Tag: science

Climate Bombshell: Greenland Ice Sheet Recovers as Scientists Say Earlier Loss was Due to Natural Warming Not CO2 Emissions

A popular scare story running in the media is that the Greenland ice sheet is about to slip its moorings under ferocious and unprecedented Arctic heat and arrive in the reader’s front room any day now (I exaggerate, but not much). Meanwhile back in the scientific world, scientists are scrambling to understand what natural causes lie behind the sudden slow-down in Greenland’s summer warming and ice loss dating back to 2010. The recovery of Arctic summer sea ice has been spectacular of late, with the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Center reporting that this year’s September minimum was 1.28 million square kilometres  higher than the 2012 low point of 3.39 million square kilometres.

Three Japanese climatologists have recently published a paper noting that “frequent occurrence of central Pacific El Niño events has played a key role in the [abrupt] slow-down of Greenland warming and possibly Arctic sea ice loss”. Of course such findings play havoc with the simplistic ‘settled’ science notion that carbon dioxide produced by humans burning fossil fuel is the main, if not only, driver of global temperature warming or cooling – a notion that leads many green activists to claim that the climate will stop changing if society signs on to a ‘Net Zero’ CO2 emissions agenda.

For instance, a bizarre ‘fact check’ on a recently published Daily Sceptic article by Facebook partner Climate Feedback claimed there had been no natural climate change for almost 200 years. It quoted Professor Timothy Osborn of the University of East Anglia, who said: “The warming from the late 1800s to the present is all due to human-caused climate change, because natural factors have changed little since then, and even would have caused a slight cooling over the last 70 years rather than the warming we have observed.”

The Japanese scientists argue that they have been able to show that El Niño natural weather oscillations have driven “atmospheric teleconnection” and shifted the tropical rainfall zone to the north. The higher warming up to 2012 was “accelerated” by heat from the Pacific and a phase in the North Atlantic sea current oscillation that favoured warmer conditions over Greenland and enhanced ice melt. Changes around Greenland can be attributed to “natural variability, rather than anthropogenic forcing”, note the scientists, “although most climate models were unable to reasonably simulate the unforced natural variability over Greenland”.

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Major Scientific Publisher Retracting Over 500 Papers

One of the world’s largest open-access journal publishers is retracting over 500 papers, based on the discovery of unethical actions.

London-based Hindawi, which publishes over 200 peer-reviewed journals across multiple disciplines, says its research team in June identified “irregularities” in the peer review process in some of the journals.

“All Hindawi journals employ a series of substantial integrity checks before articles are accepted for publication. Following thorough investigation, we identified that these irregularities in the peer review process were the result of suspicious and unethical activities. Since identifying this unethical activity and breach of our processes, we began proactively adding further checks and improving our processes and continue to do so,” Liz Ferguson, a senior vice president for John Wiley & Sons, Hindawi’s U.S.-based parent company, said in a statement on Sept. 28.

As a result of the investigation, 511 papers will be retracted.

The papers were all published since August 2020.

Sixteen journals published the papers that are being retracted.

Some of the authors and editors who contributed to the articles may have been “unwitting participants” in the unethical scheme, according to Ferguson. She said that the scheme involved “manipulation of the peer review process and the infrastructure that supports it.”

Richard Bennett, vice president of researcher and publishing services for Hindawi, told the Retraction Watch blog that the review uncovered “coordinated peer review rings,” which featured reviewers and editors coordinating to get papers through peer review.

Neither Ferguson nor Bennett identified any of the suspects.

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Scientific Censorship: Climate Fanatics Urge Removal of Study Questioning Evidence of a “Climate Crisis”

Claiming that four Italian scientists who published a peer-reviewed paper earlier this year finding that there is not yet evidence of any “climate crisis” wrote the study in “bad faith,” climate fanatic scientists are urging that the journal that published the study remove it from public view.

The study in question comes to the conclusion that the so-called “climate crisis” that the mainstream media say is already upon us is not evident — at least yet — and that it is counterproductive to claim that such a crisis exists.

The study, done by four Italian scientists — physicist Gianluca Alimonti, professor of agrometeorology Luigi Mariani, atmospheric physicist Franco Prodi, and physicist Renato Angelo Ricci — states that “the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet.”

Further, the Italian study calls into question the wisdom of leaving such a “crisis” for our children without the necessary tools — fossil fuels, etc. — they will need to adapt to such a crisis should it ever come to bear.

