Three centuries ago, the world ran on green power. Wood was used for heating and cooking, charcoal for smelting and smithing, wind or water-power for pumps mills and ships, and whale oil or tallow for lamps. People and soldiers walked or rode horses, and millions of horses and oxen pulled ploughs, wagons, coaches and artillery.

But smoke from open fires choked cities, forests were stripped of trees, most of the crops went to feed draft animals, and streets were littered with horse manure. For many people, life was “nasty, brutish and short”.Then the steam engine was developed, and later the internal combustion engine, electricity and refrigeration came along.

Green power was replaced by coal and oil. Carbon energy powered factories, mills, pumps, ships, trains, and smelters; and cars, trucks and tractors replaced the work-horses. The result was a green revolution – forests began to regrow and vast areas of crop-land used for horse feed were released to produce food for humans. Poverty declined and population soared.

But new environmental problems emerged. Smoke pollution from burning cheap dirty coal in millions of open fires, old boilers and smelters produced massive smog problems in cities like London and Pittsburgh.The solution was improved technology, sensible pollution-control laws and the supply of coal gas and coal-powered electricity to the cities.

In Orlando, Florida is a lone climate researcher who, for almost eight years, has been putting the U.S. government’s best scientists and science agencies to shame, when it comes to accurately making major climate predictions. This is especially true when compared to Al Gore-style global warming politicians, government funded university Ph.D. climate scientists and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN-IPCC).

The UN-IPCC is the UN’s climate research arm that historians may someday remember best for unreliable climate models and associated wildly exaggerated, and erroneous temperature and sea level rise predictions. The “climategate’ scandal at the UN will likewise be prominent for the disclosure that its supposed ‘best climate scientists” falsified or manipulated climate data to fit the politically motivated manmade global warming storyline.

In March 2013, while I was the Florida Editor for the online conservative journal Watchdogwire.com, I had the chance to review the track record of this maverick in the field of climatology. When I was done I put my name on a column naming him “America’s best climate prediction expert.” I added to it in April 2014 updating his list of predictions he had made. He is Mr. John L. Casey, a former White House and NASA space program consultant, Space Shuttle engineer, and high tech start-up company executive.

It’s unfortunate that Pope Francis now also joined the church of climatology [1]. However, many of his followers in the Catholic realm will doubt that this is a command by St. Peter. 

A few weeks ago I returned home from attending the 2014 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP-20, at Lima, Peru. This mega-event gave me the impression of a clerical synod by a world-encompassing religious community. There were many nice people from all corners of the world whom I had cordial conversations with. They all meant the best for planet Earth.

However, the main problem of this event was that 99.9{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the attendees viewed the most important nutrient for all life on earth (carbon dioxide, CO2) as a hazardous substance. That view was shared even by the attending farmers who should profit from better harvests [2] due to improved CO2 fertilization.

I asked approximately 50 people from 25 countries several questions and talked to many more. Only 5 people (10{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of those I asked) knew even the order of magnitude of CO2 in the atmosphere (0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}). The others answered “I really should know that but cannot answer the question.” None knew that the mean global temperature has remained constant over the last 10 years and has not been increasing for 18 years (in contrast to predictions from models by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC). Among those I asked, some claimed that the temperature had risen anywhere between 0.1 and 10.0 (!!) degrees – that’s not a lie. None knew that the global sea-ice extent recently reached the same values as have been observed at the beginning of the 1980s (the extent has increased in the Antarctic and slightly decreased in the Arctic).

A new type of antibiotic developed from soil culture could solve one of the most pressing medical problems of the modern age: antibiotic resistance. New drugs could save millions of lives lost to killer microbes. 

A paper in the journal Nature details how the new antibiotic, dubbed teixobactin, proved completely effective at healing mice infected with the most common drug-resistant forms of super-bug MRSA and tuberculosis. What’s more, it could take a long while for bacteria to become resistant – which is particularly useful as pathogens around the world build up resistance to treatments.

“The need for new antibiotics is acute due to the global problem of pathogen drug resistance.Teixobactin’s dual mode of action and binding to non-peptidic regions suggest that resistance will be very difficult to develop,” said Dr Kim Lewis, co-founder of biotech firm NovoBiotic, which helped develop the drug.

For years now, doctors have been warning about the problems coming down the line from antibiotic resistance. The overprescription of the drugs, and their wholesale use in the livestock farming business, has led to the evolution of illnesses that laugh in the face of even the most complex antibiotic compounds.

Last month a UK government study [PDF] on the subject estimated that antibiotic-resistant infections kill 700,000 people each year worldwide, and that without new forms of the medicine, that could rise to 10 million a year by 2050.

Scientists have found that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) reduces transpiration and overall evapotranspiration in all biomass. As a consequence, the overall amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is reduced.  

