By Paul D. Thacker

The panic and outrage were palpable last February when President Trump announced plans to trim reimbursement rates for government-funded scientific research.

“This is going to decimate U.S. scientific biomedical research,” Northwestern University biologist Carole Labonne told Bloomberg. “The lights will go out, people will be let go, and these [medical] advances will not occur,” David Skorton, CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges, told PBS. “The goal,” University of Washington biologist Carl Bergstrom warned on BlueSky, “is to destroy U.S. universities.”

The sky has not fallen on American research in the 10 months since. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is still paying the same 50% to 70% in indirect costs – the premium added on top of grants meant to reimburse universities for providing labs and other research infrastructure – because lawsuits have frozen the president’s proposed policy. One Trump official admits this is unlikely to change because the administration will almost certainly lose in court. The current system, which provides the lion’s share of billions of dollars each year for often-unspecified overhead costs to universities, has the backing of Congress. As it stands, there appears to be no momentum, even among Republicans, to reform the practice.

“It’s basically a slush fund,” one NIH official told RealClearInvestigations. “We just don’t like to call it that.”

A RealClearInvestigations analysis of these indirect payments reveals a long, largely forgotten history of concern about taxpayer-sponsored research. Although many researchers have cast Trump’s proposal as an attack on science, this issue isn’t the need to fund research activities that sometimes lead to beneficial discoveries, but whether some of the billions that support the necessary infrastructure and equipment are actually being shifted to purposes such as staffing and buildings that have little or no direct connection to the actual research. 

In the late ’80s, Stanford faculty revolted against the university’s high overhead charges for diverting research dollars to a bloated administration and a campus building frenzy. Those concerns are still voiced by some.

“If the universities truly believe that it takes 60-70% of a research grant to provide facilities, utilities, and other basic support, then that is easy to prove by opening the books,” said Sanjay Dhall, a research physician at the University of California, Los Angeles. “I suspect however, that opening the books would reveal that a significant chunk of these funds, or even the majority, are paying an army of unnecessary administrators.”

At a time when the value of college is being challenged because of exorbitant tuition and fees, and the federal government is struggling to rein in debt, the story of indirect funding offers a window into the history of runaway costs and the growing power of college officials. RCI has also learned that NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya has been selling a new plan that makes the grant process more competitive for institutions that were overlooked in the past. 

Indirect Costs Hard To Define

Distributing over $37 billion in grants every year, NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research on the planet, far exceeding the European Commission, which spends around $12 billion, and dwarfing the Gates Foundation’s $1 billion. 

Every NIH grant a university researcher receives provides two categories of funding: direct and indirect costs. The direct costs include all items the researcher submitted as part of the project’s budget, from laboratory equipment to a percentage of salaries.

Indirect costs are harder to define. The funding goes to administrators, and how they use it is shrouded in mystery. What’s more, indirect rates vary from university to university for reasons that few understand and can explain. 

While institutions charge private foundations like Gates a mere 10% and Rockefeller 15% for indirect costs, they charge the NIH much higher rates – 69% for Harvard, 67.5% for Yale, and 63.7% for Johns Hopkins. 

“How do you think Harvard built all those buildings?” one NIH official, a graduate of Harvard Medical School who insisted on anonymity, told RCI. “NIH indirect costs paid for that.”

When Trump first proposed the 15% cap in 2016, Harvard president Drew G. Faust told the student newspaper in late 2017 that she flew to Washington, D.C., to lobby Republicans in both the House and the Senate to stop it. “We’re bringing in quite a bit of money through federal contracts which provide money for a lot of buildings and other infrastructure that makes possible what we do going forward,” a Harvard dean told the student newspaper. “So if that was to all go away, we’d have to sit down and look at that.”

The Trump administration’s proposal to cap overhead at 15% would cost university administrators billions of dollars that they control. Among the many critics was Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the flagship journal Science and a former university administrator. He wrote an editorial last February titled “A Direct Hit” that described the cap as a “ruthless takedown of academia.”

“The scientific community must unite in speaking out against this betrayal of a partnership that has enabled American innovation and progress,” he wrote.

In response to questions from RCI, Thorp said any change to NIH overhead funding should be done in partnership with the scientific community. “Indirect costs are used to secure debt on research facilities and were treated as very secure by banks and the rating agencies,” Thorp said. “Pulling all of that abruptly – without following processes with decades of precedent – is certainly betraying a partnership by putting the universities in difficulty with their lenders and bond ratings.” 

Inexorable Rise in Charges

It turns out that concerns over universities possibly misusing federal grant money date back more than half a century, according to Thorp’s own publication. In 1955, the federal government almost doubled the 8% premium paid for university overhead. A decade later, Science reported that Congress lifted the overhead ceiling to 20%, maintaining a flat rate to assure more taxpayer dollars were targeted at scientific research, and less spent on constructing new buildings. Some members of Congress believed that “the universities need not accept the grants if they can’t afford them.” Elected officials also worried that indirect costs would not go to research but to support other university efforts.

“You might be surprised if you read the list of money being spent for research in various universities,” one senator said in a 1963 Science news story. “Not only to pay the teachers, but also to construct buildings and facilities around the school.” 

Despite these concerns, lobbyists convinced the government in 1966 to remove all caps, empowering universities to negotiate directly with federal agencies to set their own overhead rates. In 1966, overhead consumed 14% of NIH grant expenditures. By the late 1970s, it consumed 36.4%. When the federal government attempted to backpedal in 1976 to bring “spiraling indirect cost rates under control,” it failed. 

Both Republicans and Democrats have long championed increasing NIH budgets, partly because grants for research land in congressional districts scattered across the nation. Republicans have often been the NIH’s biggest supporters. Fifteen years ago, Congress launched investigations into the NIH’s poor monitoring of grants that were awarded to research physicians with undisclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Despite the unfolding scandal, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter pushed through a 34% increase in the NIH’s budget in 2009. During the 2013 government shutdown, the NIH was one of the few agencies that Republicans pushed President Obama to keep open. Two years later, Republicans cut many parts of Obama’s proposed 2015 budget, yet gave the president even more money than the increase he requested for the NIH.

Like some elected officials, academics have also long complained that high overhead harms academic scientists by diverting NIH funding to administrators. In 1981, a University of California researcher published a study in Science, which showed how “Funding has thus been markedly reduced, and this has become a critical factor limiting research support in the United States.”

By 1983, indirect costs accounted for 43% of the NIH grant budget. In response, then-NIH Director James B. Wyngaarden pushed to make more money available for scientists by paying administrators only 90% of what they claimed in overhead. 

“[L]egislators tend to sympathize with the investigators who are more interested in seeing federal money spent for equipment and researchers’ salaries in their labs than for light and heat and the services of typists and bookkeepers,” reported Science at the time. 

However, Science reported that Wyngaarden was met with stiff opposition from university officials and their allies in Congress.

When Wyngaarden tried to deal with the matter by sending a report to Congress, Science reported, officials from several university lobby groups shut the report down, calling it not “acceptable.”

