Burt Rutan on Climate Change - WUWT-TV November 14th 2012

The Belief That CO2 Can Regulate Climate Is “Sheer Absurdity” Says Prominent German Meteorologist

NoTrickZone
P. Gosselin

Meteorologist Klaus-Eckard Puls

Physicist and meteorologist Klaus-Eckart Puls was interviewed by Bettina Hahne-Waldscheck of the Swiss magazine “factum“.

I’ve translated and summarized the interview, paraphrasing for brevity.

factum: You’ve been criticising the theory of man-made global warming for years. How did you become skeptical?

Puls: Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data – first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first checking it. The CO2-climate hysteria in Germany is propagated by people who are in it for lots of money, attention and power.

factum: Is there really climate change?

Puls: Climate change is normal. There have always been phases of climate warming, many that even far exceeded the extent we see today. But there hasn’t been any warming since 1998. In fact the IPCC suppliers of data even show a slight cooling.

factum: The IPCC is projecting 0.2°C warming per decade, i.e. 2 to 4°C by the year 2100. What’s your view?

Puls: These are speculative model projections, so-called scenarios – and not prognoses. Because of climate’s high complexity, reliable prognoses just aren’t possible. Nature does what it wants, and not what the models present as prophesy. The entire CO2-debate is nonsense. Even if CO2 were doubled, the temperature would rise only 1°C. The remainder of the IPCC’s assumed warming is based purely on speculative amplification mechanisms. Even though CO2 has risen, there has been no warming in 13 years.

factum: How does sea level rise look?

Puls: Sea level rise has slowed down. Moreover, it has dropped a half centimeter over the last 2 years. It’s important to remember that mean sea level is a calculated magnitude, and not a measured one. There are a great number of factors that influence sea level, e.g. tectonic processes, continental shifting, wind currents, passats, volcanoes. Climate change is only one of ten factors.

factum: What have we measured at the North Sea?

Puls: In the last 400 years, sea level at the North Sea coast has risen about 1.40 meters. That’s about 35 centimeters per century. In the last 100 years, the North Sea has risen only 25 centimeters.

factum: Does the sea level rise have anything to do with the melting North Pole?

Puls: That’s a misleading conclusion. Even if the entire North Pole melted, there would be no sea level rise because of the principles of buoyancy.

factum: Is the melting of the glaciers in the Alps caused by global warming?

Puls: There are many factors at play. As one climbs a mountain, the temperature drops about 0.65°C per 100 meters. Over the last 100 years it has gotten about 0.75°C warmer and so the temperature boundary has shifted up about 100 meters. But observations tell us that also ice 1000 meters up and higher has melted. Clearly there are other reasons for this, namely soot and dust. But soot and dust do not only have anthropogenic origins; they are also caused by nature via volcanoes, dust storms and wildfires. Advancing and retreating of glaciers have always taken place throughout the Earth’s history. Glaciology studies clearly show that glaciers over the last 10,0000 years were smaller on average than today.

factum: In your view, melting Antarctic sea ice and the fracture of a huge iceberg 3 years ago are nothing to worry about?

Puls: To the contrary, the Antarctic ice cap has grown both in area and volume over the last 30 years, and temperature has declined. This 30-year trend is clear to see. The Amundsen Scott Station of the USA shows that temperature has been declining there since 1957. 90% of the Earth’s ice is stored in Antarctica, which is one and half times larger than Europe.

factum: Then why do we always read it is getting warmer down there?

Puls: Here they are only talking about the West Antarctic peninsula, which is where the big chunk of ice broke off in 2008 – from the Wilkins-Shelf. This area is hardly 1% of the entire area of Antarctica, but it is exposed to Southern Hemisphere west wind drift and some of the strongest storms on the planet.

factum: What causes such massive chunks of ice to break off?

Puls: There are lots of factors, among them the intensity of the west wind fluctuations. These west winds have intensified over the last 20 years as part of natural ocean and atmospheric cycles, and so it has gotten warmer on the west coast of the Antarctic peninsula. A second factor are the larger waves associated with the stronger storms. The waves are more powerful and so they break off more ice. All these causes are meteorological and physical, and have nothing to do with a climate catastrophe.

factum: Then such ice breaks had to have occurred in the past too?

Puls: This has been going on for thousands of years, also in the 1970s, back when all the talk was about “global cooling”. Back then there were breaks with ice chunks hundreds of square kilometres in area. People were even discussing the possibilities of towing these huge ice chunks to dry countries like South Africa or Namibia in order to use them as a drinking water supply.

factum: What about all the media photos of polar bears losing their ice?

Puls: That is one of the worst myths used for generating climate hysteria. Polar bears don’t eat ice, they eat seals. Polar bears go hungry if we shoot their food supply of seals. The polar bear population has increased with moderately rising temperatures, from 5000 50 years ago to 25,000 today.

factum: But it is true that unlike Antarctica, the Arctic is melting?

Puls: It has been melting for 30 years. That also happened twice already in the last 150 years. The low point was reached in 2007 and the ice has since begun to recover. There have always been phases of Arctic melting. Between 900 and 1300 Greenland was green on the edges and the Vikings settled there.

factum: And what do you say about the alleged expanding deserts?

Puls: That doesn't exist. For example the Sahara is shrinking and has lost in the north an area as large as Germany over the last 20 years. The same is true in the South Sahara. The famine that struck Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia was mainly caused by the leasing of large swaths of land to large international corporations so that they could grow crops for biofuels for Europe, and by war. But it is much easier for prosperous Europe to blame the world’s political failures on a fictional climate catastrophe instead.

factum: So we don’t need to do anything against climate change?