The findings are published in ‘CO2 and Temperature Effects of Evapotranspiration and Irrigated Agriculture,’ (Jorge A. Ramfrez and Bryce Finnerty). [1]

The authors found that the result of lowering atmospheric water vapour is to buffer the “positive feedback” of supposed global warming. Conventional climate science has for decades believed that rising atmospheric CO2 causes rises in global temperature. But global thermometer readings and satellite data proves no increase in temperatures for nearly twenty years despite a substantial increase in atmospheric CO2 levels during the same period.

Most climate scientists had believed that more CO2 in the climate system causes a positive feedback i.e. rises in temperature. Typically, their thesis is that:

“The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere exists in direct relation to the temperature. If you increase the temperature, more water evaporates and becomes vapor, and vice versa. So when something else causes a temperature increase (such as extra CO2 from fossil fuels), more water evaporates. Then, since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, this additional water vapor causes the temperature to go up even further-a positive feedback.” [2]

However, findings by independent scientists (outside the realms of politicized government climate science) and involved in researching plant evapotranspiration, supports earlier peer-reviewed scientific research from the 1980’s that flies the face of positive feedback meme. There is now a growing recognition of a body of evidence telling us that the global biomass of plants significantly impacts evapotranspiration and changes in planted environment directly impact climate.

If you ever walked along an ocean shore you’ll have seen the constant waves rolling in. According to Wikipedia, the idea to harness that wave energy has been proposed as early as 1799. Over the last 15 years several technologies have been proposed. Among them, the Pelamis wave power system is one of a couple of dozens of ocean wave energy extraction schemes.

SAN FRANCISCO — The ancient Maya civilization collapsed due to a century-long drought, new research suggests. 

Minerals taken from Belize’s famous underwater cave, known as the Blue Hole (pictured from space, right), as well as lagoons nearby, show that an extreme drought occurred between the year 800 and 900, right when the Maya civilization disintegrated. After the rains returned, the Maya moved north — but they disappeared again a few centuries later, and that disappearance occurred at the same time as another dry spell, the sediments reveal. [In Photos: Stunning Sinkholes]

Although the findings aren’t the first to tie a drought to the Maya culture’s demise, the new results strengthen the case that dry periods were indeed the culprit. That’s because the data come from several spots in a region central to the Maya heartland, said study co-author André Droxler, an Earth scientist at Rice University.

The Maya civilization flourished in the Yucatan peninsula from 300 to 700. These ancient Mesoamericans built stunning pyramids, mastered astronomy, and developed both a hieroglyphic writing system and a complex calendar system. The Maya calendar became famous in recent years when some doomsayers wrongly claimed that it predicted the end of the world in 2012.

After more than eight years analysing all aspects of climate alarm, from the initial scare that man’s emissions of carbon dioxide caused global warming to a name-change to man-made climate change – when the globe stopped warming despite ever increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide – to a further name-change to climate disruption – then it was realised that climate changes all the time – it is time to face the music and ask: “Where is the evidence regarding man-made climate change?” 

Let me to point you in the direction of some recent reports and studies that use the scientific method to analyse and appraise the current situation of blaming carbon dioxide emissions, especially those coming from human activity.

1. There has never ever, as yet, been presented any empirical evidence that can be interpreted as proof that the totality of atmospheric carbon dioxide has any influence upon the climate; quite the reverse: climate influences the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The man-made proportion of the total amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide is in any case only around 3{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}, that’s three percent and is the figure detailed in several UN IPCC reports.

2. For an extensive report on many popular climate alarm scenarios, please refer to Marc Morano’s summary.

3. Here is proof, one of many, that there is no magical greenhouse effect, making or keeping earth warmer that it should be and being enhanced by the increase in carbon dioxide.

4. The scientific truth about atmospheric carbon dioxide is that is causes atmospheric cooling and no global warming at all is even possible; quite the opposite of what you have been told thus far!

In a detailed new mathematical study the actual atmospheric effect of infrared-active gases are examined for climatic impact. Principia Scientific International (PSI) researcher, Jef Reynen explores the so-called ‘stack model’ of earth’s climate and finds that it is possible to more accurately model climate without factoring in any ‘greenhouse gas effect.’  

His new paper, Lessons from a chicken wire stack on the Moon, re-examines a concept first addressed at PSI three years ago. Back then Reynen considered a finite difference one-stream-heat-flow formulation. More recently, he has employed the more transparent finite element method (FEM).

Due to the recurrent failures of computer simulations to model climate, Reynen’s more pragmatic approach employs the concept of a stack of chicken wire in a vacuum environment (that is, where convection is not possible) e.g. on the Moon. In a vacuum, the stack has a temperature and heat flux completely defined by the process of radiation, without convection. Conventional computer climate modeling disavows itself of the dominance of convection (e.g. wind impacts) and applies a far more radiation-obsessed approach; whereas in the reality of planet Earth, it is nearly the other way around. This, says Reynen, has been climate science’s great error.

News reports that most cases of cancer are the result of bad luck dominated the headlines at the start of the year. But there has since been a lot of criticism of the reporting, and some of the science itself. So what should the reports have said? 

