Winter was coming. In AD 536, the first of three massive volcanic eruptions ushered in a mini ice age. It coincided with an epidemic of the plague, the decline of the eastern Roman Empire, and sweeping upheavals across Eurasia. 

Now we have the first evidence that the disruption to climate continued a lot longer than a decade, as was previously thought. The extended cold period lasted until around 660, affecting Europe and Central Asia, and perhaps the rest of the world too.

The work builds on research that used ice cores to identify three significant volcanic eruptions in the years 536, 540 and 547. Now Ulf Büntgen at the Swiss Federal Research Institute in Birmensdorf and his colleagues have used tree ring data from Europe and Central Asia to show that decades of cooler summers – in some cases 4 °C cooler – ensued, probably caused by volcanic particulates in the atmosphere.

Days after the German chancellor triggered the creation of hydrogen plasma for less than a second, China has announced that one of its fusion reactors has broken the record for plasma creation.

On Friday the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced that its boffins had created the 102-second plasma burn in its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) at Hefei, capital city of east China’s Anhui Province.

During the experiment, sensors recorded the plasma’s temperature at 50 million degrees Celsius (90 million degrees Fahrenheit). That’s more than three times as hot as the core of the sun, which NASA estimates is a toasty 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit).

The Chinese experiment is a major step forward in fusion research, but the Middle Kingdom magicians have much bigger plans. They hope the EAST instrument will eventually be able to sustain plasma for 1,000 seconds at twice the current temperature.

Groundbreaking research could help fertility treatment … or create custom humans. UK scientists have been given the green light to use the CRISPR gene editing technique to experiment on unused human embryos in what is described as a boon to biological research. 

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) granted approval to London’s Francis Crick Institute to explore the earliest moments of human life using the latest genetics research techniques.

It is also the first time such research has been cleared by a Western Government regulator.

Scientists in China have tinkered with the DNA of embryos and last year announced they ad altered a gene to correct a blood disorder.

It will remain illegal to implant a manipulated embryo into the womb of a woman.

Francis Crick Institute developmental biologist Dr Kathy Niakan will use the pioneering CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technique to alter genes in healthy human embryos in research lasting a week after fertilisation when embryos reach about 250 cells.

Respected international scientist, Dr Klaus L E Kaiser, issues words of caution in the wake of the Zika virus and concerns over mosquito-caused infectious diseases and ‘dangerous’ climate change.  Kaiser writes:

Just in case you feel a need for being on the lam, nature has a tip for you! Whether you’re hiding out in the bush or mingling with the downtown (abbey ??) crowd, you ought to wear the old-fashioned zebra-type striped garb. You know what I mean, the kind of garb that was common in certain government institutions, like in the picture nearby.

After all, as was recently reported in the journal PLOS ONE in an article entitled “Zebra Stripes through the Eyes of Their Predators, Zebras, and Humans,” it seems to be particularly important in the African savannah to avoid not only them nasty lions but, more importantly, blood-sucking insects, like mosquitos.

The Spark of Life, depicted by the Italian master Michelangelo (1475-1564) in his famous fresco of God giving life to Adam in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican, is a gift from God. 

That gift includes the carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere and the natural process of converting it to living matter, plants and all other life on earth, a process termed “photosynthesis.” Photosynthesis is what converts atmospheric CO2 to carbonaceous materials, the principal components of all plants. In turn, with plants being the basic food for all higher life forms on earth, the latter also contain that element.

Scientists at CalTech claim to have found proof that there is a ninth planet in the solar system, using computer modeling and historical astronomy data.

The new planet has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and has a very eccentric path around our Sun, making one complete orbit every 10,000 or 20,000 years and travelling 200 times further from the Sun than our orbit. The planet hasn’t been seen, but can be determined to exist based on its effect on objects in the Kuiper Belt that encircles our solar system.

“This would be a real ninth planet,” said Mike Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. “There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. It’s a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that’s still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting.”

We may be a step closer to realising the dream of using nuclear fusion to create limitless supplies of energy. An international team claims to have created a technique where they can ‘see’ where energy is delivered during fusion. 

Seeing the energy flow could allow scientists to test different ways to improve a fusion reactor’s design, they claim. 

The team, led by the University of California, San Diego and General Atomics, used the technique a nuclear fusion profession known as ‘fast ignition’.  Fast ignition involves two main stages to start nuclear fusion. 

First, hundreds of lasers compress the fusion fuel – typically a mix of deuterium and tritium – which are contained in a spherical plastic fuel capsule. Then, a high-intensity laser delivers energy to rapidly heat and ignite the compressed fuel.

Scientists consider fast ignition a promising approach toward controlled nuclear fusion because it requires less energy than other designs.

