Global warming debunked: NASA report verifies carbon dioxide actually cools atmosphere

© Natural News

Global warming debunked: NASA report verifies carbon dioxide actually cools atmosphere
May 22, 2013 | Natural News | Ethan A. Huff

Practically everything you have been told by the mainstream scientific community and the media about the alleged detriments of greenhouse gases, and particularly carbon dioxide, appears to be false, according to new data compiled by NASA's Langley Research Center. As it turns out, all those atmospheric greenhouse gases that Al Gore and all the other global warming hoaxers have long claimed are overheating and destroying our planet are actually cooling it, based on the latest evidence.

As reported by Principia Scientific International (PSI), Martin Mlynczak and his colleagues over at NASA tracked infrared emissions from the earth's upper atmosphere during and following a recent solar storm that took place between March 8-10. What they found was that the vast majority of energy released from the sun during this immense coronal mass ejection (CME) was reflected back up into space rather than deposited into earth's lower atmosphere.

The result was an overall cooling effect that completely contradicts claims made by NASA's own climatology division that greenhouse gases are a cause of global warming. As illustrated by data collected using Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER), both carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), which are abundant in the earth's upper atmosphere, greenhouse gases reflect heating energy rather than absorb it.

"Carbon dioxide and nitric oxide are natural thermostats," says James Russell from Hampton University, who was one of the lead investigators for the groundbreaking SABER study. "When the upper atmosphere (or 'thermosphere') heats up, these molecules try as hard as they can to shed that heat back into space."

Almost all 'heating' radiation generated by sun is blocked from entering lower atmosphere by CO2 

According to the data, up to 95 percent of solar radiation is literally bounced back into space by both CO2 and NO in the upper atmosphere. Without these necessary elements, in other words, the earth would be capable of absorbing potentially devastating amounts of solar energy that would truly melt the polar ice caps and destroy the planet.

"The shock revelation starkly contradicts the core proposition of the so-called greenhouse gas theory which claims that more CO2 means more warming for our planet," write H. Schreuder and J. O'Sullivan for PSI. "[T]his compelling new NASA data disproves that notion and is a huge embarrassment for NASA's chief climatologist, Dr. James Hansen and his team over at NASA's GISS."

Dr. Hansen, of course, is an outspoken global warming activist who helped spark man-made climate change hysteria in the U.S. back in 1988. Just after the release of the new SABER study, however, Dr. Hansen conveniently retired from his career as a climatologist at NASA, and reportedly now plans to spend his time "on science," and on "drawing attention to [its] implications for young people."

You can read more details of the new NASA SABER study by visiting:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/

You can also check out a informative, four-minute video report on the solar storm here:
http://youtu.be/EEFQHDSYP1I

Sources for this article include:

http://principia-scientific.org

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/

http://youtu.be/EEFQHDSYP1I

Ancient Human Innovations Linked to Climate Shifts

Stone tools known as bifacial points recovered
from Blombos Cave, South Africa. They were
made during the Middle Stone Age, about
75,000 years ago, by anatomically modern
humans. Scale bar: 1 cm (0.4 inches).
CREDIT: Courtesy of Christopher Henshilwood,
University of the Witwatersrand

Ancient Human Innovations Linked to Climate Shifts
May 21, 2013 | Live Science | Douglas Main

The climate of South Africa was once much wetter than it is today, and those lush times may have spurred human populations through especially innovative periods, new research shows.
Evidence from these ancient periods suggests humans produced new tools, and used symbolism in wall engravings. The findings suggest a tight link between abrupt climate changes and the emergence of modern human traits, researchers say.

"We provide for the first time really good evidence that the occurrence and disappearance of these first finds of human innovations are linked to climate change," said study author Martin Ziegler, an earth science researcher at Cardiff University in Wales.

Before these periods of innovation, humans were quite primitive, with the most impressive technology being hand axes, Ziegler said. But during these wet periods, more advanced stone and bone tools appear in the fossil record, as well as painted symbols on cave walls that suggest the development of language.