One of Wyngaarden’s biggest critics was Stanford President Donald Kennedy, whose school was then charging one of the highest rates for indirect costs. Kennedy convened a group to attack cost-saving proposals, stating in a letter, “The NIH proposals to reduce reimbursement of those costs … will directly damage the research effort as a whole.” 

This effort appeared to succeed until Kennedy himself became ensnared in a scandal that showed Stanford’s indirect costs charged to the NIH paid for a bevy of personal goods and upkeep on a yacht. 

Stanford’s Taxpayer-Funded Yacht

Stanford’s yacht, the Victoria, was valued at $1.2 million and became a symbol of excess, with walnut and cherry paneling, brass lamps, marble counters, and lavish woodwork. Administrators used the yacht as a fundraising venue to wine and dine campus bigwigs. NIH money had paid for overhead to maintain it. 

As Congress and federal investigators dug into Stanford’s accounting, they discovered that administrators had also redirected NIH research overhead to pay $2,000 a month for flowers at President Kennedy’s home, $7,000 for his bed linens, and $6,000 to provide him with cedar-lined closets. Another college official had hosted Stanford football parties and charged the NIH $1,500 for booze.

Humiliated in the media, Stanford was forced to lower the indirect rate it charged the NIH from 78% to 55.5%, and federal agencies launched audits of overhead charges at dozens of other universities, resulting in millions of dollars returned to the NIH. 

With the politics and the media on his side, Michigan Congressman John Dingell launched reforms to indirect charges. Stanford and other institutions were forced to halt expensive building campaigns. President Clinton proposed a cap on indirect costs in a “concerted effort to shift national spending from overhead to funding research.” As in the past, universities opposed the change, and the White House buckled.

“One way or another, I’ve been involved in controversy about indirect cost rates for about 30 years,” a chancellor at the University of Maryland told The Baltimore Sun in 1994. 

Kennedy resigned from the Stanford presidency, as did several of his administrators. Kennedy later joined Science as editor-in-chief – a predecessor to Thorp – while universities’ charges for indirect costs to the NIH eventually snapped back to their former pricing, which continues to this day.

RCI spoke with several academic researchers at institutions scattered across the U.S., working at both private and public-funded universities. None wished to be named about their concerns about how their administrators spend NIH indirect funding, with one professor noting that administrators determine your career, so it makes no sense to criticize their spending habits.

While university presidents say administrators strictly account for NIH indirect funds, the reality appears to be different. Professors who bring in large sums of NIH money, sometimes referred to as heavy hitters, can complain and get some of the indirect costs back from the administrators for their own research and even personal use. At some institutions, department heads can get a cut of the indirect costs to set up slush funds, monies they can dole out to favored professors, or even divert to their own labs.

Professor Dhall said that after he published a March letter in the Wall Street Journal that supported Trump’s cap on indirect rates, he was contacted by colleagues across the country. “They congratulated me on going public and vehemently agreed, in private,” he said. 

A congressional staffer who has spent decades investigating problems at the NIH said that nobody truly understands how universities negotiate their NIH overhead rates. And once that money gets to the university, it disappears into a byzantine accounting system that seems designed to confuse government auditors, who rarely inspect university books.

“It’s a complete black box,” he said. “I wish someone could explain it to me.”

Trump’s Play To Change the Game

The Trump administration will lose the fight to cap indirect costs at 15%, a senior HHS official told RCI, because of the universities’ outsize influence. During the first Trump administration, universities caught wind that Trump planned to cap overhead rates. As they had done for over half a century, university lobbyists ran to Congress to complain, only now they sought an alliance with the pharmaceutical industry.

Responding to lobbying pressure, Republicans in the House and Senate inserted a provision into the appropriations bill in 2018 to block Trump’s attempt to change universities’ indirect cost rates. That provision has been included in every succeeding appropriations bill.

While it does not seem likely that Congress will strip the schools in their states and districts of billions of dollars in funding, NIH Director Bhattacharya has been floating his own proposal to revamp indirect payments to make them more equitable in private talks with members of Congress and university leaders. Shortly before Thanksgiving, Bhattacharya gave a dinner talk to the Republican Main Street Caucus, a group of 85 GOP members of Congress who are critical behind-the-scenes players among Republicans now running the House. 

A dinner participant recounted to RCI that Bhattacharya noted that more than half of the NIH’s money goes to 20 universities located on both coasts. These elite universities win a lion’s share of the grant money, including indirect costs, because they have the money to attract excellent scientists, in part because NIH money helped them build great infrastructure. 

This creates a vicious cycle that guarantees NIH will continue to fund institutions that have already won past NIH money – and which charge high indirect costs. To end this cycle, Bhattacharya wants to break off indirect costs into a separate category of infrastructure grants that universities can compete to win.

During the talk, Bhattacharya said that all the universities in the entire state of Florida now get as much money as Stanford. Yet, there’s no reason Florida could not become a hub for scientific research if the federal government invested in its scientific infrastructure. 

If Florida can provide lab space at a lower cost than Stanford, he said, they should get the money. Bhattacharya also wants to make it easier for academics to take their grant to different universities. If a Harvard researcher is offered more space or better facilities at a university in Kansas, because building costs there are cheaper, that professor should be able to transfer his grant. 

The NIH already provides specific grants for infrastructure, and the hope is that spreading the billions in indirect costs across the country will gain political support. 

“He wants to get this money out to the middle of the country, not just the coasts,” said Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Republican from Iowa. Dr. Miller-Meeks is one of the few physicians in Congress and said she was impressed with Bhattacharya’s talk at the Main Street Caucus dinner. However, she is uncertain whether Democrats would embrace the new proposal in today’s polarized environment.

“I would think there are members from the center of the country that would like to see more money in their district,” she said.

A spokesperson told RCI that NIH remains focused on ensuring that funding is used efficiently and that direct and indirect costs contribute to scientific productivity. “Bhattacharya’s proposal represents one of several ideas being discussed publicly about how to structure federal support for research infrastructure,” the spokesperson said. “NIH looks forward to continuing to work constructively with Congress on this issue.”

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

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A few years ago, asteroid mining was all the rage. With the commercial space sector growing rapidly, the dream of commercializing space seemed almost imminent. Essentially, the idea of ​​having platforms and spacecraft that could assemble and mine near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and then return them to space-based foundries was akin to sending commercial crews to Mars. After much speculation and failed ventures, these plans were put on hold until the technology matured and other milestones could first be achieved.

Nevertheless, the dream of asteroid mining and the associated “post-scarcity” future remains. In addition to the need for more infrastructure and technical development, further research is needed to determine the chemical composition of small asteroids. In a recent study, a team led by researchers at the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) analyzed samples of C-type (carbon-rich) asteroids, which make up 75% of known asteroids. Their results show that these asteroids could be a crucial source of raw materials and offer opportunities for future resource exploitation.

The team was led by Dr. Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez, a theoretical physicist from the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE) and the Catalonian Institute for Space Studies (IEEC) in Barcelona. He was joined by PhD student Pau Grèbol-Tomàs (also from ICE and IEEC), Dr in the *Monthly Communications of the Royal Astronomical Society* (MNRAS).

