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Junk Science: Researchers have discovered a chain of smoldering active volcanoes under the West Antarctic ice sheet — which happens to be the ice sheet that climate hysterics say is proof of man-caused global warming. The 2004 science fiction movie "The Day After Tomorrow" — and the operative word here is "fiction" — opened with a portion of the West Antarctic ice sheet shearing off as a prelude to planetary doom. But if the researchers depicted in the film had looked deep into the widening crevice, they might have noticed a string of active volcanoes lurking under nearly a mile...

Happy holidays from the Obama administration. Federal agencies are currently working on rolling out hundreds of environmental regulations, including major regulations that would limit emissions from power plants and expand the agency’s authority to bodies of water on private property. On Tuesday, the White House released its regulatory agenda for the fall of 2013. It lists hundreds of pending energy and environmental regulations being crafting by executive branch agencies, including 134 regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency alone. The EPA is currently crafting 134 major and minor regulations, according to the White House’s regulatory agenda. Seventy-six of the EPA’s pending...

On October 15, 2013, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) granted 'Certiorari' to Petitioners who have been suing the EPA over regulations to control CO2. In 2007, SCOTUS had ruled that CO2 may be considered a pollutant under the Clean Air Act (CAA), provided EPA could demonstrate that continued emission of CO2 would harm 'human health and welfare.' In 2009, EPA published the required Endangerment Finding, which was subsequently attacked on scientific grounds by a collection of plaintiffs. [Full disclosure: SEPP is one of the many plaintiffs involved in this lawsuit.] However, in June 2012, the Court of Appeals for the...

Regulation: More than 3,500 coal supporters descended on Washington Tuesday to protest environmental rules requiring technology that doesn't exist, designed to turn the Saudi Arabia of coal into the Bangladesh of energy. Members of Congress, union members, miners and their families stormed Capitol Hill to air their grievances about President Obama's policies that make it harder to burn or mine coal. They were protesting the government shutdown that hasn't ended — that of the coal industry in pursuit of environmental goals that ignore global temperatures that haven't budged in 17 years and greenhouse-gas emission declines that have occurred as a...

A German proposal circulated on the fringes of the EU Competitiveness Council on 27 September calls for phasing-in the EU’s 95 grams of CO2 per km (g/km) fuel efficiency standard for passenger cars over a four-year period ending in 2024. The proposal, which has been confirmed to EurActiv by several diplomats, would apply the standard to 80% of national fleets in 2020, with a 5% increase in each of the following years, reaching 100% in 2024. The green think tank Transport and Environment estimates that the scaling down of ambition would lead to an emissions standard of 104g/km in 2020,...

A major project has been quietly underway, within the executive branch of the U.S. government, trying to calculate a "social cost of carbon" (SCC) -- a so-called "non-market externality" (i. e., not captured by the normal price system of a free market). This calculated cost would then be imposed on all government programs in order to "fix" the price system -- so they say. The SCC report was published in May 2013, with little fanfare; public comments had to be submitted by Sept. 16. But this whole misconceived exercise has no valid scientific basis and can destroy the supply of...

Alberta’s carbon dioxide pipeline project has nailed down solid dates for construction as its main gas supplier, the new Redwater bitumen refinery, gets rolling. Enhance Energy needs to time its project to match the North West Redwater Partnership’s $6 billion bitumen-to-diesel refinery, which was officially kicked off last week on a large patch of former farmland. The refinery is a bit behind its original schedule, and is expected to open in mid-2016. For Enhance president Susan Cole, that sets her Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL) on a firm timeline. “We will be ready when North West begins, but we don’t...

The outgoing government in Norway has buried much-vaunted plans to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground amid mounting costs and delays. The oil and energy ministry said the development of full-scale carbon dioxide capture at Mongstad oil refinery had been discontinued. It said it remained committed to research into carbon capture. When the Labour Party presented the plan in 2007, it was hailed as Norway's equivalent of a "Moon landing". Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and his allies lost a general election to conservatives and centrists this month, and are due to step down shortly. Mongstad had already run into...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration will press ahead Friday with tough requirements for new coal-fired power plants, moving to impose for the first time strict limits on the pollution blamed for global warming. The proposal would help reshape where Americans get electricity, away from a coal-dependent past into a future fired by cleaner sources of energy. It's also a key step in President Barack Obama's global warming plans, because it would help end what he called "the limitless dumping of carbon pollution" from power plants. Although the proposed rule won't immediatedly affect plants already operating, it eventually would force...