Archaeologists have also found some of the first evidence of constructed plant beds during these periods, and shells thought to be worn as adornments or jewelry, Ziegler said. Among the most important periods analyzed in the study date to 71,000, and a period between 64,000 and 59,000 years ago. [Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans]

In the study, Ziegler's team reconstructed South Africa's climate over the last 100,000 years. They pieced together the record by analyzing sediment cores taken from the offshore region near the southeastern tip of Africa.

Chemicals within the sediment suggest how much rainfall fell nearby, Ziegler said, as well as other indicators of climate.

The climate reconstruction agrees with records from elsewhere in the world. During these lush periods in South Africa, much of the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa was experiencing a drought, while much of the Northern Hemisphere was very cold, Ziegler said. The study suggests that cold conditions in the north reoriented Atlantic Ocean currents, shifting the global monsoon belt — with its torrential rains — to the south, he said.

The study shows an association, but not a cause-and-effect relationship between wetter conditions and human innovation. But it may be that during these periods, drought farther north forced ancient humans into South African refuges, leading to a "bottleneck" of competition, and cross-cultural fertilization, Ziegler said.

Future work may look at the connection between human populations elsewhere, and local climate shifts.

But insights from these locations in South Africa are vital, because they are thought to "reflect the emergence of modern behaviors of innovation, language and cultural identity," the authors wrote in the study, published today (May 21) in the journal Nature Communications.

Email Douglas Main or follow him on Twitter or Google+. Follow us @livescience,  Facebook or Google+. Article originally on LiveScience.com.

Devastating Tornado Cuts Path of Death in Oklahoma

A child is pulled from the rubble of the Plaza
Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., and
passed along to rescuers Monday, May 20,
2013. A tornado as much as a mile (1.6 kilometers)
wide with winds up to 200 mph (320 kph)
roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday,
flattening entire neighborhoods, setting
buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on
an elementary school. (AP Photo Sue Ogrocki)

Devastating Tornado Cuts Path of Death in Oklahoma
May 21, 2013 | Common Dreams | Jon Queally

Officials in Oklahoma have confirmed the death of 91 people, including 20 children, following a tornado on Monday that devastated the town of Moore and other suburbs outside Oklahoma City.  Hundreds more are injured and the death toll is expected to rise as the search for survivors continues.

Reports indicate the tornado was more than a mile wide at times, contained winds of over 200 miles per hour, and simply destroyed everything in its path. Whole neighborhoods were flattened, cars flung, roofs ripped off and even schools where children huddled for safety were not spared.

As The Oklahoman reports Tuesday morning:

As Monday turned into Tuesday, the town of Moore, a community of 41,000 people 10 miles south of the city, braced for another long, harrowing day.

“As long as we are here … we are going to hold out hope that we will find survivors,” said Trooper Betsy Randolph, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

More than 120 people were being treated at hospitals, including about 50 children. Amy Elliott, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Medical Examiner's Office, said Tuesday that there could be as many as 40 more fatalities from Monday's tornado.

Families anxiously waited at nearby churches to hear if their loved ones were OK. A man with a megaphone stood Monday evening near St. Andrews United Methodist Church and called out the names of surviving children. Parents waited nearby, hoping to hear their sons' and daughters' names.

The New York Times reports:

Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore was reduced to a pile of twisted metal and toppled walls. Rescue workers were able to pull several children from the rubble, but on Monday evening crews were still struggling to cut through fallen beams and clear debris amid reports that dozens of students were trapped. At Briarwood Elementary School in Oklahoma City, on the border with Moore, cars were thrown through the facade and the roof was torn off.

“Numerous neighborhoods were completely leveled,” Sgt. Gary Knight of the Oklahoma City Police Department said by telephone. “Neighborhoods just wiped clean.”

This time-lapse video shows that path the tornado cut:
Action News 5 - Memphis, Tennessee

Action News 5 - Memphis, Tennessee

Photos:

This photo provided by KFOR-TV shows homes flattened outside Moore, Okla., Monday, May 20, 2013. A monstrous tornado as much as a mile wide roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school. (AP Photo/KFOR-TV) 

Aerial view of homes hit by a massive tornado between SW4th and SW 19th in Moore, Monday May 20, 2013. (Photo By Steve Gooch, The Oklahoman)

This aerial photo shows the remains of homes hit by a massive tornado in Moore, Okla., Monday May 20, 2013. A tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school. (AP Photo/Steve Gooch)

"Official" Solar Activity = Earthquakes and Tsunamis

"Official" Solar Activity = Earthquakes and Tsunamis
May 20, 2013 | Mr2Tuff2

Apparently the experts know more about the recent string of X class flares than they are telling the public. more..