Puls: There’s nothing we can do to stop it. Scientifically it is sheer absurdity to think we can get a nice climate by turning a CO2 adjustment knob. Many confuse environmental protection with climate protection. it’s impossible to protect the climate, but we can protect the environment and our drinking water. On the debate concerning alternative energies, which is sensible, it is often driven by the irrational climate debate. One has nothing to do with the other.

Frankenstorm

Climate Etc.
Judith Curry

Hurricane Sandy is the largest Atlantic hurricane on record in terms of diameter of the storm. Sandy was associated with an estimated 13 foot storm surge in areas near New York City.

The Wikipedia has a good discussion of the meteorology, preparations, and impacts of Sandy.

CFAN’s forecasts

Sandy was a highly predictable storm. Allow me some bragging rights regarding the forecasts made by my company CFAN (see this post describing our forecast methods).

We began watching the potential for disturbance in the Caribbean on 10/12, and on 10/16 we forecast a 40% of forming a TC and on 10/19 we predicted a high probability of formation. On 10/23, the NHC named Sandy as a tropical storm. CFAN’s forecast on 10/23 predicted a high probability of Sandy becoming a hurricane, with a 30% probability of landfall on the U.S. northeast coast. On 10/24, we predicted 50% probability of a landfall on the northeast U.S. coast on 10/29 or 10/30, with the most likely location between Delaware and New Jersey. On 10/24 we also forecast a horizontal size of 1250 km and a large storm surge.

Last Friday, CFAN’s lead forecasters conducted a webinar briefing for over 400 people in the energy sector, to help understand and plan for impacts in the energy sector (power outages, energy demand, impacts on northeast refineries).

Global warming (?)

I’m sure you have all spotted articles that blame Hurricane Sandy on AGW. Bill McKibben, in a post on democracynow, sums it up as:

Bill McKibben on Hurricane Sandy and Climate Change: “If There Was Ever a Wake-up Call, This Is It”

In the midst of a lot of unwarranted alarmisn on this issue, I have spotted two articles that, IMO, treat this issue appropriately

NPR

Eric Berger

One of my first blog posts at Climate Etc. was entitled Hurricanes and global warming: 5 years post Katrina. If you missed it the first time, have a look. Heck, even if you’ve read it before, read it again. The science has not changed, my assessment still stands.

The only possible impact of global warming that I am seeing on the Atlantic hurricanes is the extension of the tropical Atlantic warm pool eastward (towards Africa), which means formation is occurring further east than previously and results in more TCs curving North into the Atlantic (so called fish storms). Note: the impact of warming on hurricane intensity seems theoretically robust, but impossible to sort out an AGW signal from the the natural variability.

Kevin Trenberth frequently says that global warming is affecting all of weather. He is probably right, but apart from the relative magnitude of the effect, this begs the question as to whether the effect is good or bad; arguably in terms of Atlantic hurricanes, the warming is resulting in fewer U.S. landfalls.

2012 hurricane season

So far, the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season has seen 19 named storms, 10 hurricanes, and 1 major hurricanes, currently tied with 1887, 1995, 2010, and 2011 as the 3rd most active season for which we have records. At the beginning of the hurricane season, I had a post entitled 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season. Pretty much everyone was predicting below normal activity; revisions on Aug 1 raised the levels to closer to normal activity. Note: I do not make seasonal hurricane forecasts myself.

What happened? A big part of the failed seasonal hurricane forecasts is ENSO. From my post:

Bottom line ENSO forecast: many forecasters think we are headed for El Nino by late summer/autumn. I agree that the most likely scenario is to have the ENSO index positive, it is not clear whether it will stay in neutral territory or make it to El Nino. Note: there is no sign of a Modoki (central Pacific warming), which is more predictable than ENSO.

In an ENSO neutral year, the AMO and PDO have substantial control. At the beginning of the summer:

With regards to AMO and PDO, the AMO index is currently moderately positive, the PDO index is currently moderately negative.

In this regime (which characterized the 1950’s), there were a large number of U.S. landfalls, particularly on the Atlantic coast.

Sandy impacts

At the time I am writing this, 16 people have been killed and the early estimates of insured damage are $10-$20B. Given the magnitude of this storm, size of population impacted and concentration of property in the path of the storm, these numbers are really astonishing low. The forecast for this storm was spot on, and the NHC pretty much had it right about 5 days in advance. FEMA and other agencies were on this very early in the game. Mayors of cities were primed for effective action after Hurricane Irene. NCY Mayor Bloomberg has done an exceptional job in this regard.

Sandy is a terrific example of how the U.S. is adapting to the elevated hurricane activity. Hurricane Katrina was a huge wake up call. A key element of this adaptation is good weather forecasts. Another key element is good partnership between the forecasters and decision makers. It is reassuring to see this success, particularly in view of the issues surrounding the Italian seismologists.

Portland City Council calendars don't show meetings reported by fluoride lobbyists: Portland City Hall roundup

OregonLive
Brad Schmidt

Portland’s newly elected City Council was all smiles
two weeks after the November 2008 election.
Mayor-elect Sam Adams (second from right) joined (from left)
Commissioner Randy Leonard, Commissioners-elect Amanda Fritz
and Nick Fish, and Commissioner Dan Saltzman for a portrait.