It’s amazing that minuscule bacteria can cause life-threatening diseases and infections –- and miraculous that tiny doses of vaccines and antibiotics can safeguard us against these deadly scourges. It is equally incredible that, at the planetary level, carbon dioxide is a miracle molecule for plants -– and the “gas of life” for most living creatures on Earth.

There is finally some good news from environmental scientists studying climate change: as the earth gets warmer, ancient redwood trees are thriving. The huge trees that dot the California coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains soak up carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, keeping the potentially harmful greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere. Despite the warming climate, redwood trees are growing faster than at anytime over the last century, according to a report issued today by the Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative.

Here’s a graph showing something about Australian, Chinese and Indian emissions (thanks to Tom Quirk). At a glance you might think we are up there with the best of them (doing our bit to fertilize the flora of the planet, and to regreen the deserts). Alas, the Australian tally (the green triangles) represents the total emissions of Australia. The lines depicting Chinese and Indian emissions just show their annual increases.Chinese annual increases in emissions are larger than the entire Australian output. India is not too far behind. UPDATE: TonyfromOz points out the Y-axis scale  is missing three zero’s. Data source:...

The fate of the world’s forests on a warming planet has long been one of the great unanswered questions about climate change. Now, new research is complicating the picture further, suggesting that big shifts are already under way in how forests work. A paper published Wednesday suggests that trees in at least some parts of the world are having to pull less water out of the ground to achieve a given amount of growth. Some scientists say they believe that this may be a direct response to the rising level of carbon dioxide in the air from human emissions, though...

There was a small surprise: Viking found nitrogen to be the second most abundant gas in the Martian air, but Curiosity’s measurements revealed a nearly equal abundance of nitrogen and argon, a stable noble gas. Mission scientists are puzzled, but suspect it might have to do with the different tools used to sample the atmosphere.

Increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have helped boost green foliage across the world’s arid regions over the past 30 years through a process called CO2 fertilisation, according to CSIRO research. In findings based on satellite observations, CSIRO, in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), found that this CO2 fertilisation correlated with an 11 per cent increase in foliage cover from 1982-2010 across parts of the arid areas studied in Australia, North America, the Middle East and Africa, according to CSIRO research scientist, Dr Randall Donohue. “In Australia, our native vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments...

A recent study says life on Earth will suffer a carbon-dioxide-related extinction--not from too much of the gas, but from too little of it. Study: Too Little Carbon Dioxide Will Destroy Earth The New American 05 July 2013 Related Articles: EPA Declares Human Breath (CO2) a Pollutant EPA Declares Carbon Dioxide a Danger to Public Health Global Climate Warming Stopped 15 Years Ago, UK Met Office Admits

On Tuesday, President Obama announced a sweeping series of initiatives, including the use of executive powers, to combat global warming. The plan will involve federal funding for renewable energy technology, and spending for areas hit by storms and droughts aggravated by an allegedly changing climate. Yet the most ambitious part of his agenda is an effort to force a reduction in so-called greenhouse gases from the nation’s coal-fired power plants. Prior to the speech, Daniel P. Schrag, a White House environmentalism adviser and director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, got to the nub of that agenda: “Politically,...

President Obama gave his “War on Coal” speech at Georgetown University yesterday. And killing hopes for the Keystone Pipeline. His plan includes $8 billion in Federal Loan Guarantees for clean energy firms (like Solyndra). Here is a list of deceased solar energy companies: 2009 to 2010: Bankrupt, closed, acquired Advent Solar (emitter wrap-through Si) acquired by Applied Materials Applied Solar (solar roofing) acquired by Quercus Trust OptiSolar (a-Si on a grand scale) closed Ready Solar (PV installation) acquired by SunEdison Solasta (nano-coaxial solar) closed SV Solar (low-concentration PV) closed Senergen (depositing silane onto free-form metallurgical-grade Si substrates) closed Signet Solar...

