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The Obama administration Tuesday announced a nationwide plan to help wildlife adapt to threats from climate change. Developed along with state and tribal authorities, the strategy seeks to preserve species as global warming alters their historical habitats and, in many cases, forces them to migrate across state and tribal borders. Over the next five years, the plan establishes priorities for what will probably be a decades-long effort. One key proposal is to create wildlife "corridors" that would let animals and plants move to new habitats. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Daniel M. Ashe said such routes could be made...

It’s not rocket science. If energy costs more, that means we have to make do with less of it, or make do with less of something else. Thus if the government forces everyone to pay more for electricity, companies have less spare cash to employ people. Their margins are tighter, they can’t make and sell as many products. So when we are told the clean energy revolution is creating jobs, is it virtually self-evident that’s a mythical fairy claim.I say “virtually”, because it is theoretical possible it could work, but only if this green power provided some productivity or...

By Christopher Monckton of BrenchleyAs Anthony and others have pointed out, even the New York Times has at last been constrained to admit what Dr. Pachauri of the IPCC was constrained to admit some months ago. There has been no global warming statistically distinguishable from zero for getting on for two decades.The NYT says the absence of warming arises because skeptics cherry-pick 1998, the year of the Great el Niño, as their starting point. However, as Anthony explained yesterday, the stasis goes back farther than that. He says we shall soon be approaching Dr. Ben Santer’s 17-year test: if there...

Joe Romm must be upset  that NZ greens are ignoring his trademark “hell and high water”.From the New Zealand Business Review (h/t to Bishop Hill):When Jeanette Fitzsimons was co-leader global warming was the greatest-ever threat to the planet. It dwarfed all other environmental worries. It was the granddaddy of them all.…But the shift on global warming with the Greens is significant. We are safe in concluding that they no longer regard global warming as the greatest threat to the planet. It would, I think, merit a mention in a leader’s annual speech to the Greens if it were. A fast-approaching...

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...

Blue Dog Democrats are asking President Obama to quit stalling and approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Members of the fiscally conservative coalition sent a letter to Obama on Wednesday saying “the time to approve the Keystone XL project has come.” “Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline will provide a positive impact to a broad spectrum of the American economy,” wrote coalition co-chair Reps. John Barrow (D-Ga.) and Kurt Schraeder (D-Ore.). “An estimated 13,000 direct jobs will be created, with an additional 7,000 direct jobs needed to keep it operational. If the recent jobs report shows us anything, it’s that Americans...

Enlarge Image Mixed bag. Carbon dioxide emissions were down in the United States and Europe in 2012, but up worldwide. Credit: International Energy Agency/Redrawing The Energy-Climate Map LONDON—Governments shouldn't wait for a proposed international climate deal to take hold in 2020—they can take four steps right away to curb carbon emissions, argues a new report from a global energy think tank. By implementing the quartet of policies by 2015, nations could buy "precious time while international climate negotiations continue," says economist Fatih Birol, the lead author of a report released here yesterday by the International Energy Agency (IEA). At...

As readers may know, National Review and I have an impending court date in Washington with Dr Michael E Mann, creator of the global-warming “hockey stick” and self-proclaimed Nobel laureate, for the hitherto unknown crime of “defamation of a Nobel prize recipient“. (You can contribute to our legal defense fund here; also, the TV rights to my forthcoming white Bronco chase are still available – we’ll be using a hybrid, of course). Forced by circumstance to take an interest in the latest developments on the climate-change “consensus”, I was interested to see this story, in which The New York Times...

Climate Change: The New York Times is wondering, as are other mainstream media outlets, "What to Make of a Warming Plateau." If the media had a more critical eye, they'd see what they've been expecting is wrong. The Times reported Monday that "The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace." The reporter admits the break in temperature increases "highlights important gaps in our knowledge...

(Reuters) - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday announced a $20 billion plan to prepare for rising sea levels and hotter summers expected as a result of climate change in the coming decades. The plan, which follows widespread destruction wreaked by Superstorm Sandy last year, included about 250 recommendations ranging from new floodwalls and storm barriers to upgrades of power and telecommunications infrastructures. It coincided with a report updating projections of the impact of climate change, saying that over the next 40 years the number of sweltering summer days could double or even triple and that the sea level...

