Rupert Darwall ■ It needs catastrophe scenarios to sell their ideas || Its most eye-catching claim (in the new WGII report) is that negative impacts of climate change on crop yields are more common to date than positive impacts are. This improbable claim finds only the weakest support in the main body of the report, with its qualification that climate change played a “minor role.” It is, the report states, “extremely difficult” to define a clear baseline from which to assess the impact of climate change, and many non-climate factors are often difficult to quantify. More egregiously, the summary speaks of rapid price increases following climate extremes since the 2007 report. This negligence amounts to downright dishonesty, as the summary omits mention of one of the principal causes of the 2007–08 spike in food prices, which is highlighted in the main body of the report. It was not climate change that increased food costs, but climate policies in the form of increased use of food crops in biofuel production, exacerbated by higher oil prices and government embargoes on food exports. Source

Tony Thomas: Finally, Some Real Climate Science

This week, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is releasing its latest report, the “Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report.” Like its past reports, this one predicts apocalyptic consequences if mankind fails to give the UN the power to tax and regulate fossil fuels and subsidize and mandate the use of alternative fuels. But happily, an international group of scientists I have been privileged to work with has conducted an independent review of IPCC’s past and new reports, along with the climate science they deliberately exclude or misrepresent. Our group, called the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), was founded in 2003 by a distinguished atmospheric physicist, S. Fred Singer, and has produced five hefty reports to date, the latest being released today (March 31). So how do the IPCC and NIPCC reports differ? The final draft of the IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers identifies eight “reasons for concern” which media reports say will remain the focus of the final report. The NIPCC reports address each point too, also summarizing their authors’ positions in Summaries for Policymakers. This provides a convenient way to compare and contrast the reports’ findings.

Humans are NOT to blame for global warming, says Greenpeace co-founder, as he insists there is 'no scientific proof' climate change is manmade. ● There is no scientific proof of man-made global warming and a hotter earth would be ‘beneficial for humans and the majority of other species’, according to a founding member of environmental campaign group Greenpeace. The assertion was made by Canadian ecologist Patrick Moore, a member of Greenpeace from 1971 to 1986, to U.S senators on Tuesday. He told The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: ‘There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years. If there were such a proof it would be written down for all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists.’

Richard McNider & John Christy ■ In a Feb. 16 speech in Indonesia, Secretary of State John Kerry assailed climate-change skeptics as members of the "Flat Earth Society" for doubting the reality of catastrophic climate change. He said, "We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists" and "extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts." But who are the Flat Earthers, and who is ignoring the scientific facts? In ancient times, the notion of a flat Earth was the scientific consensus, and it was only a minority who dared question this belief. We are among today's scientists who are skeptical about the so-called consensus on climate change. Does that make us modern-day Flat Earthers, as Mr. Kerry suggests, or are we among those who defy the prevailing wisdom to declare that the world is round? [...] We should not have a climate-science research program that searches only for ways to confirm prevailing theories, and we should not honor government leaders, such as Secretary Kerry, who attack others for their inconvenient, fact-based views.

Charles Battig: Mass destruction of science: John Kerry at work!

The origin of the Ashkenazi Jews, who come most recently from Europe, has largely been shrouded in mystery. But a new study suggests that at least their maternal lineage may derive largely from Europe. Though the finding may seem intuitive, it contradicts the notion that European Jews mostly descend from people who left Israel and the Middle East around 2,000 years ago. Instead, a substantial proportion of the population originates from local Europeans who converted to Judaism, said study co-author Martin Richards, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Huddersfield in England.

