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Celebrating the Tour de France and Hans Krebs in Sheffield. (Courtesy: University of Sheffield)
By Hamish Johnston
Sports fans in the UK are spoiled for choice this weekend, with the Wimbledon finals in London and the kick-off of the Tour de France in Leeds. This is only the second time that the famous bicycle race has started in the UK and to celebrate, the University of Sheffield has created a huge image of a bicycle in a field near to the route. But as well as celebrating the passing cyclists, the image honours a very different cycle that makes the race and indeed much of life on Earth possible.
The Krebs cycle was discovered at the university in 1937 by the biochemist Hans Krebs, who shared the 1953 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology for his explanation of how aerobic organisms convert stored nutrients into energy. So when the cyclists are fighting their way up the steep Buttertub Pass in the Yorkshire Dales, you can be sure their Krebs cycles will be working overtime!
Are you a climate-change sceptic? How would you like to earn a cool $30,000 for justifying your views on global warming? The physicist Christopher Keating has said “I will award $30,000 of my own money to anyone that can prove, via the scientific method, that man-made global climate change is not occurring”. The deadline for submissions is 31 July 2014 so get on your bike and get that proof to Keating.
First it was Stephen Hawking, whose appearance in a TV commercial for the price comparison website gocompare.com made us smile. Now the US string theorist Jim Gates has made an advertisement for the mobile-phone network Verizon. If he tires of physics, a career as a voice artist beckons – I would buy a phone from Gates! You can watch him in action below.
The Christopher Keating thing just isn’t credible, Hamish. He says he’ll award $30,000 to anybody who can prove that global warming isn’t happening. But he’s the judge, and I can’t prove that fairies don’t exist. Here’s a report saying Antarctic sea ice is at an all-time maximum. Here’s a report saying Chicago had its coldest winter on record last year. But this guy will dismiss that and later say “nobody can prove global warming isn’t happening”.
John, here’s an article in the Daily Mail (hardly a global-warming cheerleader) pointing out that last winter was exceptionally warm in Siberia…Closer to home, my garden pond in Bristol didn’t freeze once last winter — whereas I could stand on the ice in previous winters. Based on these two observations, I’d say global warming is happening!
But here in Poole I didn’t cut my grass for six months. I presume you’ve read about the BBC censorship issue and demolishing Didcot A at night. They don’t want anybody filming the insanity. China and Germany are building new coal power stations, while for us, it’s going to be physics funding cuts and plenty of money for windmills, then lights out.
I can’t falsify climate change. However, what I CAN do is offer a challenge of my own: prove, if you can, that climate change is a falsifiable theory. And if it is not falsifiable then obviously no one can falsify it, can they?
I agree with John Duffield. It is a stupid challenge because a) climate is not defined b) if climate is defined by temperature and rainfall then climate is changing all the time c) there is geological evidence that changes in climate at a particular location have been many and often abrupt (ie in one or two years)
If one wants to link CO2 to changes in climate it can be shown by measured data and experimental results obtained by Chemical Engineers at MIT (see chapter 5 of Perry’s Chemical Engineering Handbook) that the radiation absorptivity of CO2 at the present level (or even near future) in the atmosphere is insignificant. If one wants to also include CH4 it can be proved that the statement intimating that CH4 is worse than CO2 is a lie (check http://www.cementafriend.wordpress.com )
I cannot see how such a tiny amount of c02 and that the 3% from humans is to blame , it is impossible to calculate anything as complex as c02 , you cannot even measure it given it is different in every depth of the oceans plus calculate the amount being used .It is chaotic theory which is impossible to predict , the past proves they cannot project the climate longer than maybe a week . I also read the 4,000 emails in climate gate , if that’s science we are all in a lot of trouble . It is without a doubt the biggest fraud in history , they have been wrong on all predictions not just some .
Send a message to Mars : Even though your atmosphere is 95%c02 you are going to melt to pieces even though your an average temps are minus 85 -85c . Pay for the climate ? You guys are out of your mind.
Spoken like the true right-wing ideologue he is.—-as is any and all that have anything at all to do with Verizon!
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