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As the nation's light switch and gas pump, Texas releases far more greenhouse gases into the air than any other state, according to federal data released Wednesday. Texas' coal-fired power plants and oil refineries generated 294 million tons of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in 2010, more than the next two states - Pennsylvania and Florida - combined, the data shows. The Environmental Protection Agency released the data by industrial facility for the first time as part of a broader effort to reduce emissions linked to global warming. The agency collected data from more than 6,700 industrial facilities that...

Two top U.S. hurricane forecasters, revered like rock stars in Deep South hurricane country, are quitting the practice because it doesn’t work. William Gray and Phil Klotzbach say a look back shows their past 20 years of forecasts had no value. The two scientists from Colorado State University will still discuss different probabilities as hurricane seasons approach — a much more cautious approach. But the shift signals how far humans are, even with supercomputers, from truly knowing what our weather will do next. Gray, recently joined by Klotzbach, has been known for decades for an annual forecast of how many...

A team comprised of geological and environmental science researchers from Stanford University has been studying the impact that early European exploration had on the New World and have found evidence that they say suggests the European cold period from 1500 to 1750, commonly known as the Little Ice Age, was due to the rapid decline in native human populations shortly after early explorers arrived. Following up on their paper published in 2008, the team has now brought their findings before the Geological Society of America. The researchers say that the population decrease, which came about due to the introduction of...

Scientists believe that our warming world may face catastrophic changes to its natural environment, including droughts, rising oceans and fiercer, more frequent hurricanes. Theoretically, it may be necessary to act globally to mitigate the damage. Initially, those efforts will probably take the form of limits on greenhouse gas emissions or forest preservation. But some scientists and policy makers believe it might be necessary for scientists to take an active hand in engineering a solution to our climate problems. Those potential solutions, collectively called "geoengineering," would use scientists' knowledge of the Earth's cycles to curb the rise in temperature, the melting...

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Anthony Watts Al Gore speaking in Aspen earlier this year. Photo: Troy Hooper, Colorado IndependentThe fact that he has started cussing while addressing audiences(even supportive ones) clearly shows that he has lost the battle. “There’s no longer a shared reality on an issue like climate even though the very existence of our civilization is threatened. People have no idea! … It’s no longer acceptable in mixed company, meaning bipartisan company, to use the goddamn word climate. It is not acceptable. They have polluted it to the point where we cannot possibly come to an...

Data from NASA's Terra satellite shows that when the climate warms, Earth's atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to "believe." The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. The previously unexplained differences between model-based forecasts of rapid global warming and meteorological data showing a slower rate of warming have been the source of often contentious debate and controversy for more...

The German government wants to encourage the construction of new coal and gas power plants with millions of euros from a fund for promoting clean energy and combating climate change. The plan has come under stiff criticism, but the Ministry of Economics and Technology defended the idea. A spokeswoman said it was necessary as the government switches from nuclear to other renewable energy sources and added that the money would promote the most efficient plants possible. Funding for the initiative is limited to five percent of the energy and climate change fund’s annual expenditure between 2013 and 2016. Annual funding...

More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes soil to release the potent greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, new research published in this week's edition of Nature reveals. "This feedback to our changing atmosphere means that nature is not as efficient in slowing global warming as we previously thought," said Dr Kees Jan van Groenigen, Research Fellow at the Botany department at the School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, and lead author of the study. Van Groenigen, along with colleagues from Northern Arizona University and the University of Florida, gathered all published research to date from 49 different experiments...

The Web site Think Progress (Think Liberal) speculated Mother Nature unleashed tornadoes last month that killed at least 349 people in several Southern states in retribution for their congressional delegations' recent refusal to support a resolution supporting the global-warming dogma: They "overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists." The pollution in question, of course, is carbon dioxide, which fuels earth's life cycle. But the bigger hole in this theory is last month's twister outbreak was far from the deadliest on record. For example, tornadoes killed 454 Southerners...

Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez, 11, of Boulder, is a leader of the Colorado-based Earth Guardian group and one of the plaintiffs named in the suit against the state of Colorado, Gov. John Hickenlooper, the Colorado Department of Health and Environment, the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission and the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. The goal is to "force action on climate change" in all 50 states, translating to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and implementation of reforestation programs, according to the lawsuit. A gathering of thousands of young people is planned in Denver on Saturday, one of dozens of marches around...

What the hell went wrong? For months now, environmentalists have been asking themselves that question, and it’s easy to see why. After Barack Obama vaulted into the White House in 2008, it really did look like the United States was, at long last, going to do something about global warming. (snip) Instead, the climate push was … a total flop. (snip)

BOSTON — A record number of North Atlantic right whales have been spotted off Massachusetts, prompting state officials to warn boaters to stay clear of the endangered animals. An aerial survey of Cape Cod Bay and surrounding waters on Tuesday identified 101 individual right whales, the most ever spotted in a single day. The previous high came last April when 70 of the whales were spotted during a single aerial survey.

PORTLAND, Maine — Harp seals from Canada are showing up in U.S. waters in greater numbers and farther south than usual, and biologists want to know why. Small numbers of juvenile harp seals are typically found each winter stranded along the coast of the northeastern United States. But this year, well over 100 adult harp seals — not juveniles — have been spotted, said Mendy Garron, regional marine mammal stranding coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Gloucester, Mass. The sightings are reported by 14 seal stranding and rehabilitation organizations in New England and the Middle Atlantic.

Barack Obama may be forced to order a two-year delay in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) action on climate change to try to avoid a complete government shutdown, an environmental conference has been warned. Buried among the $61bn in Republican budget cuts are a series of measures that would strip the overall budget of the EPA by 30%. The Republican bill would specifically bar the Obama administration from funding programmes regulating greenhouse gas emissions, or connected to climate science and international negotiations for a deal to end global warming. It cuts funds for the post of White House climate adviser, Carol...

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2011) — Up to two-thirds of Earth's permafrost likely will disappear by 2200 as a result of warming temperatures, unleashing vast quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, says a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. The carbon resides in permanently frozen ground that is beginning to thaw in high latitudes from warming temperatures, which will impact not only the climate but also international strategies to reduce fossil fuel emissions, said CU-Boulder's Kevin Schaefer, lead study author. "If we want to hit a target carbon dioxide concentration, then we...

The heaviest snowfall in more than a century on South Korea's east coast is causing widespread chaos. Hundreds of houses have collapsed under the weight of the snow. One newspaper described it as a snow bomb. The South Korean government has deployed 12,000 soldiers to rescue stranded residents. The worst weather has been in Gangwon province. Weather experts say there will be more snowfall in the area in the coming hours

A University of Michigan study released Tuesday claims shrinking snow and ice cover intensify global warming. But many skeptics question the conclusions and point to the limited amount of data over time that the researchers had available...

Evergreen, a Marlboro-based solar panel maker once considered a clean-energy darling of Gov. Deval Patrick, has been steadily shifting jobs to its facility in lower-cost China, but until today had indicated its Massachusetts operations would continue

Lest we forget, the modern world was created and is maintained by science and technology; so much so and so successfully that many people have often been able to take it for granted. A few hundred years ago, you would have been thinking about what it takes to keep your wagon rolling, if you had one. (Many people still do.) If a wheel broke you would have had to fix it if you could. You would have directly understood the consequences if you couldn't. In recent times, the public has been awakened, at least to some extent, by regional...

Coldest December since records began as temperatures plummet to minus 10C bringing travel chaos across Britain Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned - grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill. And tonight the nation was braced for another 10in of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures - with no let-up in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned. The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met...

BERLIN – Heavy overnight snowfall disrupted air travel across western Europe Friday, forcing more than 800 flight cancellations and leading to major delays in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Germany appeared the hardest hit by the snow, with more than 600 flights canceled, schools forced to close and highways clogged with traffic after scores of accidents that killed at least three people and injured dozens.