Reflected light image of a thin section of a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite from NASA’s Antarctic collection. Image credit: ICE-CSIC/JMTrigo-Rodríguez et al. (2025)

Carbonaceous chondrites (C-chondrites) regularly fall to Earth but are rarely recovered by scientists for study. Aside from making up only 5% of all meteorites, their fragility often causes them to shatter and be lost. To date, the majority of specimens found have been found in desert regions, including the Sahara and Antarctica. The Asteroids, Comets and Meteorites Research Group at ICE-CSIC, led by Trigo-Rodriguez, studies the physicochemical properties of asteroids and comets and is the international archive for NASA’s Antarctic meteorite collection.

In this latest study, the research group selected and characterized the asteroid samples, which were then analyzed using mass spectrometry by Professor Jacinto Alonso-Azcárate at the University of Castile-La Mancha. This allowed them to determine the exact chemical composition of the six most common classes of C chondrites and provide valuable information about whether raw material extraction will be possible in the future. Trigo-Rodríguez said in a press release from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC):

The scientific interest in each of these meteorites is that they sample small, undifferentiated asteroids and provide valuable information about the chemical composition and evolutionary history of the bodies from which they come. At ICE-CSIC and IEEC, we specialize in developing experiments to better understand the properties of these asteroids and how the physical processes occurring in space affect their nature and mineralogy. The work now published is the culmination of this team work.

It is crucial to know the material richness of asteroids because they are very heterogeneous. While they are typically classified into three categories: C-type (carbonaceous), M-type (metallic), or S-type (siliceous), asteroids are also classified by spectral properties and orbit. Furthermore, asteroids are essentially material left over from the formation of the solar system and are heavily influenced by their long evolutionary history (approximately 4.5 billion years). Therefore, it is important to know the exact composition of asteroids to determine where various resources (water, ores, etc.) are likely to be located.

*Source: ESO*

According to the team’s findings, mining undifferentiated asteroids (believed to be the precursor to chondritic meteorites) is far from profitable. The study also identified a type of asteroid rich in olivine and spinel ribbons as a potential target for mining operations. The team also noted that water-rich asteroids with high concentrations of water-bearing minerals should be selected. In the meantime, they emphasize the need for additional sample return missions to verify the identity of the precursor bodies before mining can be carried out. Trigo-Rodríguez said:

In addition to the advances that sample return missions represent, there is an urgent need for companies capable of taking decisive steps in the technological development necessary to extract and collect these materials under low-gravity conditions. The processing of these materials and the waste generated would also have significant impacts that should be quantified and appropriately mitigated.

They argue that this will require the development of large-scale collection systems and methods of extracting resources in microgravity. “For certain water-rich carbonaceous asteroids, extracting water for reuse appears to make more sense, either as fuel or as a primary resource for exploring other worlds,” said Trigo-Rodríguez. “This could also provide science with greater insight into certain bodies that could one day threaten our existence. In the long term, we could even mine potentially dangerous asteroids and shrink them so that they are no longer dangerous.” As Grèbol-Tomàs added:

Examining and selecting these types of meteorites in our clean room using other analysis techniques is fascinating, especially due to the diversity of minerals and chemical elements they contain. However, most asteroids contain relatively small amounts of valuable elements, and therefore the aim of our study was to understand the extent to which their extraction would be useful. This sounds like science fiction, but it also seemed like science fiction to me when the first sample return missions were planned thirty years ago.

In any case, the benefits of asteroid mining are immense, which is why the topic has gained so much attention in the last decade. In addition to precious metals, many asteroids are a source of water ice, which could be used to produce fuel for space missions and water for drinking and irrigating crops. This would mean less reliance on resupply missions from Earth and allow robotic and manned missions to achieve greater self-sufficiency. By moving mining and manufacturing to cislunar space and the main asteroid belt, humanity would also reduce the environmental impact of these industries on Earth.

While public enthusiasm for asteroid mining has waned over the past decade, many companies are now researching and developing the necessary technology. Similarly, space agencies such as NASA and JAXA have conducted sample return missions that revealed much about the scientific and material wealth that asteroids may contain. In the near future, China’s Tianwen-2 mission will rendezvous with a NEA and a major asteroid belt comet. Although it may take many decades (or longer) for a space-based resources industry to emerge, there are many willing to jump in from the start.

Further reading: CSIC, MNRAS

From Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York

Roger Caiazza,

I have been meaning to write this post for a long time because I think there is an important distinction about climate change that could potentially be affected by reducing GHG emissions that is not generally recognized.  I have postponed this article because I did not want to try to explain the driving factor for my concern – ocean and atmospheric oscillations.  Andy May is a petrophysicist who has a climate blog that recently published 14 articles about atmospheric oscillations that I have used in this post.

I am convinced that implementation of the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks.  Moreover, I take the heretical position that our understanding of the causes of climate change are not understood well enough to support the idea that reducing GHG emissions represents sound policy.  I have been a practicing meteorologist for nearly 50 years, was a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, and have B.S. and M.S. degrees in meteorology.  The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.

Background

Weather and climate are often confused.  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Ocean Service “Weather reflects short-term conditions of the atmosphere while climate is the average daily weather for an extended period of time at a certain location.”  They go on to say: “Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” 

The standard climatological average is 30 years.  It is important to understand that programs like the Climate Act’s GHG emission reduction targets are intended to reduce global warming over longer time scales than 30 years.  Statements suggesting that even if aggressive mitigation reduces greenhouse gases  that temperature will still increase for 20-30 years due to inertia in the climate system are based on the premise that CO2 is the control knob for the climate.

I often hear and have noticed myself that “winters aren’t what they used to be” and that leaves are turning color later than the past.  The goal of this article is to show that there are climatic oscillations with time periods greater than 30 years that are likely causing these perceived examples of climate change.  However, I will show there is no connection between those observations and the value of the Climate Act as a potential reason to reduce GHG emissions in hopes of changing those observations.

Climate Oscillation Analysis

Earlier this year Andy May published 14 articles about climate oscillations in the oceans and atmosphere. I think his analysis is notable because it is data driven.  The basis of his analysis is articles describing observed oceanic and atmospheric changes, not modeled simulations.  Given the complexity of the interactions between oceans and the atmosphere and the poor understanding of their relationships, assuming that modeled simulations are credible is not reasonable. 

His articles provide compelling evidence that each of the 14 oscillations is natural.  I believe his work provides sufficient evidence proving that “each oscillation is natural and has been around since the pre-industrial period, or even earlier, and thus is natural and not random variability.”  This is important relative to claims that reducing the GHG emissions will affect global temperatures. 

May’s work consists of a statistical regression analysis of observed features in the oceans and atmospheres that have occurred over many years.  He uses the HadCRUT5  global average temperature data set used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to track global warming in his analyses.  May offers the following caveat about his work.

Finally, this is a regression analysis to predict HadCRUT5 with climate oscillations to try and detect the climate oscillations that best correlate to “global warming.” This is not a climate model, it is not an attempt to make a climate model, it is only a statistical exercise. Statistics and statistical analysis are not proof of anything, it isn’t even scientific analysis, they are just useful tools to sort through datasets. Just as AI is not intelligent, statistics is not science, both are useful tools.