Cloud mystery: Climate change and cosmic rays

Cloud mystery: Climate change and cosmic rays
Mar 3, 2013 | Objective Science

Henrik Svensmark's documentary on climate change and cosmic rays. Henrik Svensmark (born 1958) is a physicist and professor in the Division of Solar System Physics at the Danish National Space Institute (DTU Space) in Copenhagen.

'Crazy' Ants Driving Out Fire Ants in Southeast

Nylanderia fulva, also known as the tawny
crazy ant, hails from northern Argentina and
southern Brazil. CREDIT: Joe MacGown,
Mississippi Entomological Museum

'Crazy' Ants Driving Out Fire Ants in Southeast
May 17, 2013 | Live Science | Douglas Main

Invasive fire ants have been a thorn in the sides of Southerners for years. But another invasive species, the so-called "crazy" ant — that many describe as being worse — has arrived and is displacing fire ants in several places.

"When you talk to folks who live in the invaded areas, they tell you they want their fire ants back," said Edward LeBrun, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, in a statement from the school. "Fire ants are in many ways very polite. They live in your yard. They form mounds and stay there, and they only interact with you if you step on their mound."

Crazy ants, on the other hand, "go everywhere," invading homes and nesting in walls and crawlspaces, even damaging electrical equipment by swarming inside appliances. [Image Gallery: Ants of the World]

A study published in the April issue of the journal Biological Invasions found that in areas infested with crazy ants, few to no fire ants were present. Exactly how they are able to outcompete fire ants is so far unknown. In areas with crazy ants, the researchers also found greatly diminished numbers of native ant species, according to the study.

Fire ants are known for their painful stings and have spread through the Southeast since arriving from South America in the 1930s. Crazy ants were first discovered in Houston in 2002, and they have already spread to coastal areas from Texas to Florida, according to the researchers. Although the "crazies" don't have as painful a sting as fire ants, they multiply in even greater numbers. They are also difficult to control since they don't eat the same poison baits as fire ants do, the statement noted.

Last year, the crazy ant species was identified as Nylanderia fulva, which hails from northern Argentina and southern Brazil, according to a 2012 study in PLOS ONE. It's also known as the tawny crazy ant and was previously named the Rasberry crazy ant after the exterminator Tom Rasberry, who first discovered it. The "crazy" moniker comes from the ant's quick, seemingly random movements.

Luckily, the crazy ant doesn't spread as quickly as the fire ant, advancing only 650 feet (200 meters) per year on its own, the release noted. Therefore, it's vital that people don't accidentally transport the ant, the prime method by which it has spread, according to the release.

Email Douglas Main or follow him on Twitter or Google+. Follow us @livescience,  Facebook or  Google+. Article originally on LiveScience.com.

Friday Trash Dump: Obama DOE Approves 2nd Fracked Gas LNG Export Terminal

Freeport LNG Development's liquefied natural
gas receiving terminal in Freeport, Texas
while under construction. The Energy
Department approved a permit allowing the
facility to send gas overseas.
(Source US News)

Friday Trash Dump: Obama DOE Approves 2nd Fracked Gas LNG Export Terminal
May 18, 2013 | Common Dreams | Steve Horn

Friday is the proverbial "take out the trash day" for the release of bad news among public relations practioners and this Friday was no different.

In that vein, yesterday the Obama Department of Energy (DOE) announced a conditional approval of the second-ever LNG (liquefied natural gas) export terminal.

LNG is the super-chilled final product of gas obtained - predominatly in today's context - via the controversial hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") process taking place within shale deposits located throughout the U.S. Fracked gas is shipped from the multitude of domestic shale basins in pipelines to various coastal LNG terminals, and then sent on LNG tankers to the global market.
The name of the terminal: Freeport LNG.