Actor and long-time liberal Robert Redford said he hopes President Barack Obama has the “courage” to bypass Congress and make coal-powered power plants reduce their carbon emissions. In a video message for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Redford, an environmental activist, said that because Congress has not taken action to address climate change, Obama should. “Record setting heat and drought, rising sea levels and severe weather events like Hurricane Sandy: climate change is happening, fast,” Redford said. “We’ve got to stop making the problem worse and that means reducing carbon pollution from its biggest source, coal-fired power plants. It’s...

Removable flood walls would be set up for much of lower Manhattan, a 15-to-20-foot levee would guard part of Staten Island and gates and levees would shield Brooklyn as part of a nearly $20 billion plan Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed Tuesday to protect New York City from storms and the effects of global warming.Bloomberg’s proposals also include building dunes in Staten Island and the Rockaways, firming up the shoreline with bulkheads in various neighborhoods and considering building a levee and a new “Seaport City” development at the South Street Seaport that would echo nearby Battery Park City. The mayor also...

As unlikely as this may sound, we have lucked out in recent years when it comes to global warming. The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace. The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists. The situation highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system

WASHINGTON, DC—Scientists have long suspected that a flourishing of green foliage around the globe, observed since the early 1980s in satellite data, springs at least in part from the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Now, a study of arid regions around the globe finds that a carbon dioxide “fertilization effect” has, indeed, caused a gradual greening from 1982 to 2010. ..snip... The team’s model predicted that foliage would increase by some 5 to 10 percent given the 14 percent increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration during the study period. The satellite data agreed, showing an 11 percent increase...

Germany has submitted a proposal on regulating carbon dioxide limits for cars that campaigners say is a “desperate attempt” to weaken EU emissions limits. The proposal calls on EU member states to allow carmakers to “bank” credits earned by producing electric cars, in order to make heavier, more polluting vehicles. The European Commission has proposed limiting average fleet emissions to 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer (g/km) from 2020, down from the 130 g/km limit set for 2015. But in what many saw as a capitulation to the German car industry, it decided to reinstate a “supercredits” scheme in which...

I was aware of this story yesterday, but I didn’t like the original plot, (see at the end of this post) since use of straight line linear trends doesn’t accurately reflect the reality of the observation data. While it is often hard to find any reality in climate models, linear trend lines mask the underlying variance. Today, Dr. Spencer has produced a graph that I feel is representative and very well worth sharing, because it does in fact convey an EPIC FAIL speaking directly to the accuracy of an ensemble of climate models. – AnthonyDr. Roy Spencer writes: In response...

Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate, is on the wane. Once riding high, the ideology of man-made climate change is losing its influence in governments across the world. Climategate, the release of e-mails from the University of East Anglia, called the science of dangerous warming into question and turned the tide of global opinion. Background On November 19, 2009, and unidentified hacker or internal whistle-blower downloaded more than 1,000 documents and e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in the United Kingdom and posted them on a server in Russia. Within...

The most widely feared consequence of global warming appears to be sea level rise (SLR). Environmental advocacy groups are polluting the airwaves and internet with lurid images of flooding of Bangladesh and Pacific islands, and raising the specter of hundreds of millions of environmental refugees. Even sober scientists... --snip-- The first clue that there might be something amiss with the IPCC logic comes from the IPCC report itself. According to this authoritative source, the contribution to SLR of the past century comes mainly from three sources: (i) thermal expansion of the warming ocean contributed about 4 cm; (ii) the melting...

The sun over Greenland has risen two days early, baffling scientists and sparking fears that Arctic icecaps are melting faster than previously thought. Experts say the sun should have risen over the Arctic nation's most westerly town, Ilulissat, yesterday, ending a month-and-a-half of winter darkness. But for the first time in history light began creeping over the horizon at around 1pm on Tuesday - 48 hours ahead of the usual date of 13 January. Thomas Posch, of the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Vienna, said that a local change of the horizon was 'by far the most obvious...