New York Times: Genes Suggest European Women at Root of Ashkenazi Family Tree
Window To Palestine: New Genome Study Destroys Zionist Claims to Palestine

An award-winning professor from the University has followed in the footsteps of Indiana Jones by cracking the code of a 600 year old manuscript, deemed as ‘the most mysterious’ document in the world. ● Stephen Bax, Professor of Applied Linguistics, has just become the first professional linguist to crack the code of the Voynich manuscript using an analytical approach. The world-renowned manuscript is full of illustrations of exotic plants, stars, and mysterious human figures, as well as many pages written in an unknown text. Up until now the 15th century cryptic work has baffled scholars, cryptographers and codebreakers who have failed to read a single letter of the script or any word of the text. Over time it has attained an infamous reputation, even featuring in the latest hit computer game Assassin’s Creed, as well as in the Indiana Jones novels, when Indiana decoded the Voynich and used it to find the ‘Philosopher's Stone’. However in reality no one has come close to revealing the Voynich’s true messages. Professor Bax however has begun to unlock the mystery meanings of the Voynich manuscript using his wide knowledge of mediaeval manuscripts and his familiarity with Semitic languages such as Arabic. Using careful linguistic analysis he is working on the script letter by letter.

The 2004 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union saw evidence that proved beyond doubt that a devastating and abrupt change in climate happened 5,200 years ago. Now when I say abrupt I really do mean abrupt. A massive and profound global cooling event happened 5,200 years ago, and one of the leading scientists in the field of ice core analysis thinks it’s about to happen again. Not much was said about this outside of scientific circles, certainly nothing was said by the government. Even the words and research of a world renowned expert count for nothing. As far as the warmist government is concerned, we are all to believe we will die of heatstroke in the next 50 years. Thompson even mentions the Sun, and it’s role in climate forcing, and once again, just like 5,200 years ago, the Sun is showing the lowest activity for a century. Predictions for solar cycle 25 are that there may not be any sunspots at all.

The recent cold spell that swept through much of the continental U.S. was the result of global warming, a new propaganda video put out by the White House claims. According to Obama's Science and Technology Advisor, Dr. John Holdren, the U.S. supposedly experienced one of its worst freezes in contemporary history because the planet is warming, an absolutely astounding demonstration of cognitive dissonance that proves the total insanity of our nation's leaders. The video, entitled "The Polar Vortex Explained in 2 Minutes," makes the audacious claim that one of the major indicators of global warming is a progressive increase in extreme cold weather patterns. With a completely straight face, Dr. Holdren, the White House climate czar, attempts to convince America during the clip that extreme cold actually means progressive warming, or something like that.

[Editor's Comment:] If there had been a spell of hot weather, it's pretty darn clear that the White House Climate Czar would have claimed this was because of global warming. So according to him (probably), any spell, whether cold or hot, would prove his position, which fundamentally therefore is untestable. Flashing all sorts of graphs and time-lapse imagery of changing polar ice caps isn't in and of itself science. Science is the realm of the testable. If it's not testable, it's not science. What is it then? Faith? -Well, no, because Obama's Climate Czar is not being sincere. He knows he's lying. So it's not even faith. We'll get to the point: it's clear what it really is - it's propaganda. That's what this video is. Pure & simple. So updating Orwell a wee bit, we'll put it this way: Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, War is Peace and Freezing is Warming...There you have it.

Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record large extent for a second straight year, baffling scientists seeking to understand why this ice is expanding rather than shrinking in an [allegedly] warming world. | On Saturday, the ice extent reached 19.51 million square kilometers, according to data posted on the National Snow and Ice Data Center Web site. That number bested record high levels set earlier this month and in 2012 (of 19.48 million square kilometers). Records date back to October 1978. The increasing ice is especially perplexing since the water beneath the ice has warmed, not cooled. The "overwhelming evidence" is that the Southern Ocean is warming, said Jinlun Zhang [claimed], a University of Washington scientist, studying Antarctic ice. “Why would sea ice be increasing? Although the rate of increase is small, it is a puzzle to scientists.”

