Free Republic

German researchers have re-ignited debate over geo-engineering by saying that “seeding” oceans with iron is an effective way to lock up CO2. While the principle behind seeding is simple enough – the iron acts as a fertilizer for phytoplankton, which multiply and consume carbon dioxide as they grow – the topic is fiercely debated. The core of the argument is also simple: it’s probably impossible to predict what other environmental impacts phytoplankton fertilization would have. The researchers, led by Victor Smetacek from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, are reporting the results of a 2004...

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Anthony Watts I’ve never done a double feature before where our Climate Craziness of the Week and Quote of the Week are one and the same. 350.org’s Bill McKibben gets this unique honor.From the what universe does Bill McKibben live in department? While going on about heat waves, he comes up with the ultimate “I don’t understand science” zinger. How long before people stop listening to this guy? I would not have believed he’d be disturbed enough to write this if I hadn’t read it as a direct quote written by his own hand.Hat...

UPDATE: less than 24 hours after posting this, we already have an end of the world prediction naming global warming, see below. New end of the world book treats climate change just like many other end of times worries that have not come to pass. Weston, FL — (SBWIRE) — 07/16/2012 — The end of the world is not going to happen within our lifetimes. That’s the word from Justin Deering, author of The End of the World Delusion: How Doomsayers Endanger Society. “We’re bombarded with end-of-the-world scares practically everywhere you look,” Deering explains. “You hear about it in church, on...

From the told ya so department, comes this recently presented paper at the European Geosciences Union meeting. Authors Steirou and Koutsoyiannis, after taking homogenization errors into account find global warming over the past century was only about one-half [0.42°C] of that claimed by the IPCC [0.7-0.8°C]. ------------------------------------------------ Here’s the part I really like: of 67% of the weather stations examined, questionable adjustments were made to raw data that resulted in: “increased positive trends, decreased negative trends, or changed negative trends to positive,” whereas “the expected proportions would be 1/2 (50%).” And… “homogenation practices used until today are mainly statistical, not...

The head of Iran’s cultural heritage and tourism organization believes that in addition to economic sanctions, the West is launching another kind of “soft war” on the Islamic republic. Speaking at a ceremony to introduce the nation’s new meteorological department chief, Hassan Mousavi, said that he was “suspicious about the drought in the southern part of the country.” He went on to accuse the West as using “technology” to influence the nation’s climate, saying sand storms, droughts, and other extreme weather were the result of an unspecified method of war. … Last year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Western countries...

If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe. Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest...

It’s business as usual at the Petermann glacier, doing what a glacier does, calving ice into the sea. We reported on another chunk in 2010, four Manhattans in size. Borrowing from an oft used media ploy, at this rate, it will be down to ice cube size in ten years. I wonder though, if we’d ever have noticed any of this without MODIS? Keep that in mind when reading the claims.At left An ice island twice the size of Manhattan has calved from Petermann Glacier off northern Greenland. At right, the 2010 calving, with the crack for the new chunk...

Earlier today, certain Congressional Democrats let it be known that their party would be ready and willing to take the country over the coming fiscal cliff if Republicans don’t agree to President Obama’s proposal to hike taxes on the country’s wealthiest earners (but remember: Republicans are ones refusing to cooperate and causing all of this dat gum partisan gridlock!). A top Senate Democrat bluntly warned Monday that her party is prepared to let all the Bush-era tax cuts expire and automatic spending cuts to defense and domestic programs take place at the beginning of next year unless Republicans agree to...

A massive landslide sent tons of rock and debris tumbling more than five miles down a glacier in Alaska, the National Park Service reported in an event that could be yet another sign of a warming world. ocated in a remote area of Glacier Bay National Park, the slide was so big it registered on earthquake monitors as a magnitude 3.4 event. Officials noticed the monitor blip on June 11 but it wasn't until July 2 that a pilot passing over the site took photos that showed just how large it was, Glacier Bay National Park announced on its Facebook...

Heat wave, fires have climate change activists on offensive By Ben Geman - 07/06/12 06:00 AM ET Record-breaking heat across the U.S. and catastrophic wildfires in Colorado are giving environmentalists a rare opening to regain the political offensive on climate change. While scientists caution against chalking up specific weather events to climate change, they say generally that heat waves, wildfires and other extreme weather is expected with increasing frequency and intensity in a warming world. Skeptics of climate change often point to winter blizzards as evidence that the planet is not warming; now those who say climate change is a...

