Free Republic

NASA finally mentions the Maunder Minimum in its discussion of the current prolonged solar minimum, but it STILL does not mention that the Maunder Minimum coincided with the onset of the Little Ice Age, or that the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800’s was also cold, as was the unnamed fin-de-the-1800’s minimum. Thar she blows, the Maunder Minimum of sunspot activity: As it has done for two years now, NASA is predicting that solar cycle 24 will ramp up tomorrow. Should that broken-clock prediction hits its hour, then NASA is also predicting that solar cycle 24 will have the modest...

As President Obama arrives in Copenhagen hoping to seal an elusive deal on climate change, his approval rating on dealing with global warming has crumbled at home and there is broad opposition to spending taxpayer money to encourage developing nations to curtail their energy use, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. .... At the same time, there's growing negativity toward the president's handling of the broader global warming issue. Around the 100-day mark of Obama's presidency, 61 percent approved of the way he was dealing with the issue. Approval slumped to 54 percent in June and to 45...

UN Under-Secretary-General Ameerah Haq said on Saturday as a global citizen she was disappointed at the outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference that ended without binding deals for helping out the victims of climatic calamities. Ameerah, the first woman from Bangladesh to reach this highest-ranking position in the world body, told reporters in Dhaka that more could have been done and achieved in terms of reaching a legally binding agreement at the global summit on climate change in the Danish capital Copenhagen. “We’re all disappointed… we could have seen and done more for our future generation,” she said, adding that...

Al Gore strides on stage and cracks his trademark joke about how he used to be the next president of the United States. The fact we all know what we are doing to our planet is largely due to one man. He failed to become US president, but now Al Gore is the world’s unlikeliest eco-warror. Peter Gorrie reports. After more homespun tales delivered in his Virginia drawl, a giant screen glows with depictions of Earth from space, melting glaciers, dessicated farmland, flooded cities and all manner of graphs and charts, accompanied by Gore’s darkly impassioned narration. This is the...

Arctic char is now on the bears' menu at the Polar Bear Habitat and Heritage Village in Cochrane. The recent change was prompted by a university study of the polar bears' adaptability to various diets. Arctic char is part of the bears' natural diet in the wild. Markus Dyke, who lived in Nunavut for 11 years and taught science at the Arctic College in Iqaluit, has been conducting the study for a PhD he's working on through the Department of Biology at Queen's University in Kingston. Dyke said the idea for the study was triggered by environmentalists who suggest global...

Conservative bloggers are calling for a boycott of the company. Executives say the series, in which Santa is warned the North Pole could melt before Christmas, was intended to inspire children.St. Louis - First, Chicken Little warned children that the sky was falling. And now Build-a-Bear Workshop has warned children that the North Pole could disappear before Christmas. The Missouri-based company has found itself in hot water, defending an animated series on its website featuring polar bears, penguins and Mrs. Claus, as Santa is warned that global warming is "a serious situation." Conservative bloggers reposted the videos online and called...

Aside from ideologues, hydrocarbon haters, Gaia worshipers, profiteers and power-grabbing politicians, most of the sentient world now realizes that the hysteria over global warming disasters is based on dubious to fraudulent temperature data, analyses, models, reports and peer reviews. Climate Research Unit emails, HARRY_READ_ME.txt computer memos, and blatant tampering with Australian, Russian, UK and US temperature data make the scandal impossible to ignore or explain away. They certainly helped Copenhagen descend into an expensive, carbon-emitting gabfest, and cause China and India to reject any deal that would force them to curtail their energy generation, economic growth and poverty reduction programs....

WASHINGTON | By brokering a climate deal last week in Copenhagen, President Barack Obama has committed himself to a more daunting task: passing comprehensive climate legislation in the Senate next year. Although many senators — especially key Republicans — have shown little appetite for backing another ambitious bill after the polarizing health care debate, it is clear that enacting legislation to cap the U.S. carbon dioxide output and allow polluters to trade emission permits is essential to delivering on the pledges that Obama made to other world leaders.

"Climategate" has been discovered by the News Sentinel - about two weeks after other news organizations. But it responded with poo-poo articles, reporting the "consensus" via quotes from well known proponents of man-caused global warming. Some years ago, maybe 30, I heard a lecture during which was shown a plot of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere versus the average earth's temperature. There was obviously a strong correlation. But teachers of courses about statistics always caution care in cause-effect conclusions from interesting correlations. More than 60 years ago, my statistics professor told the class that the most perfect natural correlation...