Freeport LNG is 50-percent owned by ConocoPhillips and located in Freeport, Texas, an hour-long car ride south of Houston. The export facility is the second one approved by the Obama DOE, with the first one - the Sabine Pass terminal, owned by Cheniere and located in Sabine Pass, Louisiana - approved in May 2011.

DOE gave its rubber stamp of approval to Freeport LNG to export up to 1.4 billion cubic feet of LNG per day from its terminal.

Moniz's DOE is Dept. of LNG Exports

The announcement comes in the aftermath of an April DeSmogBlog investigation revealing that recently confirmed Energy Department Secretary Ernest Moniz - a former member of the Board of Directors of ICF International - has a binder full of conflicts-of-interest in any decision the DOE makes to export the U.S. shale gas bounty.

As we explained in that investigation, a Feb. 2013 "study" published by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and conducted on its behalf by ICF International concluded exporting shale gas was on the economically sound up-and-up.

ICF is a consulting firm that teams up with oil and gas industry corporations and was one of three firms that did the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on behalf of the U.S. State Department for the northern half of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline. The SEIS was published in March 2013.

Furthermore, among the members of the Obama Administration's industry-stacked DOE Fracking Subcommittee formed in May 2011 was Kathleen "Katie" McGinty. McGinty formerly served as Vice President Al Gore’s top climate aide during the Clinton Administration, segueing from that position into one as chair of the Clinton Council on Environmental Quality from 1993-1998. Her husband is Karl Hausker, the Vice President of ICF International.

In Dec. 2012, the DOE - like API/ICF - said exporting LNG was economically sound. The DOE's LNG exports economics study itself was published by another industry-tied firm, NERA (National Economic Research Associates) Economic Consulting.

Given the myriad ties that bind, it's tough to fathom any other decision being made by the DOE on Freeport or any other LNG export terminal from here on out. And the ecological consequences of that will be disastrous.

"Exporting LNG will lead to more drilling -- and more drilling means more fracking, more air and water pollution, and more climate fueled weather disasters like last year's record fires, droughts, and superstorms," Deb Nardone, Director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Natural Gas campaign said in a press release in response to the DOE announcement.

"Once environmental impacts are evaluated, it becomes clear that the additional fracking and gas production exports would induce is unacceptable."

© 2013 DeSmogBlog.com

The Ship Mother Earth - A View from Space [VIDEO]

The Ship Mother Earth - A View from Space [VIDEO]
May 17, 2013 | sebastiansz

What GovCorp Hasn't Mentioned: Home Foreclosure Rates are Comparable to the Great Depression

image

Home Foreclosure Rates are Comparable to the Great Depression
May 17, 2013 | Washington's Blog

Editor's note: Washington's Blog provides endless amounts of factual data that can be used to analyze our current environment. We are told that the economy is recovering but the data that is clearly available shows otherwise, so in effect, the only economy that is improving is those institutions that are consuming the livelihoods of people and their ability to survive. There is no recovery, there is only the slaughter.

---

Have As Many People Lost their Homes as During the Great Depression? 

The San Francisco Chronicle notes that it is difficult to keep track of foreclosure rates now … let alone during the Great Depression:

Foreclosure rates of the late 2000s are often compared with those of the Great Depression, which took place through the first half of the 1930s. However, there were no public or private agencies keeping track of foreclosure rates at that time. Indeed, the government still does not keep an official statistic on the number of homes in foreclosure or repossessed by banks and lenders.

But the Chronicle provides estimates of foreclosures during the 1930s:

A 2008 article by David C. Wheelock, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, cited annual reports issued by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board during the 1930s. These reports reveal that the foreclosure rate exceeded 1 percent from 1931 until 1935. At the worst point in the Depression-era economic crisis, in 1933, about 1,000 home loans were being placed in foreclosure by banks every day.

How does that compare to the last 5 years?

RealtyTrac notes (via North Carolina State University) that:

From January 2007 to December 2011 there were more than four million completed foreclosures and more than 8.2 million foreclosure starts ….

CoreLogic reported a year ago:

Approximately 1.4 million homes, or 3.4 percent of all homes with a mortgage, were in the national foreclosure inventory as of May 2012 compared to 1.5 million, or 3.5 percent, in May 2011 and 1.4 million, or 3.4 percent, in April 2012. The foreclosure inventory is the share of all mortgaged homes in some stage of the foreclosure process.