WASHINGTON — President Obama is preparing a major policy push on climate change, including, for the first time, limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants, as well as expanded renewable energy development on public lands and an accelerated effort on energy efficiency in buildings and equipment, senior officials said Wednesday. Heather Zichal, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change, said the president would announce the new policy initiatives in the coming weeks. Another official said a presidential address outlining the new policy could come as early as next week. “He is serious about making...

IIn history studies of the Great Global Warming Scare, people will ask, is this the bargaining stage or the start of acceptance? Adapting to _ not just fighting _ climate change is taking the heat out of global warming talk Seth Borenstein for The Associated PressWASHINGTON (AP) — Efforts to curb global warming have quietly shifted as greenhouse gases inexorably rise.The conversation is no longer solely about how to save the planet by cutting carbon emissions. It’s becoming more about how to save ourselves from the warming planet’s wild weather. — Newsdaily On the five stages of  grief, this...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Efforts to curb global warming have quietly shifted as greenhouse gases inexorably rise. The conversation is no longer solely about how to save the planet by cutting carbon emissions. It's becoming more about how to save ourselves from the warming planet's wild weather. It was Mayor Michael Bloomberg's announcement last week of an ambitious plan to stave off New York City's rising seas with flood gates, levees and more that brought this transition into full focus. After years of losing the fight against rising global emissions of heat-trapping gases, governments around the world are emphasizing what a...

Might it be that it was Ronald Reagan and not Barack Obama who began to slow the rise of the seas? That is one conclusion that could be drawn from a new paper by Canadian physicist Qing-Bin Lu of Ontario's University of Waterloo. Instead of carbon dioxide emissions, Mr. Lu argues that ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other halocarbons caused global warming. Thanks to the Reagan administration and the 1987 Montreal Protocol, CFCs have been phased out by developed countries. After a lag, Mr. Lu argues that global temperatures peaked around 2002 and predicts they are set to gradually fall over...

IF you were the leaders of the State of California and you were hemorrhaging businesses, with entire industries leaving as fast as they could pack and taking jobs with them, what would you do? Assist with job training? Offer tax credits? Ease regulations? Wrong. The State of California didn't do that. Instead, they looked at the few still struggling industrial businesses dumb enough to want to still operate in this hostile environment and asked why? Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/california_to_industry_get_lost.html#ixzz2VRWtWLXw Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — not carbon emissions — are the real culprit behind global warming, claims a new study out of the University of Waterloo. “Conventional thinking says that the emission of human-made non-CFC gases such as carbon dioxide has mainly contributed to global warming. But we have observed data going back to the Industrial Revolution that convincingly shows that conventional understanding is wrong,” said Qing-Bin Lu, a science professor at the University of Waterloo and author of the study. “In fact, the data shows that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays caused both the polar ozone hole and global warming,” Lu...

According to data being gathered at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which has been monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1958, the CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere officially exceeded the 400 parts per million mark last week, a value not attained on Earth since humans were first human. This ominous milestone comes at a time when the evidence that human activity is resulting in unprecedented climate change is now overwhelming. More important, perhaps, even if all greenhouse gas production ceased immediately, this elevated carbon dioxide level would persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years. (snip) So in addition...

The demonized chemical compound is a boon to pant life and has little correlation with global temperature. Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That's simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity. The cessation of observed...

AP article. Whenever I post anything from the AP, it disappears. But the article is lamenting the incredible rise in carbon dioxide. Thoughts?

A recent NASA report throws the space agency into conflict with its climatologists after new NASA measurements prove that carbon dioxide acts as a coolant in Earth's atmosphere. NASA's Langley Research Center has collated data proving that “greenhouse gases” actually block up to 95 percent of harmful solar rays from reaching our planet, thus reducing the heating impact of the sun. The data was collected by Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry, (or SABER). SABER monitors infrared emissions from Earth’s upper atmosphere, in particular from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances thought to be playing...

From the University of Georgia:UGA discovery may allow scientists to make fuel from CO2 in the atmosphere Pyrococcus furiosus Image: MIT click for more infoAthens, Ga. – Excess carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere created by the widespread burning of fossil fuels is the major driving force of global climate change, and researchers the world over are looking for new ways to generate power that leaves a smaller carbon footprint. Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have found a way to transform the carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere into useful industrial products. Their discovery may soon lead to...

