Written by bbc.co.uk
Image copyright: REUTERSSeveral of the tech firms whose products have been allegedly compromised by the CIA have given their first reactions to the claims.Wikileaks published thousands of documents said to detail the US spy agency’s hacking tools on Tuesday.
They included allegations the CIA had developed ways to listen in on smartphone and smart TV microphones.Apple’s statement was the most detailed, saying it had already addressed some of the vulnerabilities.
Written by Kip Hansen
‘Alternative facts’ is a term in law to describe inconsistent sets of facts put forth in a court given that there is plausible evidence to support both alternatives. The term is also used to describe competing facts for the two sides of the case. – Wikipedia
So . . . what exactly is a ‘fact’? From the Wikipedia:
A fact is something that has occurred or is correct. Facts may be checked by reason, experiment, personal experience, or may be argued from authority. In the most basic sense, a scientific fact is an objective and verifiable observation, in contrast with a hypothesis or theory, which is intended to explain or interpret facts.
Written by Dr Judith Curry
The smartest people on the planet want to oppose Trump & the best they can come up with is a march in support of themselves? – Roger Pielke Jr
A mega March for Science has been planned for Earth Day (April 22) in Washington DC. The web site states:
The March for Science demonstrates our passion for science and sounds a call to support and safeguard the scientific community. Recent policy changes have caused heightened worry among scientists.
Written by Dr Tim Ball
Emotionally, it is almost impossible to walk a mile in another person’s shoes. It is particularly true when the other person is of a different sex. I say this because I believe a climate science story that must be told is the degree of difference in nastiness directed at those who questioned the prevailing AGW wisdom.
I think there are ways that a person can get a sense of the experience of another’s shoes, but it is only a sense. For example, as a young boy I delivered newspapers and on one occasion was attacked by a large dog. Since then I have been afraid of large dogs, and that has influenced my life because I walk every day, but avoid areas where I know there are large dogs.
Written by Yin, J., Fang, X. and Su, Y.
Paper Reviewed: Yin, J., Fang, X. and Su, Y. 2016. Correlation between climate and grain harvest fluctuations and the dynastic transitions and prosperity in China over the past two millennia. The Holocene 26: 1914-1923.
In their study of climate change impacts on dynastic wellbeing in China over the period 210 BC to AD 1910, Yin et al. (2016) focused on relationships among dynastic transition and prosperity and how they were impacted by historical climate change and its impacts on grain harvests. And what did they learn by so doing?
Written by scientific-alliance.org
Despite the dizzying rate of progress in the modern world – fuelled by human ingenuity – it often seems that people would prefer to see no change. Not only that, but we have a seemingly inbuilt perception that certain things – our local environment, the weather etc – should conform to an established pattern we are familiar with and that any change is automatically for the worse.
Written by Tony Heller
The US has by far the best temperature record of any large area on Earth. We have an excellent network of 1200+ USHCN (United States Historical Climatology Network) stations with data going back to 1895 and earlier. The raw USHCN temperature record shows that there has been a slight cooling since 1920. USHCN is a subset of GHCND (Global Historical Climatology Network Daily.)
Cooling doesn’t suit the needs of NOAA and NASA, so they cherry picked a small subset of GHCND stations which show a large amount of warming since 1920, for use in the global GSN temperature record.
Written by Dr Klaus L E Kaiser
According to the Chinese calendar, this year (2017 A.D.) is also the “Lunar Year of the Fire Rooster.” In accustomed fashion, Canada Post (CP) has issued a special stamp that celebrates the occasion with a new rooster issue, surely with more vivid colors than in the previous “Wood Rooster” (2005) issue.
With the Lunar calendar cycle repeating every 11 (Gregorian) calendar years or so, what’s different now? If you are an artist, you might note that (as per CP), the 2017 issue is significantly more red than the previous stamp, more or less artistic, and so forth. In both stamps the color blue is essentially absent. However, the rooster may not be as important as other “elements” for this year, namely the color BLUE and the element cobalt. 
Written by Helen Briggs
Image copyright: SPLNeanderthals dosed themselves with painkillers and possibly penicillin, according to a study of their teeth. One sick Neanderthal chewed the bark of the poplar tree, which contains a chemical related to aspirin.
He may also have been using penicillin, long before antibiotics were developed. The evidence comes from ancient DNA found in the dental tartar of Neanderthals living about 40,000 years ago in central Europe.
Written by Kenneth Richard
In a late February (2017) interview on a U.S. news program, mechanical engineer Bill Nye claimed that the settled science says humans have been warming the planet at a rate that is unnaturally and “catastrophically” fast since the year 1750 .
“It’s a settled question. The speed that climate change is happening is caused by humans. Instead of climate change happening on timescales of millions of years or 15,000 years, it’s happening on the timescale of decades, and now years. … Humans are causing it [climate change] to happen catastrophically fast. [Without human activity], the climate would be like it was in 1750.”
Written by James Delingpole
More fake news from the Washington Post: turns out that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has helped save Americans from a substance which kills 4.2 million people every year – air pollution.
No really. If you believe WaPo it’s the fifth deadliest killer known to man:
Written by Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
First paper: Insidious pre-industrial warm phase: 4000 years ago glaciers in Norway had almost completely melted away. The University of Bergen in Norway reported 14 February 2017 on the climate in Norway 4000 years ago, when in the summertime it was on average two to three degrees warmer than today. Most glaciers in the country at the time had almost completely melted away and gone. Instead of examining these what for many are unexpected warm phases, the team of authors in the press release chose to focus the public’s attention on concern and fear for the future.
And this time – for sure – the glaciers are never coming back again, even though they did so after the last warm phase.
Written by Paul Homewood
More fake news from the Guardian:
Spring is arriving ever earlier in the northern hemisphere. One sedge species in Greenland is springing to growth 26 days earlier than it did a decade ago. And in the US, spring arrived 22 days early this year in Washington DC.
Written by University of Texas at Austin
A team of engineers led by 94-year-old John Goodenough, professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery, has developed the first all-solid-state battery cells that could lead to safer, faster-charging, longer-lasting rechargeable batteries for handheld mobile devices, electric cars and stationary energy storage.
Written by Arthur Viterito, Ph.D. Professor of Geography
Introduction: The Correlation of Seismic Activity and Recent Global Warming [1] (CSARGW) demonstrated that increasing seismic activity in the globe’s high geothermal flux areas (HGFA) is strongly correlated with global temperatures (r=0.785) from 1979-2015.
The mechanism driving this correlation is amply documented and well understood by oceanographers and seismologists. Namely, increased seismic activity in the HGFA (i.e., the mid-ocean’s spreading zones) serves as a proxy indicator of higher geothermal flux in these regions.
Written by Marc Morano – Climate Depot
Did government researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tamper with temperature data to boost the global warming campaign?Dr. John Bates, a climate scientist and former official with NOAA, says they did.
This needs to be fully investigated, but we must not allow climate campaigners to turn this investigation into an exercise in whitewashing. CFACT is petitioning President Trump to ensure the people investigating NOAA are genuine, impartial outsiders.