Unusually cold weather last winter killed Florida's endangered manatees at a record rate, a report said on Friday. During 2010, a record 699 manatees have died in Florida, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Research Institute. Of those, 244 were attributed to cold weather and many of the 271 undetermined deaths were also likely caused by weather. In most years, the leading cause of manatee deaths is from collisions with power boats

We live in an age of scientific hegemony (if I may borrow a term from the Marxists and feminists), where access to intellectual power and influence is granted to those who demonstrate their loyalty to the approved theories of the ruling elite. Scientists who refuse to bow at the altar of uniformity are labeled heretics and cast out of the intelligentsia, condemned to lives of unfunded grant proposals, tenure denials, and ruined reputations. The scientific theories to which we must pledge allegiance are not threats in and of themselves. For example, global warming, which used to be known as global...

Coldest winter in 1,000 years on its way 04 October, 2010, 22:20 After the record heat wave this summer, Russia's weather seems to have acquired a taste for the extreme. Forecasters say this winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years. The change is reportedly connected with the speed of the Gulf Stream, which has shrunk in half in just the last couple of years. Polish scientists say that it means the stream will not be able to compensate for the cold from the Arctic winds. According to them, when the stream is completely stopped,...

Would You Buy an Electric Car? Not sure -- I'd consider it, but even at $33,500 it's pretty expensive, don't you think? Yes -- I would, even at $41,000 No -- The technology and price just aren't there for me, yet. Other (post a comment)

"Al Gore is a pervert and a sexual predator,"

A masseuse who accused Al Gore of being a "crazed sex poodle" and of groping her in a hotel room is preparing to come forward and sell her story -- for $1 million. Sources tell Page Six the so-far unidentified Oregon woman is ready to publicly reveal herself and heap more embarrassment on the former vice president in return for a seven-figure media deal. And she intends to use the pants she wore on the night of the alleged incident -- supposedly stained with Gore's DNA and stored in a bank safety-deposit box -- as evidence against Gore, who recently...

Climate Fraud: A senator wants an investigation of the false climate testimony before Congress and wants Al Gore to reappear. The illegalities may involve more than just lying to Congress. At a hearing Tuesday by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the Environmental Protection Agency's budget, ranking Republican James Inhofe told EPA head Lisa Jackson that man-induced climate change was a "hoax" concocted by ideologically motivated researchers who "cooked the science." More than that, Inhofe, in releasing a GOP report questioning the science used to support cap-and-trade legislation, hinted that such activities may be part of a vast...

A lot has happened since Newsweek's Nov. 9 cover story -- mostrecently the retraction of Al Gore's rising-seas scenario. Climate Fraud: The godfather of climate hysteria is in hiding as another of his wild claims unravels — this one about global warming causing seas to swallow us up. We've not seen or heard much of the former vice president, Oscar winner and Nobel Prize recipient recently as the case for disastrous man-made climate change collapses. Perhaps he's off reading how scientists were forced to withdraw a study on a projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding two...

Snowfall predictions for Friday It will be cloudy with a high near 46 today in the Birmingham metro area, but snow is on its way, the National Weather Service reports. The low tonight will be around 29. One to two inches of snow is expected in the Birmingham area on Friday, mainly from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with a high near 35, the weather service reports. The chance of snow is 80 percent. The low that night will be near 24. Friday's snowfall is expected to be heavier just south of the Birmingham area. Two to four inches are...

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - The National Weather Service in New Orleans has issued a winter storm warning for Thursday evening through Friday afternoon. The warning includes East Feliciana, West Feliciana, St. Helena and Pointe Coupee parishes. For East Feliciana and St. Helena parishes, there will be a chance of rain and slight chance of light sleet Thursday afternoon. A mixture of rain, light sleet and snow are forecast for the evening and then snow after midnight. Snow accumulation of 2 - 5 inches are possible. Another 1 - 2 inches could fall Friday. According to forecasters, West Feliciana and...