Fluoride lobbyists reported meeting personally with all five members of the Portland City Council in July or August but only one of those initial meetings appears on public calendars -- under a vague heading -- leaving lingering questions about the effectiveness of the city's lobbying and reporting requirements.

Promoted by then-Commissioner Sam Adams beginning in 2005, the lobbying and reporting rules are supposed to preserve integrity in city decision-making. The requirements affect both lobbyists and city officials and are meant to reveal who attempts to influence city leaders -- and on what topic.

Upstream Public Health is behind the push to add fluoride to Portland drinking water. But its plan has since been challenged through a referendum effort that may block the City Council's Sept. 12 unanimous approval.

According to a recently filed disclosure, lobbyists reported meeting with Commissioners Randy Leonard on July 26, Dan Saltzman and Nick Fish on Aug. 2, Amanda Fritz on Aug. 6 and Mayor Adams on Aug. 27 to push for fluoride in public drinking water.

But those same city officials -- who are required to publicly post their calendars on a quarterly basis -- either didn't disclose the meetings about fluoride or left a vague subject heading. Adams and Leonard say they weren't actually present at the meetings.

Leonard, who championed the fluoride proposal, listed four meetings July 26. Two were about the Portland Loo, one was about skateboarding and one was with the police union. But no fluoride.

Saltzman listed three meetings Aug. 2 with the city forester, the police union and one about a homeless camp. But nothing about the fluoride proposal.

Of the nine slots on Fish's calendar, he reported a 30-minute meeting Aug. 2 with "Health Coalitions" but didn't identify the group or the topic.

Fritz, meanwhile, reports her calendar by week instead of by day. She listed 16 meetings or events, none about fluoride or with Upstream Public Health.

And Adams listed six items on his calendar for Aug. 27. They include a meeting with Police Chief Mike Reese, a meeting about Brazil trade, a meeting with Transportation Director Tom Miller, a media event and two blocks for "office time." But nothing about fluoride.

According to city code, elected officials are required to post their calendars "of activities related to official city business" 15 days after the end of the previous quarter. That deadline was Oct. 15. There is only one exception: If an elected official "determines that such posting poses a safety threat." 

Leonard said in an email Friday that he never met with Upstream Public Health on July 26, despite the group's assertion that it had a "personal meeting" with him. Leonard said the meeting involving Upstream Public Health was with Stuart Oishi on his staff. 

Adams' spokeswoman Caryn Brooks said Friday that Adams never met personally with Upstream Public Health, either. She said that Upstream instead met with herself and Amy Ruiz, Adams' deputy chief of staff, on Aug. 27. But Brooks did say that Adams called Upstream about fluoride -- which doesn't appear on the group's report -- and he also ran into representatives at Davis Street Tavern.

Fish said in an email Friday that Kayse Jama, a founder for the Center for Intercultural Organizing, requested the Aug. 2 meeting but told Fish's office it was about a "broad health equity strategy." Fish said he didn't learn the topic until the meeting.

As for Upstream Public Health, it didn't register as a lobbying group until Aug. 16. The Oregonian broke news of the fluoride push, and the group's stealth lobbying efforts, Aug. 9. 

Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it

Daily Mail

• The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures
• This means that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week. 

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years. 

global temperature changes

Research: The new figures mean that the 'pause' in global warming has now lasted 

for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. 

This picture shows an iceberg melting in Eastern Greenland

The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued  quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported. 

This stands in sharp contrast  to the release of the previous  figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year. 

Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased. 

More...

• Wettest start to autumn for 12 years as South West continues to be battered by torrential rain

Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.

Others disagreed. Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’. 

Even Prof Jones admitted that he and his colleagues did not understand the impact of ‘natural variability’ – factors such as long-term ocean temperature cycles and changes in the output of the sun. However, he said he was still convinced that the current decade would end up significantly warmer than the previous two.

Disagreement: Professor Phil Jones, left, from the University of East Anglia, dismissed the significance of the plateau. Professor Judith Curry, right, from Georgia Tech university in America, disagreed, saying the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’

Warmer: Since 1880 the world has warmed by 0.75 degrees Celsius. This image shows floating icebergs in Greenland

The regular data collected on global temperature is called Hadcrut 4, as it is jointly issued by the Met Office’s Hadley Centre and Prof Jones’s Climatic Research Unit.

Since 1880, when worldwide industrialisation began to gather pace and reliable statistics were first collected on a global scale, the world has warmed by 0.75 degrees Celsius. 

Some scientists have claimed that this rate of warming is set to increase hugely without drastic cuts to carbon-dioxide emissions, predicting a catastrophic increase of up to a further five degrees  Celsius by the end of the century.

The new figures were released as the Government made clear that it would ‘bend’ its own  carbon-dioxide rules and build new power stations to try to combat the threat of blackouts. 

Drug giants fined $11bn for criminal wrongdoing

The Independent 
Jeremy Laurance

Fines are not enough to reform drug industry, warn lawyers

The global pharmaceutical industry has racked up fines of more than $11bn in the past three years for criminal wrongdoing, including withholding safety data and promoting drugs for use beyond their licensed conditions.

In all, 26 companies, including eight of the 10 top players in the global industry, have been found to be acting dishonestly. The scale of the wrongdoing, revealed for the first time, has undermined public and professional trust in the industry and is holding back clinical progress, according to two papers published in today's New England Journal of Medicine. Leading lawyers have warned that the multibillion-dollar fines are not enough to change the industry's behaviour.

The 26 firms are under "corporate integrity agreements", which are imposed in the US when healthcare wrongdoing is detected, and place the companies on notice for good behaviour for up to five years.