Enlarge Image Evidence of the dire condition of coral reefs around the world is being presented in abundance at the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium that got underway yesterday in Cairns, Australia. And scientists are calling for action to stop the losses: More than 2500 marine researchers and managers at the conference and around the world have signed a Consensus Statement on Climate Change and Coral Reefs that calls on "all governments to ensure the future of coral reefs, through global action to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and via improved local protection of...

Germany’s large solar companies have lost almost 25 billion Euros of their stock market value (The German title is: "Solar-Pleitewelle vernichtet Milliarden".) To put it another way, large German solar companies (with one exception) "have lost more than 97 percent of their value since the peak of Germany's government policy-driven solar energy boom.

Climate: While CBS touts a "groundbreaking" government report linking extreme weather and climate change, German researchers find 2,000 years of cooling and warmer temps in medieval times and the Roman era. This summer's heat wave has given the global warmongers new hope in conning the hot and the restless into believing the whole thing is due to that SUV parked in your driveway and that coal-fired plant down the street. Not so fast, say German researchers who documented a two millennia cooling trend. Both the Roman legions and Crusaders marched in warmer climes. On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, CBS News...

Wasn´t global warming supposed to lead to greatly diminished harvests and global food scarcity? Well, tell this to Bill McKibben, Al Gore and the other scarmongers:"Largest ever cereal harvest predicted this year"The world is expected to harvest the largest ever crop of cereals in 2012-13 according to an estimate released by the UN affiliated Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) recently. It is estimated that this year's world cereal production will be a record 2371 million tonnes, marking a 1 percent, or 27 million tonnes increase over 2011.  India is forecast to produce a bumper harvest of 234.4 million tonnes of cereals, up from...

Peru’s government on Monday sent 18 trucks carrying 97,000 blankets to villages in the Andean highlands, where the populations endure freezing temperatures.The blankets were sent to Puno, Apurimac, Ayacucho, Junin, Huancavelica, Huanuco, Ancash and La Libertad regions, daily La Republica reported. The shipment is part of the national government plan to provide support to people who are not properly equipped to weather the cold. Children and the elderly are often the most vulnerable to the cold temperatures, and every year a number of people in the highlands die during Peru’s cold winter months of June through August. Last week, temperatures in the district...

Extreme caution best in assessing future weather Published in The Starphoenix July 6, 2012In the viewpoint article Extreme weather becoming norm (SP, June 28) Lidsay Olson, vice-president of the Insurance Bureau of Canada, provides a glimpse of weather extremes for various regions of Canada and warns Canadian to be prepared to live with such extremes over the next several decades. Olson refers to the study on future weather extremes done by Gordon McBean, former assistant deputy minister of Environment Canada. When did Canada witness a climate free of extreme weather, is what Olson fails to explain to Canadians.Extreme weather is...

Wednesday's CBS This Morning hyped a "groundbreaking" new report from federal government scientists that claims "the first-ever statistical connection between extreme weather and man-made climate change." Correspondent Wyatt Andrews spotlighted how the study "found that man-made heat made the Texas drought roughly 20 times more likely." Andrews also hinted a connection between climate change and a recent heat wave, even as he explained that "the biggest reason for the record heat is the transition...from the La Nina weather pattern...to this year's warmer pattern, El Nino." Anchor Erica Hill introduced the correspondent's report by noting how "the first six months of...

Enlarge Image Extreme but not greatly so. An accounting of the rain that fell in the catchment basin (red box) of Thailand's Chao Phraya river last year (blues and purple are heavier rains) shows that huge losses from floods were likely the result of extensive building in the floodplain, not the amount of rain that fell. Credit: ©2012: Google, Tele Atlas, Ches/Spot Image; U.S. Dept. of State Geographer A first attempt to dissect climate and weather extremes only months after they happen is confirming more leisurely analyses of earlier heat waves, droughts, and flooding. Human-induced global warming is indeed...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) science and its promotion involves selection of only material that supports the hypothesis that human CO2 is causing warming and latterly climate change. It is used in everything from tree ring samples chosen to create the hockey stick, to omission of the Milankovitch Effect, and the role of cosmic rays in the formation of low cloud from IPCC computer models.There’s a similar pattern of selective reporting about weather events. People are inundated with reports giving the impression that what is happening is worse then ever before, unusual and therefore due to human activities....

Rings in fossilised pine trees have proven that the world was much warmer than previously thought - and the earth has been slowly COOLING for 2,000 years. Measurements stretching back to 138BC prove that the Earth is slowly cooling due to changes in the distance between the Earth and the sun. The finding may force scientists to rethink current theories of the impact of global warming. It is the first time that researchers have been able to accurately measure trends in global temperature over the last two millennia. Over that time, the world has been getting cooler - and previous...