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On Thursday, former U. S. vice-president Al Gore delivered a major address calling on his country to abandon all fossil fuels within 10 years. By 2018, U. S. electricity and fuel should come entirely from "renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources," he said. Tickets to the event encouraged attendees to "please use public transit, bicycling or other climate-friendly means" to reach the lecture hall. So how did Mr. Gore and his retinue arrive? In two Lincoln Town Cars and a full-sized SUV that sat idling with the air conditioners blasting while the Gore party was inside. It was 34...

Gore Entourage's Lincoln Town Car Outside Global Warming Speech Idles w/ AC Cranking for 20 Minutes!

In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former vice president’s home energy use surged more than 10 percent, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.” In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh)...

An Inconvenient Truth The Opera Jackie and Dunlap on the Inconvenient Truth Opera commissioned by La Strada Click the pic to watch the video! "Over in Italy they've commisioned a new opera based on the movie 'An Inconvenient Truth'." Yeah, leave it to the Italians to combine the two worst things in the world: opera and Al Gore."

An anti-nuclear, Toronto-based, urban-loving, 1970s peace activist who opposes subsidies to the oil industry might be the last person expected to detail cracks in the science of global warming. But Lawrence Solomon has done just that in a short book with a long subtitle: The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud (and those who are too fearful to do so). The spark for the book came after an American TV reporter compared those who question the Kyoto Protocol to Holocaust deniers. But Solomon wondered about that so he sought out the...

Climate Change: Legislation pending in the Senate might warm environmentalists' hearts, but not because of potential cuts in carbon emissions. Their interest is in the heavy economic costs the plans would inflict.Each bill uses the cap-and-trade scheme to control carbon dioxide emissions. Each establishes limits, then prescribes how to distribute or sell to the private sector the rights to emit specific amounts of greenhouse gases under the cap. The bill sponsored by Sens. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., is the least egregious. It would force greenhouse gas emissions to be cut to about 3% below last year's level....

Interviewed Tuesday for Charlie Rose's PBS show, CNN founder Ted Turner argued that inaction on global warming “will be catastrophic” and those who don't die “will be cannibals.” He also applied moral equivalence in describing Iraqi insurgents as “patriots” who simply “don't like us because we've invaded their country” and so “if the Iraqis were in Washington, D.C., we'd be doing the same thing.” On not taking drastic action to correct global warming: Not doing it will be catastrophic. We'll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will...

Before I unveil my plan to combat global warming using mood rings and glowing lapel pins, let me explain the scientific rationale. Everyone talks about the future weather, but so far nobody has done much about it, not even the many people and politicians convinced that climate change will be a serious problem. This situation comes as no surprise to the behavioral researchers who have been studying the human brain’s penchant for making dumb choices. We can’t even prepare properly for something as straightforward as our own retirement. We’ll put in long hours shopping for a cellphone or a television...

It’s not a script for the next science-fiction thriller, but renowned British scientist James Lovelock is giving human civilization less than 32 years before all hell breaks loose because of the effects of global warming. Lovelock said the impact of climate change is irreversible regardless of what mankind does. “By 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine,”

Technology key to fighting global warming, Al Gore says Last Updated: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 | 1:15 PM ET CBC News Better technology — such as video conferencing — can help fight climate change and reduce carbon emissions, according to former U.S. vice-president and environmental crusader Al Gore. The Nobel Prize winner, who was also awarded an Oscar in 2007 for his environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth, told an audience at the VoiceCon telecommunications summit in Orlando, Fla., on Wednesday that businesses can improve their efficiency — and thus profitability — if they adopt new technology. Former U.S. vice-president Al...

The Public Utilities Commission's recent proposal to use a cap-and-trade system to fight global warming pollution from utilities has triggered alarms that ill-conceived policies might lead to price gouging and brownouts. Those are reasonable concerns. A poorly designed cap-and-trade system could lead to a steep rise in utility bills and worsening pollution in largely poor communities. However, a well-designed cap-and-trade system would ensure that Californians avoid these problems while reducing global warming pollution. The real benefits of a cap on pollution linked with a market-based solution is that it will unleash innovation, provide new revenue streams for the state and...

