Free Republic

For much of my life I have been a science writer. That means I eavesdrop on what’s going on in laboratories so I can tell interesting stories. It’s analogous to the way art critics write about art, but with a difference: we “science critics” rarely criticise. If we think a scientific paper is dumb, we just ignore it. There’s too much good stuff coming out of science to waste time knocking the bad stuff. Sure, we occasionally take a swipe at pseudoscience—homeopathy, astrology, claims that genetically modified food causes cancer, and so on. But the great thing about science is...

To put it another way, an area the size of Alaska, America’s biggest state, was open water two years ago, but is again now covered by ice. The most widely used measurements of Arctic ice extent are the daily satellite readings issued by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is co-funded by Nasa. These reveal that – while the long-term trend still shows a decline – last Monday, August 25, the area of the Arctic Ocean with at least 15 per cent ice cover was 5.62 million square kilometres. This was the highest level recorded on that...

Good news! As I predicted four years ago, alarmist climate scientist, Michael Mann’s gambit of using the courts to silence debate about his faked “hockey stick” graph is backfiring spectacularly. 17 mainstream media outlets now agree Mann should put up or shut up.

Scientists may have figured out why Romans wore togas and the global warming theorists are not going to be pleased. A new study by Swiss scientists finds the earth was warmer during Roman and Medieval times than it is today, which indicates that greenhouse gases may not be the driving force behind the modern global warming trend.

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Anthony Watts THE DEMISE OF SUNSPOTS—DEEP COOLING AHEAD?Don J. Easterbrook, Professor of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WAThe three studies released by NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network this week, predicting the virtual vanishing of sunspots for the next several decades and the possibility of a solar minimum similar to the Maunder Minimum, came as stunning news. According to Frank Hill, “the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.” The last time sunspots vanished from the...

Environment: The United Nations wants $100 billion a year in taxes to deal with climate change. Two groups of researchers plan to go on the offensive against global warming "denialists." When will the madness end? The U.N.'s craving for money it hasn't earned is insatiable. So it's no surprise that one of its panels has proposed to raise $100 billion a year from taxes on carbon dioxide emissions and international transportation, and possibly on financial transactions as well, to mitigate the effects of climate change. This isn't the first time, of course, that the U.N. has proposed a global warming...

The state of Texas today sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a federal appeals court in Washington DC, claiming four new regulations imposed by the EPA are based on the thoroughly discredited findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and are 'factually flawed,'. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says the rules are illegal and if imposed, will cost Texans in higher energy costs and tens of thousands of lost jobs. "The state explained that the IPCC, and therefore the EPA, relied on flawed science to conclude that greenhouse emissions endanger public health and welfare," Abbott said. "Because the...