WUWT: Climategate: Links to everything about Climategate

Photographer David Tipling charts the life of a King Penguin colony. He charts one pair of adults' journey to rear their young chick. The images were captured in Right Whale Bay, South Georgia. ● One glance at these heart-warming pictures and it is clear why penguins make the perfect parents. Mothers and fathers are seen struggling to raise their offspring in the midst of harsh blizzards and freezing conditions. This colony of King Penguins were captured huddling together during a storm in Right Whale Bay, South Georgia island. ● In his new book Penguins: Close Encounters, photographer David Tipling documents a penguin parent's struggle against adversity to raise their chick. The collection of 130 photographs showcases the birds in their natural habitat. Photos of each of the world's 17 types of penguins are included in the book. The couple are pictured creating a heart shape, craning their heads over their offspring. Meanwhile another shot captures a group of young penguins huddling together to protect themselves from the icy winds. And a tiny baby seeks shelter on its parent's feet while another image shows a line of adults making the arduous march back to the sea for food. To capture the series of images Mr Tipling said he trekked to some of the most remote and beautiful locations in the world. Renowned wildlife photographer, Mr Tipling, who has worked freelance since 1992, said: 'My latest book is a visual celebration of a group of birds that have given me more pleasure to observe and photograph than any other.' (Photo: David Tiplimg/NPL/REX)

Scientists believe life may exist within underground ocean - living off minerals and using tidal heat as a source of energy | One of the moons of Jupiter may be another habitable part of the Solar System according to new research showing that Europa is rich in vital minerals and has spectacular water fountains spraying from a subsurface ocean. The Hubble Space Telescope has identified two huge plumes of water as high as 200km (124 miles) which occasionally erupt on Europa, while a separate study has found clay-like minerals littered around the moon’s frozen surface. The water fountain appears at certain moments in the orbit of Europa around Jupiter, suggesting it is powered by immense tidal forces that periodically increase the pressure within a subsurface ocean, causing it to erupt through cracks in the surface ice, according an analysis of Hubble data published in the journal Science. Europa is one of the more significant of Jupiter’s 63 known moons and astronomers believe that below is ice-covered surface is an ocean kept liquid by the heat of tidal forces. Some scientists have suggested that life may exist within this ocean, living off minerals and using tidal heat as a source of energy. ● A separate study based on a new analysis of data from Nasa Galileo mission detected important clay-like minerals on the surface of Europa which could have come from past collisions with asteroids or comets. Jim Shirley of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: “Organic materials, which are important building blocks for life, are often found in comets and primitive asteroids. Finding the rocky residues of this comet crash on Europa’s surface may open up a new chapter in the story of the search for life on Europa.” Many scientists believe that Europa may be the best place in the Solar System to find existing life as its ocean is in contact with rock and the icy surface is mixing with the ocean below, creating an energy gradient and a source of heat as the moon get progressively stretched and squeezed by gravity during its orbit around Jupiter.

The DNA of ancient viruses first spotted in the Neanderthal genome have now been identified in modern humans – although whether they cause disease is not yet clear.

In 2010, researchers unveiled the genomes of two extinct groups of human – the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. This revealed that some humans share a few per cent of their DNA with their extinct cousins. Ever since, geneticists have been poring over the ancient DNA sequences for an insight into Stone Age life. Last year, Jack Lenz's team at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York began looking for signs of endogenous retroviruses in the ancient genomes, a class of virus that not only invades cells but worms its way into DNA. These retroviral gene sequences make up about 8 per cent of the human genome, and are part of what is sometimes called "junk" or non-coding DNA because they don't contain genetic instructions to make proteins. Lenz found 14 retroviral gene sequences in the Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA. When he compared this to the human genome used as a standard reference, he found that none of the sequences overlapped – in other words, it seemed that modern humans did not share this endogenous retroviral DNA with their extinct cousins. [Photograph by Joe McNally/NGS]

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate modeling produces terrifying scenarios of global warming and apocalyptic consequences including polar melting, coastal flooding, extreme weather, and species extinctions. Such forecasts assume that human emissions of greenhouse gases—principally carbon dioxide from burning coal and oil—will cause unprecedented warming. Although the IPCC claims that they provide “scenarios” rather than forecasts, they conflate the terms in practice to suggest that their scenarios describe what will actually happen to climate over the 21st Century.

