowd of researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors had come to hear the likes of Bill Gates and Bill Clinton expound on the importance of new energy technology—and also to tap into one of the newest funding sources in Washington, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA-E.

Founded in 2009, ARPA-E had been tasked with identifying potentially transformational research. The head of that agency, Arun Majumdar, was ready to unveil one of its first major successes: a battery cell, developed by the startup Envia, that could store twice as much energy as a conventional one. The cost of a battery that could take a car from Washington to New York without recharging, Majumdar said, would fall from $30,000 to $15,000. Electric cars would become far more affordable and practical (see “A Big Jump in Battery Capacity”).

Within months, GM licensed the technology and signed an agreement to support its development, gaining the right to use any resulting batteries. The deal was potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Envia, LeVine writes. But soon Envia was getting frustrated messages from GM engineers who couldn’t reproduce the startup’s results. The year after the announcement, the deal was scuttled. Envia’s impressive battery had been a fluke.

A former senior scientist from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been speaking out against GMOs, but his voice is especially noteworthy among the many scientists who talk about genetically modified organisms. Why? Because he studied the impacts of altered crops on the environment. Read on to find out what this expert has to say about a genetically modified world and the ‘pesticide treadmill’ that biotech has us all running on.

Dr. Ramon Seidler’s credentials are nothing to sneeze at. He was a professor of microbiology at Oregon State University for 16 years before he worked at the EPA. He holds many honors, too, including being listed by the International Biographical Centre of Cambridge, England as one of the 2,000 outstanding World Scientists of the 20th Century.

During Seidler’s tenure at the EPA, he (along with other scientists) conducted GMO experiments that were contained in indoor environments. The experiments were meant to mimic what happens outside, just as if a farmer had planted a GM crop in Idaho, Michigan, or California. The gene transfer capabilities and survival rates of genetically modified seed were observed. He also observed transgenic DNA and Bt toxin products in agricultural ecosystems.

What he and his scientific peers found was that GE bacteria survived for years in soil, even after it was removed from the plants.