Japan's boffins: Global warming isn't man-made

• Track this topic
• Print story

Climate science is 'ancient astrology', claims report

By Andrew Orlowski • Get more from this author

Posted in Environment, 25th February 2009 12:23 GMT

Free whitepaper – Utilizing IT to put data to work

Exclusive Japanese scientists have made a dramatic break with the UN and Western-backed hypothesis of climate change in a new report from its Energy Commission.

Three of the five researchers disagree with the UN's IPCC view that recent warming is primarily the consequence of man-made industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. Remarkably, the subtle and nuanced language typical in such reports has been set aside.

One of the five contributors compares computer climate modelling to ancient astrology. Others castigate the paucity of the US ground temperature data set used to support the hypothesis, and declare that the unambiguous warming trend from the mid-part of the 20th Century has ceased.

The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is astonishing rebuke to international pressure, and a vote of confidence in Japan's native marine and astronomical research. Publicly-funded science in the West uniformly backs the hypothesis that industrial influence is primarily responsible for climate change, although fissures have appeared recently. Only one of the five top Japanese scientists commissioned here concurs with the man-made global warming hypothesis.

JSER is the academic society representing scientists from the energy and resource fields, and acts as a government advisory panel. The report appeared last month but has received curiously little attention. So The Register commissioned a translation of the document - the first to appear in the West in any form. Below you'll find some of the key findings - but first, a summary.

Summary

Three of the five leading scientists contend that recent climate change is driven by natural cycles, not human industrial activity, as political activists argue.

Kanya Kusano is Program Director and Group Leader for the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology (JAMSTEC). He focuses on the immaturity of simulation work cited in support of the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Using undiplomatic language, Kusano compares them to ancient astrology. After listing many faults, and the IPCC's own conclusion that natural causes of climate are poorly understood, Kusano concludes:

"[The IPCC's] conclusion that from now on atmospheric temperatures are likely to show a continuous, monotonic increase, should be perceived as an unprovable hypothesis," he writes.

Shunichi Akasofu, head of the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, has expressed criticism of the theory before. Akasofu uses historical data to challenge the claim that very recent temperatures represent an anomaly:

"We should be cautious, IPCC's theory that atmospheric temperature has risen since 2000 in correspondence with CO2 is nothing but a hypothesis. "

Akasofu calls the post-2000 warming trend hypothetical. His harshest words are reserved for advocates who give conjecture the authority of fact.

"Before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for truth... The opinion that great disaster will really happen must be broken."

continued.....

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/25/jstor_climate_report_translation/page2.html

FOOD

http://www.11bonita.com/







Sheephogan™
Sent from: Pahrump Nevada United States.

Dark Energy to Erase Big Bang

"Nothing can move through space faster than the speed of light, but space can do whatever the hell it wants"

Fading Signal Irene Klotz, Discovery News

 

Big Bang's Traces to Be Erased | Discovery News Video

 

Feb. 23, 2009 -- When astronomers in the distant future cast their eyes around the cosmos, they will come to the conclusion that our galaxy is alone in the universe.

Even with the most sensitive detectors, future scientists will not be able to observe the leftover radiation from the Big Bang explosion, study the motion of distant galaxies to conclude that space is expanding or even see distant objects.

In the future, the force astronomers now known as dark energy, will stretch the universe beyond detection, with objects receding faster than the speed of light.

"Nothing can move through space faster than the speed of light, but space can do whatever the hell it wants as far as we know," Arizona State University cosmologist Lawrence Krauss said last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

Even without dark energy, there are regions of space moving away from us faster than the speed of light, Krauss added.

"When that happens, they carry objects with them, like a surfer on a wave. The light from those objects cannot reach us. So, eventually the universe will disappear before our eyes," Krauss said.

Scientists have some time to figure it out. Based on the currently understood estimates of inflation, the new dark ages won't occur for another 50 billion years or so. The sun would have long since died, likely taking Earth along with it, but civilizations could be living elsewhere in the galaxy.

"It's perfectly reasonable to expect that there will be civilizations not that different than our own that could arise, but they will live in an empty, dark universe," Krauss said.

Scientists are on a quest for what may be the smoking gun for this inflationary view of the universe -- gravitational

waves, which might have been imprinted as polarity in the background radiation left over by the Big Bang explosion.

"I think we'll know in 10 years time whether we can detect gravitational waves," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Alan Guth.

In April, the European Space Agency plans to launch its Planck telescope which will study cosmic background radiation. Physicists also may get some clues from experiments conducted in the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, which will be used to produce subatomic particles that may represent conditions in the extreme, high-energy environment of space.

"We live at a very interesting time, namely the only time in which we can empirically verify that we live in a very interesting time," Krauss said.

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"

Sheephogan™
Sent from: Pahrump Nevada United States.

Alien life 'may exist among us' BBC

Alien life 'may exist among us'

By James Morgan

 

How do we know we are dealing with separate Earth genesis and not a Mars genesis? Professor Paul Davies, Arizona State University

Never mind Mars, alien life may be thriving right here on Earth, a major science conference has heard.

Our planet may harbour forms of "weird life" unrelated to life as we know it, according to Professor Paul Davies, a physicist at Arizona State University.

This "shadow life" may be hidden in toxic arsenic lakes or in boiling deep sea hydrothermal vents, he says.

He has called on scientists to launch a "mission to Earth" by trawling hostile environments for signs of bio-activity.

Weird life could even be living among us, in forms which we don't yet recognise, he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Chicago.

"We don't have to go to other planets to find weird life.

"It could be right in front of our noses - or even in our noses," said the physicist.