Headline-writers and news bulletin editors around the world just couldn’t get enough of a new study of cancer published on 2 January. “Two thirds of cancers are due to bad luck” reported one typical news story – and most other media outlets had similar headlines.

But there’s been criticism of the way this statistic was reported, some of it directed at journalists, and some at the researchers themselves.

To understand the study, published in the journal Science, it helps to understand the scientific basics of cancer.

The disease occurs when cells in a specific part of the body begin to mutate and reproduce uncontrollably. The cancerous cells can invade and destroy surrounding tissues.

The researchers from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the US reported they had found a correlation between the number of cell divisions that take place in a given tissue and the likelihood that it would become cancerous. They looked at 31 tissue types (two common cancers, prostate and breast cancer, were not considered).

“Some tissues are fairly stable, so, for instance, muscle and brain tissue does not divide once it’s done developing,” explains P Z Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, in the US.

“So those tissues have a very low likelihood of coming down with cancer, whereas things like the lining of your intestine is constantly being regenerated and sloughed off and so those cells have a high proliferative output and they’re much more likely to become cancerous.”

I don’t care much for Facebook which is filled with trivia, nevertheless some eminent Skeptics have made use of it.  So I must admit that I was both amused and flattered to be invited to be a Friend with Jim Peden, the Astrophysicist, and one of my absolute heroes. So two days ago I was lead by Jim on Facebook to an essay in Climate Change Dispatch by his colleague at Principia Scientific International, Dr Pierre R Latour.

What were the headlines?

Fred Singer closing in on Fact: CO2 Doesn’t Affect Global temperature!

Here is the link and I hope and pray that all Skeptic Professors and sincere sceptic writers and so on and so forth will read this article by Dr Latour. I immediately passed it on to Hans Schreuder since it vindicates his well-known essay that Greenhouse Gases cool the Planet. This essay by Hans Schreuder is central to what I call my book – Climate for the Layman – but which is, in fact, a compilation of articles and essays.

For too long many of us Skeptics have been fighting on marshy ground – that is on the same marshy ground as the Warmists, with just a light variation. While the Warmists declared and still declare every day that the Globe is warming dangerously by virtue of the Greenhouse Gases, some Skeptics have conceded that Greenhouse Gases warm the atmosphere but only a little, not dangerously.

That is what I mean by fighting on marshy ground, by fighting on the same ground as the Warmists. No wonder they stand their ground – it is as if the Skeptics are fundamentally in agreement with them, only differing in scale.

Let’s simply state what the First Law of Thermodynamics is.  From Wiki:

First law of thermodynamics: When energy passes, as work, as heat, or with matter, into or out from a system, its internal energy changes in accord with the law of conservation of energy. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the first kind are impossible.

So whether you’re talking of a steel shell around a heated sphere, or a gas around a planet, or a component of a gas around a planet, ask yourself the question:

“Does it pass energy as work, heat, or with matter, into the sphere or planet?“

Consider the passive steel shell around the internally heated sphere, the so-called steel greenhouse.

1.  Does the passive steel shell do work on the sphere?  No, it doesn’t touch the sphere, or at most, simply rests upon the sphere’s surface.

2.  Does the passive steel shell send heat to the sphere?  No, it’s passive firstly, and secondly, it’s cooler.  It has no heat to send to the sphere.  Therefore, it sends no heat to the sphere.

3.  Does the passive steel shell pass matter into the sphere?  No, there’s no exchange of matter.

Therefore, the shell does not cause the sphere to heat up beyond the heat input that the sphere is internally provided.  QED.

The same goes for a gas around a planet, in the context of the sophistically-named “radiative greenhouse effect” of climate pseudoscience.

The First Law of Thermodynamics is all you need to debunk climate alarm, and its sophistical greenhouse effect.

Comical, really.

Whether it’s glowing lava snaking into the sea or lightning blooming in billowing ash clouds, the sight of an erupting volcano inspires awe and wonder.

Now imagine 1,500 of these suckers all shooting off at once. That’s how many active volcanoesdot the Earth, plus an unknown number hidden under the ocean. Every day, between 10 and 20 volcanoes are erupting somewhere on Earth, but scientists say the chance of every volcano on the planet erupting at once is so small that it’s impossible. But what if it did happen? Would Earth as it we know it survive?

Not likely, said Parv Sethi, a geologist at Radford University in Virginia. Even if only the volcanoes on land blasted in sync, the effects would trigger an environmental domino chain many, many times more powerful than a nuclear winter, Sethi said. “Things will become so bad that I wouldn’t want to survive on an Earth like this,” he told Live Science.

The two big hazards from a worldwide volcanic cataclysm are ash and volcanic gases. (While the explosions and outpourings of lava would be deadly to people living close by, the number of deaths would pale compared to those caused by the ensuing climate change.)

The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in China was an era of significant advances in science and art. Europe also flourished, leaving the Middle Ages behind and embracing what became known as the Renaissance. 

The news is abuzz with a socket wrench having been printed with a 3D printer at the international space station. It’s claimed that this wrench was required to be used in an unstated task.