The largest fine of $3bn, imposed on the UK-based company GlaxoSmith-Kline in July after it admitted three counts of criminal behaviour in the US courts, was the largest ever. But GSK is not alone – nine other companies have had fines imposed, ranging from $420m on Novartis to $2.3bn on Pfizer since 2009, totalling over $11bn.

Kevin Outterson, a lawyer at Boston University, says that despite the eye watering size of the fines they amount to a small proportion of the companies' total revenues and may be regarded as a "cost of doing business". The $3bn fine on GSK represents 10.8 per cent of its revenue while the $1.5bn fine imposed on Abbott Laboratories, for promoting a drug (Depakote) with inadequate evidence of its effectiveness, amounted to 12 per cent.

Mr Outterson said: "Companies might well view such fines as a quite small percentage of their global revenue. If so, little has been done to change the system. The government merely recoups a portion of the financial fruit of firms' past misdeeds."

He argues that penalties should be imposed on executives rather than the company as whole. He cites a Boston whistleblower attorney, Robert Thomas who observed that GSK had committed a $1bn crime and "no individual has been held responsible".

Following GSK's admission that it had withheld safety data about its best-selling diabetes drug Avandia, the company pledged to make more clinical trial information available. But the pledge has "disturbing exceptions", according to Mr Outterson, and in any case is made under the corporate integrity agreement, which expires in five years.

Trust in the industry among doctors has fallen so low that they dismiss clinical trials funded by it, even when the trials have been conducted with scientific rigour, according to a second paper in the journal by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. This could have serious implications because most medical research is funded by the drug industry and "if physicians are reluctant to trust all such research, it could hinder the translation of … research into practice," said Aaron Kesselheim, who led the study.

Andrew Witty, the chief executive of GSK, said at the time of the $3bn settlement last July that it had resolved "difficult, long-standing matters" for the company and that there had since been a "fundamental change in procedures" including the removal of staff engaged in misconduct and changes to incentive payments.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry said practices in the industry had improved and more changes to "build greater levels of trust" would be made. The UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said it monitored the conduct of companies and took "appropriate action" when it uncovered malpractice.

Alzheimer's funding 'must continue'

Governments, universities and charities should step in to ensure funding is maintained for research into Alzheimer's disease, following a series of failed drug trials, experts said yesterday.

They were responding to a report in The Independent that the world's leading drug companies are giving up on the search for a cure, scaling back their neuroscience departments and focusing on symptomatic, rather than disease-modifying, treatments.

A spokesman for the Alzheimer's Society said: "This is not the time to back away from dementia research. Despite costing the economy more than cancer and heart disease, funding for research into dementia is only a fraction of these conditions. More funding is urgently needed if we are to defeat it."

Gates Foundation Funds Surveillance of Anti-Vaccine Groups

Green Med Info
Sayer Ji

The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation launched the Grand Challenges in Global Health (GCGH) in partnership with the National Institutes of Health in 2003 which, according to the GCGH website, is aimed at "creating new tools that can radically improve health in the developing world."  So far, 45 grants totaling $458 million were awarded for research projects involving scientists in over 30 countries.¹
But where has all the money actually gone?  Towards developing and implementing water purification and sanitation systems? Or basic nutritional support aimed at optimizing immune function? How about providing shelter and medical facilities for the homeless? Not even close.  

For example, a $100K grant was recently disbursed to Seth C. Kalichman, professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, for "Establishing an Anti-Vaccine Surveillance and Alert System," which intends to "establish an internet-based global monitoring and rapid alert system for finding, analyzing, and counteracting misinformation communication campaigns regarding vaccines to support global immunization efforts." [emphasis added]

We can only wonder what organizations might be labeled as "misinformation communication campaigns" considering the fact that Bill Gates, in a Feb. 4^th, 2011 interview on CNN with Sanjay Gupta said that "anti-vaccine groups "kill children."" Here is the full quote:

“So it's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts -- you know, they, they kill children. It's a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important.”

It is quite possible that any dissenting voice not in support of universal vaccination campaigns may be included in this type of "surveillance and alert system" as a potentially endangering the lives of others, i.e. "killing children."  What is so ironic about the situation is that the Gates Foundation supported Polio Global Eradication Initiative may have resulted in over 47,500 cases of vaccine-induced paralysisin Indian children in 2011 alone, and which is twice as deadly as the wild-type polio it claimed to have put an end to officially on Jan. 11 2012. Who here then, is truly concerned about the health of children?
Moreover, it is exceedingly difficult to view Bill & Melinda Gates foundation's GCGH as a strictly humanitarian foundation considering many of the projects it chooses to fund. Here are a few listed on their website which have already received funding.