But in order for fast ignition to work as it should, researchers need to overcome a big hurdle; how to direct energy from the high-intensity laser into the densest region of the fuel.

The world is going green – literally, in all kinds of places that were desert-like before. 

Have you ever been in an airplane crossing the semi-arid foot hills of the Rocky Mountains and looking down at the ground? You’ll have seen large green, circular patches between the miles of dry brown land. Those patches are irrigated fields sprouting vegetables and fruits of various kinds. They are providing the ample food for the supermarket near you – and the world at large.

What Plants Need to Grow

Plants need just a few things to grow, water, nutrients, and sunshine. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is just one of those vital nutrients. However that CO2 has become more readily available, thanks to mankind’s combustion of fossil fuels.

Just a couple of hundred years ago, with atmospheric CO2 down to 0.02- 0.03{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}, the globe’s plants were nearly starved of that vital CO2 nutrient. Its natural sources, volcanoes and fumaroles, just could not keep up supplying enough CO2 to the atmosphere to even maintain a steady state between production and consumption. You might say the consumption side took over – somewhat reminiscent of today’s economics.

I am a climate skeptic. Many skeptics know that and have even contributed to my book Climate for the Layman. But we are losing the argument and for one simple reason.  We keep, – or at least some of us – keep up the illusion that there is such a thing as a Global Temperature. There is no such entity and never has been. Furthermore there is no such thing as an average Global Temperature either.

Peace be to Dr. Christy of the University of Alabama, for whom I have the greatest respect. He assures me that there is an average Global Temperature arrived at by inference from remote sensing from satellites. This is done by counting the number of joules, which as you all know I trust, are units of energy.

But may I humbly beg to differ. It is manifestly impossible to put in all the data in order to arrive at an average. It is clear that an average such as NASA provides based upon some 3,486 weather stations situated at 5ft above the ground is just nonsense. Why? Because in the whole of this sacred Planet of ours to determine the temperature based upon such a sparse amount is truly ridiculous. Moreover of the 3,486 stations 3,269 are situated in the relatively warm areas of Europe, America, and Africa. How many stations are there in the vast continent of Antarctica? Merely 8. Read that again – merely 8.

A well-functioning technological society is built on and operates with a mutually advantageous system of benefit and reward; outreach is one of the “in”-terms these days, as are globalisation, internet service and its instantaneous communication facilities.

They have brought about massive shifts in many aspects. One of such shifts is in innovation.

The Competition

There are companies, let’s call them service providers (SPs) that sprung up to make use of the great new global communication potential. Their raison d’être is bringing together actual problems with potential solvers of such. Typically, they publish a “Seeker’s” problem and their registered “Solvers” can compete for the reward.

There is no limit to the type of problems or promised rewards. The problems can range from small improvements for existing materials or technologies to brainstorming of most complex problems and searching for novel ideas, processes, and so forth. Just to give you an example of what it is about, here is a screenshot of an actual and current problem, with a deadline of Feb. 12, 2016, as obtained from a screenshot: 

A landscape architect believes she might have solved the mystery of Stonehenge’s origin. Sarah Ewbank believes the ancient structure was a two-storey “majestic roundhouse” and has used her 30 years of experience in design to create a scale model. 

It has taken nearly a year of research and studying the footprint of the stones to come up with the theory. She thinks it was once used as a multi-purpose venue and says not being an archaeologist has allowed her to think about it logically.

“Archaeologists are very obsessed with dating and the meaning of it,” she said. “I looked at it and thought it was a ruin, and that with my design skills I could work out what was there. In our climate back in the Bronze Age it still rained, and why would you move 75 large stones just so you could dance around twice a year? If you put a roof on it you can use it all year.”

Sarah says the frame would have been made out of oak with thatch used to keep out the elements.

Key to her concept was finding four lines that spanned across the central space, which she interpreted as being huge support beams.

She also noted that the height difference existing between the central giant stones was necessary to allow them be raised from horizontal to vertical.

So NASA assures us that 2015 was the warmest year ever. NOAA does the same and sure enough the Climate Research Unit of the Met Office chimes in.  Well, that is great news isn’t it? Even the Skeptics do not deny the warming but only quibble that it was the third warmest.

You know what? I had not noticed it. Had you? And did it not strike you as ironic that no sooner was the announcement made than the eastern seaboard of the United States received an unprecedented dumping of snow. Reports came in of bitter cold in Japan, freezing temperatures in Taiwan. Of course the snow in the USA received all our attention, so other places on the globe were left out. But in fact it was unusually cold everywhere upon the Earth. Read the site www.iceagenow.info The snow dominated our TV screens.