As Professor of Meteorology Dr. Richard Lindzen at MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences observed, “The latest IPCC report truly sank to the level of hilarious incoherence – it is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going.” The banner claim of this 2013 Summary for Policymakers (AR5) release is that “Human influence is extremely likely to be dominant cause of observed warming since the middle of the last century.” This “extremely likely” was ratcheted up from “very likely” they claimed in their previous 2007 report. At the same time, the IPCC actually admitted that its 2007 report estimate of greenhouse gas influence had been significantly exaggerated. One can only wonder how they have become more confident that at least more than half of the temperature rise since the mid-20th century has been caused by greenhouse gas emissions, when at the same time they are less certain about climate sensitivity to CO2. Making life even more difficult for that climate cartel is having to explain why the global climate has flat-lined over at least the past 16 years despite increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, something they euphemistically refer to as a “pause”.

October 22, 2013: Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s 24 Hours of Reality: The Cost of Carbon runs from 2 pm EDT, Tuesday October 22, 2013 to 2 pm EDT, Wednesday, October 23, 2013.Mr. Gore bases his activism on several key points, all of which are either wrong or unknown. The red text in the boxes below summarizes positions taken by Mr. Gore. The corrections of ICSC scientists follow each box.

Marlo Lewis: Balance is not bias ■ The Cook study does not really prove what it claims to prove. The authors examined 11,944 abstracts of climate papers published between 1991-2011. They found that nearly two-thirds of the abstracts expressed no opinion on the supposed “consensus” position. So their headline – 97% of scientists agree – is inaccurate and misleading. IN 1984-speak, they are claiming Silence is Affirmation. Is the 97% figure made up out of whole cloth? Not quite. It turns out that 97% of about one-third of the abstracts affirms or implies that humans are responsible for some portion of global warming since 1951. And guess what? Just about every prominent skeptic agrees with that as well. As an attempt to discredit contrarians, the Cook study is a bust. The key science question for climate researchers today is not whether greenhouse gas emissions warm the planet but whether state-of-the-art computer models are accurate enough to forecast climate change and inform policy decisions.

Mark Steyn: I’m currently being sued in the DC by Dr. Michael Mann, the eminent global warm-monger, for mocking his increasingly discredited climate-change “hockey stick.” So Dr. Mann has sued for what his complaint to the court called “defamation of a Nobel prize recipient.” ● Five years ago, I and my fellow rightwing blowhard Ezra Levant were in the midst of a spirited campaign to rid Canada of its disgusting censorship laws and restore a centuries-old tradition of free speech to a land that, in the name of “human rights,” had surrendered it too easily. The Canadian Islamic Congress had brought simultaneous complaints before the federal, Ontario and British Columbia “human rights” regimes against Maclean’s magazine for publishing an excerpt from my book. Despite the advantages of triple jeopardy, they struck out all three times, and at the federal level their suit so damaged the reputation of “Section 13” (the national censorship law with a 100% conviction rate) that last year Parliament finally repealed it. But the urge to litigate disagreement is never far from the surface in contemporary discourse. So both Ezra Levant and I find ourselves back in court yet again. In my case, I’m currently being sued in the District of Columbia by Dr. Michael Mann, the eminent global warm-monger, for mocking (in America’s National Review) his increasingly discredited climate-change “hockey stick.” So Dr. Mann has sued for what his complaint to the court called “defamation of a Nobel prize recipient.” In fact, Dr. Mann is not a “Nobel prize recipient.”

One day, when Peter Higgs was a 34-year-old physicist studying at the University of Edinburgh, he came up with an idea. It was a bold one, an ambitious one, and an extremely complex one. He wrote two papers about it — pencil scribbled on paper. The second paper was turned down; the editors said the theory was "of no obvious relevance to physics." His colleagues even told him he did not grasp the fundamentals of the field. Fifty years later, 84-year-old Higgs achieved the Nobel Prize in Physics for that one idea, on Tuesday morning.

It all started on a hike in the Cairngorms, a mountain range in the eastern Highlands of Scotland, when Higgs had an inspiration: There had to be an energy field strewn across the universe that would give mass to certain particles and leave others massless. He submitted the paper to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). That editor probably came to seriously regret rejecting that paper. Apparently, he had not yet grasped the path Higgs was embarking upon, that the young physicist was beginning to formulate the mechanism that endows the building blocks of the universe with mass, a fundamental property of all matter. Higgs was in the early stages of finding a crucial puzzle piece; he was beginning to solve a mystery that nagged physicists for decades.

