Tag: science

Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory

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When I took over as the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, I inherited a project that tracks temperature changes since 1880. Using this trove of data, I’ve made climate predictions at the start of every year since 2016. It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has.

…In general, the 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data began offering modellers an unparalleled, real-time view of Earth’s climate system. If the anomaly does not stabilize by August — a reasonable expectation based on previous El Niño events — then the world will be in uncharted territory. It could imply that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated. It could also mean that statistical inferences based on past events are less reliable than we thought, adding more uncertainty to seasonal predictions of droughts and rainfall patterns.

Much of the world’s climate is driven by intricate, long-distance links — known as teleconnections — fuelled by sea and atmospheric currents. If their behaviour is in flux or markedly diverging from previous observations, we need to know about such changes in real time. We need answers for why 2023 turned out to be the warmest year in possibly the past 100,000 years. And we need them quickly.

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This article is weird as it discusses all the usual possibilities for the temperature anomaly of 2023, but ignores the less usual but eminently possible explanation that thermal transmission from earth’s core via abyssal ocean depths is the cause. The author is none other than the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. ABN

Hunter-gatherers were violently wiped off the map by farmers, DNA reveals

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Contrary to what has long been believed, there was no peaceful transition of power from hunter-gather societies to farming communities in Europe, with new advanced DNA analysis revealing that the newcomers slaughtered the existing population, completely wiping them out within a few generations.

Researchers from Sweden’s Lund University analyzed skeletons and teeth found in what is now Denmark, and found that 5,900 years ago, the region underwent a swift and total population change. Prior to this, Danish Mesolithic people of the Maglemose, Kongemose and Ertebølle cultures – genetically related to other Western European hunter-gatherers – were prominent inhabitants. But when Neolithic farmers arrived, an abrupt shift can be seen in DNA records, with next to no genetic contribution from the local hunter-gatherers.

Tracing the DNA timeline, the researchers could see that the hunter-gatherers had been swiftly wiped out by the late Stone Age, in what they suspect was a very bloody and very thorough takeover.

“This transition has previously been presented as peaceful,” said Anne Birgitte Nielsen, geology researcher and head of the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at Lund University. “However, our study indicates the opposite. In addition to violent death, it is likely that new pathogens from livestock finished off many gatherers.”

However, it seems what goes around comes around. Some 1,000 years later, around 4,850 years ago, these farming communities suffered a similar fate, with the arrival of a ‘big-boned’ semi-nomadic group with origins tied to the livestock-herding Yamnaya of southern Russia. Again, DNA evidence suggests violent battles and the introduction of new pathogens caused another swift genetic shakeup.

The newest arrivals, who tamed animals, kept cattle and traversed the land via horse and cart, would prevail in the region; after this tumultuous period, the area was settled by a population tied to the Yamnaya and Eastern European Neolithic peoples. The genetic profile of these settlers remains dominant in Denmark today, with no trace of the first farmers, or the hunter-gatherers before them, at all.

With the rapid rate of distinctive DNA turnover and the a lack of mingling genetics, all signs point to overpowering conflicts that completely anihillated existing communities. Turning previous theories upside down, the researchers add that this new information also sheds light on migration and the movement of pathogens. Scientists have high hopes that advances in the sequencing of ancient DNA (aDNA) will soon lead to a better understanding and treatment of present-day disease.

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Paper: 100 ancient genomes show repeated population turnovers in Neolithic Denmark

‘Obelisks’: Entirely New Class of Life Has Been Found in The Human Digestive System

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Peering into the jungle of microbes that live within us, researchers have stumbled across what seem to be an entire new class of virus-like objects.

“It’s insane,” says University of North Carolina cell biologist Mark Peifer, who was not involved in the study, told Elizabeth Pennisi at Science Magazine. “The more we look, the more crazy things we see.”

These mysterious bits of genetic material have no detectable sequences or even structural similarities known to any other biological agents.

So Stanford University biologist Ivan Zheludev and colleagues argue their strange discovery may not be viruses at all, but instead an entirely new group of entities that may help bridge the ancient gap between the simplest genetic molecules and more complex viruses.

“Obelisks comprise a class of diverse RNAs that have colonized, and gone unnoticed in, human, and global microbiomes,” the researchers write in a preprint paper.

Named after the highly-symmetrical, rod-like structures formed by its twisted lengths of RNA, the Obelisks’ genetic sequences are only around 1,000 characters (nucleotides) in size. In fact, this brevity is likely one of the reasons we’ve failed to notice them previously.

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Carbon Dioxide Causes Much Less Warming Than is Commonly Believed, New Paper Finds

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Further holes have been blown in the ‘settled’ scientific view that humans are responsible for all or most of the changes in the climate by burning hydrocarbons. Three scientists, including Atmospheric Professor Yi Huang of McGill University, have reduced by nearly 40% the basic amount of warming caused by a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide – a figure commonly used to promote the global warming scare. In addition they cast doubt on the ability of CO2 to heat the atmosphere beyond the levels already passed in the pre-industrial age. “Transmissivity in the CO2 band centre is unchanged by increased CO2 as the absorption is already saturated,” they note.

If correct, of course, this work destroys the ‘settled’ climate science that back the collectivist Net Zero project. The findings are likely to be ignored by the mainstream media. Indeed, on past form some activist journalists and scientists may seek to get the paper retracted. For the time being, it is published by the American Meteorological Society in its Journal of Climate.

Another sensational finding is that higher levels of CO2 seem to actually cool Antarctica. “The [doubled CO2] forcing in polar regions is strongly hemispheric asymmetric and is negative in the Antarctic,” write the scientists. None of this will be a surprise to regular readers since it would appear to be confirmed by observations that the region has shown “nearly non-existent warming” over the last 70 years. The recent “mind-blowing’” scare over low levels of winter sea ice has been debunked by evidence from early weather satellites showing similar levels in 1966.

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