Nevertheless NASA and the other conspirators in this great plot still insisted that 2015 was the warmest ever and that it was our entire fault. What a ridiculous position! If the Globe is warming it is something for which we should rejoice. It is only these killjoy scientists who have somehow put it about that warming is bad, and that every sort of calamity will follow from Global Warming. That is ‘suggestion’ on a major scale, which is why I call these evil men Black Magicians.

Using data from heavily adjusted land-based temperature readings, NOAA and NASAdeclared yesterday 2015 to be the ‘hottest year ever,’ even though they’ve excluded the satellite record, and worse, ocean temperatures.  That’s important because “70 percent of the Earth is oceans,” and “we can’t measure those temperatures very well,” says MIT’s Dr. Richard Lindzen. “The ocean temps can also be “off a half a degree, a quarter of a degree. Even two-10ths of a degree of change would be tiny but two-100ths is ludicrous.”

2015 was remarkable for two reasons: an ongoingnaturally occurring El Niño event, where the tropical Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures are unusually warm and affect the climate all over the world. This anomaly is responsible for above-normal temps across the planet, and affects countries from Australia to Zimbabwe. There was also the multi-year Pacific blob off the West Coast fueling California’s drought.

The idea that the Globe is warming has been repeated so often and by so many eminent scientists of both sides – I mean both by Warmists and Skeptics – that surely it must true. But the fact is that nothing could be farther from the truth. Believe me, any Tom Dick or Harry with reasonable intelligence can prove this to himself – or herself, if I must be politically correct.

There is no such entity as a Global Temperature. Wait a moment! A few days ago I was assured by email by none other than Professor John Christy that there is an average Global Temperature. Who am I to disagree? And remember he is a renowned Skeptic at the University of Alabama for Space Studies. Sure there is an average temperature, though God alone knows how he or any of the others work it out. But I did not deny some sort of average. What I have said and I repeat – There is no such entity as a Global Temperature. That is entirely different to an average.

Any fool can understand that. As the Sun goes down the temperature falls, even in the Sahara. Where has all that midday heat disappeared? As my central heating switches off the temperature in my living room and throughout my house falls. Should my central heating fail, as it has done every now and then to the consternation of my wife and myself, I am bereft – I feel extremely miserable if I am cold. I may jump about and get on my exercise machine in order to keep warm; I may put on a thick pullover or even crawl into bed, but what must be my inexorable conclusion? The conclusion is that everything everywhere is cooling by itself. 

A vast, previously unrecognised canyon system could be hidden under the Antarctic ice sheet. 

Hints of its presence are seen in the shape of the white continent’s surface, in a largely unexplored region called Princess Elizabeth Land.

If confirmed by a proper geophysical survey – now under way – the winding canyon network would be over 1,000km long and in places as much as 1km deep.

These dimensions would make it bigger than the famous Grand Canyon in the US.

“We know from other areas of Antarctica that the shape of the ice surface is obviously dependent on the shape of the landscape underneath – because the ice is flowing over that landscape,” explained Dr Stewart Jamieson, from Durham University, UK.

“When we look in Princess Elizabeth Land with satellite data, there seem to be some linear features in the surface ice that to us look very reminiscent of a canyon.

“We have traced these faint lineations from the centre of Princess Elizabeth Land all the way to the coast, off to the north. It’s a pretty substantial system,” he told BBC News.

Picture a volcano. Now imagine that its main vent extends in a line. Now imagine that this line is so long that it runs for more than 40,000 miles through the dark recesses of all the world’s oceans, girding the globe like the seams of a baseball. 

Welcome to one of the planet’s most obscure but important features, known rather prosaically as the midocean ridges. Though long enough to circle the moon more than six times, they receive little notice because they lie hidden in pitch darkness. Oceanographers stumbled on their volcanic nature in 1973. Ever since, costly expeditions have slowly explored the undersea world, which typically lies more than a mile down.

The results can make the visions of Jules Verne seem rather tame.

The ridges feature long rift valleys and, down their middles, giant fields of gushing hot springs that shed tons of minerals into icy seawater, slowly building eerie mounds and towers that can be rich in metals like gold and silver. One knobby tower in the Pacific Ocean, nicknamed Godzilla, grew 15 stories high. Thickets of snakelike tubeworms and other bizarre creatures often blanket the hot features, as do hungry prowlers such as spider crabs.

The riot of life coexists with springs hot enough to melt lead or the plastic windows of mini submarines. With extreme care, humans and robots have measured temperatures as high as 780 degrees.

To date, the studies have been episodic. Ridge expeditions venture out fitfully, their schedules determined by fickle weather and budgets, not to mention the vagaries of crew and gear availability.

Now, scientists have inaugurated a major new effort.