Image copyright: SPACEX

Elon Musk, it seems, loves nothing more than to spin plates. When most of us might be looking to lighten the load, he’s piling on the ambition.

The serial entrepreneur’s latest gambit is to fly people around the Moon. Two wealthy individuals have apparently lodged significant deposits with his SpaceX company to make this journey. We have no idea who they are, just that these space tourists include “nobody from Hollywood”.

There is a popular fantasy that the earth is 33C warmer with an atmosphere than without due to the radiative greenhouse effect, RGHE and .04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} CO2.  Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start – or so I hear.

The 33C difference is between an alleged average surface temperature of 288K/15C and 255K/-18C, the alleged surface temperature without an atmosphere. Let’s take a closer look. Just which average surface temperature? The two extremes? (71C + -90C) / 2 = -10C?

New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.

Many jumped to the defense of Dr. John Bates, the former NOAA employee who waited until he retired to disclose malfeasance in the science and management at that agency. Bates claimed he told his bosses about the problem but said they effectively ignored him.

The problem is everything was already in the public record. I listened to Congressman Lamar Smith tell the general audience at the June 2015 Heartland Conference that subpoenas were filed requesting full disclosure of all the material. He also told us the requests were rejected, but a follow-up was in progress. The same information was reported in the mainstream media, albeit with a bias.

For decades, global warming scaremongers have been stealing energy from the environment using windmills, solar collectors, and biofuels, force-fed by carbon taxes and emission trading schemes.  Their delusional dream is to cool the globe.

However, there has been no global warming for nearly 20 years.  Right now, the great ice sheets are growing thicker, and record snow is blanketing much of the climate change leader, the Northern Hemisphere landmass.  Solar panels are blinded by snow, and turbines don’t turn in the cold still air, or else they have to be shut down because of icing or high winds.  Like all green things, wind and solar power often hibernate in winter.

Abstract: A new chemical process control systems engineering model of Earth’s atmosphere quantifies the effect of CO2 on Earth’s surface temperature. It uses the rigorous S-B radiant energy transfer rate law. The Earth’s surface and atmospheric temperatures are given explicitly as linear ordinary differential and algebraic equations; the only system properties needed are absorptivity and emissivity, five of which depend on CO2.

CO2 affects surface temperature by at least four mechanisms, one positive and three negative. CO2 decreases Earth’s global radiating temperature to space slightly. When atmosphere parameters increase by 1{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} due to CO2, surface temperature changes – 0.762C and atmosphere changes – 0.392C.

Climate Change: We’re often told by advocates of climate change that the “science is settled.” But in fact, “science” itself is in a deep crisis over making claims it can’t back up, especially about climate.

As BBC News Science Correspondent Tom Feilden noted last week, “Science is facing a ‘reproducibility crisis’ where more than two-thirds of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, research suggests.” This isn’t just his journalistic opinion, but the conclusion of the University of Virginia’s Center for Open Science, which estimates that roughly 70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of all studies can’t be reproduced.

The NSIDC announced #Antarctica’s #Sea Ice loss was the greatest it’s been since 1978 (when tracking began) despite a long-term trend showing the continent gaining in size. The sea ice, which shrinks every summer, contracted 883,015 square miles. The previous low was 884,173 square miles in 1997. That’s a difference of 0.1 percent or 1,158 square miles. 

Will Rogers (and Mark Twain) observed, “It’s not ignorance that is the problem, but that so much of what we know just ain’t so.” Adding to the “33C without an atmosphere” that is completely wrong is the case of Venus.
Venus, we are told, has an atmosphere that is almost pure carbon dioxide and an extremely high surface temperature, 750 K, and this is allegedly due to the radiative greenhouse effect, RGHE. But the only apparent defense is, “Well, WHAT else could it BE?!”

A dire shortage of electricity could mean Africa’s emerging economies turn to nuclear to underpin industrial growth. This would be a neat fit, considering Africa is where the nuclear age had its origins.

The raw material used for nuclear development during the Second World War was sourced in what was then the Belgian Congo. Africa is also where one of the world’s only natural reactors is found – geologists stumbled on a uranium deposit in Gabon that was found to have developed self-sustaining nuclear reaction aeons ago, and remained active for millennia.

The last Neanderthal died 40,000 years ago, but much of their genome lives on, in bits and pieces, through modern humans. The impact of Neanderthals’ genetic contribution has been uncertain: Do these snippets affect our genome’s function, or are they just silent passengers along for the ride?

In Cell on February 23, researchers report evidence that Neanderthal DNA sequences still influence how genes are turned on or off in modern humans. Neanderthal genes’ effects on gene expression likely contribute to traits such as height and susceptibility to schizophrenia or lupus, the researchers found. 

Earth is often struck by solar eruptions. These eruptions consist of energetic particles that are hurled away from the Sun into space, where those directed towards Earth encounter the magnetic field around our planet.

When these eruptions interact with Earth’s magnetic field they cause beautiful auroras. A poetic phenomenon that reminds us, that our closest star is an unpredictable neighbor.

Image copyright: THINKSTOCK

The connected city never sleeps. The thousands of sensors embedded in roads, sewers, water pipes, streetlights are busy collecting information day and night. Perhaps even your bin, which might also be tweeting.

Sensor provider Enevo offers internet connection for bins in cities in Finland, the Netherlands, UK, Belgium, Canada and the US, and runs a Twitter feed – Trashcan Life.

The results of three recently-released studies that were not included in the last IUCN Red List assessment add more than 2,050 bears (on average)¹ to the official 2015 global polar bear estimate, a point you won’t likely hear next Monday (27 February) from most polar bear specialists, conservation organizations, their cheerleaders and corporate sponsors on International Polar Bear Day.

Image copyright: GETTY IMAGES

Science is facing a “reproducibility crisis” where more than two-thirds of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, research suggests.

This is frustrating clinicians and drug developers who want solid foundations of pre-clinical research to build upon. From his lab at the University of Virginia’s Centre for Open Science, immunologist Dr Tim Errington runs The Reproducibility Project, which attempted to repeat the findings reported in five landmark cancer studies.

More CO2 would actually help the planet , says Professor William Happer of Princeton University.  CO2 can actually be beneficial to an ecosystem rather than a burden. Interviewed on TV at ‘Squawkbox.‘ Asserts levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide TEN TIMES higher than today is positively good thing. No risk to health, environment.