Free Republic

For over a year, surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean hit new highs, but that trend has reversed at record speed over the past few months, and nobody knows why. {skip obligatory global warming bs next few paragraphs...} NOAA data shows Atlantic sea surface temperatures have cooled at a surprising rate since May. Since June began, temperatures have been a degree or two Fahrenheit colder than normal for this time of year. That means El Niño will likely be replaced by its counterpart, La Niña, a weather system that allows cold water to rise to the surface of the Atlantic,...

The Turin Shroud has been at the center of debate for centuries with many believing it was the cloth used to wrap Jesus's body after the crucifixion. ====================================================================== Scientists are inching closer to determining whether the famed Turin Shroud is indeed the cloth in which Jesus was wrapped. Experts have now stated that the linen can be traced back to the beginning of the AD era, aligning with the time when Jesus was crucified. The shroud, which bears a faint outline of a bearded man believed to be an imprint left by Jesus's body, was first displayed in 1350 and...

Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition,...

The carvings at Göbekli Tepe even show the movements of the constellations. Image credit: Dr Martin Sweatman Acataclysmic comet impact 13,000 years ago may have sparked the rise of civilization, according to the authors of a new study. The event – which many scientists believe never happened – may even be documented at the world-famous site of Göbekli Tepe, forming part of a series of carvings that the researchers say represent the world’s oldest solar calendar. Located in southern Türkiye, Göbekli Tepe is a pre-pottery Neolithic complex that is estimated to be around 12,000 years old. Analyzing an intricately carved...

he importance of high-quality mask-wearing cannot be overstated in the ongoing battle against airborne threats like viruses, wildfire smoke, and environmental particles. Jennifer Veltman, MD, chair of infectious diseases, outlines the times to wear a mask in 2024

Scientists have claimed that the consumption of the fungi psilocybin, also known as 'magic mushrooms,' influenced pre-human hominids' brains six million years ago.They analyzed dozens of studies involving psilocybin and consciousness, finding the fungi increased connectivity between networks in the frontal brain region associated with expressive language, decision-making and memory.These 'significant neurological and psychological effects' may have been the catalase ancient ancestors to interact with each other and the environment - spurring consciousness among our species.The idea that magic mushrooms sparked the pivotal point in humans has been touted by podcaster Joe Rogan, who has referenced the 'Stoned Ape Theory'...

Prehistoric humans hunt a woolly mammoth. More and more research shows that this species – and at least 46 other species of megaherbivores – were driven to extinction by humans. Credit: Engraving by Ernest Grise, photographed by William Henry Jackson. Courtesy Getty’s Open Content Program ================================================================== Researchers at Aarhus University have concluded that human hunting, rather than climate change, was the primary factor in the extinction of large mammals over the past 50,000 years. This finding is based on a review of over 300 scientific articles. Over the last 50,000 years, many large species, or megafauna, weighing at least 45...

The discovery of butchered bones belonging to a glyptodont, a giant relative of the armadillo, suggests that humans were living in Argentina 20,000 years ago. Ancient humans may have butchered and eaten a giant armadillo-like creature around 20,000 years ago in what is now Argentina, a new study finds. The discovery of the butchered bones supports a growing body of evidence that people spread throughout the Americas much earlier than previously assumed. During the Late Pleistocene epoch (129,000 to 11,700 years ago), ice sheets and glaciers covered much of the planet, particularly during the Last Glacial Maximum, a period around...

The impacts of human-caused climate change are so overwhelming they’re actually messing with time, according to new research. Polar ice melt caused by global warming is changing the speed of Earth’s rotation and increasing the length of each day, in a trend set to accelerate over this century as humans continue to pump out planet-heating pollution, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The changes are small — a matter of milliseconds a day — but in our high-tech, hyperconnected world have an important impact on computing systems we have come to...

People also often try to simply change the topic of conversation. Image credit: zeljkodan/Shutterstock.com ================================================================== Eating too much meat is bad for you, bad for the environment, and fatal for the animals involved. Those are straight facts, indisputable and proven through years of study. But counterpoint: have you considered that vegans are annoying? If the comments section under just about any media promoting a vegetarian or vegan diet is anything to go by, the answer to that question is probably “yes”. And, in any case, what about all the poor plants, huh? You okay with murdering them, IFLScience? The blood...