What caused a fall from grace so sudden that IPCC’s insiders now demand Pachauri’s ouster, and that leads the Indian government to set up an “Indian IPCC” as a national alternative to the IPCC, declaring that it “cannot rely” any longer on the organization that its own representative heads? One answer is Climategate — the unauthorized release of emails in November that showed the duplicity of scientists associated with the IPCC. Unquestionably, Climategate opened the floodgates to the torrent of scandals that have since poured out, seemingly without end. Many of the new scandals, some of them sporting “-gate” as...

In his regular column, BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin considers whether another mistake by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has come to light. After the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted it had made a mistake in its Himalaya glacier forecast in its Fourth Assessment Report, climate "sceptics" are busy searching the rest of the panel's report for more mistakes. It appears that this week, they have found one. In parts of the blogosphere it has been dubbed "Amazongate".

China's most senior negotiator on climate change said today he was keeping an open mind on whether global warming was man-made or the result of natural cycles. Xie Zhenhua said there was no doubt that warming was taking place, but more and better scientific research was needed to establish the causes. Xie, Premier Wen Jiabao's special representative on climate change, was speaking in Delhi at the end of a two-day meeting of ministers from four of the most powerful emerging economies – China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

NEW DELHI -- Brazil, China, India and South Africa called Sunday for developed countries to quickly begin handing over the $10 billion pledged in Copenhagen to poor countries to help them deal with the effects of climate change. The first funds should go to the least developed countries, including small island states and African countries, said Xie Zhenhua, China's top climate change negotiator after a meeting of the representatives of the four nations in New Delhi.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- A 27-year study of polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea showed them spending more time on land and open water as ice disappeared, officials said. Between 1979 and 1987, 12 percent of bear sightings were associated with no ice. Between 1997 and 2005, however, 90 percent of bear sightings were associated with no ice, said Karyn Rode, a polar bear biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, Alaska. As sea ice disappeared, more bears were seen near shore in the southern Beaufort Sea, Rode said in a recent issue of...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — Hundreds of sea lions that abruptly blew out of San Francisco Bay’s Pier 39 last Thanksgiving have apparently found a new home at another tourist attraction — 500 miles north on the Oregon coast.

Some cash-strapped British pensioners are buying books from charity shops and burn them to keep warm as freezing temperatures gripped the UK, a London newspaper reported Tuesday. Workers at a charity shop in Swansea, in south Wales, told London newspaper Metro that pensioners were looking for thick books such as encyclopedias — which are sold for a few pennies second hand — as a cheaper alternative to coal.

Sometimes factual headlines can be bad for for the globull warming movement. Such was the case when the BBC worked quickly to pull a headline change from "Coldest December since 1981" to a less scary sounding (for the warmists) "Icy conditions lead to closure of Giant's Causeway". Unfortunately for the BBC, screenshots and Google kept them from hiding the evidence.

Global Warming: Russian analysts accuse Britain's Meteorological Office of cherry-picking Russian temperature data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures. Is Copenhagen rooted in a single tree in Siberia? Michael Mann, a Penn State meteorologist, wrote in Friday's Washington Post that "stolen" e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit still don't alter the evidence for climate change. Mann, a creator of the discredited hockey-stick graph used in reports from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to show man-made warming, attacks climate skeptics, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, saying they "confuse the public." Chutzpah has been...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN STERLING VIRGINIA HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR SNOW... WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO 6 AM EST SUNDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT. * PRECIP TYPE... SNOW. * ACCUMULATIONS... HEAVY SNOW WITH ACCUMULATIONS OF 5 TO 10 INCHES THROUGH SUNSET SATURDAY. LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS POSSIBLE... MAINLY IN OR NEAR SOUTHERN MARYLAND. ADDITIONAL ACCUMULATIONS EXPECTED SATURDAY NIGHT. * TIMING... SNOW WILL BEGIN LATE FRIDAY NIGHT AND WILL CONTINUE THROUGH SUNDAY MORNING. * TEMPERATURES... UPPER 20S TO LOWER 30S THROUGH THE EVENT IN THE BALTIMORE WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA......