Leaders in the new Southern Baptist environmental movement were careful Monday to avoid criticizing fellow Southern Baptists still skeptical of climate change, while at the same time pushing them to have greater concern for the environment. Tue, Mar. 11, 2008 Posted: 14:07:05 PM EST Leaders in the new Southern Baptist environmental movement were careful Monday to avoid criticizing fellow Southern Baptists still skeptical of climate change, while at the same time pushing them to have greater concern for the environment. “This is a journey for each of us and Southern Baptists are at different points in this journey,” said Jonathan...

Regular readers will recall that not long ago I asked the climate community research community to suggest what climate observations might be observed on decadal time scales that might be inconsistent with predictions from models. While Real Climate has decided to take a pass on this question other scientists and interested observers have taken up the challenge, no doubt with interest added by the recent cooling in the primary datasets of global temperature.

Cool the climate hysteria 'Every generation needs a holier-than-thou, ideological mantra ... to wrap themselves virtuously'Global warming is the gift that keeps on giving to climate hysterics. For those already pre-disposed to being anti-western, anti-development, anti-growth, anti-capitalist and most of all, anti-U.S., it's the perfect propaganda tool. After all, as they screech, the survival of the Earth itself is at stake and they alone are on the side of the angels. They alone care about the legacy we will leave our grandchildren. To this crowd, the rest of us are "climate deniers," in a league with the devil, in the...

It is certain that the United States is in for an energy price and supply shock the likes of which we have never experienced or imagined. While high prices, to a reasonable extent can be tolerated, hell will break loose if massive supply disruptions emerge. We are much closer to them than people think. Those who think that we can conserve ourselves to energy independence need not read any further. They are vastly wrong and it is pointless to argue with them. The first proof of trouble to come is that none of the three US presidential candidates, Senators John...

Last year, Professor Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School of Business, who will be a featured speaker at the International Conference on Climate Change March 2-4 in New York (Marriott Marquis Hotel, March 4 at 8:45am, Empire Complex, 7th Floor) proposed a Global Warming Challenge debate to former Vice President Al Gore in an effort to stimulate a scientific approach to forecasting climate change. The challenge asked that Armstrong and Gore each put $10,000 into a charitable trust fund. Armstrong bet that over the next 10 years he could forecast temperature change more accurately than any climate model that Mr....

Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate ChangeWritten By: Edited by S. Fred Singer, Ph.D.Published In: Summary for PolicymakersPublication Date: March 2, 2008Publisher: Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change / The Heartland Insstitute Abstract:  The public’s fear of anthropogenic global warming seems to be at a fever pitch. Polls show most people in most countries believe human greenhouse gas emissions are a major cause of climate change and that action must be taken to reduce them, although most people apparently are not willing to make the financial sacrifices required.While the report of the...

Al Gore has been unfairly accused of unsound environmental practices, according to Kaylee Kreider, his spokeswoman. The former vice president actually leads an eco-conscious green life — complete with solar energy and geothermal heating. His critics say he's attempting "to rewrite history." In question is an advertising campaign that begins today by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The broadcast spot says Mr. Gore's Tennessee residence uses 20 times more energy than the average American household — a claim based on damning information released last year by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, which examined Mr. Gore's utility bills. "The data...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Flooded roads and subways, deformed railroad tracks and weakened bridges may be the wave of the future with continuing global warming, a new study says. Climate change will affect every type of transportation through rising sea levels, increased rainfall and surges from more intense storms, the National Research Council said in a report released Tuesday. Complicating matters, people continue to move into coastal areas, creating the need for more roads and services in the most vulnerable regions, the report noted. "The time has come for transportation professionals to acknowledge and confront the challenges posed by climate change...

