They shoot them just to keep the poor buggers from freezing to death.

A Nobel Peace Prize denier;

Two detailed investigations by Committees of the House confirm that the IPCC has deliberately, persistently and prodigiously exaggerated not only the effect of greenhouse gases on temperature but also the environmental consequences of warmer weather.
My contribution to the 2007 report illustrates the scientific problem. The report’s first table of figures – inserted by the IPCC’s bureaucrats after the scientists had finalized the draft, and without their consent – listed four contributions to sea-level rise. The bureaucrats had multiplied the effect of melting ice from the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets by 10.
The result of this dishonest political tampering with the science was that the sum of the four items in the offending table was more than twice the IPCC’s published total. Until I wrote to point out the error, no one had noticed. The IPCC, on receiving my letter, quietly corrected, moved and relabeled the erroneous table, posting the new version on the internet and earning me my Nobel prize.
[…]
At the very heart of the IPCC’s calculations lurks an error more serious than any of these. The IPCC says: “The CO2 radiative forcing increased by 20 percent during the last 10 years (1995-2005).” Radiative forcing quantifies increases in radiant energy in the atmosphere, and hence in temperature. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 in 1995 was 360 parts per million. In 2005 it was just 5percent higher, at 378 ppm. But each additional molecule of CO2 in the air causes a smaller radiant-energy increase than its predecessor. So the true increase in radiative forcing was 1 percent, not 20 percent. The IPCC has exaggerated the CO2 effect 20-fold.
Why so large and crucial an exaggeration? Answer: the IPCC has repealed the fundamental physicalthe Stefan-Boltzmann equation – that converts radiant energy to temperature. Without this equation, no meaningful calculation of the effect of radiance on temperature can be done. Yet the 1,600 pages of the IPCC’s 2007 report do not mention it once.

h/t reader Peter G.

While it’s the damage to Endeavour’s tiles that dominates the news this morning (hard to know whether it’s as serious as it sounds, given the media’s insistance on sensationalizing any event that brings with it a degree of risk), reader “L’il Walter” passed along a series of photos taken on launch day.

(I’ve been remiss in mentioning that Dave Williams, who is charged with making the repairs, is Saskatoon born.)
Click here for more.

Save the planet – get your dirty feet off it;

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.
The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.
“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

It’s official. The only way to meet the one tonne challenge is to kill somebody.
(h/t Tenebris)

As word of the revised GISS temperature rankings (1998 no longer the hottest year on record in USA) spreads, reaction is predictable. Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit is under DOS attack.
How pathetic.

Go, Dave!

* spelling corrected. (Though I share the honour with a gazillion news outlets.)

New energy technology that doesn’t have us filling our tanks with zebra dung distillate or paving Nebraska with solar collecters;

In basic ways, Alex Fassbender’s breakthrough in clean-coal technology retains James Watt’s methodology from the 18th century. You pulverize coal into particles as fine as talcum powder, then burn it in a furnace surrounded by pipes filled with water. You direct the steam into turbines that spin to produce electricity. In other basic ways, though, it is very different. For one thing, there’s no smokestack.
Mr. Fassbender is the American engineer whose invention – as tested last year in the federal government’s energy labs in Ottawa – delivered clean electricity at a lower cost than the inventor himself had expected. Code-named TIPS (Thermo-energy Integrated Power System), the technology strips coal of its pollutants and captures its carbon emissions in power plants a 10th the size of conventional plants.

More – a little red meat for the engineering types: PRESSURIZED OXY-FUEL COMBUSTION FOR MULTI-POLLUTANT CAPTURE.

*

NASA is holding a news conference shortly to “announce significant find on Mars”.
Update: Here’s the transcript

NARRATOR: First of all, in 25 words or less, what is the news about water?
MALIN: The news about water is that we have found two gullies out of the 10,000 that we have observed that have fresh deposits that we believe were formed by water flowing out recently.
NARRATOR: How recently?
MALIN: Within the last five years.

Woohoo!