Environment: Carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere recently hit the 400 parts-per-million mark. So is all that CO2 scorching the planet? No. But it does seem to be making our deserts greener. The reality, according to Australian research, is that in this era of higher carbon concentrations, plant life in dry regions has grown lush. The greening of the deserts is due to the "fertilization effect" — the impact carbon dioxide has on plant life. In summarizing the report, the American Geophysical Union said researchers focused on "the southwestern corner of North America, Australia's outback, the Middle East, and some...

As far as I know, there are no Ph.D.s offered in the study of junk science. Maybe there should be. There are numerous instances of credentialed scientists pursuing faulty theories against evidence and common sense. Irving Langmuir's 1953 talk, "Pathological Science," is a classic compendium of examples; there is the recent case of cold fusion, with the imaginary tabletop nuclear fusion reactors still being given media credibility. Often media attention and fawning admirers blind scientists to scientific reality. Junk science also appeals to ideologues if it provides support for their ideology. For example, those who are ideologically opposed to capitalism...

Inspector Clouseau: Does your dog bite? Hotel Clerk: No. Inspector Clouseau: [bowing down to pet the dog] Nice doggie. [Dog barks and bites Clouseau in the hand] Inspector Clouseau: I thought you said your dog did not bite! Hotel Clerk: That is not my dog. As kids, we all learned the old adage, “when you assume you make an ass out of u and me.”... --snip-- The coupe de grace in this category is of course global warming, manmade climate change, or whatever Al Gore is calling it these days. In this case, all the civilized nations of the world...

First aired on The Sunday Edition (12/5/13) **SNIP** Gore's book isn't all doomsday; he does offer a sense of hope for the future. He says there are other forms of energy that we can use but there are certain obstacles to using them. "The main problem that blocks our pathway to renewable energy is the political and economic power of the legacy industries that depend upon our willingness to continue using the Earth's atmosphere as an open sewer to all of this global warming pollution," he said. He blames a lot of these blockades on politicians and corporations in the...

**SNIP** The last topic of discussion was potential solutions. The panel split into two sides on this one. Some panelists suggested different options to prevent further greenhouse gas pollution, such as a transition to renewable energy and increasing fuel efficiency in vehicles. Others, however, saw the only real solution as finding ways to live in an imbalanced world, like avoiding development in flood-prone areas. Such a view might seem unnecessarily bleak and pessimistic, but it's by far the more practical view. The Earth has only 16 years left of emitting greenhouse gases until we reach a tipping point. That's not...

Ernest Moniz, Barack Obama’s new Secretary of Energy, is making it clear there is no room for dissent regarding climate change. Speaking to his department’s employees after he was sworn in, Moniz said, “Let me make it very clear that there is no ambiguity in terms of the scientific basis calling for a prudent response on climate change. I am not interested in debating what is not debatable. There is plenty to debate as we try and move forward on our climate agenda.”

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...

Remember all the stories about how a glut of cheap shale gas was killing off coal in the United States and slashing the country’s carbon-dioxide emissions? It’s time to revise those headlines slightly. According to the latest data from the Energy Information Administration, coal has been reclaiming some — though not all — of its market share in 2013: This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. As I’ve noted before, natural gas prices have been creeping up over the past year, thanks to a combination of a colder winter, higher demand for heating fuel, scaled-back drilling, and also new...

N.Y. 3 Feet of Snow: Reversed Global Warming Causes Unusual Amount of Snowfall on Memorial Day Weekend In New York [PHOTOS] 3 feet of snow had just fallen in New York over Memorial Day weekend, and the unusual amount of snowfall sparked speculations that say the extreme weather was caused by reversed global warming. **SNIP** Although during May of last year, the temperature had been going up due to global warming, this year's Memorial Day weekend experienced what some have called "reversed global warming," as the temperature is dropping much more than usual. Residents of New York were surprised to...