“Leaving the baton to our children without burdening them with the anxiety of being in a climate emergency would allow them to face the various problems in place (energy, agricultural-food, health, etc.) with a more objective and constructive spirit, with the goal of arriving at a weighted assessment of the actions to be taken without wasting the limited resources at our disposal in costly and ineffective solutions,” the Italian study states.

The study was first published in January, and has been cited by mainstream media outlets such as Sky News Australia. Only now are other scientists, interviewed by French news service AFP, calling for the paper to be memory-holed.

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Biologists Create a New Type of Human Cells

Professor Vincent Pasque and his colleagues at KU Leuven have used stem cells to create a new kind of human cell in the lab. The new cells closely mirror their natural counterparts in early human embryos. As a result, scientists are better able to understand what occurs just after an embryo implants in the womb. The was recently published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

A human embryo implants in the womb around seven days after fertilization if everything goes correctly. Due to technological and ethical constraints, the embryo becomes unavailable for study at that point. That is why scientists have already created stem cell models for various kinds of embryonic and extraembryonic cells in order to investigate human development in a dish.

Vincent Pasque’s team at KU Leuven has developed the first model for a specific type of human embryo cells, extraembryonic mesoderm cells. Professor Pasque: “These cells generate the first blood in an embryo, help to attach the embryo to the future placenta, and play a role in forming the primitive umbilical cord. In humans, this type of cell appears at an earlier developmental stage than in mouse embryos, and there might be other important differences between species. That makes our model especially important: research in mice may not give us answers that also apply to humans.”

The model cells were created by the researchers using human stem cells, which can still grow into all cell types in an embryo. The new cells closely resemble their natural counterparts in human embryos and hence serve as an excellent model for that cell type.

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Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Vaccinate a Human

A box full of genetically modified mosquitoes successfully vaccinated a human against malaria in a trial funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The study involved about 200 hungry mosquitos biting a human subject’s arm. Human participants placed their arms directly over a small box full of the bloodsuckers.

“We use the mosquitoes like they’re 1,000 small flying syringes,” said researcher Dr. Sean Murphy, as reported by NPR.

Three to five “vaccinations” took place over 30-day intervals.

The mosquitoes gave minor versions of malaria that didn’t make people sick, but gave them antibodies. Efficacy from the antibodies lasted a few months.

“Half of the individuals in each vaccine group did not develop detectable P. falciparum infection, and a subset of these individuals was subjected to a second CHMI 6 months later and remained partially protected. These results support further development of genetically attenuated sporozoites as potential malaria vaccines,” researchers concluded.

Carolina Reid was one of twenty-six participants in the study.

“My whole forearm swelled and blistered. My family was laughing, asking like, ‘why are you subjecting yourself to this?’”

Reid enjoyed her experience so much that she says she wants to participate in as many vaccine trials as she can. For this research, each participant received $4,100 as an incentive.

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THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS: ODD NEW METASURFACE MATERIAL IS A “DOORWAY” TO STRANGE QUANTUM PHENOMENON

A phenomenon that often accompanies technological innovations involves how they tend to become smaller with their improvement over time. From televisions and communication devices like telephones to computers and microchip components, many of the technologies we use every day occupy a fraction of the space in our homes and offices that their predecessors did just decades ago.

In keeping with this trend, it is no surprise that a new tech developed by scientists at Sandia National Laboratories, in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, may soon replace cumbersome technologies than once required an entire room to operate, thanks to an ultrathin invention that could change the future of computation, encryption, and a host of other technologies.

At the heart of the invention and its function is a peculiar phenomenon that has perplexed physicists for decades, known as quantum entanglement.

Entanglement involves particles (photons, in this case) that are linked in such a way that any changes that affect one of them will affect the other. Strangely, the distance between entangled particles does not affect the way such changes occur, a peculiarity first described by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen in 1935, which Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.”

Although physicists have difficulty reconciling this mainstay of the quantum mechanical world with our concepts of classical mechanics, scientists have nonetheless succeeded in tapping the strange phenomenon of entanglement in developing new information technologies, improving encryption technologies, and even correcting errors in the burgeoning field of quantum computing.

Now, the creation of an all-new material by the Sandia Labs and Max Planck Institute team could further improve efforts to harness quantum entanglement in the production of innovative new technologies.

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Never-before-seen Diamond Crystal Structure Found Inside A Meteorite

New research indicates that a rare form of diamond may originate in the burbling cores of distant worlds, arriving on Earth thanks to violent cosmic collisions.

According to a team of scientists in Australia, the mineral lonsdaleite—a type of diamond with a hexagonal crystal structure—can be found in meteorites that were likely created when an asteroid collided with a dwarf planet billions of years ago. They investigated 18 ureilite fragments using advanced electron microscopy, to better understand how the lonsdaleite within the space rocks formed. Their research is published today in PNAS.