Two scientists have won the Nobel prize in physics for their work on the theory of the Higgs boson. ● Peter Higgs, from the UK, and Francois Englert from Belgium, shared the prize. In the 1960s they were among several physicists who proposed a mechanism to explain why the most basic building blocks of the Universe have mass. The mechanism predicts a particle - the Higgs boson - which was finally discovered in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, in Switzerland. Professor Higgs is renowned for shying away from the limelight, and he could not be located for interview in the immediate aftermath of the announcement. "He's gone on holiday without a phone to avoid the media storm," his Edinburgh University physics colleague Alan Walker told UK media, adding that Higgs had also been unwell. But the university released a prepared statement from Higgs, who is emeritus professor of theoretical physics: "I am overwhelmed to receive this award and thank the Royal Swedish Academy. "I would also like to congratulate all those who have contributed to the discovery of this new particle and to thank my family, friends and colleagues for their support. "I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research."

HuffPost: Nobel Prize For Physics 2013: Francois Englert And Peter W. Higgs Honored For Higgs Boson Research

A report in the Journal of Men's Health says that divorced men experience more health problems after the break-up and are more likely to die younger. ■ According to the research, cons of a divorce for men include a higher number of heart attacks, high blood pressure and strokes, cancer and even colds. ● The same study estimates the rate of suicides among divorced men to be 39% higher than among their married peers. They are also likelier to consume more alcohol and drugs, have less sex and be less satisfied with their life in general. ● The research shows that divorcees tend to enjoy less emotional support, including that from their kids who often get estranged from their fathers as a result of break-up, while depression rates among divorced men stand at 10.4 percent, compared to just 2 percent among married ones. ● This year’s research by a University of Helsinki also says that divorced couples reported 1% higher usage of antidepressant drugs over the next five years after they split up than those who stayed married. However, this figure rose to 7% for men and 8% for women in the six to nine months before the divorce.

Experts 95 per cent certain 'humans are responsible for global warming'. Well, of course they are. If there is one overriding prerequisite of every new IPCC Assessment report, it's to sound even more scary and urgent and certain than its predecessor. Professor Bob Carter noted this progression in his excellent book Climate: the Counter Consensus:

● First Assessment Report (1990) – "The observed [twentieth century] temperature increase could be largely due…to natural variability."
● Second Assessment Report (1996) – "The balance of the evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate."
● Third Assessment Report (2001) – "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last fifty years is attributable to human activities."
● Fourth Assessment Report (2007) – "Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperature since the mid-twentieth century is very likely [= 90 per cent probable] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."

The irony is, of course, that the third, fourth and fifth assessment reports were all produced in a period of rising CO2 levels in which there has been no "global warming" whatsoever. You'd imagine that, had the scientific method been more highly valued by the IPCC, this rather glaring flaw in AGW theory might have been afforded more prominence. But this is not the IPCC Assessment Reports' job. As Christopher Booker and others have often noted, the IPCC's reports are essentially political artefacts rather than scientific ones. This is why some governments – including Germany's and Belgium's – have been manoeuvring behind the scenes to have the new IPCC report "sexed up".

Climate Depot: UN IPCC Report Exposed By Its Own Members as ‘a pure political process’

Leaked United Nations report reveals the world's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years. Politicians fear the findings will encourage deniers of man-made climate change.
● Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed.
● A leaked copy of a United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States raised concerns about the final draft. Published next week, it is expected to address the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on record and world temperatures have not yet exceeded it, which scientists have so far struggled to explain. The report is the result of six years’ work by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is seen as the world authority on the extent of climate change and what is causing it – on which governments including Britain’s base their green policies.
● But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years. Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was ‘misleading’ and they should focus on decades or centuries. Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change. Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat - and suggested using 1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve. The United States delegation even weighed in, urging the authors of the report to explain away the lack of warming using the ‘leading hypothesis’ among scientists that the lower warming is down to more heat being absorbed by the Ocean...