Both style and substance bespeak the weakness of climate-warmist arguments.I recently attended a fascinating and informative talk by Tom Harris, director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), delivered at a branch of the Ottawa Public Library. The lecture was, in part, framed as a response to a presentation held the week before by Dave Rhynas, an Al Gore-trained speaker, who followed the warmist party line faithfully. As Harris wrote afterward about it in a circulating email, “The talk was very ‘canned,’ no significant new material from what we are all used to hearing from Gore, so it would have...

A Memorial Day weekend storm has dropped three feet of snow on a New York ski mountain near the Vermont border. Whiteface Mountain spokesman Jon Lundin says 36 inches of white powder has blanketed the nearly 5,000-foot tall mountain in the Adirondacks. That has forced the Olympic Regional Development Authority to close Whiteface Veteran’s Memorial Highway on the backside of the mountain. …

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wasted no crisis knowing what and whom to blame following the devastating tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma. Republicans caused it to happen through anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming. “When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas.” So what about all that hot air? Is it possibly coming from none other than the senator himself? Well-respected meteorologist Joe Bastardi believes...

Memorial Day weekend is expected to feel more like “winter” for areas of the eastern U.S., according to forecasters at weather.com, with snow possible for parts of the Northeast.

With his estimated wealth exceeding $200 million, Albert Arnold Gore has come a long way from the time he began a career in government politics. But it hasn’t all been a green path. He can thank some earlier events for paving over muddy ground, a time when his father, Al Gore Sr. met Occidental Petroleum’s CEO Armand Hammer at a cattle auction in the 1940s. When zinc was discovered on some of Gore’s land,

Just in time for the cooler spring that has swept the nation — complete with unseasonal snow in the Rockies region — scientists with the University of Manchester said pollution actually brings on climate cooling, not warming. The logic is that manmade pollutants make clouds brighter, and that impacts how sunlight is allowed to shine — and that brings about cooler temps, scientists say, TG Daily reported. “We discovered that organic compounds such as those formed from forest emissions or from vehicle exhausts, affect the number of droplets in a cloud and hence its brightness, so affecting climate,” said one...

HHS:'Telework' Gives Gov't Employees More Time for 'Planning and Preparing Healthy Meals' May 17, 2013 By Terence P. Jeffrey (CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says it wants as many as 20 percent of its workers to "telework," use an "alternative work schedule," or do both, in order to "reduce green house gas emissions," decrease "employee stress," and give these government workers more time for "planning and preparing healthy meals." So says one of the HHS "performance measures" detailed in an appendix to the department's latest strategic plan. HHS's performance measure "4.D.05" says: "Increase the percent...

Scientists have long used ancient shorelines to predict the stability of today's largest ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica believing, for example, that markings of a high shoreline from 3,000,000 years ago during a warm period on Earth were evidence of a high sea level due to ice sheet collapse at the time. This assumption has, in turn, led many to hypothesize that if the world's largest ice sheets collapsed before, the same could very well happen again as the Earth continues to warm again. More than ever, however, this theory is at risk of disintegrating under the weight of...

An overwhelming 97 percent of climatologists endorse the idea of human-caused global warming. As if the backing of NASA, 18 independent American scientific societies, and an intergovernmental panel established under the United Nations weren't enough to quell the protests popping up in comment sections across the Internet, a new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters confirms — once again — that climatologists almost unanimously believe that climate change is directly related to human-made carbon emissions. Researchers pored over nearly 12,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers from 1991 to 2011. These papers, according to Michael Todd at Pacific Standard, represented the...

A noted climatologist and recently-retired NASA research chief has entered the EU’s energy policy debate, with a warning that any re-industrialization strategy that increases fossil fuels use can only be short-term, irrational and economically wasteful. In a wide-ranging interview with EurActiv, James Hansen branded the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) “ineffectual” and flawed, and accused energy firms of preferring government bribes over investments in clean technology. Hansen, whose Congressional testimony on climate change in 1988 first popularized the issue in the United States, also said that approving the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to bring tar sands fuel from Canada to...