Environmental advocates and lawyers in Washington were wildly enthusiastic over the recent announcement by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson that carbon dioxide is dangerous to the health and welfare of Americans. The timing came just before the global warming conference in Copenhagen. Green groups were heartened because they believe they finally have manufacturers right where they've always wanted them: vulnerable to piecemeal regulation by an activist EPA without deliberation by Congress. Lawyers were rubbing their hands together in anticipation of all the litigation that will come their way as companies fight for their lives to be free of burdensome...

Check this entry: Naughty: Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), a vacuum for oil industry political contributions whose nonsensical denials of climate-change science in the face of vanishing ice sheets and decaying coral reefs make him Earth's Public Enemy No. 1. Nice: Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who are working diligently to craft a bipartisan climate bill despite obstructionism from the likes of Inhofe.

SCIENCE is one of the great achievements of the human mind and the biggest reason why we live not only longer but more vigorously in our old age, in addition to all the ways in which it provides us with things that make life easier and more enjoyable. Like anything valuable, science has been seized upon by politicians and ideologues, and used to forward their own agendas. This started long ago, as far back as the 18th century, when the Marquis de Condorcet coined the term "social science" to describe various theories he favored. In the 19th century, Karl Marx...

For Democrats like Harry Reid, who called them "evil-mongers," and Nancy Pelosi, who called them "unAmerican," the NBC News poll must have hit like a sucker punch at a Georgetown wine-and-cheese. The Tea Party movement, those folks rallying against spending last spring and Obamacare in the summer town halls, are viewed more favorably than the Democratic Party. Forty-one percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party movement, to 35 percent for Obama's party. Only 24 percent view Tea Party activists unfavorably, while 45 percent hold a negative view of the Democrats. While Tea Party types played a...

It is crucial that scientists are factually accurate when they do speak out, that they ignore media hype and maintain a clinical detachment from social or other agendas. There are facts and data that are ignored in the maelstrom of social and economic agendas swirling about Copenhagen. Greenhouse gases and their effects are well-known. Here are some of things we know: • The most effective greenhouse gas is water vapor, comprising approximately 95 percent of the total greenhouse effect. • Carbon dioxide concentration has been continually rising for nearly 100 years. It continues to rise, but carbon dioxide concentrations at...

The scientific evidence is everywhere we look -- in our vanishing polar ice caps, in our melting greasepaint, in the way our lapel flowers struggle to squirt. Man-made climate change is upon us, and if we do not act at once Earth itself faces an immediate catastrophic ecological pie in the face.

NewsArchive Widespread, heavy snow — a review | 23 Dec 2009 The Met Office reviews the recent snowy conditions. New evidence confirms warming record | 18 Dec 2009 New analysis shows global temperature rise calculated by the Met Office is at the lower end of likely warming. Your climate change questions answered | 16 Dec 2009 Prof. Julia Slingo answers our web visitors’ climate change questions, on YouTube.

Global Warming And Climate Change Believers, deniers, and doubters view the scientific forecast from different anglesWhether or not global warming stemming from human activities is occurring is developing into the great scientific debate of our time. If it’s true, the larger questions are what the climate consequences will be and whether or not there is anything anyone can do about it.
 Policymakers meeting in Copenhagen just wrapped up two weeks of discussions driven by those questions. At C&EN press time, they had failed to agree on an international treaty to control greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to stave off...

If this isn't proof of media bias, I don't know what is. Here we have the equivalent of finding out the moon landing was faked and I don't see any reports of this being a story of interest.

At face value, it seems harmless enough. According to ABC "Good Morning America" co-host Robin Roberts, every Christmas the show features various "spiritual leaders" to talk about the role of faith in their lives. And this year's Christmas Day broadcast was no exception. "And now, it is a ‘GMA' tradition on Christmas Day, to talk about the role of faith in all of our lives," Roberts said. "We gathered a group of spiritual leaders from different traditions to talk about the importance of belief, in good times and belief in bad times, too." Roberts' panel featured Father Edward Beck, an...