Climate Oscillations

May’s work consisted of the following posts:

In Climate Oscillations 1: The Regression May provides the following table that lists the oceanic and atmospheric oscillations considered in his series of articles.  For each of these oscillations he did a statistical regression analysis.  The first seven of the oscillations correlated with the GMST measured using HadCRUT5.  May points out that “HadCRUT5 is not representative of global climate, it is just an average temperature”.  Nonetheless, it is the primary climate change parameter.  The rationale for the Climate Act uses climate change and global warming interchangeably.

May Table 1. A list of the climate oscillations discussed and analyzed in this series. The first eight oscillations are listed in order of importance in modeling HadCRUT5, the remaining six did not add to the model. The links in this table will not work, to see the list in a spreadsheet with working links, download it here.

I am not going to review each post in this article but will describe several of the oscillations. If you want to review the articles and are content with a summary using Perplexity AI I did get a review of his work.    It notes:

The series begins with a foundational regression analysis that ranks fourteen major climate oscillations by their statistical correlation with HadCRUT5 global surface temperature. May’s analysis reveals that the top three oscillations—the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), Western Hemisphere Warm Pool (WHWP) area, and Southern Annular Mode (SAM)—together explain 77% of HadCRUT5 variability since 1950. This finding directly contradicts the IPCC’s characterization of these oscillations as unpredictable “internal variability” with minimal influence beyond a few years.

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) has the most significant relationship with global mean surface temperature (GMST).  There are several definitions based on different measurements.  For example, Gray, et al. use detrended raw tree-ring measurements to demonstrate “a strong and regular 60-100 year variability in basin-wide (0-70°N) North Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) that has been persistent for the past five centuries.”

The general approach used by May is simple.  Figure 4 plots GMST using the HadCRUT 5 data and the AMO parameter using the HadSST 4.1 data.  It is obvious that the two parameters track well.  May used regression analysis to show the strength of the relationship. Note the variation in global temperature since 1850 shown in this graph.  The first challenge for proponents of the idea that CO2 is the driver of climate change is that it is acknowledged that it is only since 1950 that CO2 has affected global warming.  So, what happened in the past to cause the observed variations?   I do not think it is reasonable to claim that all the natural drivers that caused variations before 1950 stopped and global warming became entirely dependent upon CO2 since, but that is the argument used by Climate Act proponents.

May Figure 4. HadSST and HadCRUT detrended temperature anomalies plotted together. Both anomalies are from 1961-1990 originally but are from their respective linear least squares trends. This is updated from figure 2 in (May & Crok, 2024).

May points out:

The reason for the AMO SST 60-70-year pattern is unknown, but according to Gray et al. it extends back to 1567AD, so it is a natural oscillation of some kind. Some have speculated that it is a result of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic or a “combination of natural and anthropogenic forcing during the historical era.” (Mann, Steinman, & Miller, 2020). But while interesting these ideas are speculative. Further if the oscillation has existed since 1567, it seems unlikely that it is caused by human CO2 and aerosol emissions.

The AMO has the best correlation with GMST in all the statistical analyses.  Combined with two other oscillations –  Western Hemisphere Warm Pool (WHWP) area, and Southern Annular Mode (SAM) these three  explain 77% of HadCRUT5 variability since 1950.

The Western Hemisphere Warm Pool Area (WHWP) is an area of abnormally warm ocean that extends from the eastern North Pacific (west of Mexico, Central America, and Columbia) to the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and well into the Atlantic during the WHWP peak in August and September.  Because this area is important to hurricane formation, the strength and extent of the warm pool is important.  May points out that the WHWP  combined with the Antarctic Oscillation or Southern Annular Mode and the AMO predict GMST well.  He concludes that “This suggests that The North Atlantic and the Southern Hemisphere circulation patterns correlate very well with global climate trends, CO2 may fit in there somewhere, but it must share the spotlight with these natural oscillations.”

The Southern Annular Mode/Antarctic Oscillation (AAO) is defined as the difference between the zonal (meaning east-west or circumpolar) sea level air pressure between 40°S and 65°S.  This parameter has a powerful influence on global climate and can affect weather in the Northern Hemisphere (Lin, Yu, & Hall, 2025), in particular the Warm Arctic-Cold Eurasian weather pattern that causes a lot of extreme winter weather. The AAO also affects the Indian summer monsoon and other eastern Asia weather phenomena.

Synthesis

The final article in the series, Climate Oscillations 12: The Causes & Significance, addressed the claim by proponents of the Climate Act that “ocean and atmospheric oscillations are random internal variability, except for volcanic eruptions and human emissions, at climatic time scales.”  May explains:

This is a claim made by the IPCC when they renamed the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) to the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) and the PDO to PDV, and so on. AR6 (IPCC, 2021) explicitly states that the AMO (or AMV) and PDO (or PDV) are “unpredictable on time scales longer than a few years” (IPCC, 2021, p. 197). Their main reason for stating this and concluding that these oscillations are not influenced by external “forcings,” other than a small influence from humans and volcanic eruptions, is that they cannot model these oscillations, with the possible exceptions of the NAM and SAM (IPCC, 2021, pp. 113-115). This is, of course, a circular argument since the IPCC models have never been validated by predicting future climate accurately, and they also make some fundamental assumptions that simply aren’t true.

This is a good point to remind readers that little fluctuations in incoming radiation have big impacts on the climate.  The Milankovitch theory is the most widely accepted cause of glaciation.  It states  that variations in earth’s orbit and tilt cause changes in the amount of sunlight that cause climate fluctuations strong enough to trigger continental glaciers. 

May’s analysis finds relationships between similarly small external variations that correlate with global surface temperatures.  Note however that proponents of CO2 as the control knob disregard all climate drivers but the greenhouse effect.    May explains:

Finally, oscillations are inconsistent with anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions as a dominant forcing of climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions do not oscillate; recently they have only increased with time. So, we will examine the relationship between solar and orbital cycles and the climate oscillations. As Scafetta and Bianchini (2022) have noted, there are some very interesting correlations between solar activity and planetary orbits, and climate changes on Earth.

May’s final article describes multiple observed oscillations including a period of about ~64 years, ±5 years (Wyatt, et al., 2012), Nathan Mantua and colleagues (Mantua, et al., 1997) identified 20th century “climate shifts” which results in a major multidecadal climate oscillation of 22 to 30 years and there are shorter 2-, 5-, 5-, and 9-year observed oscillations.  Note that there also are other cycles that are longer than these.

The ~64 year oscillation is of particular interest.  Marcia Wyatt’s “stadium wave” hypothesis shows that a suite of global and regional climate indicators vary over roughly the same 64-year period.  Wyatt explains:

“Stadium wave” is an allusive term for a hypothesis of multidecadal climate variability. Sequential propagation of an “audience wave” from one section of sports fans to another in a sports arena – i.e. a “stadium wave” – is analogous to the premise of the climate stadium-wave hypothesis. It, too, involves sequential propagation of a signal. In the case of the climate stadium wave, propagation proceeds sequentially through ocean, ice, and atmospheric systems. Key to signal propagation is network, or collective behavior – a feature ubiquitous throughout natural and man-made systems, a product of time and self-organization.

