The recent and concerning collapse of the once revered scientific process in large parts of the climate change and medical community is detailed in a highly critical 'open review' paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). Someday, charge the authors, there will need to be an inquiry into how so many scientific bodies abandoned core principles of scientific integrity, took strong positions on unsettled science, took people's word for things uncritically, and silenced those who tried to continue the scientific endeavour.

Universities have abandoned their historical role of open and disinterested enquiry on behalf of humanity, and "should be sanctioned for this by revoking their charitable status". Group-think that maintains prevailing fads and supresses dissent on behalf of alleged 'consensus' is the opposite of the central purpose of universities. Mainstream media have long been uncritical receptacles for alarmist 'clickbait' political scare stories, and this, it might be added, encourages self-promotion among aggressive publicity-hungry scientists. There are many errors and deceptions and much censorship, state the authors, blighting the complete story being told in an unbiased manner. Singling out the behaviour of state broadcaster the BBC, they note:

"Any reasonable observer will wonder whether Ofcom [the state regulator] is asleep at the wheel, not requiring the BBC to correct the errors it has been made aware of by experts, nor return to some form of neutrality."

The report is mainly written by Professor Michael Kelly, the former Prince Philip Professor of Engineering, Trinity Hall, Cambridge University, and Clive Hambler, Science Lecturer at Hertford College, Oxford. There is also economic input from Professor Roger Koppl from Syracuse University. The full GWPF report is due to be published in December and the paper is currently open for review, comments and contributions from other academics. The GWPF notes habitual attacks on its work from activists, and its 'open review' policy is explained here.

Science is not done by consensus, it isn't a vote.

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Regarding 'global boiling', the widely-publicized '97% consensus' study was done by Australian John Cook — a conclusion that to this day is routinely regurgitated by AGW Party members:

One researcher hypothesizes that experiments carried out by NASA's Viking landers in 1976 could have inadvertently killed microbes living in Martian rocks. Other experts are skeptical.

A scientist recently claimed that NASA may have inadvertently discovered life on Mars almost 50 years ago and then accidentally killed it before realizing what it was. But other experts are split on whether the new claims are a far-fetched fantasy or an intriguing possible explanation for some puzzling past experiments.

After landing on the Red Planet in 1976, NASA's Viking landers may have sampled tiny, dry-resistant life-forms hiding inside Martian rocks, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Technical University Berlin, suggested in a June 27 article for Big Think.

If these extreme life-forms did and continue to exist, the experiments carried out by the landers may have killed them before they were identified, because the tests would have "overwhelmed these potential microbes," Schulze-Makuch wrote.

This is "a suggestion that some people surely will find provocative," Schulze-Makuch said. But similar microbes do live on Earth and could hypothetically live on the Red Planet, so they can't be discounted, he added.

However, other scientists believe the Viking results are far less ambiguous than Schulze-Makuch and others make them out to be.

Mysteriously, warming is happening across the solar system. The one common factor is at the center of it all: the sun.
Because man is burning fossil fuels, our planet is allegedly becoming increasingly covered by a blanket of "heat-trapping" greenhouse gases, scientists like to make people believe. The recent global warming simply couldn't have anything to do with the sun, they insist.

They're likely way off the mark.

Today German Prof. Stefan Homburg tweeted a summary of warming that's happening at other places within our solar system, suggesting the sun is behind it.

"Global warming isn't only happening on earth," he tweets.

A new investigation with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide.

A new investigation with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. Webb's discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet, one which has the potential to possess a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface.

The first insight into the atmospheric properties of this habitable-zone exoplanet came from observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which prompted further studies that have since changed our understanding of the system.

Scientists have struggled to accurately forecast the strength of the sun's 11-year cycle — even after centuries of solar observations.
The sun looks immutable, a boring celestial lightbulb that's always turned on. But this fusion-powered ball of plasma is in constant flux. Every 11 years or so, it swings between slumber and an active, unruly epoch marked by sunspots and solar eruptions, such as flares and plasma outbursts.