What says holiday cheer better than a ton of carbon dioxide? Rebecca Young of Mountain View, Calif., recently opened her mail to find a gift from an old friend in New York City. “Carbon reduction certificate,” it read. It is good for three tons of carbon emissions that will be “retired” in her name so that no power plant will ever release them into the atmosphere. To some people, the certificate may be as welcome as a lump of coal. But Ms. Young, a marketing manager for the environmental Web site Care2.com, was delighted. “I don’t need stuff,” said Ms....

All interstates closed in Oklahoma City [All Highways Closed in Oklahoma Now] FROM STAFF REPORTS Published: December 24, 2009 Blizzard-like conditions and wrecks prompted state authorities to close all interstate highways in Oklahoma City along with the H.E. Bailey and Turner turnpikes. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol closed Oklahoma City interstates about 2:30 p.m. Troopers had previously closed eastbound Interstate 40 at U.S. 81 in El Reno. The H.E. Bailey Turnpike, which is the portion of Interstate 44 extending southwest from Newcastle to the Texas state line, is closed because of the weather, the patrol reported. The Turner Turnpike, which is...

Fact Sheet -- Proposed Rule: Prevention of Significant Deterioration and Title V Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule ACTION * On September 30, 2009, EPA announced a proposal that is focused on large facilities emitting over 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year. These facilities would be required to obtain permits that would demonstrate they are using the best practices and technologies to minimize GHG emissions. * The rule proposes new thresholds for greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) that define when Clean Air Act (CAA) permits under the New Source Review (NSR) and title V operating permits programs would be required for new...

... You remember those fluorocarbons, every aerosol can used to be loaded with the stuff until we found out they were putting a hole in the ozone layer. The fluorocarbons were removed and since 2002 the ozone layer has been closing and the earth stopped warming. Qing Bin-Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy at Canada's University of Waterloo took a look at the interaction between cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons and predicts that global warming has disappeared, maybe for the next 50 years This peer-reviewed paper was published in the prestigious online journal Physics Reports, Lu, who holds a Ph.D....

Transportation stalled; governor declares state of emergency By Staff and Wire Reports Published: 12/24/2009  8:39 AM Last Modified: 12/24/2009  8:43 PM The blizzard that swept through Oklahoma on Christmas Eve was deadly for some travelers and forced many others to change their holiday plans. Three people were killed in a crash on the icy Keystone Expressway west of Sand Springs, and Gov. Brad Henry declared a state of emergency for all 77 Oklahoma counties. A blizzard warning was in effect through 6 a.m. Friday for more than 30 Oklahoma counties, including the Tulsa and Oklahoma City metropolitan areas. The blizzard warning was...

Sarah takes on Big Oil: The compelling story of Governor Sarah Palin's battle with Alaska's 'Big 3' oil companies, as told by the state's top oil and gas editors, Kay Cashman and Kristen Nelson (Hardcover) Product Description Sarah takes on Big Oil illuminates Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's rise to power, along with her successes and failures in dealing with the industry that is the lifeblood of the state's economy. This book is a must read for those seeking to understand Palin's qualifications for national leadership. Purchasers of Sarah takes on Big Oil qualify for a free, two-year, online subscription to...

Climate Change: A peer-reviewed study by a respected Canadian physicist blames the interplay of cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons for 20th-century warming. The CFCs are now gone, and so is warming — perhaps for the next 50 years. Much of the nation got a white Christmas this year, some in unprecedented quantities. A record-breaking storm deposited 12 to 30 inches of snow in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Many places set records for the most snow in a single December day as more than 50% of the U.S. was covered by the white stuff. Scientists (and here we use the word...

The global warming jamboree in Copenhagen was surely the most outlandish foray into intellectual fantasizing since the fourth-century Christian bishops assembled in 325 AD for the Council of Nicaea to debate whether God the Father was supreme or had to share equal status in the pecking order of eternity with his Son and the Holy Ghost. Shortly before the Copenhagen summit, the proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) were embarrassed by a whistleblower who put on the Web more than a thousand e-mails either sent from or received at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, headed by Dr....

The New York Times environmental writer, Andrew Revkin, has left that newspaper this week. What made Revkin's departure interesting is that in his long farewell story published on Monday, he never once mentions global warming or climate change. First a little background on Revkin's departure from the Times via the Columbia Journalism Review: Andrew C. Revkin, one of the most influential and respected reporters on the environment, will take a buyout from The New York Times as part of the paper’s current round of budget cuts. His departure, after nearly fifteen years at the Times, is sure to leave a...