I think of climate as a product primarily of the climate stadium wave cycle plus contributions from other oscillations.  May explains:

If we define “global climate change” as the observed changes in HadCRUT5 or BEST global mean surface temperature (GMST) as the IPCC does, then the oscillations that correlate best are the AMO and the global mean sea surface temperature (SST) as shown in figure 2. None of the other oscillations correlate well with GMST.

In figure 2, the gray curve is a 64-year cosine function. It fits the 20th century data but departs significantly around 2005 and before 1878. The early departure could be due to poor data, the 19th century temperature data is very bad, see figure 11 in (Kennedy, et al., 2011b & 2011). Data quality problems still exist today, but are much less of a factor and the departure after 2005 is likely real and could be caused by any combination of the of the two following factors:

1. Human-emitted greenhouse gases.
2. The full AMO/world SST/GMST period is longer and/or more complex than we can see with only 170 years of data.

It is probably a combination of the two. As discussed by Scafetta and Stefani, climate, orbital, and solar cycles are known to exist that are longer than 170 years. The fact that I had to detrend all the records shown in figure 2 testifies to that. It is also noteworthy that the ENSO ONI trend since 2005 is trending down; as shown in the last post. So is the current PDO trend. All the notable oscillations are not synchronized, teleconnections or not, climate change is not simple. The trends in figure 2 result from complex combinations of gravitational forces and teleconnections (Scafetta, 2010), (Ghil, et al., 2002), and (Stefani, et al., 2021).

Discussion

May gives a concise summary of the potential human influence that has never been considered by the State of New York:

Whether global warming is a problem or not is in dispute, but it is a fact that the world is warming, and some are concerned about it. What is the cause of the warming? Is it natural warming after the cold winters of the Little Ice Age? Is it caused by human emissions of CO2? Most of the natural ocean and atmospheric circulation oscillations examined in this post are not modeled properly (some say not modeled at all) in current global climate models (Eade, et al., 2022). The IPCC AR6 report admits that the AMO (they call it the “AMV”) signal in the CMIP6 climate models is very weak, specifically on page 506:

“However, there is low confidence in the estimated magnitude of the human influence. The limited level of confidence is primarily explained by difficulties in accurately evaluating model performance in simulating AMV.” (IPCC, 2021, p. 504)

In other words, the models that predict gloom and doom that are used as the rationale that we must reduce New York GHG emissions don’t accurately predict the oscillation that correlates best with global temperatures.  If you cannot model this relationship, then the likelihood that future temperature projections are accurate is zero.

In addition, NYSERDA presentations at meetings consistently attribute the latest extreme weather events to climate change.  Maybe someday I will explain why I think that is completely divorced from reality and only serves to support the narrative that there is an existential threat.  In the meantime Roger Pielke, Jr. recently eviscerated this line of reasoning and those that continually use it.  He points out that this approach is “counter to the terminology, frameworks, and assessments of the IPCC and the broad base of research on which the work of the IPCC is based upon.”  I strongly recommend his article as definitive proof that the Hochul Administration picks and chooses the “science” to fit their narrative.

Conclusion

The intent of this article was to explain why anecdotal “evidence” of climate change is no more than recognition that there are weather pattern cycles that currently show warming.  It does not mean that there is conclusive evidence that continued GHG emissions will inevitably increase global temperatures.  There is overwhelming evidence that the current warming cycle will eventually reverse.  This does not mean that GHG emissions are not a factor but does mean they are a tweak not the primary driver.  This combined with the fact that New York GHG emissions are so small relative to global emissions that we cannot meaningfully affect global emissions means that GHG emission reductions for the sake of the climate is a useless endeavor.

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Launched in May, the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) is designed to explore the cosmos in optical and near-infrared light. During its planned two-year mission, this observatory will survey the entire sky using a triple mirror telescope and mercury-cadmium-telluride photodetector arrays, collecting data on more than 450 million galaxies, including the 100 million stars in the Milky Way, to explore the origins of the universe.

On December 18, the mission released its first infrared map of the entire sky in 102 wavelengths, capturing parts of the universe invisible to the naked eye. This data will help scientists solve some of the biggest cosmological mysteries. This includes how cosmic inflation immediately after the Big Bang affected the distribution of galaxies in our universe. In addition, the data will shed light on how galaxies have evolved since then and how the components of life were distributed throughout the Milky Way.

While the IR wavelengths are not visible to the naked eye, they are represented by different colors on the maps. The main image (shown above) shows hot hydrogen gas in blue, cosmic dust in red, and stars in green, blue and white. While some of the maps highlight distant galaxies and stars in the Milky Way’s disk, with the wavelengths emitted by dust and hot gas removed to make them easier to see, other maps highlight nebulae and stellar nurseries, as well as dust – such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from which planets form.

Each wavelength provides unique information about the observed galaxies, their stars and other features. SPHEREx relies on six detectors that are equipped with a specially developed filter to split the collected light into different wavelengths. “The superpower of SPHEREx is that it captures the entire sky in 102 colors approximately every six months,” SPHEREx project manager Beth Fabinsky said in a NASA press release. “That’s an amazing amount of information to collect in a short amount of time. I think that makes us the mantis shrimp of telescopes because we have an amazing multicolor visual recognition system and we can also see a very wide area of ​​our surroundings.”

The mission builds on the work of previous observatories, such as NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), which have also mapped the entire sky. However, no other mission has achieved this in as many colors and with the same field of view as SPHEREx. The data obtained will be used to measure the distances to the more than 450 million observed galaxies, providing the first three-dimensional distance map of the cosmos. This will allow scientists to detect subtle differences in the accumulation and distribution of galaxies in the cosmos.

The space telescope began its observations in May and completed its first full-sky mosaic earlier this month. Each day, SPHEREx observed another swath of the sky, capturing about 3,600 images per day as it orbited the Earth from pole to pole. Over the course of six months, the observatory observed the entire 360-degree sky, collecting a vast trove of data and producing over 100 infrared maps. Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, said:

It’s incredible how much information SPHEREx has collected in just six months – information that will be especially valuable when used alongside data from our other missions to better understand our universe. We essentially have 102 new maps of the entire sky, each at a different wavelength and with unique information about the objects it sees. I think every astronomer will find something valuable here, as NASA’s missions enable the world to answer fundamental questions about how the universe came to be and how it changed to eventually create a home for us in it.

SPHEREx will conduct three additional sky scans during its two-year main mission, which will be merged to increase the sensitivity of its measurements. These measurements will provide insight into an event that occurred a billionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang and has not been repeated since. The first dataset has been made available to the public and can be accessed here.

Further reading: NASA

Out of masterresource

By Roger Donway – December 26, 2025

Editor’s note: On December 26, 2008, Robert L. Bradley Jr. launched the free market energy blog, MasterResource. This opening contribution is reproduced verbatim.