So-called "environmentalists" insist on making polar bears the centerpiece for their fight against capitalism. They insist that polar bears are nearing extinction because of man-made global warming. It's not theory to them .. it's etched-in-stone fact. Right now the Bush administration is being sued by environmental groups claiming the Fish and Wildlife Service is in breach of its own mandate – its failure to protect the polar bear as an endangered species. Well, yes ... there actually has been a delay to determine whether or not polar bears are actually endangered species. The fact of the matter is that they...

Losing Brett Favre is hard enough, but what if the Green Bay Packers lost their home field advantage? Global warming could remove those icy cold days and snowstorms that tend to benefit the Pack if they're playing against a team more accustomed to warm weather. An analysis by Environment America found that cold weather teams won more than 65 percent of their home games played from November through January against warm weather teams from 1998 through 2005. And though all cold weather stadiums saw average football season temperatures rise during the past seven years compared to the previous 30 years,...

A man lost his much-coveted "carbon neutral" designation Sunday, eating a Cheesy Bean and Rice Burrito, a Carne Asada Steak Taquito, and a Mexican Pizza. Sources said the man appeared "distraught" and also "somewhat gassy and bloated." The man, who requested anonymity, prided himself on a "carbon neutral" existence, a la Al Gore. By paying for "carbon offsets" - which promises some guy in some Third World country supposedly plants some trees - the man assuaged his guilt over owning an SUVs and putting a roof over his family's head. However, the "noxious emmisions" created by his Taco Bell meal...

Last week, the Heartland Institute put on “The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change“, attended by scientists, economists, and politicians who see a lot of trouble with the science, economics, and politics of current global warming hysteria.Among the over 200 scientists was keynote speaker Pat Michaels, a must-hear and must-read on the subject…and a fun guy to have a drink with.Also attending was Czech President Vaclav Klaus. Here’s some news coverage from his home country:http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/news/index_view.php?id=300343Another interesting participant was Chris Horner, author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism“, who wrote an excellent piece for Human Events which...

Berkeley - The growth in China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is far outpacing previous estimates, making the goal of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases even more difficult, according to a new analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and UC San Diego. Previous estimates, including those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say the region that includes China will see a 2.5 to 5 percent annual increase in CO2 emissions, the largest contributor to atmospheric greenhouse gases, between 2004 and 2010. The new UC analysis puts that annual growth rate for China to at least 11 percent...

As a practicing Catholic, I try to keep up with the latest from the Home Office in the Vatican, but more often than not, I find myself wondering if they know not what they do. For instance, today we hear from officials that they have added to the list of sins Catholics must consider, including “ecological sins”. In the same breath but without a hint of irony, the same officials bemoan the decreasing participation in the rite of reconciliation, or what used to be called confession: Thou shall not pollute the Earth. Thou shall beware genetic manipulation. Modern times bring...

Star-Tribune reporter Megan Lee interviewed presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama in Casper Friday. The following is a transcript of the interview: Lee: Wyoming is a state whose economy relies on traditional fossil fuels -- coal, oil -- and a transition to a clean energy future, which I know you are pro as you discussed during the town hall meeting today about "punishing polluters." How would you suggest transitioning Wyoming from a bust-boom traditional fossil fuel state to a clean energy state? How would our economy last through that? Obama: First of all, people are still going to be using coal...

Just how pervasive the bias at most news outlets is in favour of climate alarmism -- and how little interest most outlets have in reporting any research that diverges from the alarmist orthodoxy -- can be seen in a Washington Post story on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), announced last week in New York. The NIPCC is a counter to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. The group was unveiled this week in Manhattan at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, along with its scientific report claiming that natural factors -- the sun,...

For Lent, Laila Thompson usually gives up chocolate or other indulgent sweets. But after talking with her religious leader this year, she decided to slim down something different: her carbon footprint. "I realized that I'm doing a lot of things that are harming the world, and I feel obligated to take care of God's creation," says Thompson. So for the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter, she's doing without plastic bags, wasted electricity and excess driving. Her carbon diet brings with it the newest display of green thinking that connects environmental vigilance with religious salvation. English bishops Richard Chartres...