Somewhat hidden among the alarming data about global warming and environmental horribles is a significant piece of good news that seems to have slipped by with little attention. International and American agencies charged with keeping track of carbon pollution each report that while global air pollution is on the rise, U.S. emissions have reduced significantly in recent years. The International Energy Agency in 2012 reported that U.S. carbon emissions declined from the previous year and also were down an astounding 7.7 percent since 2006. That's the largest reduction from any country on the planet. A similar finding from the U.S....

Matt Ridley, author of The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist and other books, dropped by Reason's studio in Los Angeles last month to talk about a curious global trend that is just starting to receive attention. Over the past three decades, our planet has gotten greener! Even stranger, the greening of the planet in recent decades appears to be happening because of, not despite, our reliance on fossil fuels. While environmentalists often talk about how bad stuff like CO2 causes bad things to happen like global warming, it turns out that the plants aren't complaining. Approximately 19 minutes. Produced...

Hyperia | Credit WikimediaDespite the fuss about CO2 emissions, on a global scale no one is quite sure where a lot of it ends up. Those mystery “sinks” draw in a large proportion of CO2. Here’s a big sink that just got twice as big.Science Daily  Mar. 17, 2013 — Models of carbon dioxide in the world’s oceans need to be revised, according to new work by UC Irvine and other scientists published online Sunday in Nature Geoscience. Trillions of plankton near the surface of warm waters are far more carbon-rich than has long been thought, they found. Global...

The Obama administration is leaning toward revising its landmark proposal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants, according to several individuals briefed on the matter, a move that would delay tougher restrictions and could anger many environmentalists. The discussions center on the first-ever greenhouse gas regulations for power plants, which were proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency nearly a year ago. Rewriting the proposal would significantly delay any action, and might allow the agency to set a separate standard for coal-fired power plants, which are roughly twice as polluting as those fueled by natural gas. While the move...

Video showing that the Earth is getting greener BECAUSE of more co2 in the atmosphere and that the use of fossil fuels is preserving nature, not destroying it.

Nuclear Power: Buoyed by data showing that outside the immediate area, radiation dangers remain small, Japan's pro-nuclear prime minister seeks to restart other shut-down reactors to restart a stagnant economy. It has been two years since the March 11, 2011, Honshu quake and tsunami that killed nearly 19,000 people, smashed Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima plant, and put the brakes on the worldwide commercial use of nuclear power. Days after the quake — which registered at 9.0 on the Richter scale and was equal to about 336 million tons of TNT, a quake so powerful it shifted the position of...

Up 2.67 parts per million - Scientists say hopes of limiting warming to 2 degrees F are fading away to almost nothing.

The claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) can increase air temperatures by "trapping" infrared radiation (IR) ignores the fact that in 1909 physicist R.W. Wood disproved the popular 19th Century thesis that greenhouses stayed warm by trapping IR. Unfortunately, many people who claim to be scientists are unaware of Wood's experiment which was originally published in the Philosophical magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Philosophical Magazine might not sound like the name of a science publication, but a century ago leading scientists published their discoveries in it. During the early 19th Century many physicists supported the theory postulated by Benjamin Franklin...

The Environmental Law Center of the American Tradition InstitutePRESS RELEASEWashington, D.C. Contact: Chris HornerJanuary 28, 2013 info@atinstitute.orgToday, the Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on behalf of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) in federal district court in Washington, DC. ATI seeks to compel EPA to end its eight-month stonewall of two requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regarding EPA’s close working relationship with two pressure groups with which EPA has uncomfortably close ties, at great taxpayer expense.The complaint cited to journal papers and media reports in supporting its description that: “These two...

Are the stars finally aligned for a global climate change treaty? After years of frustration, momentum seemed to change in an instant last Monday. President Obama’s second inaugural address made it clear he was going to lead the world on the issue, his words a “clarion call to action” as one observer put it. Obama’s first term was marked by one failure after another on the climate issue. For instance, his efforts to craft an agreement at Copenhagen in December 2009 were frustrated by developing nations, and subsequent conferences, such as the one last November and December in Doha, have...

A simple new method has been shown to remove carbon-dioxide emissions from power plant exhaust while consuming half the energy needed by the best existing carbon-capture approach. Testing of the technology, which uses cheap limestone-derived material to trap carbon dioxide, has been underway at two different megawatt-scale pilot plants in Spain and Germany.