“…the name of our blog is inspired by the late Julian Simon (1932-1998). He referred to energy as the most important resource because it is the resource needed to transform other resources from a natural state to a state that is beneficial to humans. Simon also used the term “ultimate resource” to describe human ingenuity.”

We’re just getting started here, but some of us veterans of the energy debate from a private property and free market perspective have come together to offer our thoughts on current energy issues. When I read my newspapers every day, I come up with some thoughts that I would like to share with people from a historical, ideological perspective. I think we all have something to add – and with it the inspiration for this endeavor.

We have a good core group of core bloggers (and principled bloggers) as well as a growing list of guest bloggers. Our goal is to release new material almost every day. What we need to offer the reader is frequent insights so that you visit us regularly.

There will be some trial and error, but now is the time to start. President-elect Obama and his team have little knowledge of the history of the energy debate – what WS Jevons said about renewable energy in the 1860s or the dangers of US energy regulation learned from war planning and the 1970s. Some of us will elaborate on this to bring a unique perspective to the debate.

By the way, the name of our blog is inspired by the late Julian Simon (1932–1998). He referred to energy as “the primary resource” because it is the resource needed to transform other resources from a natural state to a state that is beneficial to humans. Simon also used the term “the ultimate resource” to describe human ingenuity. As the institutional economist Erich Zimmermann once said: Resources come from the mind, not from the earth.

Finally, I hope that mainstream journalists and many other open-minded people will reach out to us in the big energy and climate debates. Obama’s march toward energy statism requires much debate. Big Government Democrats are not the cure for Big Government Republicanism. Oil, natural gas and coal are middle and working class fuels. Wind and solar are for the rich. Wind power, in particular, is, as my friend Robert Bryce put it, the ethanol of electricity. Maybe, just maybe, these parasitic, inefficient energies will get the attention they deserve from all sides of the political spectrum.

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With the International Space Station (ISS) set to decommission in 2030, several nations and commercial space companies are planning to deploy their own successor stations. These include China, which plans to double the size of its Tiangong space station in the coming years, and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)’s proposed Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS), whose first module is scheduled to launch by 2028. Then there are private projects like Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef, Airbus’ LOOP, Axiom Station, Vast’s Haven-1 and Starlab Space’s station.

The Russian space agency (Roscosmos) also plans to build a successor station, although its plans have evolved in recent years. According to a recent statement by Oleg Orlov, director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), the new Russian orbital station (ROS) will include the modules that make up the Russian orbital segment of the ISS – Zarya, Zvezda, Poisk, Rassvet, Nauka and Pricha. The announcement was made on December 18 at a press conference at the Russia Today (RT) international multimedia press center in Moscow.

According to Orlov, a special commission has been working on this process for several months. The decision reflects Russia’s geopolitical position amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, marked by international sanctions, canceled agreements and reduced resources.

Evolving concept

This represents a change from Roscosmos’ original plan, which was an evolution of the OPSEK (Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex) concept proposed in 2009. This station was intended to include the modules that made up the Russian orbital segment, but the plan was abandoned in 2017 after a feasibility study concluded that it was cheaper to maintain participation in the ISS program. In 2021, Roscosmos announced that its involvement in the ISS program would end in 2024, citing concerns about the condition of its modules (some of which are nearly three decades old).

*Artist’s concept for the Russian Orbital Station (ROS). Photo credit: Roscosmos*

At this point, the OPSEK concept was renamed the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS), or in Russian *Rossiyskaya orbital’naya stantsiya* (ROS) – not to be confused with the Russian Orbital Segment (also ROS). This updated plan would no longer include the Russian ISS modules, with plans for an initial launch of the Science and Energy module scheduled for 2027. By 2030, Roscosmos planned to launch three additional modules that would form the core of the station, including the Universal Node (UNM), the Gateway (SM) and the Base Module (BM).

Up to three more modules should be added to the station by 2035, with the possibility of a private habitat for space tourism. The planned station would accommodate a crew of two or more cosmonauts and would be able to fly autonomously for months if necessary.

Recycled modules, new orbit

The latest concept for the ROS reflects the changing situation of Roscosmos in recent years due to sanctions and the termination of international cooperation following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. According to Orlov’s announcement, Russia will separate its modules from the ISS once the program is completed in 2030 and will form the core of the ROS, with more modules to follow. “The Scientific and Technical Council of Roscosmos supported this proposal and approved the deployment of a Russian orbital station as part of the Russian segment of the ISS as the main possible scenario,” said Orlov, who was quoted by Russian state news agency TASS.

Orlov also stated that the ROS would have an orbital inclination of 51.6 degrees, which Orlov said was chosen for geopolitical reasons. This orbit will allow Russia to launch from its newer sites built to reduce Russia’s dependence on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan – the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia and the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East. This is even more important given the recent damage to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which has temporarily halted all Roscosmos flights to the ISS.

This announcement reflects what Denis Manturov, First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, said on December 5 during a press conference at the Rossiya National Center. Manturov explained at the time that at the end of November the RAS decided to change the plan for a station in polar orbit (96 degrees). This would allow orbital observations across Russia and conduct experiments around the North Magnetic Pole (where the Earth’s magnetic field provides virtually no protection from cosmic radiation) to study the effects on living organisms.

This new orbit will continue to allow Russia to launch cargo and crew missions from its domestic launch sites. Manturov also stated that India was considering the same orbit for its Bharatiya Antriksh station and the decision would enable international cooperation between the two stations.

*Artist’s impression of the planned Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS) in India. Photo credit: IBEF*

Unrealistic?

However, there are some in Russia who seriously doubt that the ROS will remain functional long enough for such cooperation to take place. Maria Sokolova wrote a sharp indictment of Roscosmos and the RAS’s plan to recycle its ISS modules in the Russian newspaper New Izvestia. The main problem, she wrote, were statements made by the same Orlov in 2022, in which he stated that the growing problem of bacteria and fungi that had accumulated on the ISS over time posed a threat to the safety of the astronauts and cosmonauts stationed there.

The statement was made in an interview with Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. When asked why the modules of the Russian segment could not be used to create the ROS, he answered unequivocally:

An analysis of the results of microbiological monitoring of the habitat of the ISS-RS modules, carried out as part of the full-time medical control operations, shows that the condition of the ISS habitat is deteriorating. It is an objective process. Generalized results show that in 65% of the samples analyzed from recent expeditions, microorganisms were found in quantities exceeding regulatory requirements. Among the representatives of the bacterial flora isolated from the ISS habitat, species were identified that are of medical importance and can cause allergic reactions, as well as some types of soft tissue diseases and diseases of the upper respiratory tract.

These issues have not changed in the last three years; if anything, they have gotten worse. Orlov’s expressed concerns also echoed statements made last year about the aging condition of the modules, which led to the decision not to reuse them. In essence, Russia’s decision to reuse its modules would mean that it would inherit all of the ISS’s current problems, which are biological, technical and structural in nature. This is especially true for the Zarya and Unity modules, both of which are 27 years old, followed by Zvezda (25 years).

