Most people have heard of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, but there were much worse fires burning at that time. Thousands of people were killed by massive fires in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ontario. There were also huge fires burning in the Rocky Mountains.

Scientists, identified as “conservation scientists” who presumably oppose human greenhouse gas emissions, have looked into their own lifestyles, as well as the lifestyles of other “conservation scientists,” and found that they are preaching one thing while practicing another.

The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change posts a new video, along with links to 15 recent articles, demonstrating carbon dioxide (CO2) has crucial positive benefits to life on earth.

I’ve been reading a new book, “Green Tyranny,” just out from Encounter Books, written by a Brit named Rupert Darwall.  The overriding theme is that the project to transform society by doing away with fossil fuels is fundamentally inconsistent with the basic American ideals of freedom and democracy.

European magnetometers are responding violently at the moment due to the coronal hole solar wind stream and indicate very active auroral conditions.

A leading scientist has poured cold water on fears over the supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park, saying it’s unlikely to erupt in our lifetime, if ever. George Bergantz, a professor of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, said people shouldn’t worry despite the apocalyptic impact an eruption could have on the United States and the rest of the world.

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A hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms can “reset” the brains of people with untreatable depression, raising hopes of a future treatment, scans suggest.

Have you seen headlines like “Say Goodbye to Oil, Gas, & Solar…,” or “The new Gasoline,” courtesy of Goldman-Sachs (http://www.snopes.com/new-superfuel/), or “Holy Grail of Fuels Found,” and other salivations about “alternative” new energy sources?

2017 saw the first major hurricanes strike the continental U.S in Texas and Florida in almost 12 years, with multiple Caribbean islands, including Puerto Rico, suffering major hurricane damage. Certainly hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria will be long remembered by residents of the respective devastated areas.

What seemed impossible decades ago is now true: When they make landfall, big hurricanes aren’t killing many people. Only truly exceptional storms — or more likely exceptionally poor preparedness — spawn large numbers of fatalities in the United States when one comes ashore. The big death tolls are now from flooding, often days later.

Coal is dead. Coal mining is a sunset industry. Donald Trump is crazy if he thinks he can revive Big Coal. While all these statements have become part of global consciousness when it comes to the future of the much-maligned ‘fossil fuel,’ a report by Urgewald, a Berlin-based environmental group, casts doubt on at least the first two assertions.

In a thought-provoking and reasoned commentary that asks the question, “Is climate change controversy good for science? Craig Idso examines a comparison between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Non-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) Reports. (Disclosure: I contributed material to the NIPCC Report).

We are not used to the idea of machines making ethical decisions, but the day when they will routinely do this – by themselves – is fast approaching. So how, asks the BBC’s David Edmonds, will we teach them to do the right thing?

In 1973, the Climate Long Range Mapping And Prediction Project (CLIMPA) from Brown, Columbia, and OSU predicted a new ice age.

The average ‘fossil fuel’ (hydrocarbon) power plants that were built or are in process of being built in the last several decades generate an average of 600 – 800 Megawatts each. Although no nuclear plants have been built in the U. S. recently, typical nuclear plants each generate about twice that.

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The data-storing abilities of hard drives could soon swell to 40 terabytes (TB) and beyond, says Western Digital. Currently the largest hard disk drive (HDD) that stores data on spinning disks can hold about 14TB of information. Western Digital said the bigger drives were made possible by finding a way to use microwaves to write data on 3.5in drives. The first bigger-capacity drives should go on sale in 2019.