This is definitely progress:

The latest part of the Conservatives’ long-awaited strategy focuses more on smog than on global warming…

Excellent. Naturally, the Conservatives will get nothing but criticism from environmentalists and the left-lib media, but this is exactly what they should be doing.
Whether you believe CO2 emissions are a threat to the Earth or not, surely Kyoto supporters in Canada should be embarassed about spending billions, making lofty speeches, and then having a worse record on CO2 emissions than the U.S.
So, let the critics seethe and wail. I’ll take effective measures to limit smog over useless sanctimoniousness any day.
But for those who are interested in following the science of Global Warming, I notice stories like this still get systematically underreported:

A team at the Danish National Space Center has discovered how cosmic rays from exploding stars can help to make clouds in the atmosphere. The results support the theory that cosmic rays influence Earth’s climate.
(snip)
Interestingly, during the 20th Century, the Sun’s magnetic field which shields Earth from cosmic rays more than doubled, thereby reducing the average influx of cosmic rays.
The resulting reduction in cloudiness, especially of low-altitude clouds, may be a significant factor in the global warming Earth has undergone during the last century. However, until now, there has been no experimental evidence of how the causal mechanism linking cosmic rays and cloud formation may work.
(snip)
“Some said there was no conceivable way in which cosmic rays could influence cloud cover. The SKY experiment now shows how they do so, and should help to put the cosmic-ray connection firmly onto the agenda of international climate research.”

Well, yes, it should, but almost certainly won’t. You can’t usefully demonize anyone by better understanding natural effects on the climate.

We have the technology;

Silica provides structural support to diatoms (single-celled organisms known for their remarkable nanostructural details) while silk proteins from spiders and silkworms are more flexible, stronger and able to self-assemble into readily defined structures. The Tufts researchers were able to design and clone genetic fusions of the encoding genes for these two proteins, and then generate these genetically engineered proteins into nanocomposites at ambient temperatures using only water. In contrast, high temperatures and harsh conditions are typically required by geochemical and industrial synthesis of silica in the laboratory.
Another remarkable detail about the spider silk-silica composite is its size. While past tests using silica have formed silica particles with a diameter between 0.5 and 10 nanometers, the silk-glass composite has a diameter size distribution between 0.5 and 2 nanometers. The smaller, more uniform size will provide better control and more options for processing, which would be “important benefits for biomedical and specialty materials,” according to the research.

BBC – “Geologists in Iceland are drilling directly into the heart of a hot volcano”.

Omar Friedleifsson of the Iceland Geosurvey is leading the consortium of energy companies in the Iceland Deep Drilling Project.
Last year, they drilled down to a depth of 3,082m and since then have been conducting flow tests.
Later this year, they will put a pressure lining into their borehole and drill on down to more than 4km deep.
At that depth, they hope to encounter what is called supercritical water: water that is not simply a mixture of steam and hot water but a single phase which can carry much more energy.
Engineers on the project have calculated that increasing the temperature by 200 degrees and the pressure by 200 Bar will mean that, for the same flow rate, the energy extracted from such a borehole will go up from 5MW to 50MW.
Power station manager Albert Albertsson predicts that, by the end of the century, “Iceland could become the Kuwait of the North”. The vision is to use this cheap and carbon-free energy to split water, to yield hydrogen that could be despatched around the world in tankers.

h/t The Corner.

NASA;

To get desired groundspeeds and lighting conditions for the test images, researchers programmed the cameras to shoot while the spacecraft was flying about 1,547 miles or more above Mars’ surface, about nine times the range planned for the orbiter’s primary science mission. Even so, the highest resolution of about 8 feet per pixel – an object 8 feet in diameter would appear as a dot — is comparable to some of the best resolution previously achieved from Mars orbit.

More preliminary photos.

True to its nature, when the internet encounters a new would-be information shepherd, it simply builds a better cat.

THE UNIVERSITY of Toronto has worked out a way to help those trapped behind the blocking and filtering systems set up by restrictive governments.
The system is designed to disable the Great Firewall of China and prevent countries running repressive control over the net ever succeeding.
The software known as Psiphon overcomes one of the main problems of using anti-filter programs. If a user is found by authorities, they can discover everything that a user has been up too.
However Psiphon does not leave footprints on computers. It gives monitored computer users a way to send an encrypted request for information to a computer located in a secure country. When the computer finds the information it sends it back encrypted.
It enters users’ machines through computer port 443, which is designed to transport secure data for banking. If China wanted to close this avenue down, it would also have to shut off a lot of its foreign electronic banking operations.
The downside is that the user has to know someone in the safe country to help them set up a proxy and give them a username and password.
The program will be released at the international congress of the free-speech group PEN in May.