• Synthetic Lymph Nodes: Steven Meshnick and Carla Hand of the University of North Carolina in the U.S. will develop a bio-compatible, biodegradable polymer device that can be placed under the skin to introduce vaccines and antigens to the immune system. The device will attract immune cells and trigger their proliferation as well asact as an adjuvant at the site of injection. If successful, the device could help boost immune response to new and existing vaccines. [see our article on transhumanistic technologies].
• Needle Free Vaccination Via Nanoparticle Aerosols: Vaccine delivery systems that target specific areas of the body have the potential to be especially effective against some types of infection. For example, inhaled vaccines may better guard against respiratory diseases, such as tuberculosis, and those that commonly infect the tissues of the nose and throat, such as diphtheria. Dr. Edwards is leading a multidisciplinary team using materials science technologies combined with infectious disease, device, and toxicology expertise to reformulate tuberculosis and diphtheria vaccines into aerosol sprays that can be inhaled. The team's ultimate objective is to develop a cell-based BCG vaccine for tuberculosis and a protein antigen CRM 197 vaccine for diphtheria in the form of novel porous nanoparticle aggregate (PNAP) aerosols.
• Plant-Produced Synthetic RNA Vaccines: Alison McCormick of Touro University, California in the U.S. will test the ability of a low-cost plant-based synthetic biology method to produce a combined viral protein epitope with an antigen RNA expression system for use in an RNA malaria vaccine. Using plants for this viral transfection system could make RNA vaccine production scalable and cost effective.
• Profitable Vaccine Distribution In Emerging Markets: Lisa Ganley-Leal and Pauline Mwinzi of Epsilon Therapeutics, Inc. in the U.S. will test the hypothesis that selling vaccines through medicine shops in emerging markets can lead to profits for both vaccine developers and the small business owners. Demonstrating profitability may lead pharmaceutical companies to invest greater resources in vaccine development and distribution and develop local partnerships for profitability strategies.
• Genetically Programmed Pathogen Sense and Destroy: Saurabh Gupta and Ron Weiss of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. proposed creating sentinel cells that can detect the presence of a pathogen, report its identity with a biological signal, and secrete molecules to destroy it.This project's Phase I research demonstrated that commensal bacteria can be engineered to detect and specifically kill the model bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In Phase II, Gupta and Weiss will engineer the human microbiota to specifically detect and destroy the gut pathogen Shigella flexneri, which is responsible for high mortality rates in children.
• Vaccine in a Salt Shaker: A New, Safe, Low-Cost Approach: Shiladitya DasSarma will lead a team at the University of Maryland, Baltimore in the U.S. to develop an inexpensive, safe, and effective oral vaccine against invasive Salmonella disease using gas-filled bacterial vesicles. The project seeks to produce a salt-encased, shelf-stable vaccine requiring no refrigeration for distribution worldwide.
• A Humanized Mouse Model to Evaluate Live Attenuated Vaccine Candidates: To develop new vaccines against some of the world's biggest killers, including HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, scientists must be able to evaluate promising candidates. Some of the most promising potential vaccines, are made from weakened live versions of the infectious agent. As a result, they cannot be studied in human trials unless researchers can be confident that the weakened vaccines will be safe. Dr. Flavell and his colleagues are working to genetically engineer laboratory mice whose immune systems are similar enough to humans to permit testing of vaccines against diseases that disproportionately affect people in the developing world.
• Alternative Delivery of Human Milk Proteins to Infants: Qiang Chen of Arizona State University in the U.S. proposes to engineer edible plants, such as lettuce and rice, to express beneficial proteins found in human milk. The protein bodies in these plants allow for the stable, high accumulation of these human milk proteins, and the plants can either be eaten directly by infants or formulated into baby food to provide essential nutrients and antibacterial benefits.
• Non-Hormonal Female Contraceptive Targeting Egg-Specific Metalloprotease: John Herr of the University of Virginia in the U.S. will research the egg-specific membrane enzyme metalloprotease as a target for a non-hormonal female contraceptive. After determining the nature of the enzyme's catalytic pocket, a family of peptidomimetic compounds will be tested for their ability to bind to the enzyme and block its key role in egg fertilization.
• Bacillus-Fermented Natto as Edible Vaccines for the Developing World: Michael Chan of the Ohio State Research Foundation in the U.S. will develop an engineered strain of bacteria used to ferment beans in traditional Asian and African diets, to display an antigen from the Tuberculosis bacterium.  The engineered bacillus will then be used to make the traditional Asian dish natto, which can serve as a kind of oral vaccine to elicit a strong immune response. If successful, this strategy can be used to introduce a variety of disease antigens through culturally accepted foods.
• Nanotechnology-Based Contraception: David Clapham of Children's Hospital Boston in the U.S. will develop and test a nanoparticle contraceptive that releases sperm tail inhibitors in response to vaginal pH changes or exposure to prostatic fluid. If successful, the nanoparticles could be incorporated into a vaginal gel to block sperm motility required for fertilization.
• Circumcision tool For Traditional Ceremonies In Africa: Kathleen Sienko of the University of Michigan in the U.S. has developed a prototype circumcision tool for use in traditional ceremonies in Africa, and seeks to demonstrate the functionality, cultural suitability, and potential for low-cost mass production of the device. Such a tool could increase the circumcision rates leading to lower rates of HIV transmission in the region.
• Discovery of Chemosensory Molecules as Novel Contraceptives: John Ngai and Scott Laughlin of the University of California, Berkeley in the U.S. seek to identify chemical compounds in the female reproductive system that guide sperm cells to the egg. By characterizing these "odorants," synthetic versions can be produced and administered to disrupt this navigation system thus inhibiting fertilization.
• Transgenic Cow Milk Containing Human Antimicrobial Protein: Hironori Matsushima of the University of Toledo in the U.S. will test the hypothesis that adding an antimicrobial peptide to powdered milk products can confer protection against enteric diseases. Research will focus on testing the peptide for its ability to kill pathogens in stomach conditions, and on its ability to maintain integrity through the milk pasteurization and drying processes.
• Ultrasound as a Long-Term, Reversible Male Contraceptive: James Tsuruta and Paul Dayton of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill will study the ability of therapeutic ultrasound to deplete testicular sperm counts. Characterizing the most beneficial timing and dosage could lead to the development of a low-cost, non-hormonal and reversible method of contraception for men.