Perhaps skip that in-flight negroni.You’ve had a good year. You and your significant other are about to board that long-haul flight to your well-deserved salmon-fishing vacation in Scotland, where you’ll be pampered just like King Charles in a real Scottish castle — with its own river, no less. Your wellies, your waders, and your fishing kit are on the plane. Next stop, Edinburgh and on to the wild Highlands. In the lounge with time to kill, you two decide to toast embarking on this adventure by ordering up a round of delicious Johnnie Walker Black on ice. Scotland, right? A...

As a vocal advocate of vaccinations for public health, Peter Hotez was no stranger to online harassment and threats. But then the abuse showed up on his doorstep. It was a Sunday during a brutal Texas heatwave in June 2023 when a man turned up at Hotez’s home, filming himself as he shouted questions at the scientist, who is a paediatrician and virologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Because of the long-running online and real-life abuse he has faced, Hotez now has the Texas Medical Center Police, Houston Police Department and Harris County Sheriff’s Office on speed...

Fake studies have flooded the publishers of top scientific journals, leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue. The biggest hit has come to Wiley, a 217-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, N.J., which Tuesday will announce that it is closing 19 journals, some of which were infected by large-scale research fraud. Paywall.

Proving that unpaid anonymous review is worth every cent, the 217 year old Wiley science publisher “peer reviewed” 11,300 papers that were fake, and didn’t even notice. It’s not just a scam, it’s an industry. Naked “gobbledygook sandwiches” got past peer review, and the expert reviewers didn’t so much as blink.Big Government and Big Money has captured science and strangled it. The more money they pour in, the worse it gets. John Wiley and Sons is a US $2 billion dollar machine, but they got used by criminal gangs to launder fake “science” as something real.Things are so bad, fake...

The studied Psittacosaurus under natural (upper half) and UV light (lower half). (Zixiao Yang, Author provided) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Strong but light, beautiful and precisely structured, feathers are the most complex skin appendage that ever evolved in vertebrates. Despite the fact humans have been playing with feathers since prehistory, there's still a lot we don't understand about them. Our new study found that some of the first animals with feathers also had scaly skin like reptiles. Following the debut of the first feathered dinosaur, Sinosauropteryx prima, in 1996, a surge of discoveries has painted an ever more interesting picture of feather evolution....

For years we've heard that humans are the problem when it comes to the environment. The complaints in recent years have become so intense and extreme that we're being told that humans have been likened to a harmful virus, even to the point that some individuals have begun a "human extinction project" in the crazed belief that the only chance to "save the planet" is to erase humans from existence. It's gotten to the point where hardly a day goes by where we don't hear about someone who expresses a desire to see the Earth "depopulated", at least to the...

Roughly 75% of Americans drink coffee every day. That won’t be the case for long, apparently, if the elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, have their way. Did anyone notice what they were talking about back in January during the 2024 World Economic Forum's Davos get-together? During a recent WEF panel discussion, a reporter for Moneywise, in an item posted on Yahoo! Finance, reported that one speaker, some banker named Hubert Keller, remarked, “The coffee that we all drink emits between 15 and 20 tons of CO2 per ton of coffee.” Ominously, he added, “so we should...

First, the stage must be set. The joke that currently occupies the Bully Pulpit says he’s the first climate president, says he’s making history by confronting the climate crisis, not denying it. “I’m taking the most significant action on climate ever in the history of the world.” Now to his latest tactic.Biden gave a warning on climate change in September 2021, when he surveyed damage caused by Hurricane Ida in New York and New Jersey. “We’ve got to listen to the scientists ... they all tell us this is code red. ... The nation and the world are in peril,...

“I had the hormonal urges,” said Prof Camille Parmesan, a leading climate scientist based in France. “Oh my gosh, it was very strong. But it was: ‘Do I really want to bring a child into this world that we’re creating?’ Even 30 years ago, it was very clear the world was going to hell in a handbasket. I’m 62 now and I’m actually really glad I did not have children.” Parmesan is not alone. An exclusive Guardian survey has found that almost a fifth of the female climate experts who responded have chosen to have no children, or fewer children,...

Of Homo sapiens, Darwin made only a passing mention on the third-to-last page of the tome, noting coyly that "light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." That's it. That is all he wrote about the dawning of the single most consequential species on the planet.