“This study proves categorically that lonsdaleite exists in nature,” said study co-author Dougal McCulloch, director of the Microscopy and Microanalysis Facility at RMIT in Australia, in a university release.

Lonsdaleite has previously been found in meteorites, including the Diablo Canyon meteorite, a fragment found in Arizona’s famous Meteor Crater. The mineral has also been created in lab settings, but otherwise is vanishingly rare on Earth. The mineral differs from usual diamonds in its crystal structure, which is hexagonal (ordinary diamonds have a cubic crystal structure.) Separate research earlier this year indicated that lonsdaleite’s structure makes it harder than other diamonds.

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Swiss Government Scientist Says We May Be on the Brink of Discovering Alien Life

A scientist employed by the government of Switzerland has made a bold prediction about the discovery of alien life — and his reasoning seems pretty compelling.

As Space.com reports, Dr. Sascha Quanz of Switzerland’s state-run Swiss Federal Institute of Technology said he thinks humans are likely to discover life beyond our planet within the next 25 years.

“In 1995, my colleague [and Noble Prize laureate] Didier Queloz discovered the first planet outside our solar system,” Quanz said during the opening of the institute’s new Center for the Origin and Prevalence of Life earlier in September. “Today, more than 5,000 exoplanets are known and we are discovering them on a daily basis.”

Of those thousands of exoplanets, dozens are believed to be at least potentially habitable, with the conditions on their surface ripe for liquid water. And as he said, that number is growing all the time.

Now, these fascinating worlds are inviting closer scrutiny with advanced technology.

“We need to investigate the atmospheres of these planets,” the Swiss professor said. “We need an observational approach that would allow us to take pictures of these planets.”

Though the James Webb Space Telescope has already captured arresting images of one giant exoplanet, its primary focus is on imagery of stars and is not, as Quanz said, “powerful enough” to capture images of smaller exoplanets.

That’s where two of the astrophysicist’s projects — one giant ground-based instrument being developed as an addition to the Extremely Large Telescope that’s currently under construction in Chile, and a European Space Agency mission to study the atmospheres of exoplanets for signs of extraterrestrial life — come in.

That latter mission, known as Large Interferometer for Exoplanets or LIFE, conceived in 2017, is still in an early study phase, and has not yet received either approval or funding from the ESA, Space.com notes.

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“Nothing To Do With Man” – Astrophysicist Says Climate-Cultists “Are On A Gravy Train” To Make Money

Piers Corbyn – physicist, meteorologist, and elder brother of former UK Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn – explained to the shocked RT anchor that the climate “has always been changing, but this has nothing to do with man”

The astrophysicist instead believes that changes in the Earth’s climate and its weather are dictated primarily by cyclical activity on the surface of the sun (and not, pointedly, by the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere). 

“For one thing science doesn’t do settled opinions,” Corbyn says.

“And for another they are all wrong.”

“Surely man has something to with this,” exclaims the struggling new anchor, to which Corbyn responds:

“No, the only connection is that man is here at the same time as the sun and the moon are doing things.”

The frustrated anchor falls back to consensus, asking “so how come then that so many climate change scientists disagree with you and they get so much support for that?”

Corbyn’s laughing response was straightforward:

“…those that say this are just trying to make money… They’re on a gravy train for heaven’s sake.”

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Synthetic Embryo With Brain and Heart Formed Without Using Eggs or Sperm.

Asynthetic embryo with cells capable of forming a brain and a beating heart was developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge using mouse stem cells. EuroNews described the effort as “yet another success in the unfolding race to develop embryos from human and mouse stem cells.”

The team, led by Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, developed the embryo model without using any eggs or sperm. The researchers used stem cells, specifically three types found in early mammalian development.

“By inducing the expression of a particular set of genes and establishing a unique environment for their interactions, the researchers were able to get the stem cells to ‘talk’ to each other,” explains a summary of the work.

“The stem cells self-organised into structures that progressed through the successive developmental stages until they had beating hearts and the foundations of the brain, as well as the yolk sac where the embryo develops and gets nutrients from in its first weeks.”

The synthetic embryo model developed by the Cambridge team is unique, as it reached a record level of development where the entire brain, including the anterior portion, began to develop.

The findings, which took researchers over a decade of work, could potentially be useful in understanding why some pregnancies fail along with developing synthetic organs for patients awaiting transplants.

The research also opens “new possibilities to study the mechanisms of neurodevelopment in an experimental model,” according to Zernicka-Goetz.

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