You will notice from the examples listed above that all of these funded projects involve the development of proprietary (read: potentially profitable) and as-of-yet unproven technologies, and which will require the transformation and/or alteration of a natural process or substance. Also, many of the grant disbursements have gone towards contraception. This appears to diverge from the GCGH's mission statement of "improving health in the developing world," insofar as it is focused on reducing population in the developed world, rather than supporting the health of those already living, in need of help.
¹ Grand Challenges In Global Health, About Us

Sayer Ji is the founder and director of GreenMedInfo.com and co-author of the bookThe Cancer Killers: The Cause Is The Cure with New York Times best-seller Dr. Ben Lerner and Dr. Charles Majors. His writings and research have been published in the Wellbeing Journal, the Journal of Gluten Sensitivity, and have been featured on Mercola.com, NaturalNews.com, Reuters.com, GaryNull.com, Infowars.com and Care2.com.

AMS Statement on Climate Change

Climate Etc.
Judith Curry

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) has just published its new statement on Climate Change.

The statement is billed as an ‘Information Statement’ of the AMS.  This statement is part of the AMS series of Policy Statements, see this link for Guidelines for Statements of the AMS.   From the Guidelines:

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications.

Information Statements are intended to provide a trustworthy, objective and scientifically up-to- date explanation of scientific issues of concern to the public at large. They are informational only and do not make recommendations or take positions on issues. Information Statements should use language easily understood by a lay reader and avoid technical terminology and jargon. Information statements are typically no longer than 2000 words.

The AMS wrote a previous statement on climate change in 2007 [link].

The link to the new statement can be found here [link].

Excerpts from the statement are appended below, providing a sense of the overall content:

Background

This statement provides a brief overview of how and why global climate has changed over the past century and will continue to change in the future. It is based on the peer-reviewed scientific literature and is consistent with the vast weight of current scientific understanding as expressed in assessments and reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

How is climate changing?

Warming of the climate system now is unequivocal, according to many different kinds of evidence.  Due to natural variability, not every year is warmer than the preceding year globally. Nevertheless, all of the 10 warmest years in the global temperature records up to 2011 have occurred since 1997, with 2005 and 2010 being the warmest two years in more than a century of global records. The warming trend is greatest in northern high latitudes and over land.

Why is climate changing?

Climate is always changing. However, many of the observed changes noted above are beyond what can be explained by the natural variability of the climate. It is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrous oxide. The most important of these over the long term is CO2, whose concentration in the atmosphere is rising principally as a result of fossil-fuel combustion and deforestation.

Human activity also affects climate through changes in the number and physical properties of tiny solid particles and liquid droplets in the atmosphere, known collectively as atmospheric aerosols. Examples of aerosols include dust, sea salt, and sulfates from air pollution.

Land surface changes can also affect the surface exchanges of water and energy with the atmosphere. Humans alter land surface characteristics by carrying out irrigation, removing and introducing forests, changing vegetative land cover through agriculture, and building cities and reservoirs. These changes can have significant effects on local-to-regional climate patterns, which adds up to a small impact on the global energy balance as well.

How is the climate expected to change in the future?

Future warming of the climate is inevitable for many years due to the greenhouse gases already added to the atmosphere and the heat that has been taken up by the oceans. 

In general, many of the climate-system trends observed in recent decades are projected to continue. Those projections, and others in this section,  are largely based on simulations conducted with climate models, and assume that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere will continue to increase due to human activity. Global efforts to slow greenhouse gas emissions have been unsuccessful so far. However, were future technologies and policies able to achieve a rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions — an approach termed “mitigation” — this would greatly lessen future global warming and its impacts.

Climate Change Alarmists Leading the World Toward Global Governance

Occupy Corporatism
Susanne Posel

Climate change alarmists are hard at work, pushing their agenda of man-made global warming which ultimately leads to global carbon taxing through the governance of the UN.

Daniel Sarewitz , professor of science and society and co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, asserts that: “There is not any serious debate about whether anthropogenic climate change is happening. Scientists are certain about that, and it is unfortunate that the national debate is lagging so far behind.”

The move toward convincing the general public that man-made CO2 is responsible for global warming partially stems from a study from 2000 which was co-authored by James Hansen, a prominent eco-fascist.

Hansen’s team admits that “rapid warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO2 greenhouse gases . . . not by the products of fossil fuel burning, CO2 and aerosols.” And then admonishes that the method of controlling emission output should “focus on air pollution has practical benefits that unite the interests of developed and developing countries. However, assessment of ongoing and future climate change requires composition-specific long-term global monitoring of aerosol properties.”

As Hansen states that global warming is not man-made, he still desires to see global governance over emissions regulation and carbon taxation mandated by international law to reduce this imaginary problem.

The debate over climate change originated with the 2007 report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC emphatically concluded without empirical scientific data, but rather projected conjecture used to create computer models that claimed human activity was the sole cause of the earth’s rising temperature.

The IPCC is concerned about the world’s governemnts not cutting carbon emmissions enough to reduce the CO2 output into the atmosphere.

New Study: Numerical and Science Literacy Cause Climate Change Skepticism

Editor's Note: Notice how those conducting the survey were not only surprised by the outcome, but insisted on looking at the results through the prism of the phony left/right paradigm.