These modules experience persistent problems due to extreme temperature fluctuations and radiation, leading to material fatigue and air leaks. This requires ongoing maintenance by the crew, taking time away from scientific research and other activities for which the station was created. After all, the ISS was originally designed to operate for 15 years, but its service life has been extended several times, which means that its scientific benefits are less worthwhile. Unfortunately, the motivation is clear: Russia is in a financial crisis due to the war in Ukraine, and Roscosmos is not immune to its effects.

Further reading: Izvestia, Ars Technica

Not many people know that

By Paul Homewood

h/t Doug Brodie

The Labor Party is now trying to do as much damage to this country as possible before they are kicked out:

Sir Keir Starmer is preparing to bind Britain to the EU’s net zero plans, which would impose radically tougher clean energy targets on households and businesses.

The prime minister and Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, are negotiating Britain’s rejoining of the EU’s internal electricity market, which treats the 27 EU countries and Norway as a single borderless electricity grid.

The EU will only allow Britain back into the system if Sir Keir agrees to the bloc’s ambitious renewable energy targets, which would require the UK to rapidly decarbonise not just electricity but also heating and transport.

In practice, this would mean that net zero targets would have to be doubled.

Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy minister, accused the prime minister of “ceding control of our energy system to bureaucrats in Brussels”.

She said: “UK ministers will be forced to cut emissions, regardless of the impact this has on people’s energy bills or the competitiveness of our businesses.”

Labor is seeking to forge closer ties with the EU and MPs have debated in recent weeks whether Britain should return to the customs union.

The plans would also support Mr Miliband’s ambitions to decarbonise the electricity grid and allow the UK to import foreign electricity if weak wind or sunshine reduces the output of wind and solar farms.

The EU’s demands were expressed in a document published quietly on the Cabinet Office website. The plan is both technically demanding and politically sensitive as it would subject Britain’s energy policy to EU jurisdiction.

It says: “The Electricity Agreement should… set an indicative global target for the share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption in the United Kingdom. To ensure a level playing field, the global target should be comparable to that of the European Union.”

The EU’s goal is for 42.5 percent of its total energy to come from renewables by 2030, with a target of 45 percent.

This is around double the current UK level of 22 per cent.

Mr Miliband has set a target to decarbonise UK electricity generation by 95 per cent by 2030, but electricity only accounts for 20 per cent of total UK energy consumption, so this will never be enough to meet EU requirements. Transport, heating and industrial energy account for 75 percent of the UK’s total energy consumption.

Britain currently gets around 75 percent of its total energy from oil and gas, a figure that has barely changed in decades.

Energy experts said the EU target could only be met by accelerating the replacement of boilers with heat pumps, supplementing petrol and diesel with more biofuels and encouraging even faster adoption of electric vehicles.

“Bill payers should be very concerned”

David Turver, an energy analyst, expressed doubts about the feasibility of the target even with more ambitious measures.

He said: “Whether it is a target of 42.5 percent or 45 percent by 2030 does not matter.

Ms Coutinho said: “Bill payers should be very worried about what the Labor government signs up. The EU’s Renewable Energy Directive is like all the worst parts of the UK’s climate change law – on steroids.”

Great Britain left the EU’s internal electricity market in 2021 as a result of Brexit – but has since become increasingly dependent on its European neighbors to maintain electricity operations.

The electricity generated in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and Denmark reaches Great Britain via seven interconnectors – submarine cables – and more are planned.

As of Tuesday, about 18 percent of Britain’s electricity was generated abroad, mainly in France, Norway and Denmark.

On some recent days, more than half of the electricity used in London and the South East is generated in France.

The UK’s exclusion from the EU market means its traders are banned from using the automated algorithms that optimize cross-border flows of goods and must buy and sell manually.

They also have to purchase connection capacity and power in separate transactions. The “difficulty” of such trading creates additional costs estimated at up to £370 million a year.

The whole story here.

The Tories and Reform must make it clear that they will abandon this agreement when they take office. If the EU doesn’t like it, it knows what it can do.

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was involved in another first discovery, recently available in pre-printed form on arXiv by Cicero Lu of the Gemini Observatory and his co-authors. This time, humanity’s most advanced space telescope has found UV-fluorescent carbon monoxide in a protoplanetary debris disk for the first time. Some features of this disk have also been discovered that have significant implications for the theory of planet formation.

HD 131488 is a relatively young (about 15 million years old) star in the Centaurus Lupus supergroup, located (no surprise) in the constellation Centaurus, about 500 light-years away. It is classified as an “early A-type” star, meaning it is both hotter and more massive than our Sun. It’s also not the first time it’s been the subject of an article about his CD.

Previous ALMA studies using radio frequencies found a huge amount of “cold” CO gas and dust about 30-100 AU from the star. Additional preliminary infrared data from the Gemini Observatory and NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) showed that there was likely hot dust and some solid-state structures in the star’s inner zone. Additional optical studies even suggested that the inner disk contained “hot atomic gas” such as calcium and potassium, which is not the same as CO since it is by definition a molecule.

Video showing the formation of planets in a protoplanetary disk. Photo credit: NASA video

But the key to truly understanding what was going on inside the disk lay in the infrared spectrum, and this is where JWST shines. Or more specifically, where it collects data about things that shine on it. When it turned its attention to HD 131488, which was probably only the case for about an hour in February 2023, it found a small amount of “warm” CO gas, equivalent to about hundreds of thousands of the mass of the cold gas in the outer disk.

This gas was distributed between 0.5 and 10 AU and had some interesting properties. First, there was a difference between “vibration temperature” and “rotation temperature.” The vibrational temperature of a gas indicates how quickly the atoms within the molecule swing back and forth, while the rotational temperature indicates how quickly the molecules are rotating – something that corresponds to kinetic energy. In a normal gas state, such as would be found in a typical space, these two temperatures would be equal because the collisions between the particles would equalize them to something called local thermal equilibrium.

However, with HD 131488 the difference is enormous. The CO molecule’s rotation temperature is only about 450 K maximum (and drops to 150 K further from the star), while its rotation temperature is a blistering 8800 K, which corresponds to the UV glare of its parent star. This shows that they are not in thermal equilibrium and also explains why the molecules fluoresce (appear warm).

*Comet collisions occur in a protoplanetary disk. Photo credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech*

The carbon-12 to C-13 ratio was also found to be high for this type of environment, suggesting that there are likely some dust grains trapped in the sparse warm gas cloud that are blocking the light. To emit the light pattern found by JWST, CO also needs “collision partners” – other molecules that bounce off of them and use up some of their energy. Two potential partners have been examined, with hydrogen appearing less likely, while water vapor from comets destroyed by the star appears more likely.

This “exocometary” hypothesis is a central result of the work. Scientists have long debated what creates this relatively rare class of CO-rich debris disks like HD 131488 and how they trap their gas. To explain this, two hypotheses have been put forward: first, that CO-rich disks are simply left over from the star’s birth, and second, that the gas is constantly replenished by the destruction of comets.