The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades. Their findings, published in separate journals over the past few weeks, suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide. Using advanced computer models to...

When True Believers begin to harbor doubts, they don't immediately give up the faith. It's too scary; too much pride and money has been invested; too many jobs and reputations are on the line; and they need to find a new reason to live. So they always try to add on new wrinkles and qualifications to their crumbling story. Today that's happening with the global warming cult.

Embracing Earth Charter key to environmental salvation Author and U of A professor Colin Soskolne says humans need to smarten up. March 7, 2008 - Edmonton -- Human beings, laments Colin Soskolne, are a "seriously dumb species." Just what kind of defect drives us to destroy the very ecosystems that provide us with sustenance? Why do we turn away from mounting, irrefutable evidence that we are sabotaging our very existence?Such questions are asked in a new collection of essays, called Sustaining Life on Earth: Environmental and Human Health through Global Governance, edited by Soskolne, on the environment and human health."Our...

New derivation of equations governing the greenhouse effect reveals "runaway warming" impossible Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was. That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Langley Research Center. After studying it,...

Aftermath: Population Zero investigates what would happen if every single person on Earth simply disappeared. Explore an interactive world without humans.

Ottawa recovers from near-record snowfallThe Red Cross has set-up cots in the Ottawa airport for the hundreds of people stranded there today, after more than 50 centimetres of snow fell on the capital city during this weekend's massive storm. Meteorologist Paul Delannoy happened to be stuck at the airport, waiting for his wife's flight to arrive. He spoke to CTV Newsnet Sunday afternoon. "There's hardly anything moving at the Ottawa airport," he said. "There are people sleeping everywhere, piles of suitcases and lots of people waiting for in-coming passengers who aren't coming." Ottawa now has had 410.7 centimetres of snow...

It's been a weird year.In the Northwest, we've had the snowiest winter in many years. Even with a relatively dry second half of February, the snowpack in the Willamette drainage is at 172 percent of normal.Baghdad has had snow on several occasions. I read somewhere that snow there had not been reported there since 1916. My son-in-law, Matt Halverson, is stationed in Baghdad with the U.S. Marines and confirmed that they had indeed, received snow. China has had severe blizzards; according to0 some reports, they flattened about 10 percent of the country's forests.Subtropical northern Vietnam experienced a prolong cold spell...

Think you can sidestep the issue of “global warming,” simply by voting Republican? Think again. Now that Senator John McCain is officially the Republican nominee for President, global warming is, whether anyone likes it or not, an “issue” for both of our nation’s dominant political parties. McCain has been gravitating towards this issue for several years, and made his mark with it during his chairing of the U.S. Senate hearings on global warming back in 2004

Last week, virtually unreported in Britain, the extraordinary winter weather of 2008 elsewhere in the world continued. In the USA, there were blizzards as far south as Texas and Arkansas, while in northern states and Canada what they are calling "the winter from hell" has continued to break records going back in some cases to 1873. Meanwhile in Asia more details emerged of the catastrophe caused by the northern hemisphere's greatest snow cover since 1966. It might have seemed timely that in New York an array of leading climatologists and other experts should have gathered for the most high-powered international...

Who says that the issue of global warming is a matter of science, not faith? Just last week, Mayor Gavin Newsom proved belief trumps data. The Chronicle reported that a San Francisco Public Utilities Commission study found that the giant turbines he wanted to put underwater below the Golden Gate Bridge would cost way too much money to install and maintain. They would generate power at a cost of 80 cents to $1.40 per kilowatt hour - compared with Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s 12 cents per hour commercial rate. It seems the turbines would produce only one or two...

John Tierney writes about the money paid to the man-man global warming crowd in his new article for the New York Times. In it he notes the criticism he received for speaking at a event that was funded by the Heartland Institute. The environazi’s were all aghast because they believed the institute to be funded by fossil fuel companies. Nevermind that the money from fossil fuel companies have never been over 5% of their budget, in their minds thats enough to be a tool for big oil. John notes similiarites with this kind of stuff and the “fat is bad”...