A few weeks ago, I was asked by someone privately about my “position” regarding Intelligent Design. It just so happens that at Outside The Beltway Steve Verdon helped to set up my answer with a post titled “Why Irreducible Complexity Isn�t Really A Big Deal”.
There are graphics;

In other words, I was writing that removing A, B, B’, C, or C’ renders the pathway non-functional. In short, I did not “miss the point”. However, I think it is fair to say that Joe has missed the point as he has left the main conclusion completely intact; that the evolution of IC systems is not impossible.

My position on the Intelligent Design vs Evolution debate?
I’ve concluded that it’s one of those realms of scientific debate where holding the wrong view is probably harnless. The rise and fall of species has marched along quite nicely on its own for a few millenia without our consensus. It will, in all probability, continue to do so.
However, the notion of arguing for and against either side reminds me of my fondness for singing along with Italian opera. Though I do it with some authority, I don’t actually know the words, much less what they mean … and neither does anyone else.
Though, if you ask them for their opinion, most will be convinced I’ve got it wrong.

The attention to animal cloning has been focused primarily on wealthy clients attempting to recreate a treasured pet, while overlooking the practical application most likely to attract horse, cattle and to a lesser extent, dog industry attention. From “Oozing With Type;

A project to clone elite showhorses reported its first success with a cloned foal of Pieraz, an Arab endurance champion.
Clones are banned from thoroughbred racing, but a French scientist has stored tissue from champion showhorse geldings (castrated horses) for the creation of breeding stock. Pieraz 2 is the second horse clone and the first produced for the creation of a breeding animal from a sterile one.
The first cloned horse, Prometea was announced in August, 2003, by Professor Cesare Galli, of the Laboratory of Reproductive Technologies in Cremona, Italy, who also works with a French company, Cryozootech.
”This new approach opens the possibility of preserving the genetic heritage of many exceptional horses whose genes are presently lost because of the castration,” said Dr. Galli. ”Prometea was just a scientific experiment and, scientifically, there’s not much new about the new clone.
”But from an industry viewpoint, the new horse is the real thing.”
Pieraz, an Arab horse, was the world champion of endurance races in 1994 and 1996 and is now retired in the United States in the stables of its owner, trainer and rider, Valerie Kanavy.
Endurance horse racing involves races of 50 miles or more across open country, with horses making regular ”pit stops” for food, water and veterinary inspection.
Pieraz’s foal — formally known as Pieraz-Cryozootech- Stallion — was born on Feb 25. It weighed 92 lb. and is in good health, like Prometea.
”Repeatability of the technique is now proven,” said Dr. Galli.
The cells of Pieraz used for the cloning work were provided by Cryozootech, a company founded in 2001 by Dr. Eric Palmer, a horse IVF pioneer. Dr. Palmer had been approached in 2002 by Ms. Kanavy, who was impressed by the idea that, in spite of having been castrated, her champion could transmit his qualities to future generations.

Cool.

The juxtaposition of the “miracle” of the Air France crash against the “unprecedented” repair work on the shuttle this morning was one of those moments when the universe aligns to send mankind a reminder – and mankind forgets to look up.

In this era in which nanny-state politics endeavors to stifle their natural inclinations from the moment they take their first helmeted steps, we should pause a moment and say a prayer of thanks for the gift of the “risk takers”.
They are those children – boys, usually – who jump their bicycles from garage roofs, who taunt large dogs, who ride their motorcycles far too fast, who grow up to risk all and sometimes, to give all and in so doing contribute the tools and the techniques that save lives through innovative materials and technologies.
They become the race car drivers, the astronauts, the stunt pilots and their kind. By pushing the envelope for the envelope’s own sake, the risk takers discover the knowledge that trickles down to protect and improve our everyday lives.

There is a very good chance that 309 souls are with us today because of them.

So Canadian scientists have found that giving kids Viagra is an effective treatment for puliminary hypertension. But giving Viagra to teenage males? Erf. All I’m saying is, don’t be surprised when sword fights (link: NSFW) start breaking out in high school parking lots.

A study that will resonate with more than one blogger.