The results of this study clearly support the second explanation. But they also have an impact on planet formation. Because there was a significant amount of carbon and oxygen in this “terrestrial zone” of the disk, as well as a lack of hydrogen, any planet that formed there would have high “metallicity” (i.e., elements that are not hydrogen). This would distinguish them from hydrogen-rich primordial nebulae.

Ultimately, these unique discoveries are exactly what JWST was designed for, and the company has produced a steady stream of them since its launch. Undoubtedly there are other star systems like HD 131488 that can provide further evidence for the CO-rich disk debate, but for now this paper provides ample evidence for how these relatively rare systems form.

Learn more:

CX Lu et al – JWST/NIRSpec detects warm CO emission in the terrestrial-planetary zone of HD 131488

UT – Why rocky planets form early: ALMA survey shows planet-forming disks lose gas faster than dust

UT – Astronomers see carbon-rich nebulae where planets are forming

UT – A protoplanetary disk that refuses to grow up

Not many people know that

By Paul Homewood

As I reported earlier this week, the EU has now officially lifted its ban on the sale of new petrol/diesel cars until 2035.

Instead, there will be a commitment to reduce vehicle emissions by 90% compared to 2021. It seems like a lot, but is it really?

The baseline value for cars in 2021 was around 110 g CO2/km, so the target for 2035 will be around 11 kg. But currently the manufacturers have already managed to reduce it to 93.6 g.

Undoubtedly, this change in plans will be a huge boost for hybrid cars.

The Volkswagen Golf Hybrid is said to emit 25g/km, compared to 115g/km for the diesel. The large-scale introduction of plug-in hybrids will therefore bring manufacturers significantly closer to their 2035 goals.

Obviously, there will continue to be increasing sales of electric vehicles, which will help make up the difference.

In addition, there is the use of synthetic fuels or e-fuels made from waste oil, which are also expected to be classified as “carbon-free”.

Most importantly, this policy change will allow the European automotive industry to dodge the bullet and continue producing internal combustion engine cars indefinitely.

It is not insignificant that the Telegraph article reported the following:

“Michael Lohscheller, chief executive of Swedish electric vehicle maker Polestar, added: “The transition from a clear 10 percent zero emissions target to 90 percent may seem small, but if we back down now we will not only harm the climate.” We will undermine Europe’s competitiveness.”

The big losers will be Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers like Polestar!

There is another big gap in EU logic.

The fuel consumption and emissions of all hybrid cars assume a mix of battery and engine usage. The Golf Hybrid’s battery only has a range of 88 miles – in practice it’s more like 50. Many drivers don’t necessarily have the option to charge at home.

The likely outcome is that many will simply continue to use hybrid vehicles as if they were regular gasoline cars. They run exclusively on petrol, which emits just as much CO2 as the petrol version!

Hybrids are officially considered to be low-emission. In practice, they will not reduce emissions by one iota.

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One of the main goals of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is to detect atmospheres around exoplanets to find out whether or not they could potentially harbor life. To do this, however, scientists need to know where to look, and the exoplanet must actually have an atmosphere. While scientists currently know the location of about 6,000 exoplanets, they also believe that many of them do not have atmospheres and that many of those that do do are not actually the size of Earth. And many of them are near stars that are too bright for our current telescopes to see their atmospheres. All of these limitations ultimately mean that even with 6,000 potential candidates, the number of Earth-sized specimens for which we could find an atmosphere is relatively small. So a new paper available on arXiv from Cal Tech’s Jonathan Barrientos and his co-authors that describes five new exoplanets around M dwarf stars – two of which could potentially have an atmosphere – is big news for astrobiologists and exoplanet hunters alike.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered these five candidates, but additional work is required to “confirm” them, which is reported for the first time in this new paper. When TESS finds a potentially interesting signal, its operators issue a TESS Object of Interest (TOI) alert, informing the public about a new exoplanet candidate. Confirming a candidate typically requires follow-up observations such as transit photometry or perhaps even high-resolution imaging.

Doing this for these planets was truly a team effort, involving data from at least nine different telescopes, including the Keck II Observatory and the Hale Telescope. All of this data served to confirm the existence of five planets in four separate systems – one system had two planets resonating with each other. Four of these were “super-Earths” between 1.28 and 1.56 times the size of our planet, while the other, known as TOI-5716b, was roughly the size of Earth.

Fraser discusses exoplanet atmospheres with Dr. Joanna Barstow

A key difference between our home planet and those found around distant stars is their orbital period. They ranged from 0.6 to 11.5 days, which is obviously absurdly fast, but is fairly normal for most current exoplanet candidates given the limited telescope time available to them. But perhaps more importantly, they are all close to M dwarf stars.

This is important for two reasons. First, M dwarfs are relatively dim, meaning it is much easier for a telescope like the James Webb Space Telescope to block out the star’s light while trying to resolve an atmosphere. But on the other hand, they are also notoriously volatile, with massive X-ray and ultraviolet flares that can “sandblast” a planet’s atmosphere if they are too close to the star.

Scientists explain this sandblasting effect by estimating a “cosmic coastline.” It represents a diagram between the “insolation” (i.e. sunlight/radiation) a planet receives and its gravity. At higher levels of solar radiation, planets’ atmospheres are more easily blown away. But higher masses allow a planet to maintain a tighter grip on its atmosphere. This depiction of solar radiation and gravity draws a very clear, linear line that scientists call the cosmic coastline.

Fraser discusses the technology we need to truly observe Earth-like exoplanets.

In the work, the five planets are actually divided into three categories. Three of the planets are clearly “above” the cosmic coastline, meaning the energy from their stars has likely blasted away any atmosphere they may have had. A fourth planet, TOI-5736b, the one with the shortest period, is in a category of its own, because although it receives a ton of radiation, its large radius and mass mean it could at least theoretically maintain a volatile (i.e. heavy) atmosphere simply because it is so large.

This leaves one outstanding: the exoplanet TOI-5728b. Although it orbits an active M dwarf star, this exoplanet’s atmosphere appears to be sufficient to maintain its atmosphere. Combined with the fact that M dwarfs are very faint, this planet is an excellent candidate for follow-up observation by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to attempt direct atmospheric detection.

Realistically, however, with an orbital period of 11.5 days, the likelihood of complex life on this newly confirmed planet is slim. But some extremophiles could potentially secure a livelihood if they were adequately protected. We won’t know until we look, and this journey from TOI discovery through confirmation and characterization to eventual observation by some of the world’s most sought-after observatories is exactly how science is supposed to work.

It might be a while before JWST, which is obviously very busy, can focus its attention on this one particular planet. At some point, however, we should get some data about its atmosphere that will delight both planetary scientists and astrobiologists. You just have to wait a little longer as the wheels of science continue to turn.

Learn more:

JG Barrientos et al. – From Earth to Super-Earth: Five new small planets transiting M dwarf stars

UT – Warm exo-titans as a test of planetary atmospheric diversity

UT – GJ 12 b: Earth-sized planet orbiting a quiet M dwarf star

UT – Scientists find the strongest evidence yet for an atmosphere on a molten rocky exoplanet