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For the first time ever, a large-scale, coal-fired power plant is capturing carbon dioxide to keep it from being released into the atmosphere – a milestone for a technology critical to addressing climate change. Canadian electric utility SaskPower has switched on unit 3 at its Boundary Dam power plant, about 10 miles from the North Dakota border, and will hold an official grand opening Oct. 2. Following a $1.2 billion retrofit, the 46-year-old, 110-megawatt coal unit is now on course toward capturing 90 percent of its carbon emissions. Other upgrades reduce nitrous oxide emissions and capture 100 percent of the...

Junk Science: Climate change "deniers," as global warm-mongers call those who think empirical evidence is more reliable than computer models, may soon count among their number a 50,000-strong body of physicists. At the risk of being accused of embracing what alarmists call the flat-earth view of climate change, the American Physical Society has appointed a balanced, six-person committee to review its stance on so-called climate change that includes three distinguished skeptics: Judith Curry, John Christy and Richard Lindzen. Their credentials are impressive. Christy is director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and was a...

Junk Science: Without evidence to back up their claims, climate zealots have taken to intimidation. They're blacklisting academics who have the nerve to question the "settled science" of climate change. The latest victim of climate McCarthyism is Caleb Rossiter, who, until his op-ed challenging the "consensus" on climate change was published in the Wall Street Journal, was a Democratic academic who briefly forayed into politics but was content to crusade against U.S. support for dictators and against the use of anti-personnel land mines. In that op-ed, Rossiter called himself an "Africanist." He not only questioned the science behind climate change...

Climate Deceit: Tom Steyer — the left's answer to the Koch brothers — says he has repented his fossil-fuel sins "based on the scientific evidence" to save the planet and the Democrats. And just what evidence would that be? please give this another read. it has been severely cut/edited from its original formBillionaire Steyer, having made a fortune extracting fossil fuel from the earth, confessed his guilt July 14 in Politico. "The more I learned about the energy and climate problems we currently face," he said, "the more I realized I had to change my life." So now he intends...

This lawless administration plans to bypass the two-thirds requirement for Senate ratification on a climate change treaty by entering into a "politically binding" hybrid agreement to "name and shame" climate scofflaws. Apparently letting the Environmental Protection Agency run amok with regulations fulfilling candidate Obama's pledge to bankrupt the coal industry, and enact a de facto cap-and-trade regime the president couldn't get through Congress, is not enough. The man who said his nomination was the moment the seas began to recede and the planet began to heal now plans to deal the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution yet another...

Junk Science: Those trying to save the planet leave trash-filled streets in advance of a U.N. climate confab that's a solution in search of a problem. Even a former administration official thinks the Earth is fine. Colorfully costumed zealots marched in New York and other cities Sunday in advance of Tuesday's U.N. Climate Summit. Once again they claimed, "The science is settled," and blamed capitalism for non-existent weather change. They barely noticed, as British climate-change skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton points out at Marc Morano's Climate Depot, the "Great Pause" in global temperatures now stands at 17 years and 11 months.

Climate: Amid all the hoopla over the "world's largest march against global warming," one question went unasked: Why aren't the protesters carping about the real culprits behind the recent rise in CO2? It makes no sense. America is a global warming success story, for those who believe in such things. CO2 emissions are on the downtrend in this country. [snip] China is a completely different story.

A paper published today in Earth System Science Data Discussions analyzes the 2014 carbon budget and predicts man-made CO2 emissions from fossil-fuels and cement production have increased by 65% since 1990. However, atmospheric levels of CO2 have only increased by 11% since 1990, indicating that ~83% of man-made emissions have been absorbed by natural sinks, far greater than the IPCC belief that natural sinks absorb 50% of man-made emissions. Thus, natural sinks [such as the up to 30% greening of the planet over the past few decades] are expanding faster than the IPCC anticipated, CO2 lifetime in the atmosphere is...

"Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous." Remember that statement, a while back, from some bloke on Twitter? What we now know with more than 97 per cent certainty that this guy - or whoever is in charge of running his Twitter account - is either wilfully dishonest or woefully ill-informed. The "97 per cent" claim is an utter nonsense. This report released today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation explains exactly why. First, that word "dangerous". This is a concept that was never mentioned in the study responsible for that 97 per cent claim....

Written by Stephen Leahy at "motherboard" Here’s the frightening implication of a landmark study on carbon emissions: By 2018, no new cars, homes, schools, factories, or electrical power plants should be built anywhere in the world, ever again, unless they’re either replacements for old ones or carbon neutral. Otherwise greenhouse gas emissions will push global warming past 2˚C of temperature rise worldwide, threatening the survival of many people currently living on the planet. Every climate expert will tell you we’re on a tight carbon budget as it is—that only so many tons of carbon dioxide can be pumped into the...

Carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere reached a record high last year and grew at the fastest rate in 30 years, the United Nations' climate agency reported Tuesday. Wendy Watson-Wanker, executive secretary of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, warned that time is running out in the mission to prevent devastating climate change. "It is high time the ocean, as the primary driver of the planet’s climate and attenuator of climate change, becomes a central part of climate change discussions,” said Watson-Wanker.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed global warming regulations aren’t just about stemming global temperature rises — according to agency’s chief, they are also about “justice” for “communities of color.” “Carbon pollution standards are an issue of justice,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in a teleconference call with environmental activists. “If we want to protect communities of color, we need to protect them from climate change.” McCarthy is referring to the EPA’s proposed rule that would limit carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. The agency says the rule will not only help fight global warming, but will also improve public...

For many scientists, educators, environmental activists and citizens, the topic of global warming and climate change is alarming. Many agree change is the offset — change in how we live, our legislation and how people are educated about the issue. During a House Democratic Policy Committee hearing about global warming and climate change hosted by state Rep. Steve McCarter, D-154, Aug. 26, professors, a meteorologist, state representatives, representatives from local environmental agencies and residents filled Curtis Hall in Cheltenham Township to listen, question and offer solutions, to what many say is an issue that needs be addressed now. “Numerous studies...

Congress should use the appropriations process to reassert its authority over the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a Heritage Foundation issue brief released Tuesday.The report, written by scholar Daren Bakst, identifies three issues on which the EPA has proposed rules and regulations that exceed its authority. In all three cases, Bakst recommends that Congress prohibit the agency from using its funding to implement the proposals. (RELATED: EPA Overrides Congress, Hands Over Town to Indian Tribes)According to the report, “the EPA is using the regulatory process to require greenhouse gas emission reductions even as Congress has been unwilling to take such...

Rupert Darwall is the author of Age of Global Warming (and earning excellent reviews). Darwall has a gift for converting tricky scientific concepts into a story. This month in the City Journal, he beautifully summarizes and updates the story of Murry Salby. He’s interviewed Richard Lindzen and others, and discusses Salby’s work in the context of the way heretics are marginalized. I helped Rupert with some of the background. It’s controversial science, a complex situation, with irrelevant baggage to boot. But that’s exactly the place where science communicators — or in the case of Rupert, excellent historians — are most...

Before we become too optimistic about the prospects for using renewable energy sources to curb carbon emissions, it’s worth looking at a study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which should give pause to even the most confident advocate of action against climate change. The study forecasts that new EPA regulations -- regulations intended to cut carbon emissions by 30% from coal-, oil- and natural gas-fired plants by 2030 -- will lead to higher energy costs, fewer jobs, and slower economic growth in the United States. That, in turn, will lower Americans’ standards of living. A typical household could...

A sponge-like plastic that sops up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) might ease our transition away from polluting fossil fuels and toward new energy sources, such as hydrogen. The material—a relative of the plastics used in food containers—could play a role in President Obama's plan to cut CO2 emissions 30 percent by 2030, and could also be integrated into power plant smokestacks in the future. The report on the material is one of nearly 12,000 presentations at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). "The key point is that this polymer is stable, it's...

Twelve states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration on Friday seeking to block an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to regulate coal-fired power plants in an effort to stem climate change. The plaintiffs are led by West Virginia and include states that are home to some of the largest producers of coal and consumers of coal-fired electricity. The suit was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The other plaintiffs are Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming. The E.P.A. rule, announced by President Obama on June...

On July 8 I received the Climate Science Whistleblower Award at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute and other cosponsoring organizations held in Las Vegas, Nevada. The following are remarks I prepared for my acceptance statement:~~snip~~I wrote my negative comments on the Endangerment Finding support document because I believed EPA was using bad science ... But it is very encouraging to find that others agree with my decision to do so, which EPA clearly did not. My offending comments to EPA led to my being immediately muzzled at the same time that Obama was...

As of today, Australia no longer has the most expensive “carbon” price in the world. The voters didn’t ask for a tax in 2010,  but it was forced on them in 2011. They rejected it wholeheartedly in 2013 but it still has taken months to start unwinding this completely pointless piece of symbolism which aimed to change the weather. The machinery of democracy may be slow, but this is a win for voters.11:15am EST today: The Australian Senate passes the carbon tax repeal bill.“Australia has become the first country in the world to abolish a price on carbon, with the Senate...