Here's some new terms for some of you, “carbon pawprint.” or “carbon clawprint.” Did you know that your pet emits more CO2 than your neighbors SUV? That’s right according to New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale’s new book “Time to Eat the Dog” you’d better stop casting that self-righteous stare at your neighbors as they pull out of their driveways in SUVs to go to work while you’re petting Fido on the head. Why, because you’re the greater threat to the planet not the SUV driving neighbor...

The UK Meteorological Office released what it described as temperature data for over a century and a half from more than 1500 land weather stations throughout the world, along with what the Met Office described as the code used to plot temperature trends for the time frame in question. But the data are apparently not the raw data, and questions remain as to the validity of the adjustment of the data, an inconsistency in reporting a lack of valid temperature measurements in one year, and the accuracy of the source code. John Graham-Cummings... That's a bit odd, but not serious....

Why did ten words written in 1997 made any meaningful and binding decision to come out of Copenhagen virtually impossible, and what next is there in the great Climate Change debate. perhaps now we may just get the debate we haven't had till now.

Plants and critters will have to move an average of a quarter-mile every year to keep up with global warming this century, meaning less mobile creatures will have to adapt or die, a new study revealed Wednesday. "Adapt, move or go extinct. Those are the three options," said Healy Hamilton-Hoax, a conservation biologist at San Francisco's Academy of Sciences and a co-author of the paper. On average, species would have to move 0.42 kilometer, or about a quarter-mile a year, to keep up, the study found. Nearly a third of the planet's habitats will change faster than plants are capable...

Emails from a number of high profile climate scientists (e.g. Phil Jones at University of East Anglia) were leaked to the world revealing intentional efforts to manipulate climate data and report results inaccurately for the sake of globalism. Any self-respecting individual who has been told with a straight face that science is and objective methodology for obtaining knowledge should now be questioning how it is possible that something so profoundly objective could produce "Climate Gate." The answer is quite simple: it's the Religion of Science.

It was probably a whistleblower that released files from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA)? If so then the information is admissible in court and we will get greater detail on the greatest deception in history. Phil Jones, former Director of the CRU knew the potential damage and legal implications of the file’s content. Jones told the police the files were from CRU, and claimed a crime was committed. Ludicrously, he said the information had no value because it was criminally obtained. Why an Insider? Major clues suggest the leaks were from an insider....

Obama says disappointment at Copenhagen justifiedAlister Bull and Tabassum Zakaria Wed Dec 23, 2009 6:38pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that disappointment over the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change summit was justified, hardening a widespread verdict that the conference had been a failure. COP15 "I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen," he said in an interview with PBS Newshour. "What I said was essentially that rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward...

Taking the dog for a walk to the store would seem like a more environmentally-friendly option than piling into the SUV. Not so, say two New Zealand scientists whose new book claims pets have a carbon footprint that is about twice the size of the gas guzzling vehicles that have long been a bane of environmentalism. In "Time to Eat the Dog, the Real Guide to Sustainable Living," Robert and Brenda Vale charge that a medium-size dog has a footprint of 2.1 acres compared with slightly more than one acre for a standard sport utility vehicle. The New Scientist Web...

A children's video produced by a toy company injects the issue of "global warming" into the traditional Christmas story of Santa Claus and the North Pole. A blog on Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com has uncovered a bizarre video produced by Build-a-Bear Workshop, whose website features the 3-D animation. It includes elves and two polar bears warning Santa Claus that global warming is causing the North Pole to melt and that Christmas could be canceled. Following is an excerpt from the children's video: Polar Bear: "The North Pole is melting!" Santa: "Yes, my dear, we know, the climate is changing. There's bound...

On January 31, 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army began a series of over 100 surprise attacks across South Vietnam. Although the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were taken by surprise, most attacks were quickly contained and tremendous casualties were inflicted upon the communist forces. Tet failed militarily and the communist forces suffered losses that should have eventually cost them the war. However, Tet succeeded in the realm of public opinion and created the impression in the U.S. that the war was unwinnable. President Johnson shuffled military leadership, and the strategy shifted to one resulting in withdrawal and...

Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower's freedom of action. I left Copenhagen more despondent than I have felt in a long time. After all the hope and all the hype, the mobilisation of thousands, a wave of optimism crashed against the rock of global power politics, fell back, and drained away.