Regardless of whether or not scientists are wrong on global warming, the European Union is pursuing the correct energy policies even if they lead to higher prices, Europe’s "climate commissioner" has said. ● Connie Hedegaard's comments come as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is expected to admit that previous scientific predictions for global warming and the effects of carbon emissions have been proved to be inaccurate. In an interview with the Telegraph, Europe's most senior climate change official argued that the current policies are the correct ones because a growing world population will put pressure on energy supplies regardless of the rate of global warming.

Daily Mail: World's top climate scientists admit computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong
The Telegraph: Top climate scientists admit global warming forecasts were wrong
The Telegraph: Global warming? No, actually we're cooling, claim scientists
Arctic ice melt IS a problem because Right-wing newspapers smell, explains Guardian climate expert

A leaked copy of the world’s most authoritative climate study reveals scientific forecasts of imminent doom were drastically wrong. ● The Mail on Sunday has obtained the final draft of a report to be published later this month by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the "ultimate watchdog" whose massive, six-yearly ‘assessments’ are accepted by environmentalists, politicians and experts as the gospel of climate science. They are cited worldwide to justify swingeing fossil fuel taxes and subsidies for ‘renewable’ energy. ● Yet the leaked report makes the extraordinary concession that the world has been warming at only just over half the rate claimed by the IPCC in its last assessment, published in 2007. Back then, it said that the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade – a figure it claimed was in line with the forecasts made by computer climate models. But the new report says the true figure since 1951 has been only 0.12C per decade – a rate far below even the lowest computer prediction. ● The 31-page ‘summary for policymakers’ is based on a more technical 2,000-page analysis which will be issued at the same time. It also surprisingly reveals: IPCC scientists accept their forecast computers may have exaggerated the effect of increased carbon emissions on world temperatures – and not taken enough notice of natural variability.

Rules bar government researchers from talking about their own work with journalists and even fellow researchers. :: The Canadian government in recent years has banned government scientists from talking about a growing list of research topics including: snowflakes, the ozone layer, salmon, and previously published work about a 13,000-year-old flood. Now it seems the scientists are talking back. Researchers in 16 Canadian cities have called protests on Monday against science policies introduced under the government of Stephen Harper, which include rules barring government researchers from talking about their own work with journalists and, in some cases, even fellow researchers.

■ In this video, British biologist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world's most innovative scientists, describes how science is being constricted by unexamined assumptions that have hardened into dogmas. These dogmas not only put arbitrary limits on the depth and scope of science, but may well be dangerous for the future of humanity. ■ According to these dogmas, all of reality is material or physical; the world is an inanimate machine; nature is purposeless; free will is an illusion; notions of higher orders of consciousness and absolute ("God") awareness exist only as ideas in human minds, which are themselves nothing but electrochemical processes imprisoned within our skulls. ■ So Dr. Sheldrake asks: should science be an ideology or belief system, or should it reclaim its birthright as an unbiased, open-ended method of inquiry? In his latest book, SCIENCE SET FREE, he argues that the materialist ideology is moribund; under its sway, increasingly expensive research is reaping diminishing returns while societies around the world are paying the price. In the skeptical spirit of true science, SCIENCE SET FREE turns ten fundamental dogmas of materialist science into exciting questions, and shows how all of them open up startling new possibilities for discovery. This book may well challenge your view of what is real and what is possible. ■ Dr. Rupert Sheldrake is the author of more than 80 scientific papers and ten books, and is best known for his groundbreaking theory of morphic resonance. (For his full biography and more information on his work, seehttp://www.sheldrake.org/homepage.html ). In this video, recorded in San Francisco on Sept. 7, 2012, Dr. Sheldrake speaks about his new book and answers audience questions at a presention sponsored by the California Institute of Integral Studies (http://ciis.org) and held at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco.