Daily Bell

The more science you know, the less worried you are about climate change ... 'Abandon focus on sound science', say trick-cyclists ... A US government-funded survey has found that Americans with higher levels of scientific and mathematical knowledge are more sceptical regarding the dangers of climate change than their more poorly educated fellow citizens. The results of the survey are especially remarkable as it was plainly not intended to show any such thing: Rather, the researchers and trick-cyclists who carried it out were doing so from the position that the "scientific consensus" (carbon-driven global warming is ongoing and extremely dangerous) is a settled fact, and the priority is now to find some way of getting US voters to believe in the need for urgent, immediate and massive action to reduce CO2 emissions. – Register

Dominant Social Theme: Get rid of education altogether.

Free-Market Analysis: So now we learn from the Register, an IT publication, that numeracy raises skepticism about global warming. This apparently came as a shock to those who organized the study.
As global warming is a kind of hoax, this should NOT have been surprising. But charmingly, those who organized the study were apparently true believers. They were sure that if people were better educated they would come to understand the validity of climate change.

But it worked in reverse. People no doubt sensed the essential falseness of the meme, what we call a power-elite dominant social theme. These themes are cooked up to frighten middle classes into giving up more power and control to globalist elites that are trying to create world government.
Here's some more from the article:

In a just-published US National Science Foundation-funded study, participants' science knowledge and numeracy was tested and compared with levels of concern regarding climate change. The soft-studies profs were amazed, however, to find that as one moves up the scale of science knowledge and numeracy, people become more sceptical, not less.

According to the profs, this is not because the idea of imminent carbon-driven catastrophe is perhaps a bit scientifically suspect. Rather it is because people classed as "egalitarian communitarians" (roughly speaking, left-wingers) are always highly concerned about climate change, and become slightly more so as they acquire more science and numeracy. Unfortunately, however, "hierarchical individualists" (basically, right-wingers) are quite concerned about climate change when they're ignorant: but if they have any scientific, mathematic or technical education this causes them to become strongly sceptical.

As scientific/tech knowledge and numeracy appears to be more common among "hierarchical individualists" than among "egalitarian communitarians", this meant that in the sample as a whole the effect of more scientific knowledge and numeracy was to increase scepticism. Given that the profs had assumed from the start that scepticism is wrong, this forced them to the conclusion that simply teaching people more science and giving them more facts and numbers is not a good idea as it will lead them into bad (sceptical) decisions. 

Climategate Continues

Will a penalty be called for Keith Briffa’s excessively curved hockey stick?

National Review Online
Andrew Montford
Harold Ambler

Steve McIntyre

Climategate, the 2009 exposure of misconduct at the University of East Anglia, was a terrible blow to the reputation of climatology, and indeed to that of British and American science. Although that story hasn’t been in the news in recent months, new evidence of similar scientific wrongdoing continues to emerge, with a new scandal hitting the climate blogosphere just a few days ago.

And central to the newest story is one of the Climategate scientists: Keith Briffa, an expert in reconstructing historical temperature records from tree rings. More particularly, the recent scandal involves a tree-ring record Briffa prepared for a remote area of northern Russia called Yamal.

For many years, scientists have used tree-ring data to try to measure temperatures from the distant past, but the idea is problematic in and of itself. Why? Because tree-ring data reflect many variables besides temperature. Russian tree growth, like that of trees around the world, also reflects changes in humidity, precipitation, soil nutrients, competition for resources from other trees and plants, animal behavior, erosion, cloudiness, and on and on. But let’s pretend, if only for the sake of argument, that we can reliably determine the mean temperature 1,000 years ago or more using tree cores from a remote part of Russia. The central issue that emerges is: How do you choose the trees?

It was the way Briffa picked the trees to include in his analysis that piqued the interest of Steve McIntyre, a maverick amateur climatologist from Canada. The Climategate e-mails make it clear that McIntyre earned the public scorn of the most powerful U.N. climatologists, including James Hansen, Michael Mann, and Phil Jones, while simultaneously earning their fear and respect in private.

McIntyre noticed a few problems with the way Briffa chose the sampling of Russian trees, and he wrote to Briffa requesting the data Briffa used in a published tree-ring paper. Briffa declined. And so began a four-year saga involving multiple peer-reviewed journals, behind-the-scenes maneuvering by Briffa and his closest confidants, and a Freedom of Information Act request on the part of McIntyre that appears to be on the verge of being granted. Even without the final set of data, however, McIntyre has shown beyond the shadow of doubt that Briffa may have committed one of the worst sins, if not the worst, in climatology — that of cherry-picking data — when he assembled his data sample, which his clique of like-minded and very powerful peers have also used in paper after paper.

IQ Foods: Processed Food Lowers IQ in Children, Nutritious Food Raises It

Natural Society
Anthony Gucciardi

Processed foods are the staple of far too many diets, particularly in the United States where 105 million people have either diabetes or prediabetes. These processed foods are filled with white sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, aspartame, artificial food colorings, and a wide variety of other toxic substances. Interestingly enough, research shows that these are some of the worst IQ foods. Given the makeup of processed foods, is it any wonder that children are suffering from IQ reduction upon introducing these foods into their diet?

IQ Foods: The Findings

British researchers uncovered the connection between processed foods and reduced IQ. They followed what 14,000 children ate and drank at the ages of 3, 4, 7, and 8.5 years of age, with answers submitted via parents through questionnaires. The researchers found that if children were consuming a processed diet at age 3, IQ decline could begin over the next five years. The study found that by age 8, the children had suffered the IQ decline.