Barack Obama is not used to being the guy not invited to a party. At the Copenhagen global warming conference, however, he found that not everyone wanted to hang with him. Our president can't take a hint. After Mr. Obama's bilateral meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, the Chinese began sending lower-level functionaries to the multilateral meetings. A frustrated Mr. Obama pressed for another bilateral meeting, which was scheduled for Friday at 6:15 p.m. Other leaders of the countries known as the "BASIC" bloc were harder to pin down. So imagine Mr. Obama's surprise when he arrived for the bilateral...

To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China's representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. "Why can't we even mention our own targets?" demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil's representative too pointed out the illogicality of China's position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and...

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilization collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” ---Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environmental Program - Opening speech, Rio Earth Summit, 1992 From a certain perspective, some things don’t make sense. Change the perspective and they make perfect sense. Most people value their lives very highly. Why would you strap a bomb onto your body and walk into a restaurant and blow yourself up? From a conventional perspective it makes no sense. But from the perspective of a person who believes that by doing so he enters...

Cracks emerged on Tuesday in the alliance on climate change formed at the Copenhagen conference last week, with leading developing countries criticising the resulting accord. The so-called Basic countries – Brazil, South Africa, India and China – backed the accord in a meeting with the US on Friday night, and it was also supported by almost all other nations at the talks, including all of the biggest emitters. But on Tuesday the Brazilian government labelled the accord “disappointing” and complained that the financial assistance it contained from rich to poor countries was insufficient. South Africa also raised objections: Buyelwa Sonjica,...

A writer and environmental activist who was present at the final Copenhagen climate talks says China sabotaged the deal and ensured Barack Obama would shoulder the blame. While China's Premier Wen Jiabao insisted his government had played an "important and constructive" role, the talks in the Danish capital ended with a political accord rather than a binding agreement. Mark Lynas, who was attached to the Maldives delegation, described what he saw at the talks as "profoundly shocking". "I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists...

When Will Global Warming Expert Al Gore Stop Eating Animal Flesh? TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, ALL UNITED STATES SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES AND AL GORE!! YOU MUST HAVE 20/20 VISION IN 2010 Together you have the power and worldwide influence to save the lives of billions of animals, subsequently creating a multitude of everlasting monumental benefits for humans, the earth, and the earth’s atmosphere. Together your revolutionary profound efforts could be responsible for shutting down most or all animal factory farms and slaughterhouses in the world. Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide together cause the vast majority of global warming. Raising...

BRITAIN faces months of cold weather disruption according to a leading American weather forecasting company yesterday. The UK and northern Europe are in line for a “colder than normal” January, February and March, said the firm, WSI, which provides forecasts for many top US corporations. Its prediction, which contrasts with the Met Office’s much more cautious winter forecast, came as Britain struggled in the grip of more Christmas travel chaos caused by days of ice and heavy snow. Temperatures were expected to plunge as low as -6C in many areas last night. “The Met Office had predicted when the snow...

During the 70 years that the communists controlled the Soviet Union, they had a peculiar way of teaching history to the people. They would teach things as historical fact that never happened. If you were one of those who took umbrage with their revisionist history lessons, you would soon find yourself living in a tiny apartment in a part of the country where they laugh at anyone who claims the world is getting warmer. In a communist country this is the only way to convince the masses that they are actually better off than anyone in the history of...

Barack Obama is not used to being the guy not invited to a party. At the Copenhagen global warming conference, however, he found that not everyone wanted to hang with him. Our president can't take a hint. ..."We weren't crashing a meeting," an Obama flack later explained defensively. "We were going for our bilateral meeting." But that didn't stop him from walking in where he wasn't invited. Clearly, Mr. Obama learned a few things from his own White House party crashers.

This missive is directed at the guardians of, and donors to, tiny humans. If you fall into that category you likely are already familiar with Build-A-Bear, a world-wide corporation that provides the most innocent of services. They sell customizable stuffed animals. Make your own bear, dog…penguin. Cute concept. So cute, in fact, that the Build-A-Bear empire sweeps across nearly every state and into 17 other countries. You’ll find their outlets in shopping malls everywhere and even some ballparks. The company also has a website called Build-A-Bearville.com where children can play an interactive video game that, on it’s surface, is unlikely...