Just in time for Obama to announce it, and it only cost the USA 100 billion dollars. Thanks Hillary. Climate draft deal agreed December 18, 2009 – 1:30PM Leaders and ministers from 28 countries including Australia have outlined a draft accord to fight global warming. The details of the draft are not known yet but the move came hours before some 130 world leaders were set to convene in the dying hours of the climate summit at Copenhagen. Representatives from key blocs, covering both rich and developing countries, embarked on late-night negotiations in a desperate bid to hammer out a...

India's environment minister accused rich countries of planning a "propaganda campaign" to blame developing nations for any breakdown in negotiations. Developing economies are expected to add almost all future growth in carbon emissions. "We are in the end game," said Jairam Ramesh. "It's only a matter of time before the blame game starts. Already some developed countries are accusing the G77 [developing nation group], Africa. This is completely, incomprehensively wrong." European environment ministers said talks were in danger. "We've got a serious situation," German environment minister Norbert Roettgen told Reuters. The Copenhagen summit is meant to agree a global climate...

Hillary Clinton has given US backing to proposals for a $100 billion-a-year international fund to tackle global warming in developing countries in a boost for deadlocked talks at the climate change summit in Copenhagen. The US Secretary of State said the science for climate change is now “undeniable” and the world must agree a deal in the next 48 hours. In a move that will widely be seen as a grand gesture to force developing countries to sign up to a deal, she said the US would be willing to pay into a global fund of $100 billion (£60bn) per...

Let's see now... Over in Copenhagen, we have Robert Mugabe, perhaps the most brutal and corrupt despot in Africa, whose life's work has been to destroy the once-prosperous country of Zimbabwe, lecturing the West on the "hypocrisy" of its position on climate change. (Zimbabwe doesn't have to worry about greenhouse gas emissions, because, thanks to Mugane, its economy is in a state of collapse.) We have the government of China, which won't allow its citizens free access to the Internet, complaining that the climate summit is "not transparent." We have Hugo Chavez, who took time off from shutting down Venezuela's...

The theory that signs of global warming could be the result of sunspots rather than carbon dioxide emissions caused by humans has come under attack from climate scientists. Sceptics about man-made climate change frequently cite research apparently linking natural variations in solar activity with fluctuations in temperatures on Earth. The alternative explanation was the centrepiece of The Great Global Warming Swindle, a 2007 Channel 4 documentary which provoked fierce argument. It is based on the work of Prof Eigil Friis-Christensen and Henrik Svensmark of the of the Danish National Space Centre, who both published studies in the 1990s appearing to...

Heavy snow and temperatures 22 degrees below normal are now forecasted for the Global Warming conference in Copenhagen. As weather forecasts are updated, here is a screen shot as of apprx 11:20pm EST: The average December high for Copenhagen is 39F and the average low is 32F

Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, has become embroiled in a climate change spin row after claiming that the Arctic could be completely ice-free within five years. Speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, Mr Gore said new computer modelling suggests there is a 75 per cent chance of the entire polar ice cap melting during the summertime by 2014. However, he faced embarrassment last night after Dr Wieslav Maslowski, the climatologist whose work the prediction was based on, refuted his claims.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is delivering his big speech in Copenhagen right now -- but before he took the stage he offered an opening salvo -- a whack at fellow Republican Sarah Palin who has expressed skepticism about global warming. The FT, which is on quite a roll: The California governor has become an environmental standard bearer for the Republican party, which is split on the merits of curbing emissions. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election, has attacked cap and trade and questioned any link between man-made emissions and global warming. “You have to ask:...