The sun is now approaching its maximum level of activity in the current cycle, and it's not exactly behaving according to plan. Scientists had predicted that this cycle would be weak, like the previous one, but the sun is exhibiting a level of activity unseen in more than 20 years. In June and July of this year, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it averaged roughly 160 sunspots daily, more than twice as many as predicted. Solar flares are also increasing.

The discrepancy between prediction and observation was apparent as early as July 2022, when Nicola Fox — then the director of NASA's heliophysics division — wrote on NASA's website that "the Sun has been much more active this cycle than anticipated."

A reliable solar cycle prediction is now more important than ever because of our increasing dependence on vulnerable technology. Earth's atmosphere puffs up with solar activity and increases the drag on the (very many) satellites that need to maneuver in orbit. Solar outbursts can fry electronic equipment, jam radio signals, confound GPS systems, and disrupt power grids.

As with most forecasts, the challenges of predicting the solar cycle are numerous. It doesn't follow a clear pattern from one cycle to the next — some are shorter than others — and solar physics is still a relatively young discipline. "We like to say we're about 60 years behind the weather forecasters," said Robert Leamon, a solar physicist at the University of Maryland.

Historically, researchers looked for statistical correlations between solar activity and the number of sunspots, their total surface area, and the timing of their appearance. But the scientific consensus is that those techniques — even while modernized — don't reveal much about the sun's future behavior. Now, fueled by more sophisticated solar observations, scientists are evaluating and finessing methods that instead use the inner workings of the sun as a guide.

While progress is slow — 11 years is a long time — let's take a closer look at the current state of solar system prediction.

A mysterious golden "orb" found at the bottom of the ocean during a research expedition is "biological in origin" — but scientists have no idea what it is.

"While we were able to collect the 'golden orb' and bring it onto the ship, we still are not able to identify it beyond the fact that it is biological in origin," Sam Candio, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ocean Exploration expedition coordinator said in a statement.

"While somewhat humbling to be stumped by this finding, it serves as a reminder of how little we know about our own planet and how much is left to learn and appreciate about our ocean."

[This is an updated version of an article originally published on electroverse.net. I'm currently travelling from Portugal to the UK, and will be back to it with new posts on Monday, September 11]

In recent years, the Sun has been at its weakest state in more than a century, with the two most recent solar cycles (24 and 25) on course to be the weakest pair in more than 200 years, since the Dalton Minimum.

This is revealed by the sunspot count (shown below) — a great barometer for solar activity:

The Sun's output ebbs and flows on a roughly 11-year cycle.

As visualized above, the most recently completed solar cycle (24) finished up closely matching those of 'The Centennial Minimum' (≈1880-1914) — the previous multi-cycle period of low output, aka a 'Grand Solar Minimum' (GSM).

Grand Solar Minimums themselves can also range in depth and length, and, crucially for all of inhabitants of Earth, these factors determine the severity of the accompanying 'global cooling'.

Remembering the order of information is central for a person when participating in conversations, planning everyday life, or undergoing an education. A new study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, shows that this ability is probably human unique. Even the closest relatives of humans, such as bonobos, do not learn order in the same way.

"The study contributes another piece of the puzzle to the question of how the mental abilities of humans and other animals differ, and why only humans speak languages, plan space travel, and have learned to exploit the earth so efficiently that we now pose a serious threat to countless other life forms," says Johan Lind, associate professor in ethology and deputy director at the Center for Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University.

Earlier research at Stockholm University has suggested that only humans have the ability to recognize and remember so-called sequential information, and that this ability is a fundamental building block underlying unique human cultural abilities. But previously, this sequence memory-hypothesis has not been tested in humans' closest relatives, the great apes. The new experiments show that bonobos, one of the great apes, struggle to learn the order of stimuli.

India's Chandrayaan-3 mission may have just recorded the first seismic data on the Moon since the 1970s.

If confirmed to be natural seismic data, it could finally help scientists understand how the Moon's insides are arranged.

The rumblings were recorded by the Vikram lander's onboard Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA).

It's the first Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology-based instrument on the Moon and it was was able to record the seismic rumbles of the mission's Pragyan rover moving around on the surface.