Given that there are currently around 316 million Americans – more than twice the number during the Great Depression – such high foreclosure rates mean that there may well be as many people suffering foreclosure than during the Great Depression … or more.

And NBC News reported this month:

Already some 5 million homes have been lost to foreclosure; estimates of future foreclosures range widely. [Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi], who has followed the mortgage mess since the housing market began to crack in 2006, figures foreclosures will strike another three million homes in the next three or four years.

For more comparisons of the Great Depression and today, see:

• Housing Prices Have Already Fallen More than During the Great Depression … How Much Lower Will They Go?

• Have the Last 5 Years Been Worse than the Great Depression?

• British Economy Is WORSE than During the Great Depression 

Everything Is Rigged, Continued: European Commission Raids Oil Companies in Price-Fixing Probe

European finance workers
Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Everything Is Rigged, Continued: European Commission Raids Oil Companies in Price-Fixing Probe
May 15, 2013 | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

We're going to get into this more at a later date, but there was some interesting late-breaking news yesterday.

According to numerous reports, the European Commission regulators yesterday raided the offices of oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway as part of an investigation into possible price-rigging in the oil markets. The targeted companies include BP, Shell and the Norweigan company Statoil. The Guardian explains that officials believe that oil companies colluded to manipulate pricing data:

The commission said the alleged price collusion, which may have been going on since 2002, could have had a "huge impact" on the price of petrol at the pumps "potentially harming final consumers".

Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the alleged rigging of oil prices was "as serious as rigging Libor" – which led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds.

The inquiry also involves Platts, the world's largest oil price reporting agency. The concept here is very similar to both the LIBOR scandal, which involved banks manipulating the benchmark rates for interest rates, and to the possible rigging of interest rate swap prices through the manipulation of ISDAfix, the benchmark rate for those instruments, which is also the subject of a regulatory probe.

We wrote about both of those scandals in last month's Rolling Stone article, "Everything is Rigged." In that piece, finance professionals talked about the potential for manipulation in other markets that involve voluntary price reporting:

What other markets out there carry the same potential for manipulation? The answer to that question is far from reassuring, because the potential is almost everywhere. From gold to gas to swaps to interest rates, prices all over the world are dependent upon little private cabals of cigar-chomping insiders we're forced to trust.

"In all the over-the-counter markets, you don't really have pricing except by a bunch of guys getting together," Masters notes glumly.

That includes the markets for gold (where prices are set by five banks in a Libor-ish teleconferencing process that, ironically, was created in part by N M Rothschild & Sons) and silver (whose price is set by just three banks), as well as benchmark rates in numerous other commodities – jet fuel, diesel, electric power, coal, you name it.

One analyst I spoke to for that piece talked specifically about Platts (and another, similar price assessment company), noting that they "do benchmarks for the entire oil market, the entire refined products market" and "you name it" – any of these benchmarks that rely on voluntary reporting could be manipulated.

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Financial Scandal Yet

It's not clear yet exactly what is alleged to have occurred, but Europeans have long complained that retail gas prices have not seemed to match wholesale prices. In fact, complaints that wholesale prices at gas stations were noticeably slow to fall when wholesale prices fell prompted the U.K.-based Office of Fair Trading last year to conduct a cursory inquiry into possible anti-competitive behavior in the fuel markets. Early this year, they announced that they hadn't found enough evidence to warrant a full-blown investigation. But complaints persisted.

The story is obviously hugely significant in its own right, just as the LIBOR story was. But both are even more unpleasant in conjunction with each other, and the other price-fixing scandals that have cropped up in the financial markets in the last year or two. We've had other price-fixing scandals involving gas in the U.K. and here in the U.S., just a few weeks ago, it came out that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) concluded that JPMorgan Chase used "manipulative schemes" to tinker with energy prices in Michigan and California.

FERC last year also recommended a massive $470 million fine against Barclays for similar activity. (Barclays has vowed to fight the penalty.) Deutsche Bank, meanwhile, settled with FERC for $1.7 million after the commission alleged that the German bank was involved with manipulation in the California energy markets for several months during 2010.

More on all this later . . .