Closer cooperation between European countries and an emphasis on energy efficiency would be more effective at lowering prices in Europe than dreams about an American-style shale gas boom, the EU’s climate chief said on Thursday (16 May). Speaking at the European Business Summit, EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard called for “clever regulation” to drive innovation and for a liberalized EU energy market to lower prices, saying re-nationalization would be more costly than European-wide climate policies. “We need efficient and also cost-efficient energy systems. We need to liberalize the energy market, a Europeanized market. It is wrong that re-nationalization will be...

The scientific agreement that climate change is happening, and that it's caused by human activity, is significant and growing, according to a new study published Thursday. The research, the most comprehensive analysis of climate research to date, finds that 97.1% of the studies published between 1991 to 2011 that expressed a position on man made climate change agreed that it was happening, and that it was due to human activity. The study looked at peer reviewed research that mentioned climate change or global warming. Peer review is the way that scientific journals approve research papers that are submitted. In peer...

A blast of wet and chilly weather left some hilly areas of the UK cloaked in snow as well as spring blossom on Wednesday.... Among areas affected was the hamlet of Anchor, close to the border between Shropshire and Wales. Landlord Mike Steedman, who has run the Anchor Inn for the past 17 years, said he could not remember snow falling in the area during May....

IT'S A SCENE that could be from a '70s horror movie: A wave of ice crystals relentlessly marching towards homes in Minnesota in the United States. The massive ice floes have also destroyed 12 homes and damaged another 15 in Canada, which boarders Minnesota. According to emergency officials, a total of seven homes in Ochre Breach were "literally crushed" by the ice that rose up within minutes pushed by strong winds, Winnepeg Free Press reports. A resident caught footage of a wave of ice that creeped off another lake in Minnesota - as foam froze and was pushed ashore by...

.. Record low temperatures set at Toledo OH... A record low temperature was set at the Toledo Express Airport on Sunday may 12 2013. The temperature dropped to 30 degrees at 1140 PM EST breaking the old record of 34 degrees last recorded on may 12 1969.The temperature at the Toledo Express Airport remained seasonably cold overnight and registered 30 degrees at 145 am EST this morning. This equals and sets a new record low of 30 degrees which was last recorded on may 13 1946.... Frost advisory in effect from midnight tonight to 9 am EDT Tuesday...The National Weather...

Carbon dioxide levels indicate rise in temperatures that could lead agriculture to fail on entire continents It is increasingly likely that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced from their homelands in the near future as a result of global warming. That is the stark warning of economist and climate change expert Lord Stern following the news last week that concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere had reached a level of 400 parts per million (ppm).

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...

Carbon dioxide levels have reached its highest throughout human history, recent figures from a US monitoring station show. The level in our atmosphere is now at a record high 400 parts per million, prompting renewed warnings of the ‘huge risks’ of climate change. The shocking figures, which have risen from 270ppm before the Industrial Revolution, is a result of human activity such as burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. The preliminary figures have come from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) monitoring station in Hawaii. The greenhouse gas has not been at such high levels for around three...

The governor won’t meet with a leading New Jersey warmist critic. Hello from the Paul Robeson Center for The Arts, located on Paul Robeson Place, just a few blocks down from Princeton University. They like their hardcore communists here in Central Jersey. But they also make really great coffee, which is why I make it a point to meet up with my long-time lefty friend in Palmer Square where we have plenty of options. In print, we’ll call her “Moonbeam,” to prevent our association from destroying her standing in the community, and to make it clear that her environmental policy...

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

With a veto-proof majority, the Missouri legislature approved a popular bill protecting private property and due process rights by banning a deeply controversial United Nations “sustainability” scheme known as UN Agenda 21. The legislation, SB 265, now heads to Democrat Governor Jay Nixon, who has not yet taken a public position on the issue. ~snip~ The widely criticized UN scheme, adopted by governments and dictatorships worldwide at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro more than two decades ago, has been marketed as a way to make humanity more “sustainable.” According to UN documents, however, Agenda 21 essentially seeks to...