Shovelling 'global warming' No one has the right to call you a 'climate denier' for expressing your views on climate changeIf your neighbour is a charter member of the Al Gore Nation, today would probably be a bad time to ask him how he's been enjoying shovelling all that "global warming" out of his driveway this winter. Trust me, climate hysterics (anyone who accuses others of being "climate deniers") do not like being mocked. For example, last week's otherwise largely favourable response to my March 2 column "The carbon cops are coming, When anyone says 'polluters will pay' to reduce...

MONTEREY, California (AFP) - A scientist who mapped his genome and the genetic diversity of the oceans said Thursday he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel. Geneticist Craig Venter disclosed his potentially world-changing "fourth-generation fuel" project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California. "We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy," Venter told an audience that included global warming fighter Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page. "We think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with...

Canadian geologists say they can shed light on how a vast lake, trapped under the ice sheet that once smothered much of North America, drained into the sea, an event that cooled Earth's climate for hundreds of years. During the last ice age, the Laurentide Ice Sheet once covered most of Canada and parts of the northern United States with a frozen crust that in some places was three kilometres (two miles) thick. As the temperature gradually rose some 10,000 years ago, the ice receded, gouging out the hollows that would be called the Great Lakes. Beneath the ice's thinning...

My daughter has to do a report in 9th grade Biology based on the book "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore. Can anyone recommend sources that disprove it?

UPDATE - see new graph of global ∆T for the past year below. There has been a global drop in temperature of 0.63 degrees Centigrade in the past 12 months. Of course we already have had a heads up from all the wire reports around the world talking about the significant winter weather events that have occurred worldwide in the last month, but until now, there hasn’t been a measure of how the planet was doing for the winter of 2007/2008.Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa just posted the latest MSU (Microwave Sounder Unit) data.January posted a -.08°C near...

Recent evidence shows "the climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than those on the pessimistic side of the IPCC projections had warned us," climate campaigner and former US vice-president Gore said. snip

"The engineer has learned vastly more from the steam-engine than the steam-engine will ever learn from the engineer."    -- Prof John B. Fenn, Nobel Prize, Chemistry, 2002 There is considerable debate over whether the "greenhouse gas" effect will raise the temperature of the atmosphere by between 1-5°C over the next 100 years. But even if you grant for the sake of argument the Warmist claim that the earth's atmosphere will go up a full five degrees Centigrade in temperature, Al Gore's claim that ocean levels will rise 20 feet thanks to global warming seems to ignore the laws of thermodynamics. I...

aving climate campaigner Al Gore round to your house is to open yourself to a self-flagellating guilt trip, Irish rock star Bono confessed Thursday. Sharing a stage with the former US vice president at the annual gathering of world movers and shakers in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, the U2 frontman joked that their friendship was a source of pressure on the domestic front. "He's been round my house and it's like... here's the recycler Al, you know... I've got a posh car, but it runs on ethanol Al," Bono said. Acknowledging that a career in rock music was...

If you haven't done so already, meet the Nano, possibly the most significant new car of the decade. Small, cute, and snub-nosed, it fits four people and a duffel bag, has a single windshield wiper, travels at 60 mph, and it's all yours for the princely sum of $2,500, roughly the same price as the DVD system in your neighbor's Lexus and about half the price of the cheapest cars on the market today. Even better, at least for the philosophically minded, the Nano comes with its own moral conundrum: What happens when the laudable, currently fashionable movement to improve...

While there might not be much upside to Tata Motors’ intended purchase of the luxury Jaguar and Land Rover marques, the Indian giant’s decision to build the world’s cheapest car looks like a supercharged business decision. Numbers released yesterday by the industry giants underline the potential with General Motors revealing that vehicle sales in China rose 18.5% last year to a record 1.03mn and Toyota saying it smashed targets with a 62% increase in the world’s fastest growing country. In spite of this impressive growth by the big two in China, only 0.1% of the population owns one of their...