Guest post by Paul HomewoodThe UK Met Office report that the UK has just had its coldest autumn for nineteen years, leaving 2012 on course to be second coldest year since 1996.Mean temperature in November was 0.4C below the 1981-2010 average, the third month in a row when temperatures have been well down on normal.The average temperature for the autumn in the UK was 8.6C, compared to the long term average of 9.5C and the coldest since 1993. It is also the sixth coldest autumn in the last 50 years.The year as a whole is currently running as the second...

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Guest Blogger Guest post by Tom FullerThe physics behind the theory of global warming are solid. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, we’re emitting industrial levels of it, with China now in the lead for emissions. A significant portion remains in the atmosphere for a fairly long time, though the residence time is widely disputed. This residence of CO2 retards the cooling of the Earth and temperatures warm as a result.One of the few non-controversial datasets in climate change is the Keeling curve, the graph of the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere reproduced here:Figure1...

DOHA, Qatar – Ms. Christiana Figueres, chief secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, has told a press conference here that the 18th Conference of the States Parties will bring about “a complete economic transformation of the world.” She does not have in mind a democratic, free-market transformation. The intention of these 18 successive annual vacations for the world’s pampered dictators in exotic, sun-drenched locations is what it always was: to create a treaty binding more than 190 nations to do as the Secretariat says. Democracy? What’s that? Todd Stern, the U.S. lead negotiator, was similarly upbeat at...

I wonder what sort of reactions will occur when the CO2 police come knocking on individual doors saying “you need to turn off your heater, you are killing the planet”? A video follows.From Arizona State University:Study maps greenhouse gas emissions to building, street level for US citiesProject to help overcome barriers to an international climate change treatyTEMPE, Ariz. – Arizona State University researchers have developed a new software system capable of estimating greenhouse gas emissions across entire urban landscapes, all the way down to roads and individual buildings. Until now, scientists quantified carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at a much broader...

Science: The president who said he'd slow the ocean's rise says voters can regulate the weather and stop droughts, floods, wildfires and hurricanes by backing his re-election. Never mind wrecking the economy in the process. In 2009 President Obama modestly declared: "America, this is our moment . .. that I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." During his acceptance speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, he doubled...

An important new paper published today in Global and Planetary Change finds that changes in CO2 follow rather than lead global air surface temperature and that "CO2 released from use of fossil fuels have little influence on the observed changes in the amount of atmospheric CO2" The paper finds the "overall global temperature change sequence of events appears to be from 1) the ocean surface to 2) the land surface to 3) the lower troposphere," in other words, the opposite of claims by global warming alarmists that CO2 in the atmosphere drives land and ocean temperatures. Instead, just as in...

Brown wants you to believe global warming "poses an immediate and growing threat to California's economy, environment and to public health," and that reducing greenhouse gas emissions, "which are warming the planet," is necessary "to prepare for the unavoidable impacts of climate change, including the increased likelihood of both flooding and drought." That's the same phony scare story repeated until many people finally tuned it out. It failed to persuade Congress to intervene with a law to limit greenhouse gas emissions, even though Congress almost never has seen a trumped-up crisis that didn't justify overreaching intervention... But, as the Sacramento...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal. Many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. Michael Mann, director of...

It is increasingly clear that doubling CO2 is unlikely to increase global temperature more than about one degree Celsius, not the much larger values touted by the global warming establishment. In fact, CO2 levels are below the optimum levels for most plants, and there are persuasive arguments that the mild warming and increased agricultural yields from doubling CO2 will be an overall benefit for humanity. Let us debate and deal with serious, real problems facing our society, not elaborately orchestrated, phony ones, like the trumped-up need to drastically curtail CO2 emissions.

Aug 1 (Reuters Point Carbon) - In an effort to dissuade companies in key industries facing new carbon costs from leaving the state, California is considering giving them millions of dollars worth of additional free greenhouse gas allowances, state's air regulator said on Monday. California's cap-and-trade program seeks to emulate tactics used in the European Union and Australia to address emission "leakage" - a term describing the exodus of employers from a state or country in order to sidestep environmental costs. The California Air Resources Board (ARB), the regulator of the forthcoming program, held a workshop in Sacramento on Monday...