"It is entirely reasonable to expect we will find a shadow biosphere here on Earth.

"But nobody has actually taken the trouble to look.

"The question is why? The cost is not expensive - it would be a fraction of the money we spend searching for extraterrestrial life."

'Second genesis'

Professor Davies was one of the speakers at a symposium exploring the possibility that life has evolved on Earth more than once.

"We don't quite know how weird life would look. It's as wide as the imagination and that's why it's really hard to look for."

If it exists, weird life could be based on DNA and RNA - but with a slightly different genetic code or different amino acids.

At the other end of the spectrum, we could find creatures which have more drastic differences.

"Maybe one of the elements life uses - carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus - could be replaced by something else," said Professor Davies.

"When I say that, everyone immediately thinks of silicon life - because of Star Trek. But I'm not talking about anything that drastic.

"For example, most of the jobs that can be done by phosphorus can be done by arsenic."

Arsenic may be poisonous to humans, but it has chemical properties which might make it ideal in a microbe's machinery, he said.

'Mission to Earth'

So how do we go about hunting for something we have never seen before?

"There are two possibilities," said Prof Davies, Director of the BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science.

Mono Lake in the US is home to arsenic-fuelled microbes

"One is that weird life is ecologically isolated, in niches beyond the reach of mankind."

In this case, we must begin trawling the world's most inhospitable environments - deserts, salt lakes, and areas of high pressure, temperature or UV radiation.

"We could have a 'mission to Earth'. There's a big long list of places we could be looking," observed Professor Davies.

"For example, if we are looking for arsenic life, we could head for environments which are both arsenic rich and phosphorus poor - such as deep ocean vents.

"There is also a heavily contaminated lake in California which is arsenic rich - Mono Lake - and we do find microbes in there which get their energy from arsenic.

"But they don't actually incorporate the arsenic into themselves. They spit it back out again. They smoke but they don't inhale."

On the other hand, it could be that "weird life" is actually all around us - intermingled with carbon based life.

"In that case it's going to be really hard to detect - you have to find some way of filtering everything else out."

This laborious process has been used to search for unknown organisms in seawater - by painstakingly filtering everything else away.

If we did discover something unprecedented, "we'd all start arguing" said Professor Davies, a theoretical physicist.

"The question would be whether this life was truly different, or whether there was a common precursor a deep branch on the main tree of life.

"Also, how do we know we are dealing with separate Earth genesis and not a Mars genesis?

"We know rocks do get traded between the two planets, and life could hitch a ride.

"Personally, I'm only interested in establishing whether life happened more than once. If we find it has happened twice from scratch then its going to have happened all around the universe.

"It's going to be teeming with life and there's a very good chance we are not alone."

Life in the lab

Another way to determine what alternative life might look like is to try to invent it ourselves.

If we can create new molecules which can behave in life-like way, we may then go out and look for these in the environment, says Professor Steven Benner, of the University of Florida.

His team have created perhaps the closest yet to a man-made alternative form of life.

"We are announcing the first example of an artificial synthetic chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution," he told the conference.

"Is it alive? Well, I can tell you that it is not self-sustaining.

"You have to have a graduate student stand there and feed it from time to time, but it is evolving."

The molecule is essentially a modified version of our own DNA double helix - but with six "letters" in its genetic alphabet, instead of four.

These nucleotides pair up in strands, which can replicate, though only with the help of polymerase enzymes and heat.

"Sometimes mistakes are made in pairing and these mistakes are maintained in the next generation - it is evolving," said Prof Brenner.

"The next step is to apply natural selection to it, to see if it can evolve under selective pressure.

"The accepted definition of life is a molecule capable of Darwinian evolution, so we are trying to put together molecules that are capable of doing it."

But he questioned whether our definition of "living" is perhaps too "Earth-centric".

"Remember - just because you are a chemical system which is self-sustaining and capable of Darwinian evolution, that doesn't mean that is the universal definition of life," he said.

FEATURES, VIEWS, ANALYSIS Pirate patrol diary Somali pirate capture ship and frustrate navy Journey's end A lament for every wannabe pilot's toy - flight simulator In pictures Masked revellers celebrate Bolivia's La Diablada festival

™Sheephogan™
Sent from: Pahrump Nevada United States.
Laurence J. Peter  - "If two wrongs don't make a right, try three."

ggw_bach LISTEN!!

http://100musicalfootsteps.wordpress.com/

original music by ggw_bach

composed in the year 2008-09



About Me

Age: 31 (male, and single)

Place: Sydney, Australia (lived here all my life)

My Calling: composer (I was born to do this)

Models: Bach, Beethoven, Chopin (actually JS is the man for me)

Vision: to compose music to transform the human soul (I call it 'Musical Alchemy')

Twitter: @ggw_bach (that's where you'll find me!)

hunab-2012

Influences: truth theory, sacred geometry, the Law of One, buddhism, modern psychology, modern physics,  alternative history (actually I'm interested in all fields of knowledge, but these are my main drinking holes. I get around!)

8 Curious Things

  1. vegan (for 6 months+)
  2. dreamer (every night!)
  3. twitter addict (spend virtually all my free time there)
  4. love going barefoot (hate shoes!)
  5. passed through the Dark Night of the Soul (now in the Light)
  6. studied Bach for 10+ years (a long apprenticeship!)
  7. play piano occasionally (and getting a lot better!)
  8. bibliophile (or at least used to be, do all my reading online these days)

My Bookmarks: stumble_upon (where I also keep a photoblog)




™Sheephogan™

P. J. O'Rourke  - "Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them."