For the past 50 years—since the discovery of a thousand-year-old Viking way station in Newfoundland—archaeologists and amateur historians have combed North America's east coast searching for traces of Viking visitors.
● It has been a long, fruitless quest, littered with bizarre claims and embarrassing failures. But at a conference in Canada earlier this month, archaeologist Patricia Sutherland announced new evidence that points strongly to the discovery of the second Viking outpost ever discovered in the Americas.
● While digging in the ruins of a centuries-old building on Baffin Island (map), far above the Arctic Circle, a team led by Sutherland, adjunct professor of archaeology at Memorial University in Newfoundland and a research fellow at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, found some very intriguing whetstones. Wear grooves in the blade-sharpening tools bear traces of copper alloys such as bronze—materials known to have been made by Viking metalsmiths but unknown among the Arctic's native inhabitants.
● Taken together with her earlier discoveries, Sutherland's new findings further strengthen the case for a Viking camp on Baffin Island. "While her evidence was compelling before, I find it convincing now," said James Tuck, professor emeritus of archaeology, also at Memorial University.

(Image: William D'Andrea / Brown University)

■ Greenland's early Viking settlers were subjected to rapidly changing climate. Temperatures plunged several degrees in a span of decades, according to research from Brown University. A reconstruction of 5,600 years of climate history from lakes near the Norse settlement in western Greenland also shows how climate affected the Dorset and Saqqaq cultures. Results appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
■ The end of the Norse settlements on Greenland likely will remain shrouded in mystery. While there is scant written evidence of the colony's demise in the 14th and early 15th centuries, archaeological remains can fill some of the blanks, but not all.
■ What climate scientists have been able to ascertain is that an extended cold snap, called the Little Ice Age, gripped Greenland beginning in the 1400s. This has been cited as a major cause of the Norse's disappearance. Now researchers led by Brown University show the climate turned colder in an earlier span of several decades, setting in motion the end of the Greenland Norse. Their findings appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
■ The Brown scientists' finding comes from the first reconstruction of 5,600 years of climate history from two lakes in Kangerlussuaq, near the Norse "Western Settlement." Unlike ice cores taken from the Greenland ice sheet hundreds of miles inland, the new lake core measurements reflect air temperatures where the Vikings lived, as well as those experienced by the Saqqaq and the Dorset, Stone Age cultures that preceded them.

■ Scientists from the MARUM Institute at the University of Bremen, the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, and the ETH Zurich have published a study that find earthquakes are releasing massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere to significantly alter the temperature of the planet and change the dynamics of eco-systems across the globe.
■ David Fischer, professor at MARUM, stated: “We started going through the literature and found that a major earthquake had occurred close by, in 1945.
■ Based on several indicators, we postulated that the earthquake led to a fracturing of the sediments, releasing the gas that had been trapped below the hydrates into the ocean.” Earthquakes cause measurable tears in the ocean floor, allowing methane to seep out. By analyzing an 8.1 magnitude earthquake from 1945, researchers concluded that the Nascent Ridge, a shallow reservoir of methane, was opened after the quake.
■ Based on several indicators, we postulated that the earthquake led to a fracturing of the sediments, releasing the gas that had been trapped below the hydrates into the ocean.” Earthquakes cause measurable tears in the ocean floor, allowing methane to seep out. Fischer explained: “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculates the planet’s carbon budget by estimating all possible natural sources of carbon to the atmosphere, and we now provide a new mechanism of carbon export that had not been considered before.”

● Archaeologists have unearthed what they believe to be a vampire burial ground on a building site in Poland. The team of historians discovered graves containing four skeletons with their heads removed and placed between their legs near the southern town of Gliwice. Decapitating a suspected vampire was common practice in medieval times because it was thought to be the only way to ensure the dead stay dead.
● The exact fate of the skeletons is yet unclear, but the archaeologists noted that, apart from being headless, there was no trace of any earthly possessions, such as jewellery, belts or buckles. 'It's very difficult to tell when these burials were carried out,' archaeologist Dr Jacek Pierzak told the Dziennik Zachodni newspaper. The remains have been sent for further testing but initial estimations suggest they died sometime around the 16th century.
● It comes a year after archaeologists in Bulgaria claimed to have discovered two ‘vampire’ corpses in excavations near a monastery in the Black Sea town of Sozopol, both more than 800 years old and pierced through the chest with heavy iron rods. Bulgaria’s national museum chief Bozidhar Dimitrov said as many as 100 such ‘vampire corpses’ have been found in the country in recent years. ‘They illustrate a practice which was common in some Bulgarian villages up until the first decade of the 20th century,’ he explained.