On the contrary, children who ate a nutrient-rich diet were found to increase their IQ over the 3 year period. The foods considered nutrient-rich by the researchers were most likely conventional fruits and vegetables. If children were to eat a wide variety of organic produce, superfoods, mineral-rich plants, and perhaps even consume a food-based multivitamin, the researchers would most likely see a substantial IQ increase. This eating plan would also benefit the children — or even adults — in other aspects of their lives as well, such as better overall health & well-being.

Processed foods have been known to wreak havoc on the body for quite some time. One joint American and Spanish study has even found that junk food products, particularly those containing trans fats, can make healthy young men infertile by damaging their sperm. Another study, conducted by scientists from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the University of Granada, reported that both junk food and fast food consumption can bring on depression. The link was so strong, in fact, that those who consumed fast food were 51% more likely to be depressed. It isn’t surprising that some of the worst IQ foods are the same foods that cause numerous health complications.

Myths and Facts about Climate Change

Climate Change 101

MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.

FACT: Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8C over the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas ("heat islands"), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas ("land use effects"). Two science teams have shown that correcting the surface temperature record for the effects of urban development would reduce the warming trend over land from 1980 by half. There has been no catastrophic warming recorded.                                                                                                                       . Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here.

MYTH 2: The "hockey stick" graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature decrease for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.
FACT: Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17^th Century the "average global temperature" has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 – 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare. The "hockey stick", a poster boy of both the UN's IPCC and Canada's Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and has now also been proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It is a computer construct and a faulty one at that.                                                                         Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here.
    

MYTH 3: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.
FACT: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the CO₂ content of the atmosphere has increased. The RATE of growth during this period has also increased from about 0.2% per year to the present rate of about 0.4% per year,which growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years. However, there is no proof that CO₂ is the main driver of global warming. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO₂ levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth's oceans expel more CO₂ as a result.                                                                                                                                                              Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here.
MYTH 4: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.
FACT: Greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, (about 97%) of water vapour and clouds, with the remainder being gases like CO₂, CH₄, Ozone and N₂O, of which carbon dioxide is the largest amount. Hence, CO₂ constitutes about 0.039% of the atmosphere. While the minor gases are more effective as "greenhouse agents" than water vapour and clouds, the latter are overwhelming the effect by their sheer volume and – in the end – are thought to be responsible for 75% of the "Greenhouse effect". At current concentrations, a 3% change of water vapour in the atmosphere would have the same effect as a 100% change in CO2. Those attributing climate change to CO₂ rarely mention these important  facts.                                                                                                                                         Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here.



MYTH 5: Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.
 FACT: The computer models assume that CO2 is the primary climate driver, and that the Sun has an insignificant effect on climate. You cannot use the output of a model to verify or prove its initial assumption - that is circular reasoning and is illogical. Computer models can be made to roughly match the 20th century temperature rise by adjusting many input parameters and using strong positive feedbacks. They do not "prove" anything. Also, computer models predicting global warming are incapable of properly including the effects of the sun, cosmic rays and the clouds. The sun is a major cause of temperature variation on the earth surface as its received radiation changes all the time, This happens largely in cyclical fashion. The number and the lengths in time of sunspots can be correlated very closely with average temperatures on earth, e.g. the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Varying intensity of solar heat radiation affects the surface temperature of the oceans and the currents. Warmer ocean water expels gases, some of which are CO2. Solar radiation interferes with the cosmic ray flux, thus influencing the amount ionized nuclei which control cloud cover.                                                                                                                                                           Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here          
                                                                                                                            
 MYTH 6: The UN proved that man–made CO2 causes global warming.
 FACT:  In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
1) "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases."
2) "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes"
To the present day there is still no scientific proof that man-made CO2 causes significant global warming.                                                                                                                                                  Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here.

MYTH 7: CO2 is a pollutant.
FACT:  This is absolutely not true. Nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere. We could not live in 100% nitrogen either. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is. CO2 is essential to life on earth. It is necessary for plant growth since increased CO2 intake as a result of increased atmospheric concentration causes many trees and other plants to grow more vigorously. Unfortunately, the Canadian Government has included CO2 with a number of truly toxic and noxious substances listed by the Environmental Protection Act, only as their means of political control.                                                                                                                                                       Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here.


MYTH 8: Global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes.
FACT: There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that supports such claims on a global scale. Regional variations may occur. Growing insurance and infrastructure repair costs, particularly in coastal areas, are sometimes claimed to be the result of increasing frequency and severity of storms, whereas in reality they are a function of increasing population density, escalating development value, and ever more media reporting.                                                                                                                                                                 Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here.

MYTH 9: Receding glaciers and the calving of ice shelves are proof of global warming.
FACT:  Glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for hundreds of years. Recent glacier melting is a consequence of coming out of the very cool period of the Little Ice Age. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries. Scientists know of at least 33 periods of glaciers growing and then retreating. It’s normal. Besides, glacier's health is dependent as much on precipitation as on temperature.                                                                                                                                             Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here, 6 here.

MYTH 10: The earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level rising.
FACT: The earth is variable. The western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer, due to cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, but the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. The small Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica is getting warmer, while the main Antarctic continent is actually cooling. Ice thicknesses are increasing both on Greenland and in Antarctica. Sea level monitoring in the Pacific (Tuvalu) and Indian Oceans (Maldives) has shown no sign of any sea level rise.       Review some references 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here.
 In addition to the above references for the 10 common myths, there are a large number of peer reviewed papers that support the facts. To review the listings, click 1 here and 2 here.